konchog uma

ignorance is ignorance, and bliss is bliss. Most people who live in a state of ignorance never get a chance to experience actual bliss, thats just something they say when life rips a crack in their coccoon and the light hurts their eyes. not to argue with you mal, i think that as a quote its apropos of the complaints of mike134. just sayin

according to theravada view there is only one bodhisattva, and that is maitreya, the next buddha. There can only be one bodhisattva at a time in that view. according to mahayana view, anyone who takes the bodhisattva vow is a bodhisattva. Who takes it officially, under the auspices of a lama etc. Its a vow to remain and help beings, even if one achieves liberation and can go anywhere one wants (like to paradise) or disappear from reality and merge back into the light never to return. The vow is understood to carry over into future lifetimes and affect the course of one's spiritual progress for as long as it takes until samsara is empty and all beings are liberated. Until then, its helping beings liberate. There are probably a few people on this board who have taken the bodhisattva vow, but its generally for totally committed buddhists. its a prerequisite to taking tantric vows in most schools, so anyone who genuinely practices vajrayana buddhism has probably taken the bodhisattva vow. I have taken that vow, and i doubt i'm the only one here (not even going to open that can of worms) who thinks of themselves as a bodhisattva.

@malikshreds, right it sounds like the goal is the same, and it sounds like a great practice.. i do wish you success with it @rv, yeah i was blown away twice by the practice, the first time by how f-ing HARD it is to do, and then when i finally had some success in it, how amazingly relaxing and tranquilizing it is to engage in. Im looking forward to seeing how deep that rabbit hole goes.. i really recommend anyone who feels intrigued by this to just try it next time youre meditating on the breath.. pay attention to the diaphram and belly muscles (assuming you breath from your belly) and feel how you are manipulating them subtly, and try not to. It is such a neat experiment! lol

what you are talking about is still regulating the diaphram. i am trying to not do that. the result is the same, cessation of breath as it grows increasingly more subtle, but i think you are doing something different to get there. good luck to you in your practice!

since the recent resurgence of pick-up artist content, i thought i would post about an actual role-model lol. Gedun Chopel (or Gendun Chophel), subject of the movie , left his vows and monastery behind and went to India to live a very colorful life. He is regarded by many as the foremost Tibetan intellectual of the 20th century, and is probably most known today for his book "Treatise on Passion", which has been translated into english by Jeffrey Hopkins and published by Snow Lion as Tibetan Arts of Love. I will quote from the back cover: "This book presents in lucid detail the sixty-four arts of love, divided into eight varieties of sexual play - embracing, kissing, pinching and scratching, biting, moving to and fro and pressing, erotic noises, role reversal, and positions of love-making. It includes a complete and unexpurgated translation of "Treasise on Passion" [...] Gedun Chopel traveled to India where he learned Sanskrit and studied the Kama Sutra, yet his rendition of the arts of love is more evocative and more accessible than the erotic tomes of India. He gives titillating advice to shun inhibitions, describes sexual acts in detail, shows how to use sexual pleasure to enhance spiritual insight, and explains how to increase female sexual pleasure. With a mutually supportive ethic of love as a foundation, he speaks eloquently of the equality of women and their victimization by social and legal codes. An over-arching focus is sexual ecstasy as a door to spiritual experience and fundamental mind; the sky experience of the mind of clear light pervades the scintillating descriptions of erotic acts. Tibetan Arts of Love also includes a robust introduction by Professor Jeffrey Hopkins [...] The introduction begins with an account of Gedun Chopel's fascinating life story. Hopkins then brings together material scattered throughout the text to reveal its major underlying themes. He also describes in detail the psychology of Highest Yoga Tantra in which the mind of orgasmic bliss is used for realizing the final nature of reality. The introduction and translation combine to make this a highly accessible, engaging, and provocative exploration of the erotic arts." I just got a copy yesterday from paperbackswap.com although it is generally available inexpensively.. have looked through it a little with my lady love, and found what we did read to be very fascinating and different from anything else out there in significant ways. Seems to be very worthwhile so far, so i thought i would share!

sorry for the delay alchemistgeorge, i didnt see your reply til now i am still reading the rather incredible bio of gedun chophel, and haven't gotten to the practices yet. I am not sure what information on the highest yoga tantra or other tibetan ways of unifying lovemaking and spirituality will be contained.. as i uncover that, i will post it here.. you shouldn't have to wait long.

just finished Heart Drops Of Dharmakaya today, and ordered: Realizing Emptiness: Madhymaka Insight Meditations by Gen Lamrimpa and B Alan Wallace and Center of the Sunlit Sky: Madhyamaka in the Kagyu Tradition by Karl Brunnholz

right which is the crux of buddhism right there. shakyamuni had a lot of followers who said to him "we will follow you if you tell us what is eternal, and do human beings have a soul, and where did reality come from, and what is absolute" etc.. it was big in india at that time to be concerned about such things.. and the buddha said to them that they were like a man who has been shot on the battlefield through the eye with an arrow, and is talking to the doctor who is there to pull the arrow out, saying "you can not pull this arrow out until i know the nationality of the man who shot me, and what kind of horse he was riding, and was it a longbow or a shortbow, and what kind of bird gave the feather which guided this arrow?" To him it was completely silly to be concerned with anything except our present condition and how to better it. not to inundate with buddhism, but thats my background, so you know.. sometimes it slips out lol

agreed thats the main reason that i insist that daoism and buddhism are two sides of the same coin.. they both agree that what is going on here (reality, if you will) is completely beyond all attempts to conceptualize it. Thats also why i suspect that reality as a whole is a mystery, utterly unknowable. i still give a hearty *facepalm* to anyone who disagrees based on buddhist or daoist logic. (i acknowledge that much can be known btw, just feel that ultimately, there is far more which isn't and i would guess cant be known)

@sinfest, youre mixing tibetan and japanese, but thats okay i think once you throw my pretty ponies in the mix all bets are off anyway @hnjt, never spent time in salem... i was in eugene and portland. Oregon is my favorite state of all the states i have been to (which is more than half of them)

"did you hear the one about the monk who couldn't vacuum his curtains? he had no attachments!"

i think that there is a kind of happiness that chases sorrow around the wheel of existence, and then there is the kind of happiness which comes from, as HNJT put it, acceptance. In mahamudra practice there is the idea that at a certain point in ones meditation, all possible scenarios which might arise as one's circumstances have only "a single taste". This phase of "one taste" is followed by the final phase of mahamudra practice, "non-meditation", where mind constantly rests in the natural state, uncontrived in any way. I bring this up because the "one taste" is generally understood to be delicious, and the natural state is said to give rise to bliss and clarity. i guess you could say that there is conditional happiness, and unconditional happiness. I am very sure that there is conditional sorrow, but i am not sure that there is unconditional sorrow. I think that when a person reaches an unconditioned state of mind, it gives rise to happiness. Not sure tho, curious what others think...

"one who knows, knows only one" wonderful! thank you

@sinfest: uma means horse in japanese

uma is tibetan for "middle way". konchog means "three jewels". its the name given to me by ontul rinpoche when i took refuge. @hnjt/naja i love oregon, what part do you live in?

oh thanks cat. i would like to change it to "konchog uma" (all lower case) if you don't mind. i appreciate it

quite so wwroa

sacred geometry is exhibited by everything natural.. there would be benefit to someone who copied patterns and examples down, or who built something according to the principles of sacred geometry if that was their goal... but i think its interesting to note that from the position of buds on a plant to the proportions of the human face to the skeletal structure of basically every animal (i think!) that ratios like phi appear to dominate the relationships and natural growth of organisms. in fact i would go so far as to say that if you wanted to understand sacred geometry, but didnt know where to jump in, start with phi. Theres a reason its called the golden ratio. From your studies of phi, you could easily branch out into whatever elements of sacred geometry strike your interest.

last night the vote was to extend the Bush tax cuts permanently. Instead they increased payroll tax. (the debt ceiling was not addressed at all) edit: so thats whats up with them lately

thats not entirely correct. if it were, the 2nd chakra wouldn't have anything to do with the generative organs, which it does. things just aren't so linear, like "because the adrenals rest on top of the kidneys that means the closest chakra to them must influence them." The body is a holistic system, and the energy body regulates the functions of a very wide variety of things, some of which are local and some of which aren't.

with meditation and energy work, its rare to achieve results with a single try. rather, you'll find results accumulate with regular practice over time.

don't worry i didn't reify it or conceptualize it i just cut and paste it and promptly forgot that i had done it so its okay whew

thanks for sticking up for me seth. Not sure i'm one of the nicest on the forum , but i'd guess i've caught the sharp end of vmarco's defamatory rhetoric. I say guess because unlike you, i am happy to ignore his posts. With every word that comes out of his mouth he embarrasses himself and misrepresents the dharma. I have never seen one of his preachy rants on any buddhist forum, probably because some part of his mind realizes that what he is espousing isn't actually vajrayana buddhism. lol thats what gets my goat personally, his misrepresenting the dharma by quoting the same sources, out of context, over and over and over, to justify a dogmatically geminate version of neo-dharma which he calls shortpath, in reference to vajrayana, when this new philosophy he is making up has nothing to do with tantric buddhism. Vajrayana is essentially nondual, and vmarco is still psychologically trapped in the duplicity of right and wrong, better and worse, his way and the ways of "believers" and "spoilers" et cetera. Every word that comes out of his mouth generates a schism between his way of thinking and anyone that disagrees, and every post he jumps into turns into an argument!! Its so obvious. Thats how i know he isn't a representative of the buddha-dharma, and that's why i will study my vajrayana from sources who have attained the degree of peace, acceptance, civility, and equanimity that is the hallmark of an actual spiritual teacher. Its considered horrible form to misrepresent the buddha-dharma, and is just narcissistic to take ones own personal biases and prejudice and prop it all up onto the dharma and call your philosophy "buddhism" when all you do is attempt to divide people, cut those who disagree down with pejorative rhetoric, and carry on as if you were the one single enlightened being and everyone else had something to learn from you! in actuality its a buddhist practice to carry on as if everyone else in the world were enlightened, perfect in every way, and that you are the last person who has not achieved enlightenment. In this way one can realize the inherent perfection of the vajra world and its inhabitants, and cultivate humility and beginners mind, the basis of enlightened mind. How far from this is vmarco?! There's some duality for you...

Earth, mountains, rivers - hidden in this nothingness. In this nothingness - earth, mountains, rivers revealed. Spring flowers, winter snows: There's no being or non-being, nor denial itself. - Saisho (circa 1490) Zen Poetry: Let the Spring Breeze Enter

i think that warrants a separate area of the pit 3bob great idea