Practice, lifestyle, and personal preference

[Vanir Thunder Dojo Tan]

So I found a good read when I was younger, maybe 10 years ago or so, a book by Mary Summerrain called The Phoenix Rising. Another book she wrote, Dreamwalker, spoke of a concept that has been on my mind for a while and I figured it's time to just hash it out and put it into words. Maybe get some answers just doing so, but it's here as well, for discussion. (note, for some reason I cannot use the enter key to add vertical spaces between paragraphs, this wont be easy to read.) So! SummerRain makes note of something genuine: That a holy person, sage, monk, or other spiritually aware and/or advanced person's lifestyle is irrelevant. You can be a dreamwalker, as noted in this book, even though you drink sodas, smoke cigarettes, and eat red meat. MAYBE spiritual titles are irrelevant, that this applies across the board, or perhaps it's only relevant to dreamwalkers? It rings true, in my ears, that a physical lifestyle influences only the physical life-world, and is irrelevant regarding spiritual and/or psychic experiences and ability. So I am wondering to myself if it matters a person's sexuality, gender, diet, habits, addictions, or lifestyles have any genuine meaning in regards to practicing anything of the spiritual/energic sort? I personally do not believe smoking dope and promiscuity are going to directly inhibit immortality, but as with all things, everything in moderation...

Edited November 30, 2012 by Hot Nirvana Judo Trend

[Cheshire Cat]

So I am wondering to myself if it matters a person's sexuality, gender, diet, habits, addictions, or lifestyles have any genuine meaning in regards to practicing anything of the spiritual/energic sort? I personally do not believe smoking dope and promiscuity are going to directly inhibit immortality, but as with all things, everything in moderation...

 

In daoist common sense, spiritual and material is the same thing.

Daoists teach that a healthy body is essential to attain the Way.

 

In western thought, we have an immortal soul that temporarily lives in the body.

No matter what happens to the body, the soul will live forever and it's development could be completely isolated from physical transformations (even if a lot of christians saints had supernatural abilities).

 

I feel in my gut that the daoist idea makes more sense.

[Christian]

No doubt a sage could do harmful things to the physical body without concern. But would they?

 

I have a feeling that many people use this idea as a way to do what their conditioning forces them to do while claiming they are free of their conditioning. And it give bad teachers a way to get people to follow them.

 

And a thought about "everything in moderation..."; everything is a lot of things. Maybe one needs to moderate that as well

[Harmonious Emptiness]

I think it really depends on the path your taking. At a certain level one is going to know what is hindering them and they have to choose. If your cultivating martial prowess and/or responsible for healing people with energetic medicine, then you will likely see rather quickly what is hindering your attention.

 

Another problem though with these things is that they can reduce your will power, and people end up with great ideas and intentions, but no force to carry them through. In the right situations though people can still live an extraordinarily virtuous life while not giving up all of these things. The difference may lie in lifestyle though. If you are already living your purpose then it's easier to continue doing so, than going from an indulgent lifestyle full of vice to an indulgent lifestyle full of purpose.

 

More often than not though, these things tend to keep people stuck where they are regardless of knowing what they ought to be doing, ie., their true path of spirit in this life. For some this is industry, for some it's healing, for some it's art, for some it might even be military. I think this is most important. Not everybody was born to be an ascetic, but everybody has a path that fills them with divine energy and guidance so long as they stay on it. This to me is more important than quitting indulgences. Give up not following your path. That is a much more dangerous thing to your spiritual life than material indulgences.

[deci belle]

SummerRain makes note of something genuine: That a holy person, sage, monk, or other spiritually aware and/or advanced person's lifestyle is irrelevant.

 

I know it doesn't matter. Enlightening being adapts to conditions and sees through phenomena without denying characteristics. Bodhidharma said, "A buddha doesn't keep precepts, and a buddha doesn't break them either."

 

I don't want to drink coffee. But whenever I've ordered a tea at a certain espresso bar in my town, it's as if the sun won't come up if I don't let the barista make me a single breve ristretto …so it's kinda like that sometimes. They just can't see myself with a vapid tea— it's just not right! So being free from life and death means being free with life and death.

 

Some people gotta have their abstracted meditation states while for others it's appropriate to be fifty feet past their last anchor on a winter ice-climb at altitude in the dark while timing the certitude of the next spindrift avalanche.

 

It just gets sso old when it becomes obvious that people simply can't imagine themselves (or others) just as they are now, only awake. Only strangenesses qualify for conceivable scenarios and personages in terms of enlightening being. It is so limiting …❤

[Christian]

I know it doesn't matter. Enlightening being adapts to conditions and sees through phenomena without denying characteristics. Bodhidharma said, "A buddha doesn't keep precepts, and a buddha doesn't break them either."

 

I don't want to drink coffee. But whenever I've ordered a tea at a certain espresso bar in my town, it's as if the sun won't come up if I don't let the barista make me a single breve ristretto …so it's kinda like that sometimes. They just can't see myself with a vapid tea— it's just not right! So being free from life and death means being free with life and death.

 

Some people gotta have their abstracted meditation states while for others it's appropriate to be fifty feet past their last anchor on a winter ice-climb at altitude in the dark while timing the certitude of the next spindrift avalanche.

 

It just gets sso old when it becomes obvious that people simply can't imagine themselves (or others) just as they are now, only awake. Only strangenesses qualify for conceivable scenarios and personages in terms of enlightening being. It is so limiting …❤

 

Is being enlightened the same as being awake? It is just that I use those terms differently. I feel being awake can lead to enlightenment. Drinking coffee effects the mind (promotes glutamate release by blocking the adienosine receptor) so it is hard for me to be "awake" after I drink coffee.

[Vanir Thunder Dojo Tan]

Hmm I think there are some awesome insights coming about from this topic, thank you. I am thinking that the idea posited in the book I read is more along the lines of taming your perceptions of duality; as though to say you CAN be an immortal wise sage and still drink alcohol, coffee, and sodas. In a sense that true mastery is a non-duality... habits and lifestyles make little difference in contrast to exercising the ability involved. In some cases, its a roundhouse or an hour long session of horse stance, on other cases, it is mindful breath awareness meditation or consistently practicing astral projection. I think that lifestyle, habits, addictions, and diet are a lot lower on the list of importance than what we make them out to be. FOR A REASON. That while, yes we CAN be immortal wise practitioners while living a promiscuous life of sex, drugs, and alcohol, doing so SUCCESSFULLY is easier without distractions. IF You are so much more focused on practice that your lifestyle, habits, addictions, and diet make no impact, then maybe that's all it boils down to, a "study aide", however I think it requires a certainly high level of dedication and focus..

[deci belle]

Well …bodhi means awake (I think), and buddha means awakened one (close?).

 

I didn't mean for liquid stimulants to figure into the discussion~ haha!! I just meant, in the course of ordinary affairs, that transcending life and death (in terms of enlightened being) means if dying now or later or whenever or when you predict it will or even coming back as a bug doesn't make any difference either— because it doesn't (that's tough for buddhas too!).

 

Transcending life and death also confers that realization is the knowledge that life and death doesn't exist since awareness itself has no beginning. It has never originated. It is uncreated. It has no self. Selflessness is just this— it doesn't mean you would give the shirt off your back to someone. Your own awareness right now is this reality. And this is what is you right now. There is no other awareness. Since awareness is your living conscious essence, then what you are is unborn. Everything resolves in the unborn mind. There is no other mind. Awakening to this unborn nature as unborn awareness is seeing your buddha nature.

 

The event of sudden enlightenment is (im)personal realization of impersonally aware uncreated nonorigination (ie, you aren't a self— so that is seen). Seeing essence is awakening to your nature. This is it. But functioning in terms of enlightening being is a natural condition whenever the lucidity of the primal mind occasionally comes to the fore at any time. It's a matter of celestial timing (unless you have solidified the accomplishment in the aftermath of sudden realization).

 

There are two basic statements concerning enlightenment in the taoist canon: "Refine the self and await the time" (celestial timing), and "See essence on your own, then seek a teacher (to corroborate your experience).

 

Other than that, it is a matter of using the power of nonpsychological awareness (lead in alchemic terms) to neutralize the power of psychological awareness (mercury). After a long time of this subtle self-refinement, sudden enlightenment just becomes an indication of evidence of efficacy in terms of one's practice. It's not that one isn't expressing enlightening being already just because the instant of sudden enlightenment hasn't occurred in terms of personal history.

 

Everyone uses enlightened mind ALL the time. There is only one mind, not two. It's just that the ordinary course for people is to follow errant intellect and create illusion using this shining mind by going along with the impersonal flow of creation relative to karmic evolution in the macrocosm and psychological momentum in the microcosm (sorry if got those cosms mixed up— i do that sometimes).

[deci belle]

Hmm I think there are some awesome insights coming about from this topic, thank you. I am thinking that the idea posited in the book I read is more along the lines of taming your perceptions of duality; as though to say you CAN be an immortal wise sage and still drink alcohol, coffee, and sodas. In a sense that true mastery is a non-duality... habits and lifestyles make little difference in contrast to exercising the ability involved. In some cases, its a roundhouse or an hour long session of horse stance, on other cases, it is mindful breath awareness meditation or consistently practicing astral projection. I think that lifestyle, habits, addictions, and diet are a lot lower on the list of importance than what we make them out to be. FOR A REASON. That while, yes we CAN be immortal wise practitioners while living a promiscuous life of sex, drugs, and alcohol, doing so SUCCESSFULLY is easier without distractions. IF You are so much more focused on practice that your lifestyle, habits, addictions, and diet make no impact, then maybe that's all it boils down to, a "study aide", however I think it requires a certainly high level of dedication and focus..

 

Enlightening activity is a sober, precise affair that ultimately allows one to let the spirit flow freely, according to the situation. Habitually abandoning oneself unawares isn't in the province of being awake. For example, I believe Chogyam Trungpa knew what was happening, fully aware of the evolving situation. Enlightening being is entry into the inconceivable. As such, one cannot judge~ enlightening being has no purpose in entertaining doubts or judgements of right, wrong, good or bad because this depends on duality. Enlightening beings only act in terms of unity, not duality.

 

Certainly formative practice is gradual practice and gradual practice, either before or after sudden realization is a temporary expedient— so yes, it is an "study aide". It is temporary because one's body is created and one's milieu is also circumstantial. Even a buddha's appearance is karmic, circumstantial.

 

 

ed note… lost original post due to edit booboo. Pooh!!

Edited December 2, 2012 by deci belle

[Vanir Thunder Dojo Tan]

"Enlightening being is entry into the inconceivable. As such, one cannot judge~ enlightening being has no purpose in entertaining doubts or judgements of right, wrong, good or bad because this depends on duality. Enlightening beings only act in terms of unity, not duality."

 

 

In a sense, asking the question in the first place is presenting a duality, whereas my position or opinion in the topic is closer to a matter of either carelessness, zen, or unity?

[deci belle]

mr hotness said:

In a sense, asking the question in the first place is presenting a duality, whereas my position or opinion in the topic is closer to a matter of either carelessness, zen, or unity?

 

Yes, the question is certainly itself a dualism from which there is no escape. As for your position…

 

It rings true, in my ears, that a physical lifestyle influences only the physical life-world, and is irrelevant regarding spiritual and/or psychic experiences and ability. So I am wondering to myself if it matters a person's sexuality, gender, diet, habits, addictions, or lifestyles have any genuine meaning in regards to practicing anything of the spiritual/energic sort? I personally do not believe smoking dope and promiscuity are going to directly inhibit immortality, but as with all things, everything in moderation...

 

it just is.

 

Carelessness, zen , or unity

How would one compare

what has never mattered

tastes just like green hair

only see your nature

what then would you compare❄

 

hahaha!!!❤ *curtsies*

 

 

 

 

ed note: does not bow; curtsies!!

Edited December 3, 2012 by deci belle

[Vanir Thunder Dojo Tan]

I'll nod to that! Well said, i think... So... the question now is... What am i still doing here?

Lezboyenne?

[Protector]

Typing random crap in my screaming burning crushing journal of pain, what else?

[三江源]

 

Everyone uses enlightened mind ALL the time. There is only one mind, not two. It's just that the ordinary course for people is to follow errant intellect and create illusion...

 

Times in practice when I cannot eat meat nor drink alcohol nor coffe. Bodymind says NO. Just simply says NO. Othertimes I want to party, bodymind says YEAH, but then later it says OHGODNOWHYDIDIDOTHAT, but then it feels ok again.

 

The rules come from the outside, only because they arent coming from the inside. Once the inside gets a heard, it can set the pace, then the outside rules disapear from view.

[SEEKER OF TRUTH]

Obviously, there is a consequence for every action, but in my experience, drugs and alcohol seemed to ruin any insight due to delusions of grandeur. Coffee and tobacco don't make much difference, to me, but sugar, now that's getting back towards drugs and alcohol. Must stay away from Ben and Jerry's chocolate fudge brownie ice cream, it's almost as bad as heroin.

[oildrops]

I think it would be delusional to disregard my physical existence as a conduit to the energetic self, so I view my body as an antennae. Sometimes as a science experiment.

 

I wouldn't intentionally mistreat a plant or animal, but I sometimes mistreat my own body out of unconsciousness.

 

I try not to think of immortality. I see no difference if my energy remains intact- when my body is no longer pumping matter around in its machine like state- or disperses into infinite fragments or somewhere in between. It's not in my control. I think there is a balance between enjoying the pleasures this world has to offer, and enjoying the clarity gained from choosing pleasures wisely.

Edited February 18, 2013 by oildrops

[RiverSnake]

Are physical environment as well as what substances we put in our body effect our energy. Knowing that truth, we should be aware and act according to our deepest wisdom.

 

My 2 cents, Peace

[Cat Pillar]

In my experience "lifestyle" is nothing more than a collage of habits. Some of those habits are what I would call "habitual indulgences." You do something over and over again cuz it feels good, and the good feeling sometimes prevents you from noticing that it may be adversely affecting another area of life.

 

The hardest part about reversing habitual indulgences for me is the delay between stopping a habit and experiencing a benefit. I sometimes don't have the attention span to avoid falling back into habitual indulgence.

 

The indulgence brings instant gratification. For example...

 

I want a taco. I buy a taco. DAMN, THAT'S A GOOD TACO (instant gratification.)

 

Now, compare that to not eating a taco. It's going to take several weeks, maybe months, of not eating that taco over and over again before I can sell the little wheelbarrow I use to carry my gut around.

 

Some of this stuff used to be a moral thing for me...y'know, celibacy, drugs, food, spirituality..."this is wrong, that is wrong..."

 

These days, I look at it from a purely practical point of view. "Does this help or hinder my cultivation?" That, more than anything else, is the determining factor for me.

 

Although that doesn't mean that although I see the taco as a hindrance, I won't still eat it now and then.

 

Damn tacos.

 

Edit: To tie in to the OP a little more...my opinion is that a sage's lifestyle is irrelevant because what matters is the attainment. But I think it's important to recognize that irrelevance goes both ways - a sage's lifestyle neither condemns nor condones habits or actions. It is precisely that - irrelevant.

Edited February 18, 2013 by Cat Pillar

[Birch]

"Some of this stuff used to be a moral thing for me...y'know, celibacy, drugs, food, spirituality..."this is wrong, that is wrong..."

 

Heartily agree! These days it's more of a 'whatever works' (or doesn't). IME cultivation ramps up sensitivity to the point it's no longer fun when I try too much fun. I'll chalk that down also to getting older^_^.

 

So where the 'morality' of this stuff comes from is sort of a mystery to me.

[Vanir Thunder Dojo Tan]

i liked, unliked, and subsequently liked again, cat pilalr's post. on account of accuracy and understanding the point my the initial post all togehter.


You said it better than i could have.


Edit: And i got caught up with that and skipped ~Kirk~'s post... or wait, are you still gonna do that? HAW!



but seriously now:

Moarlity is only an opinion and not part of the topic at hand as much. not unrelated, just not in the aimed focus. But since it was brought up, morality is only an opinion and not a fact, it has no grounding in physics.
Morality is used to justify or incriminate an activity or event. it (morality) is designed to suit an agenda and aid liars into reaching their goals.


Now, back on topic, the sage who smokes pot and drinks jack daniels, still heals jsut as well as any other sage, maybe even better. This sage likes to sleep in, watches daytime drama, but still sees the spirits and can tell you how fat your dead grandma's gotten since she let herself go (into the afterlife), but does this have any genuine bearing on the sage?


NO! It doesnt. the sage is able to do whatever the sage is able to do by intrinsic inheritence. it would take a genuine effort to fight your intrinsic energy in order to becoem anyone you arent meant to be.




REGARDLESS of weather you shit in the bowl or the tank; weather if you smoke opium in a hospital or cure cancer; weather you steal stock money from wallstreet or bread from the market to eat; you cannot change your intrinsic energy's signatures.


each example above is comparing two potentials for 3 different (theoretical) individuals.

In the theif example, the individual could have been Mohamed the prophet.

In the health example, the individual could have been a(ny) qi gong practicioner.

The toilet ettiquette example could be any individual with autism.




REGARDLESS of the morality, circumstances always alter our perceptions.

the more about the circumstances we know: the more we know about what we think we see.

Edited February 18, 2013 by Northern Avid Judo Ant

[PrimordialLotus]

 

Is being enlightened the same as being awake? It is just that I use those terms differently. I feel being awake can lead to enlightenment. Drinking coffee effects the mind (promotes glutamate release by blocking the adienosine receptor) so it is hard for me to be "awake" after I drink coffee.

 

That's strange because two weeks before I joined this site; I decided to stop drinking coffee. I pretty much noticed how coffee tended to be a stimulant for people with addictive personalities.

 

Example: When they could not afford cigarettes and alcohol; they were drinking twenty cups of coffee.

 

Sorry to go off topic. Just thought I would bring that up.

[Birch]

I love coffee but not too much. It's going so I love lots of things, but not too much.

I doubt I'd be at full strength with too much crap in my system. But why?

[Vanir Thunder Dojo Tan]

Coffee is my favorite acquired taste so far. As a kid, bitter was frowned upon with a grimace that could coerce gravity toward its pull.

But by far the hole-in-the-corner-nameless-coffee-stand white chocolate mocha has proven that tastes evolve over time... and it's my favorite forever <3

[dawei]

spiritual and material is the same thing.

 

enuf said...

[Taoistik stylez]

These replies are awesome and my brain will now explode! But before it does I would like to add my 2 Abraham Lincoln coins. I think that sin doesn't belong in tAoism and so there is no justification to say that anything man does can be judges by anyone other than man: also, look at the difference in lao tzu vs Chaung tzu. Very opposite in discipline vs carefree. So choose your path but remember one of the three treasures is Moderation