konchog uma

you're onto something idiot_stimpy although i am pretty sure that the buddha taught that the world exists in a relative sense, just not in an absolute sense. my lama has conveyed that to me...

Hi Mike 134 i didnt read every post in this thread, but you can join the freemasons by finding a lodge and knocking and asking them about it. If you have something to offer, and someone to vouch for you, you will be considered by the lodge for membership. From there you can get progressively more evil until you are invited to join the illuminati! Its hard to find an outlet for kundalini energy... i wish you the best. Maybe considering a magical order or just going to your local metaphysical shop or somewhere your intuition takes you and talking to people about ways to become engaged in self cultivation would be fruitful. There is always yoga, I recommend the Satyananda Saraswati lineage if there are schools in your area. Kundalini is applicable to most healing, magical and spiritual work, so don't limit yourself to fraternities that specialize in social power and manipulation is my advice best

i second that lucky7strikes bless your path, i hope you find inspiration wherever you go

thanks gemstone

looks good jetsun two nights ago i realized i was dreaming but in attempting to stabilize my lucidity the dream faded to black. I have worked with Stephen Laberge's techniques and writings and successfully attained regular lucidity, but that was about 20 years ago. I should get back into it! I think i will look into Robert Moss. Does anyone have other suggestions for lucidity authors?

holy crap grandmasterP youve been a member here for two months and have 1500 posts?? thats wild

brilliant thank you i had the same impression about zuowang, no definitive source for the method. Those lines from the stories of master Chuang always struck me, thanks for the clarification about them.

Reginald A. Ray Secret of the Vajra World - The Tantric Buddhism of Tibet great so far, its the follow up to Indestructible Truth, which i learned a lot from. This book delves into the esoteric and more mysterious of Tibetan practices, where Indestructible Truth dealt mostly with the exoteric and commonly known practices. i super highly recommend these two book to anyone who still wonders "wtf" about tibetan buddhism. Vajrayana can be such a strange thing to outsiders, but these books clear up the mystery in nontechnical language and clear and concise scholarship. Delicious books

snowmonki, any recommendations of good texts/books to read about zuowang? thanks

innocently sidetracking topics on internet forums is truly ineffable

Just wanted to say hi to everyone. My retreat was awesome, i made progress. Lots of meditation.. about 8-10 hours a day. Lots of laughter and tears, lots of clarity I met Dr Eva Wong too... we talked a little about yang chi/kundalini. She was there teaching Wudangshan five animals long form qigong to a bunch of students during the last week of the retreat. Its good to be back. I could go on and on about dharma this and meditation that but all im going to tell you is that i spent a month with a bunch of sexy ladies and without my girlfriend, and i channelled my sexual energy up into my body and around and round every day so i didnt go crazy... so when i came home today my girlfriend pounced on me and we got right down to business, and my body was so used to channeling it that i had 4 internal orgasms! So theres an awesome lesson in there somewhere. bless you all

thanks cat! and everyone, its so nice to have a group like taobums i quit drinking caffeine on the first day of the retreat, and have been drinking herbal tea ever since. I feel so much better without all the up and down all day... holy wow. At first i had a headache from withdrawal and then i was drowsy for 3 days, but when that passed, i could wake up and be awake, without needing a cuppa! amazing! i could barely have conceived of it, i have drank caffeine so religiously for so long (for years i worked as a coffee and tea buyer) SO much progress in so little time. This retreat was like compressing a half years worth of practice (at 1.5hrs per day every day) into 28 days... I am sad now cause the magic is starting to fade, and while i was up there, i could really let go and have a totally open heart and let my emotions fly in the wind... now back in the city i can't be that open it hurts too much. Sad to subconsciously close off but thats what im doing Funny what the mind and heart filter for our own good

thanks again i forget what the Chinese was, but in English the qigong we learned was from the "primordial limitless gate school"

half of my ignore list is the various incarnations of tulku lol

thanks everyone! So nice to feel the warmth here... sinfest, im glad you understand the massive import of what i was trying to convey up there. For clarity's sake, it was one pounce. CT, all tongue in cheek lerner, details about the retreat, or the sex? lol gatito, yes many awesome people. many young people, from all over america, made some awesome friends since i have already provided TMI about the sex, i will stick to the retreat... it was wake up bell at 6:30, sit from 7 til 8, oryoki breakfast, sit from 9 to 12:30, often with a dharma talk thrown in, oryoki lunch, chores and/or break til 3:30, qigong and sit til 5, tea and snacks, sit from 5:30 to 6:30, oryoki dinner, sit from 7:30 til 9:30, lights out at 10:30... for 14 days, then a day off, during which i climbed Mt Willard in New Hampshire at Crawford Notch, and did some other hiking and ate some great thai food, then 14 more days of regimen. We had an Alexander Technique teacher there to do body work and posture alignment for two weeks, and the acharya who was leading the retreat was also a student of Eva Wong's and we learned some wudangshan forms of qigong.. one from a 17th gen lineage with a huge long name which i forget, and yi quan which is just 3rd gen and has a lot of zhan zhuang like wuji posture and holding the ball and stuff. The meditation was shamatha for the first week, then she introduced a vipassana technique and we could work with that.. there was also a more formless technique introduced which was like open eyed mahamudra or dzogchen. Just sitting there: no breath, no mind, no nothing. The meditation was in the shambhala buddhist tradition of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche and his son Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche... the center where it was held, Karme Choling, was founded by Trungpa in 1970 and was the first Tibetan buddhist meditation center in the US. Its where CTR was cremated in 1987, which we watched a video of one night, there were some pretty awesome signs in the sky.. a double rainbow and some things that looked like the aurora borealis.. amazing footage. I'm not a huge fan of CTR but i have come to accept him as a mahasiddha and the founder of the shambhala lineage in america.. He and suzuki roshi basically spearheaded dharma in america, which is no small feat whatsoever. I like Sakyong Mipham a lot better personally, but thats just me. He is the recognized reincarnation of Mipham the scholar and is considered to be a nirmanakaya deity emanation of Manjushri.. i did not know that before this retreat. The land and property are so amazing... very healing. I was thinking about the place the second or third night i was there and all of a sudden in my mind i saw a flower of life (the 19 circles) flanked by two seeds of life, and they lit up like candles and from the center of every circle a spark of healing energy flew out! Something told me that that was the energy of Karme Choling as it was represented to my vision eye... it started working its magic the moment i arrived... i let go of so much heart stuff and had so many moments of ordinary magic. Everyone had very vivid dreams and premonitions and foreknowledges. My necklace broke about halfway through, and about 30 min before it did i saw it break in my mind. I should have taken it off and checked it out but i collected all the beads and i'll restring it. Anyway, thats some deets for you Michael and everyone else.. not a whole lot more to report... I don't like to talk about my meditation progress or experiences as a rule, but i made progress and had experiences! It was amazing

...and appears likely to label GMO products in stores. interesting article for those of you following food safety http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_26204.cfm

I will see you all in a month, on the other side of a 28-day retreat. Thank you all who gave advice on how to ride the wave i am about to ride. I have very few hesitations or doubts, and a lot of happiness about the prospect of sitting for a month. I am not even taking my computer up there, and do not plan on checking activity here for the month, so blessings to you all, and have a great month!

Thanks everyone! Its nice to see so many well wishes i was talking to a teacher this morning, a shambhala acharya, and he said something really cool. I was telling him about a mental state i had attained for a little bit and asking him if that glimpse was ati or mahamudra, and he said this: "this little bit of cold coffee in the bottom of my cup is dzogchen and mahamudra as much as that state was... working with dzogchen is like drawing with your finger on the surface of water. Its not that you are trying to draw something or spell something out that will capture the essence of dzogchen, because that just disappears. Its actually the constant disappearing of what you draw that is dzogchen." i had a fun day working with that, just letting all manifestations of today be drawings on water. It was nice. Bless you all (again!) and goodbye for real this time

Chogyal Namkhai Norbu - The Crystal and the Way of Light wow. first CMN book i have read, and i will read more. i see what the hype is about.. anyway, a great book about dzogchen and about his experiences as a kid and a young adult Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche - Rebel Buddha about how the little voice inside that tells you to rebel against the status quo is the voice of wisdom Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche- Ruling Your World & Turning the Mind into an Ally chogyam trungpa's son, who i really like, has written these two about basic meditation practice and guidance on the path

ok don't feel any particular need to answer if you just don't feel like it or something but who is thoth? you said this tarot was used by thoth..

just wanted to point out that he doesn't "lose his mind" or forget what he's talking about.. he just pauses. Theres nothing wrong with stopping to collect your thoughts when youre talking for an hour and a half without any notes, as he tends to. One of the points of promotion of his material is that he is one of the few western teachers to attain the state of formless samadhi or nirvikalpa... so from the beginning he is not coming from the same place his listeners are coming from. But he isn't spaced out or heedless, he just likes to pause while he talks, i imagine to let things sink in, and to give his next thought room to arise. i know he has a folder in his sheet-music-holder (whatever they're called lol) up there in this vid, but he usually talks from the space of the modality of consciousness he is talking about, so many of his lectures are moreorless spontaneous. Interesting reactions that people have to him, i have never felt much but grounded and calm when listening to him, and also inspired to meditate. I don't think his face does anything unnatural either, but i could be wrong.. i think its just not tense. hmmm

bright observations Michael, thank you! I still love him but lately i have been seeing some of the holes in Mark's approach myself, his mixing in of hindu terminology when talking about buddhist topics, and some things, like what you just pointed out, just seem like "guruspeak" instead of plain english, which i much prefer. I think that buddha quote is one of my favorite things he ever said, thanks for sharing

welcome redrebel

thanks Hundun!