Vajrahridaya Posted October 14, 2009 QUOTE(nac @ Oct 13 2009, 03:42 AM) You Americans have no idea how good you have it. Besides, any country without a Bollywood is paradise IMHO . I have heard that Bollywood is even bigger and way more profitable than Hollywood??? That's nuts!! I hear ya'll Indians wait around the block in line to see these incredibly long 3 to 4 hour movies??? I can't imagine... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Sunya Posted October 14, 2009 Is the link from Great I to No I taught explicitly as in Buddhism? See: http://www.zenforuminternational.org/viewt...p?f=12&t=48 If so, then Advaita doesn't really teach unity and it's practically the same as Buddhism. Nac! thank you! i've been reading that article and its truly amazing, wonderful, incredible! i don't know why i'm so excited... but its exactly what i've been looking for, and what i've been thinking about recently. the explanation of stage 2 to stage 3 is so crucial to understanding Buddhism and why negation is important. I had a crazy argument today during class with my Mysticism professor, who is incredibly arrogant; I feel he's at stage 2. I used a metaphor about all beings being waves in the ocean, just to illustrate a point about Monist thinking.. I wasn't arguing against it. and he started railing on me: 'Who's ocean is it' ? and I kept saying there can be no 'Who' because subject and object are both manifestations of the ocean. Now what he was doing was collapsing the Ocean and the subject into One Grand Being, the Big Dreamer, the Godhead..and then identifying with that. so thus, I am You, I am ALL! and I argued incessantly against this, and made great points, but the guy is so full of pride that he would cut me off and intentionally try to embarrass me; he felt threatened. A problem of attachment, big time. so that site is really relevant because the jump from stage 2 to stage 3 is exactly the most difficult journey, and believing in any real essence will prevent that realization from happening. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Vajrahridaya Posted October 14, 2009 Nac! thank you! i've been reading that article and its truly amazing, wonderful, incredible! i don't know why i'm so excited... but its exactly what i've been looking for, and what i've been thinking about recently. the explanation of stage 2 to stage 3 is so crucial to understanding Buddhism and why negation is important. I had a crazy argument today during class with my Mysticism professor, who is incredibly arrogant; I feel he's at stage 2. I used a metaphor about all beings being waves in the ocean, just to illustrate a point about Monist thinking.. I wasn't arguing against it. and he started railing on me: 'Who's ocean is it' ? and I kept saying there can be no 'Who' because subject and object are both manifestations of the ocean. Now what he was doing was collapsing the Ocean and the subject into One Grand Being, the Big Dreamer, the Godhead..and then identifying with that. so thus, I am You, I am ALL! and I argued incessantly against this, and made great points, but the guy is so full of pride that he would cut me off and intentionally try to embarrass me; he felt threatened. A problem of attachment, big time. so that site is really relevant because the jump from stage 2 to stage 3 is exactly the most difficult journey, and believing in any real essence will prevent that realization from happening. It's very difficult Michealz. It has been a hard journey for myself, having had so many reifying experiences through SY of great depth and bliss that worked on my subconscious in such a way as to find it hard on a deep level to let go of this... "I"... (Hears it echoing throughout the vast universe). Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
nac Posted October 14, 2009 (edited) drewhempel: Just as philosophical study can't help everybody on their spiritual paths, I don't think just anyone can achieve nibbana by sweeping monasteries or living like Kalahari bushmen either. Skillfulness is highly subjective. . I have heard that Bollywood is even bigger and way more profitable than Hollywood??? That's nuts!! I hear ya'll Indians wait around the block in line to see these incredibly long 3 to 4 hour movies??? I can't imagine... Don't get me started. Mandala visualization may not improve IQ scores, but I'm pretty certain about what decreases it... Edited October 14, 2009 by nac Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
voidisyinyang Posted October 14, 2009 drewhempel: Just as philosophical study can't help everybody on their spiritual paths, I don't think just anyone can achieve nibbana by sweeping monasteries or living like Kalahari bushmen either. Skillfulness is highly subjective. Yeah I guess the "Facial Coding System" is subjective in the final analysis: We will evaluate accuracy in terms of congruence between the ratings of experience and the time-synched dynamic changes in objectively measured facial expressions of emotion. Specifically, we are predicting that the retreat group by virtue of the intensive training in monitoring their own experience so will achieve greater congruence between their self-reports and the more objective measures of facial expressions than the congruence demonstrated in the control group. We are engaged now in the time-intensive process of coding the facial expressions using FACS (the Facial Action Coding System), to allow a detailed frame-by-frame video analysis of observable changes in facial musculature. To our knowledge, no other study of short- or long-term meditation training has examined changes in spontaneous emotional experience. Brief Summaries of Shamatha Project Preliminary Results Provided by Dr. Cliff Saron, University of California Davis Self-reported Psychological Variables To assess whether meditation changed participants' self-reported adaptive functioning, we employed several well-validated measures from the disciplines of personality, social, and clinical psychology. Retreat and control participants completed identical questionnaire packets at the beginning and end of the retreat periods. (We studied two 3-month retreats.) The questionnaires measured the following adaptive traits or qualities: mindfulness, ego resiliency, empathy, agreeableness, openness to experience, conscientiousness, and psychological well-being. They also measured the following maladaptive traits or qualities: attachment-related avoidance and anxiety, depression, general anxiety, neuroticism, and difficulties in emotional regulation. We hypothesized that the retreat participants would improve by increasing their scores on the measure of adaptation and decreasing their scores on the measures of maladaptation; over the same time period, we expected the control participants not to change. Participants' scores on the measures tended to be correlated both before and after the retreat period, indicating that the measures were capturing a common latent contruct that we call "adaptive functioning." Appropriate statistical analyses confirmed that we could represent this latent construct well with a weighted combination of the primary measures. When this construct was tested for differential change over time in the retreat and control groups, we found that retreat participants who were not different from the control participants did not. This resulted in the retreat group reporting better adaptive functioning than the control group at the end of the retreat period. In a second 3-month study, the former control group entered their own retreat, and they then improved in adaptive functioning in a way similar to the previous retreat group. These results indicate that intensive meditation training enhanced participants' mindfulness, ego resiliency, empathy, agreeableness, openness to experience, conscientiousness, and psychological well-being while reducing their attachment-related avoidance, general anxiety and neuroticism, and their difficulties in regulating emotions. Further data analyses will determine whether these self-reported improvements covary with objective indicators of attention and health-related physiology. Attention Skills To assess whether meditation training led to fairly general improvements in attentional skills, we examined behavioral performance on computer-based tests of visual perception and concentration. Before, during, and after three months of meditation training, participants completed two related tasks designed to measure sustained attention and attentional control over long periods of time: (1) a traditional sustained attention task that required button responses to rare events (a short "target" line appearing 10% of the time in a sequence of long "non-target" lines), and (2) a response inhibition task that required button responses to all long lines but the withholding of button responses to rare short lines. In both tasks, we equated task difficulty across individuals by setting a particular length of the target line for each individual at each testing point such that they could only detect differences between long and short lines about 75% of the time. This was done with a visual threshold procedure that measured how well participants could detect small differences in the lengths of lines. Previous research has shown that untrained adults are unable to perform sustained attention tasks for long periods of time, and performance gets worse with increasing time on task. On traditional sustained attention tasks, observers miss more targets over time, and on response inhibition tasks, observers make more accidental responses over time. We hypothesized that retreat participants would improve by detecting more short lines during the course of the sustained attention task, and make fewer accidental errors in the response inhibition task. We also hypothesized that better target detection would be related to how well retreat participants performed on the visual threshold task. After three months of training, the first group of retreat participants showed improvement in visual threshold as compared to control participants, and the control participants did not improve. The improvement in visual threshold was maintained up to 5 months after the end of formal training, as tested in a follow-up assessment. However, we did not observe any changes in sustained attention or response inhibition in the first group. We hypothesized that changes in visual threshold masked changes in sustained attention performance, because retreat participants were performing a more difficult task by the end of training. To test this, we fixed the length of the target line at the beginning of testing in the second retreat. Participants in the second retreat (the wait-list control participants from the first retreat) demonstrated the same improvement in visual threshold as the first retreat group, replicating our findings from the first retreat. In addition, participants with the most improvement in visual threshold showed the most improvement in target detection accuracy during the 30-minute sustained attention task. Participants also improved in response inhibition, with younger people benefiting the most from training. Further data analyses will determine the neurophysiological correlates of improvements in threshold, target detection accuracy, and response inhibition, and will reveal whether changes in these measures relate to improvements in self-reported adaptive function and other cognitive measure such as mind wandering during reading. Experience of Spontaneous Emotion Anecdotally speaking, meditators report that intensive training in meditation enhances the ability to notice the contents of consciousness, including the nature of one's thoughts, the impulse to act, and one's emotions as they unfold in real time. For the scientist, the challenge is to capture such effects of meditation, should they occur. We developed an experimental paradigm of the film viewing task to detect subtle changes in sensitivity to one's own emotional experience. We showed the participants brief film segments, culled from documentaries, depicting graphic scenes of human suffering. After viewing each film, participants viewed a storyboard of individual frames from the film, arranged sequentially. They used these pictures to help them remember when in the films they experienced changes in emotion; and for any from that represented a place in the film that elicited emotion, participants completed ratings on several different emotions, each represented by an emotion word. From these ratings we obtained profiles of momentary emotional experiences over the course of the film. We are currently analyzing these data. We predict that meditators (the people in the retreat group) will be more accurate in knowing what emotions they experienced than control participants. We will evaluate accuracy in terms of congruence between the ratings of experience and the time-synched dynamic changes in objectively measured facial expressions of emotion. Specifically, we are predicting that the retreat group by virtue of the intensive training in monitoring their own experience so will achieve greater congruence between their self-reports and the more objective measures of facial expressions than the congruence demonstrated in the control group. We are engaged now in the time-intensive process of coding the facial expressions using FACS (the Facial Action Coding System), to allow a detailed frame-by-frame video analysis of observable changes in facial musculature. To our knowledge, no other study of short- or long-term meditation training has examined changes in spontaneous emotional experience. We also expect training in compassion to reduce the intensity of emotions that cause people to pull back from others who are either suffering or doing things that are unappealing. Consistent with this prediction, preliminary analyses show that after viewing scenes of the Iraq war (in which American soldiers bragged about getting psyched up to shoot Iraqis by listening to heavy metal music), followed by images of suffering Iraqis (including children), the retreat group reported significantly less contempt than the control group. Don't get me started. Mandala visualization may not improve IQ scores, but I'm pretty certain about what decreases it... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
nac Posted October 15, 2009 (edited) Are we talking about experiences of enlightenment or enlightened action? Yes, there have been hundreds of independent studies on meditative techniques. See papers like: http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/...p04/MQ57700.pdf Regardless of all that, attaining some form of "enlightenment" for oneself isn't all that matters you know. Certainly not in the long run. Edited October 15, 2009 by nac Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Jeremy Posted October 15, 2009 So both Chunyi Lin and Jim Nance trained in full-lotus deep and deep but then a few years ago Jim Nance fell in the icy parking lot in Minnesota Winter and TORE the ligaments in his knee joints. He had to have surgery, despite being a qigong master! Was this related to his full-lotus practice? I don't know -- yet somehow there must be some deeper lesson for him because the level he was at he shouldn't have done so much knee damage just from slipping on the ice! Hey Drew, at the Spring Forest Qigong Level 3 retreat this year, Jim Nance was walking in crutches, still apparently recovering from that accident, yet he was able to sit in full lotus the entire time he gave lectures! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
voidisyinyang Posted October 15, 2009 (edited) Jeremy -- good to hear from you! Thanks for sharing this about Jim Nance. I find this "accident" and "injury" to be very intense and wild -- I think there was some definite deep karmic reworking. Jim Nance is amazing to hold on to Chunyi Lin's guidance! haha. There's some SERIOUS ego-realigning going on. Jim Nance told me that Africa had more powerful masters than Chunyi Lin and I looked at him not sure what to think -- he said that if Chunyi Lin went to Africa Chunyi Lin would have more than he can handle. I disagreed because Chunyi Lin's abilities and level of emptiness is so advanced and I think Jim Nance was maybe projecting his Afrocentric position. Who am I to say! haha. Only that in advanced practice there are lots of dangers that manifest from very subtle levels of energy. The full-lotus is really the main tool. Look at John Chang -- some Westerners show up -- he demonstrates to them -- but the one female in the group gets a chop-stick to the center of her forehead from John Chang's chi!! He therefore goes into hiding so he can get forgiveness from his masters -- such is the rare subtle balance of the spiritual energy. Thanks for the link -- my Burmese friend who has the Theravada monastery sent me this book link today -- again emphasizing that I'm practicing samadhi without the "rupas" (material) insight for nibanna.... http://books.google.com/books?id=C389AAAAI...;q=&f=false The monk of this book is very critical of the "paths of purification" book: http://www.dhammasukha.org/Study/Books/Pdf...20Sutta%202.pdf Are we talking about experiences of enlightenment or enlightened action? Yes, there have been hundreds of independent studies on meditative techniques. See papers like: http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/...p04/MQ57700.pdf Regardless of all that, attaining some form of "enlightenment" for oneself isn't all that matters you know. Certainly not in the long run. Edited October 16, 2009 by drewhempel Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
nac Posted October 18, 2009 BTW in the Vajrayana tradition, women are called wisdom holders and disparaging them is considered one of the one of the fourteen root downfalls of a tantric practitioner. Here are a few online samples of Great Bliss Queen literature: http://www.zangthal.co.uk/files.html Judge it for yourself. For example, see the 5th and 8th texts. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
voidisyinyang Posted October 18, 2009 After reading that her "vulva was developed" I definitely got the message. haha. Still... Dzogchen If anything I'm finally figuring out where to put the "z" in this teaching. haha. I think it's Anne Klein who has the "Great Bliss Queen" book but I got her title referenced in the "Warm Breath of the Dakini" book by a female Naropa tantra professor.... There's NO escape from the ladies (thankfully). haha. thanks for the links! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
nac Posted October 18, 2009 (edited) I think it's Anne Klein who has the "Great Bliss Queen" book but I got her title referenced in the "Warm Breath of the Dakini" book by a female Naropa tantra professor.... More info: http://www.buddhistethics.org/4/lang2.html http://www.anandainfo.com/tantric_robes.html I would of course never defend the suffering she went through, but I nevertheless find June Campbell's analysis of Tibetan symbolism and her assertions that Bon was an earth-goddess religion questionable to say the least. On the other hand, it's true that Tibetan civilization was at a very primitive, priest-king stage like ancient Sumer. Then again, there are theories that the traditional imperial hierarchy of China had been derived from ancient Sino-Tibetan beliefs about heavenly officials and hierarchies. The Chinese emperor was titled the Son of Heaven and was supposed to command an unquestioning, nearly religious obedience. They also surrounded themselves with innumerable concubines, but at least they didn't try to keep all this stuff a secret... Edited October 18, 2009 by nac Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
voidisyinyang Posted October 18, 2009 (edited) Edited October 18, 2009 by drewhempel Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
nac Posted October 18, 2009 Nah... I feel really sorry for what happened to her, but I wasn't convinced by her weak arguments. I think it's probable that Tibetans merely replaced their native mythology-oriented theocracy for an imported one. They were the ones who started the practice of "recognizing reincarnated lamas" after all. Tulku was essentially a government position just like that of Chinese officials. Meanwhile, the Chinese kept their sacred hierarchy, one based on folk Taoism. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
voidisyinyang Posted October 18, 2009 (edited) Edited October 18, 2009 by drewhempel Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
nac Posted October 18, 2009 (edited) June Campbell argues similarly that the Bon were still a Great Mother culture.... Hinduism is full of "Great Mother" goddesses. In all probability, India is still the most patriarchal nation on the planet. Bon is a shamanic tradition related to folk Taoism that was heavily influenced by Zoroastrianism and the neighboring despotic Persian culture. Persia was never exactly a matriarchal ideal, you know, being racial cousins of us Indians and all. Even before Zoroastrian sage-kings like Xerxes, Persian culture was similar to Vedic culture. I try to keep an open mind about these things. I just have a very strong bullshit detector. Edited October 18, 2009 by nac Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Sunya Posted October 18, 2009 (edited) ROFL i really hope this "IHC" is a joke, look at their ambassadors.. 15 year olds and pedophiles alike, the very best! http://www.instituteforhumancontinuity.org...or/gallery.html WOW... which creepy guy do you want as a leader of the "post 2012" world ? http://www.instituteforhumancontinuity.org/vote/ LOL this is hilarious!! i'm voting for the guy with the mustache Edited October 18, 2009 by mikaelz Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
JustARandomPanda Posted October 18, 2009 I did not realize the Madonna / Whore dichotomy was so widespread across such disparate cultures. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
nac Posted October 18, 2009 I did not realize the Madonna / Whore dichotomy was so widespread across such disparate cultures. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Sunya Posted October 18, 2009 i'm voting for this guy actually http://www.instituteforhumancontinuity.org/vote/mykelm/ btw this can't be serious http://www.instituteforhumancontinuity.org/vote/aaroni/ 00:30 "the road head will be tough" HAHAHA my Saturday night is now amazing thanks to you, Drew. Michael gets my vote for best campaign video http://www.instituteforhumancontinuity.org/vote/michaels/ Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
voidisyinyang Posted October 18, 2009 (edited) O.K. -- read page 50 of Professor Sherry Ortner's "Virgin and the State" chapter -- not only is the Madonna/Whore dichtomy due to the rise of the "stratified state-relations" but also is due to the DOMESTICATION OF MEN in the state structure.... http://books.google.com/books?id=XoeDtwMT8...%22&f=false Here's a feminist book on Confucianism incorporating Sherry Ortner's arguments -- essentially that women's rights are within a larger class structure based on kin networks: http://books.google.com/books?id=yTvLQbaH8...;q=&f=false Edited October 18, 2009 by drewhempel Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
nac Posted October 18, 2009 (edited) Speaking of Madonna/Whore dichotomy, have you guys read the Indian epics? I sometimes find their "morality" impossible to tolerate. Anyway, I'll let real Vajrayana practitioners answer these charges if they care to, but frankly, I'm having difficulty imagining Tibet of all places suffering from a Madonna complex. In reality, Tibetan culture was much less "patriarchal" than India, China, Persia or Mongolia, the countries surrounding it. Polyandry and even free love were common among both ordinary people and nobles, lamas and non-lamas. (every other person carried STDs) Both sexes practiced whatever profession they pleased and there were lots of female lamas too. Some early western visitors called them jolly, but decadent and depraved. It's a mystery how the Madonna complex fits into a picture like this... Edited October 18, 2009 by nac Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
voidisyinyang Posted October 18, 2009 nac -- you're correct as per this academic anthology on "Women of Tibet" that the females had greater freedom than other Asian countries, although in the 7th C there was still "forced childhood production" and "arranged matrimonial alliances" -- So I think the "free love" applies as the whore while the elite female power marriage applies as the Madonna (along with Goddess Worship).... http://books.google.com/books?id=FELZ48HwL...=gbs_navlinks_s There's other Buddhist scholars writing on misogyny in Tibetan Buddhism but compared to the current RASH of Tibetan Prostitutes serving the Chinese -- and homeless Tibetans, etc. it seems unfair to focus on former Tibetan Buddhist control, now reduced to more or less "spiritual tourism" show.... I think June Campbell's focus, like Sherry Ortner, is much broader than just a comparison of Asian sexism -- if you read Campbell's revised 2002 edition, she's comparing Tibetan Buddhism with Christianity and everything else. Ortner is also considering "stratified state-societies" -- as a whole... so Asia and the West.... And, again, in the context of "progress" sexism is a mixed bag with Ortner arguing that MEN HAVE BEEN DOMESTICATED -- in service of an elite female caste. Other feminists have made similar arguments.... Nefertiti is a classic example -- sort of like saying the wife of Dick Cheney is in control. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Vajrahridaya Posted October 18, 2009 Speaking of Madonna/Whore dichotomy, have you guys read the Indian epics? I sometimes find their "morality" impossible to tolerate. Anyway, I'll let real Vajrayana practitioners answer these charges if they care to, but frankly, I'm having difficulty imagining Tibet of all places suffering from a Madonna complex. In reality, Tibetan culture was much less "patriarchal" than India, China, Persia or Mongolia, the countries surrounding it. Polyandry and even free love were common among both ordinary people and nobles, lamas and non-lamas. (every other person carried STDs) Both sexes practiced whatever profession they pleased and there were lots of female lamas too. Some early western visitors called them jolly, but decadent and depraved. It's a mystery how the Madonna complex fits into a picture like this... Yes, it's the only country that I know of, where women are allowed to marry multiple men. Seriously... think about it! That's pretty liberating for women, to have a few men take care of the family and serve your sexual desires?? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
voidisyinyang Posted October 18, 2009 Vaj -- it's a good point but it's due to LACK OF LAND -- so the multiple men are usually TWO BROTHERS. Also in traditional tantra in South India -- the brother or uncle has more power in his sister's family then the husband of the sister -- so this is an example of the kin network as "matrimonial alliances" -- while the female may have MORE than one male to receive sexual energy from (physical or emotional) the reason is for the larger state-stratified society. The original case of this is the Bushmen culture where the females "own" the land and the men wanting to marry have to MOVE INTO THE FEMALE'S PARENTS HOUSE -- live for 3 years providing food for the female's parents and then, ONLY then, physically sleep with the female in marriage. So it's all relative about land ownership and sexual liberation, and spiritual healing, etc. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Dainin Posted October 18, 2009 I remember seeing a film in anthropology class years ago that had a section on polyandry. It was about a tribe in the Himalayas, I don't think they were Tibetans necessarily. They were animal herders, and one husband would go out with the flocks, while the other stayed at home, and then they would rotate. So it wasn't like they were both there serving the wife at all times! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
