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If that is what you are happy with then good luck. What I mean by happy is kept an UNINTERRUPTED sense of happiness from the time that you interpreted that. That is the ONLY WAY that you know if that is true. Best Wishes

It is getting easier and faster. I haven't taken 2 or PSD. I've started to work on some entry level core practices. Kind of pre-KAP. I'm in an accumulation/preparation stage. Through the wisdom of somebody that is close, I got dropped away from Heaven in order to see Heaven. I'm grateful because I wouldn't have been able to see Heaven if I was already there. It had to happen because I wanted to die.

I missed that one. Insight to lead to compassion is supposed to be applied to both of the conflicting sides, the slandered and the slanderer, the defender and the aggressor. Santiago was taught this pretty early and still practices it. Most of the time the defender and the aggressor have the same limitations, same filters, same unwholesome emotional states, and same unwholesome reactions. That is why some conflicts never ends. A more advanced person recognized the faults because the faults were his or her own at some time. When they recognize it they feel compassion for people with faults because the advanced person sees themselves in the other person. I'm falling into too much mental masturbation

I'm still trying to figure out the virtuous and examined life right now. Especially, the "examined", I'm hoping that I can reduce the time of "mental masturbation" so that I can arrive to understanding and best wishes for everybody (to include myself) as a conditioned reflex. After that, having a serious examination every half-dozen to dozen events be good to prevent laziness. I'm hoping to cut out the unproductive emotion, the recognition that there is a problem, and the time lag for mental masturbation to reach a conclusion. I'm just starting to have an inkling of an understanding what relative Bodhicitta is all about and how Relative Bodhicitta and Absolute Bodhicitta tie into each other, which is very promising. I'm still in the beginning stages of the crawl phase of "crawl, walk, run". Thank you for saying that the ego has to be retrained.

You don't realize how much you are giving to yourself, Earth, Human, and Heaven by having a child. In the beginning (and probably some for maintenance reasons), it does demand a lot of energy from the body. I neglected that aspect and I paid for it.

You have to do both. You don't do the Wai Gong and you "F" yourself up, like I did.

Mofo, You just f-ed me up. But thank you for giving me that perspective.

Hmmmmm Maybe it would be better to leave this person alone.

Brother, Let's leave him or her alone. I found this in Daniel Ingram's FAQ "Q: You claim to be enlightened, and thus I have all these ideals that I want to project all over you, test out, have you verify or deny, criticize you for your claims to attainments, think you are amazing, or any other sort of questions and statements on this general front. A: I talk a lot about how preposterous most of the models of awakening are in my book, and so I tend to refer people there. Beyond that, the simple fact is that I am an ordinary guy who by following time-tested instructions achieved something that is rare only because those that take the time to do that are so rare. As to anything beyond that, please discard any and all dehumanizing and unrealistic notions of what this stuff is about and instead simply practice well. A fair number of mighty traditional scholars and dogmaheads have come at me with the expected responses to my claims, and unfortunately I don't think that anything productive has come from any of those tedious exchanges. " I, myself, am trying to get rid of some of the habits that he or she has. Unfortunately, I have to engage in "mental masturbation" in order to get some sort of understanding and compassion. Hopefully, some time in the future, I don't have to engage in "mental masturbation" and it'll become an automatic response so that anger, cynicism, alienation, and dehumanization won't have a home in my psyche.

Likewise and best wishes.

Perhaps, Shakyamuni expressed that in order to inspire women to seek something higher. Do you think that I'm going to believe an institution that is interested in keeping the status quo? Their power has been waning for decades and why? Because people were looking at them more closely. People, in general, don't want to support extravagance for other people when there are mouths to feed. Are they doing things from a view of Love and Wisdom? How many times have they been caught doing things? Why are Buddhist and Taoist numbers going up, even with the bad apples? Why are Catholic numbers going down? Keep in mind what happened. The Moors "invaded" Spain and kept it for 500 years. Go ahead and look at why and what the Moors gave us for being "invaded". Nations fall apart from the inside, not the outside. Did the crusades after that work?

BOOYAH! Thanks Brother, I owe you. What are your sources? Do you read Arabic? Keep in mind that the catholic church sent out people to try to discredit him. Also, Heavens gives ways and means to those who are committed to accomplishing the purposes of Heaven. The purposes of Heaven can't be accomplished if in some way the five elements get dirty.

Gautama prostrated to a set of bones by a road in front of his disciples. He explained that it could have been his mother or father in another life. Maybe he left home out of a sense of love and duty?

Dude, Also, do we know the language to actually read the source? Who translated? Who paid the person to translate it?

He wasn't discontent with his teachers, he was discontent with the answers that he got for "Ending Suffering". In the end, he had to put up an illusion of going out for "alms" in order to start healing people at two levels. They could have just have stayed in the woods and lived off the land but he had way bigger fish to fry. On edit: check out your "Taoist Alchemy", sooner or later you find that it is a means of starting an "outer" Heaven in your environment. Heaven doesn't stop at its so-called "boundaries".

If you take a look at most of the "nasty tempered" posts that Santi gives, he uses at least some honey with the vinegar that he is dishing out. That's the impression that I get. Highly cultivated guy + Martial Arts If you look at Daniel Ingram's response posts over the internet, especially when he is getting flamed...you feel like you get hit by a truckload of COMPASSION

Oh yeah, never mind. It did work.

Uh I'm ashamed to say that the "middle finger" thing wasn't even nasty tempered, it was malicious because I was laughing when I did it.

Use the methods, see if they work for you.

It is a Belief System that has an active Liberation/Salvation Plan. It is quite different from a Religion that says "you come to my church and you are saved". the active Liberation/Salvation Plan can't be changed because the Liberation/Salvation Plan is WHAT WORKS. Buddhists consider compassion & wisdom to be power. The community will stay together to preserve the teachings and support the teachers.

Brother, That is inaccurate. Look at this sutra: http://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/filial-sutra.htm

Vajrahridaya, Brother...I'm trying to say this in the nicest way possible. You talk of your absolute Bodhi but where is your relative Bodhi?

http://books.google.com/books?id=XWNwewQBi...;q=&f=false This is what I found out and am just starting to apply myself. Don't shy away from negative attitudes, stand your ground, otherwise your cultivation is for nothing. Not from your own negative energy and not from another person's negative energy. Acknowledge their shortcomings and try to find out why they are "miserable, they whine, they complain, they judge". Use cause and effect to find the root and compassion will rise. If you don't think that you could move them "skillfully" to another manner of acting then try to be quiet and just learn how not to act. Try to find the root cause of why you feel "frustrated, hurt, and downright angry". Your root cause is probably because you may not be patient. Acknowledge your own shortcomings, have some compassion for yourself and don't kick yourself, and try to learn from your own shortcomings and their shortcomings. Remember that cultivation takes a while. If you fall into a bad mood, investigate the bad mood. That is how cultivators make their gains. At first, the negative energy will touch your core; but after a while it won't. The best battlefield to test cultivation is life and your best and sharpest weapons are investigation, cause and effect, compassion, love, kindness, and TRUTH.

"emptying the mind" is an oversimplification. Shakyamuni actually taught Arhats that had not discerned what "emptiness" was. For the people that don't know what is an Arhat...at that point in time, the Arhat was the final stage before becoming a Buddha. An Arhat is a person that had eliminated suffering to an extremely high degree and defeated the 10 fetters of Buddhism. You probably knew this way before me

Not to mention that it can simply help the practitioner just stay alive just long enough to make it through a rough spot.