GrandmasterP

I wasn't implying that you were getting sniffy Sifu FH. Your posts are a like a treasure house containing great wealth of wisdom.

It does indeed. No dinner. No life. We're having Tofu balls in tomato n leek sauce this evening. Choc Ice for pudding. Yum. :-)

Found it. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Entangling-Vines-Classic-Collection-Kirchner/dp/B00E31PE9E/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1397748612&sr=8-2&keywords=Entangling+Vines "Entangling Vines, a translation of the Shumon kattoshu, is one of the few major koan texts to have been compiled in Japan rather than China."

I think Swastika is the name. Isn't it Sanskrit?

If you do manage to hypnotise yourself ( unlikely as proper hypnotism rather demands a hypnotist and a compliant subject)... You'll still be 'you'. Not my place to tell anyone what or what not to do though.

If someone wishes to include Jesus in their cultivation then where's the harm? Those Orthodox Christian Hesychasts ( for one example) are as close to Taoist hermits as makes no difference. Anybody who knows TTC and reading the Philokalia will see the similarities. John Main the monk who started the Christian meditation tradition and wrote all those books was a Taoist in all but name and he celebrated ' Mass' every day of his working life until his death. Here's absolutely no point anyone getting sniffy and claiming... "That's NOT proper Taoism! THIS is proper Taoism!" How could anyone know for sure and who, beyond teenaged years; would be so arrogant as to dismiss the faith-path choice of another? One mountain, lots of paths up the mountain.

We have 'physical mediums' on our path and I've sat with some good ones, some indifferent and a few total shysters.Will post a link below to one of the ( IMO) good ones. Make your own mind up. Thing is about any physical manifestation... What's the point? As a magic show, fair enough but you can see more spectacular illusion shows and have a nice dinner in places like Blackpool or Las Vegas. To convince the skeptic? Good luck with that, aint ever gonna happen. To bolster the 'faith' of believing sitters? Hardly, any Spiritualist paying £40 a ticket or more for a seance is pretty much on board already. Physical mediumship ebbs and flows in fashion. Right now it's back in fashion. Then, down the line some big name physical medium will get caught faking phenomena and it all dies off for a while. This whole 'signs and wonders' schtick is part of life for sure but an 'amusing' part of life at best. At worst this stuff can detract interest from serious cultivation and, as I said before - there are some total shysters out there. Here's Scott Milligan's site. http://www.scottmilligan.net/cart/ He's a good physical medium and I bet none of you knew that someone out there was still selling 'seance trumpets' . He's a good lad is Scott, genuinely believes in what he's doing and gets 'results'. :-)

Spiritualist here. Born and raised. Still active at our local centre, filling in whenever mediums can't make it ( due to ' unforeseen circumstance' usually). Spiritualism under one name or another underpins most faith paths so I tend to feel at home most anywhere 'faith- wise'. The only times we've ever been picketed was by fundamentalist Christians and that many years ago. They seemed to have calmed down these days. Our centre is in England's first ' non white majority city' with the largest Indian community outside of India. We also have two universities and a huge student population in term time. Hence we get all sorts at our centre, Jains, Hindus, Parsees, Sikhs, Buddhists, Taoists. You name it they've attended. Most of the local members are either born Spiritualist of came into it from very nominal Christian upbringing. We don't get many Pentecostalists or evangelical types attending but lots of Roman Catholics.

"One day a man called Malunkyaputta approached the Master and demanded that He explain the origin of the Universe to him. He even threatened to cease to be His follow if the Buddha's answer was not satisfactory. The Buddha calmly retorted that it was of no consequence to Him whether or not Malunkyaputta followed Him, because the Truth did not need anyone's support. Then the Buddha said that He would not go into a discussion of the origin of the Universe. To Him, gaining knowledge about such matters was a waste of time because a man's task was to liberate himself from the present, not the past or the future. To illustrate this, the Enlightened One related the parable of a man who was shot by a poisoned arrow. This foolish man refused to have the arrow removed until he found out all about the person who shot the arrow. By the time his attendants discovered these unnecessary details, the man was dead. Similarly, our immediate task is to attain Nibbana, not to worry about our beginnings." From.... http://www.budsas.org/ebud/whatbudbeliev/297.htm

"Let us visualize the waves on the ocean, several waves appearing on the surface of the ocean. Some waves are big, there are those that are small, and each wave seems to have its own life. A wave may have ideas like, "I am a wave. I am only a wave among many waves. I am smaller than the other wave. I am less beautiful. I last less than the other wave." Ideas like that. A wave can be caught in jealousy, in fear, in discrimination. But if the wave is able to bend down and touch the water within herself, it will realize that while it is a wave, it is at the same time water. Water is the foundation of the wave. While waves can be high and low, more and less beautiful, the water is free from all these notions. That is why if we are able to touch the foundation of our being, we can release our fear and our suffering. Touching the foundation of our being means touching nirvana. Our foundation is not subjected to birth and death, being and non-being. A wave can live the life of a wave, but a wave can do much better than that. While living the life of a wave, a wave can live a life of the water. The more our solidity and our freedom grows, the deeper we touch the ground of our own being. That is the door for emancipation, for the greatest relief." ( Thich Nhat Hanh) Full text here... http://www.dhammatalks.net/Books2/Thich_Nhat_Hanh_Resting_in_the_River.htm

Betcha can't chew tinfoil for any length of time. A chum on another ( whackier) forum than TTB has all his windows lined on the inside with tin foil.

Try... 交絡バインズ Kōraku bainzu Hope that helps.

Hello Ching Sung, which ancient training practices do you seek to restore? Also if I can have two questions... What is your favourite time of day to cultivate and why?

Creation myths are possibly as old as people one myth informs another and stories are embroidered down the aeons of time. For example Bon is pre- Buddhist but kinda mixed in with Buddhism now. They have all sorts of creation myths generally involving an angry giant throwing things about who calms down and eventually becomes a proto- Buddhist. In Tibet Bon swastikas are anti clockwise whereas Buddhist swastikas are clockwise. Also Bon devotees circumambulate shrines anti clockwise. Peter Matthieson ( RIP) in his ' The Snow Leopard' is good on pre- Buddhist creation myths. Cracking book. I re- read it last week after hearing of his passing. He was a good age.

Here it is.... http://www.patheos.com/blogs/monkeymind/2014/03/the-old-woman-burns-down-the-hut-a-dharma-talk.html In the poor old hermit's defence, he could have been describing himself rather than insulting the lady's daughter as she seemed to have imagined he was. Hope that helps.

Yep. My reaction tends towards... " EW!" Once stayed at a guest house in India that was a bit to close to some Parsee 'Towers of Silence' where they did sky burial for raptors to dispose of the cadavers. Some of the stuff the vultures dropped in the guest house garden militated against us breakfasting on the verandah. Each to their own though.

For sure that works or we'd likely none of us be here. Our ancestors who knew how to avoid trauma and danger to life back in the day would tend to be those ancestors who managed to stick around and have kids.

I've suggested a JAJ interview over on the Interview thread.

Any chance of interviewing JAJ? That could be interesting.

Right now in England we have the Ofsted ( school inspectors) investigating several secular schools that appear to have been taken over by a particular faith group. Allegations include governing bodies electing only fellow sectarians, marginalisation of non-sect-member teachers and the ousting of head teachers who have attempted to oppose the doctrinal 'steer'. I have no issue with 'faith' schools whatsoever but believe it is wrong for taxpayers money to subsidise de facto faith schools taking over secular state schools by what appears to be 'stealth'. State subsidised education should be secular so as to equitably educate and include all pupils of any or no faith. News report here... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-27024881

Good call. A JAJ thread would be interesting and potentially informative. He does good work. Any chance of an interview with him?

Steady on lads. All I asked was if Dan Tien might translate as 'belly' if only colloquially. Seems like it might do, someplaces, sometimes. Job jobbed. Where does Kabalism and Theosophy come into it apart from north of the neck of anyone who chooses it to do so? By the same abstract extrapolation I could posit... Dan Tien Implies Belly Implies Dinner Therefore Dan Tien means 'dinner'. It doesn't, anymore than Kabalism equates with anything beyond its own self- referential parameters. Take your pick on Kabalism... https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=tree+of+life+and+kabbalah+images&site=webhp&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=EKJOU92XI6bN7AbZroCABw&ved=0CGUQ7Ak&biw=1024&bih=644 Everyone else and his mystical dog seems to have done so.

Yep. It's become the 'have a pop at FH club house' Membership 1 To the Pit with it and good riddance. :-)

Wasn't there something like that as the opening clip to each episode of that excellent TV series 'Monkey'? Will have a look. Yay... Found it... Man that is a blast from the past and no mistake. I loved that TV show, used to watch it with our two lads when they were small. They are in their 40s now.

Church, synagogue, mosque, temple, gurdwara - etc.... Those are places for religious instruction. Not schools. Fair enough if it's a religious school and that's what the kids and their parents really want - but in a regular secular school, maybe not such a good idea.