Book study leading to mastery

[C T]

THIS... is exactly why I don't post here anymore - this will be my last post.

 

I'm not in a position to teach - the original post in which you quoted was full of ego to begin with - having the urge to post in the first place should have been my que (now as well).

 

I truly wish you all the best.

I was asking in sincerity. Not sure the reason for the touchiness. You offered up a rather vague premise , dont you think its ok for readers to want to get clarification? There is no need to over-react, especially when its based off an assumption.

[Sahaj Nath]

I was asking in sincerity. Not sure the reason for the touchiness. You offered up a rather vague premise , dont you think its ok for readers to want to get clarification? There is no need to over-react, especially when its based off an assumption.

 

guess i can respond, since he's not planning to be posting anymore...

 

i don't think his post was meant to be touchy. i think he's just going through an intense and uncomfortable period of self-examination. CT, you're not the reason he's no longer posting; he's no longer posting because of the insidious nature of his own motivations, that impulse to "dispense wisdom" whenever the smallest insight is gleaned.

 

i love don_vedo. he's a beautiful guy. it's just a learning process that he's going through right now, and he's doing better than most would, i think.

 

i'm sure he'll be back around whenever he feels it appropriate.

 

 

 

just wanted to offer a little clarity.

Edited May 24, 2014 by Hundun

[C T]

guess i can respond, since he's not planning to be posting anymore...

 

i don't think his post was meant to be touchy. i think he's just going through an intense and uncomfortable period of self-examination. CT, you're not the reason he's no longer posting; he's no longer posting because of the insidious nature of his own motivations, that impulse to "dispense wisdom" whenever the smallest insight is gleaned.

 

i love don_vedo. he's a beautiful guy. it's just a learning process that he's going through right now, and he's doing better than most would, i think.

 

i'm sure he'll be back around whenever he feels it appropriate.

 

 

 

just wanted to offer a little clarity.

Thanks, Hundun.

 

We have chatted, All is well.

 

And yes, Don Vedo is a beautiful guy...

[GrandmasterP]

GrandmasterP, thank you. For me, learning to sit the traditional "body-posture challenge" was a long process of experimentation and study, even to be able to sit once a day for 37 minutes without busting my knees (seems like that's about my interval of late).

 

The last time I saw Kobun Chino Otogawa was the tail end of a seven-day sitting at Jikoji in the Santa Cruz Mountains early this millennia, and Kobun was completing the third of three seven-day sesshins. He said, "if I seem a little crazier than usual, that's why". In response to a question, he said he never had pain or numbness in the lotus.

 

I can sit once a day in the lotus for about 40 minutes, usually without pain or numbness, at least at home. I am constantly relearning everything I know, and yet the most important piece of the puzzle for me has been waking up and falling asleep through my sense of where I am and the freedom of that sense of where I am to move.

 

The rest is me coming to accept that it could be that simple, but apparently that's my path! Ha ha!

I can't sit full lotus period.

Dodgy left leg won't bend like it once did.

Can do half lotus but unless I have my oversize zafu to sit on then anything over half an hour and I need to walk a while.

Using that big zafu though I can go a full session with few problems.

For Mindfulness we can sit as we choose and most choose a chair whilst some use a little bench.

Main thing being as long as there are three points of contact and the back is straight then it's good to go.

Was thinking of punting a Brad Warner thread on here.

Whaddaya think?

I really like the guy but some don't.

Edited May 24, 2014 by GrandmasterP

[Mark Foote]

Interesting about the left knee-- I did a post on that awhile back. Still a mystery to me, mostly, why the left knee seems more responsive to what's going on inside than the right.

 

Found this looking at Nisargadata's final teachings:

 

 

Once there is an unequivocal apperception of your true nature, once you clearly see the false as false, is there any question of having to decide the propriety or otherwise of any action ? Who will make the decision ? Does one have the independence of volition to make the decision ? Is there really any choice ? Once it is apperceived that there is no entity with any independence of action, would 'living' thereafter not be totally non-volitional living ? Would not, in other words, the apperceiving itself lead to an abandonment - or more accurately - a spontaneous cessation of the very concept of volitional activity ? One may think that one lives; actually, one is only 'being lived'.

Exhausted by this brief but animated exposition, Maharaj lay back again in his bed, and said that he would have liked to expand this point further, but he just did not have the physical strength. He added, with a wary touch of humour, that it was perhaps just as well that he could now only give out capsules of knowledge.

 

Mostly I suffer and feel like I can't breath in a subtle way, then I return to my senses.

 

Let me put it another way:

 

'The flow of consciousness, impact, and feeling is sometimes a necessary component of the movement of breath, and at such times the unconscious can effect action through the medium of the breath. As if by hypnotic suggestion, the ability to feel necessary to the breath gives rise to action in the body; Kobun Chino Otogawa described the experience with the words, "sometimes zazen gets up and walks around". ' (that, from here)

Edited May 26, 2014 by Mark Foote

[doc benway]

"One may think that one lives; actually, one is only 'being lived'."

 

"Only"(?!) being lived?

 

I question the master's choice of word here.

I think I understand his point ---> we are too wrapped up in "our" lives, ignorantly believing ourselves to be independent agents of volitional activity. The "only" may be an attempt to help us let go of our self-importance and allowing life.

 

On the other hand, once the apperception of truth is directly experienced, there is no "only" about it.

There is nothing more liberating, fresh, and wonderful than that gnowledge.

The realization of our nature goes beyond "being lived" because that which is being lived and that which is doing the living are one and the same.

[GrandmasterP]

Interesting about the left knee-- I did a post on that awhile back. Still a mystery to me, mostly, why the left knee seems more responsive to what's going on inside than the right.

 

Found this looking at Nisargadata's final teachings:

 

 

 

 

Mostly I suffer and feel like I can't breath in a subtle way, then I return to my senses.

 

Let me put it another way:

 

'The flow of consciousness, impact, and feeling is sometimes a necessary component of the movement of breath, and at such times the unconscious can effect action through the medium of the breath. As if by hypnotic suggestion, the ability to feel necessary to the breath gives rise to action in the body; Kobun Chino Otogawa described the experience with the words, "sometimes zazen gets up and walks around". ' (that, from here)

 

My left leg's shot.

Literally ( It got shot when I was in the army).

Never been a happy leg since that time as it is missing some vital muscle-ey bits.

Anatomy chap back in nurse training once told us that everybody 'naturally' bears weight inequitably, favouring one leg or the other.

He reckoned that right handed people bore weight unevenly onto their left leg.

Tends to be the weight bearing leg where varicose veins show up initially too, if someone is going to have those.

[Mark Foote]

Sorry to hear about the message from the cosmos to the left leg. Seems like you have found energy flow in spite of all.

 

My surmise is that ultimately it's a left-brain, right brain thing combined with the lower/higher attachment thing from the diaphragm to the spine.

 

 

I continue to believe John Upledger's accounts of a rhythm of hydraulic pressure in the dural sac that flexes and extends the entire body, and the importance of allowing movement in three axes with the sense of location to that rhythm.

 

Then again, zzz...

[Mark Foote]

"One may think that one lives; actually, one is only 'being lived'."

 

"Only"(?!) being lived?

 

I question the master's choice of word here.

I think I understand his point ---> we are too wrapped up in "our" lives, ignorantly believing ourselves to be independent agents of volitional activity. The "only" may be an attempt to help us let go of our self-importance and allowing life.

 

On the other hand, once the apperception of truth is directly experienced, there is no "only" about it.

There is nothing more liberating, fresh, and wonderful than that gnowledge.

The realization of our nature goes beyond "being lived" because that which is being lived and that which is doing the living are one and the same.

 

I think the key is that he was too tired to continue at that point.

 

The Gautamid said that after his discourses, he returned to "that characteristic of concentration in which I ever abide" (he didn't name it). Zen master in ancient China said he never had mundane thoughts except at mealtime. I would say that these descriptions both point to an inability to concentrate when activity conditions the movement of breath, speaking or eating. So nobody experiences action in the absence of volition all the time.

 

The surrender of volitive acitivity to relaxed experience, particularly the experience of the senses associated with the presence of awareness, can in the course of inhalation and exhalation precipitate physical action without the exercise of volition.

 

"(For one) knowing thus, seeing thus, there are no latent conceits that ‘I am the doer, mine is the doer’ in regard to this consciousness-informed body."

 

"One may think that one lives; actually, one is only 'being lived'."