Seeing, Recognising & Maintaining One's Enlightening Potential II: Open Tradition Edition

[Sherman Krebbs]

54 minutes ago, forestofclarity said:

Meditation is Tibetan is gom, often translated as "to become familiar with." I like this emphasis it isn't really effortful. Once you become familiar with some one, we can recognize them instantly, even if they are dressed differently, with a different haircut, or even in disguise. Same here, IME. 

 

Thanks!  Emotion seems to be hardest to "recognize" and release in this context.  Sometimes am not sure how to regard emotion within the pheonmenonal realm, or really what emotion is. Happiness, sadness, anger, fear, anxiety, anger.  Suppose there are all just the same thing. or maybe there is just pain and no pain.   Something sterling said the other day really stuck with me though, that its the story we make of these things not the things themselves, as they are self liberating. 

[forestofclarity]

1 hour ago, old3bob said:

 

mind, including pure mind (which is great) is still a thing and is not "beyond the beyond" per borrowing a Buddhist quote.

 

Not at all, but feel free to form whatever ideas if that helps you on your own path. 

[old3bob]

 

oh, what happened to the funny guy?

[Thrice Daily]

This is a nice song that is very meditative and is sang three times at each daily session in the Mahayana Kadampa centres … it’s always stayed with me and it’s lovely in the precise way they sing it there. It’s very memorable and meditative in the spirit of a sympathetic joy…. 
 

Here are the words;

 

Tsongkhapa

Crown ornament of thе scholars of the Land of the Snows

You are Buddha Shakyamuni and Vajradhara

The source of all attainments

Avalokiteshvara

The treasury of unobservable compassion

Manjushri

The supreme stainless wisdom

And Vajrapani

The destroyer of the hosts of maras

 

O Venerable Guru-Buddha

Synthesis of all Three Jewels

With my body, speech and mind

Respectfully I make requests

Please grant your blessings

To ripen and liberate myself and others

And bestow the common and supreme attainments…

[forestofclarity]

Quote

Compared to begging one hundred times, save me, protect me! It is much more effective to say once, "Devour me!"

 

--- Machig Labdron

[forestofclarity]

Let's mix it up. I was surprised to come across this. Maybe not fully on point, but sympathetically so: 

 

Quote

 

Kia cannot be experienced directly because it is the basis of consciousness (or experience), and it has no fixed qualities which the mind can latch on to. Kia is the consciousness, it is the elusive “I” which confers self-awareness but does not seem to consist of anything itself. Kia can sometimes be felt as ecstacy or inspiration, but it is deeply buried in the dualistic mind. It is mostly trapped in the aimless wanderings of thought and in identification with experience and in that cluster of opinions about ourselves called ego. Magic is concerned with giving the Kia more freedom and flexibility and with providing means by which it can manifest its occult power. Kia is capable of occult power because it is a fragment of the great life force of the universe.

 

--- Peter Carroll, Liber Null

[Thrice Daily]

3 minutes ago, forestofclarity said:

Let's mix it up. I was surprised to come across this. Maybe not fully on point, but sympathetically so: 

 

--- Peter Carroll, Liber Null

well ahead of his time wasn't he.

[stirling]

1 hour ago, forestofclarity said:

Let's mix it up. I was surprised to come across this. Maybe not fully on point, but sympathetically so: 

 

--- Peter Carroll, Liber Null

 

I read that a few months ago. Some of it is, while more complicated, quite similar to the Buddhist models. I think of his description of Kia as (an inexpensive car... kidding!) a nice metaphor to explain how our intention can manifest in the world when we are more and more "empty" of "self". My experience is that this is certainly the case.

[forestofclarity]

17 hours ago, Thrice Daily said:

well ahead of his time wasn't he.

 

Or behind, by several millenia, depending on how one looks. 

 

16 hours ago, stirling said:

 

I read that a few months ago. Some of it is, while more complicated, quite similar to the Buddhist models. I think of his description of Kia as (an inexpensive car... kidding!) a nice metaphor to explain how our intention can manifest in the world when we are more and more "empty" of "self". My experience is that this is certainly the case.

 

I could never get straight chaos magic to work. One could say that the model wasn't conducive to convincing my deeper layers of mind. 

[Mark Foote]

On 11/11/2024 at 12:43 PM, forestofclarity said:

Let's mix it up. I was surprised to come across this. Maybe not fully on point, but sympathetically so: 

  Quote

Kia cannot be experienced directly because it is the basis of consciousness (or experience), and it has no fixed qualities which the mind can latch on to. Kia is the consciousness, it is the elusive “I” which confers self-awareness but does not seem to consist of anything itself. Kia can sometimes be felt as ecstacy or inspiration, but it is deeply buried in the dualistic mind. It is mostly trapped in the aimless wanderings of thought and in identification with experience and in that cluster of opinions about ourselves called ego. Magic is concerned with giving the Kia more freedom and flexibility and with providing means by which it can manifest its occult power. Kia is capable of occult power because it is a fragment of the great life force of the universe.

--- Peter Carroll, Liber Null
 

 

 

A post on my own website, Take the Backward Step:

 

 

Nisargadatta said:

 

You are not your body, but you are the consciousness in the body, because of which you have the awareness of “I am”. It is without words, just pure beingness. Meditation means you have to hold consciousness by itself. The consciousness should give attention to itself.

 

(Gaitonde, Mohan [2017]. Self – Love: The Original Dream [Shri Nisargadatta Maharaj’s Direct Pointers to Reality]. Mumbai: Zen Publications)

 

 

“The consciousness should give attention to itself”—in thirteenth-century Japan, Eihei Dogen wrote:

 

Therefore, …take the backward step of turning the light and shining it back.

 

(“Fukan zazengi” Tenpuku version; tr. Carl Bielefeldt, “Dogen’s Manuals of Zen Meditation”, p 176)

 

 

That’s a poetic way to say “the consciousness should give attention to itself”.

 

... In his “Genjo Koan”, Dogen wrote:

 

When you find your place where you are, practice occurs, actualizing the fundamental point.

 

(“Genjo Koan [Actualizing the Fundamental Point]”, tr. Robert Aitken and Kazuaki Tanahashi)

 

 

Given a presence of mind that can “hold consciousness by itself”, activity in the body begins to coordinate by virtue of the sense of place associated with consciousness.  A relationship between the free location of consciousness and activity in the body comes forward, and as that relationship comes forward, “practice occurs”.  Through such practice, the placement of consciousness is manifested in the activity of the body.

 

Dogen continued:

 

When you find your way at this moment, practice occurs, actualizing the fundamental point…

 

(ibid)

 

 

“When you find your way at this moment”, activity takes place solely by virtue of the free location of consciousness. A relationship between the freedom of consciousness and the automatic activity of the body comes forward, and as that relationship comes forward, practice occurs. Through such practice, the placement of consciousness is manifested as the activity of the body.

 

You could say that's all about "giving the Kia more freedom and flexibility".

 

Regarding "it is a fragment of the great life force of the universe":

 

There’s a third line about actualization in “Genjo Koan”:

 

Although actualized immediately, the inconceivable may not be apparent.

 

(ibid)

 

 

... Dogen didn’t offer an explanation of his third line, but he did provide a case study from the literature of Zen:

 

Mayu, Zen Master Baoche, was fanning himself. A monk approached and said, “Master, the nature of wind is permanent and there is no place it does not reach. Why then do you fan yourself?”

 

“Although you understand that the nature of the wind is permanent,” Mayu replied, “you do not understand the meaning of its reaching everywhere.”

 

“What is the meaning of its reaching everywhere?” asked the monk again. Mayu just kept fanning himself…

 

(ibid)

 

 

The wind that reaches everywhere was actualized immediately in Mayu’s fanning.

 

(The Inconceivable Nature of the Wind)