Crures

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If my understanding is correct, these plants manifest your subconscious, right? On the one hand, I'm curious what it's like, and if people tell me that it helped them, I don't think I'd be dismissive. On the other hand, if my subconscious would manifest.... I don't really want to tango with strange clowns. But what role plants could play, I don't know, because I don't know anyone who has used it. I do think it might require more guidance than meditation/yoga, because if you are careful with those, not too strange things will happen. What are your experiences with plants, what happened?

Hey everyone, for a while I am meditating consequently now (every day) and do yoga. I am content with these practices, but I somehow feel like a good “mindset” is missing, a way of going about things. I feel like there’s some sort of flow missing in life, like I don’t entirely do what I want to do, or maybe what needs to be done, but I’m not sure what it is. I am generally interested in buddhism, but I somehow feel like buddhism is more about controlling things instead of letting things (skillfully) run their course (I may be mistaken about this). On the other hand, in zen, spontaneity is praised as a virtue. In general, I tend to want to control things, but it is to a degree that I want to look years ahead in the future and plan everything.. I feel like a naturalness is missing, it feels like I’m approaching life more like a surgeon than a playful person. Having read the TTC and Zhuang Zi, I still feel like it’s not really clear what is meant, how to be more natural. There are some general concepts that are sort of easy to understand, that peace is better than war, that it’s good to aim for contentment. However, concerning day-to-day choices, I don’t really know what the right thing is to do. I tend to approach things with thinking rather than feeling, analyzing a situation, finding the "best solution", and feeling gets no say. I constructed some questions that I think, if answered, may lead me in a right direction, but if you know something else which you think would benefit, feel free to share . Questions on te/wu wei/tao: Does an “accomplished” daoist do something on impulse, does he do some planning, or does he do something inbetween? What role do emotions have? does a daoist “deal with it” in some way? I think it was mentioned in a daoist text that a daoist person does things at the right time, but does this not come forth from thinking / the mind simply understanding cause and effect? If it is the aim of daoists to follow feeling/intuition, does this not come forth from mental conditioning? Is a choice “aligned with Dao” a choice that simply does not come forth from clinging and aversion? And now for maybe the foolishest question of them all… is it beneficial to do some kind of daoist cultivation that will bring one more in sync with Dao? (“the dao that is caught is not the real dao” posts incoming!) If you want to reply, please take these two things in regard: I don’t speak/read chinese, and using chinese language and symbols will probably make things less clear. Also, please make your answer clear to beginners, sometimes when I read posts by some of you, it is from a point of view that is hard to follow, because it is so… beyond beginner . I wish you all a good day Crures

Thanks for your responses.

So there's a negative feeling, and then after that something like anger? This negative feeling is not an emotion itself? Can a sound be negative, then? Well, I guess they could if it is spoken in for instance an angry way? So... I guess that emotions in general often arise from clinging and aversion then? And yes, I know that the skandha's are there to "point at" no self, but I just couldn't place emotions arising from conditioning, since it was stated that in my book that the emotions in skandha four do not arise from words and concepts... It just kinda seemed like a pity to go through so much effort creating the skandha's, and then not giving "emotions arising from conditioning" a place

Hey fellas! I read a book in which the skandha's were mentioned and briefly described, but I got some questions about emotions and the skandha's and the sites google brought up are not clear. So in the first skandha, there are the 6 senses and their sense objects. Because the sixth sense is "the mind's eye", the third and fourth skandha reside here/are perceived by it. The second skandha is about whether something feels pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. To me, it'd be logical that all emotions would therefore be categorized in these 3 categories. However, in my book it's stated that the second skandha is *not* about emotions. About the fourth skandha, my book says that traditionally there are about 10 or 20 or so phenomena, but that they are reducable to five categories: 1. volition/decisionmaking, 2. clinging and rejecting, 3. forms of energy (positive ones like calm and willpower, negative ones like restlessnes and laziness), 4. pure emotions, like anger, joy, (but these are not based on words or concepts) 5. ethical factors like friendliness, compassion, wisdom. So where are emotions that arise from conditioning categorized? To the category of clinging and rejecting? Would it not be much more logical to say "hey, the second skandha is about emotion too", since they would fit perfectly in the "pleasant, unpleasant, neutral" category? Curious to hear what you think. If there is anything else stated above that you think is wrong, please let me know. In any case, have a nice day Crures. PS. A buddhist, a catholic and a muslim walk into a bar. When the bartender notices them, he shouts: "What's this, a joke!?"

If I could get an answer to any question, then I'd ask what time is and how it works.

About the off-topic subject: When someone says a word, it depends on the context what it means, and therefore what kind of feeling it will provoke. So I think the subconscious mind will only hold one concept. One may notice that there is ambiguity when looking at the pronunciation, but the context will set it right.

Is it possible to know whether chakras exist or not? Can it be proven by science or can it be experienced only, and if it can be experienced only, how to know whether or not one imagines chakras to be existing?

If I had it I'd be more conscious of everyday life, I think. To look for opportunities. When I tend to think I do not have free will I think differently about opportunities, I think things like "was this determined, yes or no, and if so, how does it work" and then a long monologue in my mind begins , instead of really using the opportunity well. I like this answer. It's kind of in the direction in which I am thinking.

Do you think we have free will? On the one hand I think we have not, because we never choose our thoughts, the things we apparantly like, our emotions. They just appear. We could be just wittnesses of a story that has been determined already. On the other hand, we can choose to do things the way we don't like it, and despite negative emotions or the emotion of fear still do something. But that's because we want it, and that's the point - is this under our control? Is our will part of us, or from somewhere else? This question has bothered me a long time already, and I know there may not be a definitive answer. Still, I'm curious about your opinions. Greetings and not knowing whether I had no choice of writing this, Crures

Hi, I'm new. The topics on this forum are interesting, so I've decided to join.