Fū Yue

You can still do those things, just don't rely on the negative exclusively as a muse. Maybe try minimalistic artwork with simple themes such as 'completeness', 'peace', et cetera. Its very good for calming down the mind.

This is major Tom to ground control, I'm stepping through the door And I'm floating in a most peculiar way And the stars look very different today Here am I sitting in a tin can far above the world Planet Earth is blue and there's nothing I can do

You will live. Have faith in your god, and if not god, then have faith in the clarity of the sky. You are the son of the sun and no negativity can last, just as clouds must inevitably evaporate it is all impermanent, so do not be swayed by these shadows on the wall.

Do you know what kind of entity this is? Does it have a form?

负压

Once again you are not understanding what I'm saying. You evidently do not appreciate my advice, because you continue to overlay your own interpretation of what I mean when I say Tao, and then continue on with that same faulty interpretation which I had just said, specifically, was not was I was saying. You keep thinking that when I say Tao I am referring to something other than you. You erroneously assume that when I speak of nature, I am referring to something external to yourself. You are separating yourself from the world around you for no reason. What does religion have to do with anything that I have said? I'm talking about you, and the world in your immediate presence, tangible right now, if only you would extend yourself beyond your self-imposed fleshly limitations and narrow field of vision.

It seems that you do not understand what is meant when I refer to the Tao. Following the Way means matching your steps in creation to the true nature of reality, not thinking about it or believing it. In order to do this, you must first drop your current paradigms and see nature as it is, without any bias. It is beyond thinking. Do I understand yet? Yes, I understood you just fine when you said the same thing in the previous post. Your ideas are not original, they have been said in many different traditions. I did not say leave it to Tao. I said rest in Tao. Look, if you are so powerful, why are you stressing yourself out so much trying to counter these impermanent mind-states, which are only there for a fraction of a second, when they are already taken care of by your divine nature the very next moment? What I am suggesting is that you drop these prefabricated reactions, and see what's there without shouldering all this pretense. By what you've said, your one-man attempt at strong arming the Tao within toward your conditioned will is not working out very well. It's not healthy to put this much pressure on the self. The most powerful intention is not said. The most powerful energy is unmoving. Let your self be like water, let your body be as a mountain, let your mind disappear into nature, and don't worry yourself with what is forever out of your control. You will never be able to control mother nature. The Tao is not other than you, and trying to cajole yourself into helping yourself manifest yourself is just foolhardy. No matter what you may believe, the fact of the matter is, energy is not your possession. Life is not your possession. It flows through you of it's own accord. It keeps you healthy because it feels like it, and it can leave at any time for any reason. The wish-fulfilling jewel in the heart does it's work whether or not you tell it what you want - it already knows. The thoughts that arise on the surface of the mind are just like waves on the surface of the ocean, and the same is true of feelings and even the superficial 'me'. If you really want to penetrate the depths of natural energy, you have to dive in and let it take you away, towards the truth and far from your imaginary fabrications and notions of control. That's where the real magic is. That you don't even need to put on a facade of 'doing', that it just happens, because life loves you and fuck it, why not? Mother nature will play with you. The earth and the heavens can be your constant companions. You may find that they even have a voice of their own. But this is impossible so long as you steadfastly hold on to your idea of 'me' as an individual being separate from his environment, and the universe around him. Are you so independent that if, tomorrow, the earth disappeared from below you, you would somehow survive? If the air were ripped from your lungs, would you still survive? If all the water in the world were to vanish suddenly, would you still survive? Get over yourself and give credit where credit is due. You owe everything to the universe. Without her, there is no 'you' independent from any of these elements. No belief necessary. You aren't the supreme godhead just yet, you still need mother earth, the sun and the moon and the stars. These are your relatives, respect and communicate with them, and get out of your head.

That doesn't sound particularly healthy. You should work on dissolving the barrier between yourself, the environment and universe around you, that is a permanent cure for loneliness; rather than holding on to a future that is not certain, the Tao inside, outside, above, and below us is, and it is always there. Mother nature is reliable. Our self-identity, feelings, thoughts, beliefs, dreams, and aspirations are not. What you said about the body is doubly true of the self as well. Your perception of yourself is constantly changing at an even faster rate than your bodies cells are reviving themselves. Why hold on to these impermanent mind states? Rest in the Tao. When all is lost, space is still as vast and accepting as ever. At the end of the day, the earth is still propping you up on her back, and you are living. This is enough for the body and the heart, which reliably plods on through time unending, why not the mind as well?

Wow!

Look at those eyes... That's no pony.

Maybe?

You cannot win going against nature, It wouldn't even be a fight. Chi is the blood of nature and is what keeps us alive, if you 'battle nature' with chi, you are just killing yourself in a strange, roundabout way.

Thanks for sharing those books and the excerpt Recep, looks good.

Oh! You better watch out, you better not cry, while you horse stance, I'm telling you why, Sinfest 2 is coming to town! He's making a fist, he's checking online, gonna find out who's naughty or nice, Sinfest 2 is coming to town! He sees when you're not sleeping, he knows when you're a fake, He knows if you've been bad or good, So be good for goodness sakes! Oh! You better watch out, you better not cry, while you horse stance, I'm telling you why, Sinfest 2 is coming to town!

Great advice.

I think it's hilarious.

It does matter if anybody can understand it or not. All of our names are conceived of by ourselves, based on our supposed understanding of things 'as they are' and the world around us as we 'think they are'. If we do not actually understand or know how it is now, our names are only 'accurate' in our imagination, not in reality. You say 'mind', but you do not actually understand what that is, so how can your idea, your name, be accurate in any way shape or form? How can you say 'mind belongs to this world', when you can't even locate this 'mind' in the first place? Ridiculous!

Yes. Let me rephrase it for you; Can the unspeakable, indestructible mystery moving your lips, hands, feet and arms right now, which we, for loss of any sort of description for that thus-come moment which we are all participating in, call 'mind'. be defined, named or grasped in any way shape or form? What makes you think that this very 'Thus'-ness is not you? Beyond the name 'mind', what is there?

Can your own ordinary mind really be defined, named or grasped at in any way, shape or form?

What happened to this thread?

What's the difference between virtual and real? What's the difference between 'you're sort of tying your shoe' and 'you're really tying your shoe'? The problem with your model is that it's still emptiness. You're not progressing anywhere, because what you're saying is exactly the same. We were 'created' by the real humans? And who created the 'real humans'? If nobody created the 'real humans', then they just sprung up from nowhere, or were always there. If they sprung up from nowhere uncreated, then they have the same nature as the uncreated. We don't make things, we just rearrange what was already there, and if the 'real humans' are already there, then the real humans didn't create anything, they just rearranged what was already there, and what was already there? If there was nothing there in the first place aside from them, they didn't do anything and it was always like this, we are inside of their bodies as atoms within atoms within atoms and so on... If the 'real' humans have the ability to make something from nothing, then it stands to reason that something before them could have created them out of nothing. And so on, ad infinitum, and you just end up with 'emptiness' all over again. Because then that means the 'real' humans were only virtual approximations of the 'really real' humans and the 'this time we are seriously real' humans made them, and... in the end, no beginning and no end can be seen. It's just as valid to say that this entire world is on a leaf blowing in the wind by a river.

Indeed! The most terrifying thing about the void for the individual, I think, is how intimate it is. It makes the time we spend in silent appreciation of it all the more important. Peace and love, two of the very few things we can rely on in this world, always with us. What greater truth could there be but that, right? it always leaves me grateful for what little I do have, and those I can share it with. We are all united in the great sameness, and it is in our apparent differences that we can recognize life's great compassion.

I wasn't referring to the rest of your post, or even really your post at all, because I agreed with what you were saying. I was not attempting to correct you on anything. sorry for offending you. My you in that post was impersonal. I wasn't talking about you, just in general a state of mind that tends to pop up when it comes to emptiness (as you said) I was only expounding on the point you were making, because it was so important and potentially life (and sanity) threatening when it comes to practice, not disagreeing with you. I sometimes forget that most people do not see things as clinically as I do. Once again, apologies. Edited for clarity.

Just think of how, when we dream, if we have been turning a blind eye to what's just beyond the surface and neglecting very important things, they arise in our dreams in obvious or subtle ways. If you act on ignorance during waking life, this is like denying the truth of selfless purity. But our mother will always have her way in the end, so that neglected virtue will seek manifestation at some point in your life if you don't pay it off with your attention as currency. Otherwise, it will come to fruition as illness and disease.Since it's our own delusion, we will have to own up to it or dispel it with a sharp, sword-like awareness. Bartering with mother nature, you gotta know when to hold em and when to fold em. The whirled wants what it was promised, your whole life. It wants your complete attention. You can't squander the opportunity to go beyond this spicy jambalaya of cause and effect (LOL) because you never know what shes gonna add next to the stew. When you stop taking the obvious for granted, you will stop getting mixed in with the jump rope oscillations of rising and falling negative and positive energies, which hurt. You will start to coagulate the volatile elements and appreciate the impermanent. You will start to see the middle path, free of extremes. If you think of the body as some sort of out-of-control alien spaceship, then you stop flying directly into the face of dangerous peaks and chasms and opt for the scenic route, because your pilot will finally start reading the manual and realize that blowing up is bad on the engine. It wants you to take responsibility for your evolution at this moment so that it can finally relax and loosen up. The ego takes the earth and puts it on it's back, and then complains when she crushes him to bits while the Buddha rests on her navel, completely unharmed, and shakes it's head like, what an idiot. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. She's a little spiteful already, best just give her what she wants - your whole self. Plunge into the unknown and experience the intensity of the light, till it burns up whatever's left to see, then just be. In the vivid emptiness, totally aware. The more potential you steal (like a natural disaster on a forever-long waiting list), the more selfless you will need to act, so that your energy doesn't bite you back or manifest in untoward ways. It's as deci belle said, self-generated trouble. In order to utilize your full potential, you need to leave behind habits, all of them, so that you dont get twisted up in energetic irony. Really, our entire situation right now is self-generated trouble. Realization is the price that sages must pay for freedom. Once it's known, though, it's natural, so what is there to do? Just be what you have always been - free, from every thing. Once the way is free from debris, you should probably leave... Because your house is on fire, and the deliciously refreshing river of life is just to your left, then take a right! I'm sure if you ask the earth very nicely, maybe she will drown your clay hut with the waters as she dries off her hair after a swim, like Shakyamuni Buddha.

I agree completely. I would also like to expound on why this particular state of mind is so incredibly damaging to progress and even our health- We all must remember, the primordial purity is also living. It's weaving our lives on the fly, like a freestyle rapper. If you intentionally kill your brother while your mother is watching you play, do we really think that we're just going to get off scot-free? The present is given for free, but when we act, there is a weight to everything we do, and when we take, there is always a price. We can't stain the essence, but we can corrupt our view of it, because the beholder is always making itself in the image of our actions. It basically just goes along with whatever happens to be arising and passing away at that moment. Free-jazz style. Really, it's just like music. we must be fast enough, weightless enough, to go with the song of cessation... without leaving anything undone. Every loose end must be resolved, so we shouldn't do things with heavy consequences. Gotta keep the narrative light. The self is the most dedicated actor ever, don't underestimate the insanity of a perfectionist. Its's just like the irish folktales about the sidhe, with their crazy rules and nonsense obligations that they stringently hold themselves accountable for while constantly trying to loophole their way out of every deal they make. The self is like that. It can't lie, so everything you see is the truth... but we must remember, the relative world is entirely symbolic. The appearance of our world is only a metaphor for what's really going on right now. Watch out for rogue similes, and don't write fairy tales that you can't easily retcon. So, non-action. Because mother nature is sane, but we aren't, and we don't want to give her a reason to twist up our plots. We probably won't enjoy it at all. Two words: external blockages. Heh. Anyway, well said, Shagrath. Apologies for the misunderstanding.