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Awful time of the year for southerners, winter, when nothing moves. Can't wait for it to the over, tbh. And certainly not a potent time to Fire people. Happy SS to you

To be enjoyed, Regardless of whatever Another fabulous opportunity Here & Dao

Quite hot here. Feels like summer has been here for a few weeks already. Happy solstice everyone.

Tomorrow, June 20th, will be the summer solstice in the northern hemisphere, and the winter solstice for our southern friends. I always think of these yearly turning points as potent times for spiritual practice and reflection. Whether you´re experiencing an apex moment of light or darkness, I hope the day brings you joy.

It means that to post on the board - his posts require a mod to approve them. He should be able to get PMs though and reply as normal.

What its like when you are ' freezing cold ' in Australia ..... I wish I had worn a jumper to the beach . In any case its about to 'turn' ... good ! That sun gets any lower , it will be touching the top of the waterfall !

Solstice three hours and some ahead now, the sun will already be low in the Western sky at solstice. Almost half a year gone, poof! May your Midsummer be a celebration, for me my semi-sesquicentennial. Wishing the best to everyone!

It depends on the depth of your practice and understanding of reality, my friend. Does this kind of information help those that don't have those things? Of course not. Could it change YOUR experience of the world under more mild conditions? Oh, absolutely. I have many students and have met many students of other teachers from various traditions that have used their practice to transform their lives and the experience of suffering of emotional and physical pain. As for extreme examples, you COULD google "monk self-immolation" and see what sort of torture a person with dedicated training can endure. It isn't a pleasant rabbit hole, I wouldn't suggest it.

the frameworks that people are describing and discussing, are not directed towards other people. they are for inner work and inner self reflection. they are tools for inner healing, growth, self-improvement, spiritual advancement, and self-development. what is directed outwards to other people is kindness and compassion. And there is no need whatsoever to attack individual people posting. Discuss the ideas and views and behaviors. NOT individual people on the forum.

Mmmmm ..... its a good time to have fires though . I set off a huge bamboo pile yesterday ... that is always enjoyable ! - there was some talk of having a solstice fire tonight .... but I think its just talk . Anyway, I already had mine .

It is a good question I used to ask myself. Because there are "blameworthy" behaviour. Behaviour that does cause harm to ourselves and others. We don't have to look that far outside of ourselves to see that we have all done actions worthy of the blame in the cause for someone else's suffering. And that is obviously not a phenomena exclusive to us. You already mentioned a big clue, is in the maturity of the individual's view and attitude towards the cause and effects of an event. It comes down to aversion. Aversion in specifically taking up ANY kind of responsibility is the issue. Responsibility around what you can do, past, present and future of an event, with all the resources you have to position yourself better. To not get into the habit of realizing the power and potential one has. To blame out of aversion, is to hand over all that responsibility and power to do something about the situation, to hand over responsibility to unstable things like someone else, some other organization, society, entity, external phenomena. Shifting responsibility away basically, and foolishly hope for the best, end up suffering betrayal. Not saying you cannot depend on others to help your situation. But to "assume" 100% of your safety in unstable and impermenant things is a recipe for disaster. You are basically putting blind and foolish trust into things that WILL betray your "expectations", by its very imperment nature and design. And that constant turmoil between adopting ignorant expectations and constant betrayal causes the person to fall deeper into despair and confusion. So "seeing things as they really are" as the Buddha often said. To develop the right view and perspective of existence, and know clearly where your work and responsibilities are. We come into this life, and not by the direct choice of our own, "adopted" this situation, this mind, this body. It is like adopting this wild animal. And it will bite and scream, and cause problems in the beginning, untrained. We did not wish this mind and body be in this state, we are not directly to blame for its baseline conditions, but we are nevertheless "responsible" for taming it. Weather we like it or not. It is ours and ours alone. Other people might come tempt this wild animal with treats, and try to abuse it, but we as it's owner are responsible to guard this creature well, tame it. Nobody else is going to do it for us.

Just curious: where exactly do you draw the line? I tend to favor your second opinion / quote from another thread here: Often enough the receiver is the interpreter of the message and can choose between responsibility and/or feeling blamed. The first seems mature, the second emotional (in my opinion). The questioner might just be looking for a neutral intention/causation chain explanation of your perspective and its you who mistakenly assume you are being blamed on a guilt tableau. added: and or at the same time give you advice that others won't handle the circumstances-causes-effects imposed upon themselves by you so well as they did and that you and or others might face severe consequences not being wished upon you or upon others by them. After all, on a certain level or through a certain perspective there's no difference between cause effect, observer and observed, still, some circumstances, causal or not, may require understanding for dissolution or healing or recovery of trauma. Few people seem to be able to show affinity as a different means to understanding. Mature people wish for affinity and peace in their interactions, but are understood falsely at times to be accusatory. So where do you draw your line?

The voodoo. Unnecessary and distracting. Requirements: 1. Find a legit teacher with years of experience. Chinese Internal Martial Arts are preferred: Ba Gua, Xingyi & Tai Chi 2. Apply yourself and do not deviate from what you are learning as mixing practices is also distracting and unnecessary. 3. Learn seated meditation technique preferably from the Buddhist line; eg. Vipassana.

For discussion purposes, some Buddhist early traditions point to what I like to call "Non-dual 1" which refers to the insight of no-self. Later traditions point to "Non-dual 2" which is "emptiness". In my opinion "enlightenment" ALWAYS (sometimes eventually, perhaps) ends up being "Non-dual 2". "Non-dual 2" is when there is not only "no-self" in the practitioner, but ALSO when NO seeming objects/appearances in consciousness have "self" either. ALL dualities begin to dissolve on awakening, including those of time (then/now) and space (here/there). If we take "self" AND time out of the equation, what is born or dies? Whither past lives? This is where you get: Death exists in the Relative reality, but is an obvious delusion when seen from the Absolute. Both coexist, like the yin/yang. But what we truly are is "the deathless". What we truly are is the only thing that is not impermanent. It is something you are intimately familiar with, and that is always visible once your teacher introduces you to the "emptiness"/Buddha Nature/Rigpa/The Nature of Mind and you learn to return to this seeing with your practice. This simple moment of introduction, properly understood, is probably the most powerful moment of teaching any student could receive. - There are arhats all over the place. There are a number on this board, and there is often at least one even in small towns where there is dharma, though not always. I know a few in my small town of 10,000 or so, for example. They come from many traditions, and sometimes NO tradition. The way to know them is by the simple clarity of their teaching, kindness, humbleness, gentle humor and stillness of being. The method of practice is to seek stillness, and stop clinging and aversion in your life when you have been trained to recognize it. This liberates karma. Precept study is a good idea. The precepts are designed to help you focus on areas where you can stop generating karma. Include Bodhidharma's version of the precepts when you study them. Meditation where there is "emptiness" is what the world looks like without karma, AND "self". Watch and drop any clinging and aversion to your path, your practice, success or failure, or attainment. _/\_

It is a lot of workload. So who is being punished, Bob or the poor mod?

Happy solstice to all.

possibly @Nungali occult traditions; @-ꦥꦏ꧀ ꦱꦠꦿꦶꦪꦺꦴ- qigong; @Taoist Texts neidan, @wandelaar philosophical taoism

I had not considered emotions as "safeguarding" or protecting me. They flicker and pass quickly. My job is to recognize them, observe them, and allow them to, well, pass quickly. That is not stuffing nor is it denying, blocking, repressing, ignoring or overriding. It allows them to float on by. I do not have to engage, I do not have to chase it or grasp it or build a story around it. And I certainly do not have to act it out. I do not have to participate in it and i do not have to express it. Emotions are fleeting. "Emotions are always based on an external stimulus, and almost always come and subside quickly." (from here, article What’s The Difference Between Emotions, Feelings, And Moods? ) "The art of listening to and understanding our feelings is crucial, as is the skill of recognizing when they may be steering us off course." (from here, article Feelings Are Not Facts) "They can be so intense that they feel undeniably real, leading us to believe they represent the absolute truth. However, it’s important to remember that these emotions, regardless of their intensity, are not facts." For me they (emotions and feelings) are steering me off course if i don't allow them to pass quickly. Because it is the nature of emotions to pass quickly. What i DO see as protecting and safeguarding me is my intuition. Intuition is neither emotion, nor feeling, nor mood. That is an important distinction for me to make, and vital for me to be able to discern and differentiate. Emotions and feelings are NOT reliable indicators for me (except to remind me when i am not in balance). However intuition IS a very reliable indicator. It is through my intuition that I glean "does this situation have my best interests at heart." thank you bindi for the post, it includes a lot of thoughtful material

Hey guys, I hope this is an apropriate question for this forum, if not I apologize. A few months back my interest in taoism started, probably due to the need of seeking something new. I was always interested in esotericism and more "occult" traditions for a lack of better terms. Doing some basic google search and the classic texts (dao de jing and zhuangzi) came up, but what I associated with taoism (and hoped to find out more about) were actual practices like qigong and neidan. At the same time, what seems to be more up my alley was the discovery of chinese folk religion. Now already there is so much material (books, videos, articles) that I managed to loose oversight, I dont even know if I am looking for the right things in the right spots. Sorry for this weird rambling, the important question is: where should I start in the many schools and offshots of taoism if I want to learn more about "magical" practices and is the familiarisation with philosophical taoism (and reading the important texts) necessary?

Not the same.

Agreed. And kindness and compassion is not enabling bad behavior. It is often calling it out, and recommending a better way to live life, to consider life and its phenomena. If they request it, request a discussion. But not everyone welcomes healthy criticism and beneficial suggestions like my mother in law. So remaining silent around her for the most part, being courteous, doing the best to keep some peace, not stirr up her mind to the best of my ability is part of it. And creating some distance to reduce her chances to say harmfully things towards people close to her.

Criticisms, and highlighting "blameworthy" behaviour in others, needs to come with the intention at the service of OTHERS, for the benefit of OTHERS, and for the benefit of the one you criticize. That is the boundary you maintain. When is that line/ boundary that we do not cross? It is when a criticism is made that serves your "self". When you blame others, criticize others, find fault in others to manage their minds and behaviour to serve your "personal preference". To ignorantly assume that they will do anything to accommodate to you when you blame them. My mother in law criticized my wife alot when she was a child growing up. And blamed alot of her unhappiness on my wife, just being a helpless 10 year old kid. And now my wife is an adult, this blame and criticism still continues. My mother in law is 75 years old now. A single word used incorrectly in a sentence that breaks the comfort of her reality, she would go into a 3 day fit of rage. At this age, she still suffers, causes suffering. She continues to blame others for her circumstances. She expects and assume the world must accommodate to her preferences, when she was young, and must accommodate to her now. If 75 years of blaming did not improve her situation, did not improve her mind, did not give her peace, how many more years will she finally achieve the paradise that blame has to offer? Declare virtue, virtue is universal. Criticize behaviours. But never assume safety in blaming someone else and expect them to change for you. Criticize skillfully to develop discernment for what is virtue, so you can develop that in yourself, and notice that in others, and navigate life skillfully, identifying virtuous people to associate with. Keep developing that skill.

Because those practices are UNGROUNDED and you already live in a very ungrounded world unless you work as a shepherd in Afghanistan.

I love your screen name by the way.

i have to learn and understand and be able to differentiate between: blame responsibility accountability example: I am not responsible for trauma i experienced as a young child. As an adult, however I am responsible for seeking treatment to heal from that trauma. If i inflict trauma on my own children, i am responsible for my behavior and I am held accountable for that behavior. I don't blame my own parents for my current actions as an adult. I am 100% responsible. In this way (seeking treatment and healing, taking responsibility for my behavior, learning new and different and healthy ways of responding as a parent) the cycle of family violence is stopped. if there is no treatment sought, or if I don't put it into practice, and i continue to blame my parents (or anything else including people places things institutions society the world) for abc, xyz, for causing whatever misery is present currently in my life as an adult, then i stay stuck in that misery and also the cycle of family abuse (in this example) continues generation after generation. Note that in the healthy model, there is no blame. It is out of the picture. Blame is gone. Completely. I don't blame myself. I don't blame others. Blame is discarded entirely. What remains are responsibility and accountability. Why is blame discarded entirely? Because it is toxic and crippling and keeps a person in victim mode. This too is part of the healing and recovery from trauma. Seeing myself not as a victim, but as a survivor. Try the words on for size and see what each evokes for you. [that is at the secular human level. a separate post will cover at the soul level "but what about reincarnation and karma etc."]

Why are the Chinese Internal Martial Arts preferred? As opposed to say, Internal Alchemy, Spiritual Qi Gong, etc

In secular psychology, blame is toxic and is a barrier to healing and recovery from trauma. Blame prevents healthy behavior. When we blame others we surrender the ability to make positive changes in our life, we give away our power to learn and grow from our life experiences. Blame has no purpose in recovering from trauma, and it prevents the process of healing. the beauty of this forum is that we get to see, hear, share, understand, and learn how a wide range of paths view and deal with whatever it is we are facing in life

what is non-retrogression? for this layperson to understand. thank you.

My take on where emotions come from: I see the two subtle body side channels as being literally the channels of emotional and mental energise, from my perspective emotional energy goes up Ida Nadi and mental energy comes down Pingala Nadi. Note these are side channels, and this equates to the importance of thoughts and emotions. Important, but not as important as the central channel which carries “Shiva and Shakti’ energies. In my framework, if energy isn’t flowing up Ida and down Pingala, the fundamentals of the system are not in order, and the central channel can’t start operating, so for me emotional flow is the first thing to establish (as we seem to have a lot more trouble with our emotional flow than our mental flow), and everything else flows from that.

Check out Jason Read and the Maoshan sect if you want the “magical” practices

It is what he likes. He likes orange and you recommend an apple. Knowledge in internal martial arts, Neidan, meditation, philosophy, Yijing and Chinese medicine are helpful and useful but not necessary in the many Zheng Yi magical practices.

People are sensitive and rarely take kindly to any perceived slights of dignity. I´ll be surprised if Old3bob is willing to post much at all under the current conditions. Nice that he can still use the private message function though to keep in touch with those he´s close to.

Two versions of this: I quote the first a lot as an illustration of the power of just dropping the recursive mind and realizing that IT is actually the source of "problems". This, that we are presently peering at, is just reality. There is no problem with it.

oh my gosh, that actually has a name, it is Maslow's Hammer. !!!

sorry doc ... when I said "you" it was a collective 'you' and I didn't mean you personally so I should have been more mindful in what I wrote under a quoted post from you . Actually, I think you understand my approach * better than most * see above post .

Ahhh ... a hint about what 'restricted account ' could mean . Did you get 'unrestricted ' or is this still part of your restriction ? ( Damn ! I wanted to find and post an image of a guy being boa constricted by a HUGE boa and only one arm out and typing on a keyboard ... no luck , you will have to visualize it )

If you are only interested in the "magical" practices, the answer is no. It is not necessary.

Yes. Intuition, inner tutor. My intuition, that is my soul speaking, it tells my two brain-halves what’s right.

He still visits the forum. You can read his old topics.

You might like Daniel Goleman's "Emotional Intelligence". He writes that responses get stored by the amygdala, reactions to situations picked up in very early childhood and beyond, and when the circumstances that gave rise to those responses are duplicated the amygdala overrides the cognitive centers of the brain to react. Out-of-hand emotional responses is his focus, like a sudden anger. I think Bindi's right, not so much "how we can deal with them" but how we can learn about our human condition from them.

I think @Taoist Texts is no longer on this board. He used to comment a lot, but lately I have not seen much of him.

another helpful resource, is after a while when you have favorite posters and you want to read more of what this or that person has written, here is the path to view all their posts. Click on their name, click on see their activity (button upper right) this shows a few recent posts but not all of them, then click on posts (left side menu list). Then the posts appear. I just looked up someone who has provided helpful information recently on several areas of experience which resonated with me; they have 1,005 posts so there are 39 pages I can view and read and mine for useful information.

also the Activity tab at top of page lets you see at a glance the most recent posts, people, and topics under discussion. I have found gems there (people and posts and conversations) that i would not have found through searching by topic or section. So that is a great section to get in the habit of viewing.

welcome! there are discussions and topics in the forum on any and all of the above noted interests in bold. a good place to start is throw each of those bold topics one by one into the search and start visiting threads. what works for me is to randomly visit threads, see what piques my interest in what is being discussed, and go from there. If someone is discussing something of interest, i ask "can you tell me more about this, what resources do you recommend" and people on this site are quite helpful and responsive. as you go along you can then see what jumps out at you and explore further. I also find and start noticing there are certain posters that consistently resonate with the interests I have so i will visit other threads they may be participating in and invariably there is related information that I also find helpful. what brought me to Dao Bums was wanting to find out more about different forms of qi gong, and there is robust discussion around that, I have found. It does help (for me anyway) to hear people discussing their experiences with different types of qi gong and helped me decide to try out two forms which were different than what i had been practicing (on and off) since 2019. You can also start a topic and ask whatever question you might have. Have fun exploring, jump right in, ask questions.

Ok nice, great answers bro, thank you very much!! I will be practicing again today.

I see emotions as part of a holistic feedback system, designed to safeguard an individual and lead an individual to make positive life choices. Problems arise when emotions are ignored or overridden by mental strategies, in which case the emotions are stuffed away. This leads to a shutdown of this aspect of our system feedback, which is similar to caging a tiger, the emotional system doesn’t disappear but remains tense and agitated, lashing out at inopportune moments. There are multiple strategies that have been devised to deal with this caged tiger, few of which directly address the fundamental issue. Emotional flow has a place in the ultimate setup of a human being, but it is only one part of the entire system, and not even the major part. But when emotional flow is blocked it can be the major problem that we face. Ultimately we need to go beyond being led by our emotions, but only when emotional flow has been re-established and is healthy. For that matter the same can be said of our thoughts, we need to go beyond being led by them but only when our mind is fully healthy. Being emotionally in tune with the people and things in our environment is valuable, and knowing when these people or things don’t have our best interests at heart is also valuable, even if this isn’t our ultimate guide in life, and is only a part of the ultimate system. Personally I’ve worked with dreams to establish emotional health, and though it’s a very long (decades long) and hard road I think I have finally achieved it.

Absolutely! In Buddhism, we are attempting to see through the delusion of the existence of a "self". When we don't identify with anger and it simply passes through us it creates no karma. When you grasp it, or try to push it away, it becomes part of your story, which is what karma IS. The arising emotion is liberated - free to be what it actually IS - a fleeting flash in consciousness. This is the difference between "practice" and "actualization". We need more actualizing!

In recovery I learned this regarding anger. True anger flares like a match when it is first lit, and then sputters out after a few seconds. So that is the duration of anger, sputters for a few seconds and then is gone. If it goes beyond that and lasts longer (the anger) then that is me pouring gasoline on the fire and making it a conflagration. it has been very helpful for me in knowing what portion of anger is "OK" (a few seconds only) and what portion is "me pouring gasoline on the fire" (anything beyond a few seconds) that is then my responsibility to well stop doing.

Emotions are due to past conditions, views, actions, conduct that we have participated in for a long time. In this life, in previous lives. Emotions are not so much stored, but experiencing enough of it, the layers of the body adjusts, rewires, to accommodate these flavours of emotions. To be more efficient in expressing them, to fuel them, to accommodate them. And often at the cost of our health. Because it takes a lot of twisting internally and physically to accommodate its existence. Emotions are blameless. They are just a natural phenomena of life doing what to supposed to do, based on the conditions of our views, ignorance, habitual participation in it via thoughts, speech, action. It is doing what it supposed to do. In buddhism, there is the teachings of dependent origination. Alot of training happens at the link between feeling and action. An untrained person, allows feelings/emotions to automatically roll into action. And it causes suffering, strengthens the chains of samsara, weighs one down to lower realms. The job is to weaken, and eventually break these chains. So as feelings arise, one does not act due to the pressures of the feeling. Instead train to eventually see that it is actually totally separate domains that arises on its own. This reveals true responsibility. Because we realize ALL our actions we were actually responsible for. No amount of pressure of feelings or emotions could have ever crossed from the gate of feeling into the gate of action. We were solely responsible for making that connection out of ignorance. That is why virtue has this very specific quality. Virtue is wholesome action is done out of wisdom, "no matter how intense the pressures of feelings are against it". Why virtuous person chooses death instead of making unwholesome decisions/ actions. The question of how to "cool down" emotions, is basically to tackle its roots, which is refining views, developing wisdom, and paired with taking skillful action and habits, to gradually untwist the mind and body, so various emotions cool down and have no fuel or basis to arise.