markern

What has kunlun done for your karezza? I am intrigued.

I too, as I am guessing almost everyone else, see this thread as a thinly veiled attack on Seth Ananda. I can`t see that he had viscously attacked you before so why the attack. If it is not meant as an attack then why does your post feel so insincere and sarcastic?

Nicely said! I agree:) By the way everyone responsible for pearl harbor might today have been reborn as americans for all we know or be in hell realms or live in the Peruvian mountains. So why should those that live there now pay?

Interesting! I did not know that. I knew they did some stuff but thought it was more in the hundreds of thousands. I think the main reason for the focus is that in Europe we fought the Nazis directly and the Holocaust happened here. China was too far away for people at the time to concern themselves much with. Personally I don`t really believe in karma for countries and regions. It does not make sense to me.

Really? The Japanese killed more chinese people than the nazis killed jews? My heartfelt wishes to Japan as well.

I haven`t had time to read through the thread so apologies if I missed some vital info. You could try Thonglen. It is a buddhist meditation to build compassion++. It is a VERY good painkiller. When I read that it was a good painkiller I tried to play arround with it a bit and found it had almost instant effect. Makes you feel great as well. However, it radically opens your heart and being in a way many are not ready for. I felt quickly that this was too much for me to handle. When I mentioned the practice to my teacher which had been doing it for years he said that if you practice it before you are ready you might create extremely subtle holding patterns in the heart beneath the aparent openess because your heart wants to protect itself. But you have many years of practice behind you so you should probably give it a go. In this book: http://www.amazon.com/Joy-Living-Unlocking-Science-Happiness/dp/0307347311/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1299844933&sr=8-1-spell The writer, a Budhist monk, writes about how his father (which was one of my teachers teachers), underwent an operation in a western country and woke up during the operation because the doctors hadn`t given him enough drugs. The doctors panicked as they thught he would have to be in excruciating pain but he asked them not to drug him anymore because he enjoyed playing with the pain. After years of meditating on pain he learnt to sort of penetrate it in a way that made it disolve and just energize him and give him pleasure in stead. It made him very wakefull it hink he said. So there are meditation techniques for working with pain that can help you mostly work arround it. At least parts of the day when you are able to focus enough to do it.

On of my best friends told me he can not come unless he has sex with a woman he really trusts. That usually means she has to be his girlfriend in order for him to come. He is quite alpha by the way. I versions of this are more common amongst men than people think as I have seen a bunch of threads about it in sexuality forums over the years.

I can see how htat can be the case but the studies wold then show that everybody studied closes themselves of to it. That does not seem very plausible.

Yeah, but when you give them to a hundred people and you give another hundred people a placebo and tell them it is homeopathy the group who got the homeopathy pills does no better than the placebo group. In other words the entire efect is placebo. And if a statisticly anomaly lead to an actual efects being disguised the efect would have to normally be incredibly small to get covered up by a statistical anomaly. Given that htere has now been done many studies on Homeopathy and metastudies of the studies show that there is zero efecs when the studies are looked at as a whole then Homeopathy is disproved entirely.

Good to hear you are learning the sounds. I am getting a lot out of them these days. THey are my most important emotional healing tool now. One thing that can be good to remember is that even if you can`t bring forth specific emotional qualities you want in the organs, the sound, colour and smiling at the organ still makes it work in teh right direction. You know many people have trouble in teh begining with genereating the feeling of confidence or happiness for hte secret smile or emotions such as trust in the spleen and kindness in the liver, but that does not prevent progress because of the other stuff I mentioned. THat can be good to remember if it feels frustrating. I have a very minor scoliosis myself. It is so small that it is likely to disapear with further practice. What worries me more is that I have spndilosis (or spondylitis, can`t remember the english name properly). I have almost entirely gotten rid of it through practice but I think it has still left obstructions in my body that might bring me pain when energy comes to clean it out later on. I love taking long walks. It feels good during and leaves me feeling great afterwards.

I believe homeopathy "works". But purely through placebo. THere has been done many studies on homeopathy and when they are all reviewed together they show zero effect. It is extremely unlikely that something that has been looked at that well should have an efect. At least not more than a tiny, tiny efect. Even herbs that haven`t traditionally been claimed to have more than a small or moderate efects usually turn out to have clear albeit small or moderate efects when studied well. I have read that a placebo efect of about 35% improvement in a condition is the average when someone believes in a treatment. I think a cultivator that believes in a treatment that has no efects beyond belief will probably get an even greater improvement than the average person because a cultivator has developed strong "NLP skills" so whenever they believe something or intend something their mind and body "obeys".

This I think is very true. Whenever i think about how it would be to have certain siddhis I feel like it would bring me ethical dilemas that are extremely comlex and that I am not ready for yet. I can also feel how it is easy to feel special and too powerfull and howdrug like that can be, sort of like the way the ring in lord of the ring works. I think both these things holds true for almost everyone and that means getting too powerfull siddhis would mess a lot of us up. Later on when you have gotten furhter and have gradually adapted to the complexity and differentness of a spiritual and energetic life it gets easier to handle and one can probably get an intuitive sense of how to handle ones abilities. In addition to seeking siddhis from the start probably being problematic it has always been incomprehensible for me why anyone would spend valuable practice time developing a fun power when they could work on enlightenment or at least emotional and energetic balance.

How about starting to practce the iner smile and or healing sounds Non? Try to go the route Dmatawards went.

Another related problem can be found when an advanced Vipassana student go to a retreat. Because attainments are not suposed to be talked about it is often impossible to get any idea where exactly the teacher is on the path and so if he can teach you how to get to a level beyond where you are at now. This leads to advanced students sometimes spending long time in retreats being thaught by teacher that should be their students in stead. Daniel Ingram writes well on this.

WHat??? I have a book with interviews with Buddhist masters where his holiness or venerable something A Tibetan guy I think) says that Falun Gong should be banned and talks about how abusive the mind control methods of Falun Gongs leader is and he calls it the highest BUDDHIST qigong

I have read about ti and I think it reduces peples worth to showdogs. I think it is an inhumane, bordeline fascistic way of bringing up a child.

THat said, I do belive 5ET is righ that the current generation suffers from an entitelment syndrome that can create a lot of problems. But I would blame celebrity cult, reality tv, wealth, the after effects of hipie ideaology and several other factors just as much or more than the inernet for that.

Nice post! With regards to "interviewing" different teachers. If I am to learn something that in fact will (positively in most cases) lobotomize my brain, which is what meditation will do to you in a sense, then of course anyone should inquire in depth about what exactly will be thaught and what it will do to them. I certainly would like to have explained in as much detail what exactly I am about to put myself through so that I can evaluate it properly and compare it with the other options.

I agree with some of the things in the opening post but would like to mention that at thedharmaovergroundorg they have had spectacular success at helping people reach very high levels with Vipassana in a very short time. Zero contact with live teachers and yet far faster results than most traditional teachers would get with their students. Many there have also had extensive training with traditional teachers and can compare. And we are talking results such as stream entry and far beyond and mastery of all the eight Jhanas. THese are not small attinments and they are done solely via the writen word on the web. Although Daniel Ingrams work is the key in this progress the exchange of experience between the community of practioners has significantly improved upon the teachings he had to begin with. Anotehr interesting example is AYP. No one has ever met the teacher and no one knows his real name. Yet through his books, his online lesons, his answers to students in the forum and via mail and through the exchange of experience between students in the forum the AYP students have done very, very well. It is also a fact that you will often get very little actual time to get questions answered thorougly by teachers in workshops and retreats. THe depth of answers you can get from a teacher such as Yogani or Ingram when they repeatedly answer questions and questions to answers and five advanced students chip in and give their perspectives in posts that in total took many hours to write, often transmitt more and more precise knowledge than you can get in person. KAP taguht via skype also works excelent. Teryy Dunns teaching of his system via DVDs and a thread here on thetaobums also work very well. THat said I certainly want as much personal contact with teachers as possible as I find that highly valuable as well and there are aspects of what you can get in a personal student teacher relationship that you can`t`get online. However, I do not find it essential for high attainments, even high levels of enlightenment, and I think I have backed that up about as well as antyhing can be backed up in the world of cultivation with the four mentioned cases.

Nice! I`ll remember that one. Key insight IMO.

Sure it is difficult.

I am pretty sure she would not need to pay a cent for that. She could not only get it for free but get paid for it. Actually some women do get paid for that although not in as large numbers as we talk about here. I am sure if a women in a big city wanted two hundred men a day to donate some Jing she would have them show up if she created enough internett adds.

Sure, he would need some degree of ok looks and body language and dance skills to get that far but that is not that difficult. It is not easy, but it is not all that hard either. You can find step by step and very god instructions on how to approach on the dance floor. Let go of your ego and try fifty times and eventualy you will get the vibe down. Add in some reggaeton and hip hop classes and some good fashion advice and most men shoudl be able to at least get to dance with those girls that rarely get approached and they can work up from there.

Flirting isen`t insincere just because the words are actual lies. THe point is that you are expressing emotions and meaning through your body language and through the subtext to teh actual words ratehr than the words. That is actually very similar to any sort of in person communication wether between friends, colleges or parents and children. It just gets a bit more exreme in flirting. So I think you put too much emphasis on the words. THrough talking about completely different things you could have communicated your interest and she could have communicated hers. Even dispite possibly saying "lies" about realtionship status and other things this would have been honest in my opinion.

Just get her on the dance floor and she will know. Once you get into a bit steamy dancing you can even put her hand on your jade stalk to have her inspect it .