steve

As a living symbol of hatred and violence, I would be very pleased to know that he is dead. That said, I long ago gave up believing anything I read or hear from any news organization. Nothing will change as the result of the death of one hateful man but I do hope that he no longer breathes.

Lucid dreaming for me has never been anything more than entertainment... or terrifying.

They're just beginners but at least they're practicing! I love Wing Chun. I practiced it exclusively for about 8 years. Now more into the Taiji, Bagua, and Xingyi. A lot of similarity to Xingyi. Good stuff - thanks for those great pics.

Great post - I'm with you on this one. I don't believe in belief. I don't "believe" in much - certainly not ineffable concepts like the ones you listed. Can't recall who to quote but I'll paraphrase - Belief is the fervent hope that some idea or doctrine that I rely on for my security or sense of well being is true. On the other hand I do have faith- Faith is the confidence and conviction that when we have the courage to let go of all beliefs and ideas and doctrine, that which remains - what I can see and feel and experience inside and around me through awareness, that is the truth. In that sense, I feel that I am a deeply religious person. I know that I have experienced and continue to experience the truth - I am a living expression of it. What more do I need? Words? Books? Bibles? Buddhas? Hah! If you meet the Buddha in the road, kill him! Kill your beliefs! Sit and close your eyes an be. So I will disagree with you also - your refusal to accept someone else's doctrine and ideas, your refusal to believe, and your desire to simply be and cultivate integrity, that makes you a profoundly religious man in my view. Namaste, brother (or sister, as the case may be). Real religion is the individual's internal search for the truth, everything else is politics.

What to do with hate? Lots of good responses so far. A simple and very effective approach is simply through awareness. This is beautifully presented in the talks of Anthony Demello. You've already started. 1. Identify the negative feeling - what is behind that feeling of hate? Fear? Low self esteem? Guilt? Often it is a recognition or projection in another that we do not like about ourselves. Look deeply. Be patient, persistent, and diligent. It takes time. 2. Understand that the feeling is inside of you. It does not exist in the outside world. Other people may react completely differently in your identical circumstances. What does the negative feeling say about YOU? Don't be concerned about what it tells you about the other person. 3. Do not identify with the negative feeling. The feeling is there, it will pass, it will return. It is an experience of transient emotions. It is not who or what you are. If you wait a while - you'll feel better. Sooner or later - you'll again feel worse. It is the nature of emotion. I am not angry - anger is there, anger will pass. I am not depressed - depression is there, it will pass. 4. That's about it. You don't have to DO anything. Through awareness comes understanding. With understanding comes change. Be patient, be persistent. Look deeply into yourself and you will see everyone around you. See if you can recognize yourself in the other people who make you angry. Don't they want to feel safe and secure? Don't they want to feel happy and loved? Don't they like good food and time off to relax? Sure, we behave differently but that is just a by product of conditioning. The fact that you have identified hate as a problem is the beginning of healing. Good luck, much love, and support. _/\_

Great topic for discussion. Thought seems to be the interaction of awareness with the contents of the mind which includes memory, knowledge, and conditioning mostly. Such interaction results in a stream of dialogue mixed with images of other sorts (visual, auditory, etc..) which creates the perception of time. Notice that the awareness of time is really nothing more than the movement of thought or some other sensory input. In deep meditation, when there is tranquility in the mind, thoughts become more and more spaced out (I don't mean trippy... I mean infrequent) and there is then the feeling of timeliness. This is created by the spaces between thought or sensory stimulation. So then you talked a bit about "me" - well, what is me? Me is the thought which has associated with it a unique marker that identifies itself as "that which thinks and/or observes thought." So the idea and awareness of "me" is just another of those thoughts. It is absolutely no different than any other thought, it just thinks it is. Thoughts are very useful and I think the process developed as an evolutionary advantage. It allows us to run scenarios in our mind without having to put ourselves at risk. Rather than jumping in front of a train we can think about the consequences in advance and not have to do the experiment to see the result. Thought has enormous benefits and (as predicted by Tai Ji theory) equally profound negative effects - neurosis, psychosis, and so forth. Thought can be an enormous barrier to experience, and is particularly unhelpful in such practices as Taijiquan and meditation. Certainly thought can be of some limited value in these disciplines but not nearly as valuable as practice and practical experience. One of the most interesting experiments I've read about in a long time is one that demonstrates that thoughts regarding the intention to perform an activity occur AFTER measurable changes occur in the neuromuscular system that are associated with the initiation of the activity. That is, when I decide to pick up a glass of water, my neuromuscular system has already initiated the activity - prior to "me" being aware that the activity has been initiated. So what is thought? Perhaps it is a recording of the events that are unfolding as experienced by "me" (a thought) interspersed with numerous other imaginary scenarios being run that outline different possibilities of alternative events or outcomes and constantly comparing to previous experience and knowledge. One thing is for sure - I am not who I think I am and thought is not what I think it is...

I agree - excellent question. I'd like to offer a response. First - the vast majority of Daoists do not practice formal cultivation. They treat Daoism much as other folks treat their various religions. Lots of superstition, ritual, habit, ignorance, obedience, worship, and so on... Only a very small group of folks practice Daoist cultivations methods and the majority of those in the West study from Western interpretations of the original methods through book and videos. Many have no direct contact with credible teachers and the true intent of cultivation is often absent. Second - living one's daily life with the intention of going with, rather than against, the flow of what transpires in nature is a core component of Daoist philosophy - Wu Wei. Cultivation, in my experience, is not inconsistent with this. The process of cultivation as I practice it is more about developing awareness and intent to a very sensitive and skillful level in such a way that one is able to fully explore and experience human potential physically, mentally, and spiritually. One is not so much looking to be transformed as more fully realized as a human being. It may sound like a semantic distinction but I think it goes beyond that. What we are changing is not the natural state of the human but rather the incompletely developed and often corrupted human that is a product of a variety of social, cultural, political, and economic stressors. That's how I would reconcile this apparent paradox.

I think that we reach outward because we are conditioned to believe that we are separate from God and separate from the universe and separate from each other. So we look for answers outside of ourselves and in words and books and in other people - politicians, religious leaders, gurus. Because if I am just this little, separate, individual, ignorant me - how could I possible contain the secrets of the universe? They must be out there and that big whatever it is, somewhere... If we would come to understand (and feel) that we are the same stuff as the universe and each other and God and that we are all intimately and perfectly integrated and interrelated, then we would realize that there is no where that we can possibly be more in touch with truth than in our selves. Then we would look inward rather than outward for our answers. I think this awakening is what brings many folks to this forum and to the various forms of cultivation.

Very beautifully put. This is when true love and compassion become manifest. When you feel that truth deep in your bones or in "that warm space somewhere down behind the belly button" as you put it (I love that), that we are all just the eyes and ears of the eternal, apertures through which the universe becomes aware of itself. This is the awareness of immortality. Manitou - did this come to you suddenly or gradually? When it happened to me it hit me like a ton of bricks. I was giddy and giggling like a school girl for days. My family thought I was ill. Eventually the old me crept back in but that place will always be there now and it's very reassuring to be able to access it when life gets difficult.

My good friend who is a healer and occasionally on this forum has been studying and using this technique for a while. He is very impressed with it. I recently had the occasion to watch trembling in action. I treated someone with a very serious hand injury. During my initial evaluation she was emotionally and psychologically devastated. Couldn't control her emotions at all. Really a mess. She then began violently shaking and trembling. Her mom tried to intervene and get her to stop and "control herself." I had recently learned about this technique from my friend and asked her mom to just let it run its course. The next time I saw her she was totally transformed. She was completely at peace and went through her treatment and rehab with an amazingly positive attitude and presence. I'm absolutely convinced that I witnessed the power of trauma release through trembling in action in its natural form. Fascinating! I plan to try it myself. Thanks for the links.

Very well said.

Beautiful - Richard Feynman meets Jiddu Krishnamurti. Feynman is a very cool character and brilliant teacher.

Just click on the "Insert Media" link (the one with three overlapping squares) above the reply/edit window then paste in your address. Beautiful version of Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring - thank you.

Interesting, I think you are either misunderstanding me or making assumptions that are inaccurate. I never said that one should not examine themselves, nor do the traditions I mentioned. Deep and committed self examination is the only way to know what you are. I'm not pushing any particular view of self and I agree with you that there is nothing sinful about it. It is what it is - certainly. Something to remember is that it is also a source of much suffering - hence the admonition of self-examination. Remember that the Buddha's stimulus to examining self and other was to find the cause of suffering and attempt to relieve it at it's source. I agree that there is nothing wrong with trying to explain what the self is. You are welcome to spend all the time doing that you like. I would assert that your attempts at explanation will never be satisfactory. The self is beyond rational comprehension and verbal or ideological encapsulation. There is no reason to deconstruct the self intellectually but if you examine yourself deeply over time, you will see through the many layers of conditioning and it will all come apart at the seems to reveal the core. In fact, what is an examination of something without some level of deconstruction? Don't we need to see the parts and how they interact and integrate to form the whole? The self that you are referring to is a composite of all of your life experience, conditioning, socialization, education, and emotions, not to mention a genetic expression of previous generations of the same. As you peel that away, layer by layer, you eventually reach the truth that is beyond words and concepts. I genuinely believe that we are taking the same approach. You must deeply examine the self. Look at everything you do and think and feel. Where does it come from? What is it's purpose? Why this particular reaction and not another? That is the way to understand. But to try and put all of that into some coherent explanation or rationalization? Good luck!

Much can be and has been said about the nature of self. It's all words and words will never be satisfactory. It's fascinating that the "I" being a self feels compelled to try and use words and thoughts to "understand" what "I" is. Why can't the self just be what it is and be satisfied with that? I'm not being critical, I'm genuinely interested in what it is that motivates us to engage in this inquiry. I suspect it is a tendency of human thought to not be satisfied with being but rather needing a verbal or ideological equivalent that it can observe. I think this tendency has been extremely effective in our survival and therefore selected for by (shudder) evolutionary progress. This is a core concept of Buddhist and Hindu thought. The Daoists seem to see through this question and recognize it is enough to be the self without having to "understand" what that is. Also, much of Buddhist teaching (especially Chan and Zen traditions) is directed at encouraging the student to be what they are rather than try and understand it in rational terms. This is addressed often with responses like - can the knife cut itself? can the eye see itself? can the tooth bite itself? can the "I" know itself? I'm not going to bore anyone with what I think it is or what I feel myself to be because my experience is nothing more than that - my experience. It will be nothing more than inadequate words used to try and describe something beyond words and concepts. If you are truly interested in what the self is, an investigation can be undertaken and is very challenging and arduous. Check out Sri Ramana Maharshi and Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj. Also, Jiddu Krishnamurti is a good resource for an examination of self albeit from a very different perspective that is a bit less direct. Good luck with your search.

Lord Matthew Isaiah Boots-Keston

I couldn't agree more - theories and words are limited approximations. The issue will never be closed IMO. If you consider yourself separate from and outside of "God" then certainly you may attribute what's going on (evolution, words, and all the rest of it) to some super-powerful, external entity and call it whatever you like. If God is infinite, omnipotent, and omnipresent, how are you outside of that? God + 1? Or are all of us separate? Then what are we speaking of when we refer to God? Of course the whole thing is one, that is what all of the great traditions recognize and teach in their sutras and scriptures. It's the institution that encourages a feeling of separation from God, otherwise they would have no power over the individual.

Great link cat, thanks Karen Armstrong is a great writer and thinker. I need to check the others.

Great reading in this thread from everyone! I practice a system that does indeed have multiple stages and indicators of progress though my teacher does the measuring - not me. In addition, I've seen many changes in myself over time associated with this practice - are they direct consequences of meditation or coincidental? Who knows? Presumably they are consequences, for example - - I no longer have much interest in intoxication of any type - I can no longer derive pleasure from harming anything (ie fly fishing used to be a hobby - can't do it anymore) - My heart has opened to friends, family, patients, co-workers and my life and work, and relationships have changed as a result. - I've experienced the fundamental connection of everything deep in my bones and it will never leave me - I generally see through the shell people put up and recognize their motivations and intentions, simply because they are also in me. Plus lots of other "experiences" However! True meditation is simply to be fully aware and be fully what we are. There is nowhere else to go, no one else to be. How can a horse be more horse-like? The sage is completely in touch with his human-ness and does not strive to be something other. Buddhism, particularly the Chan and Zen traditions, very strongly emphasizes this principle as does Vedanta, Sufism, and all the great traditions. So what goal can there possibly be in meditation? How can you get there if you already are? This is a key lesson in meditation although most of us do have to jump through many hoops to see it. And it led to a crisis in me when I recognized it. It look a long time to reconcile the fundamental truth of meditation (no goal, nowhere to go but here and now) and yet continue to practice. It's quite a paradox. And certainly the process does seems to have valuable and beautiful side effects.

No there are not many sides to the debate. There is evolution - one of the most powerful scientific theories in existence, and there is a small group of vocal "believers" desperately trying to gain support for viewing the beginning of the book of Genesis as the origin of humanity on Earth. Of course evolution is not a perfect representation of reality. Words, ideas, and theories can never be a perfect representation of reality. This is also a core error in fundamentalism - the word is not the thing. Words come from man, not God. They are simply approximations and conventions of communication. The word is never the thing. Repackaging the creation assertion using pseudo-scientific terms and methods does not change the heart of the matter. At least be honest with yourself, if not us...

Not true - evolution as a scientific theory is so consistent with observable data and so strong in predictive value, that the only folks calling its overall validity into question are those who believe in an alternative assertion (not a scientific theory mind you). As a rule, all of these folks are attempting to gain support for Creat-Intelligent Design-ism due to their fervent desire that the book of Genesis represents reality rather than allegory. That's the bottom line. Yawn...

Why do we think that the calcification is unnatural or harmful? Perhaps the crystals are transducers or of value in some way. Have you spent any time focusing on this area in meditation?

I find some solace, or at least acceptance, when I put these horrors in the perspective of the Dao and Daoist principles. All things in nature are in balance. With great beauty comes great ugliness - they define each other, neither can exist without the other. It is not an explanation, for what makes us think that there is or should be an explanation? Explanations are nothing more than a rationalization that satisfies human thought. Where do we get the idea that the universe and all of its manifestations exist in such a way that satisfies our desire for explanation? Zhuangzi's parable about the empty boat addresses this. When nature takes the lives of thousands (whether they be people or fish) we do not question. When man's hand is involved, there is suddenly an offense. One can look at these horrific occurrences as being the hand of nature in action - man is only the tool. I'm not trying to excuse - just endure... If a man is crossing a river and an empty boat collides with his skiff, even though he is a bad-tempered man he will not become very angry. But if he sees a man in the boat, he will shout at him to steer clear. If the shout is not heard he will shout again, and yet again, and begin cursing. And all because there is somebody in the boat. Yet, if the boat were empty, he would not be shouting, and not angry. If you can empty your own boat crossing the river of the world, No one will oppose you. No one will seek to harm you.... Such is the perfect man: His boat is empty.

I think we would have to begin by defining our terms - what is a spiritual pratitioner? what is it to 'get' this? what do I mean by difficult? It may sound presumptuous, even arrogant, but I don't think very many people on this forum are on a serious spiritual search... or at least that is the way it seems from much of the discussion I read. Of course, each of us gets to choose and define what that means for ourselves and I am simply commenting from my own biases.