forestofemptiness

Taobums always makes me more spinning than shining--- but that's one reason I come.

How do you define "limit" and "thing"?

TianShi--- thanks for your help. If Ultimate Tao can also be translated as Ultimate Ancestor, then this explains something in the 100 character stele.

Sometimes there are secrets so that the student can figure it out for oneself. Too much openness can make some things banal and common place. There is sharing too little and sharing too much. Koan practice, evidently, used to be done in public. But then people started copying responses, and instead of providing answers, they were parroting what they thought was right. Don't throw your pearls before swine, and all that.

This is a most wonderful book. It is so simple, that most people think it's too basic. But in fact, I believe it is very advanced.

Enlightenment is: The sky is gray, dark, full of angry, menacing clouds. The wind picks up, and either suddenly or slowly, the clouds drift away. Now the sun is shining, clear and bright.

It's one thing to disagree, and another to be mean. I wonder how much better off the world would be if people forgot about spirituality and just tried to be COURTEOUS. Personally, when I find something offensive here, I try to use it as an opportunity to learn about myself.

Traditionally, the Skandha of form was the body or matter, and all the others up to Vijnana were considered mind. You will find a lot of Theravada talk about mind and matter. Vijnana can be translated as "discriminating consciousness". Now, if you fast forward to the Zen masters, you will hear a lot of talk about getting rid of discrimination. So this must not be the mind they are talking about. Ma Tsu thought he could become a Buddha by sitting in meditation. But the master picked up a tile, polishing it to become a mirror. How can polishing a tile make a mirror? How can sitting make a Buddha? This is why I said, Neither.

I don't think its a taboo topic, either. Historically, for every person seeking so-called enlightenment, there are always 100 seeking the powers. I would wager that everyone on this forum either is or had been searching for some sort of powers at one time or another. The question Zhang seems to have is: should I spend my time cultivating powers, then moving on to the Big Game? Shinzen Young has described the pursuit of power as a horizontal axis, and the pursuit of enlightenment as a vertical. The vertical eventually leads to what he calls The Source. The horizontal has no limit, it goes on forever. If he's right (and I'll leave that for each of us to decide), then pursuing enlightenment may lead to power, but pursuing power may not lead to enlightenment. In fact, pursuing power may lead to pursuing more power, and on and on. A person may have great power, but still suffer. But some one who has gone beyond suffering won't care whether or not they have power. His advice was to find the source, than develop the powers to help others if you choose.

Neither.

It's easy to accept the magical, uplifting, wonderful states. It's hard to accept the ordinary, mundane, day-to-day boring states. Yet the point is to accept, right?

Red Pine in his Taoteching compares straw dogs to Christmas trees. I must admit, it gives a different color to the passage.

So I've been looking at Chinese translations lately, and am seeing that classical Chinese is much deeper than the English presupposes, especially how characters build on one another. Are there any good resources on Classical Chinese? I'm not interested in speaking or writing so much as seeing and translating. I'm not interested in boring, formal learning, but curious, playful exploring. Also, anyone have any experience with this? http://www.clavisinica.com/home.html

I'm continually puzzled that, being on a Taoist forum, there are so many one-sided solutions. Because people tend to over think, some therefore assume we shouldn't think at all. This is especially funny related to Vipassana, because many Vipassana masters are Tipitka masters as well! When some one tells me not to think, I wonder what it is they're after that they don't want me to think about.

I would say, it is what's there before form. When a person is innocent, it is because of what they didn't do rather than what they did.

Like curing a headache by cutting off a hand.

Depends on who you're talking to. Each person requires something different. I've seen many people who go nowhere because they try to do nothing, rather than try to learn some concentration or non-attachment.

I couldn't have said it better myself! Or could I?

Out of all the teachers, books, messages, etc. I've come across, in all traditions, a straight back is universally recommended. Now this is a hard thing to accomplish. There is a difference between feeling straight and being straight. It may be, sundragon, that what you think is straight is not straight at all. If you have some one take a long ruler (at least a meter or a yard), they should connect three points: the lower back, the middle of the shoulders, and the back of the skull. The first time I started doing this, I felt like I was tipping backward, which is not uncommon. Also, a lot of meditation teachers allow some people to reinforce their backs with pillows and cushions.

These strike me as the wrong questions. The question is whether so and so wrote a certain book. The question is whether the teachings, as applied, work as promised. And they do. How do I know? Because I use them and see the results. Suttas and sutras are only living in so much as they are experienced and lived, not as they sit on blank pieces of paper. When you say the ancient teachings may be irrelevant, I have to smile, for to me, it is like saying there is no such thing as sunshine. If the Buddhist teachings make you crabby, then by all means, set them aside. Luckily, there are many paths available.

I came across the 100 Character Stele the other day, which I found quite interesting. Instead of visualizations, chakra spinnings, tai chi, qi gong, and the rest, it seems to provide a rather simple formula to attain heaven's ladder. My questions have to do with the Chinese. For one, could the experts please tell me which characters are being used in the translated version, versus the reproduced stele at the bottom? And for translating "forget speech keeping," some translators interpret this to mean discursive thought, which sounds reasonable. I was wondering about other interpretations. http://gator.dt.uh.edu/~chong/CPoetry/luyan1.htm

Ha ha! I read it differently. Not surprising, given our different predispositions. I read it along the lines of not focusing on any particular phenomenon, but by being calm and focused, allowing the energies to arise on their own.

Some do, some don't. Gudo Nishijima and his students deny life after death. Others accept it. Ajahn Brahm says that it is not something to be believed, but to be found out for oneself. Zen, in my opinion, is not about trading in one set of beliefs for another, rather it is a way to transform yourself. Whether you believe in reincarnation or not is besides the issue.