Warm Path

[宁]

Hi all,

 

it seems that almost all the threads on this forum are in fact ways we can find the answer in ourselves.

No matter if the answer we get from others is a good one, we always seem to find a better one, when we follow the direction of a certain answer - I hope I'm clear enough, I don't know how to put it in other words.

 

Another thing is that everybody seems to agree that energy cultivation path could lead you to certain acheivements regarding health, emotional balance and even wisdom... but when it comes to spiritual awakening and liberation, we all tend to follow, or search, more traditional paths, or, more franckly, quite religios or religious-like paths. I wonder if that is not something "the matrix" has put inside our heads. Wonder if we really need a religious-like path, for spiritual attainment.

 

Yet another thing, I wonder if we could find a definite way... not to profound, and not to shallow, like in the mith of the Icarus, not too close to the sun, to avoid melting the wax that binds the wings, and not to close to the ground, to get hit by trees and the tops of the houses. Because, as the path is getting closer to deeper meaning and acheivements, the problems and the dangers get even higher. Is there something a lay man could practice, that wouldn't endager him, a red line thread that he could follow, just to keep himself safe, from both hitting the ground, and burning of the sun?...

 

 

Little

[rex]

I wonder if that is not something "the matrix" has put inside our heads. Wonder if we really need a religious-like path, for spiritual attainment.

You can have spirituality without religion and religion without spirituality. I lack the acumen to go it alone so rely on the support of an established path. Edited October 29, 2007 by rex

[joeblast]

Logical fallacy of icarus/wax melt aside...it seems like the religious entanglement tends to happen whenever the realm of metaphysics is delved into. I agree with rex though...you neednt have one to have the other.

[宁]

tell me about it.. I know, but this is the way people seem to think.

why do you think it's a fallacy?

 

Thanx guys

[joeblast]

the logical fallacy of the wax melting due to him flying too high and 'close to the sun' - wouldnt happen, its far more likely that it would be warmer at the lower altitudes. if anything about the height broke the wings, it would probably have been stronger winds.

but that's all beside the point of the story

[seadog]

Religion or the religous exprience is hard wired into our brains.This can be artificial stimulated by external applicatin of electro magnetic impluse to particular parts of the brain.As can profound memorys of childhood,sexual manifestations,expriences of heaven and hell,also obe and a sense of other beings close to us when in fact theres no one there in physical realm.Roughly from the age of twelve we effectively become hard wired via the vehicle of language to use a reuse the same neuro pathways.Meditation,drugs,high fever,stravation etc are age old methods to help us unwire as it were.The religous exprience,the mystical exprience,are all wonderful attributes we have been engendered with, do to the actions of the enviroment upon our ancestors.They should be valued as important survival mechanism not abused for land ownership or control over other people.

[doc benway]

Hi all,

 

it seems that almost all the threads on this forum are in fact ways we can find the answer in ourselves.

No matter if the answer we get from others is a good one, we always seem to find a better one, when we follow the direction of a certain answer - I hope I'm clear enough, I don't know how to put it in other words.

I agree and think I understand your point. The only real answers are in ourselves. There is no where closer to the truth than inside where the feeling of "I am" is found... Others' answers are best for them, sometimes useful to us, never as good as ours.

 

Another thing is that everybody seems to agree that energy cultivation path could lead you to certain acheivements regarding health, emotional balance and even wisdom... but when it comes to spiritual awakening and liberation, we all tend to follow, or search, more traditional paths, or, more franckly, quite religios or religious-like paths. I wonder if that is not something "the matrix" has put inside our heads. Wonder if we really need a religious-like path, for spiritual attainment..

I don't think it's the matrix, it's us. We identify consciousness with the body/mind and it creates the separation. We then are always searching for that something more, that next step, we need to become something more or different, it's the nature of the mind. It helps us find food and shelter, keeps us safe, but also creates suffering and drives us crazy. We recognize that there is something beyond or within us that it better, more powerful and we give it religious significance and call it God or whatever but it's really just us!

Yet another thing, I wonder if we could find a definite way... not to profound, and not to shallow, like in the mith of the Icarus, not too close to the sun, to avoid melting the wax that binds the wings, and not to close to the ground, to get hit by trees and the tops of the houses. Because, as the path is getting closer to deeper meaning and acheivements, the problems and the dangers get even higher. Is there something a lay man could practice, that wouldn't endager him, a red line thread that he could follow, just to keep himself safe, from both hitting the ground, and burning of the sun?...

Little

Awareness and self-inquiry is one method that sort of fits your criteria - be in every moment, physically, emotionally, experientially. When thoughts arise, notice them and ask who they are occuring to. Keep turning the thoughts back on themselves by looking at who it is they occur to. Do this in your daily life. This is one safe, direct, and simple method that doesn't presuppose any particular believe system. Eventually, with patience and diligence, the I burns itself out - "like the stick used to stir the funeral pyre" and what's left is the true Self (borrowed from Sri Ramana Maharshi)

[Fusion]

Edited October 30, 2007 by Fusion

[Taomeow]

Spirits and gods are real, that's why.

 

Biomechanical fundamentalism (or, to use the term popular in the former Communist block, "scientific materialism") is just another religion, one that postulates the absence of gods and spirits on the basis of nonbelief in anything and everything it can't incorporate into its own man-made theoretical model and/or exploit/profit from with linear predictability. Nonbelief is a form of belief. Hard evidence for nonexistence of gods and spirits can only be obtained by omniscience, something our science isn't. And if it was, its manifestations would be indistinguishable from those of gods and spirits, magic and miracles, the universe itself, tao itself. Is our science the universe itself, tao itself? Nah...

 

The view I take is that magic is science whose theoretical basis is gods and spirits and whose practical applications are living, lasting miracles. I don't consider myself religious, I consider myself scientifically minded -- just on different terms than what's been offered by biomechanical fundamentalism, an obsolete reductionist religion of no interest to me.

 

What is science anyway?.. The way I see it, it is the kind of know-how that suffices to create a worm out of nothing, rather than the kind that can clone, ad nauseam, a worm already in existence, or a cell already alive for three billion years with no help from any Ph.D. Our "modern science" can't create a worm -- or a living cell -- or a loving heart -- or a happy couple -- or a galaxy --

 

which means it is not engaged in anything of any interest to the mind of tao. Sure it can exterminate worms and wolves and human beings... it can extinguish a loving heart, scientifically define "happy" as "upper middle class," or talk about galaxies and particles and space-time through a voice box attached to a body in a wheelchair ravaged by disease (and apparently ignored in its predicament by the very galaxies it studies -- like a student forever ignored by the teacher, like a child forever trying to understand an infinitely distant mom who refuses to approach him unless dragged in by force--) --

 

if that's "bigger-better" than gods and spirits... Well, I dunno...

[宁]

Thank you guys, your oppinions are a lot of help. I'm happy to see we share simmilar understanding.

I think the path of awareness really could be one of the easiest approaches. I really tried something like this some decade ago, and it really draws you near something valuable.

 

You know what my real problem is?

 

What I see is that the deeper understanding of spiritual practice is very different from usual understanding of spiritual practice. Actually is... how do you say... peculiar. Is not something neither logical nor illogical, it is simple and selfsustaining and working lively... These words have nothing to do with it's description, it is the "spirit" behind it, if you can sense it. So naturally I'm drawn to the same old question, what if spirituality is something totally diferent from what we know, and masters are totally different from what we know, and the way is totally different from what we know... I ask myself these quite often, and it's one of the best ways for me to go even more deeper. And it seems to be a deeper layer everytime.

 

Hope I made sense, I tried to.

[宁]

Hi, Taomeow,I remembered something I read, fact or fiction, from Alexandra David-Neel's books. She said that when she had a discussion with some tibetan abbot about bringing more the light of the Buddha to the people, and trying to stop them from falling into superstition and cheap mysticism... she heard the voice of a great demon, Mahakala or something, that said like: "These people are mine, you won't succeed". Afterwhich she commented more about the fact that there are a lot of rituals in Tibet that feed gods and demons, and they would surely become angry if people would see another way of... you know, being better, and give up the burning of incense and sacrifices. Maybe it's the same with what you say. People are bound to be religious, because the religious systems and living concepts (gods) are fed this way. I would say that would be a little pessimistic, but nevertheless, has truth in it...

[Taomeow]

Hi, Taomeow,I remembered something I read, fact or fiction, from Alexandra David-Neel's books. She said that when she had a discussion with some tibetan abbot about bringing more the light of the Buddha to the people, and trying to stop them from falling into superstition and cheap mysticism... she heard the voice of a great demon, Mahakala or something, that said like: "These people are mine, you won't succeed". Afterwhich she commented more about the fact that there are a lot of rituals in Tibet that feed gods and demons, and they would surely become angry if people would see another way of... you know, being better, and give up the burning of incense and sacrifices. Maybe it's the same with what you say. People are bound to be religious, because the religious systems and living concepts (gods) are fed this way. I would say that would be a little pessimistic, but nevertheless, has truth in it...

 

So do you think she should have told the great demon Mahakala, "get lost, you're just a superstition, a creation of cheap mysticism?" Would it work to make him disappear?

 

What about Dick Cheney? Would he disappear if I said, "you're just a pertoleum vapor" ("vapors" and "winds" are the prevalent words for "spirits" in many languages -- and even "smells" in some... by far the majority of all spirits are not available to visual perceptions, i.e. aren't the classic "ghosts" that haunt Gothic castles or "apparitions" that show up in Catholic churches... but it doesn't mean they aren't available to other senses -- or even the intellect). Would the demons of the underworld brought to the surface by oil and gas industries be less destructive if they were brought to the surface by a shamanic incantation, a subtle vibration of dark magic? You're right that awareness answers lots of questions (including the ones we never thought to ask) -- so what if someone becomes aware, by whatever means, of a larger "spirit" (vapor, smell, energy that shapes events and destinies) than the exhaust of one car -- the great "Demon of the Ancient Dead Wood of the Underworld" that calls itself something else -- e.g., Exxon? -- and notices him precisely because of his tangible actions, not as a direct "apparition" but as a cascade of effects of which he is the cause, the source -- and notices that this particular demon indeed rules the people he has captured and they are his and live to serve him,

 

and serve him daily by burning, not incense but toxic petrochemicals --

 

would stopping to burn this "demonic incense" stop the demon? Make him disappear? Most probably.

 

Looks like there's nothing cheap and superstitious about knowing that. But what if a scientist-by-other-means, a shaman, kam, h'men, zhuoyi, daoshi, ayahuasquero, etc. -- has technologies for making demons and spirits appear and disappear beyond the drilling and digging, beyond the crude li technologies? What if knowledge is only superstition to those who don't know... and to those who do, it is the process of co-creation, a joint venture between the scientist-magician and the spiritual entity? You won't get a lunch appointment with Bill Gates just because you feel like telling him a thing or two... likewise, a lay person won't get an "appointment" with the spirit of the Yellow River or with the Jade Emperor just because he or she wants to... but if you substantiate your intent with competence of the level sufficient to communicate or negotiate on that level, it's another story altogether. Bill Gates will talk to Dick Cheney, in other words... and I'm sure Mahakala meets them both for lunch on a regular basis.

Edited October 30, 2007 by Taomeow

[Fusion]

[宁]

Hi Taomeow, I admit I didn't thought of that before. It could make sense. But that would mean there are alot of gods and demons today, even more than in ancient times, brought by, as you say, li technology. As for Cheney, who hasn't heard the rumors. I know it's pretty delicate to discuss entities on a board of western daoism, where, even if we want it or not, we have borrowed some of the old fashion... was it "positivism"?

Ah well, some of us grew up watching scooby doo.

Yet, that and all, what hope do you see? Kuz stopping things doesn't seem to be our call. The best and most important tool we have as seekers is the spirit. But if the spirit is bound to... there I say it again... "feed" something or someone else, we, as humans, have little chanse for a revolution of awareness, like chicano Castaneda would love to call it - the Che of nagualism. If the only subconscious sollution to spiritual developement would be in the bindings of a religious system (we are "given" to them since we are little, thru specific rituals, every religion has it's way, the WASP way isn't so different)... how can we "beat" subconscious, other than, how you say, becoming more aware? So I guess I answered my own question... or did I? Being aware, having vision, are only parts, specific functions of the different inner spirits. It's the manifestation of this awareness that put's me to puzzles...

 

 

Fusion, I understand your point. Please, try to see beyound that, because I myself am a fighter against doubt as a "scattered qi syndrome". The more I cultivate, the more it seems that there are really mostly three things I have to cultivate: vitality, awareness, and... mind. Mind being the one that senses. Yi. It senses new approaches and methods of rising vitality and awareness faster. And although doubt is an enemy, it is also a precious ally. Only doubt has the power of deconstructing. You need that every day. Because I am a new man everyday. If I'm not, I'm stuck. Even if the vitality and awareness are high. If the mind is "flat", I'm finished.

I repeat: we may sense that spirituality is something more than what we seem to know. Like a dim light, inconvenient, because it casts doubts and shadows. It's something beyound. So beyound, that even masters and teachers are chasing hard to catch it's tail.

[Fusion]

True!

 

Attach no importance to my words though. At times like this, my words are without emotional clinging: Just wind and words.

[宁]

Oh, no, your oppinion is interesting and it really counts. I think though we are ready to get to another level

[arnquist]

Spirits and gods are real? Scientific materialism is a religion? I guess those statements are true if you stretch the definition of "real" and "religion." Spirits and gods are only real to those who believe in them. They're not real like food we eat, the air we breathe, the light that lets us see, the people we know and love. Scientific materialism is religion if you take out the supernatural mythology, the dogma, the suspension of rational thought known as faith.

 

I have no problem with people talking about gods, spirits and the supernatural, but your holy-than-thou attitude toward science and atheism annoys me. Yes, I realize I'm doing the same thing, so I guess this post is just my way of saying

Edited November 2, 2007 by arnquist

[lockpaw]

Science is nothing magical. Its a method that involves observation and repeated trials. You form a hypothesis, you experiment controlling as many variables as possible, you tell your friends so they can do the same thing. Shamans don't do that.

 

Most people who believe they can manipulate the world magically in this day and age are generally people without power in the real world who want it. My boss is a mean prick? No worry, I am Melkor the 10th Level Magic User, I am really much more powerful. Just another of the 10,000 things the ego does to keep you busy and away from actually cultivating anything.

[Taomeow]

Hi Arnquist,

 

you may want to look up "holier-than-thou" in the dictionary.

 

I have in the past, and intend to in the future, express many opinions that are very non-mainstream. That's the word you were really looking for.

 

Lockpaw,

 

most people who didn't believe that what I cultivate is taoist sorcery have already been turned into assorted insects, toads, or protozoa. Do you have a favorite bug? You can place a special order while I'm in the mood. A butterfly maybe? Yes, I'm thinking a butterfly is what you should really be, what with your beautiful elegant strokes here and there, your never-failing grace and lightness...

Edited November 3, 2007 by Taomeow

[宁]

Meow, I'm sure that was only a metaphor, or was it.

[林愛偉]

hahaha

 

This thread is intense huh? ;-)

 

One of the above posts reminded me of the story of an Arhat meditating in a forest under a tree. One day someone came along and asked for advice, or to be read the future. The Arhat helped the person out and moved to another tree. Then that person told many others, and everyone began looking for that Arhat. One day the Queen or so also sent out people to find the Arhat. Finally when the Arhat was surrounded by people with desires, he became upset..haha and screamed, "I just want to cultivate! Why don't you all just die!" something to that effect. And then...guess what.. haha Everyone dropped in their places and died.

This situation happened before the Buddha Shakyamuni's time. That place where the situation happened was a barren land for the most part during the Buddha's time, and the story was told by the Buddha to his disciple who questioned him on why just a few feet away was plush green land, and at their feet was all sand and barren....lol

 

Many things can happen

 

Peace and Blessings,...hahaha

 

Lin

Edited November 4, 2007 by 林愛偉

[宁]

Yes, Lin, and I still look for an answer: why do we associate spiritual development with religious cultivation.

We can acknowledge only partial benefits to qi cultivation.

But then, what is qi?

What is qi, Lin?

[林愛偉]

Yes, Lin, and I still look for an answer: why do we associate spiritual development with religious cultivation.

We can acknowledge only partial benefits to qi cultivation.

But then, what is qi?

What is qi, Lin?

 

We associate it because we see that those in organized, institutionalized religion hold to the view that they touch upon the spirit realm more so than those not associated. Infact, before institutionalized "religion, there were only groupings of cultivators. To maintain the teachings they cultivated, they created close knit organizations to preserve...over time, ego got involved by those seeking a name for themselves, those getting stuck in views of being more wiser than others. Over time we see only what is presented, and at most times not told directly, the methods to cultivate to completion.

 

Qi is mind, mind is Qi. Light is mind, mind is light. They are a substance which is only a substance when in the state of experiencing them and seeing them as being actually real. They are outcomes of concentration. Sensations of it is felt through the body's senses, and we view it as extraordinary, when it is only an expression of our original nature.

 

Then what is our original nature? To answer that, it is best to cultivate and discover what has been always there, but without conclusion to direction.

 

Peace and Blessings,

Lin

Edited November 4, 2007 by 林愛偉

[宁]

With all due respect Lin, I don't buy that. This kind of answers is too abstract. If I ask you about what is the mind, you will tell me something about the Void, wouldn't you. And so on.

What I'm looking for is a practical definition, or at least a hint at it, and this is only because I have a riddle my teacher gave me to solve.

If I go to him and say "Oh, it is the mind", he'll ask me to do it. And I try and it doesn't work. How can you use the mind without using the senses. How can you move the qi without sensing it?

 

[林愛偉]

With all due respect Lin, I don't buy that. This kind of answers is too abstract. If I ask you about what is the mind, you will tell me something about the Void, wouldn't you. And so on.

What I'm looking for is a practical definition, or at least a hint at it, and this is only because I have a riddle my teacher gave me to solve.

If I go to him and say "Oh, it is the mind", he'll ask me to do it. And I try and it doesn't work. How can you use the mind without using the senses. How can you move the qi without sensing it?

 

 

 

haha I wouldn't say the mind is the void, but I would say you can perceive the void through the mind, and then drop the mind to reveal the void from the veil of perceiving it. Then even the void disappears.

 

Qi is mind, but I never said that i didn't need to be cultivated. Sensing Qi is of the mind, not the qi. It is using the senses to sense, but that is also being perceived through the mind...no?

 

When the idea of Qi and mind existing separate is the view, they are both and the same. When there is no view of them as separate, they are no longer both and the same, now they are not they. Only of mind. Therefore, ability to sense Qi is of mind, ability to use Qi is simply the mind being used.

 

It is something to be cultivated. But it isn't separate at all. This is why I say it is mind. There is nothing that is not of mind, but there are things we view that cause the experience to seem as though it is coming from somewhere else. Experiencing energy is still holding a view of it, because there is still someone there that is experiencing.

 

Using qi to move things, is simply using the mind to move it. No mind, no thing to move. It is mind moving, not the object. It takes lots of cultivating to do such things, especially when they are not of living organism.

 

Peace and Blessings,

Lin

 

P.S.- Cultivating Qi is concentrating the mind. The results are realization of things not being permanent. But that is not the end. One still has to learn to use it. Feel, sense it all, and use the expression of Will to direct the intent to make something happen with the mind...using Qi.

Edited November 5, 2007 by 林愛偉