Miffymog

A little bit more relaxed.

But what I like about it at the moment is how the quality of my practice accurately reflects how I feel my life is going at the time. Last week I felt rubbish and so was my practice. This week I feel great, and so does my practice, so it gives me a little mirror on how I'm feeling.

39 minutes ago, allinone said:

If to do emptiness meditation then the mind will have a body.

It was just this morning when I felt frustrated over how little control I have over my emotions. But that was immediately followed by the realisation that I have near complete control over my body and this thought came to me while I was in a semi empty minded state.

The above statement you wrote really related to this.

Without the mind there is still the body. I have little control over my emotions, but with my body I have nearly 100% control. 

Say you play a musical instrument as fast as you can, you can keep the tune and show off your technical abilities, but it makes it more difficult to express your emotions. If you play a tune at 70% of the speed you are capable of, that leaves the rest of your ability to naturally express your emotion.

I remember reading an article that said around 70 years ago, it was not an issue if a concert pianist made a mistake. This meant that the pianist could throw all their emotion into the performance with some abandon. Where as now, it is really frowned upon if any mistake is made, which means there's not quite the same passion in the performance.

So, there are those who much prefer recordings from the past because they don't mind having some mistakes because they like the extra passion. It's always interesting looking at recordings from the past because the attitudes and culture was so different and you get insight to this.

I have admit, I know very little about forms, but that old recording was fascinating.
 

16 hours ago, silent thunder said:

I found it interesting that my innate dislike of yellow is not unusual among tetrachromes.  It always seems harsh to me.  Sunlight is a real bugger for me out here in Southern California lol.

 

On some of these tests, I have noticed slippery areas in the orange hues for me.  I counted 37.

 

For the record, there are 39 colors in that diagram... according to those who produced the image.

? - Isn't it just that each colour change is evenly spaced out? So if you see the same colour spread over two or more 'bars' you're just not good enough at differentiating them? But if you then divide the grid up into evenly spread out vertical bars you get about 44 different colours - ? - I'm just confused.

7 hours ago, roger said:

I read something very interesting by Eckhart Tolle that's given me an exciting new idea about awakening to ultimate reality.

 

He said that our thoughts 'are not true absolutely'.

 

He wasn't just talking about value judgments or opinions, but nearly ALL of our thoughts.

 

I've learned that love is all there really is and that everything is really perfect. Fear, attack, and badness are only illusions. They're part of the DREAM WORLD.

 

So, if we have the thought, 'I'm feeling kind of anxious today,' we can remind ourselves that anxiety (fear) is only an illusion.

 

If we think, 'That was very unkind of him,' we can remember that lack of love and attack aren't real.

 

Or if we see on the news that something 'unfortunate' happened, we can know that badness is an illusion and that everything is happening as it should.

 

I was already aware of this approach to awakening, but after reading that teaching from Eckhart Tolle, it occurred to me just how much of my thinking acknowledges the dream world as real, rather than as an illusion.

For me at the moment, it's not that thoughts are incorrect or not true, more that the less I think the better (kind of). I am currently becoming more sensitive to how a particular thought induces a particular emotional / hormonal response. So I am (kind of) practising having less intense thoughts. Not to not have them, but rather to calm them down in order to maintain a more even emotional keel.

21 hours ago, Brian said:

 

Brilliant - I now have a higher down load limit so I can watch some of  the Youtube links. Quite a bit of Monty Python was just too weird for me but some of it was inspired surreal humour. And I now get to watch all of the links you post and it cheers up my day

12 minutes ago, Starjumper said:

 

The more I see and learn about that guy's chi kung the more I see he's presenting a glaring case of extremely wimpy chi kung.  I have a student here who told me what he was learning from him and it was absolutely dismal!  Either he actually knows little or he's hiding iwhat he knows.   You can do MUCH better by learning some real tai chi, like Yang or Chen style, from just about any accomplished teacher.  As a chi kung system what I see in the first video is pointless and lifeless.  Pointless because although it is an ok moving meditation there is almost no focus on moving energy in any way that is of benefit to health and zero benefit for cultivating chi power, other than the fact that it is a moving meditation, which has some health benefit of it's own.

Having read some of his books, I can see where you are coming from. It is possibly due to him just trying to make the techniques as palatable and as easy to access for westerners as possible. Doing some kind of form is better than doing nothing ...

2 hours ago, bubbles said:

Being mindful to what you are doing and to the surroundings is enough of a healthy practice while driving your car.

I would keep reverse breathing for a time of formal practice. Besides, Reverse breathing is not a stand alone practice, it is part of larger systems and should be considered done accordingly.

Just to second this!!!

I love this pink discussion. It was only a few weeks ago when I was thinking about colours and thought 'all they are is a continuous variation in wavelength with a higher and lower limit, then why do we not experience them as a simple increase / decrease like we do with the frequency of a sound?

I spent some time thinking about how our interpretation of the world was benefited by our perception changing this simple linear increase with a top and bottom limit in to the circular colour circle painters are familiar with.

As has just been suggested, the link in the circle could well be this colour pink! But why make it a circle?

Well, I then went on to think that we perceive three main colours, yellow (maybe due to the predominane of the sun), green (due to the predominance of green leaves etc) and blue (due to the 'blue' sky and sea).

Now, if you sense the colours not as a continual increase in wavelength, but by taking three sample points amongst that spectrum. It may then, in fact, be relatively easy to conceptualise these three points as actually existing on a circular spectrum, rather than a linear one.

This conclusion satisfied my thought process somewhat - but not entirely. If I'm honest, I am little disappointed that we don't experience colour in a linear way with an upper and lower limit like we do with sound and I actually feel our brains are just playing a big fat trick on us, one that we can't stop it from doing ...

But, maybe because we can sense intensity / brightness on a linear scale, the brain decided having a linear colour scale too was too much, and that our lives would be easier if it was circular ... I don't know.

46 minutes ago, Starjumper said:

OK, I made a video yesterday.  I was motivated to do this after seeing the horrendous tai chi performance by the immortal master shyster Gary Lyman.  I was going to post it there but then that thread disappeared and I was thinking, there must be some place where we can put some tai chi short form demos =)

 

Keep in mind I haven't done Yang style in a million years and did this mainly to check myself for errors that have crept in over the decades without a teacher.  I can see I made a few mistakes, like the 'press' is too high and the birds beak isn't tight enough, in the second round I forgot to step forward on the first brush knee and push.  The rest of what may look like doing it wrong are instead doing it the Thcoung Ta Tchen way, where you get to see where the power comes from, something that is more hidden in the normal Yang style.   This is the Yang style of Grandmaster Tchoung Ta Tchen, his last variation of it before he passed away.  It is a double form but I only did the half which is facing towards the camera.  This form also has some Chen flavor added which you may notice.  It's done twice, the second time is faster and slinkier with more Chen flavor, and it shows some kicking variations which are 'hidden' in section one, there are other places for a kick which I didn't do.  You can hear some horses in the distance a couple of times.

 

 

Great stuff - I was completely hypnotised by the movement of your hands

I used to practice 'Silent Illumination' based on the work of Master Hongzhi and transmitted to the west by Master Sheng Yen. It's very similar to Shikantaza and when I took up Zhan Zhuang, my aim was simply to take the 'Silent Illumination' meditative state of mind over into a  standing meditation. I could then combine the benefits of meditation along with benefits of stance training.

I have to admit, I'm still not sure where I am in terms of this transition. If I were seated and took a 'Silent Illumination' state into a 'sitting and forgetting' state that is sometimes described in Daoism, I think I could achieve this with some success. Although how much change there would be between the two I can't really say.

However, with standing, the mental state is quite different from a sitting. I've read a few times that ZZ is not a meditation and that you should just let your mind wonder if it wants to so this is what I do. If my mind finds itself settling down then it is definitely nearing a 'Silent Illumination' state, but it is not my aim and these periods are relatively infrequent.

One of the differences for me is that sometimes while sat in Zazen, there can be a tendency for there to be a lot of energy in the head. Now, I don't feel this is an actual aim of the meditation, more something that can happen as a consequence of it. Where as with ZZ, arguably there is an aim for energy to descend as much as possible.

Ultimately I tend to agree with something that one of the posters Spotless often says - and that is to try to avoid trance like states in meditation, which means you are then more truly present i.e. each second that passes you feel as a whole second that has passed.

There are some thoughts on the topic

Currently - Around the World in Eighty Days, Jules Verne.

1 hour ago, SHINTO said:

It is practical taoism.

Chuang tzu is referring to it.

I've filled in a few forms recently saying my religion was Daoism. I often then get asked what this is. The response I give is that I'm not really sure but that I follow Daoist practices. When asked what this is, rather than saying its Zhan Zhuang or Qi Gong, I just say its a form of Tai Chi, which is the closest thing they can relate to and seems to satisfy their curiosity.

So what kind of Daoism is this, if any at all? Well, I think of it as practical Daoism. For me, it's not religious or philosophical, its something I do, so its practical Daoism.

Just curious, and I know it will be different for different people, but I was wondering ...

... how long does the short form and long form take?

I've looked through the thread and I've not been able to work this out.

10 minutes ago, allinone said:

Went outside to find and eat berries, i noticed a bug on a berry and i took it away as its nothing. Whhyyyyy

Some inner turmoil being projected on to the outside world.

7 minutes ago, CloudHands said:

I think the harder is to keep each day a place for it, everyday. And keep searching, among the ups and downs. Remembering to enjoy each step, even the hard ones, they are a blessing. That's the one you learn the more.

This is very true. My aim is to keep my practice consistent everyday, which means I have to still be happy to do it even on my least motivated mornings ie with a hang over. So I never push my self too much on any practice.

I keep telling my self that that duration of the practice almost always exactly equals how much less sleep I need each night so I'm not actually missing out or sacrificing anything by doing it. This train of thought helps after I've done it, but it can still be difficult getting up early every day to make time for it.

I went on one silent retreat where the topic was the koan 'what is this?' It just didn't work for me and I had to leave half way through. A few years later I went on another retreat where the meditation was  'Silent Illumination', I stayed for the whole duration and made good progress.

The difference is that for the first retreat I did not have an established practice before but with the second one I'd already been using 'Silent Illumination' for about a year so I knew that I liked it and that it worked for me.

It can be worth testing the water before you step into what can be a very challenging experience.

I wrote a practice log for my ZZ practice which I still do, I review both books at some point in the log.

Well, the British election has come and gone and while it has made little impact outside of the country, inside, there have been some pretty significant changes for us Brits.

As with any election there have been a few bloody noses, beyond that of Teresa May's.

Alex Salmond, the greatest proponent of a second Scottish Independent referendum, lost his seat to a Conservative (!).

Nick Clegg, who took the Liberal Democrats from 57 seats in 2010 to 8 in 2015 by going into coalition with the Conservatives, has also lost his seat.

And Teresa May who called for the election in order to increase her majority, has instead gone backwards.

Why? Well, there are a number of reasons, but my favourite is the performance given by Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the Labour Party, who has managed to lead the party to its greatest increase in percentage popularity since 1945.

And he did this with an incredibly left wing manifesto which included high taxes for the rich and the renationalisation of the railway. The main demographic that these policies appealed to were the young and there was a 72% turn out of the electorate in the 18-24 age bracket (!).

These policies were in total opposition to the Blairite ones of 'New Labour' who always aimed to take the middle ground.

These left wing views are also the reason why Mr Corbyn has had to take on a leadership challenge and has struggled to fill positions in his cabinet because, despite massive grass roots support, few of his own MP's actually support him.

However, May's own campaign was also poorly run.

So what next? The Conservatives are still the largest party, but they don't have a majority any more. In the next few months there could be a challenge to May's leadership or even another general election.

And all this with Brexit negotiations starting in a few days time.

I practice ZZ every day and although I've never experienced what you describe, I have come across something slightly similar while knitting.

I happen to have a knitting mill which produces circular tubes. I use this on a table while standing up so that the tube has somewhere to drop down. The thing is, it's a cheap mill and I have to watch each stitch that the mill knits like a hawk in case it drops one, if it does, I pretty much have to start the whole thing from the beginning again.

When I started doing this, I would simply bend my head down at a slight angle so I could see what was going on. But after an hour of standing like this, my slightly bent neck would aggravate the sciatica in my lower back which would then send pain down to my foot.

This really took me by surprise because I haven't had any sciatica since I started ZZ, and I'd definitely never experienced it due to something that my neck was doing. The solution was simple, stand with a straight neck and just look downwards at a greater angle, pain gone.

The point here is that doing one thing with one part of your spine definitely effects the rest of it. The pain you're experiencing could be due to a slight trapped nerve / slipped disc / injury in your neck that you never knew about before.

ZZ can definitely help with some injuries, but it's not a cure all panacea and it can be difficult to differentiate between 'good pain' and 'bad pain'. Your instructor may well be very experienced, but I've had Yoga teachers tell me certain things were good for my sciatica in the past and they were just plain wrong.

This is a pain that you should be very wary of. One of the things I had to learn about ZZ was the limit that I could push my knees to. If I stood for too long (say around 30 mins everyday), the right knee would start to swell up when cycling. I cut down on my time and my knee is now absolutely fine. Accepting the limits of my ability and curbing my ambition was tough, but I've now got a simple settled practice that I'm happy with.

As owner permissions do not apply for the time being (so I can't hide your post), maybe this is a good opportunity to discuss whether or not your post belongs here.

 

Yes, wildfires are beneficial to certain types of forest, and some even need wildfire in order to produce seeds and continue to flourish.

 

But a post like that... doesn't it come under 'wildfire appreciation' rather than 'tree appreciation'? If someone made a 'human appreciation' thread, would you post something about the need to appreciate death? Would that be appropriate in a topic intended to celebrate humans, not the death of humans?

 

Honest questions. My first instinct was to remove your post but now I'm only 85% sure...

I can see why the dramatic picture of fire evoked some emotions, especially if you are fond of trees. For me though, MooNiNite was just raising one of the aspects of the lives of trees. There is some natural beauty even in that picture of flame.

Hurt locker time for me - I'm having to ask for forgiveness