monucka
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Everything posted by monucka
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Mantak Chia is currently pending prosecution in the Phillipines for blatantly plagiarizing two of another teacher's entire books. Remember Cosmic Healing I and II? Compare them to Pranic Healing I and II by Choa Kok Sui, paragraph for paragraph, at this site: http://pranichealing.org/defense.htm I agree whole-heartedly with you.
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So I finally took the ten days off to attend one of S.N. Goenka's Vispassana retreats. Length: Ten days. No talking, no sexual stimulation, eye contact, or communication with anyone but the teacher. Meditation instruction and theory every night for three hours, to be practiced the following day. Almost 11 hours of sitting per day, two meals and a light fruit and tea snack in the evening (for new students, old students are permitted no food after noon). Cost: absolutely free, although donations are accepted after students complete the full ten-day program. The reasoning is this: the process is so intensive and so mentally painful (there's a depth reached that I haven't experienced with any other practice) that -any- expectation of "getting what you paid for" could be used as an excuse not to confront the demons that arise in the practice. They even take your car keys before the course begins so you can't drive away in the middle of the night. It really is that rough. <grin>. Experience: Possibly the hardest and most rewarding thing I've ever done. I've been thinking about writing this review for the month and a half I've been back, trying to be as concise as possible. For the record, I did experience a number of the physical effects of meditation practice that Nan Huai Chin describes in Tao and Longevity, and that Bill Bodri likes to write essays on. Specifically the following concept: sila (discipline), samadhi (meditative concentration), and prajna (transcendental wisdom) are the causes, while jing, qi, and shen are the results, in ascending order: first jing must accumulate and refine, then qi follows, and ultimately shen is produced. Not that I'm done that process, but I experienced the initial stages enough to convince me that the whole thing follows that pattern, and I would speculate that emptiness comes after shen. So my experience is that buddhism explains better (or at least more consistently) what to -do- to have the effects the taoist manuals describe. The old schooly daoists and the buddhists described what I now believe is essentially the same transformative process, using different perspectives and different terminology. Another Major Realization: following one practice in deeply enough that the ego becomes frightened and begins major psychological resistance is necessary for deep transformation. This process is described as the ego's fear of death by both Chinese buddhists (Ru Ding, I think it's called) and Jungian psychological theory. There is nothing truly there to die, nothing is lost, and that's the whole point: an inherently unreal self-identification and limit fights to preserve it's own (powerful) delusional existence. It's a set of thought patterns amplifying themselves in a feedback loop. The practical implication, though, is that I'm more convinced than ever that exploring a ton of different paths is really a self-defeating avoidance of true transformation. One path feels good for a time, and then (right around the time it would really start working, it seems) another path comes along or is 'discovered' that looks even cooler, man... and so the jumping from one qigong technique to another to shamanism to hatha yoga to tibetan buddhism to native american spirituality to chanting bhajans to internal alchemy... whatever new thing comes along looks better to the ego than sticking it out with one truly effective technique. Which is why the ten days of silence, no taiji, no yoga, no physical exercise except walking, no other paths or practices: participants are forced to confront themselves in the absence of any other options for distraction. Other observations: Segregation of the sexes was observed, and helped greatly to minimize distractions. There was a female and a male teacher present to answer questions from female and male students and to ask them about their progress and give feedback. The actual lectures and meditation instruction are given by this guy on audio and video tape: it sounds super cheesy, but I was very suprised at the depth and accuracy of his instructions and expectations. I stopped bothering to ask questions after the first day because the guy on the tapes, after having led probably thousands of these retreats in person, knew exactly what questions would come up on which days and answered them. The food was great, vegetarian (there were vegan options) and mostly organic. I went with a wheat-allergic vegan friend, and she did fine. Eating only two meals a day -is- conducive to meditation. Lots of water helps with the physical aspects of intensive meditation. Outcomes: There are more intensive and deeper retreats in the Vispassana tradition that are available to students as they enter more deeply into the practice. The retreat I did was the most basic prerequisite for anything deeper. I consider Vispassana and taijiquan my two practices for the next year, at least, although so far I'm pretty sure I've found the elegant, extraordinarily effective practice that I've been looking for, and I am pretty sure I'm done searching, after seven years. Now what remains is practice, which is a daunting prospect, but far more rewarding, perhaps, than scanning bookstores for the latest eastern spirtuality titles. For those interested: Vispassana retreats are held all over the world, year-round, and are always free. For more information, check www.dhamma.org. If you don't see a retreat center close to you check the listing of "non-center courses". The retreat I just took was "non-center" and was actually held at 8500 ft, in a pine-forest valley of the Colorado rockies. Which was really nice, for a nature-headed hippy taoist kid like me. <grin>. Much love to y'all. - j
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So I'll drop a post here on my way out the lobby. I'm going to take some time away from this forum with the intention of practicing more and discursing less. <grin>. I've really appreciated everyone's contributions, with mad props to Spyrelx, Trunk, Mbanu, Cam, Sean, Yoda, Hagar, Alchemycal Monkey, Lozen and Redfox. Y'all rock. If I've spoken with you and forgotten you, you rock too. Someone (who rocks) brought something to my attention that I figure I'll address now: I am not a woman. Monucka has nothing to do with the name Monica, in case anyone was confused. <grin>. With that said, I'm going to set my controls to send me an email if anyone PMs me here, so I'm still contactable, especially if you're going to be in Colorado. I plan to post an update on my practice sometime next summer. Much love to y'all. - j
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Does the inner smile cover Emptiness practice?
monucka replied to Cameron's topic in General Discussion
In response to both posts (which raise good questions) I'll quote three times. The first is from "Overall Essentials of Alchemy", by Shangyangzi, a Complete Reality Taoist. "A disciple asked Shangyangzi: 'it is certainly true that 'there are not two Ways in the world.' The way of Lao-tzu is the Way of of alchemy, the Way of alchemy is the Way of essence and life. But what Bodhidharma [founder of Ch'an Buddhism] brought from India is 'directly pointing to the human mind for perception of its essence and attainment of buddhahood.' Is this beyond alchemy? Shangyangzi said, 'The Way of Bodhidharma is identical to the Way of alchemy. People of the world differ in terms of the keenness or dullness of their faculties and capacities, so the buddhas and masters set up names expediently out of compassion. Among students of later times, the intelligent went too far while the ignorant didn't go far enough.'" A modern Taoist and physician named Fu Hua-I wrote: "The purpose of the Taoist practice is to cultivate three selves. The first is the physical body. Although the first self is temporary and unreal, attainment of the Way depends on it. Therefore when inactive it is best to be calm and light, and for action it is best to be cultivated through exercise. Breathing exercises, yindao, yijinjing (muscle/tendon changing) and taijiquan will all do. The second self is the vital spirit. This means using the methods of quiet sitting to refine this substance, in which dark and light are mixed, into a pure serene body of balance and harmony. Single-minded concentration on the infinite whatever one may be doing is what called "the supreme state in which even nothingness does not exist." The third self is the fundamental essence. It neither increases nor decreases, is neither defiled nor pure: it is the true emptiness that is not empty. When you understand mind and see its essence, only then can you know its original state and be the primordial true master. All beings have the same source; to look back for the fundamental essence is something that both Buddhist and Taoist classics discuss." Lao-tzu said: "Return is the movement of the Way; yielding is the function of the Way. All things in the world are born of being; being is born of nonbeing." These quotes, and lots of others that support them, can be found in 'Vitality, Energy, Spirit: A Taoist Sourcebook' by Thomas Cleary. That's all I'm going to add to this discussion. - j -
Does the inner smile cover Emptiness practice?
monucka replied to Cameron's topic in General Discussion
So correct me if i'm wrong, anyone, but this is my experience: the inner smile is a sort of emptiness practice, possibly, but it's not taught precisely as such. One develops acceptance and positive feelings (both very beneficial), but it's only by accident, as it were, that someone practicing the inner smile realizes the illusory nature of the mind that's doing the smiling. As far as I remember, none of Chia's books really discuss "essence". Even Awaken Healing Light doesn't seriously discuss "sitting forgetting", which makes me think that the IS is supposed to fulfill that function, even while it generally remains in the realm of mental gymnastics. On the other hand, perhaps Winn's emphasis on yuan qi is a parallel way of expressing this that i've not had experience with. The question remains: how can one think herself into union with the Tao? -
Lots of taijiquan practice, especially concentrating on and practing repetitively the movements which involve changing the orientation of the hips by opening one gua and closing the other. It is pretty amazing how much tension is stored there. - j
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Looks like the beginning of an essay or book or instructional series. Not that it has to be, but the points you've outlined make sense to those who've already experienced them- sort of a crib sheet for aspects of jing gong (nice term), not yet a guide. Do you have any plans to develop those pointers into guides for beginners, whether oral or written? For example, healthy forward and healthy reverse are admirable, but open to interpretation how does one differentiate the real from the false? - j
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Mad important, I think. Some folk with very high levels of achievement might be "assholish," especially if they feel that their level of knowlege isn't being appreciated or respected. Nonetheless, there are certain behaviors which indicate a lack of integration, and if the nature of practices is to develop integration, then you could say that they're probably not the best choice of teachers. One of my warning flags concerns how people deal with drama in their lives. Rough situations occur, but there's always a wide range of reactions, from annoyed complaint to reacting in ways that exacerbate the situation. I don't think that throwing fuel on a fire is in much harmony with the tao, in most cases. I am also very wary of madness and mental instability and their symptoms. It's not that folk with mental issues are bad people, but it doesn't speak much for their practices if a calm, centered, peaceful and stable mind isn't a result. - j
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All discussion of the Red Cross and their purported links to the illuminati aside, I'm not sure that greed really was Buddha's 'root of suffering'- I'm no expert, but my understanding is that the root is 'attachment': craving, aversion, and ignorance. Craving in the buddhist sense is not the same as greed. Rather, greed is the symptom of both aversion and craving, which are mentally attaching unnecessary importance and self-interest to inherently valueless external stimuli. Eliminate attachment, and greed dies naturally without destroying one's ability to function in the world. Don't eliminate attachment, and attempts to supress greed ultimately fail. My two cents. - j
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I'm am laughing out loud. Right now. That's awesome. <grin>. BTW, one of my best friends works for the Red Cross and is currently giving disaster relief training for volunteers being flown to New Orleans. Whatever she is, she's not annunaki, and she ain't no templar, neither. Nor is she fabulously wealthy, although I dunno... the CPR lessons and choking rescue training she gives teenage babysitters could really be a front for... GOVERNMENT BRAINWASHING!!! - j
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She's Charles Neville's daughter, so Aaron is her uncle. Her dad played sax with the Neville Brothers, and she used to do backup vocals with them. I'm more impressed with how she saved close to thirty folk, including those with disabilities, by breaking and entering, learning to drive an RTA bus, etc.
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http://www.wafb.com/ and scroll down to 'featured videos' and select the one titled "Charmaine Neville: New Orleans Evacuee" That lady is amazing. She's also an accomplished musician, although you wouldn't know it from the video. - j
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Engineers Without Borders: check ewb-usa.org, find your local university chapter and get involved, no engineering skills necessary. If you like what they're doing, they can definitely use money. But then, I'm biased, cuz' I think that having well-trained humanitarian engineers is gonna do a lot of good in the world, and maybe it won't. <grin>. - j
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My thought is that from taoist alchemical and buddhist perspectives, most all beings are stone mad. There is socially acceptable neurosis, but it's still neurosis, and those who awaken from those mental states are considered sages, saints, etc. As for qigong, I think that a lot of what pass for practices have delusional aspects to them, some more than others. "Mind regulating mind" is one of those warnings that come up a lot in old schooly texts, as a reference to trying to control mental states by layering other states on top of the underlying issues, which can lead to madness. In Jungian terms that would be something like supression/substitution: the underlying projections are not integrated, they're just layered with a thin patina of "spirituality" until situations cause them to appear in a strong form, often inappropriately. In that regard, I don't think "we" as a bunch of posters necessarily share much besides a common field of inquiry to address our perceived problems and lacks. There are widely differing ideas even of those problems, and of what internal work consists of. Thus the motivation to practice may be very different from person to person, and success and progress as well. I suspect that many of us are spiritual hobbyists, otherwise we wouldn't check in here every day. - no expert
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I think that's right on. Ditto for your suggestions for a balanced approach: one really comprehensive practice, or one sitting, one moving, one in daily life. That's an awesome way to describe a good practice set! I think that there are some practices that are thorough and deep enough in themselves to stand alone, and then there are other practices that are auxiliary at best, wastes of time at worst. Some practices use a number of auxiliary methods (taiji uses numerous qigong techniques as corollaries to learning the inner dynamics) while keeping the central 'work' very clear. Other practices are more mishymashy and don't have a unified basis. - j
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Awesome post, Trunk. I'd love to see more stuff like that as well, if only cuz' it validates my experiences. <grin>.
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Followup, on Rumsfeld's pimping the latest 'non-lethal' weaponry: http://alternet.org/story/24044/
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Thanks for the practice, Peter. I'm already working two techniques that I like, so I won't be experimenting with visualization, but I appreciate that you took the time to post a method. I totally agree that discursive thought doesn't do much in the end. - j
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I got that bit, I just don't understand what transforming each of the trigrams is supposed to represent. For example, mixing water and fire takes the yin from fire and the yang from water to re-create heaven and earth. So far so good, if the symbolism there makes sense. But what about all the others? What does changing them, one at a time or two at a time, represent? Different techniques? Different mileposts on the route? Or is it a case of too much symbolism for a simple, difficult process, where the basic idea of recreating early heaven was felt to be only valid if it's logically justified with diagrams showing how thunder can transform to wind, or whatever corresponds to it's post-heaven place in pre-heaven, by shuffling their lines? I imagine that understanding those details is a later development, and the initial stages of transformation don't actually require that much erudition. But then, what do I know? :-)
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I think I partly understand heaven and earth, water and fire, as they're often used (but not well enough to try to explain, so I'd love an explanation of those as well), it's the others that confuse me. When she describes changing the post-heaven bagua to the pre-heaven bagua, the roles of wind, mountain, lake, and thunder are pretty much meaningless to me. I've always assumed it's because I don't have a teacher to explain that symbolic tradition. The section I'm thinking of is in "Cultivating Stillness".
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I've been reading some alchemical texts lately, comparing their contents to my experience. The big deal is that all the translator's i've read say that the texts are guides for the already initiated. I find that as I reread them, I can somewhat gauge my progress by how much I understand, while admittedly practicing a different technique than what the texts assume I already know. I think that this is possible because the texts listed below describe goals more than practices, and the stages of understanding are the same for most traditions, despite the different terminology. I think. They're good food for thought. My fav's (as they purposely contain texts and commentaries that aren't too esoteric) are: Thomas Cleary: Vitality, Energy, Spirit (great selection of sources, from the mists of antiquity to contemporary taoists, and some major points in between. One section is devoted to illustrative stories from the Lieh-Tzu, where the translator mixes the written text with the oral tradition to clarify the stories as they relate to the goals of Taoist cultivation. Pretty cool.) Thomas Cleary: The Book Of Stillness and Harmony. From the intro: "... is a famous anthology of writings by a thirteenth-century Taoist master of the Complete Reality School ... provides a most unusual compendium of the teachings of Complete Reality Taoism, including its theoretical and practical basis in classical Taoism." I really like this one for it's clarity, and the fact that the author takes the time to define a lot of terms (at least as the Complete Reality sect understood them), like so: "Q: How is it that there is water in fire? A: Water stands for the spirit, fire for awareness; water in fire is the spirit in awareness." Also check the classification system for practices, from false paths to practices that are part of the 'highest vehicle'. Have fun ranking your techniques. Stuart Alve Olson: The Jade Emperor's Mind-Seal Classic. This is a very old text, and as such the interpretation possibilities are probably myriad. Nonetheless, the author/translator makes a good argument for his way of looking at it, and throws in some fun stories about his own teachers. The newer edition also contains two other texts which are meant to support one's understanding of the mind-seal classic and the concept of immortality. I also like Eva Wong's translations, but for the most part the i ching symbolism that appears in all the ones I've read escapes me. If anyone knows what's going on with all that, I'd love a simplified explanation. :-) - j
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The following is all there was in "The Art of Living: Vispassana Meditation As Taught By S. N. Goenka", by William Hart. The book itself is mostly paraphrase and direct quote from the teacher himself, and is probably the most authoritative book on Goenka's teaching. This is from a question and answer session. "Q: I practice yoga. How can I integrate this with Vipassana? A: Here at a course, yoga is not permitted because it will disturb others by drawing their attention. But after you return home, you may practice both Vispassana and yoga - that is, the physical exercises of yogic postures and breath control. Yoga is very beneficial for physical health. You may even combine it with Vispassana. For example, you assume a posture and then observe sensations throughout the body; this will give still greater benefit than the practice of yoga alone. But the yogic meditation techniques using mantra and visualization are totally opposed to Vipassana. Do not mix them with this technique. Q: How about the different yogic breathing exercises? A: They are helpful as physical exercise, but do not mix these techniques with anapana. In anapana you must observe natural breath as it is, without controlling it. Practice breath control as a physical exercise, and practice anapana for meditation." My note: anapana is one part of the technique taught at courses: there are three interlinked meditation techniques that are taught, with anapana being the first. - j
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Uncle Lee's is a company that sells boxes of 100 white tea bags for 5$. Not the highest quality stuff, but sufficient, I think, and great if you're on a budget. One could probably have a coop order it for them. - j
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There was a vague reference in the introductory speech about someone who had done herself grievous harm by mixing a retreat with "another technique"... I followed the retreat rules really closely, figuring that for ten days I could give up just about anything, even taiji. :-) As far as "our path is the best", yeah, I've found that attitude in just about every spiritual tradition I've looked at and i'm sure it's in the vispassana community as well. The folk at the retreat I attended were very open and accepting of other methods, though- just clear on how two traditions could aim for the same result but be at cross-purposes in technique. I agree that qigong is not antithetical to buddhist meditation: the whole shaolin tradition comes out of that fusion. As a side note, if you compare Goenka's vispassana technique to BK Frantzis's internal/external dissolving process, they're really similiar, except vispassana advocates simply equanimously watching the sensations, including those of blockages, and observing them -changing-, while 'water-method' asks for conscious intent to -dissolve- (placing it at odds with vispassana, i think). I suspect the similarity is more than coincidence, Frantzis's teacher was a tian tai master in addition to being a taoist lineage holder. There's an old argument about the concept of qi itself: is it an ethereal energy that exists outside of the body as well as within it, or is it a functional term for metabolism, body/mind relation and specific practical effects of certain practices? Bodri suggests that what is now usually called qi (and manipulated by imagination) is synonymous with the wind element of the body (called ghost qi in some traditions): real, maybe, but not what the old-schooly taoists were writing about. I mention this because there are many health-oriented qigong techniques that do not require visualization, which possibly make them suitable for vispassana practitioners- i don't think i'm qualified to make pronouncements on the subject, but it's something i've been thinking about. I got a copy of Vispassana: Art of Living yesterday. If I find any quotes that relate to the mixing of paths I'll be sure to post them. - j
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Although, who knows? I'll come back and apologize if my understanding turns out to be wrong in a year or three. - j