Apech

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Posts posted by Apech

  1. Posted

    7 hours ago, Forestgreen said:

    The effect of meditation on the Self has a lot in common with dissociation, and a person that already have issues with the Self might fare better if that is dealt with first (dissociation is often classed as avoidance).

     

    Not saying that concentrative breathwork and basic mindfulness are without use, but going deeper into a meditative process might be problematic.

     

    The method most often called out for being an avoidance is the habit of slipping in to a cognitive empty no-self state. A state without thought and where the experience is that this is not happening to ME is definetly a problem if the goal should be integrating traumatic experiences. 


    Yes we’ve had quite a few conversations on here about spiritual bypassing - I don’t think that we should confuse meditation with therapy.

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  3. Posted

    8 minutes ago, snowymountains said:

     

    The same one as you. Also perhaps the pointers re its gaps are not to be found in meditation, as after all otherwise claims around what meditation can do would had been more modest.


    Same as me? Really how bizarre.

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  4. Posted

    5 minutes ago, snowymountains said:

     

    Why do you want to grade me 😁?

     

    No meditation tradition can change a fair amount of stuff because simply it takes a different process and also more than one person to change them.

    It's no accident that meditation is often classed as avoidance for doing the actual work on ourselves. It doesn't need to be avoidance, because it's a good tool, but all too often it often is.


    I wasn’t trying to grade you but I just wondered where you derive the authority with which you speak about meditation.  I actually agree that it can be used as avoidance strategy - there’s a term for it which I can’t remember.   
     

    I would suggest though that whatever knowledge you have may be incomplete as you seem to assume that people are saying things which they are not.  That’s all.

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  5. Posted

    43 minutes ago, snowymountains said:

     

    That stage exists in all traditions, it's still not sufficient.

    It's good to have 24/7 sati, but it still won't register some things and even if it did it doesn't address to a satisfactory degree what to do with it.


    How much meditation practice experience do you have, may I ask.

     

    Also I don’t remember mentioning a 24/7 Sati so why do you assume that is what I am talking about?

  6. Posted

    1 hour ago, snowymountains said:

     

    👍

     

     

    I haven't practiced mahamudra but I'm referring to big gaps not to twists in how it's done.

    Meditation as a practice ( any meditation ) is not sufficient for becoming aware of lot of things about us and also, there's a lot that meditation cannot transform in us.

     

    Meditation is a very good practice but like everything else it has its scope and applicability.

     

    Expanding would take a long post that unfortunately I don't have time for at the moment.


    The point I was trying to make is that the ‘meditation’ ceases to be a practice - for instance there is a stage called ‘ non meditation’ of Mahamudra.

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  7. Posted

    5 hours ago, snowymountains said:

     

    About the same way you describe above, as an example, something that is felt, as opposed cognitively realised, and transcends the strict notions of a self within a body.

     

    A non-dual realisation (even tho this is a nonsense term really) is a direct insight of the 'not two ness' of subject and object.  It has feeling associated with it, joyful loving feelings, but it is not the feelings.  'Body' is another matter of course which is changed in perspective by the realisation - there is no actual transcendence in this respect - as transcendence is only something we think about from our side of the thing.

     

    5 hours ago, snowymountains said:

     

    It does make a lot of sense, yes it is underneath, it was there before these were created, nevermind conceived cognitively. It truly is an unborn, all the rest begins about after 20 weeks from conception.

     

    The 'unborn' is the cause, the path and the result - even the obstruction is the path.

     

    5 hours ago, snowymountains said:

     

    On this indeed we agree to disagree. For me the gap is twofold, one part is that meditation practices in isolation will not reveal a lot of things and also Buddhism provides only a partial answer the question of what to do with "Sati" when the skill has been built, which imo is the point where the real work begins. But let's leave this for another thread. The practice is very good though, just not sufficient.

     

    In Mahamudra practice the view of shamatha/vipasanya is different.  In a way they no longer comprise practices or techniques but are the actual settling or resting in the immediacy of mind/awareness and the seeing what the awareness is, its nature.  Techniques may be used to introduce yourself to this experience (wrong word but will have to do) but the meditation has no process or technique in the end.  There is no further stage of elaboration needed.

     

     

     

     

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  8. Posted

    21 minutes ago, liminal_luke said:

     

    Zapchen (Zapchen Somatics) is a somatic wellness practice that combines simple childlike bodily movements (yawning, sighing, stretching, jiggling, etc) with elements of Buddhism.  It´s great stuff, imo, but not the important part of my anecdote.  My coach Laura fell in love with another woman and entered a relationship with her in spite of the fact that she remained sexually attracted to men. I found this inspiring, a little weird but inspiring.   


    Actually I find that quite normal.  Love should always be to the person and not their attributes.  
     

    on the other hand Buddhism and gurgling like a baby is a bit odd 😃

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  9. Posted

    2 hours ago, liminal_luke said:

    I don´t have a story of dating a transgendered person, just a transgender dating-story adjacent anecdote.  When my Zapchen coach, Laura Lund, told me the story of the love of her life, another woman, I assumed she was a lesbian.  Not so.  Turns out she met this woman, fell in love, and got married (spiritually if not legally) -- all this in spite of a markedly hetero sexual identity.  Her love eventually died but they had a deep and mutually fulfilling relationship.  I can´t imagine doing such a thing.  I can´t imagine being so tuned into the inner qualities of another person that I could joyfully put gender preferences aside.  What flexibility!  To my thinking, this is what having superpowers looks like.


    What is zapchen?

     

    your story confused me can you do the cliff notes version?

  10. Posted

    6 minutes ago, Salvijus said:

     

    Christ just means Love consciousness.

     

    Like buddha nature. There is also Christ nature. 

     

    Everyone can attain to Love consciousness same way everyone can attain to Buddha conciousness. 

     

    There are two fundamental forces in existence. Masculine and feminine. Shiva Shakti. YinYang. Emptiness and Love. 

     

    The masculine expression of the Great Spirit is silence, emptiness, renunciation, etc. 

     

    The feminine expression of the Great Spirit is creativity, love, responsibility, art etc. 

     

    Your identity can either go to zero, or it can go to infinity.

     

    If your identity goes to zero, you take absolutely zero responsibility for anything (detachment) .

     

    If your identity goes to infinity, you take the responsibility for everything. (compassion and love) 

     

    That will determine if you're a Buddha or a Christ. Both these energies have a role to play in creation. 


    By the time we got to Woodstock we were half a million strong…

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  16. Posted

    1 hour ago, snowymountains said:

     

    Correct 👍, according to Buddhism they're empty of self, not empty in a general sense.

     

    I don't agree with the Buddhist view on this but the above is an accurate description of what the Buddhist view is.

     

    That's not what Mark is saying I don't think.

     

     

  17. Posted

    5 minutes ago, Taomeow said:

    Yeah, digging deeper/earlier is always fun.  You can uproot a whole lot of very unpopular opinions this way. ))

      

    Here's a recent example I've encountered.  (Departing from the buddhist debate for a while, or at least trying to. :) )The oldest known written literary work in the Slavic language, The Tale of Igor's Campaign (aka Slovo o Polku Igoreve), an epic poem dated 1185-1187, poses considerable difficulties for translators -- although some of the original can still be understood by a non-specialist if you know a language originating from Old East Slavic the epic is written in.  That's "some," not a whole lot.  However, it's been studied for centuries and some sort of consensus emerged regarding this or that passage, and accepted translations became more or less carved in stone.

     

    That's until a Kazakh, Olzhas Suleimenov, who happened to be both a Russian writer and a Turkologist, published his revised versions with corrections, and corrections concerned multiple words from Common Turkic language which appear here and there in the original and which had escaped the comprehension of Slavists who went before.  Here and there in the text, the new translation immediately made a whole lot more sense, and the "weirdness" of the ancestors became quite a bit less weird as more logical passages replaced the misconstrued ones.  

     

    Needless to say this opinion, which in my opinion was one hundred percent correct (and a work of genius), immediately became very very unpopular among both the mastodon specialists and lay folks who studied the old version in school.  Neither were ready to let go of the nonsense they are used to taking at face value.

     

    "Such is the nature of man." -- Gurdjieff                 

     

    I think the art of translation must be one of the greatest human skills to acquire.  

     

     

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  18. Posted

    39 minutes ago, Taoist Texts said:

    here you are. they are voluptuous all right

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    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aniconism_in_Buddhism

     

    However, in 1990, the notion of aniconism in Buddhism was challenged by Susan Huntington, initiating a vigorous debate among specialists that still continues.[5] She sees many early scenes claimed to be aniconic as in fact not depicting scenes from the life of the Buddha, but worship of cetiya (relics) or re-enactments by devotees at the places where these scenes occurred. Thus the image of the empty throne shows an actual relic-throne at Bodh Gaya or elsewhere. She points out that there is only one indirect reference for a specific aniconic doctrine in Buddhism to be found, and that pertaining to only one sect.[6]

     

    so the notion of early Buddhist aniconism is outdated

     

     

    That makes a great deal of sense!  Marvellous thank you.

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  20. Posted

    11 hours ago, Mark Foote said:

     

    So strange that you characterize the skandhas that way. 

     

    They are identifications of "self" with phenomena, not the phenomena.  Dependent causation has to do with the source of suffering, which suffering (old age, sickness, death) Gautama referred to as "in short, the five skandhas".

    They don't have to do with whether or not a tree is real, or what caused the tree, or what caused us to perceive the tree.  Pass the olives, please.

     

     

    Maybe I was taught in a non-standard way ... or maybe not.  But certainly the skandhas were applied to phenomena to 'show' emptiness and then the same process applied to oneself.

     

    I think the issue may be that Buddhism doesn't really use ontological proofs at all.  Unlike other systems.  But this may be yet another of my unpopular opinions :)

     

     

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  21. Posted · Edited by Apech

    12 hours ago, Mark Foote said:

     

    I ask for examples of:

     

    The art work of early Buddhism shows what early Buddhism and the Buddha was like.  He is not depicted but represented by a pair and sandals, or an empty cushion and so on.  He is surrounded by dancing and singing, by nature spirits including voluptuous female nature spirits, and naga serpents.

     

    and you give me a parasol over an empty seat.  Tsk, tsk.

     

     

    Oh no --- two tsks ... are you an elephant?

     

    The quote came from Dalrymples Empire podcast which I posted above - which might like to listen to if you have time.  Otherwise the artwork at Sanchi might be a start.

     

    or look here

     

    https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/tree-and-serpent/exhibition-objects

     

    Quote

     

    I see that you're right, northwestern India suffered Muslim incursions in the 7th century, but the wider invasion of India and the destruction of the Buddhist universities was not until the 12th-13th centuries.   

     

     

    Yes the Mahayana/Vajrayana style of Buddhism became prominent during the Indian Medieval period which is about 600 - 1300 AD after which Buddhism (more or less) died out in India itself.  This was the period of the mahasiddhas - this is a good book on the subject:

     

    https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B008D30MMW/ref=kinw_myk_ro_title

     

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  23. Posted

    14 minutes ago, forestofemptiness said:

     

    While I agree with much of this post, I think this is a common misunderstanding from a typical Kagyu/Nyingma Buddhist perspective in my experience. This is a common question or suggestion I've seen posed to many teachers and every one of them rejected it. 

     

    Everything is empty, i.e. it lacks a unitary, independent, permanent self or essence, but not everything is aware. Classic examples are pots and pillars. A pot is empty of a unitary, independent, permanent "pot nature," but we would not say that it is therefore aware. Further, specific to Nyingma based Dzogchen teachings, emptiness is generally considered a non-affirming negation, a minus without a plus. So when we say X is empty, it doesn't not mean that we are asserting anything positive about X. 

     

    Of course, one is free to disagree with this perspective. 

     

     

     

     


    With the greatest respect because I’ve been there - but I feel madyamika just leads to this kind of formulation which is ultimately meaningless.  

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  24. Posted

    18 minutes ago, liminal_luke said:

     

    Do you think it´s specifically a guy thing?  Or maybe a straight guy thing?  The stereotype of straight guys is that they don´t like to have long, "processing" kind of conversations, but I´m not sure how true that is these days.  Has your socializing experience changed for the better since your transition?


    ‘Hey I saw you from across the room and couldn’t help notice the copper wire sticking out your backside.  Your place or mine?’

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