Love, Loving-Kindness, Bonds, Attachment

[old3bob]

reasonable measures for reasonable ends definitely have a place, although the plans of mice and men can go awry,  so in the end game what can one really count on...

 

[TranquilTurmoil]

13 hours ago, Bindi said:

One can show evidence of all the signs that are expected in a particular method, because that is what the particular method is designed to actualise, but this isn’t an overall proof of anything, it merely proves that by following a particular method particular signs can be expected. How would one know whether any of these signs are actually valuable in an ultimate reality? 
 

3bob suggests the small voice within, but that hasn’t been very effective for the people in death cults, or suicide bombers for example. Belief systems can override the small voice within, and not just in obvious cases, but in less obvious cases as well. How would you know whether you’re following a belief system and it’s method or working towards ultimate truth? 

As someone who followed essentially a cult of one (+ whatever I was contacting when consulting the I Ching everyday) for 8 years, I think it's very possible to make genuine spiritual progress even if following a path that is harmful or misleading. And if the two combine, it's extremely confusing to be able to discern if that path is harmful or misleading. But I can't tell from my examination of different paths if there is anything that is valuable or unvaluable in ultimate reality anyway. But to people like us who are perpetually dwelling (at least that's how I percieve myself) in relative/historical reality, I certainly have preferences as does everyone else I have encountered I believe. So while steve shared most of the things I could think of, I guess the ultimate measure of a path for me is if it helps me and others become the people we would want to become if we were pure of heart, with deep aspiration, and an open, caring, inclusive mind... and especially if the teacher/teachers seem to embody these qualities. As I don't have a traditional path, and as I have deep traumas, limited access to residential training, and for whatever reason working online (reading, teachings, zooms with mentors) causes me discomfort... the best I can figure out for myself is to make the most of what is accessible to me and seems trustworthy. One can grow a lot in the midst of confusion, discomfort, imperfect people. And I tend to get stagnant when I start ruminating on my dissatisfaction and disillusionment with others, with teachers, with life itself, or on the seeming futility of my own efforts. But it's still really hard to navigate that dissonance... but nothing else seems more truthful or worthwhile in such an impermanet and fragile world.

[Mark Foote]

28 minutes ago, TranquilTurmoil said:

 

One can grow a lot in the midst of confusion, discomfort, imperfect people. 

 

 

You've come to the right place (Dao Bums)!

Do you have a daily practice, may I ask?  Fellow Dao Bums, tell us:  do you have a daily practice?

I'm under the impression that most Dao Bums do, whether it's consulting the I-Ching (which I guess is in your past, TranquilTurmoil), meditation of one flavor or another, or martial arts.  Me, I sit "cross-legged" as they say, usually first thing in the morning and last thing at night.  I used to sit 40 minutes, but about a year ago my knees began to object, so now I sit 25.  More or less.

For a long time, I took the advice of Kobun Chino Otogawa, a Zen teacher who was in my neighborhood.  He said, "Take your time with the lotus", and I worked at it.  I did manage to sit the lotus for about 20 years, but now I find myself following in the footsteps of Dennis Merkel, regarding the posture.  Merkel says he sat about 20 years in the half lotus, 20 in the full lotus, and now he sits Burmese (one leg in front of the other, flat on the floor).  

I still regard the cross-legged posture as my teacher.  I've met a lot of folks who were strong sitters and teachers, and I appreciate their effort and dedication but they never could speak to what I needed.  I think I have what I need now, but what a long, strange road it's been.  The cross-legged posture and free-style dance, my teachers!

[steve]

10 hours ago, old3bob said:

reasonable measures for reasonable ends definitely have a place, although the plans of mice and men can go awry,  so in the end game what can one really count on...

 

 

change

[old3bob]

1 hour ago, steve said:

 

change

 

Brahman

[TranquilTurmoil]

8 hours ago, Mark Foote said:

 

You've come to the right place (Dao Bums)!

Do you have a daily practice, may I ask?  Fellow Dao Bums, tell us:  do you have a daily practice?

I'm under the impression that most Dao Bums do, whether it's consulting the I-Ching (which I guess is in your past, TranquilTurmoil), meditation of one flavor or another, or martial arts.  Me, I sit "cross-legged" as they say, usually first thing in the morning and last thing at night.  I used to sit 40 minutes, but about a year ago my knees began to object, so now I sit 25.  More or less.

For a long time, I took the advice of Kobun Chino Otogawa, a Zen teacher who was in my neighborhood.  He said, "Take your time with the lotus", and I worked at it.  I did manage to sit the lotus for about 20 years, but now I find myself following in the footsteps of Dennis Merkel, regarding the posture.  Merkel says he sat about 20 years in the half lotus, 20 in the full lotus, and now he sits Burmese (one leg in front of the other, flat on the floor).  

I still regard the cross-legged posture as my teacher.  I've met a lot of folks who were strong sitters and teachers, and I appreciate their effort and dedication but they never could speak to what I needed.  I think I have what I need now, but what a long, strange road it's been.  The cross-legged posture and free-style dance, my teachers!

I wrote about it quite a bit a year ago, so apologies to anyone who is tired of hearing me talk about my long, strange journey in samsaric cycles here!

 

My I Ching devotional consultation life wasn't altogether seperate from my daily practice. Very early on in my meditation (and yoga) practice, I started developing injuries... first to the neck, and then to the knees from sitting seiza/kneeling. Very early on in my I Ching path, I started yielding over massive amounts of freedom, and my life essentially became sitting meditation (in a chair), walking meditation, laying down meditation, over and over and over. It wasn't like I was picking it over other activities or hobbies, I didn't have (wasnt permitted to have) any other activities. Eventually it just became sitting meditation and an increasingly austere life (including a brief 34 month stint in a psychiatric facility from Jan 2015-Nov-2017!). The austerities combined with sitting for hours and hours a day combined with no exercise other than walking the halls to get meals, use the phone, and see visitors (my family) eventually made my bones start to give out altogether. After being discharged from the hospital with severely deteriorated bones, my practice became laying down meditation and walking meditation in alternation (which was sooooo much nicer!). I regained a lot of freedom and quality of life in the year before breaking from the I Ching, but fell into a severe energetic imbalance in July 2021, a month before breaking away from it. In the Fall I started doing Damo Mitchell's anchoring the breath practice as my daily sitting, and I would walk in nature, and do what I could to rehabilitate my body. In January, a zen teacher I had been working with since August unexpectedly assigned me a koan, which started out great, but within two weeks it had severely re-aggravated my energy imbalance worse than it had been before and I had to use my discernment and drop the koan (my teacher didn't have much experience with subtle energy). I went back to Anchoring the breath, but after starting to work with my Taoist Teacher in April, I stopped doing it everyday, then altogether, in favor of intuitively practicing and adapting practices and methods to where I'm at and what I need... with the emphasis being on getting my energy, mind, anxiety, fear, and projection: grounded, rehabilitating my body, restoring my body awareness and connection with the breath (I lost that part when I snapped into energy imbalance a year ago), and learning how to relate to + navigate the living experience of my body. 

 

This consists of a lot Self-Massage Qigong, walking, finding creative ways to gently exercise that aren't so habitual that I do them unconsciously, and returning thought, mind, energy, breath, awareness down into my body from my head... as best as I can given my hyper-vigilance and the perpetual anxiety, fear, and trauma that I carry with me. I don't actually have a formal sitting practice anymore, although I think it would be great if I got in the groove of it again. It's kind of like my life is a constant shallow meditation, where there is no point i'm not meditating in some way, but I never enter conventional concentrations... my awareness is perpetually mindful yet scattered. I meet with a handful of mentors, dharma friend, and a buddhist therapist weekly too, and try to sit with a sangha once a week. So that's that I suppose, I really miss sitting cross-legged but my feet can only endure sitting occasionally for brief periods of time. It will take either a miracle, or the miracle of losing my health before I turned 30 having a generally good prognosis for long-term recovery to even sit burmese one day!

[TranquilTurmoil]

@old3bob @steve

 

"He's changing yet he knows the Changeless!

He's Changeless yet he knows Change!"

 

-Zhaungzhi

[mcoolio]

@TranquilTurmoil Wow, this is quite a story you posted here ... Thanks for sharing it. You must have learned some important lessons through all of it.

 

19 hours ago, TranquilTurmoil said:

One can grow a lot in the midst of confusion, discomfort, imperfect people.

 

Without this, is it even possible to grow? Probably not!

[Mark Foote]

On 7/9/2022 at 5:19 PM, TranquilTurmoil said:

 

Interestingly enough, Thich Nhat Hanh had as his most essential sutras the Sutta on the Full Awareness of breathing (which had 16 steps) and the Sutta on the Four Establishments of Mindfulness (Satipathhana I believe)... I neglected both of those all of these years until it hit me how essential and profound of a door the Four Establishments are, and how much there was to be benefitted potentially from skillfully reciting "Breathing in, I am aware of my body... Breathing Out, I smile to my body.... Breathing In, I am aware that I am breathing in, Breathing out, I generate a feeling of joy!" 

 

Hahn gives a positive spin to things.  Me, I just harsh everybody's buzz!--I hope you can forgive me.

I see that Thich Nhat Hahn translates the second set of four in Anapanasati:
 

‘Breathing in, I feel joyful.
Breathing out, I feel joyful.’
He or she practices like this.

‘Breathing in, I feel happy.
Breathing out, I feel happy.’
He or she practices like this.

‘Breathing in, I am aware of my mental formations.
Breathing out, I am aware of my mental formations.’
He or she practices like this.

‘Breathing in, I calm my mental formations.
Breathing out, I calm my mental formations.’
He or she practices like this.

 

(https://plumvillage.org/library/sutras/discourse-on-the-full-awareness-of-breathing/)

 

I tend to go with Woodward's translation for the Pali Text Society:
 

Thus (one) makes up (one’s) mind:

 

Feeling the thrill of zest I shall breathe in. Feeling the thrill of zest I shall breathe out.

Feeling the sense of ease I shall breathe in. Feeling the sense of ease I shall breathe out.

 

(One) makes up one’s mind:

 

Aware of all mental factors I shall breathe in. Aware of all mental factors I will breathe out.

Calming down the mental factors I shall breathe in. Calming down the mental factors I shall breathe out.
 

(SN V 312, Pali Text Society Vol V pg 275-276; tr. F. L. Woodward; masculine pronouns replaced, re-paragraphed)

I can find something like "the thrill of zest" and something like "the sense of ease", if I can relax.  "The thrill of zest" for me is just a subtle energy, and "the sense of ease" is an ease in my body (what else would it be!).  Joyful and happy as in Hahn's translation?--not so much.

The next two instructions I interpret as having to do with the senses, with awareness and calm with respect to the senses (I’m interpreting “mental factors” as “mental faculties”, and defining “faculties” per Merriam-Webster:  "one of the powers of the mind or body the faculty of hearing", Merriam-Webster). 

Koun Franz described a practice with respect to the eyes:

 

I was taught we should be constantly aware of our eyes when we sit. Specifically, we should be aware of how we narrow and widen the aperture, how our field of vision gets narrower and narrower as our mind gets narrower and narrower. When you see that clearly, you also see how easily you can just open it up; the degree to which we open it up is the degree to which we’re here.

 

(“No Struggle [Zazen Yojinki, Part 6]”, by Koun Franz, from the “Nyoho Zen” site
https://nyoho.com/2018/09/15/no-struggle-zazen-yojinki-part-6/)

 

The practice koun Franz described is a matter of being aware of the eyes, and I would contend of calming that awareness.  I would summarize it that way, and approached in that manner, the practice applies to all the senses, and is particularly relevant to the awareness of the senses critical to posture (proprioception, equalibrioception, graviception, plus the aforementioned occuloception).  

 

The Tai-Chi classics describe seated meditation as “straightening the chest and sitting precariously”*, and sitting with continued precariousness demands calm in the exercise of the senses involved.  

 

In The Early Record, I commented on the first two elements of Gautama's "mindfulness of feeling":
 

To the extent that calm in the stretch of ligaments and relaxation in the activity of muscles reflects the extension of balance from the base of consciousness, a certain zest and ease emerges.

 

That's what the practice come down to for me:  relaxation with regard to the activity of the body, and calm with respect to the activity of the senses, particularly in light of the awareness of activity generated out of the stretch of ligaments.

 

I see that the folks at Plum Village wrote that Thich Nhat Hahn was especially happy to have found Anapanasati Sutta among the scriptures of the Pali Sermons.  I can relate to that, yet I wonder at the variety of translations I see, and how long I had no path forward with respect to Anapanasati on account of them.

 

 

* “Master Cheng’s Thirteen Chapters on T’ai-Chi Ch’uan”, by Cheng Man-Ch’ing, translated by Douglas Wile, pg 21
 

Edited July 14, 2022 by Mark Foote

[Mark Foote]

On 7/8/2022 at 10:35 AM, TranquilTurmoil said:

 

"A Pilgrimage Can't compare to a Good Laugh

A good laugh can't compare to simply Letting Yourself Go

 

Once you are at peace,

letting yourself go

And leaving Change Behind

Only then do you enter the Solitary Mystery of Heaven"

 

-Zhaungzhi

 

Can anybody cite the particular translation here?  I did find "The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu" translated by Burton Watson online (https://terebess.hu/english/chuangtzu.html), and Wikipedia says:
 

Zhuang Zhou commonly known as Zhuangzi was an influential Chinese philosopher who lived ... Chinese: 莊子; literally "Master Zhuang"; also rendered as Chuang Tzu)
 

but I can't find the quote.  

Thanks!

[TranquilTurmoil]

21 hours ago, Mark Foote said:

Can anybody cite the particular translation here?  I did find "The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu" translated by Burton Watson online (https://terebess.hu/english/chuangtzu.html), and Wikipedia says:
 

Zhuang Zhou commonly known as Zhuangzi was an influential Chinese philosopher who lived ... Chinese: 莊子; literally "Master Zhuang"; also rendered as Chuang Tzu)
 

but I can't find the quote.  

Thanks!

David Hinton, I think Chapter 6, if not chapter 5!

[Mark Foote]

22 hours ago, TranquilTurmoil said:

David Hinton, I think Chapter 6, if not chapter 5!
 

 

A rabbit-hole kind of day, here. 

 

Buddhaghosa's explanation of one-pointedness of mind:

 

Ekodi-bhuta.  khanika-samadhina ekagga-bhuta samahita, 'by a momentary concentration become one-pointed and tranquillized.'

 

("Sarattappakasini", Buddhaghosa's commentary on Samyutta Nikaya, footnote SN V 144, Pali Text Sociey V p 123-124)

 

A definition of dhyana (I don't see any authorship ascribed): 

Dhyana is a Sanskrit word meaning "meditation." It is derived from the root words, dhi, meaning “receptacle” or “the mind”; and yana, meaning “moving” or “going.”

(dhyana, dec. 9 2017, "Yogapedia"; https://www.yogapedia.com/definition/5284/dhyana)

 

Googling the two sanskrit roots, looks like the derivation above is correct.  So, dhyana is literally "mind moving".

 

David Hinton, writing in "China Root:  Taoism, Chan, and original Zen":

 

Etymologically, dhyana means something like “to fix the mind upon,” hence meditation as fixing the mind upon emptiness and tranquility.

 

Here I think he missed the mark.  Gautama's "one-pointedness of mind" and Buddhaghosa's "one-pointed" don't actually stipulate that the mind is fixed on anything, or fixed in space.  Koun Franz pointed out the difference between "placing the mind here" meaning "to fix the mind upon" and "placing the mind here" as meaning to allow the mind to take place somewhere other than in the head.

Happens every night in falling asleep, the mind moving, but it's easier to see it happen in falling back to sleep after three or four hours of sleep than in first falling asleep.  That's because it's necessary to be awake enough to see it (but not too awake to fall back asleep).

Hinton describes "mind" in the literature of China as "empty-mind", presumably something more than the mind of "determinate thought":

Empty-mind is about much more than simple tranquility or attentiveness, essential as they may be. It is, instead, everyday ordinary mind operating at Tao’s generative origin-moment/place, which the Dark-Enigma Learning master Kuo Hsiang described as the “hinge of Tao” where our “movements range free” because we move as the Cosmos (Tao) itself unfurling inexhaustibly through its boundless transformations.

(https://terebess.hu/zen/mesterek/roo.pdf)

 

 

"Origin-moment/place", or as Dogen put it:

 

When you find your place where you are, practice occurs, actualizing the fundamental point.

When you find your way at this moment, practice occurs, actualizing the fundamental point…

 

(“Genjo Koan”, Dogen; tr. Robert Aitken and Kazuaki Tanahashi.)

 

To me, finding my place where I am means "by momentary concentration become one-pointed", a one-pointed that moves yet remains right where I am.  Finding my way at this moment just means:

 

... People who are moving around outside all sit with you. They don’t take the sitting posture!

 

(lecture by Kobun Chino Otogawa, “Shikantaza”, http://www.jikoji.org/intro-aspects/)
 

They are right where I am, at this moment.

 

... Dogen starts off by talking about body and mind dropped off. It is funny that he says, “Body and mind dropped off is the beginning of our effort.” Dropping off body and mind is an important technical phrase for Dogen, in Japanese shinjin datsuraku. Body and mind dropped away is a name Dogen uses for zazen. For him zazen is simply dropping off body and mind. It is also his name for annuttara samyak sambodhi, “Complete unsurpassed perfect enlightenment”. 

 

(Taigen Leighton, https://www.ancientdragon.org/dropping-off-body-mind-and-the-pregnant-pillars/)

 

 

 

 

[C T]

@Mark Foote"Here I think he missed the mark." 

 

I agree. When not used loosely, Dhyana implies meditation free of coarse and subtle obstruction, per the tradition I follow. Its often used in conjunction with the term 'Equipoise'. 

[Mark Foote]

On 7/15/2022 at 7:46 PM, C T said:

 

@Mark Foote "Here I think he missed the mark." 

 

I agree. When not used loosely, Dhyana implies meditation free of coarse and subtle obstruction, per the tradition I follow. Its often used in conjunction with the term 'Equipoise'. 

 

 

Gives new perspective on that old case from the "The Gateless Gate":

 

29. Not the Wind, Not the Flag

Two monks were arguing about a flag. One said: "The flag is moving."

The other said: "The wind is moving."

The sixth patriarch happened to be passing by. He told them: "Not the wind, not the flag; mind is moving."

 

Mumon's comment: The sixth patriarch said: "The wind is not moving, the flag is not moving. Mind is moving." What did he mean? If you understand this intimately, you will see the two monks there trying to buy iron and gaining gold. The sixth patriarch could not bear to see those two dull heads, so he made such a bargain.

 

Wind, flag, mind moves,
The same understanding.
When the mouth opens
All are wrong.

(The Gateless Gate, by Ekai, called Mu-mon, tr. Nyogen Senzaki and Paul Reps [1934], at sacred-texts.com)

 

 

I used to think the sixth patriarch was talking about the relationship of "mind" to the weather, something like the ability of shamans the world over to affect the weather in their vicinity.  Black Elk standing on a butte in the bad lands and a storm he expected coming up out of nowhere.  One of our local Kashima healers predicting red rolling lightning upon her own demise, and the testimony of witnesses to the occurrence of the lightning outside the tribal round house when she passed.

 

Ekai says the flag is not moving, the wind is not moving.  He's putting words in the mouth of the Sixth Patriarch, isn't he?  To me, what the sixth patriarch said was, pay attention here, not to the flag or the wind.  Ekai’s interpretation of the sixth patriarch’s words left me in confusion, for a lot of years.

I do like the way Ekai says "if you understand this intimately", and then goes on to reject understanding in words altogether ("when the mouth opens, all are wrong").  
 

 

Edited July 18, 2022 by Mark Foote

[manitou]

On 7/12/2022 at 4:56 PM, TranquilTurmoil said:

I wrote about it quite a bit a year ago, so apologies to anyone who is tired of hearing me talk about my long, strange journey in samsaric cycles here!

 

My I Ching devotional consultation life wasn't altogether seperate from my daily practice. Very early on in my meditation (and yoga) practice, I started developing injuries... first to the neck, and then to the knees from sitting seiza/kneeling. Very early on in my I Ching path, I started yielding over massive amounts of freedom, and my life essentially became sitting meditation (in a chair), walking meditation, laying down meditation, over and over and over. It wasn't like I was picking it over other activities or hobbies, I didn't have (wasnt permitted to have) any other activities. Eventually it just became sitting meditation and an increasingly austere life (including a brief 34 month stint in a psychiatric facility from Jan 2015-Nov-2017!). The austerities combined with sitting for hours and hours a day combined with no exercise other than walking the halls to get meals, use the phone, and see visitors (my family) eventually made my bones start to give out altogether. After being discharged from the hospital with severely deteriorated bones, my practice became laying down meditation and walking meditation in alternation (which was sooooo much nicer!). I regained a lot of freedom and quality of life in the year before breaking from the I Ching, but fell into a severe energetic imbalance in July 2021, a month before breaking away from it. In the Fall I started doing Damo Mitchell's anchoring the breath practice as my daily sitting, and I would walk in nature, and do what I could to rehabilitate my body. In January, a zen teacher I had been working with since August unexpectedly assigned me a koan, which started out great, but within two weeks it had severely re-aggravated my energy imbalance worse than it had been before and I had to use my discernment and drop the koan (my teacher didn't have much experience with subtle energy). I went back to Anchoring the breath, but after starting to work with my Taoist Teacher in April, I stopped doing it everyday, then altogether, in favor of intuitively practicing and adapting practices and methods to where I'm at and what I need... with the emphasis being on getting my energy, mind, anxiety, fear, and projection: grounded, rehabilitating my body, restoring my body awareness and connection with the breath (I lost that part when I snapped into energy imbalance a year ago), and learning how to relate to + navigate the living experience of my body. 

 

This consists of a lot Self-Massage Qigong, walking, finding creative ways to gently exercise that aren't so habitual that I do them unconsciously, and returning thought, mind, energy, breath, awareness down into my body from my head... as best as I can given my hyper-vigilance and the perpetual anxiety, fear, and trauma that I carry with me. I don't actually have a formal sitting practice anymore, although I think it would be great if I got in the groove of it again. It's kind of like my life is a constant shallow meditation, where there is no point i'm not meditating in some way, but I never enter conventional concentrations... my awareness is perpetually mindful yet scattered. I meet with a handful of mentors, dharma friend, and a buddhist therapist weekly too, and try to sit with a sangha once a week. So that's that I suppose, I really miss sitting cross-legged but my feet can only endure sitting occasionally for brief periods of time. It will take either a miracle, or the miracle of losing my health before I turned 30 having a generally good prognosis for long-term recovery to even sit burmese one day!

 

 

Could it be that your body is telling you not to worry too much about the nuts and bolts of any particular practice?

 

I don't know that I have anything that anyone wants, I've never walked a Daoist or Buddhist path.  I have no lineage.  I've never known a monk or gone to a monastery for anything.  I do know that something really profound has changed in me - and the Dao Bums had almost everything to do with it.  I see the answers in the caulking between the tiles, not in any particular tile.  

 

The most important component of any enlightenment I may have experienced is the undoing of self.  I have unravelled myself to the core, to the best of my ability.  Sometimes I think us alcoholics and addicts are the lucky ones.  If we want to avoid a premature and ugly death, or rubber rooms, then we have to unravel self.  Once this process has started, at some point it continues on its own, with or without my consent.  This has been my only practice.  This, and years of meditation to be able to experience stillness of thought.  And by snagging the incredible bits of wisdom here and there on the Bums, whether it came from a Daoist or a Buddhist.  Oh, and I forgot:  coming across a translation of the DDJ at a yard sale.  This, and triangulating other translations, I have taken very seriously and internalized.  I could feel the ringing assent of my own heart the first time I read the DDJ.  I knew that was My Truth.

 

Somewhere earlier in the thread, someone mentioned feeling burnt out because of having loved, and having experienced disappointment.  This happens if there are expectations on another person, and an expectation that the person act in a way that we might want.  But to live in true realism, where we have no expectations but instead accept a person for just what they are (not what we think they ought to be), this is the touchstone, IMO, of the impersonal and unconditional love we are speaking of here.  And the DDJ does tell us that we can choose either perspective.  To get entrenched in the emotions, or to live in the 'isness' of what is happening.  I often find myself remembering that we are all straw dogs, in the eyes of the Dao.  What I take that to mean is that the Dao doesn't really care who is the thumper and who is the thumpee.  At our core, we are manifesting what happens to us in life (I know how controversial that statement will be, but perhaps I just need to look at it that way for my own personal reasons).  I have a social conscience that is deep and well aware of the unfairness of life.  I mourn the fact that I have it so easy, and there are so many in the world that have it so rough, live on nothing, live under brutal conditions.  There are several ways I work that out in my mind; one is the self-manifestation aspect; another is the possibility that I too, in another incarnation, have lived a miserable life in unbearable conditions and that it's just their turn in this lifetime; and another angle is that the piece of divinity that we all share and carry within us knows exactly what it is that any individual person needs in a lifetime to bring him to the surface, like the lotus growing in the mud and ultimately finding the sun.

 

What a wonderful and rich thread this is.  I feel honored to be able to discuss such things with the incredible Bums here.

[Cobie]

8 hours ago, manitou said:

… the undoing of self …

All good people have a sense of self. (unknown)

 

 

Edited July 18, 2022 by Cobie

[Mark Foote]

15 hours ago, manitou said:

 

There are several ways I work that out in my mind; one is the self-manifestation aspect; another is the possibility that I too, in another incarnation, have lived a miserable life in unbearable conditions and that it's just their turn in this lifetime; and another angle is that the piece of divinity that we all share and carry within us knows exactly what it is that any individual person needs in a lifetime to bring him to the surface, like the lotus growing in the mud and ultimately finding the sun.

 

I think there's a certain amount of unrequited love and unresolvable tension in being alive.  We have to be ready to act, and I believe we are moved to act, when the occasion presents itself.   

 

One of the main takeaways for me of the patchwork path is to hang with the place the action comes from, and abandon the notions of self, just as you said manitou.  That the notions of self are identically suffering--I am attracted to that aspect of Gautama's teaching.

Edited July 18, 2022 by Mark Foote

[manitou]

7 hours ago, Cobie said:

All good people have a sense of self. (unknown)

 

 

 

 

Agreed, and it is the true Self, not the conditioned self, that needs to be found.  The True Self is the one we all have in common, the point of awareness, the pinprick of light within us, that does the manifesting and knows what we need.

[Small Fur]

Edit: post deleted, as it was posted to the wrong thread.

Edited Monday at 05:23 AM by Small Fur