skyblue

In no shape or form have I ever heard Sadhguru deify himself. The quotes posted here are taken from longer talks and are completely out of context.

It depends on what you consider failure as. If failure to bring about an eternal world peace and communal bliss to the planet is considered as his failure, then yes. He failed.

If him being one of the pillars of the worldwide spread of Daoism and just spirituality in general counts as success, then he succeeded.

I think that he did what he could, and went his own way to attain the Dao. He worked for the emperor, felt dispassionate, and went away, but not before leaving the sagely treatise. Acted as an example to the world as a live and an excellent personification of the concept of 'letting go'.

8 hours ago, Immortal4life said:

Ok so I have a much better idea now of basic buddhist practices like Sadhana, Mantra accumulation, vajrasattva and meditations including shamatha, vipassana, mahamudra, and dzogchen 

 

I met a drikung kagyu teacher and they were accessible and really cool seeming people, very sincere and caring people, but light hearted too.

 

Buddhism can be so crazy sometimes though. It reminds me of a story I heard a long time ago, about like this Island where if sailors landed there, women would feed them lotuses, and then the men would never leave the island and time would pass away like a dream, they'd lose touch with reality

 

That's what buddhism can be, it really takes over your mind, and mind state.

 

Makes you forget reality and mundane activities. Next thing you know months pass and you've disengaged life a bit cuz your mind is always constantly thinking of the dharma, and compassion, and regret, and aversion to samsara, and you read these texts and all you think about is meditating more and getting more into that mind state, or true reality as it is, I won't say I see rigpa, but like the strong aspiration and desire to keep getting at rigpa, letting go into it, getting clearer and more aware every day, takes over your mind and personality.

 

When I started, my worldly activities had strong momentum, and I would also have meditations to energize and engage in my daily life activities. As time goes by though the Buddhist practices keep piling up and taking over

 

Yesterday I couldn't find motivation to engage in life at all. I couldn't find inspiration or interest in doing anything but meditating and reading mahamudra and dzogchen texts, and mantras. All day.

 

Its good, but today I had to force myself to cut out all buddhism, to do tai chi and meditations for health and engaging life, I need to get that balance down again, cuz it got to a point buddhism, and milarepa, and aspirations of love for all beings, and renunciation of samsara was taking over a bit too much. If you meditate on these things and do sadhana's every day, they start habituating even after you are practicing and effecting you all day afterwards.

 

I have the exact same opinion. Only, I have experienced this phenomenon in lots of Hindu practices as well. If I immerse myself too deeply within them, I'd start to lose touch with my surroundings.

There is a sensation of a loss of grounding which wouldn't come back unless the mind is brought back and relaxed into mundane reality, time and time again.

This is one of the reasons I'm more engaged in Daoist practices as of now, developing qualities within me while I look for certain other things in the people around me, the sky, the trees and just about everything.

While they might be helpful on the spiritual path, the disconnect caused from the 'here and now' makes my being rather uncomfortable. So while I haven't completely stopped interacting with Buddhist sutras and Hindu texts, I go about reading them at a slow pace, trying to digest little things and seeing them play out in my day-to-day mundane life. We just have to remember that while the direction is the same, each one of us walks their own dao, their own path.

SKY BLUE

Sappy blue pear

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Damo Mitchell podcast where he delves into Qigong, TCM, etc. : https://www.scholarsage.com/

1 hour ago, Creation said:

I had a similar experience recently, but with acknowledging my faults and generating a resolve to change them.  It was as though I couldn't do this without an intense sense of shame, self-blame, and self-criticism activating, which had a really toxic effect on my energy and emotional state. 

Exactly my problem. For some reason, I was convinced that as a cultivator, I should never be tired, frustrated/angry, have no weaknesses and be perfect at everything. And this was when I had barely begun to open my body.

Now that I think about it, it was very self damaging. The self-criticising part is still here, but it seems to be dissolving slowly. I actually needed to distance myself from anything spiritual for about a while for this to happen.

7 hours ago, freeform said:

 

So here's the issue.

 

 

In essence, Humility is selflessness... similar to what Dwai says... similar to what Early Grey says here:

 

 

So it is possible to contrive Humility by making the self small - 'the lowest of the low'.

 

The problem is, that this is still the self... this isn't Humility, it's a kind of false-humility. It's an affectation the self adopts to seem a certain way... kinda like the 'victim mentality'. It is, in a way, another way for the self to create more self.

 

The difficulty in releasing the 'self-creating-tendencies' is that you must have a strong enough self esteem to begin to release these tendencies.

 

When your self feels threatened it can only hold on for dear life.

 

When your self is under pressure - and you then try to subdue it - it's like forcing a frightened cat into a box - it'll scratch, hiss and fight back out of self preservation.

 

But when the cat feels safe and secure in its environment - all you have to do is introduce a box - and in it goes by itself.

 

When you feel strong enough in yourself that you can handle most threats, you can actually let go.

 

So first develop some ease within yourself. Self esteem doesn't have to be arrogant - it doesn't have to be a contrived confidence thing at all. It's just a deep belief that overall you're ok... your life is ok... you can handle things. If you feel a lack in some aspect of life... if you feel incapable in some way, notice it and take care of it.

 

Martial arts is how it was done in the olden days... but that's just one avenue - maybe find a way to talk to the kind of people that you normally feel threatened by... or figure out how to solve some area where you feel you're lacking. Talk to other people about this... sometimes you'll learn that your perspective isn't quite right - maybe you feel like you're socially awkward, but actually you come across very well to others.

 

Once you feel comfortable in yourself - then you can begin to explore humility.

 

Start with the easy stuff - humility before the divine is a good place to start. This is what makes prayer powerful (genuine prayer, not an 'o lord will you buy me a mercedes benz')

 

Then begin to evaluate your interactions with people...

 

Was what I said a way to bolster my status to that person?

 

Did I put that other person down as a way to bring myself up?

 

Did I do that out of true kindness or was it to look good, or be liked?

 

Simply pay attention to your 'self-creating-tendencies' - notice them, that's all.

 

And if you're strong and secure enough internally, eventually you'll be like the cat presented with an empty box.

Wow. I gained a lot from reading this. I shall read it again and contemplate. Thanks.

A funny video I came across.

Hi.

What exactly is humility? And how does one remain humble without hurting their self esteem (which can be extremely harmful, more so for cultivators)? How does one keep their self esteem relatively high without becoming arrogant?

I am probably misunderstanding something here, but when I read about becoming the lowest of the low (like water) and tried to emulate the mental quality in me, something felt very incongruent within. So I stopped doing that. However, doing it for quite a while (months) left a scar within me, so that whenever I did something, a part of me would desperately struggle to perform it better while constantly reminding me that I am not very good at it. This feeling has eased recently with careful and gentle contemplation, but it's still there. I would like to invite discussion on this topic to get more clarity and understanding about one of the fundamental qualities of Daoism.

Hey there! Congratulations!

7 hours ago, Creation said:

There are stories about the famous "Mahavatar Babaji", who has an immortal body that will remain until the Kalki avatar comes.  

Isn't he supposed to be a nirmankaya, one who can consciously recreate a form they choose to appear in and dismantle it after their job is done?

Kalpas and yugas are a fascinating topic for me, personally. I'm not like those who would argue against proven scientific facts by quoting sacred texts but I still think that there had to be some merit in them. I mean, why would the highest of cultivators of those times just write some imaginary numbers as the number of years and use these numbers so frequently in the description of the world? Moreover, they are similar in both Hindu and Buddhist cosmologies. There should be some reason as to why Shakyamuni Buddha, who chose to reject all ancient Hindu rituals and even the complete notion of atman would go on to use the same extraordinarily large numbers in his temporal model of universe. 

Whatever it may be, there's this one thing I gained from these temporal descriptions. It's that human life is short, way too short. In this bubble of a lifetime, I was fortunate enough to come across something that helps me peer into the nature of reality and the source of creation. I'm very grateful for that.

Hey @XianGong, how exactly do you define cultivation? I'm asking because I feel that it's a lot different from the general, more popular meaning of the term. Secondly, is there an end goal to your cultivation? If so, what is it?

Bump!

As a person about to step into the money-making game of the society, I would love to hear more views on this.

13 hours ago, XianGong said:

As far I have read, Buddhist texts only cover the part to the beginning of the path.
What are you gonna do NEXT, after you reached the beginning? IF all one can do is follow instructions written that don't have details about the path past getting to its start.

What, in your opinion, would be the end of this path if not Buddhahood?

Strong loving kindness needs to go hand in hand with jnana (wisdom) for one to become more fully fledged as a human being. Loving kindness without wisdom will result in one being an empath and lots of unpleasant states of being, including but not limited to burnouts, exhaustion, constructions and tensions in body, etc. Great wisdom without metta results in excessive cunningness, vying for mundane things while forgetting the grand scheme of things.

So if you work on the two of them together, there will be no reason to moderate loving kindness. Just let it expand and cover the whole cosmos, while you stay rooted in the mundane reality.

10 hours ago, Creation said:

[Puts Buddhist philosophy that on] If there is something beyond the mind (call it spirit or yuan shen or whatever), is it necessarily a "Self"? 

In my opinion, self or no self can be a matter of perspectives.

However, as a counter to this, it can be said that something that is a matter of perspectives is unreal. So, the self is unreal.

What do you think?

Healing With Wholefoods.

This was recommended on Damo's website in his article on the Yang Shen Fa. I haven't read it yet myself, but I will give it a try.

Listen

On 25/09/2021 at 11:14 PM, steve said:

In Dzogchen one learns to become responsible for oneself without following rules. A person who follows rules is like a blind person who needs someone to guide them in order to be able to walk.

For this reason it is said that a Dzogchen practitioner must open his or her eyes to discover their condition, so that they will no longer be dependent on anyone or anything.

~ Chögyal Namkhai Norbu

Beautiful.

You can get a subscription to Damo Mitchell's internal arts academy if you can. It'll definitely pay off. If not, try some of the stuff below:

Start with some physical exercises (not too much), some intuflow, wall squats where you face a wall from an inch or two away and squat, etc.

Lam Kam Chuen has a playlist of Zhan Zhuang vids on YouTube. You could check that out and start practicing them everyday.

For the theory part, I recommend watching videos from Damo Mitchell's Youtube channel. You can also get his books on neigong and internal alchemy if you want.

Also, try these practices at your leisure. They are an year or two's worth of practices that can give you a very solid base for the real work.

Start introspecting. Look at and understand your thought patterns and where they come from. Is there something you react to violently? Stop yourself and inteospect. Look at how you effect the people around you and how they, in return, have an effect on you. Spend some time (half an hour maybe) simply sitting with eyes closed (pratyahara) to start taming the wildness within. Try looking at serious situations in a humorous manner. 

Lastly, a few points to remember. Don't chase after the best cultivation systems. Don't lust after immortality, enlightenment, qi sensations, supernormal powers, etc. Start working on the foundations from the ground up : The body through these exercises and the mind through introspection. This creates a causation chain where the qi starts balancing itself.

Again, definitely get a good teacher if you can.

It's good enough to attract beginners into Daoism. Anything that propels humanity to look inside, away from the material world is good imho. While quite a bit of stuff he says does seem new age, it works well in stirring emotions and passion and generating movement in mortals (for lack of a better word) towards spirituality. I believe Daoism (as in the cultivation practices combined with the philosophy) could use more internet exposure than they currently are right now and this guy seems to be doing his part in the act pretty well.