Apech

renewal could be. a fresh start for all of us. green shoots of new hope.

Thanks for your reply. Just to clarify - when I referred to understanding I did not mean intellectual knowledge but rather an awareness of the nature of mind, being or reality - whichever you like. I still have a problem with 'habit' but I won't split hairs . Best wishes and good luck in all your work. Apepch7.

Well no not really. I feel you may be arguing from a dualist point of view. You will only be disappointed if you go into meditation with an expectation. I don't - so without the kind of goal you suggest I don't get disappointed. I was trying to explain that intent and expectation are not the same thing. No one, no matter what they say, starts meditating without some intent. Understanding is the first intent but this is not conditional on result. If I come out of meditation more confused or scattered then this is part of the process and will lead to better understanding, since it displays the nature of the mind. Meditation is not 'habitual' or 'without thought'; as habitual refers to routines and inertic patterns which is not what meditation is about and there is nothing wrong with thought. Trying to meditate without thought is a form of dualism - it is better to look at 'mind-as-is' and understand its nature. There is a good story in 100,000 songs of Milarepa called "Women's role in Dharma' which deals with this.

Composite animals like Chimera are interesting. Here's a front end view of your Etruscan one. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Chimera_di_Arezzo.jpg

Yep I will give it a try.

Om Yoda, You have started a cult on the discussion page! Taurus - North Scorp. - South Aquarius - West Leo - East in my understanding. This is from the understanding of the Zodiac as four elements in three phases. The three phases being cardinal, fixed and mutable. The fixed versions being the four compass points. Also the four beasts (bull, eagle, man and lion). For reasons I can't recall Scorpio is transposed into Aquila the Eagle for the purposes. Also the four apostles, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Would have to look up which is which cos I don't do Christian stuff much (!). When I was in Greece the eastern Orthodox iconography used the beasts for the four apostles.

gotten in greed- grab garbage heaps of grub gorged grot garden growing green.

I think that intending is not the same as expecting. If I expect to have some kind of experience when I meditate then when it doesn't work out then I may become dissatisfied or disappointed. But this is because I have built up some picture of the goal in my mind which doesn't match the result. However this is not the same as building the intent to meditate. If you practice and you begin to feel the momentum of your practice which has built up over time - a kind of momentum which carries you through rough patches - then this is what I call intent. Silent will, or what ever. The goal of this can be very broad and actually may change over time as your meditation grows deeper and deeper. But to a simple soul like me I begin with understanding (later there is becoming, doing and complete absorption - or however you might want to put it.). Meditation with no intent is quite an achievement, IMO, and is much more than just not saying to yourself what you are doing. It is more like just pure sitting - if you can do that then bloody good I say! Far from gaining nothing from this - you will gain everything (in a way).

Well said! I think that you inevitably set up intent when you sit to meditate but its best to let that intent to be to understand, to discover and so on. After all why are you meditating anyway?

I think correspondences are tricky at the best of times and get harder and harder from culture to culture. Even the Sons of Horus to the elements is difficult. Closest fit is to the four fixed signs of the Zodiac - Scorpio, Taurus, Leo and Aquarius.

Cat, serpent and tree. This is from Ch. 17 Book of the Dead. Ra in the form of a cat (with rabbit ears!) slays the serpent Apophis before the sacred Ished tree (Sycamore sacred to Nut) so that the sun can rise. BTW symbolically the sun rise can be taken as the energy rising into the higher centres and becoming visible. The Ished tree is said to be 'split on its side' or split in two and could be taken to stand for the energy body 'split' by energy rising up the central channel.

So ... $1000 or remain in ignorance ... not a hard decision to make, ignorance can be fun with $1000 in your pocket.

I need to see the official certificate of registration of this koan with TAKS before I start to contemplate anything. I don't puzzle over any old rubbish you know! I do have standards.

Best so far - what's the answer?

or mortgage brokers, whose derivatives have dropped. Things of no value. (answered my own haiku - sorry I was bored.)

Is that a koan?

God is everything but everything is not God. If you are reading this: "Are you here because of me, or am I here because of you?"

No I, no world. Where do I look to find the origin of the mind?

Your name. Who is writing this?

In most people awareness (or the mind) is already scattered. Learning to settle the mind and concentrate (in an effortless way) is something everyone has to learn. You may find that the feeling in certain parts of the body is quite intense because of previously established patterns, habitual ways of being and perhaps energy blockages. It may be necessary to do something specific to change this (for which you need the guidance of a competent teacher). But otherwise you need to 'set the intent' of settling the mind in a restful and yet aware state on the lower Tan Tien (if that is your practice), notice the various other feelings in the body, thoughts and emotions and so on without following them - and return gently to the object of your focus when you realise that your mind has drifted. I agree with the poster above who suggested the breath as the focus of your meditation as this is the most widely used starting point.

I took the five terminally ill people from the second question and threw them onto the railway line in the first question. After being hit by the train the five people stopped asking for new organs - so I released the healthy guy to get on with the rest of his life - free from guilt. The six people I saved on the railway lines took me out for a drink to celebrate but got upset when I said that having spent the evening with them I was beginning to think I had made a bad decision ... how's that for ungrateful? eh?

If you have a teacher then you should go and discuss this with them. If not - it is important to maintain your practice. So if you set out to focus on the lower Tan Tien but get reactions in other parts of the body, then just note those feelings but continue to focus on Lower Tan Tien. Gently move your attention back to the point of concentration. You need to be relaxed but persistent. The throat centre is important though and you might want to look up exercises specific to it.

Silence. My dog has Buddha nature but won't come when I clap one hand. Why is this?

Er ... haven't you forgotten a certain island off the north coast?!?

Hi Yoda, Thanks for the questions Yoda. The Phoenix has its origins in the Egyptian Heliopolitan sun worship and was seen as the creator god (Atum or Ra) or his 'ba' (soul). The bird depicted in Egyptian iconography is the grey heron (Ardea cinera) and was called by the Egyptians 'Benu' (sometimes written Bennu). The name Benu is related to other terms such as 'ben-ben', the original mound or hill from which the creation took place. This mound was symbolised by the obelisk and the pyramid. Also related is the word 'weben' which means 'to rise or to shine' and refers to the emerging sun at dawn. As I think you know, the pre-creational state was imaged as a watery darkness called the Nun. The Egyptians had a number of images and symbols which were designed to reflect the way in which the created world emerged from the waters of Nun. One of these involves the Benu (Phoenix) as the soul of Atum flying above the waters and settling on the first mound (ben-ben) and then crying out. As it cries all that is to be is distinguished from what is not to be. And so the created world emerges. If we see reality as a field of vibrational energy, then we can say that before a perceivable world exists, all possible forms are co-mingled in the field in a way which means that equal and opposites cancel each other out. You can compare this with the idea of destructive interference in physics. If you superimpose two sine waves of equal amplitude on each other so that the peaks of one wave coincide with the troughs of the other, you get a flat line. What's interesting about this is that the slightest disturbance to this equilibrium allows the energy of the waves to burst through into activity. You can see this phenomena in turbulent seas where 'flat water' is the most dangerous. The symbol of the Phoenix refers to the phase of creation when form begins to stand out from the Nun waters. Hence the long legged heron who stands out from the wetlands. The cry of its voice is the breaking through into time of the vibration potentials held in the void. The separation of what is to exist form what is not to exist. The word 'exist' itself gives us a clue about this because it literally means ex-ist (out - stand), to stand out from the background. For a form to exist it must stand out form the field of energy which creates it. The name Phoenix comes from a Greek word for 'blue'. When the Egyptians drew the Benu they used a blue pigment, so the Greeks saw a blue bird. The Greeks traded with the Phoenicians. The Phoenicians originally from what we now call the Lebanon (Tyre and Sidon) were a great sea going and trading nation who spread along the North African Mediterranean coast, including their main city of Carthage (see Hannibal). One of the things they traded was a blue dye - hence the connection in the Greek's minds of blue dye with Phoenician - thence Phoenix. As a symbol of the birth of the sun (and creation) the Benu also is a symbol of rebirth. "I go in like a hawk, I come forth as a Phoenix" says the Book of the Dead of the afterlife. Its connection with the sun gives also the connection with heat and flame. Greek writers like Herodotus recounted the story of a bird which rose form the ashes of its fathers funeral pyre (in Heliopolis). The nature of these stories, to me, suggests a Persian connection, or possibly Indian - but I only know the Egyptian side of this. Suffice to say the 'inner' function of the phoenix is to do with renewal and how rebirth occurs after the shedding of the exhausted accumulation of past experience. As a philosopher said (not sure which one) "All universes are formed from the debris of prior universes." It incorporates all the Egyptian ideas/truths about renewal and the cycling of energy. The issue of the Indian/Chinese connection is difficult because there are two possible types of connection. One is historical in the sense of the history of ideas - and I have no idea if such a connection exists. The other is the 'truth' that image of phoenix resonates with an inner function of power (or spirit) which is universal and so you can have phoenix type images cropping up in different cultures and their similarities doesn't necessarily suggest a single historical origin. Dragons? Well depends what you mean. No actual dragons as we know them in Ancient Egypt but plenty of reptilian and amphibian - also composite deities - and perhaps most significantly serpents. Including serpents with legs and wings - which is not far from a dragon really. In the Underworld Books of the New Kingdom, like the Am Dwat you find serpents like Neheb-kau who have legs and wings. (see pic). I know that dragons in the West are sometimes called 'Worms' and 'Serpents' so it is possible that the Egyptian winged serpent was more or less the same thing. Now in terms of the hawk/scorpion and phoenix/dragon connection I can say this. The serpent Neheb-kau is said to be the son of the scorpion goddess Serket (or Selkis, Serqet). They are both specifically associated with healing, especially the recovery from stings and bites or scorpions and snakes. Serket also has a similar relation to Quebehsenuef, the son of Horus with a hawks head, so you can infer a connection between Neheb-kau and Quebehsenuef. I am not sure what the dragon/phoenix relationship is in Chinese mythology - so I think we have come to the end of my understanding ... ... hope this fills some gaps anyway ...