konchog uma

hi ricemaster, i believe the diaphram is moving downward, drawing in breath, and you are compressings qi at the dantian by moving in towards it from all sides.

Thanks and blessings dwai and tibetan ice, i'm off to read mudrashram now

hahaha why didn't i think of that?! thank you seth

Om, Homage to the Perfection of Wisdom the Lovely, the Holy Avalokitasvara, the Holy Lord and Bodhisattva, was moving in the deep course of the Wisdom which has gone beyond. he looked down from on high, He beheld but five heaps, and he saw that in their own being they were empty. Here, O Sariputra, form is emptiness and the very emptiness is form; emptiness does not differ from form, form does not differ from emptiness, whatever is emptiness, that is form, the same is true of feelings, perceptions, impulses, and consciousness. Here, O Sariputra, all dharmas are marked with emptiness; they are not produced or stopped, not defiled or immaculate, not deficient or complete. Therefore, O Sariputra, in emptiness there is no form nor feeling, nor perception, nor impulse, nor consciousness; No eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind; No forms, sounds, smells, tastes, objects to touch, or objects of mind; No sight-organ element, and so forth, until we come to: No mind-consciousness element; There is no ignorance, no extinction of ignorance, and so forth, until we come to: There is no decay and death, no extinction of decay and death. There is no suffering, no origination, no stopping, and no path. There is no cognition, no attainment and no non-attainment. Therefore, O Sariputra, it is because of his non-attainmentness that a Bodhisattva, through having relied on the Perfection of Wisdom, dwells without thought-coverings. In the absence of thought-coverings he has not been made to tremble, he has overcome what can upset, and in the end he attains to Nirvana. All those who appear as Buddhas in the three periods of time fully awake to the utmost, right, and perfect Enlightenment because they have relied on the Perfection of Wisdom. Therefore one should know the Perfection of Wisdom as the great spell, the spell of great knowledge, the utmost spell, the unequaled spell, allayer of all suffering, in truth - for what could go wrong? By the Perfection of Wisdom has this spell been delivered. It is like this: gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha. This completes the Heart of perfect Wisdom.

again, thank you xabir

thank you so much, thats completely helpful! i saw with my inner eye the bright light of kundalini as it was between the root and sacral chakra, and entering the sacral chakra. And i see in the same way the bright light of it in the triangle in the root chakra, but i have not seen it go higher than the sacral center (svadhisthana) with my inner vision. I see a light but it is not the same light, in the central channel. It is much less brilliant and only arises at times, although i Feel sensations of energy up and down my spine and in all my centers, i am thinking that this is not the kundalini but just some energized um energy for lack of a better way to put it. My channels are pretty clear. I would not be surprised if i had the energy and clarity for the kundalini to proceed upward almost immediately, but i think my experience was a combination of 1. feeling the kundalini's desire to reach the crown and superimposing that on the experience and 2. the kundalini charging up my energy with its power and that charged energy climbing the spine. Maybe there is more to it than that, and maybe i am still a little off or wrong but that makes so much more sense to me. But i know i saw a gossamer thread of lightning between my root and sacral chakra, and both chakras were "ignited" with the same energy. I can not believe that i have had the full experience yet because i saw it so clearly at first, and then i can not see it later, but that, i think, is because i was looking for it in my upper spine, or in my head, or places where it isn't. I need to learn a lot more about it... this happened before i had really educated myself about kundalini, so i am really learning as i go. I feel excited to know that if just a tiny taste of kundalini-fied energy went to my crown and i felt such a bliss experience, and have had such insights and experiences since then, that there must be much more waiting for me. btw, the morning after i wrote that (about not being able to see it), i saw it again. I think it wants me to talk about my experiences and to read and learn exactly what the hell is going on. I feel foolish but then again, i am a fool, especially in this regard. Thanks and blessings phosphor!!

oh i don't have that opinion. And if i did i wouldn't be strongly attached to it. i said they seem ineffable, i dont even personally care what is or isn't ineffable according to you, or to anyone else. I just find matter/energy and consciousness wherever i look, hence my statement that they seem ineffable. maybe they is and maybe they amn't, but i don't see any point in theorizing about it. Far be it from me to think i know whats ineffable or not.

i like that urbandharma link, thanks. by hypnogogic imagery, i just mean the soft yellows and reds that float around in the blackness, they disappeared too. I wasn't having any sort of visualization or hallucination at the time. I wouldn't call it a hypnogogic state that i was in per se, just that i stopped seeing anything for a few moments, just blackness. does a realization of emptiness change a person's way of relating to the world? That is to say, are they fundamentally different after than they were before? I don't feel that way about last night's happening btw. I am essentially the same.

thank you xabir!

Thank you phosphor, i appreciate your insights. Maybe i am feeling ordinary energy up my back, and only feeling a small part of the whole experience yet. When it awakened, i felt like it went up to my crown in 20 minutes or so, and flooded me with bliss, which is somewhat less time than a couple years per chakra but i am not saying i am right and you are wrong. I am only relating my experience of it. It was a very tangible and insistent force, and when i felt it get to different centers, it shook off blockages there, especially my heart and head. Can the kundalini affect the heart and head without passing through it? And where do you think the flood of bliss might have come from? It was almost from the moment it started humming in my tailbone area i knew it was headed for the crown, and i hadn't even read or learned much about kundalini at all, so that didn't color my expectations and perceptions. I have done very intense chakra meditations for about 2 years under a masters guidance, and my centers are all more or less open. At the anahata and ajna, i experienced a good bit of blockage to be released and dissolved, but i didn't have much of an experience of 3 knots that others have mentioned, or of the slow progress of the energy from one center slowly to another. What you are saying makes intuitive sense to me; perhaps i am just passing highly energized prana through my centers.. do you think it is possible for someone who had done a lot of chakra work and had a pretty clean and clear energy system in the first place to have such an awakening? Or do you have any explanation for what i experienced? Thank you for taking the time to help me...

no. Its like seeing a lightning bolt in the night sky but with my eyes closed. I probably thought "holy crap" the first time but its something that i associate with the meditative state

thanks SereneBlue i just did

aw its more that i just don't have it than that i think its unreasonable. but i'm glad you cleared that up, cause the way i wrote it was misleading. thanks!

I was sitting tonight (not with the heart sutra or the mantra, just doing samatha-vipassana) and i started to follow my breath out with my mind, going out farther and farther with each breath. I went out to the edge of my own personal energy field, then i went out into the solar system, then the galaxy, then i went out into the cosmos with all the galaxies. I breathed out and my mind expanded to embrace all those galaxies until i came to the edge of reality, the cosmos, and i went out into a great void, only to realize that out there in the void are other cosmoses and realities, and that it went on forever, as far as the mind could reach, inner and outer dimensions in infinite worlds, and it seemed like the stars and galaxies and realities were like the atoms and molecules in my body, and then all of a sudden, POP i was nobody gazing at nothing. I lost all sensation of my body for about 2 seconds and went completely blank, but more than that, even the hypnogogic imagery was gone, i myself was gone and nobody was there to care that i was gone, but a point of perception remained, that is to say, something observed this null state, but wasn't able to care in the least. When i came back i was really mentally elated, but i couldn't care emotionally until later.. i felt like i had finally had a direct realization of emptiness. I don't feel very different, and my emotions came back later although they were strangely absent for the time immediately after the experience. Do you think i had a realization of emtpiness? or did my mind play a trick on me? I want to ask on dharma-wheel but i have a lurk-only policy that i would have to break. Hopefully someone here can help Blessings and thanks

i might add chidragon that the yin and yang of dao, that being energy/matter and consciousness, seem also ineffable. but i wouldn't, because i think vmarco believes that nothing is ienffable and he probably just started this thread to argue with people who have opinions of their own.

well said, all of that. Thanks. i tend to think that the more someone uses quotes to make their point, the less thought they themselves have put into said point. Quoting someone sagely is easy, becoming sagely oneself... welll... And while the cone in front of you may in fact be just a standing waveform masquerading as a solid chunk of matter, indistinguishable from a thought-form in a dream, mistaking it for something else is foolish, and mistaking it for not being there is pointless. I like my buddhism pragmatic, not escapist.

Thanks for bringing it to our attention! I'm considering staying up all night. Too bad hardlight's one-time streaming charge is $95. but i don't need it... i'll just watch the shivaratri videos from mid-90s and use my imagination!!

thanks Jeremiah, thoughtful post. I accept death, and made my peace with it! It is inevitable, even those that live forever in the spirit and choose when and how they die must face it. I don't think there is any way to true immortality in the daoist sense (or any other) without coming fully to terms with death and being ready and willing to die without it meaning anything at all. Don Juan Matus said that our death is a presence which follows us around at arms length on our left, and that when we are feeling weak or petty, to turn to our left and ask death for advice, because that will dispel our crappy feelings and give us a sense of immediacy. I have found that asking my death for advice is an amazing technique for cutting through false self-importance (is there any other kind?) I had an awesome near death experience where i was so close to the light i reached out and touched it, and all i felt "out there" where i was, was unconditional love, and an overwhelming sense of compassion and acceptance. I knew without a doubt that all that church crap was for the birds, and that i would be forgiven for my mistakes without having to ask. I left that place and came back to my body, but after that, the idea of death didn't phase me at all. If i died while typing this, that would be fine. If i live to see my 200th birthday, thats also okay. I would like to leave my body behind one day since the physicality is such a painful burden, and live as a spirit. That to me is like having my cake and eating it too . But i'm sure i'm not the only one hahahaah

i take my comment back, its profound. It just didn't seep into my thick head all at once. No need for explosions and sex marblehead. Unless you were gonna do that anyway, then don't let me stop you.

yeah put some sex and explosions in it!! hahahah for the kids

that one doesn't do much for me. I think its one of the only ones that just doesn't strike me as profound. Probably the first so far.

Taoist Tales and Parables: Wandering on the Way Victor Mair Yen Hui inquired of Confucius, saying, "When Mengsun Ts'ai's mother died, he cried without tears, his heart felt no distress, and during the period of mourning he felt no sorrow. Although lacking these three qualities, he was held to be the best mourner in the state of Lu. Can one really attain a name without the substance? I find this to be very strange." "The clansman Mengsun was so thorough," said Confucius, "that he had advanced beyond knowledge. Although he may have wished to simplify mourning, but wasn't able to do so fully, still there is that which he did simplify. Mengsun didn't know why he lived and didn't know why he would die. He didn't know which came first, life or death, and which came last. You see, he just went along with the transformation of things, awaiting the unknown transformation that was in store for him . Moreover, as we are about to undergo transformation, how do we know that we aren't already transformed? As we are about to cease transfor- mation, how do we know that we have already transformed? Perhaps you and I are in a dream from which we have not yet awakened. He, however, had a vulnerable physical body but no damage to his mind, a patched-together lodge but no expendi- ture of his essence. Mengsun was singularly awakened. When others cried, he cried too. That's why he behaved himself as he did. "Moreover, people identify each other as 'I,' but how do we know that what we call 'I' may not really be 'I'? You may dream that you are a bird and streak across the sky, that you are a fish and descend to the depths. We cannot determine whether we who are speaking now are awake or dreaming. We may be so suddenly delighted that we don't have a chance to smile; we may break into a smile before we have a chance to arrange ourselves. Repose in what has been arranged for you and leave transforma- tion behind, then you will be able to enter the unity of vast heaven.

http://www.amazon.com/Layayoga-Definitive-Guide-Chakras-Kundalini/dp/0892817666/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1328038119&sr=1-1 i stumbled upon this and have been really getting a lot out of it, although i am not far along yet. Has anyone else read this book, or Goswami? I can definitely say it has bettered my kuji-in practice, which is very chakra based, and my knowledge of kundalini, theoretically speaking. Oh well, just wanted to pass it along! I highly recommend to anyone interested in chakras and kundalini from a yogic point of view.

thanks for that adyashanti link.. he's okay but not a favorite of mine either. But that doesn't matter... Your magnet realization reminds me of the 2nd to last painting of Alex Grey in the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors (COSM) that was his rendition of the same sort of "void" state. If you've never seen COSM the movie, i highly suggest watching it, its a video interview with him and a guided tour of the exhibit. Most wonderful!! the last painting in the series btw is just a plain black empty page with the 4 tibetan elements around the edges.. a beautiful rendition of emptiness you can see a very tiny version of cosm here: http://ericdean.com/pages/COSM/SacredMirrors.html