senseless virtue

This is what Sifu Terry had to say about jewelry over a decade ago: Sifu Terry on electronics a few years ago: Hopefully this helps while Sifu Terry's answer is still pending.

Practices for World Peace Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s Recent Advice for Generating Peace in the World When the world is in trouble, it can feel very powerless and overwhelming to not know what we can do to actually help. IMI Sangha recently asked Lama Zopa Rinpoche for advice on prayers and practices they could do at this time. We are happy to share this valuable advice with you as well: Sampa Lhundrupma Recitation of Guru Rinpoche mantra Heart Sutra recitation Prayer to stop war: Prayer in Accordance with the Times Most Secret Hayagriva sadhana (for those who have received the initiation and can do the practice) Download compilation: Prayers to Stop War – Prayers 1–3 Download Prayer in Accordance with the Three Times – Prayer 4. For those who can do, or sponsor at a monastery, please also do: Drugchuma Most Secret Hayagriva Tsog Kong Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s advice for how to motivate and think when doing these prayers and practices:At the beginning generate strong bodhicitta, then do these prayers and practices to stop the war between Russia and Ukraine. The main purpose is to stop the war immediately. Then also to prevent famine, disease, and all the dangers of earth, water, fire, and wind, for all these dangers to be pacified immediately. To fill the whole world with perfect peace and happiness, including enlightenment, and to generate loving kindness, compassion and bodhicitta in the heart of all sentient beings, especially in that of the President of Russia.Think that from Guru Padmasambhava’s heart, beams radiate and totally purify all the six realms’ sentient beings, totally purify all the delusions and negative karmas collected from beginningless rebirths, especially anger, attachment, and ignorance; think that these are totally purified. Then recite Sampa Lhundrupma, followed by the Padmasambhava mantra (one or two malas).With strong faith in Guru Padmasambhava and total reliance, Guru Padmasambhava will definitely help because his compassion embraces all sentient beings.Then another way to think is, with strong faith in His Holiness the Dalai Lama in the aspect or Guru Padmasambhava, nectar beams are emitted to the Russian President and enter his body, and totally purify all his negative karma and obscurations; all the dissatisfied mind, desire, ignorance, anger, and selfish mind are totally purified; he generates bodhicitta especially, and then the whole path to enlightenment. Do that very strongly, making strong prayers to His Holiness the Dalai Lama.Then nectar beams are also emitted to all the Russian and Ukrainian armies, and these purify all the anger and self-cherishing thought on both sides, but mainly President Putin’s. They generate bodhicitta, and stop giving harm to even one sentient being and only benefit sentient beings, up to enlightenment.Then recite the Heart Sutra and the prayer to stop wars.For those who can do the Most Secret Hayagriva sadhana, do this at the beginning of the practice. When reciting the mantra, you can do the same visualizations as above, and think President Putin’s mind is totally changed and he generates bodhicitta. Source: Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition website, article Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s Recent Advice for Generating Peace in the World. My additional thoughts: Always believe that peace and harmony are possible! Never lose your heart even if times appear grim!

Meeting with European Campaigners for Peace November 8, 2023 Thekchen Chöling, Dharamsala, HP, India - This morning His Holiness the Dalai Lama met a group of peace campaigners mostly from Europe. Their leader, Sofia Stril-Rever from France, declared that their hearts were filled with joy to meet him again. She told him that they were inspired by the example he has set in service of humanity. She reported that the group took part in observing the UN endorsed Day of Conscience on 5th April. This occasion is dedicated to establishing fundamental freedoms and human rights for all people without distinction. Stril-Rever asked His Holiness how good conscience and love can contribute to lasting peace in the world and he responded: “As human beings we all receive our mother’s love as soon as we are born. As young children we unhesitatingly play with other children without caring where they are from or what they or their family believe. This kind of openness is our basic human nature. “As adults, too many of us see other people in terms of ‘us’ and ‘them’, basing our discrimination on secondary political or religious differences between us. If we are to contribute to peace among us, we must find ways to acknowledge that fundamentally, as human beings, we are all the same. We share a common experience. We are born the same way and ultimately, we all die. “Focussing on differences of nationality or faith just becomes an excuse to kill each other. It’s unthinkable. Even animals live together more peaceably. If things are to change, we 8 billion human beings must learn to live together on this planet. We must recognise our common humanity. That’s why, whenever I meet someone new, I always see them as another human being like me. And because of this I recognise that we all belong to one human family.” In answering questions about the climate crisis, His Holiness remarked that the changes taking place seem to be beyond our ability to control. He reiterated that as human beings we are all the same and we must learn not only to live together but also to work together in our common interest. “While we still have time,” he added, “it would be sensible to cultivate a sense of brotherhood and sisterhood and help each other. We need to find a way to prolong the basic human love our mother shows us at birth and extend it to others for the rest of our lives.” Asked how religion can influence the future of the world, His Holiness replied: “The essence of religion is warm-heartedness. This is what all religions teach, whatever philosophical stance they adopt. Warm-heartedness is the essence: cultivating this is what will help.” https://www.dalailama.com/news/2023/meeting-with-european-campaigners-for-peace The Efficacy of Non-Violence

See my old post here: There are many ways to study and approach the qi phenomenon and how the human energy-body works. I've also read of cultivators in Germany using infrared video cameras to capture how the body reacts to higher training.

Mantas are beautiful creatures and diving in the sea is a great hobby for sure. You take photos or just go on to admire them?

Do you feel there is difference between romantic love and altruistic love? Why do you think the Mahayana Buddhist practice is centered around cultivating bodhicitta, i.e. altruistic love? Could it make meditation more powerful by any chance?

The Dao Bums doesn't have any decent policy for content curation. Think of it as the anarchists' library where books are often placed and returned on random shelves.

In general, Mitchell says that his main lineage is Dragon Gate.

Mr. Mitchell keeps his lineage information hidden which is considered alright and even normative in the Daoist tradition. Not everyone likes this lack of transparency.

My thoughts about the overall abuses in this thread: Having correct ethical discipline gives clear and meaningful speech. Lacking maturity or kindness, it's easy to permit abusive language, odd attempts at humor, or get sidetracked into nonsense. If a person believes that causing no harm is a valid and highly worthwhile value, then there is real consideration for not harming others even by accident. Not harming is one of the few indicators that are difficult conceal and which show pretty accurately where a person stands in their ethical training, and by that I would also say how well their preliminary training has succeeded. Preliminaries should be in everyone's heart when any strange powers or attainments are brought up because it's heartfelt kindness which actually transforms and empowers people. The lack of love only empowers vices and delusion.

Basically huiyin, yes.

Thank you for confirming your ignorance.

You probably have no experience of genuine cults based on how and what you write, therefore you are just another person who doesn't really know how to articulate their thoughts. Cults always have more sinister stuff going on than some crazy monetization scheme(s), but so far you have or anyone else has even implied anything of those on Rudi or his teachers. Of course, it's a very effective insult to call some group randomly a cult because it just suits your fancy, isn't it?

Some years ago I discussed briefly with @freeform about a neigong practice that had a non-standard lower dantian: it was located at the perineum. What does this mean? It tells that the location of the lower dantian is really flexible and can depend on the cultivation method entirely, unless the dantian forms spontaneously through meditative practices. This also implies that some qigong and neigong methods may have natural incompatibility unless the dantian is fully developed already. What is the point of having the dantian in the perineum? It allows a greater stimulation of the root chakra and basic vitality. The downside is that the practitioner must have a very strict discipline in ethics and sexual behavior so that it doesn't lead into losing steam to increased sex drive. There might be other considerations also, but I'm not initiated in the practice and don't know more details.

Oh boy.

I understand perfectly well that you are pulling a lot punches with little regard to proper investigative dialogue, etiquette, and how others feel about your judgmental views which you explain as straight facts. You are inspecting your attitudes and giving them a public voice. You really shouldn't be discussing things you don't have the faintest idea about.

There seems to be substantial issue that you write a lot that doesn't actually mean what it implies, and then go on calling others liars without even bothering to make any throughout investigation.

Out of curiosity and to measure the credibility of your speech: How many Reiki healers have you counseled personally and what have been your experiences? Why you feel qualified to comment on Reiki as if its methodology was in any way comparable to what is taught and practiced in Chinese Neigong?

Do you want a good faith investigation of strange phenomena or a harsh judgment of the person involved with them? How you started you last post seems out of place. You could have worded yourself much more politely without losing any of your skepticism.

Oh dear. I have met a fanatical vegan who thought this picture genuinely passes as good pro-vegan propaganda. He was a dutiful soldier for the cause of carrots and soy beans.

Baolin Wu's books have deliberate lies that cast a genuine modern history martial arts master in an unfavorable light as I have pointed out in the thread that was already linked here: It's wishful thinking that the miracle story of Du Xinling has any credible substance through the transmission of Baolin Wu. If there was a character named Du Xinling in Beijing as Patrick Kelly tells in his book that you referred to, then the old monk figure likely was a trained actor like everybody else there, although he might have been particularly charismatic and fully enjoying his job of delivering riveting tales to gullible tourists. It's no different than a pirate actor in a amusement park confessing to a impressionable kid that he actually is a real pirate and the others only are actors, especially if the kid had vocal suspicions about some people being fake pirates, and that he goes to drink rum by his hidden treasure stash every night when the paid actors go home. Moreover, what Patrick Kelly's account tells us now is that Baolin Wu himself might have been inspired by the same actor whom he saw in the White Cloud Monastery, so that Baolin Wu decided to elevate him as his make-believe master in order to turn "the old master's Daoist miracle tales" even more lucrative business than ever before. Why waste a good lie if it was found effective such that people enjoy hearing about it and would pay to hear more of these tales made into ever more elaborate fabrications?

July 9, 2023 by Mattias Daly, Organizer Hi everybody--got some big news to share! Ten Discourses on Daoist Alchemy is now known as... Taoist Inner Alchemy: Master Huang Yuanji's Guide to the Way of Meditation. It will be published by Shambhala Publications on March 12, 2024 and distributed internationally by Penguin Random House. Next week I begin going through the page proofs... So, one last step (I hope!), and then it's off to the presses! I thank you all for helping get this project so close to completion!

Buddhist Practice Is Not For Spacing Out Buddhism is very keen on emptiness and unselfishness (non-self), but it's not spaced out or navel gazing hippie spirituality. Why? Buddhism teaches that there are two merits to be accumulated: the merit of virtue & the merit of emptiness. The former requires compassionate action and true altruistic love for others because only these realize what is truly unselfish behavior. This is where many people — especially the self-initiated Western folk — interested in internal cultivation get a failing grade: they simply disregard perfecting conduct as a supplement at best or as a needless annoyance at worst. You wouldn't find any traditional Buddhist teacher supporting such disregarding notions. People who claim to understand about abiding in emptiness might just get swallowed by a false impression instead. I have seen quite a few Western yogis (even more abundantly outside of this forum) who claim to attainments and speak of their self-grasping having diminished, but neither do their conduct nor yogic accomplishments align with the traditional criteria at all. Who is fooling whom? No virtue, no bodhicitta, thus no advancing in the two accumulations. For those who wish to practice the Buddhist way: Don't go cherry picking what is easy or you may end up doing the spiritual equivalent of glue huffing or sniffing farts and thinking yourself really civilized and top of the game. Please have some grounded skepticism instead and try not to be impressed by any appearance of "emptiness" because that itself would also be another illusion.

My new ageless plastic Guru! Total devotion!

@statusquovadis Here is one, please enjoy.