Rare Methods?

[CedarTree]

I sometimes hear about:

"Sky Gazing"

"Watching patterns of smoke from the Chillum"

"Prostration Practice".

I'd love to see how everyone see's the points of these practices, especially Sky Gazing and also to list some other unique practices they have heard or come by

[C T]

youtube?

[doc benway]

The basic point of sky gazing is to recognize the nature of one's own mind.

The effectiveness is based on the similarity of the nature of mind and the clear sky, illuminated by the sun, unobscured by clouds, manifesting natural warmth and radiance.

[Taomeow]

11 minutes ago, steve said:

The basic point of sky gazing is to recognize the nature of one's own mind.

The effectiveness is based on the similarity of the nature of mind and the clear sky, illuminated by the sun, unobscured by clouds, manifesting natural warmth and radiance.

 

Here in SoCal we call it "the drought."  

 

Clear sky, warmth and radiance --

without clouds, mists, fogs, rain --

= barren.

 

Taoists are fond of gazing at a different sky...    

[doc benway]

Not barren... pregnant with potential.

We look at the same sky and see it not as it is but as we are.

[Aetherous]

1 hour ago, Taomeow said:

Clear sky, warmth and radiance --

without clouds, mists, fogs, rain --

= barren.

 

Taoists are fond of gazing at a different sky...    

 

 

So interesting 

[Taomeow]

2 hours ago, steve said:

Not barren... pregnant with potential.

We look at the same sky and see it not as it is but as we are.

 

Only if we look through the prism or our conditioning.  Remove that and what's to stop you from seeing it as it is? 

 

It is what it is.  I have to water my plants every day.  Seeing the sky differently doesn't water them.  It's barren not because of the way I see it, but because of the way it is.  Always clear.  No rain.  Drought.  Barren.  Pregnant with potential?  For six years?  I call this impotential.

 

The sky is yang in the taoist paradigm and it has potential indeed, but pregnant...  that needs yin.  Except in systems that would rather knock up the male principle than deal with the female.  

[doc benway]

1 hour ago, Taomeow said:

 

Only if we look through the prism or our conditioning.  Remove that and what's to stop you from seeing it as it is? 

 

That's precisely the point of sky gazing.

[SeekerOfHealing]

All those practices are useless. Just saying.

[Marblehead]

1 hour ago, SeekerOfHealing said:

All those practices are useless. Just saying.

That's a pretty serious statement.  Just saying.

 

 

[C T]

16 minutes ago, Marblehead said:

That's a pretty serious statement.  Just saying.

 

 

 

You know what they say, old habits die hard. 

[SeekerOfHealing]

5 hours ago, Marblehead said:

That's a pretty serious statement.  Just saying.

 

 

 

I used to do them all. I'm initiated in dzogchen texts that most not even touch. 

[CedarTree]

In other words searching for un-regulated and un-approved posts on Wikipedia...

 

Lol jk

Edited November 5, 2017 by CedarTree

[CedarTree]

23 hours ago, Taomeow said:

 

Here in SoCal we call it "the drought."  

 

Clear sky, warmth and radiance --

without clouds, mists, fogs, rain --

= barren.

 

Taoists are fond of gazing at a different sky...    

 

Great contribution!

 

What would you say the depths of Taoist understanding are about this sky vesus maybe the emphasis on emptiness and the void in Buddhism?

[C T]

Its like the difference between drawing on the finest piece of silk screen and drawing on water. 

[Bud Jetsun]

19 hours ago, Taomeow said:

 

Only if we look through the prism or our conditioning.  Remove that and what's to stop you from seeing it as it is? 

 

It is what it is.  I have to water my plants every day.  Seeing the sky differently doesn't water them.  It's barren not because of the way I see it, but because of the way it is.  Always clear.  No rain.  Drought.  Barren.  Pregnant with potential?  For six years?  I call this impotential.

 

The sky is yang in the taoist paradigm and it has potential indeed, but pregnant...  that needs yin.  Except in systems that would rather knock up the male principle than deal with the female.  

 

 

Every human body shares the sky in a link as intimate as the blood in your veins.  Not appreciating the sky doesn't mean you don't drop the ground gasping and die rapidly without it. 

 

While it offers breaths that carry your bodies life energy, it remains pregnant with unlimited potential. 

 

A rare technique would include appreciation of one's Buddha nature Now.  The sky, the earth, and the water all exist to enable appreciation of Buddha nature. 

 

Unlimited Love, 

-Bud

[Taomeow]

43 minutes ago, CedarTree said:

 

Great contribution!

 

What would you say the depths of Taoist understanding are about this sky vesus maybe the emphasis on emptiness and the void in Buddhism?

 

Thank you.

 

This sky, a very traditional and very popular subject of taoist painting, is full of qi, and so is the artist depicting it.  You don't remove yourself from this flow, you don't take an absentee "observer" stance in order to get it -- there's no getting it unless you're part of it and it is part of you.  Quite a few famous old taoist paintings actually have the artist himself painted in, captured by the brush in the very process of looking at this landscape and this sky, being part of it, not separating his mind or body or spirit or the brush in his hand from the mind of tao and the flow of qi it engenders. 

 

He is looking at the transformations of qi that are life.  Taoism is fundamentally about life.  Let this sink in...  From solid earth to flowing water to soaring mountains to clouds and mists disappearing into the unknown, leaving you with the image of a dragon ascending from the earth to the sky and melting away into mystery --

 

 all of it is of interest to a taoist, it's non-hierarchical and emptiness is not the "goal" or "true state" or anything like that, anymore than nonexistence is a "true state" vs. existence.  It is not.  Being comes from nonbeing like a child from the womb, not like a criminal thrown into jail (or hell, purgatory, illusion, what have you) to pay for her transgressions.  Nonbeing is nurturing, the great mother, and she does not hate her children, the beings.  Sky and earth are beings, both her children, and neither is a "favorite child."  The taoist circle of life is not a vicious circle.  It is a virtuous spiral.     

          

"To paint the bamboo," the poet and painter Su Shih wrote in the 11th century, "one must have it entirely within one. Grasp the brush, look intently [at the paper], then visualize what you are going to paint. Follow you vision quickly, lift your brush and pursue directly that which you see, as a falcon dives on a springing hare---the least slackening and it will escape you."

 

 Chinese painters were expected to paint from memory rather than depicting a landscape that lay before them. The artist deliberately chose materials forcing him to paint quickly in one continuous process.  Quick drying ink and absorbent paper which could not be erased or retouched.  What is, as is.  The 11th century landscape painter Kuo His wrote: "In painting any view the artist must concentrate his powers to unify the work.  Otherwise it will not bear the peculiar imprint of his soul..."

 

So, my soul -- or rather my qi and my all shens -- are players when I gaze at the sky, my heart-mind has a memory, an opinion, a mood, a feeling, an imprint of my whole life's experiences --

 

and none of these are "bad," "not real nature" by any religious authority's decree, none are on trial for being "not the true mind, " none suspect unless I myself suspect them and undertake to cultivate them away because I want to, not because I'm afraid of some boogie man or other (rebirth, maya, deviating from the dharma, whatever...).  They are legit.  I am simple and complex -- visible and hidden, yang-hard and yin-soft, showing-revealing and hiding-concealing, playing with things mild and misty and feather-light and with things sharp and unyielding and powerful.  When I look at the taoist sky, I play with qi...

 

...and if I don't know how, I shouldn't gaze at the sky, much less paint it, much less proselytize about its "true nature."  How would I know if there's things I exclude -- e.g. my love of water, my love of life, my ability to notice that there's a prolonged and devastating drought going on in SoCal?..  My true nature is not a dogma.  It is what it is.  To disown any part of it on cue, because someone tells me to, is, from a taoist's POV, ridiculous.  (Zhuangzi drove the point home with a rather blunt statement of where tao, "the true nature," can be expected to be found -- good luck excluding it from anything, let alone from a cloud in the sky!  -- which I won't repeat here...)  

[Bud Jetsun]

In LA the sky is beautiful as I type this. 

 

There beauty will not appreciate itself in your reality without your consent. The magnitude of its beauty and appreciation of the Tao will remain limited only by one's mindful choice and creativity. 

 

It's all always been perfect, even when labeled drought, it's the harmony of nature balancing, always atom precise with no errors. 

 

Unbounded appreciation of the real remains available to every being whether any attention is paid or not, whether sky is clear or smoggy, whether breathing comes easy or labored, whether skin is warm or cold, which nerves are tickled with signals. All phenomena has been perfect, exactly what one needs in this aspect of perceiving a one moment. Our understanding why has never been a requirement in our ability to appreciate it. 

 

The Tao of the sky remains perfect, the Tao of the earth remains perfect, even if it's toxic, it's perfectly the result of whatever choices manifested it's being. 

 

Unlimited Love, 

-Bud

 

[Taomeow]

Docility of the slaves relies on their acceptance of things toxic, cruel, torturous as normal, beautiful, perfect.  Read "1984" -- the scenes of teaching the main protagonist this party line of "everything is perfect and you only have to accept it" are the best illustration of the real-life practical applications of this doctrine I know.   

 

 

[Bud Jetsun]

The Tao remains perfect if you understand why or not. 

 

If it only coddled you, it would be impossible to appreciate the difference from the non-coddled state. The dynamic range is the experiential phenomenon scope provided towards connecting to the real. 

 

Socal sky is beautiful tonight for your enjoyment. 

 

Unlimited Love, 

-Bud

 

[liminal_luke]

If I had my druthers, I`d much rather be in the misty mountains than under a cloudless California sky.  That said, I find the sky gazing practice (and associated metaphor) pretty groovy.  I`ve been reading Awakening the Luminous Mind, by Bon teacher Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, and he asks a question that really put it in perspective for me...

 

Does the sky have a problem with the clouds?

 

For those that aren`t familiar, the sky here symbolizes open awareness.  The clouds, well, that`s everything else -- thoughts, feelings, sensations, and so on.  When I read the question above, I immediately thought of my sometimes rocky relationship.  Unlike the sky -- which doesn`t have a problem with the clouds -- I`m often annoyed by my partner.  Several weeks ago, I was working with the Bon practices outlined in the above book and applying them to my particular relationship situation, when, lo and behold, I found myself feeling less irritated.  For me, this was a big success.  There weren`t any energetic or alchemical fireworks to speak of, no awakenings of the kind that are regularly talked about here, but I did find myself dealing with this aspect of my life in a way I liked better.  Sky gazing can be a support for these practices, a way to remind myself of the open awareness that helped me be gentler with my partner, and, for this reason, I like it.  

 

Doesn`t mean I wouldn`t rather have a rainy day, though.    

Edited November 6, 2017 by liminal_luke

[Taomeow]

The needs of live creatures are real.  The ideas of live creatures of our species...  not so much. 

 

I need the sun and the rain.  Being of the Wood phase of qi and all.  My bazi says "both, or you're screwed."   That's a human interpretation of the way it is.  The way it is is not contingent on how I interpret it, it is contingent on itself.  I need things that are different from what bacterium deinococcus radiodurans needs.  It needs a nuclear reactor to live in.  I don't.  It doesn't need rain.  I do.  Tao is not politically correct and not an equal opportunity employer.  Where deinococcus lives, there's no tao for me.  There's tao for the deinococcus there.  Its tao is proprietary and individualized.  So is mine.  One size does not fit all.  

 

"Blowing on ten thousand things so each can be itself."  Not "so each can be the same."  

 

 

[9th]

On 11/4/2017 at 3:00 PM, CedarTree said:

I'd love to see how everyone see's the points of these practices,

 

Why is that?

[silent thunder]

I have discovered over the last decade that few things more elevate my awareness into full immersion than the soft lavenders, piercing pinks and the flowing blues on the high cirrus clouds the coming time of year, shortly before dawn here in Southern Cali.

[Bud Jetsun]

4 hours ago, Taomeow said:

The needs of live creatures are real.  The ideas of live creatures of our species...  not so much. 

 

I need the sun and the rain.  Being of the Wood phase of qi and all.  My bazi says "both, or you're screwed."   That's a human interpretation of the way it is.  The way it is is not contingent on how I interpret it, it is contingent on itself.  I need things that are different from what bacterium deinococcus radiodurans needs.  It needs a nuclear reactor to live in.  I don't.  It doesn't need rain.  I do.  Tao is not politically correct and not an equal opportunity employer.  Where deinococcus lives, there's no tao for me.  There's tao for the deinococcus there.  Its tao is proprietary and individualized.  So is mine.  One size does not fit all.  

 

"Blowing on ten thousand things so each can be itself."  Not "so each can be the same."  

 

 

 

 

The Tao provides perfectly for you inherently to be able to type this. Enough sun, enough rain, or you would be dead already vs here to complain about the life support keeping you alive to enable imagining complaints about its aspects of providing. 

 

Wherever you 'see no Tao' is not where the Tao isn't, but merely arbitrary choices to selectively recognize and appreciate the Tao which never diminished in its perfection or balance in providing and sustaining your life with each breath of this beautiful sky. 

 

With each inhalation you drink the sky's blood and it sustains the energy flow processes in your body. This is a precious gift beyond all material items, as no material items offer much without breathing the sky to keep this body animate to remain free to enjoy or complain as one chooses, depending on if they wish to live suffering or live liberation. 

 

Unlimited Love, 

-Bud