konchog uma

from Victor Mair's "Wandering on the Way: Taoist Tales and Parables" Great knowledge is expansive Small knowledge is cramped. Great speech blazes brilliantly Small speech is mere garrulousness. When people sleep, their souls are confused; when they awake, their bodies feel all out of joint. Their contacts turn into conflicts, Each day involves them in mental strife . They become indecisive, dissembling, secretive. Small fears disturb them; Great fears incapacitate them. Some there are who express themselves as swiftly as the release of a crossbow mechanism, which is to say that they arbitrate right and wrong. Others hold fast as though to a sworn covenant, which is to say they are waiting for victory. Some there are whose decline is like autumn or winter, which describes their dissolution day by day. Others are so immersed in activity that they cannot be revitalized. Some become so weary that they are as though sealed up in an envelope, which describes their senility. Their minds are so near to death that they cannot be rejuvenated. Pleasure and anger; sorrow and joy; worry and regret; vac- illation and trepidation; diffidence and abandon; openness and affectedness. These are all like musical sounds from empty tubes, like fungi produced from mere vapors. Day and night they alternate within us, but no one knows whence they arise. Enough! Enough! The instant one grasps this, one understands whence they arise! "If there were no `other,' there would be no 'I'. If there were no 'I,' there would be nothing to apprehend the `other: " This is near the mark, but I do not know what causes it to be so . It seems as though there is a True Ruler, but there is no particular evidenc \e for Her. We may have faith in Her ability to function, but cannot see Her form. She has attributes but is without form. The hundred bones, the nine orifices, and the six viscera are all complete within my body. With which am I most closely identified? Do you favor all of them equally? Or are there those to which you are partial? Assuming that you treat them equally, do you take them all to be your servants? If so, are your servants incapable of controlling each other? Or do they take turns being lord and subject among themselves? If not, do they have a True Lord over them all? Whether or not we succeed in specifying His attributes has neither positive nor negative effect upon the truth of the Lord. Once we have received our complete physical form, we remain conscious of it while we await extinction . In our strife and friction with other things, we gallop forward on our course unable to stop. Is this not sad? We toil our whole life without seeing any results . We deplete ourselves with wearisome labor, but don't know what it all adds up to. Isn't this lamentable? There are those who say that at least we are not dead, but what's the good of it? Our physical form decays and with it the mind likewise . May we not say that this is the most lamentable of all? Is human life really so deluded as this? Am I the only one who is so deluded? Are there some individuals who are not deluded ?

Thanks joeblast, i think you already mentioned this to me when i first started working with my bones and marrow. I looked into it, and incorporated it into my meditations. My morning kujiin meditations end with white light and bone breathing, and i visualize my whole skeleton glowing white for as long as i can sustain the visualization, and when it starts to waver or fade, i let my bones fall into a pile on the floor and i make an offering of them to the elemental spirits, letting them turn to dust and the winds take them away. Its a neat gateway to emptiness meditation, which i also sit with for as long as i can sustain it. I have been having very effective emptiness meditations at the end of my kujiin. So thanks! It is entirely different, but its a great suggestion.

thanks, theres a lot more info on condensing breathing than there is on bone marrow nei kung, search-engine-wise i will look into those books, thank you bubbles!

good point. At the end of the day, I don't really care if Max is a trickster or not, or Kunlun is 8,000 years old or the root of all 12 mystery schools, etc., I care if the meditation techniques that he teaches are effective. He has every right to be a trickster, life is a trickster, and as far as marketing, thats his karma for which he has to deal with the repercussions and consequenses. So it doesn't really bother me. (thats one of the reasons i was phrasing my questions so loosely, all the hype i alluded to doesn't really bother me.) Its helpful to realize that he is actually just a guy, since there is a seeming misconception of him as a spiritual master of sorts. It seems like he is a lama in the sense that he is empowered to help others realize and progress in their growth. Maybe, like someone said, the reason his marketing scheme and past actions don't resonate with the expectations one would have of a spiritual master is that he isn't a spiritual master. And that too is just fine with me. I was probably looking for an idealized "spiritual master" with too much thirst to see that he is a practitioner with flaws like everyone else, so i acknowledge that. Anyway, Sifu Jenny's Yigong is really excellent. Its amazing how a simple technique can be so profound. Just doing those mudras and motions with the expectation of spontaneous movement triggers my body to release all kinds of garbage. Some of my motions at first were scary! I see why people ask the questions about jolting and shuddering being ok.. my body has some serious early childhood trauma to heal from too so its nice to feel like i have a means to get in there and root that out. I am looking forward to developing more natural, graceful spontaneous motions, but at first my body really wants some old violent garbage out. I guess im gonna have to go through some more spasmodic motions than i would like. Haha garbage in garbage out as they say. So i found her Yigong pretty easy to pick up on and as soon as started to contemplate "what does that mean, a formless form?" I realized that probably that one technique never really ends so how is there going to be "level 2" to yigong i wonder. Haha but i am not the type to get caught up in levels and that sort of thing. If i stay at level 1 forever and never realize the inner or spiritual aspect of the practice, i still think it can take me a long way in healing, and i really can't wait for my body to just dance and spiral naturally instead of all the garbage releasing. Hahaha she looks so beautiful when she does it, and i look like a fish on a hook. But i am experiencing release of a lot of old feelings that I didnt even realize affected my thinking and feeling. Even in just a couple days, doing it 1x a day, there has been a difference for the better.

i don't do a lot of horse stance training but thank you for the suggestion. I might add it to my regimen when my knee gets better. I think it would benefit my taiji. Plus its good in general i don't see how tea will help my marrow but maybe it depends on the tea. @ everyone else: are there even other books besides Chia's on the subject? I search amazon to find nothing but mr Mantak, and a rare mention of it elsewhere. I know the practice exists and he didn't make it up because its integral to iron shirt. So should i study iron shirt? I don't really want to learn how to take a beating I want to return my marrow to a youthful state. When i google "bone marrow nei gong (or nei kung)" I just get a million links to Chia book, and some other links that aren't useful. I will keep digging.

pretty awesome sinfest, thanks for the trailer! I like that they do real breaking with real staffs that part looks awesome.

hahaha i know what you mean. I am a total hermit, and don't really talk to people, or go out and socialize at all. So i avoid the whole conundrum by not trying to throw truth in anyone's face. If you find that a truthful nature is at odds with your social nature, i suggest saying less, but making your words count more.. when you lie to people, sometimes it is with good reason, like to avoid conflict. But be aware of your actions is my advice, this is more valuable than being truthful on principle. Be aware of when you lie and Why you lie. I also advise don't be a wanton liar just to please people thats a bad habit which leads to trouble. But you probably know that already :D Anyway, as you watch your behaviors you will see your nature, which is ultimately more valuable than clinging to dogma like "i should tell the truth". there is more power in truth because it matches up with actual reality, it has actual power behind it. Lies don't have that power, they can only mislead and misdirect, they don't have the power of actual reality behind them.

everything said is true false and irrelevant from a trine of points of view. thinking that lies are truths and truths are lies tho is a slippery slope. Best to stay on the path of virtue and give the truth a fair chance. There's a lot of power in truth.

thats not really what i was saying. I was saying that the burden of being truthful is far less heavy than the burden of being a liar. truth is one thing, which is, does what is said match up with the reality. Sometimes depending on what is said, truth can be a little flexible. And sometimes, truth can just be inappropriate to the situation at hand. Then there is high truth, or Truth capital T (or ma'at in egyptian which had a good understanding of it.. ma'at was the feather your soul was weighed against at death) which is a little different and not as flexible. the wisest words i have heard on truth are this: "speak the truth to condition your mind to believe that what you say can manifest. If you are always lying, you subconsciously condition the mind to believe that your words are just flimsy constructs which could mean anything. If you are constantly telling the truth, your mind comes to believe that what you say and think is real and can manifest, so this is important to magic."

Victor Mair titled it: Carefree Wandering

deep thoughts mr everything some ideas match up with the reality-as-it-is and some are based in fantasy and delusion. Truth carries with it responsibility so there is a burden, but integrity is a lighter burden than one carries if they are involved in lies and fantastic delusions. The latter is much worse, so in the end, going through time is a burden, best to man up and carry yours nobly. truth is not the best policy 100% of the time like some naive people think, but integrity is the measure of ones spiritual success and wholeness.

I think "Chronicles of Tao" by Deng-Ming Dao is a neat story about religious daoism since you ask for book recommendations. its the story of daoist master Kwan Saihung, and its so off the wall and out there that some people don't believe it could be real and they think mr Dao is making the whole thing up. I have heard stories of "proof" that Kwan Saihung is a fraud and a con, and i have heard that other daoist masters who have met him say he is definitely one of the few legit priestly type daoists out there. Its like Carlos Casteneda tho, it pushes the boundaries of what the reader is willing to believe, and I don't care how openminded you are. I say all that because the story is SO hard to believe that you'll see why before you're 2 chapters into it. So if you want to get a good idea of what religious daoism was like before Mao and the cultural revolution destroyed so much, that is a great book. Full of priests and monks and immortals and aspirants and magic and mischief. All in all, I think the book is worth reading just to read it, you needn't believe or disbelieve (back to the commentary about there being a lesson therein regardless).

Yes I think he is saying that the dao is the wind of the pipes of heaven. Its a little clearer now that I came back to it. Thanks for your thoughts, that helps me get it!

Thanks Cat Pillar, i totally missed that!

in his explanation of the pipes of heaven, Zi-Qi seems to be implying that things vibrate of their own accord and that he "joined the source" in order to become in the state that Zi-You saw him, like a withered tree, in the beginning. He seems to me to say he is a pipe and heaven was playing him. I think he seems to be saying that the pipes of heaven are everywhere and beyond sound as things do not need to be "played" by the wind in order to emit vibrations. Everything vibrates naturally?? I am not quite sure what he is getting at, so these are more questions than not. Is he saying that the pipes of heaven are everywhere and beyond wind and orifice, division of player and playee? Is he saying that everything has its own essential vibration so what need is there for outside vibration to affect it? Maybe he is saying that everything is thus musical, hence "pipes of heaven". I'm not sure I understand at all

from Victor Mair's "Wandering on the Way: Taoist Tales & Parables" Sir Motley of Southurb sat leaning against his low table. He looked up to heaven and exhaled slowly. Disembodied, he seemed bereft of soul. Sir Wanderer of Countenance Complete, who stood in attendance before him, asked, "How can we explain this? Can the body really be made to become like withered wood? Can the mind really be made to become like dead ashes? The one who is leaning against the table now is not the one who was formerly leaning against the table." " Indeed," said Sir Motley, "your question is a good one. Just now, I lost myself Can you understand this? You may have heard the pipes of man, but not the pipes of earth. You may have heard the pipes of earth, but not the pipes of heaven." "I venture" said Sir Wanderer, "to ask their secret." "The Great Clod," said Sir Motley, "emits a vital breath called the wind. If it doesn't blow, nothing happens. Once it starts to blow, however, myriad hollows begin to howl. Have you not heard its moaning? The clefts and crevasses of the towering mountains, the hollows and cavities of huge trees a hundred spans around: they are like nostrils, like mouths, like ears, like sockets, like cups, like mortars, or like the depressions that form puddles and pools . The wind blowing over them makes the sound of rushing water, whizzing arrows, shouting, breathing, calling, crying, laughing, gnashing. The wind in front sings aiee and the wind that follows sings wouu . A light breeze evokes a small response ; a powerful gale brings forth a mighty chorus. When the blast dies down, then all the hollows are silent. Have you not seen the leaves that quiver with tingling reverberations?" "The pipes of earth," said Sir Wanderer, "are none other than all of the hollows you have described . The pipes of man are bamboo tubes arrayed in series. I venture to ask what the pipes of heaven are." As for the pipes of heaven," said Sir Motley, "the myriad sounds produced by the blowing of the wind are different, yet all it does is elicit the natural propensities of the hollows them - selves. What need is there for something else to stimulate them?"

hahaha fair enough. I can't even answer the first why when it comes to why do bad things happen. I guess they just do!

more talking about not wishing to be able to control events, just controlling our reactions to them

oh thats a good point it doesnt affect me as much (fios) but thanks for pointing it out

super awesome, nice track! if you put "video" in brackets and "/video" after your link it will embed in this page fyi

and i in turn will delete this nonsense its better off that way anyway

you didn't say originally "semen retention", you said masturbating was a deviant act and in the same category with alcoholism. i am not seperating sex from spirituality don't play word games with me. Your post has nothing to do with what i said, and nothing to do with what you were saying. I'm not going to get into one of these conversations.

Well i don't have your answer, but in light of that, I think that asking "why" is kind of an infinite regression. I mean, you can say, why? Because... but then it leads to another thing to ask why about. And that keeps going ad infinitum. So you can know about who what when where how but you can't really ever know why in a definitive way. I think that lack of knowing is essential to the idea of "the mystery" and is why people invent God as the ultimate "because"

i think trauma is a common experience. not that it happens often but that its common to the human experience. Like we all in our own way know what trauma is.