Thoughts on Bill Bodri's latest book & view?

[anshino23]

Greetings.  

 

I'm curious to hear old-timer daobums take on Bill Bodri and his new view on things.

 

If you're familiar with the late master Nan Huai Chin, then you've probably heard of Bodri, who was one of his students. In his earlier works, Bodri focused on the "consciousness-only" approach, emphasizing emptiness meditation and anapana as the keys to success.

 

But in his latest books, Bodri claims that much of what he previously espoused was actually wrong, and that the true key to enlightenment is access to the illusory body, or deva body. He believes that achieving this attainment makes you enlightened and known as a Buddhist Srotapanna Arhat, Hindu jnani, Taoist Immortal, Homo Deus, or 'twice born'. According to Bodri, this attainment is the first rung of the true spiritual ladder that is kept hidden from most people, as they would be dejected about their spiritual efforts and stop cultivating altogether.

 

Bodri also claims that nearly 100% of spiritual practitioners, even monks and nuns, don't know how to cultivate correctly. He argues that one of the main purposes of spiritual practice is to purify and strengthen your subtle body composed of Qi, so that you can achieve the independent deva body attainment while still alive, or lay the foundation for the Sakadagamin stage and then Causal body Anagamin achievement after death.

 

So, what do you all think about Bodri's new perspective? Do you agree or disagree with his ideas?

 

Here are some excerpts from his new book that may be interesting for this discussion:  

 

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Most of my previous Stages students had spent thousands of dollars reading countless spiritual books. They had spent years studying various schools and traditions. You can replace most of that time, effort and expense with just ARHAT YOGA … and you might add in CORRECTING ZEN, NEIJIA YOGA and BUDDHA YOGA. Here is a sample of the information from ARHAT YOGA that you need to understand:
 

Chapter 14 GENERAL PRINCIPLES FOR QI/PRANA INTERNAL ENERGY PRACTICE

 

In spiritual cultivation you proceed from study to practice, and from practice to study. You need to mix study and practice together (theory together with meditation and inner energy work) to achieve the final result just as you must mix flour and water together to make bread. Unfortunately, in many traditions the adherents only study spiritual books and perform neither meditation nor meritorious deeds nor inner energy work. Some traditions don’t even emphasize good behavior. In some schools they perform physical exercises but no energy work or self-corrective work that polishes the character and improves behavior.

 

You need to engage in inner energy practices, meditation practice and behavioral training to attain the higher transcendental bodies of enlightenment that correspond to Moksha or liberation. In Visishtadvaita Vedanta adherents try to accomplish the inner energy work through devotion (bhakti practices of mantra, chanting, worship, cultivating intimacy with God, cultivating the attitude of being a servant of God, etc.) and merit accumulation as well as behavioral excellence through the path of action (Karma Yoga) since the intellectual path of Advaita Vedanta without practice is not enough. In various monastic orders within Hinduism the practice requirements require meditation practice, spiritual study, devotional activities (prayer, chanting, ritualistic puja) and service activities too, which is an admirable and effective mixture just as we find with the Christian Capuchin monastics. To achieve enlightenment you must perform meditation practice either directly or indirectly without knowing it, directly perform inner energy work or activate neijia Qi work through your devotional/spiritual activities, and must start performing acts of merit that help other people. Acts of service performed for others must become part of your character along with the traits of kindness, caring and acceptance of others including all their faults.

 

You attain the goal of the spiritual path from perfection in study and practice together because study alone will not strengthen, purify and then liberate the inner subtle body from your physical nature, which normally happens only upon death. Practice without a guide will lead you nowhere also. In other words, study alone will not get you to the first dhyana attainment, which is the Srotapanna deva body achievement, because it is only achieved through cultivation practice, and haphazard cultivation practice without adherence to principles will produce no substantial progress either.

 

For the generation of an independent subtle body during life you need meditation work to stop holding onto your thoughts (which thus frees your Qi to circulate better since Qi and thoughts are linked), and to sharpen your mental clarity so that you can spot and then correct errant thinking and behavioral tendencies. As a living being you need to cultivate and perfect the various abilities and activities of your consciousness and meditation practice enables you to achieve mastery of more capabilities than we can mention.

 

You also need to perform energy work on your inner Qi/Prana so that you become energy-rich and energy-pure. The deva body (Srotapanna Arhat or Homo Deus attainment) is your inner subtle body but it is locked inside your human frame until death, or until you release it through spiritual cultivation. Cultivating its freedom through inner Qi exercises is sometimes called “growing the embryo,” which is terrible terminology because the word “embryo,” “baby” or “womb” makes people incorrectly think that there is a small body like a baby developing inside you. Actually, you are simply purifying and strengthening the Qi inherent within your full form physical body, and the subtle body when ejected is an exact duplicate of this adult structure. Once it is freed from the physical body, which is the “mind-born” body achievement of enlightenment described in the Buddhist Surangama Sutra, you have the beginnings of the sambhogakaya attainment because it will still be attached to your physical body, and you will have then two bodies that you can use. This is the first stage of enlightenment equivalent to the first dhyana.

 

This type of purification-ejection process of a new and higher transcendental body out of an old (lower) one is the spiritual path, and sometimes it is called “building a Buddha within you.” Because you can keep generating bodies in this fashion you can gain access to the abilities of higher spiritual bodies with greater capabilities than the physical body, and by using these higher bodies spiritual “masters” are able to perform miracles in the world. The miracles don’t “come from God” but from spiritual beings using their bodies to perform certain deeds in the world. To release the subtle body while alive you must perform lots of intensified yoga practices that purify its Yin and Yang qualities, and greatly increase the freedom of its internal energy circulation. You can pursue this path by becoming healthy, energy-rich (through celibacy and better Qi circulation) and by engaging in intensified yoga practices or martial arts forms that stress the mastery of breathing and inner energy as do taijiquan, baguazhuang and xingyiquan.

 

Furthermore, if you are not a virtuous person, spiritual beings will not help you in this process and their help is absolutely essential for purifying your Qi, as is the assistance of a qualified master to oversee the process. Therefore, it is impossible to succeed unless you have a good teacher and are also a virtuous human being deserving of higher bodies because you are intent on helping others and devoted to self-improvement of your own character and behavior.

 

The principles of effective practice differ for each type of spiritual cultivation technique. The principles of practice always take into account the welfare of your mind and body – you are never to hurt your mind or body through spiritual practice! You are always to preserve and improve your health and well-being otherwise it will be difficult to proceed onwards and succeed. Remember that the deva body is a duplicate of your physical body, so you shouldn’t harm your body in any way. In particular, you should not undertake extreme ascetic practices that tax or risk your physical body, you should never ignore taking care of medical conditions, should cut off habits harmful to your health and welfare (ex. smoking, drugs, drinking, etc.) and should not devote yourself to harmful physical sports that produce frequent physical injuries.

 

The main objectives of spiritual practices are to calm your mind and stimulate the Qi/Prana of your body into moving so that this change of state purifies your Qi/Prana. A greater circulation of your inner Qi, or the act of washing it over and over again, will gradually strengthen your inner subtle body composed of Qi/Prana until through purity it can weaken the chains to the physical body and finally leave your physical shell while you are alive. Then it becomes your main body of being, the center of your life, although still attached to your physical body that then becomes like an appendage that you learn how to control using that new body. The higher body can reside within its lower shell or somewhere else, and when traveling somewhere else we say “the master is in samadhi” because he seems non-responsive (as if in a thoughtless trance) because his spirit is absent due to traveling elsewhere in the higher realms. This is why there are stories of a master’s body being burnt because his students thought he was dead but his spirit was traveling elsewhere. When a master repeats a long discourse/lesson to his students (and the students wonder why he repeats the same lesson over and over again) it is often because he is absent for a prolonged period of time and asks another spiritual master to possess his body during that interval and deliver a lesson that draws from his memories. Inner energy practices to mature the independent subtle body attainment (Tibetan Buddhism calls it the “impure illusory body”) are sometimes called “attaining control over the life process within your self” because Qi/Prana is the body’s vital energy or life force.

 

You should practice as many different types of spiritual exercise as possible, each of which works according to different principles for transforming your Qi/Prana. Through simultaneous practice of many different cultivation exercises at the same time, each which affects your Qi/Prana via different principles, you will maximize your chances for real Qi/Prana transformations that will purify its nature and produce the independent subtle body quickest. Since you don’t know which techniques will work best for transforming your Qi/Prana, the use of multiple techniques simultaneously, each of which works on affecting your Yin or Yang Qi/Prana according to different principles, is highly recommended.

 

For instance, one might during a single day practice meditation, Mantrayana recitation, pranayama, yoga stretching with visualization on your muscles, and inner nei-gong work (“anapana”) to move your Qi. This is an example of practicing multiple techniques simultaneously rather than just a single cultivation method. Using multiple methods will mean that each of them will have an effect on transforming (purifying) your Qi/Prana via different principles. The harder you work – the more types of methods you practice and the longer and more consistently you practice – the higher your chances for success, and the quicker your success if success is to come. Success is the result of consistent effort applied across time. The longer and deeper you practice the more profound will be your results. 

 

This kind of approach seems very different than the more streamlined Daoist lineages such as those taught by Longmenpai and other famous daoist schools where there's a clear line of development -- and, in a way, is much more "new age" in that Bodri basically says to "steal"/"borrow" techniques from all different kinds of lineages and combine them all in the hope of having the most success, and to do this consistently along with everything else. 

 

In any case, I would be curious to hear people's thoughts...  

[freshpondtaiji]

Based solely on reading the passage above, my initial impression is:

1. his understanding seems better than the previous one he is renouncing

2. he is sincerely trying to communicate his latest understanding and there's something to it

3. I don't think 90+% of the terminology he's using is great/many other traditions use same words to mean very different things so can be a bit confusing, and his overall explanation is a bit convoluted/confusing/I think incorrect in some aspects,

4. but my understanding would agree with what I think is a central point he is trying to convey: in my words (my teacher's words) I'd say something along the lines of: the first step to true spiritual practice is clearly separate (in one's own mind/understanding) the inner self from the outer daily self. The outer self is all the daily body needs and wants that is 95+% of a beginner's mind (food, sex, resources, social status, etc... all the things we need to keep the body alive and reproduce more bodies), I believe the Bodri passage above is talking about feeding the inner self, and then letting that spirit come through. We could call this the 3rd initiation (in Gurdjieff terminology) = the lesser Enlightenment of the Buddhists = the "heaven" of the Christians. Many of the religions ("external" structures influenced by and built around the original teachings, with inevitable distortions that accompany that) view that as the highest level. My understanding is that it is actually only the first rung of the ladder (and there are many things so high above that that for our current level it is meaningless to talk about or try to comprehend, even this first rung is already at the limit of most people's current understanding) and I get the impression that is what Bodri is trying to convey.

 

 

[stirling]

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So, what do you all think about Bodri's new perspective? Do you agree or disagree with his ideas?

 

There is ultimately only ONE understanding: "not two, not one"/unity/enlightenment/non-dual realization/alignment, etc. etc..  This becomes obvious when it is properly seen. This one realization is enlightenment. There aren't multiple levels, there is only deepening of the one understanding. From this deepening eventually come the "supernatural" aspects (siddhis, etc.) ... but these aspects in NO WAY overshadow or replace the reality of the first realization. The "supernatural" aspects are merely what is seen as obscurations drop away, NOT any deeper insight with deeper meaning. 

 

This idea that there are secret teachings that only one teacher possesses or understands are the most overt signs of snake oil there are. This is delusion. No specific technique causes enlightenment and never has. No specific approach will be best for "everyone". 

 

You mention steps of realization from the Four Stages of Awakening:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_stages_of_awakening

 

These fetters are realized by successive layers of "self" belief dropping away in a living being, not after death, in some other realm, or from any particular practice. Stream entry is realization. Realization deepens. After realization at the level of Arahant it becomes very difficult to describe in subject/object language what deeper realization means. It is beyond meaning, which sounds much more esoteric than it should. For example, how would you describe the flavor of a pomegranate? If I tell you will YOU understand completely what a pomegranate tastes like? 

 

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Bodri focused on the "consciousness-only" approach, emphasizing emptiness meditation and anapana as the keys to success.

 

If this is a correct representation of his understanding, he was much closer before. My 2¢.

 

Edited April 4, 2023 by stirling

[Vajra Fist]

I think these kind of grand overarching insights into entire spiritual traditions, often imply great insight. I know Bodri is a prolific author, but I've never seen him give a dharma talk. I've also never met him in person. 

 

Conversely, I have met people who've dedicated their lives to so-called 'consciousness only' traditions, who have a genuine, immediate presence. Like a thundering mountain in human form.

 

Edit - I also think energetic development is a natural by-product of meditation, especially in those schools that emphasise jhana.

Edited April 4, 2023 by Vajra Fist

[Bindi]

I agree that it’s all about development of the subtle energy body, but to just throw multiple random techniques at it in the hope of developing the subtle energy body is likely to be as productive as giving a two year old multiple paint brushes and tubes of paint in the hope that they might produce true art. What needs to be detailed is exactly how to go about developing the subtle energy body, and that book is yet to be written. 
 

 

Edited April 4, 2023 by Bindi

[doc benway]

5 hours ago, anshino23 said:

 

Bodri also claims that nearly 100% of spiritual practitioners, even monks and nuns, don't know how to cultivate correctly.

 

 

This statement is presumptuous and arrogant garbage, IMO. I haven't read the entire post but if this tiny extract is any indication of the precision and validity of his writings then I doubt I will read much further.

 

It's nice to see that he has grown in his own knowledge and understanding. Good for him that he recognized that what he was doing in the past has not worked or no longer works for him. Good that he is flexible enough to modify his practice. 

 

And it is a rookie mistake to imagine that what works for me necessarily works for others and what doesn't work for me, doesn't work for others. We see that all the time on a forum like this but I don't expect it from such a well known and widely quoted "teacher."

 

 

 

[Taoist Texts]

17 hours ago, anshino23 said:

This kind of approach seems very different than the more streamlined Daoist lineages such as those taught by Longmenpai and other famous daoist schools where there's a clear line of development -- and, in a way, is much more "new age" in that Bodri basically says to "steal"/"borrow" techniques

his approach is different in a sense that it is fake. he steals the terminology in order to pass his imitation for the real thing. but he cannot steal the techniques. because he has no clue what the techniques are. cant steal 'an unknown unknown' as they say.

 

17 hours ago, anshino23 said:

the subtle body when ejected is an exact duplicate of this adult structure.

this one is hilarious. thanks;)

[doc benway]

I read the whole post and it only got worse... 

I would recommend looking elsewhere for guidance.