What is Immortality?

[awaken]

If anyone want to know what is immortality, he should read Lankāvatāra-sūtra and yellow court jin. These two books talks about the immortality very clearly.

 

How do we know the immortality by ourselves?

First, we should give up the wrong concepts. The biggest wrong concepts is the secret door. If you think someplace in your belly is the secret door, you will have no chance to know what is the real secret door. Only the real secret door can lead you to have the immortality. The fake secret door only can make you breath. 

 

[SeekerOfHealing]

The secret door is basic achievement. You need to open it to any proper cultivation take place.

[9th]

And yet you are still entirely clueless, it seems...

[Mudfoot]

2 hours ago, awaken said:

The biggest wrong concepts is the secret door. If you think someplace in your belly is the secret door, you will have no chance to know what is the real secret door. 

So you disagree with the quote of some unnamed classic that Wu Ming Jen made in the secret door thread,  where the center of the LDT is named the secret gate. 

 

But isn't there a classical commentary (Liu I Ming?)  which names all centers along the central channel except the yellow court, and states that they are not the secret gate? 

 

Your notion that the central channel is the gate is in line with what other teachers describe,  sometimes using a different terminology. 

 

Keep this line of discussion going, interesting things come up. 

[Rara]

On 03/11/2017 at 4:07 AM, Lost in Translation said:

I'm really enjoying this thread. You guys have done a great job illustrating differences between Taoist approaches to immortality and Buddhism.

 

Thank you to everyone.

 

Hi Lost In Translation.

 

I thought back to what you said here just now when something sparked in my mind. Have you also considered that the Taoist view points being expressed here aren't actually Taoist?

 

I mean, they are, by definition I guess. But Chuang Tzu would point out that it is only subject to one's own experience and teachings. Just like any other opinion, neither would really have much substance if it's only based on a point of view from a certain tradition.

 

What is the truth? What is immortality? That's up to you, and we can cherry pick ideas from this thread to make up our own ideas that suit us best. Being honest with myself, I am clueless, and that is the beauty in it. I could say, that makes me immortal.

 

Depending on what you want out of it, I'd always say to remember that it's all just banter, ideas and it's neither here nor there

[Lost in Translation]

52 minutes ago, Rara said:

Have you also considered that the Taoist view points being expressed here aren't actually Taoist?

 

What is 'Taoist' anyway?   We're talking about something with thousands upon thousands of years history. I imagine quite a bit of opinion has been injected along the way.

 

55 minutes ago, Rara said:

Chuang Tzu would point out that it is only subject to one's own experience and teachings.

 

You and I are in complete agreement. As I have said in other threads, we have knowledge and we have belief. Knowledge is based upon one's own experience. Belief is everything else. Since I can't live someone else's experience I choose to not dismiss their words off-hand, but neither do I accept them as truth. People experience lots of crazy things. If I wrote about all my experiences... but I digress.

 

59 minutes ago, Rara said:

What is the truth? What is immortality? That's up to you, and we can cherry pick ideas from this thread to make up our own ideas that suit us best.

 

Some of us listen. Others talk. Some preach the gospel. Some even debate how many angels can fit on the head of a pin. It's all good.

 

1 hour ago, Rara said:

Being honest with myself, I am clueless, and that is the beauty in it. I could say, that makes me immortal.

 

Amen. We all die, and death lasts forever. We're immortal but we aren't alive to enjoy it.

 

 

[Rara]

2 hours ago, Lost in Translation said:

We're immortal but we aren't alive to enjoy it.

 

 

 

Well, you never know...we'll see, won't we?

 

I think I've said all I needed to say. Thanks for leading this discussion!

[Michael Sternbach]

On 3.11.2017 at 4:25 PM, Lost in Translation said:

I love where this conversation is going, but there is one thing I alluded to in my original post that we really haven't discussed. This is fear.

 

Everything changes. If something changes 'enough' then it appears as destruction, thus nothing lasts forever. We all know this. So the desire for immortality is, at its core, a desire to not change - to hold on to what we have and remain. This desire to not change looks to me like fear of change.

 

Put it this way:

 

If a child wanted to remain a child forever he would fear growing up.

If a youth wanted to remain a youth forever he would fear growing old.

If a man wanted to live forever he would fear death.

 

But children do grow up, and youths do grow old, and men do die.

 

So we've talked about the how of immortality. What's the why of immortality?

 

Why one would want to be immortal?

 

Think of how much one could learn. And how much one could accomplish with what one has learned. Rather than having to start from scratch over and over again (if you believe in reincarnation).

[Marblehead]

But wasn't it fun making all those mistakes during the learning process?

 

[silent thunder]

If I thought physical immortality were an actual possibility/end game of any of my energetic and meditation play, I would cease immediately.

 

[allinone]

57 minutes ago, silent thunder said:

If I thought physical immortality were an actual possibility/end game of any of my energetic and meditation play, I would cease immediately.

 

 

then what about chan master skill to enter nirvana at will: means physical death of a body.

[silent thunder]

8 minutes ago, allinone said:

 

then what about chan master skill to enter nirvana at will: means physical death of a body.

yes!~

er... no?

 

but maybe... for sure!

[rainbowvein]

On 11/4/2017 at 6:29 AM, Gunther said:

Sometimes the immortals eat painted rice cakes to satisfy their painted hunger😀😀😀

 

I thought they just drank rice wine by moonlight. 

[Marblehead]

4 hours ago, allinone said:

 

then what about chan master skill to enter nirvana at will: means physical death of a body.

I don't believe it means "death of a body".  I believe it is more at spiritually leaving the living body for a while and then returning to it.

 

[Marblehead]

3 hours ago, rainbowvein said:

 

I thought they just drank rice wine by moonlight. 

Yes, they do that too.

 

[Gunther]

18 minutes ago, Marblehead said:

Yes, they do that too.

 

They even pretend to me mere mortals

[rainbowvein]

1 hour ago, Marblehead said:

Yes, they do that too.

 

I see. So xians eat rice cakes and drink rice wine. So much for Taoist lore about abstaining from grains! 

[Marblehead]

That actually gave me a chuckle.  Thanks.

 

[Golden Dragon Shining]

diet, density, dimension 

 

Edited November 6, 2017 by Golden Dragon Shining

[allinone]

12 hours ago, Marblehead said:

I don't believe it means "death of a body".  I believe it is more at spiritually leaving the living body for a while and then returning to it.

 

 

physical body and karmic blood and pus made body aka organism of countless lifeforms who can individually multiply, not sure if they are same if

[Marblehead]

39 minutes ago, allinone said:

 

physical body and karmic blood and pus made body aka organism of countless lifeforms who can individually multiply, not sure if they are same if

I can't go there with you.  I really can't go much further than I did above.  What I said above is consistent with the concept of wu wei.  I have no support for anything else.

 

[Lost in Translation]

5 hours ago, allinone said:

 

physical body and karmic blood and pus made body aka organism of countless lifeforms who can individually multiply, not sure if they are same if

 

What does this mean? What is "karmic blood and pus"? Is this just karma?

[allinone]

20 minutes ago, Lost in Translation said:

 

What does this mean? What is "karmic blood and pus"? Is this just karma?

 

blood is food, wanted thing.

pus is semen, unwanted thing.

 

mixture of it is a holes and pins put together and we get a structure.

 

what means physical body? means tangible, but there isn't contact happening actually, contact is for to give a image, so also i think the sense organ contact with light photons or whatever doesn't actually happen. So for now i am thinking about waht is the deal about the buddhist descriptions of contact, dependent orgination....in one word these are models and in reality things are actually different.

[9th]

On 11/3/2017 at 2:16 PM, Spotless said:

One could look at this subject from the following:

 

[gj551]

sorry i thought it was all about creating a yang spirit/embryo (shengtai) to leave the body to appear in countless transformation bodies in space