sree

The hidden gems I find are in the world markets. They are the kind that I can cash in for US dollars. I am neither a spiritualist nor an atheist. I just like to argue with you guys to keep my mind sharp. I can play your game. I don't think you can play my game because you need to have money and the guts to put it where your mouth is.

I should have told you that I debate Buddhist scholars all over the world wherever I find them. The last one was a Tibetan Rimpoche with a PhD in engineering at MIT. DragonNectar is right. I just love to argue.

Do you realize that Leadbeater was a serial pedophile? Also, he was the bishop of some heretic version of the Catholic Church, a religion which you condemned as propaganda. He also discovered DrangonNectar's monk who was killed by the same disease that visited you: cancer.

You are quoting Buddhist scripture founded on the story of the Buddha. Have you been successful in your practice? Are you sure the senses are the root cause of suffering? Why not pin the fault on craving? Do you think it is correct to equate the “letting go” of Buddhist philosophy with the Wu-wei ( 無爲) of the Tao Te Ching? Buddhists believe in ending suffering while philosophical Daoists believe in being satisfied with whatever and not giving a damn. I don’t think detachment from the senses is a teaching of the Tao Te Ching. Chapter 12 says the five colors make one blind in the eyes. Come to think of it (meditation in the Buddhist sense), it is not even the colors themselves that cause problems. It is the meanings derived from colors that arouse emotions. Color symbolism excites and churns sentiments.

What you have presented is a theory. Your objective is to cut out the emotional reaction. I understand what you are saying even though what you said doesn't make sense. Cutting out emotions because they are problematic is a very drastic choice to make. It's like prescribing lobotomy to deal with and control shcizophrenia. Like I said, it's a theory. Why are you attracted to this? You have problematic emotional reactions to your sensory experiences?

Glory? I thought that ape was not happy with its state of ignorance.

We will all breakdown and die? Generally, that's the case. Sounds like you have accepted your fate with the Grim Reaper. Damn right. Dissatisfaction is the mother of invention. What exactly are you happy with? Apart from being satisfied with breaking down and dying like a bozo, what is it about your life situation that you are happy with? Even the damn monkey is not satisfied and happy being a monkey.

A-players always rush. Our reality is the prison that I need to get out of without delay. Silent Thunder and others here talk about lucid dreams. Isn't this reality lucid enough of a dream? You don't wake up even if you bang your head on the wall in great pain and blood streams down your face. I don't think one can break out of this reality prison in a sudden Zen awakening. If this is true, according to the Mahayana Buddhist, we would all have been freed 2,500 years ago when the Buddha awakened to the truth that the self is an illusion. But I am not free and still stuck in this space-time lucid dream even though I do realize that the self is an illusion. I know there is only the body walking around. It will eventually breakdown and die. I don't want to die a bozo. We are like mountain climbers who never get to reach the top but fall off the rock face - all of us. Does that make sense to you? Every time some other climber goes whizzing past me on his way down, I hear that sickening thud and ask why? I am told there are now 7 billion bozos in existence climbing up the mountain side. With an average annual death rate of 5%, that means there are one million bozos dying every day and about 11 every second. Thud, thud, thud...I could be next. I think this lucid dream reality prison has a lock with multiple pin tumblers and not a simple lock with just one pin. Opening this lock is like cracking a safe with multiple combinations. The Buddha discovered the first combination: the self is an illusion. And that was only the first step to cracking the safe. There was no liberation, no Nirvana. This is why we are still locked in. We need to find the next combination to the safe. This lock may have only two pin tumblers and the next combination could free us all.

Diversity is a liberal value. This is not the universal principle of the Dao that celebrates no culture. Do you think that a man's life is not complete without a woman? I am not talking about sex. I am talking about a natural balance that draws the two together? What is the significance of dreams to you?

Wow, I wish you had not reposted that youtube link in your reply. That's one horrid picture.

No one can beat me at poker when I am certain that every card in the deck is a blank card. Is my self-confidence a state of self-delusion? The Tao Te Ching says that, in life, Three out of ten who don't know, want to know Three out of ten who don't know, don't care to know Three out of then who don't know, claim to know. I am playing against the three who claim to know. They are the theist, the atheist, and the spiritualist. They want me to believe that they are not holding blank cards and have higher hands than mine.

By the way, Gentlewind, do you do your 5-hour thing around the same time? Give me the time window. I will drop in and help you pass the time.

If it is beyond our comprehension, then we don't understand it. Until we get the full facts, we will just have to dump it. Correct?

I don't need further information. The Russian was not dead and woke up the moment he was cut. So, going Home does not wise people up? If after all that near-death experiences of Home we still come back as bozos, what is the value of going Home? It's so depressing. We might as well all just drop dead with no afterlife and be done with it. I do look forward to being defeated by you, Gentlewind. I've never been beaten at the game of poker. I don't think I can ever lose. How's that for self-confidence?

When you get back from the barbecue, tell me more about your love of other cultures. Have you visited many places abroad? And did your wife cook that spicy shrimp curry herself or took it out of an Indian restaurant?

Ok, the premise here is that the senses are in the way and they distort perception. What are the instructions for cutting off the 5 thieves? (I tried web searching "Buddhaoism" and couldn't find it.) A person born blind and deaf could still smell, taste and touch. There are three more senses in the way and need to be knocked out. What is the benefit of becoming reality if it entails bestowing upon oneself total disability? .

Ok, I browsed your link and came away with these conclusions: 1. There is no information of the idiot who pronounced the Russian man dead. 2. People with no detectable pulse or any other vital signs are normally assumed dead. 3. Instances of people assumed dead coming back to life are not unusual. There was a case of a woman who woke up in her casket at her own funeral rite. Here are a couple of links of dead people coming back to life: http://perezhilton.com/2011-06-25-woman-mistaken-for-dead-wakes-up-at-her-own-funeral-then-dies-from-the-shock#.UaocodI_vIs http://thestir.cafemom.com/in_the_news/137575/man_dies_wakes_up_as By the way, your Russian man went Home, presumably a place of Truth, and came back to embrace what you call religious propaganda and became a Christian priest. How would you explain that?

He can be without his body? Wow. I would pay a lot of money to see that act. Even magician David Copperfield would pay millions to buy the secret to that illusion. Brain dead people being themselves are not unusual but being without bodies is something I've got to see. Mid-autopsy? You mean the person doing the autopsy had the dead guy's head cut up and the brains dissected and laid out in the pan while the heart and lungs are removed to another table for examination when the dead guy returned to life and sat up? Can we have more factual details, please? And why is that? Silent Thunder is still happily married after 20 years.

No, that wouldn't be dying in the conventional sense. To be able to junk the body the way I scrap my car - not when it is old and broken down but before it goes out of style even though it is still running fine - is the Tao of dying. In this sense, death has a profound meaning because it is not the dying of the body we are concerned with. It's the ending of something else.

What are the side effects of your medications? Is the elimination of your output a painful process? Not really. I need more details. It is not a morbid curiosity but a deep concern about a situation that can happen to anyone including me. I need to know how bad life can get if my body's condition ever gets to be like yours. Everybody has his own truth to tell. But one man's meat could be another's poison. I have no issues with the recount of your experiences as a cancer patient. When you use that as a platform to expound on spiritual matters for me to swallow, I reserve the right to demur. I am not questioning your honesty. There is recorded evidence in my posts testifying to my affirmation that you have been telling the truth as you saw it, and that you do not deliberately tell lies. As an American, I believe in the freedom to question any statement purported to be factual and not subject myself to its authority unless it is a just expression of the truth. The American revolt in the 18th century was also regarded as poor form by the British. An imperial attitude, on your part, in public discourse is not helpful. Your story is of use to me in learning how to avoid bowel cancer. So, I need to know how you ended up with the disease. Was it caused by a careless lifestyle eating bad food and drink?

Let's examine carefully what you have said so that we understand the same things in the same way. I want to become you and see what you see. And let's keep it simple and direct - no leaps of faith, nothing that we cannot immediately verify. We have this reality, this awareness of existence as a human being. I am sitting on the porch at this Dell laptop and the weather is just great. I am perfectly healthy and love being alive. I know this won't last forever. Like a passenger on an airplane, I know this wonderful flight can't go on indefinitely. I need to land it safely before it runs out of fuel or starts to malfunction. How would you deal with this? Another namaste. Do you also use this greeting like Gentlewind with fingers pointing upwards, palms closed facing each other in front of your chest to indicate we are all one in Brahman?

Maybe you should eat less. If you sh*t at the same rate as the average person for 5 hours, there would be a ton of excrement. You would be digesting food at the rate of a 2-horsepower-1500 watt meat-grinder. It's important to share information accurately in all matters. If you mislead in one area, you are likely to mislead in all areas of discussion. An average person who needs to sit more than ten minutes is constipating unless one likes spending time in the quiet of the bathroom with a magazine or a book. So, why don't you tell me why you need 5 hours to do it? I want to know because I am not a fair-weather friend. I am not a hypocritical well-wisher who drops in at the hospice to do his good deed, or a philosophical Daoist with a Mother Teresa complex who needs to be nice to a sick guy to feel great about himself.

Good Lord! I thought you were talking just to me. You are having a conversation with a whole multitude of demons like a priest in the exorcism of Linda Blair.

If my thoughts come across as being contradictory, then you need to point them out so I can fix them and give myself a boot in the butt. Both sides of what fence? What is it that you think I am driving at but not spelling out? It is unfortunate that my use of the word "dying" has been misconstrued as the conventional kind of dying. I am not talking about this kind of dying which attract flies to the corpse as the spirit goes Home.

No, I have not. Well, that was one hell of a movie, a well-told story. The guy did try to fit in despite the horrors of prison life. And when he decided to break out, nothing could deter him. Our reality is Shawshank Prison. I am going to die anyway if I stay. So, I really need to get out. Are you coming or staying?