Solitary cultivation- Living as a hermit, has anyone experience/info on this?

[Sahaj Nath]

 

I had an apartment to myself in an apartment complex in Rancho Cordova California. Every day I got up at 4 am and rode my mountain bike down to the American River Park. From 4 am to noon ish, all I did was sitting, standing and moving meditation practices. Then I took a break, lunch, read some books etc. Around 3-4 pm, I went back into the park to begin again from late afternoon to late night. I would stay past sunset and sit until I was ready to leave. Sometimes I found myself leaving the park long after it was officially closed at 10 pm. Sometimes I was there past midnight or even later. Sometimes, when I got really into sitting, I found myself at the river's edge at dawn.

 

wow, i didn't know you actually LIVED in RC for a while! okay, so THAT'S how you knew... um... our mutual friend.

 

what a loss for me that i never ran into you back then. i was still wandering aimlessly in the dark, trying to figure it all out for myself with no practical foundation to start from. and Master Ninja-Prince was so busy trying to be important that he didn't seem to have time to waste on actual cultivation.

 

it would have made a world of difference if i had met you back then.

 

i spent many nights down by the river in those days. many nights at various parks.

 

 

somehow this comforts me to know that there WAS someone out there drawn to the same thing that drew me out there, but someone who understood what i didn't. it was always my hope to find you, but i started to think myself crazy. luckily, i became fine with being crazy.

 

 

wow, we REALLY need to get together soon.

 

Edited July 7, 2008 by Hundun

[SFJane]

wow, i didn't know you actually LIVED in RC for a while! okay, so THAT'S how you knew... um... our mutual friend.

 

what a loss for me that i never ran into you back then. i was still wandering aimlessly in the dark, trying to figure it all out for myself with no practical foundation to start from. and Master Ninja-Prince was so busy trying to be important that he didn't seem to have time to waste on actual cultivation.

 

it would have made a world of difference if i had met you back then.

 

i spent many nights down by the river in those days. many nights at various parks.

somehow this comforts me to know that there WAS someone out there drawn to the same thing that drew me out there, but someone who understood what i didn't. it was always my hope to find you, but i started to think myself crazy. luckily, i became fine with being crazy.

wow, we REALLY need to get together soon.

 

 

Haha yeap I lived right down the road from him actually. We both had an article in some local new age publication for a public class. Mine was chi gung and his was for some ninja power thing

 

I actually visited him unannounced at his leet ninja studio. He was my age and I wanted to check out my competition. He did his ninja cosplay thing for me and was telling me about all his juice.

 

It was pretty entertaining.

 

 

 

Anyhoo. Yes glad to hear of your affinity for that place. I lived there man. That was my yard.

 

In fact I will show you something. I just scanned some old disposable camera photos of one of the places I used to frequent.

 

If you follow Coloma Road south from Sunrise Blvd or north from Folsom Blvd you will come to a street called El Manto. It will be on the right if Sunrise is behind you.

 

El Manto leads straight into the American River Park. The last perpendicular street as you pass through the Burbs is Ambassador Drive.

 

Follow El Manto as it passes the park gate and there will be a beaten down path on the right that cuts across tons of Spanish Thistle the bane of bicycles.

 

When get through the thistle field you will be on the paved bike trail overlooking the American River. From there keep an eye on the river and look for rock formations that stick out from the land into the river.

 

I built this one with my bare hands back in 1998 and spent hundreds perhaps even thousands of hours on or near this area.

 

Perhaps if you have a cam you can take a picture of what it looks like today.

 

The first time I built it, the first phase, it got punished by the flood water during the rainy season. But I made it stronger and it began to reappear after spending a few weeks submerged from the Sierra run off.

 

I built it so I could literally sit in the middle of the river and dissolve.

 

Edited July 7, 2008 by SFJane

[Ian]

Wow!

[.broken.]

If you're going way out into the wilderness, it's essential to know how to find food. A good book for the states (especially I think around the Pennsylvania area...don't know where you live) is "Stalking the Wild Asparagus"...talks about foraging for all kinds of different wild foods, and how to prepare them, etc. One of my favorite books.

 

It's good to know how to build a decent shelter, or find one. Caves are good. Pop up campers are the best.

 

Know how to insulate the ground so when you sleep you don't lose all of your energy and heat.

 

There's a lot of basic survival stuff that you should learn if you're doing it that way, so spend a good deal of time in the nature section of Barnes and Noble.

 

Very good suggestions. Janus, you may also want to check out Ray Mears - he's done countless documentaries for the BBC on bushcraft and wild foods. I believe he has also had some input into the SAS's internal survival guides. Was surprised to discover he even has a website.

 

Yours humbly,

James

[Taiji Bum]

Just as an aside..... opinions vary on whether or not you need to go out and live in a cave or if in this "day and age" we dont have to. I am pretty old school on this sort of thing and firmly believe that at a certain point a hermitage is absolutley required. Not for years but the solitary "testing" which is pretty common in both the east and west with advanced mystics. The great mystics of the west did it too like Elijah and Jesus. Both took off into the desert for some "alone time".

 

I think there are three critical junctures where solitude is required and that is in the early jing-qi transformation, then in the early qi-shen work and finally in the early shen-void work. There might be another one at the void-Tao stuff to be consistent but I dont know.

 

But like I said opinions vary.....

[Andrei]

For anyone who consider becoming a hermit, I highly recommend watching this movie:

 

hI_1F_uXl2A

 

anyhow I wouldn't do it without a minimal confort

 

houses in the trees

Edited July 8, 2008 by steam

[Janus]

Edited August 13, 2008 by Janus

[gendao]

for me it was the ruthless band of mosquitoes!

 

LOL!

For example, George Saunders visited Bomjon and observed him for a single night, but was impressed by Bomjon's perfectly still stature even as the humidity brought sleepiness and mosquitoes

Anyone heard about this Nepalese kid, Ram Bahadur "Palden Dorje" Bomjon?

[exorcist_1699]

Same as a marathon runner who deliberately trains himself on a plateau ,a Taoist can put himself under a situation with most hardships and temptations , so as to polish and upgrade qi in his body . But where ? In fact , the ideal place is in our society , not some place to where you want to retreat.

 

This is the reason why Tao and De (virtue ) is said to be just the two faces of the same coin .Believe it or not ,upgrading your morality does have effect on your capacity of manipulating qi , and does deepen your understanding of Tao . Qi , as a Chinese word, besides being used in medical area with specific meaning , in most cases in daily life , refers to something moral or spiritual .

 

Every time you are looked down by some guy, every time your girlfriend leaving you , your creditor chasing after you for money, or your having not enough money to buy a loaf of bread..all these are stuff for polishing qi in your body...

As Tao and qi exist everywhere , so any moment in your life can be an interval for cultivation , not necessarily when you are sitting in a cave: for instances, any moment when you are waiting for an elevator coming, sitting on a bus on the way home , queuing for buying a ticket... all are good moments for cultivation.

 

As a Taoist master once asked: With your body equipped with qi, a portable , multifunctional stuff ( as food, air, medicine..)supporting your life , what do you worry about?

Edited July 8, 2008 by exorcist_1699

[Andrei]

Anyone heard about this Nepalese kid, Ram Bahadur "Palden Dorje" Bomjon?

 

 

MWnJlNMZgoA

[Aetherous]

Ram Bomjon rocks. He belongs to an esoteric branch of Buddhism, and does certain visualizations of Gods praying in the midst of thunder and stuff...of course all in lotus pose. He doesn't meditate constantly. There's more info about him in other places on the net, and I think his website is still up where it tells more and has videos of him walking around.

 

But yea truly an inspiring person who is even younger than I am.

[hagar]

In our current globalized modernity, aloneness, or isolation is the state of affairs, so why retreat?

 

No better testingground for your issues, your "blind spots", your fear of death than right here, in this wester culture, defined by the German philospher Walter Benjamin as actual "Hell"; Bombared by impressions, temtations, emotions, drama, emotional and spirtual alienation. For me, retreat, as society in western culture is right now is pure and utter escapism. We need to transform society, and in that perspective, sitting in some cave doing qi-acrobatics, visualizations and attempting to gain wizard-status is downright ego-tripping.

 

Want to test your spiritual insights, your "level" or your Gong? Go to Darfur or Gaza. Make a difference, and while you are witnessing that, keep equalibrium, compassion and presence.

 

Everything has changed, the cosmic energy as well, and it dictates us into the eye of the storm.

 

That last bit came across abit pretentious...

 

h

[Janus]

Edited August 13, 2008 by Janus

[hagar]

To some people cultivation may seem pretentious....

 

So all those in solitary retreat are ego tripping?

 

I get what your saying, but why be this way? People have their different methods.... Who's ego tripping? Many top cultivators are in retreat...

 

Use all the time I can get, come back and help when I can really make a difference, those were my thoughts.....

 

At the end of the day cultivation is about our liberation....

 

All the "shoulds" and morality, what need for this is there?

 

Solo cultivation is by definition not pretentious, I just realized how very arrogant and stuffed up my post was.

 

All I wanted to say, though a bit polemical, was that for many aspiring cultivators, retreats at an early age often hides underlying agendas, like avoiding choices, "real" life, and seeing mundane, everyday life as something less fruitful for attaining whatever you're looking for.

 

One book that had a great impact on me was Buddhist psychologist Jack Kornfield's "After the ecstacy, the laundry". This book is a compilation of interviews with ex-recluses from different traditions, and their challenges and ordeals in getting back to western reality after longer or shorter retreats. They may have had great successes and attainments in their cultivation, yet returning to society proved a much greater challenge than anything they experienced in solitude or in the monastery; serious life-crisis, divorces, battles with family or friends, financial or legal problems etc.

What the book points to is that allthough you may have gotten some level of attainment in your practice, integrating this into life is THE practice. And it is a hard blow to a new-found blissful self-image to find yourself even worse off then when you left. A neurotic, moody and depressed fellow, much like your fellow non-cultivators, finally realizing how much of what we deem as "self" that is infact our relation to others and the world itself.

 

So, how do we know we're not ego-tripping: By challenging ourselves into dealing with people, and everyday boring life.

 

Like Suzuki Roshi, who admitted that eventhough he may have had some attainment as Zen master, realized he was a really bad father.

 

h

[三江源]

What Hagar said.

 

all of it.

[Gerard]

Hagar,

 

You are leaving something out of the equation. (Note: I am about to switch off the computer and can't type it up because it's going to tell me a while so I will link directly):

 

http://www.chinavoc.com/zodiac/horse/five.asp

 

I am the fire type of that sign.

 

Ask me to go to Darfur or Gaza is going to really damage my health and my psyche really. Too Yang!!

 

Same goes with someone who is a fire sheep or a fire snake.

 

Going against Y&Y is unwise.

 

Cheers.

[三江源]

True. There could be problems with sunburn, also.

Caves are nice and shady.

[mjjbecker]

True. There could be problems with sunburn, also.

Caves are nice and shady.

 

Aye, but in the middle east there seem to be some shady people occupying some of them, (sorry, couldn't resist).

 

Like yourself Cat, I'm with Hagar on this.

 

Bring on the Skol song!

 

 

Childhood memories...sorry...couldn't resist...

Edited July 9, 2008 by mjjbecker

[Taiji Bum]

I think its individual whether or not to retreat. If Hagar does it the perhaps 'he" would be ego tripping. If Janus goes perhaps "he" would find the solitude aids in some seriously deep cultivation and aid in his liberation. Should we make such large sweeping generalizations as to say only this way or that way is right?

 

The same arguement goes on in the Catholic church between the actives like parish priests and the contemplatives like monks. The actives say the contemplatives need to get out into the world and do something and that all that solitude and meditation is useless. This is an arguement that I think has gone on forever and will continue to go on forever.

[hagar]

I think its individual whether or not to retreat. If Hagar does it the perhaps 'he" would be ego tripping. If Janus goes perhaps "he" would find the solitude aids in some seriously deep cultivation and aid in his liberation. Should we make such large sweeping generalizations as to say only this way or that way is right?

 

The same arguement goes on in the Catholic church between the actives like parish priests and the contemplatives like monks. The actives say the contemplatives need to get out into the world and do something and that all that solitude and meditation is useless. This is an arguement that I think has gone on forever and will continue to go on forever.

 

In agreement with Darin.

 

I'm intentionally generalizing to get a point across. To me retreat seemed like I did something spiritual, or atleast something for me to progress on my path. Yet how far off I was. I feel I'm not the only one.

 

There is much to be said on this. Also, just sitting still, transforming yourself in solitary meditation somwhere remote does not neccesarily only affect you. It changes the world also.

 

But for me, it boils down to this: If you go off trying to change anything, getting somewhere, becoming enlightened etc. you will never get there. Siddhis, attainments, powers are just not important, and should not be focused on. It creates a veil between you and real life.

 

Try to relate to people from the perspective of being a cultivator who is "on his path" doint whatever special exercise you're into, and see how it works. It will really make you crazy, or atleast neurotic in the end if you take that into seclusion.

When I stopped being a "taoist" or "qigong practitioner" or "alchemist" or whatever, and just was Anders, here now, together with others, my practice transformed.

 

h

[hagar]

Hagar,

 

You are leaving something out of the equation. (Note: I am about to switch off the computer and can't type it up because it's going to tell me a while so I will link directly):

 

http://www.chinavoc.com/zodiac/horse/five.asp

 

I am the fire type of that sign.

 

Ask me to go to Darfur or Gaza is going to really damage my health and my psyche really. Too Yang!!

 

Same goes with someone who is a fire sheep or a fire snake.

 

Going against Y&Y is unwise.

 

Cheers.

 

In relation to Yin and Yang, and that whole department, you'd need to consult a proffesional reader of iching-based divination to see things properly. Not only your animal sign, but alot of other elements are involved as well. Too complicated to go into, and I'm no expert.

 

Yet with proper practice, these things matter less. And many would say that only in hardship will real practice begin, and you'll save years of just muddling through. Yet now it seems like I know what I'm talking about.

 

I don't, and I've rambled long enough.

 

h

[Janus]

Edited August 13, 2008 by Janus