markern

Getting rid of a certain desire is probably possible. Getting rid of all kinds of desire is impossible. Read in Daniel Ingrams blook about models of enlightenment. You can find it at interactivebuddha.com

I agree with you that budhist and hindu writings easily gives you a more gloomy and ascetic feeling. I have struggled a bit with that myself. Taoism seems to deal better with this in it`s writings. However, Kornfields book about budhist psychology clears up a lot of the confusion with regards to budhism. Hinduism/yoga does have some paths that are of the extreemly ascetic life denying type that the budha tried and rejected. I dislike these a lot. However, it also for the most part is a middle path. Kashmiri Shaivism especialy. Iyengars book light on life takes a fairly similar stand. I agree that as long as you "micromanage" chi correctly it is not unnatural. However, There are some problems with it. For one there are a bunch of different maps on how to micromanage in the different traditions and also within particular traditions. Some yogic maps contradict each other and some taoist maps contradict each other. Since enlightenment does happen through emptiness or insight meditation alone, such methods in one sense outperforms the aproaches that try to make a map out of the awakening process and control the chi in ways that modulate the process of awakening. The methods that makes it happen spontaniously presumably achieves some of the alchemical process better because it does not realie on maps with small faults but a natural process. However, the engenering aproaches do achieve the same goal, and quite often achieves at least part of the process faster. In other words. Even though there has to be at least some "faults" with some of the maps since they are different, they are good in the overal sense and the small "faults" cannot be that important. The more "natural" spontanious" aproaches aren`t without fault either. Without more active energetic work they will often leave out certain energetic developments that while not being essential are highly beneficial. They can also lead to energetic imbalances that could easily be managed with more actice techniques. For example, the founder of Rinzai Zen had huge problems with energetic overload in the head and sought out many masters without getting workable advice until a taoist hermit showed him how to pull the energy down into the dan tien via the microcosmic. My opinion is that any system based on a fairly good map of chi management is excellent as long as it is combined with some sort of emptiness meditation to digest the actively directed work and smooth out the minor failings of the map. Mantak chias system for example work a lot better if you combine it with enough emptiness meditation. I also think that doing pure emptiness meditation without any knowledge of energetic work what so ever is just plain dumb. It is sometimes so easy to correct imbalances arising in such meditations with active techniques and there are just so much good stuff you get in addititon from the more actice techniques that adding a few is the only meaningful thing to do. At aypsite.org they have extreemly simple highly effective yogic techniques and a very life afirming yogic philosophy. The Diamond aproach by H. Aalmas has a masterfull way of combining the everyday psychological stuff we deal with with the aproach of enlightement. Just wanted to pass on two of the most life affirming and positive while still genuinly spiritual and effective aproaches I have found.

I can very much relate to your thoughts with regards to asceticism and doing away with the ego. However I think that the way budhism has been presented to you is wrong and that it indeed is the middle path (although not the only middle path). One does not realy do away with the ego in budhism, one puts it in its place and that is the same as in taoism and yoga and basicly all the other traditions. However, many people have misunderstood this or talks about it in ways that makes one take it in a too ascetic and extreem form. You should read Jack Kornfield a path with Hart, and the Heart of Wisdom - budhist psychology for the west (also by Kornfield) Those books will clear up the common misunderstandings about budhism and a lot of the problems you have incountered in spiritual life. Contemplative Taoists will be happily to sit with yogis and Zennists for as long as is reasonable and comfortable, but when nature tells us that we are 'pushing the river' we will get up and do something else, or even go to sleep. (From Tao: The Watercourse Way). Altough I know this is the true Taoist way of thinking it seems to me that it is often not the way people practice. Mantak Chia for example keeps talking about how one dosen`t strain or force within taosim while his system is one of the most fire and yang based I have ever come across. Almost never does he realy just let things happen. I find it funny that while taoist always talk about letting things happen naturaly taoist alchemy often is a form of chi engeneering which through very technical and "unnatural", at least not very spontainious meditations, achieve the same things other traditions (or other taoists) do through just sitting (Zen and many taoist emptiness meditations) or insight (Vipassana). Whereas the pearl in many traditions (like sufism) tends to show up by itself, in many forms of taoism one makes it conciously. This is not a criticism of taoism per se. I like taoism. I just find the contrast between procalimed philosophy and actual practice to be very large amongst the more fire based schools of taoism. It just annoys me to read about how other schools of practice supposedly so often are unnatural and forceful when it is often the other way around. I experience the basic process of the fusion meditations many times during Vipassana or just during the day in stead of through the extreemly technical fusion meditations. It is a spontanious process which often happens when you are mindful and so happens naturally and spontainiously in many traditions while it is forced in the fusion practices. Same thing goes for opening the orbit. It opens by itself if you are mindful. I am not saying there is anything wrong with opening the orbit in an active way or doing the fusion meditations. I actualy consider doing fusion at some point because I think there is benefit in doing it intensly for a while in stead of just bit by bit in the spontanious way. However, I just think that if your style of practice is based on planned micromanagment of chi one should not call other paths unatural and forced when clearly it is the other way arround. There is actualy more chi engeneering and micromanagment of chi in taoism than I have seen in any other tradition.

Daniel Ingram (wich has an amazing free ebook by the way) writes a lot about the Dark Night a phaze that many spiritual seekers go through once they have gotten pretty far. What it is for different people can vary but one often gets very depressed, has problems meditating and become extreemly frightened. The way out is mostly to just be mindfull of it and be able to accept it. Ingram seems to claim that this will happen to very many people as they progress but that some get through a lot easier than others and don`t realy experience it as a big deal. He also claims that this period always follows a breakthrough wich in Vipassana is called arising and passing away and that if one does not progress through the dark night and a bit further up to first level of enlightenemnt one has to go through arising and pasing away and the dark night again and again. He also claims that after first enlightenement one will experience many smaler dark nights all the way up till Arahat level is attained but that after first enlightenment these are much less problematic. I am wondering what you guys know about the dark night phenomenon, wether you have experienced it, how frequent you think it is, what you think it is and how best to handle it. After reading in Ingrams forum (Dharma Overground) about the experiences of people there it seems to me that a lot of their problems with the Dark Night comes from lack of good energywork and a too exclusive reliance on meditation. It apears that very many people that do Vipassana only go to a yoga class once or twice a week and don`t realy do much heavy energetic work. Since the arising and passing away is usualy assosiated with kundalini like experiences and the dark night follows, since Ingram claims that loving kindness meditation and the meditating in the Jhanas and that grounding stuff like judo helps to stabilice the dark night, it seems to me that it is not just an "insight" problem but to at least a large extent energetic. If those things help it would seem natural that something heavily grounding and rooting like iron shirt would help. I am guessing that when people do Vipassana and have breakthroughs in insight a lot of energy goes to the head. If one has not done other energetic work to cleanse, ground and prepare the body, this might lead to loads of overload problems just like with ordinary energetic overloads. It might not be much to the dark night other than an unbalanced practice, just a somewhat different form of kunadlini imbalance. Opinions anyone?

Daniel Ingram has a lot of interesting stuff to say about what actualy happens and what does not happen at enlightenment: http://web.mac.com/danielmingram/iWeb/Dani...ok/Archive.html Read the parts called models of the stages of enlightenment

This computer program is scientifically proven several times to improve memory and focus tremendously if it is used about half an hour a day for around a month. In young people the results are permanent at least for a year: cogmed.com Acupuncture should do at least a little bit for memory while also making your mother feel better in general and is something she can do without much effort on her own part. Otherwise there are of course al sorts of qigong yoga, breath excercises and meditations that help a lot but all of that of course depends on wether your mother is able and willing to do them. That can be a problem with anyone especialy elderly people, however they realy do help. Dharma Singh Khalsa has some good stuff about al of this. Also from a nutritional point of view: http://www.drdharma.com/Public/Home/index.cfm Whis you and your mother all the best.

After lurking around various webforums and websites relating to meditation ++ my very superficial and absolutely not necesarily correct impression is that while people that are into taoist cultivation methods seem to get somewhat better results in terms of cultivating energy but that actualy reaching enlightenment (at the initial stages) is much more frequent amongst people practicing budhist methods and to some extent also in the yogic traditions. As I said I am not claiming this is true, it is just the impression I get online. I have read quite often about people reaching first and second enlightenment within theravada, Tibetan Budhism and Zen but almost never read about anyone except peoples Master in China etc having attained this with taoist methods. Do you think this is correct and if so why? Is it because the taoist methods spend a lot of time doing energy work that is useful for many purposes but not necessary for reaching enlightenment while most Budhist and yogic aproaches just aim straight at getting the strictly necesary work done to get enlightened? Is it because it is so difficult to actually get the necesary teachings within taoism becuase so much is kept secret while in for example in Vipassana absolutely everything is in the open or is it something else?

This meditation sounds really great but as I have seen Budhist forms of skeleton meditation explained before it has always also been explained as being an insight practice were you are examining impermanence, no self etc. in addition to getting concentration and chi work done. I don`t see were the insight part of this practice comes in. Of course really spending so much time visualizing yourself as a skeleton can bring insights about impermanence by "accident" but as I have read about such things before it is usualy done more structured and learning the "concentration" parts of the practice is peanuts compared to learning to do the insight parts of the practice well. On a related note my meditation teacher say that when one is doing deity yoga the insight part of the practice is what the meditation is actualy about but many people in the west doing deity yoga just visualize themselves as a deity and stop at that and don`t realy get how to use it as an insight practice and then it isen`t realy deity yoga at all but just rather meaningless play with visualization which only gives benefits in terms of concentration and chi but does not achieve the actual purpose.

Shinzen young also has a lot of good stuff. Insight meditation society has great retreats.

I get your point but contrary to a lot of PUA wisdom it is not necesary to be an ashole to women to be extreemly succesfull with them. One of the most respected piskup artists Juggler teaches a style of pickup wich is very genuine and nice while as effective or more than a lot of the other rather sinister PUA material. Check it out at: charismaarts.com

A common opinion about Chias stuff is that there is a huge lack of stilness/emptiness/inner silence, whatever you like to call it, type of meditation/cultivation. Too much activity, too much forcing, too much breaking through, too much fire. There is also a good bit of criticism about sexual cultivation being taught too early and poorly and also criticism of his Iron Shirt Qi Gong. In large part a lot of this has been corrected by Michael Winn wich teaches the same basic formulas, Fusion, Kan and Li etc, as he learnt from Chia but he has modified them to bring in more of a water element and not force things as much as Chia does. Winn also teaches the sexual techniques a bit later because he wants you to master more of the preliminaries to be able to handle the sexual energy well. The lack of stillness/emptiness meditation in CHias system can be corrected by practicing zazen in addition to it. I asked Chia about combining Zen with his system and he said it was perfectly fine. One of his teachers, Ajan Al (DIrk Al) now also teaches Vipassana combined with the orbit and chanting at Chias retreat center. Doing a lot of Chias inner smile meditation is also a way of correcting the stilness aspect and helps a good bit with the potential problems with the sexual practices. A third problem with Chias and Winns stuff is that it is so dependt on your ability to do complex visualisation and lead qi with your mind. A lot of people just don`t have the concentration needed to start such practices and need some sort of straight forward concentration practice first. Through zazen you already have that. Several people on this forum has said that chias way of opening the micocosmic orbit is not good. I think they recomend a guy named charles Luk but ask arround about that. They also recomend the sexual techniques of a guy I think is called Dr. Lin or Li or something like that. You are probably better of asking arround about this and using these two guys in stead of Chia for doing the orbit and for managing sexual energy. There is also a member on the bums that has a site with lots of stuff on correcting the problems with Chias sexual practices. The fact that you practice karate means you are in good physical shape. Many of those who get problems with Chias stuff are in bad shape. A question that is often raised about a system is wether or not it leads to enlightenment or not. Dirk Al (Ajan Al) told me he reached first enlightenment while he was a budhist monk in Thailand. After a while he lost it again but after doing Chias formulas he got back again to exactly the same place. In other words it does lead al the way. That can not necesarily be said about all the other systems out there. All in all I would say that Chias will most likely be a good experience for you as long as you spend a fair amount of time doing zazen or similar stuff on the side, as long as you realy prioritize the inner smile, you spend your time doing all the preliminary stuff like healing sounds until you are well prepared for advanced stuff, and as long as you research the criticism of Iron shirt and the sexual stuff (on this forum++) and correct it on the basis of that criticism in your own practice. If you go with Michael Winn instead it will as I said be more less fire based and less forcing and in my impression simply better thought through and better taught. Many learn a bit from both as the core of the formulas are the same and a lot of the additional stuff such as healing sounds and inner smile are the same. Winn has written 7 or so of Chias books for him. You should think through wether this whole style of meditation is for you. There is a lot of visualisation, leading chi around the body with your mind and in general micromanaging of chi. It is aproaching enlightenment like an engineer. Some people like that sort of aproach while some people don`t. I prefer Vipassana, Zen and those styles that don`t control as much of what is happening, which isen`t as complex, which let things unfold more naturaly by just doing a very straight forward meditation and which brings you forward through insight and not managing chi. One option could be to just keep doing zazen (under a good master) and find some qigong or pranayama that realy moves your practice forward by generating chi and helping you go deep and get great concentration and cleanse your system. AYP (aypsite.org) is another option which is extreemly simple, very powerful and almost problem free. Another problem with Chias system (and Winns) is that there is absolutely no emphasis on psychology what so ever. That is a huge problem in my opinion but also something that can be corrected by yourself.

I think chunui Lin the springforest guy offers a form of shaktipat, at least they do stuff like long distance third eye opening. Since his reputation is impecable and his powers are highly respected he seems like the right man to turn to. However, what he does might be a good bit milder than activating kundalini and some of the other stuff mentioned. It is al on his website so you can check out what he is actualy offering there.

Has Max ever done anything wrong other than presenting himself a bit too mysterious and larger than life? It seems pretty clear to me that he is way too much into himself but he also seems to have a very playful attitude about it al and it does not seem like he has ever done any of the terrible guru things that are so common like taking control of peoples lives, making people give him their savings, ruining their self esteem and bedding all the hot young students. At least thats my impression from reading on this forum.

Wow. The Shinzen Young site is great!!! Thanks for the link

http://www.aypsite.org/forum/topic.asp?TOP...Terms=vipassana This thread has some very important points to make about the Goenka retreats and that style of Vipassana. However it also covers a lot of other interesting stuff before the Goenka discussion gets going

Meditation has repeatedly been shown to be one of the most eficient ways of treating depression and anxiety. What people on this forum know but that has not been firmly established yet is how great the benefits are on the realy long term. Both are good reasons to advice someone to meditate when they have mental problems. A large part of the people on this forum, if not most, probably were very skeptical towards meditation and energy practice earlier in their lives. So someone being sceptical, presumably from a lack of knowledge isen`t realy a good argument for not encouraging them to give it an open minded try.

Simple stuff that i find very effective for all round healing, cleansing and psychological development is the six healing sounds and inner smile. It is not the stuff that realy amps up your regular meditation a lot although it will have a lot of benefits there also, it will however give loads of all round benefits. I think these excercises are especialy good to do for people starting out as they take care of a lot of basic work. Another thing you could try is wu ji qigong. I learnt it a few weeks a go and find it to be an amazing practice. It is also very simple to learn and could be learnt well from video and books. Not all people find it to be such a great practice it seems to be about half who absoultely love it and half who doesn`t like it that much. Michael winn has cds and books about it and you can read about it here: http://www.chionline.com/qigong/wuji.htm Another option is pranayama. It seems your path is going to be toist so it is probably best not to mix traditions too much and anyway most pranayama is best learnt by an experienced teacher. However some easy pranyama can be learnt on your own. A practice like laternate nostril breathing is excellent for preparing for meditation and has numerous benefits. It is also a pranayama I don`t think conflicts with taoist practices. You can find some simple version of alternate nostril breathing (without retention of breath) and slowly and carefully try it out.

I have wondered about this myself. I think even if nothing is transmitted in the way we speculate here, at least the sperm will often be of a very high quality and quantity (more competition equals a better sperm wins). Retention would play a lot into this. That should lead to the children having all round more favourable genes than without any energetic practice. I also think that the mothers practice during pregnancy should have a lot to say. The benefits to the mothers body should translate over to better development for the child in an extremely vital period. Just think about the good hormones and other stuff scientificaly proved to be produced during pregancy. It also makes sence to think that a mother who practices has quite a bit more of chemicals and hormones in her body that are more linked to love and spirituality. Stuff like oxytocin and melatonin (I think I read that melatonin is produced by the pituary gland during meditation but I might have confused it with something else). Having a larger amount of those chemicals and hormones floating around in the mothers system should influence the child somehow. Anyway just by being extreemly healthy happy and by having strong feelings of love and very little stress the baby should benefit a good bit. However, all of this is reduced in importance by the fact that the baby is prioritized over the mother during pregnancy so that if the mother does not eat enough of certain vitamines the body prioritizes to give those to the baby and "eat of" the mothers suplies and weakening her. Often when the motehr has gotten to little of certain things or been quite sick the baby does not get much damage because of this mecanism. This presumably means that for the most part the baby takes what it needs and not so much is to gain from being extreemly healthy during pregnancy although I am sure a lot is still to be gained

A lot of people love the Goenka retreats and get a lot out of them. Quite a few people also get a bit scared. and don`t continue to practice. The regimen is a bit too rough on beginners in my opinion. Having halucinations and al kinds of wierd energetic experiences happen even in Zen although it is not sought after in Vipassana nor Zen as it is in some traditions. In Vipassana and Zen one would just try to be mindfull and non-atatched with regards to such occurences. Although I have not sat any sort of retreat I practice Vipassana and I have read quite a bit about it. I have enorumous respect for Spirit Rock and Insight meditation society and their teachers. Much more than Goenka. At those to retreat centers you can also choose between a much larger variety of retreats both with regards to length, regimen, and to some extent the content. There is also a much better understanding in that tradition of how to integrate Vipaasana into the lives of westerners and how to blend the western and budhist psychological tradtion. the reality is that about half of those who sit the three month long retreats at IMS get so much pshychological stuff coming up that they deal more with that than with cultivating the Jhanas or doing high level Vipassana.

I face this same dilema when adviceing people I know that have mental problems about meditation and energy practices. Research shows pretty cleraly that simple meditation like Vipassana and mantra are very beneficial for people with anxiety, depression and bipolar disorder. There has been done at least one study on minfulness meditation and schizophrenia. It proved to be very helpfull to them. However, they always meditated with a therapist near by in case thay get pulled in to delutions. I think the risk might be a bit high in the case of psychosis and in those cases guidance is clearly needed. For depression and anxiety good instruction and a few warnings should suffice but extra monitoring is also good. If someone is able to meditate regulary with Vipassana or something else that is breath based I think that is a better place to start for people with mental problems. I tink it is better for developing the skills of being mindfull with regard to your symptoms and destructive paterns and disolving them/choosing differetnly. Mantra sometimes becomes too much of an escape although it certainly has many benefits and does deveopl a lot of mindfulness and in many regards is quicker than breath based stuff. However, many people find breath based meditation too difficult at first and need something which can quiet their minds quicker and mantra tends to do that better at first. What I plan to do with some people i know that want to learn basic meditation is to start of with breath and see what they think. If it is too hard for them or does not hook them I will sugest they use the SO HAM mantra coordinated with breath combined with ending each session with 5 minutes of observing breath and body without mantra. If that does not work I will suggest a different mantra that is not supposed to go a long with the breath I also think that healing sounds and inner smile are absolutely superb for people with mental problems. Five animals probably as well because it aims so much for emotional balance. Wuji qigong/primordial qigong is also very good I think, especialy for people that alternate between being a bit too high and a bit to low like bipolar people and anyone that is not realy balanced. For anxiety any simple grounding excericse is also excellent. For all mental problems simple breathing techniques that focus on slow and even and free floating breath is also great and safe. Beyond that it gets more murky wether it is safe or not but some pranayamas like sudarshan kriya has showed superb results with regards to depression. Chi nei tsang is also realy great for mental problems

Pilates and or Iyengar yoga are in my opinion superb for posture. Yin yoga is probably most effecient for stretching

A nation wide ID is extreemly far from forming a world government. It is impossible to form a world goverment when nobody and especially no countries army wants it. How is Obama going to make the military implement a plan for communism or world governement when absolutely no one in the army wants either one of those things? You need a power base to make a revolution and there just is no power base for any of these two ideas. How in practice should such a governement work anyway? How is the world governement run by Obama going to implement its policies in China, India, Iran, France and Russia. How can something like that be implementet when every country on earth would fight it bitterly? The EU has taken 50 years to form wat it is now and it is still extreemly far away from anything that could be called a european state. Why on earth do you claim Obama to be a communist anyway? What is your basis for that? He is clearly a fairly normal american liberal. Your labeling of things and people being communist or socialist is absurd and false by any meaningfull definition. Communism implies complete state ownership of capital and 100% command economy. From the most extreemly free capitalist economy there is a sliding scale towards more and more state involvement which is still clearly capitalist untill it then becomes social democratic and then finaly communist. Countries like Sweden, Denmark and Canada ar largely social democratic countries. The US is actualy not as pure of a capitalist economy as many people asume and has largely never been. Goverment regulation, goverment redistribution, progressive taxation various state services etc have been a part of the american system for a long time. Your goverment actualy spends alomost as much on health care as social democracies like norway and Denmark but you are just so ineffiecient doing it that not much services is actualy provided unlike in these countries were healthcare is free universal and good. A slight increase in public spending a slight increase in the amount of taxes paid by the richest and a sligth decrease in the amount paid by the poorest isen`t going to make the US socialist. It`ll just move the US slightly closer to were Europe has happily been for a long time. Communism you basicly only have in Norht Korea and Cuba. Almost nobody anywhere wants communism today. In Norway about 1% of the electorate vote for the comminst party. The same is the situation almost all over the world and especially amongst elite groups there is absloutely ZERO support for communism.

In yoga one talks about three granthis and these are placed at the same places as the Dan Tiens by many altough some place the granthis differently. These are seen to be knots that lie at the points were the nadis interesect and that block the flow of energy and so must be untied. One accumulates prana through for example pranayama and brings it to the granthis to clear them. Could this be the way yogis see the process of filling the three Dan Tiens? Clearing and filling sounds different but it might in reality be the same if the main question is accumulating chi there.

How do you define socialism as opposed to communism? It seems what you actualy mean is social democracy like we have in Norway, Sweden and Denmark, meaning a combination of a capitalist economy with a large state sector and heavy redistribution of wealth. If that is the case I can assure you there will be no problems as almost all types of international rankings rate our quality of life a good bit above that of the USA despite our "horrbile" "socialism". Actualy rankings with regards to freedom of the press and democracy usualy put these countries well ahead of the US as well so you needn`t be concerned about your freedom either. Communism on the other hand would be a completlty different matter. That would mean 100% state ownership and economic controll but can in principle be combined with electoral democracy and total freedom of the press although that is not very likely in practice. Not a good alternative at all. However, even if Obama were a communist how on earth would he be able to introduce it? Perhaps 1 percent of the US poppulation has communist sympathies and about 0.01% of the economic and politcal elite has communist symphaties while in the army you find something like 0.0000001% with communist sympathies. It would be an impossible task. Neither the army nor branches of goverment nor any elected official would obey orders to such an effect. He would also have the entire poppulation and the might of business against him. You realy need to read up on some elementary political science and history because your arguments are insane

I heard a therpist say the other day that there is a quite good rate of success in treating former sex offenders when they realy want to work towards change. They have a pretty good chance of changing their sexual desires and if not learn to contain their remaining destructive desires through learning more emphaty with victims and self controll techniques. This made me think that maybe some techniques from eastern traditions could be beneficial for them. For many of these people it is a problem during treatment that despite of a genuine will to change, their sexual desire can at times be so great that even though they know it is wrong, they might still offend. If they could aply some qigong or yoga techniques that reduces sex drive they would be less likely to offend in this period. If they manage to change their desires fundamentaly so that the urge to offend is no longer there, they could use similar techniques to get the sex drive back. Does anyone know of good techniques to reduce sex drive? I would presume diet has quite a lot to say. Probably not much meat. I know a couple of yoga poses that are said to reduce sexual desire. I have heard that accupuncture can be used for this as well and it makes sense to me that it can. Presumably there are also some herbs and some qigong techniques. Are there also techniques one can use in an acute situation like drawing the energy away from the genitals and up towards the head or into the microcosmic or accupressure points or breathing techniques?