<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <rss xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" version="2.0"> <channel> <title>Vajrayana/Tantra</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_category?p_l_id=&amp;mbCategoryId=77840</link> <description>All Vajrayana/Tantric wisdom practices should go here.</description> <pubDate>Sun, 19 Oct 2014 00:31:18 GMT</pubDate> <dc:date>2014-10-19T00:31:18Z</dc:date> <item> <title>RE: advice about trekchod and thogal practice in laymans terms please</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5558631</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Sadalsuud Beta Aquarii:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Jeff&lt;/strong&gt; that thread is excellent, thanks! Any other amazing vintage threads I should know about?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Jake&lt;/strong&gt; thanks for your words too, resonates, especially stuff about the states and feelings that arise with recognition of rigpa being confused for something to do with it.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;strong&gt;T DC&lt;/strong&gt; what practice vector do you recommend instead given how I describe my experience in the OP?&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;As James Yen said a few post up, I would consider Trekchod and Thodgal to be essentially ussless unless you have an extremely refined understanding of emptiness.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Though we may advance on the path, the basic practice of meditation never changes.  We have the problem: delusion/ clinging to forms as solid and lasting, and we have the goal which is a state free from grasping.  Meditation is always (no matter where on the path) the practice of training the mind to turn away from grasping.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;To be clear, my practice of meditation did not change as I progressed on the path.  Meditation for me was always recognizing awareness and sustaining it.  As this is done, breakthroughs occur, and one comes to recognise greater degrees of awareness.  This is probably obvious for you exeprientially.  Anyhow, the point here is that meditation remains the same throughout the path.  What changes is the context.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;By context I mean attainment; where you&amp;#039;re at on the path.  Consider this anology:  You are on a long hike: meditation is the process of walking, it remains roughly the same throughout the hike.  Context is the scenery through which you move.  To extend this analogy, practicing thodgal after 4th path is like hoping to get from the base of the mountain to the top in one go, one step.  Remember that the basic process of walking remains the same.  At anytime, the only place you can travel to immediately is that directily in front of you.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Focusing on such loft goals, the peak, leads one to distraction.  It takes effort to move anywhere on the path, and so your attention is best spent focusing on attainable goals.  Best case scenario, practicing thodgal doesn&amp;#039;t distract you too much and you manage to attain the next step anyway; worse case scenario, you are too distracted, and unsure about the next step to move on.  Teaching about context help because they point you in the right way for you right now.  (If you focus on a map of a city 200 miles away while trying to navigate the one your currently in, you&amp;#039;re likely to get lost.)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;What I recomend is reading Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism, focusing on the chapter on emptiness (form is empty, emptiness is form..), or also &amp;#039;The way of the Boddhisatva&amp;#039; by the Dali Lama.  Basically after 4th path, form is seen as empty, now emptiness must be seen as form..  Chogyam Trungpa describes this progression well (CTSM).&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Cheers!</description> <pubDate>Sun, 20 Jul 2014 04:26:45 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5558631</guid> <dc:creator>T DC</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-07-20T04:26:45Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: advice about trekchod and thogal practice in laymans terms please</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5558622</link> <description>https://m.facebook.com/notes/dzogchen-khenpo-choga-rinpoche/auspicious-news-my-teacher-lama-karma-attains-rainbow-body/10151794778007773&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Interesting read&lt;br /&gt;Enjoy&lt;br /&gt;Jeff</description> <pubDate>Sun, 20 Jul 2014 01:34:56 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5558622</guid> <dc:creator>Jeff Grove</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-07-20T01:34:56Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: advice about trekchod and thogal practice in laymans terms please</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5556928</link> <description>A link to an interview with some powerful descriptions of the path of Thogal:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;www&amp;#x2e;acircleisdrawn&amp;#x2e;org&amp;#x2f;index&amp;#x2e;php&amp;#x2f;heart-essence&amp;#x2f;"&gt;http://www.acircleisdrawn.org/index.php/heart-essence/&lt;/a&gt;</description> <pubDate>Mon, 14 Jul 2014 14:32:01 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5556928</guid> <dc:creator>. Jake .</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-07-14T14:32:01Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: advice about trekchod and thogal practice in laymans terms please</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5552858</link> <description>SBA,&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;You were probably looking for this:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;https://www.dropbox.com/s/0g3iwn7mlbqlql9/practice-dzogchen.pdf&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This book contains complete instructions on Trekchod as well Thodgal (as well as instructions for a &amp;#034;dark retreat&amp;#034;), the emphasis is on thodgal more, however. I&amp;#039;m fairly certain that practicing these practices, with a blank slate, prima facie (is that the correct use of the phrase?) without an understanding of emptiness, is completely useless.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Regardless, the information is there.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Regards,&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;James&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;(just post here if you want anymore books, I have a ton)</description> <pubDate>Thu, 03 Jul 2014 18:27:48 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5552858</guid> <dc:creator>James Yen</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-07-03T18:27:48Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: advice about trekchod and thogal practice in laymans terms please</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5552744</link> <description>&lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;www&amp;#x2e;dharmaoverground&amp;#x2e;org&amp;#x2f;discussion&amp;#x2f;-&amp;#x2f;message_boards&amp;#x2f;view_message&amp;#x2f;3244665&amp;#x2f;en"&gt;http://www.dharmaoverground.org/discussion/-/message_boards/view_message/3244665/en&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;www&amp;#x2e;dharmaoverground&amp;#x2e;org&amp;#x2f;discussion&amp;#x2f;-&amp;#x2f;message_boards&amp;#x2f;view_message&amp;#x2f;3244665&amp;#x2f;en"&gt;http://www.dharmaoverground.org/discussion/-/message_boards/view_message/3244665/en&lt;/a&gt;</description> <pubDate>Thu, 03 Jul 2014 02:41:35 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5552744</guid> <dc:creator>Jeff Grove</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-07-03T02:41:35Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: advice about trekchod and thogal practice in laymans terms please</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5552734</link> <description>&lt;strong&gt;Jeff&lt;/strong&gt; that thread is excellent, thanks! Any other amazing vintage threads I should know about?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Jake&lt;/strong&gt; thanks for your words too, resonates, especially stuff about the states and feelings that arise with recognition of rigpa being confused for something to do with it.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;strong&gt;T DC&lt;/strong&gt; what practice vector do you recommend instead given how I describe my experience in the OP?</description> <pubDate>Thu, 03 Jul 2014 00:13:29 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5552734</guid> <dc:creator>Sadalsuud Beta Aquarii</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-07-03T00:13:29Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: advice about trekchod and thogal practice in laymans terms please</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5552263</link> <description>Hi &lt;br /&gt;I have wrote about these practices on the forum if you do a search as they have been my main practice for a few years&lt;br /&gt;http://www.dharmaoverground.org/discussion/-/message_boards/message/3124677?_19_threadView=flat&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;For books try&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Http://www.dharmaoverground.org/discussion/-/message_boards/message/3728181&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Enjoy&lt;br /&gt;Jeff</description> <pubDate>Mon, 30 Jun 2014 19:32:36 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5552263</guid> <dc:creator>Jeff Grove</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-06-30T19:32:36Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: advice about trekchod and thogal practice in laymans terms please</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5551972</link> <description>Another point related to the &amp;#039;rigpa vs. states that are similar&amp;#039; concern is that we often mistake states and feelings that tend to co-arise with the natural state for &amp;#039;it&amp;#039;. Traditionally it&amp;#039;s said that relaxing in the natural state will tend to bring up experiences of no-thought, emptiness, clarity (including visions, esp etc as well as six-sensate clarity) and bliss. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Another book is &amp;#039;Clarifying the Natural State&amp;#039; by Tashi Namgyal. It&amp;#039;s a practice manual with lots of exercises. </description> <pubDate>Sun, 29 Jun 2014 19:52:10 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5551972</guid> <dc:creator>. Jake .</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-06-29T19:52:10Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: advice about trekchod and thogal practice in laymans terms please</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5551907</link> <description>Yes Sadalsuud you are right, one has to be careful not to confuse Rigpa with various states that are similar. In some ways it&amp;#039;s best not to define the state at all (noting there is a difference between description and definition!). For me there is either clarity or not in any given moment. The descriptions don&amp;#039;t really matter. The thing itself is completely free from suffering, and self-evidently self-clear.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Probably best to work directly with a dzogchen teacher or one or more senior students, and I&amp;#039;m not aware of either of those participating on these fora. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;On the other hand, it is called the &amp;#039;natural&amp;#039; state for a good reason. It&amp;#039;s the &amp;#039;way it is&amp;#039; for us experientially in a very basic way. So while it &lt;strong&gt;is&lt;/strong&gt; something precise, that something is &lt;u&gt;like&lt;/u&gt; a context in which all our experiencing happens. It&amp;#039;s the nature of that experiencing. So you can&amp;#039;t get too far from it and I don&amp;#039;t like descriptions that emphasize how &amp;#039;far out&amp;#039; it is. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Anyhow lots of folks have glimpses of the natural state way before ever practicing, this is pretty common as I understand it. What the teacher and teaching do is point out the &lt;u&gt;significance&lt;/u&gt;&lt;u&gt;&lt;/u&gt;&lt;u&gt;&lt;/u&gt; of the state so that it can be the basis for a path. The benefit of using halfway approaches like Pure Land or tantric-inspired practices is that they can bring us &amp;#039;closer&amp;#039; to the state. I think of it like fractal resonance. The state is the fractal pattern for all experiences in a fundamental way (the basis). But ordinarily our attention is absorbed in a partial representation of that fractal. All we need to do is &amp;#039;drop&amp;#039; those representations and just let experience be as it is and suddenly all is clear. Whether representations (thoughts in the broadest possible sense) are present or not isn&amp;#039;t the issue, but whether we are confusing them with reality, whether our attention is contracted into a particular representation (i.e., one of the realms of desire, form or formlessness) is the issue. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I can&amp;#039;t say anything about practice after fourth path as I don&amp;#039;t claim that, nor do I see consistency in the pragmatic dharma scene as to a definition of that, however, using Daniel&amp;#039;s definition I am not (and his definition makes a lot more sense to me than for instance Kenneth&amp;#039;s). I don&amp;#039;t think all these different paths map up to one another really. </description> <pubDate>Sun, 29 Jun 2014 13:58:23 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5551907</guid> <dc:creator>. Jake .</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-06-29T13:58:23Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: advice about trekchod and thogal practice in laymans terms please</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5551806</link> <description>Hey it&amp;#039;s James, banned again.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I actually agree with T DC, in my experience I first started buckling down on Buddhist practice in 2012 and it started with practicing Mahamudra and the Six Yogas of Naropa, sounds fancy and intimidating, but at the time I couldn&amp;#039;t squeeze any oil out of those olives (if that makes sense).&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;It&amp;#039;s not that the practice are not efficacious, it&amp;#039;s merely that they are not relevant at earlier stages in development, it&amp;#039;s only now that I have penetrated Mahamudra and One Taste and have any valid fruition Mahamudra experiences, and that&amp;#039;s only because I&amp;#039;m reading Chogyam Trungpa right now.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Without reading his descriptions or having his instructions, I would say that it would have been nearly impossible for me to enter the Vajrayana.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I like the nine yana journey because it is accurate in my experience, Chogyam Trungpa describes it very well, first beginning with the Hinayana you get off your ass, learn some discipline and manners, then you begin to feel samatha and vipassana, you penetrate the three characteristics of phenomena.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;But you don&amp;#039;t penetrate emptiness yet, or no-self, but once you do you enter the Mahayana, at this point you interchange yourself with others, because... there is no self! Self, other? Who are you saving? So this compassion develops. There is a lack of self and other, or duality.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I have a fairly good grounding in Hinayana, but Mahayana is obviously a good next step for people who think the Hinayana is too claustrophobic, and Vajrayana is a whole &amp;#039;nother story.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I highly recommend Chogyam Trungpa&amp;#039;s posthumous compilation of lectures: The Profound Treasury of Dharma, all three are great!</description> <pubDate>Sun, 29 Jun 2014 00:46:24 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5551806</guid> <dc:creator>James Yen</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-06-29T00:46:24Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: advice about trekchod and thogal practice in laymans terms please</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5551753</link> <description>If this thread turns into a mature discussion of the proper use of dzogchen... damn, that will be quite a contribution for everyone.</description> <pubDate>Sat, 28 Jun 2014 22:54:41 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5551753</guid> <dc:creator>x x</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-06-28T22:54:41Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: advice about trekchod and thogal practice in laymans terms please</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5551737</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Sadalsuud Beta Aquarii:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;Hey Jake thanks for the input.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I will check out the Aro book Roaring Silence, as I read Spectrum and found it really good.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;What you say about total existential release, completeness and panoramicness definitely resonates with experience. Does recognition of rigpa always feel very objectless / uncontracted? &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I am a bit wary about mixing up recognition of Rigpa with being in certain &amp;#034;states&amp;#034; and hence looking for certain very panoramic states (not saying you are doing this, just that it might be a trap for me)...&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;After MCTB 4th path, (when the coarse self is seen through, and sense fields are known to be free of objects), if one is not currently in a position (which could be a very subtle one) of someone wanting/trying something, is recognition of rigpa the effortless baseline?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I will read and practice more.&lt;br /&gt;Thanks again&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Just to add my opinion..  As jake said treckchod deals with maintaining a glimpse of the ultimate state.  Obviously in order to do this one needs to first glimpse the ultimate state.  As you said in your post this is may be easier said than done, given the difficulty of having such a glimpse.  The glimpse you&amp;#039;re going for here is literally that of the awakened state, or at least quite close to it.  To just have such a glimspe is exceedingly difficult, I need not really explain I think.. How many times have we as practitioners tried to have this glimpse?  How many times have we succeeded?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;After 4th path, I was in a very similar position, actually I went out and bought a book on dzogchen.  However I quickly got nowhere, reason being the teaching were above my head.  While 4th path affords a glimpse of emptiness, this is merely a glimpse.  Consider on the other hand that treckchod and thodgal are practices geared toward final enlightenment.  In other words 4th path is at one end of the attainment spectrum, and the basis of these dzogchen practices is at the other.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I know these practices may seem enticing, but in my experience, above all else is the recognition that while the practices you do help to set you up for success, the key factor that determines your attainment will always be the state of mind you start from.  In other words, when you&amp;#039;re at level 1, don&amp;#039;t shoot for level 4 because the best you can do right now is level 2.  Once you&amp;#039;ve gone through 2 and 3, then shoot for 4.  IMO, practicing advanced dzogchen practices after 4th path is like trying to go from level 1 to level 15 in one go.  Not likely to happen.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Just to share my experince with these practices, I did practice thodgal.  I did so after I had reached the stage at which this was appropriate.  This stage is VERY near full enlightenment.  As may be noted, thodgal is divided into 4 visions, the first of which is &amp;#039;direct realization of reality istelf&amp;#039;.  At this first stage the sense of self is fully seen through, the resulting visions eliminate residual dualistic perception.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So to be blunt I think you may be wasting your time pursueing this.  I am happy to recomend avenues to pursue however.</description> <pubDate>Sat, 28 Jun 2014 21:39:44 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5551737</guid> <dc:creator>T DC</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-06-28T21:39:44Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: advice about trekchod and thogal practice in laymans terms please</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5551527</link> <description>Hey Jake thanks for the input.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I will check out the Aro book Roaring Silence, as I read Spectrum and found it really good.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;What you say about total existential release, completeness and panoramicness definitely resonates with experience. Does recognition of rigpa always feel very objectless / uncontracted? &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I am a bit wary about mixing up recognition of Rigpa with being in certain &amp;#034;states&amp;#034; and hence looking for certain very panoramic states (not saying you are doing this, just that it might be a trap for me)...&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;After MCTB 4th path, (when the coarse self is seen through, and sense fields are known to be free of objects), if one is not currently in a position (which could be a very subtle one) of someone wanting/trying something, is recognition of rigpa the effortless baseline?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I will read and practice more.&lt;br /&gt;Thanks again</description> <pubDate>Sat, 28 Jun 2014 09:51:37 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5551527</guid> <dc:creator>Sadalsuud Beta Aquarii</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-06-28T09:51:37Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: advice about trekchod and thogal practice in laymans terms please</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5551338</link> <description>I recommend Ken McLeod&amp;#039;s book, &lt;em&gt;Wake Up to Your Lif&lt;/em&gt;e. Ken has solid Tibetan credentials. The book has a minimum of esoteric jargon and lots of meditation exercises.</description> <pubDate>Fri, 27 Jun 2014 18:45:10 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5551338</guid> <dc:creator>Jack Hatfield</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-06-27T18:45:10Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: advice about trekchod and thogal practice in laymans terms please</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5551324</link> <description>Also James Low is well worth a google. His videos and essays and translations/commentaries seem spot on and profound to me. The thing about dzogchen is depending on how it&amp;#039;s presented it can seem like something really simple and obvious or something totally unapproachable and abstruse, but once you get a taste for what is pointed at you can find support in all those different forms. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Okay I&amp;#039;ll stop now!</description> <pubDate>Fri, 27 Jun 2014 17:34:15 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5551324</guid> <dc:creator>. Jake .</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-06-27T17:34:15Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: advice about trekchod and thogal practice in laymans terms please</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5551319</link> <description>One of my all time favorites is &amp;#039;The Flight of the Garuda&amp;#039; translated by Keith Dowman. Really fantastic. The introduction has some great biographical material of him meeting Lamas and receiving teachings and I like his commentaries and translations a lot. Tons of very concrete stuff about Treckcho, self liberation, and the emotions/wisdoms dynamics and what those experiences are like. Also gives you a great feel for the assumptions and flavor of this subculture. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I like to expose myself to multiple different presentations (and the Aro, Norbu, and Dowman presentations are different) because it helps me get a feel for the commonalities. We approach this stuff in our own individual ways and articulate the experiences and insights in our own unique ways so I find it interesting and helpful to expose myself to different perspectives. Some folks function better by taking one single approach and buying into it completely. YMMV.</description> <pubDate>Fri, 27 Jun 2014 17:32:18 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5551319</guid> <dc:creator>. Jake .</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-06-27T17:32:18Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: advice about trekchod and thogal practice in laymans terms please</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5551266</link> <description>hi Sadalsuud,&lt;br /&gt;traditionally Dzogchen as a path is considered in terms of view, meditation, lifestyle/conduct and result. The view is Rigpa or the nature of mind. This is tough to talk about. But it&amp;#039;s not just recognizing and releasing patterns of tension in the body mind, although that in my experience can happen in proximity to &amp;#039;resting in the natural state&amp;#039;. The latter though is more complete-- it&amp;#039;s complete release. In that glimpse everything is completely transparent, open, and complete. The &amp;#039;relaxation&amp;#039; is complete, it is existential. There is nothing left out in that moment-- it&amp;#039;s completely panoramic wholeness and openness and freedom and clarity. This can become clear when a particular pattern self-liberates but sometimes a pattern liberates and there is just a psycho-physical relaxation and openning which is different. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Treckcho is about &amp;#039;sustaining&amp;#039; this &amp;#039;state&amp;#039;. So obviously you need to identify the state first and clear up doubts about it. &amp;#039;Sustaining&amp;#039; is in scare quotes because it is more like you have struck the bell (recognized the View, relaxed into the natural state) and the bell just keeps ringing if you don&amp;#039;t try to grasp it. This in my understanding is really where non-doing comes in and I find it very challenging on deep deep levels to &amp;#039;remain&amp;#039; in that natural state. It will bring up a lot of &amp;#039;purification&amp;#039; i.e. all your stuff &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/happy.gif" &gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;In my experience practice oscillates between phases where &amp;#039;working&amp;#039; on patterns is more prominant and other phases where just letting go and letting be is more prominant. This happens in a fractal way within days, weeks, months.... Erring too much to the &amp;#039;working&amp;#039; side can create a sort of spiritual ego, a &amp;#039;practitioner&amp;#039; self. Erring too far to the non-doing side can be a kind of self-deceptive thing because I&amp;#039;m honestly not there yet. Like you I still find (and maybe always will find) a lot of value in exploring my patterns and digging them up to see them clearly and for me this requires reflection and effort at times. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So again I would emphasise the difference between a psycho-physical release of tensions as a result of investigation applied in tandem with calm abiding and on the other hand this complete existential release in which everything spontaneously appears as free, clear, translucent, open, perfectly complete. There is more to it in that the predominant klesha that is arising (pride, jealousy, anger, desire, ignorance) in the moment of spontaneous liberation can transform into a wisdom energy of corresponding flavor (rather than just dissapearing completely). In the dzogchen system this is very related to tantric practices although in dzogchen it is said to come about in a different way than in tantric practices which utilize energy-body work, visualizations and the like whereas in dzogchen treckcho this transformation is said to be spontaneous. I don&amp;#039;t have much experience with tantric practices per se, just the adapted forms of it that are transmitted in dzogchen lineages and these are lighter-weight, simpler and shorter than standard traditional tantric practices. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I would recommend checking out the Aro books &amp;#039;Roaring Silence&amp;#039; which is an introduction to the natural state, a sort of introduction to dzogchen, and &amp;#039;Spectrun of Ecstasy&amp;#039; which details the correspondences of the five emotional kleshas and the five wisdoms as putting the two together is pretty close to many traditional strains of dzogchen which in practice utilize both &amp;#039;working&amp;#039; methods of working with the energy, body, behavior, mind trainnig etc and the complete relaxation letting go and letting be. Also any books by Namkhai Norbu or his students are really good for delving into this practice subculture. Omega Point&amp;#039;s presentation seems like a more technically precise version of what a lot of Norbu&amp;#039;s students put out there in their books (in other words they tend to use a more yogi-friendly language). Check on John Reynolds&amp;#039; translation of the Golden Letters for instance or &amp;#034;self liberation through naked awareness&amp;#039;, another great book that i think Reynolds translated. There is also a guy on facebook named Jackson Peterson who teaches dxogchen very openly. Check him out.</description> <pubDate>Fri, 27 Jun 2014 15:06:08 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5551266</guid> <dc:creator>. Jake .</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-06-27T15:06:08Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>advice about trekchod and thogal practice in laymans terms please</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5551026</link> <description>&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #444444"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: courier&amp;#x20;new&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;monospace"&gt;​&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;I see a lot of people talking about Dzogchen and would like to ask, could anyone please explain these practices to me in language I can understand? I will speak a bit about where I am coming from and what I am looking for so maybe it will be easier for you guys to respond.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;Over the past year, thanks very much to this forum/group and those who contribute here, I have been having various insights into the emptiness of various things, which have changed things a lot for me. My baseline state is that this body is 95% of the time happily bumbling around by itself having a lovely time, sometimes excited, sometimes sad, but very content, in a world which could easily just all be a dream. Not much push or pull on reality that I yet notice. Quite a lot of thoughts, 95% of which seem not at all a problem, just like the neighbour having the radio on. Sometimes there is suffering, which is experienced as mental stuckness/tension around sensations relating to strong desires.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;how I am trying to understand self-liberating/letting go&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #444444"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: courier&amp;#x20;new&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;monospace"&gt;​​&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;I am really drawn to the very simple practice of letting patterns of tension around emotion/thought systems self-liberate. I am a bit confused about the difference or similarity between spontaeneous self-release, and having to seeming work on patterns of suffering. I will explain this as I understand it, any help is very welcome.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;So, suffering arises as physical and/or mention tension around a fear and a thought. Normally within a second or so, the actual root fear is recognised/felt/accepted as just a sensation, it is self-liberated, but sometimes things are sticker.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;In my experience this might happen in the following way.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;E.g. I see a someone I am  sort-of romantically involved with being physically intimate with someone else at a party. Fear arises, but the attention seems to contracts around the fear sensation, and the sensation is treated like a problem. Various mental strategies for avoiding it play out over a few seconds like &amp;#034;they shouldn&amp;#039;t do that, I must fix this somehow&amp;#034;. Then this is quickly seen through, and the thought becomes &amp;#034;I shouldn&amp;#039;t be reacting like this, I need to work more on accepting etc,&amp;#034;, so then I might go into just trying to feel the sensation... but actually even in this &amp;#034;just feeling&amp;#034;, there is a subtle tension because there is someone treating this feeling is a problem and is trying to feel it in order to change it. The attention is still &amp;#034;tensed&amp;#034; around the sensation. Then when this final &amp;#034;trying&amp;#034; to feel it is dropped, the attention seems to open out, the tight fear sensation seems to spread as a warmth through the chest and arms, and there is a relief, and a ease and a good humour about things, rather than any mental tension of trying to fix. As soon as the subtle holding is noticed, there is an instantaneous forgetting, spontaneous release. A problem which never existed.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Sticker things that don&amp;#039;t spontaeneously release&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;Now, when the problem is something where I can feel the actual emotional fear, sometimes this takes a few seconds, sometimes minutes. But sometimes - more rarely - there are situations where I feel tense and awkward but can detect no emotion. The body is obviously reacting with tension, e.g. holding itself away from a certain person, but I cannot detect why or what emotional system is doing it. In these cases I have to really investigate the situation before an emotion becomes apparent, then it can release in this way.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;An example. I saw my mother, we talked for a while and it was evident that my body was holding itself far from her. I did not know why though, I couldn&amp;#039;t feel any sadness, anger, nothing really around the heart or gut. My mind was clear and lucid, but a bit tense. So we played a game where we looked into each other&amp;#039;s eyes and just said whatever words came to mind, in turns, a bit like noting I guess. Soon enough after a few minutes there were words like &amp;#034;misunderstood&amp;#034;, &amp;#034;distant&amp;#034;, &amp;#034;disappointed&amp;#034; and I started to notice feelings of sadness and anger. Instantly I knew what seemingly innocent tiny details of our interaction had triggered this block, and the pattern then self-liberated over the next minute as truth became apparent.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;I think that with deep set patterns like family or lust-related stuff, there will be a lot of this kind of exploration, or deeper-diving meditation which will be needed to make the root of the pattern clear to self-liberate.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;What I would like to achieve:&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;It just seems natural to unfold all this stuckness, which seems to be all be rooted in hidden fear. Also I notice that the more of these sticky fear-based patterns I liberate, the less selfish I am and the more helpful I am to other people, in ways which continually surprise me.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;So my questions are:&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;1. I have heard trek chod talked about as spontaneous release. Am I broadly on the right track with what I wrote about?&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;2. I can see the value in having very fine sense clarity of all the very subtle sensations (eergy pathways if you prefer) in the body - heart and gut especially - as a lot of deep patterns which can cause stuckness seem to have their keys there. Do the Dzogchen practices have specific exercises for this?&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;3. What is Thogal? How is it different?&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;4. What are the stages or visions of trekchod? What do they represent?&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;5. Do the practices emphasise any special skilful means, like visualising, or like trying to work on specific aspects, like all the deep rooted patterns related to sexual stuff, or does trying to fix things in this way just lead to more tail-chasing?&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;6. I saw omega point&amp;#039;s great article about this, &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;http://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/message_boards/message/5424997&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;and basically I was left perplexed by the difficult (for me) language in it, and wondering whether it is pointing to a totally different mode of practice or just using technical words for things which most post MCTB 4th-pathers (not fetters model 4th path) are naturally doing?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;7. are all these things secret, and have I committed some sort of dharmic faux pas in asking? sorry if so.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: #222222"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial"&gt;Sincere thanks for any help afforded, and gratitude to everyone who contributes here on this forum. I think there are probably a lot of people interested in these practices and maybe this thread will be of benefit to them.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;</description> <pubDate>Fri, 27 Jun 2014 01:12:30 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5551026</guid> <dc:creator>Sadalsuud Beta Aquarii</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-06-27T01:12:30Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Great quotes from Chogyam Trungpa</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5543575</link> <description>Apologies for the double post, would like to attach the last image here, seems there is a limit of five attachments.</description> <pubDate>Sun, 08 Jun 2014 21:45:36 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5543575</guid> <dc:creator>J J</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-06-08T21:45:36Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>Great quotes from Chogyam Trungpa</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5543555</link> <description>This guy is a genius.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Here&amp;#039;s a link to a small image library of some quotes I snapped from &amp;#034;The Tantric Path of Indestructible Wakefulness&amp;#034;, a compilation of lectures by Chogyam Trungpa over his lifetime.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I really resonate with the notion of immedicacy and fullness in the Vajryayana, whereas in the Mahayana there are inklings or hints of a future fulfillment.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Link: &lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;imgur&amp;#x2e;com&amp;#x2f;a&amp;#x2f;r75kC"&gt;http://imgur.com/a/r75kC&lt;/a&gt;</description> <pubDate>Sun, 08 Jun 2014 21:42:57 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5543555</guid> <dc:creator>J J</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-06-08T21:42:57Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Ethics of adapting "secret" practices for one's own use</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5322547</link> <description>Hi Avi!&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I&amp;#039;ve been also worried about this same issue you mention here. Eventually I found Medicine Buddha practice which according to some sources I was reading at the time, does not require the empowerment/transmission. Problem solved! &lt;br /&gt;I can also highly recommend a related book, Medicine Buddha Teachings by Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche. It is the most detailed, easily accessible and profound book I have found relating to deity visualization. I have also the inner fire book somebody recommended but I personally prefer the Medicine Buddha Teachings over all other material I&amp;#039;ve read on the subject. Maybe it&amp;#039;s a matter of personal preference, but still I wanted to share this with you! &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/happy.gif" &gt;</description> <pubDate>Tue, 18 Mar 2014 11:44:36 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5322547</guid> <dc:creator>Jehanne S Peacock</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-03-18T11:44:36Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Ethics of adapting "secret" practices for one's own use</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5316381</link> <description>Hi Avi!&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I encountered Namkhai Norbu&amp;#039;s Vajrayana and Dzogchen teachings over a decade ago on retreat in NYC. He was extremely generous with giving out powerful teachings (his group has a reputation for creating a pretty rugged path for many because of this). We walked away from the retreat with explanations and pamphlets for dozens of practices including visualzation/mantra practices as well as breathing/energy practices. He was very clear and straightforward about the risks and rewards but there was really a sense of, you need to take responsibility for your own path (which is why he transmitted and explained so many practices, so you would have a ton of stuff in your toolbox). I tried to employ a particular energetic/breathing practice without honestly having the experiential basis in terms of insight into empty impermanence but rather tried to deploy the method in a forceful, egoic way, and it resulted in an energetic disturbance that *seemed* to lead to a chronic physical condition (I say seemed... the physical condition was real, diagnosed, and problematic-- still is, 15yrs later-- but although the connection to the energetic practice and my experiences with it seems very plausible and synchronistic of course I have no way of knowing that...). &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Anyhow, long story short, this is all just to say even with all the formal transmission and solid explanations from an accomplished teacher it&amp;#039;s certainly possible to harm oneself with some of these practices. And conversely I am convinced that with the appropriate insight into empty impermanence to start with, one may engage these practices safely, with or without the formal empowerments etc. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;One cool thing about Norbu though, as I said he was incredibly generous with these teachings and his explanations and pamphlets were very helpful-- and I didn&amp;#039;t ever get the impression that he was selling anything. It was a six day retreat in Manhattan which cost me about $200 including a room to sleep in. Another $40 later I had probably 20 pamphlets containing and explaining various practices which he also explained and transmitted over the course of the retreat. And unlike many other Vajrayana teachers there were no complex committments expected of us (in fact, really none at all)-- other than to use the practices as and when they felt useful.</description> <pubDate>Sun, 16 Mar 2014 23:10:27 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5316381</guid> <dc:creator>. Jake .</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-03-16T23:10:27Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Deity Yoga How To?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5315642</link> <description>vaj ra sat tva sam a yam an u pal a ya vaj ra sat tva ten op a ti shta dri to me bha va su tosh yo me bha va su posh yo me bha va an u rak to me bha va sar va sid dhi me pra yac ccha sar va kar ma such a me chit tam shri yang ku ru hung ha ha ha ha ho bha ga van sar va ta tha ga ta vaj ra ma me muñ cha vaj ri bha va ma ha sam a ya sat tva a hung</description> <pubDate>Sun, 16 Mar 2014 21:46:45 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5315642</guid> <dc:creator>tom moylan</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-03-16T21:46:45Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Ethics of adapting "secret" practices for one's own use</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5315464</link> <description>Two replies in one.&lt;br /&gt;***&lt;br /&gt;Thanks Dreamwalker for the Shinzen Video, that was a great summary of the essence of these practices and it helps to stay focused on the basic concept of the practice and not get lost in all the complexity and dire warnings. I haven&amp;#039;t found the place where Shinzen describes getting enlightened through Deity Yoga. If anybody knows where he talks about that, I&amp;#039;d love to see it. It was also encouraging to see that he recommends Western deities for Western practitioners. That makes sense since the whole thing is based on a resonance and psychological power to mobilize archetypes. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Regarding the upper world journey idea. I have gone on many journeys to seek guidance on this, and I&amp;#039;ve gotten some tremendous information. The main reason for interest in the Vajrayana deity yoga practices is to get ideas for taking these big mythical revelations and integrating them into a regular meditation practice. There&amp;#039;s obviously lots of material in almost all the world&amp;#039;s religions on deity worship, and some of it is very inspiring, but it&amp;#039;s also very mixed up with dogma and not clearly related to a set of practical techniques. I always respect the technical soundness of the Buddhist approaches. Buddhism is like the BJJ of the spirit world.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;***&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Change A.:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;I gleaned the information about the visualization practices from the book &amp;#034;The Bliss of Inner Fire: Heart Practice of the Six Yogas of Naropa by Lama Yeshe&amp;#034;. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Thanks Change A. for the reply. I&amp;#039;m definitely going to start with that book. I wouldn&amp;#039;t mind learning to warm myself up either because I&amp;#039;m chronically cold &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/happy.gif" &gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Change A.:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;I think it is really important that you have some experience with renunciation, bodhichitta and emptiness before embarking on this journey because otherwise the ride can will get rough. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I do have a fair amount of experience with insight practices, and with rough rides. Thanks for the concern.</description> <pubDate>Sun, 16 Mar 2014 20:31:17 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5315464</guid> <dc:creator>Avi Craimer</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-03-16T20:31:17Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Deity Yoga How To?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5315281</link> <description>Well, I decided to take it step by step, and faltered right at the beginning. Frankly, I even had problems with Vajrasattva purification. I will come back to those practices when I have more time and feel more ready, but for now I&amp;#039;m working primarily with metta and sila in general.</description> <pubDate>Sun, 16 Mar 2014 19:23:16 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5315281</guid> <dc:creator>Brother Pussycat</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-03-16T19:23:16Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Ethics of adapting "secret" practices for one's own use</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5315224</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Avi Craimer:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;That&amp;#039;s so good to hear. Which tantras do you use? How did you choose which tantras to use? Where did you get information about the practices? How specifically have they helped you? &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;As you can see I&amp;#039;m very curious about this : )&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I gleaned the information about the visualization practices from the book &amp;#034;The Bliss of Inner Fire: Heart Practice of the Six Yogas of Naropa by Lama Yeshe&amp;#034;. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I tried many deities for visualization and after some time, I could see which one I need to use. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I think it is really important that you have some experience with renunciation, bodhichitta and emptiness before embarking on this journey because otherwise the ride &lt;strike&gt;can &lt;/strike&gt; will get rough.</description> <pubDate>Sun, 16 Mar 2014 19:08:05 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5315224</guid> <dc:creator>Change A.</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-03-16T19:08:05Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Ethics of adapting "secret" practices for one's own use</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5314921</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Avi Craimer:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;As you can see I&amp;#039;m very curious about this : )&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Couple of thoughts about this...&lt;br /&gt;Have you visited the &amp;#034;upper&amp;#034; realms in your shamanic practices? I&amp;#039;m sure you could find some spirits/deity that may wish to come into a relationship with you for the betterment of all. From my understanding these entities may teach you things. You may wish to ask your personal guides/helpers if this is to your benefit at this time before doing so.&lt;br /&gt;Shinzen Young has some good perspective on deity practice...it was very interesting...it was the path that he took to enlightenment. I have no idea where I found it as it was years ago. maybe this &lt;a href="https&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;www&amp;#x2e;youtube&amp;#x2e;com&amp;#x2f;watch&amp;#x3f;v&amp;#x3d;6WtPrOE1JSk"&gt;The &amp;#034;Secret&amp;#034; of Archetypal Deity Yoga ~ Shinzen Young &lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Good luck,&lt;br /&gt;~D</description> <pubDate>Sun, 16 Mar 2014 17:04:07 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5314921</guid> <dc:creator>Dream Walker</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-03-16T17:04:07Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Ethics of adapting "secret" practices for one's own use</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5314445</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Change A.:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;I&amp;#039;ve had good results (up until now*) with deity visualization which wouldn&amp;#039;t be possible with anything else. I never received transmission for this. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;That&amp;#039;s so good to hear. Which tantras do you use? How did you choose which tantras to use? Where did you get information about the practices? How specifically have they helped you? &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;As you can see I&amp;#039;m very curious about this : )</description> <pubDate>Sun, 16 Mar 2014 14:15:50 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5314445</guid> <dc:creator>Avi Craimer</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-03-16T14:15:50Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Ethics of adapting "secret" practices for one's own use</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5311150</link> <description>I&amp;#039;ve had good results (up until now*) with deity visualization which wouldn&amp;#039;t be possible with anything else. I never received transmission for this. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;*Though I can see that it is a delicate balance and things can possibly go wrong. But I started on my own because I thought I had no other choice.</description> <pubDate>Sun, 16 Mar 2014 08:00:19 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5311150</guid> <dc:creator>Change A.</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-03-16T08:00:19Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Ethics of adapting "secret" practices for one's own use</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5304989</link> <description>Hi Avi,&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I agree with Tom&amp;#039;s sentiment, as well as with your own last two paragraphs. If those selling such books really believed that terrible karma would result from unauthorized use, they would not be taking the suicidal risks involved in selling such books online.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;If you had information (such as secret tantras) which you believed could reduce or even eliminate suffering, would you not want to spread this information far and wide? On what basis would you be offended if someone got access to this information without asking for your consent? These books aren&amp;#039;t like nuclear launch codes: Seems to me that here the dangers of misuse, i.e. some people going crazy, are far outweighed by the potential benefits, i.e. far more people getting saner. While there certainly are benevolent motives for keeping secrets, one should not ignore the corruptions of power and the inertia of tradition (clinging), no matter how realized a being.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This coming from someone who is all too frequently second-guessing himself, but also from one with confidence in the spirit of science.</description> <pubDate>Sun, 16 Mar 2014 07:21:39 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5304989</guid> <dc:creator>Sakari A</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-03-16T07:21:39Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Ethics of adapting "secret" practices for one's own use</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5300259</link> <description>Howdy Avi,&lt;br /&gt;i like reading your thoughtful posts.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;i have busied myself in the past with vajrayana practices. it was exactly the secret nature of it that eventually drove me towards the much more open style exibited here. it is diffficult to dissemble rationally all of the reasons for all of the secrecy in vajrayana. some is clearly political / factional and others based on real concerns for the welfare of the practitioners.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;i always took the warnings about practicing (or even reading) some teachings without the proper prerequisite practices, blessings and ceremonies and teachers with a grain of salt. many are laden with threats like &amp;#034;eternitiy in the hell realms&amp;#034; if abused or insanity as the certain outcome of such unapproved practice. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;as someone with vast experience with &amp;#034;the dark night&amp;#034; i think i can see well the downsides to practice. perhaps some of the more dire warnings come to fruition with the &amp;#034;deeper&amp;#034; diamond way practices but i doubt that.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;more to your ethical question; i think its like a copyright. a warning which protects the current owner and not necessarily helping the tradition or the practitioner.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;the site offering thi stuff: is it profiting from this distribution? if so, my opinion is that all moral or religious questions are dissolved with that fact alone.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;just my thoughts&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;tom</description> <pubDate>Fri, 14 Mar 2014 21:18:24 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5300259</guid> <dc:creator>tom moylan</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-03-14T21:18:24Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>Ethics of adapting "secret" practices for one's own use</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5300254</link> <description>Hey,&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I&amp;#039;ve been looking into information about Vajrayana practices of Deity Yoga. The last post led me to this site: &lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;dechenlingpress&amp;#x2e;org&amp;#x2f;products-page&amp;#x2f;"&gt;http://dechenlingpress.org/&lt;/a&gt; which has some very interesting looking material. Their store allows one to buy all kinds of &amp;#034;secret instructions&amp;#034; for various tantras. However, they specifically ask the people not purchase some of the books unless they have received official transmission from a tantric master. For example, the page for the book &lt;em&gt;The Extremely Secret Dakini of Naropa&lt;/em&gt; says, &amp;#034;The material in this book is restricted. This book may be read only by those who have received a Highest Yoga Tantra empowerment.&amp;#034; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I am less concerned about the superstitious aspect of the whole thing; the idea that somehow just reading the book could harm me if I don&amp;#039;t have the okay from a lama. However, I am concerned about the ethics of taking sacred information through a means that is lacking in integrity. I don&amp;#039;t want to feel as if I&amp;#039;m violating another spiritual tradition&amp;#039;s practices. I&amp;#039;m not even planning to practice the specific tantras, but simply to read the instructions in order to get ideas for developing my own eclectic practice.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Also, I can&amp;#039;t help but feel that the site is being a little cagey about the whole thing. If the writings were actually so secret, they would presumably not be making them available online for just whoever wanted to order them. Even putting &amp;#034;Extremely Secret&amp;#034; in the title has the air of a marketing pitch meant to generate interest. So I&amp;#039;m not sure how seriously to take the whole thing. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The other perspective is that for too long these traditions have been cloaked in secrecy. Daniel&amp;#039;s book revealed many things about Theravada that are considered secrets in the traditional Buddhist world, and I believe it has done great good. Maybe it&amp;#039;s time for Vajrayana to undergo a similar opening of the doors. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Any thoughts?</description> <pubDate>Fri, 14 Mar 2014 20:51:32 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5300254</guid> <dc:creator>Avi Craimer</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-03-14T20:51:32Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Deity Yoga How To?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5296770</link> <description>Brother, did you find it helpful?</description> <pubDate>Fri, 14 Mar 2014 03:40:05 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5296770</guid> <dc:creator>Change A.</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-03-14T03:40:05Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Deity Yoga How To?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5293698</link> <description>Cool thanks, I&amp;#039;ll check it out. Just from reading the first few lines of the preview it sounds a lot like the perspective presented at AYP site. That&amp;#039;s good though, because I&amp;#039;ve been looking for a way to coherently map together the Yoga/vedic perspective with the Buddhist perspective. Maybe this book will provide the bridge.</description> <pubDate>Thu, 13 Mar 2014 21:40:27 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5293698</guid> <dc:creator>Avi Craimer</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-03-13T21:40:27Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Deity Yoga How To?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5293338</link> <description>The Bliss of Inner Fire by Lama Yeshe could be of help.</description> <pubDate>Thu, 13 Mar 2014 19:29:19 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5293338</guid> <dc:creator>Brother Pussycat</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-03-13T19:29:19Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>Deity Yoga How To?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5287132</link> <description>I&amp;#039;m fascinated by the ideas of Vajrayana deity yoga as a possible bridge between Buddhist practice and other traditions like Bhakti yoga, shamanism, kabbalah, alchemy, etc. Does anybody know of a book or website that discusses the principles of deity yoga in an accessible way for people who aren&amp;#039;t looking to work within a lineage transmission system?</description> <pubDate>Wed, 12 Mar 2014 06:28:43 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5287132</guid> <dc:creator>Avi Craimer</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-03-12T06:28:43Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Choosing a lingeage: Theravada vs. Vajrayana</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=4819885</link> <description>Interesting to know..</description> <pubDate>Sun, 20 Oct 2013 09:54:54 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=4819885</guid> <dc:creator>George S. Lteif</dc:creator> <dc:date>2013-10-20T09:54:54Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Choosing a lingeage: Theravada vs. Vajrayana</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=4819736</link> <description>I think the Vajrayana and Teravadan perspectives can work nicely together, so long as you can just digest and basically ignore the propaganda you will hear about the &amp;#034;Hinayana&amp;#034; from the Tibetans, who basically know nothing about the modern Theravada as it is in places like Burma, so they are talking about some ancient, somewhat anti-idealized creation of their own historical minds, using it basically as a literary or teaching device, a foil. The Theravadans know nearly nothing about the Vajrayana most of the time, but wouldn&amp;#039;t even bother to mention them, as it generally has nothing to do with their worldview at all. In summary, we have the Vajrayana using the Theravada as a whipping boy with inaccurate negative propaganda, and the Theravada basically totally ignoring the Vajrayana. I am not sure which is worse, but neither is particularly helpful.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;From the Theravada you will get very good technique in great abundance and an extremely practical, practice-based approach. It will give you the sort of foundation that the Tibetan practitioners often lack, whose world often has so much ritual, ornament, cults-of-personality, political and dogmatic stuff that they generally are not doing what the Theravadans do, meaning just busting it on the cushion hour after hour after hour building the muscles you need to perceive things clearly and stabilize attention.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;That said, the Theravada has its shadow sides, and from the Vajrayana you gain a perspective that can work with energies, colors, qualities, the textures of space, emotions, the archetypes, and things like that, in a way that is generally more whole, human, vibrant, and immediate than the Theravada often produces, though on paper it involves working with all of that also, in some relatively dry way that often, due to its particular models and some of its dogma, means subtle or overt denial and asceticism beyond what is needed to get really fluent in your reality as it is.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I would seriously consider starting Theravada, getting stream entry and perhaps second path from the Mahasi kids first and then a good sense of what really strong concentration is from the Pau Auk kids, and then take that into the Vajrayana, and you will already have what you need to visualize really well as well as having established a direct understanding of ultimate bodhichitta, which is essential to that path, and be able to see that the endless fascination with ritual and the rest of the hyper-abundant trappings and politics and personality stuff may, at best, be skillful means, as Attachment to Rites and Rituals will be profoundly lessened if not eliminated, and so you will be able to have the wide, vibrant acceptance that the Vajrayana offers without its obvious initial traps that so confuse most people who get into it before they were really ready for it. Dzogchen and its related perspectives really help with 3rd path territory. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;My 2¢,&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Daniel</description> <pubDate>Sun, 20 Oct 2013 08:01:20 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=4819736</guid> <dc:creator>Daniel M. Ingram</dc:creator> <dc:date>2013-10-20T08:01:20Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Choosing a lingeage: Theravada vs. Vajrayana</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=4818032</link> <description>&lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;www&amp;#x2e;dharmaoverground&amp;#x2e;org&amp;#x2f;web&amp;#x2f;guest&amp;#x2f;discussion&amp;#x2f;-&amp;#x2f;message_boards&amp;#x2f;message&amp;#x2f;1973107"&gt;Hierarchy of Vipassana practice&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;Q: Which technique is better: Noting, Body Scanning, Zen Koan Training, or what?&lt;br /&gt;A: Whatever at that time helps you progress or at least stabilize above the bottom levels of that hierarchy. Note: techniques take time to learn, so continuous abandoning of one poorly-learned technique for another poorly-learned technique is unlikely to do much of anything good, but if you have learned a few techniques well, they anything that works goes. One should realize that this is for most people a very dynamic and non-linear progression, with many risings and fallings up the ranks of the hierarchy, and learning how to shift focus or approach at the right time is a learned skill that requires constant vigilance and practice, but having the basic goals in mind should help guide you.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</description> <pubDate>Sat, 19 Oct 2013 17:38:35 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=4818032</guid> <dc:creator>Richard Zen</dc:creator> <dc:date>2013-10-19T17:38:35Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>Choosing a lingeage: Theravada vs. Vajrayana</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=4818023</link> <description>I&amp;#039;m intending to spend time this year at both Therevada and Vajrayana centers. Namely Pa-Auk and the U Pandita center in Myanmar on the Therevada side, and Traktung Rinpoche&amp;#039;s center on the Vajrayana side of things.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So, i&amp;#039;m gunna somewhat from experience what to make of these differences. But i&amp;#039;m wondering, what does everyone think? Do both of these systems go just as far? just as fast?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I wanna go all the way. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Thanks.</description> <pubDate>Sat, 19 Oct 2013 17:34:54 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=4818023</guid> <dc:creator>Jesse Cooper Levy</dc:creator> <dc:date>2013-10-19T17:34:54Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>The Nine Stages of Awakening in Tantric Nyingma Buddhism</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=4274851</link> <description>&lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;www&amp;#x2e;youtube&amp;#x2e;com&amp;#x2f;watch&amp;#x3f;v&amp;#x3d;eJqZOUh8zZA"&gt;The Nine Stages of Awakening in Tantric Nyingma Buddhism&lt;/a&gt;</description> <pubDate>Sun, 05 May 2013 16:54:54 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=4274851</guid> <dc:creator>Change A.</dc:creator> <dc:date>2013-05-05T16:54:54Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Mantras! Don't know if this goes here...</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=3036607</link> <description>SO, this part of Daniel&amp;#039;s post is what I&amp;#039;m yet still having trouble with: &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&amp;#034;So, can you just let the complexity and the chaos and the unpleasant things happen while noticing them widely, all around, as they attempt to come into the territory you think of as you, as that is part of what needs to happen.&amp;#034;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I just don&amp;#039;t know how to accept these unpleasant things; I sure do notice them and notice how unhappy they make me and how obsessive they make my thinking, how generally detrimental they are, but the problem is I consider my thoughts RIGHT for all that they make me unhappy. I know this is a dark night post and it&amp;#039;s not especially relevant to insight-techniques, I know it&amp;#039;s content. But the content is seriously screwing me up still, and I haven&amp;#039;t found any really good answer yet. I really do try over the years here to hold back my content from spilling out into my life, but it&amp;#039;s difficult when the people around me (my co-workers in my grad. program for example) are intent on drawing my stuff out, on &amp;#034;correcting&amp;#034; me.</description> <pubDate>Thu, 05 Apr 2012 23:24:35 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=3036607</guid> <dc:creator>Mike Kich</dc:creator> <dc:date>2012-04-05T23:24:35Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Mantras! Don't know if this goes here...</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=2792048</link> <description>Hi,&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;A couple of points, responses inline.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Mike Kich:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;There doesn&amp;#039;t seem to be any technique or tradition in particular that I&amp;#039;m actually very interested in consistently &lt;em&gt;doing&lt;/em&gt;, and during meditation I even have to struggle against the impulse to switch techniques in the middle of a sitting. I&amp;#039;ve never been under the impression that meditation of any kind should be &amp;#039;easy&amp;#039;, but it should be definitely more interesting. I mean, I know what all of this &lt;em&gt;means&lt;/em&gt; in the sense of &amp;#039;yes, I know it at least has somewhat to do with my Dark-Nighting&amp;#039;, but what to do about it practically speaking still has me stumped.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Why does this have to be dark night related? It would seem to fall under the hindrances of sloth-torpor/restlessness from my view. Sitting and meditating is _hard_, the mind is being forced to do something it isn&amp;#039;t at all used to doing. Getting bored when sitting feels like a very common problem and hardly unique to the dark night. For me, switching technique in the middle of a sit has always had to do with boredom/lack of focus.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I recently listened to a talk by a teacher that was adamant that you needed to pick a technique and stick with it or there simply wouldn&amp;#039;t be much in the way of progress.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Mike Kich:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;Like I said, it just doesn&amp;#039;t seem intuitively right that meditation should be characterized by this kind of grim struggling with even the technique itself and horrible problems with the posture and limbs constantly falling asleep and the mind just refusing at a certain point to stay on task. It just seems there&amp;#039;s something flawed about my basic assumptions about what my attention and concentration should be like, optimally speaking.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I to have/had this problem, which i imagine is fairly common, and have simply decided to go with a technique with more emphasis on relaxing the mind, which has done a lot for relaxing the entire meditation process for me.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Mike Kich:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;I do all kinds of practices actually, maybe too many, almost every day: Yoga, Tai-Chi, Karate again (which is also somewhat the same deal), and formal meditation. And all of them definitely have benefits, and I really enjoy Karate for example...but there&amp;#039;s this kind of passionlessness that being in the Dark Night just seems to unavoidably engender. Something has to *stand out*, and that quality of standing out just seems to have left the boat at the A+P. I want to find technique or practice that I really *click* with, because it seems like that&amp;#039;s the only way to inspire real progress, and yet that isn&amp;#039;t possible it seems. I don&amp;#039;t find it acceptable that the whole rest of my journey should be this uninspired and difficult, and that implies I&amp;#039;m working from a wrong-basis.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This, to me, sounds like perfectly ordinary boredom. I have picked up plenty of hobbies in my life that from the outside seemed really fun, and i really really wanted to enjoy them because i enjoyed the _thought_ of me practicing the hobby, but when it came down to it i simply didn&amp;#039;t enjoy it. Finding a hobby, or anything really, that really stands out, that you &amp;#039;click&amp;#039; with, is _hard_, it&amp;#039;s not something that happens every day. None of this is particularly unique to the dark night in my eyes. I&amp;#039;m not saying that meditation is a &amp;#039;hobby&amp;#039; by the way, just using hobbies as a basis for comparison.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I&amp;#039;m not trying to say that you shouldn&amp;#039;t meditate, or stop looking for a particular technique that will *click* for you, but perhaps try to find other reasons to meditate than that it must be fun. Look at the benefits it brings your life off the cushion, perhaps you can find motivation there rather than in the process of meditating itself.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Disclaimer: I&amp;#039;ve only been doing this for a year, please don&amp;#039;t give my opinions any more weight than that.</description> <pubDate>Fri, 27 Jan 2012 08:39:21 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=2792048</guid> <dc:creator>Simon Ekstrand</dc:creator> <dc:date>2012-01-27T08:39:21Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Mantras! Don't know if this goes here...</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=2792001</link> <description>Yeah, the control thing is a tricky point.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Here&amp;#039;s the 4 vipassana jhanas to help us with that. The trick is to avoid using the perspective that worked in an earlier jhana as the solution to the higher one.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;First vipassana jhana, namely first 3 insight stages (Mind and Body through Three Characteristics): effort works well, gets you somewhere, makes the difference, is a great plan.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Second vipassana jhana, namely the A&amp;amp;P: usually you notice that you see things a lot more clearly with less effort and finally the A&amp;amp;P takes over and there is no effort, just the A&amp;amp;P doing its thing.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Then there is the first subjhana part of the 3rd vipassana jhana, in which it actually does make some sense to apply effort, but the third jhana is wide and complicated and that is its nature, and so you have to get used to complexity, used to the wide open nature of attention, very soon the width and complexity give way to the dreaded 2nd-early 4th subjhana parts of the 3rd vipassana jhana, namely the Dark Night, and it is here that allowing a wide field to manifest on its own in all its complexity while staying present to how unpleasant that can be and how bad practice can feel, particularly in comparison to now nice and narrow and linear and straightforward practice seemed in the early jhanas, is the key.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So, can you just let the complexity and the chaos and the unpleasant things happen while noticing them widely, all around, as they attempt to come into the territory you think of as you, as that is part of what needs to happen.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The 4th jhana is the through and through one, the all the way through the center one, the space-realted one, the fluxy one. It is different from the early ones in that it is more integrated, yet more vague for most, more open and yet more subtle in some ways, more boring, such that many miss it and have no idea they got into it, more easy and yet we long for something to do out of habit and the feeling that we should be doing something, when actually the thing we want happens when we are doing nothing at all except naturally, effortlessly paying attention just because of a natural fascination, like in a daydream, and getting to this point requires a lot of fine tuning for most, learning to just let things happen while simultaneously just being there with them and then let this happen all the way through the core of everything: attention itself, wanting itself, effort itself, asking itself, looking itself, subtle things about fear and expectation and analysis, all of that. This has to be done gently and with finesse, and at points up in the 4th vipassana jhana things can feel really ordinary and not special or different or particularly meditative or altered at all.</description> <pubDate>Fri, 27 Jan 2012 08:10:27 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=2792001</guid> <dc:creator>Daniel M. Ingram</dc:creator> <dc:date>2012-01-27T08:10:27Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Mantras! Don't know if this goes here...</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=2791968</link> <description>Thank you both for your kind help, I will apply it. I do want to further question/clarify one or two points which you address, Daniel.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;1) Your point that the wandering mind itself, i.e. watching INstability, makes very much sense and the idea has seemed cogent to me for a long time actually. &lt;em&gt;Actually &lt;/em&gt;giving up the sense of control is paradoxical in the extreme to me, and that&amp;#039;s my issue with this up till now, since I think I need some degree of control present at all times, constantly, during meditation. Otherwise, it&amp;#039;s just normal awareness, hopping from thing to thing to thing, forgetting I&amp;#039;m meditating for just a split second, coming back, and so on. This superimposed view of meditation obviously doesn&amp;#039;t hold up well, otherwise I wouldn&amp;#039;t be asking about it, but it seems hard to imagine how otherwise just being alive and conscious isn&amp;#039;t meditation. When I consider how my mind hops from thing to thing to thing normally throughout the day, I actually don&amp;#039;t understand what the qualitative difference is anymore; how is that normal-awareness NOT meditation itself then? &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;If I&amp;#039;m reciting a mantra and my attention&amp;#039;s on that, and then my attention shifts to the individual movements of me walking, and then away again to an intrusive thought, and then I notice the original thought and the thoughts that follow it pretty close to when they arise and then watch them vanish quickly into renewed focus-awareness on the mantra, is that what&amp;#039;s meant by Choiceless Awareness? &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I&amp;#039;ll try the bo-staff exercise. )</description> <pubDate>Fri, 27 Jan 2012 07:48:34 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=2791968</guid> <dc:creator>Mike Kich</dc:creator> <dc:date>2012-01-27T07:48:34Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Mantras! Don't know if this goes here...</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=2791495</link> <description>Oh, yes, mantras.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Try them with the spinning bo staffs at the same time, and let the mantras and the spinning and the rest synchronize, realizing that, as things get higher into 4th vipassana jhana territory, the mantra may get diffuse and may even get silent and may even disappear and don&amp;#039;t worry about that, so long as the whole thing synchronizes and is allowed to disappear then it is all ok.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Daniel</description> <pubDate>Fri, 27 Jan 2012 04:34:34 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=2791495</guid> <dc:creator>Daniel M. Ingram</dc:creator> <dc:date>2012-01-27T04:34:34Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Mantras! Don't know if this goes here...</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=2791466</link> <description>A few ideals you seem to present might be part of the issue, so this is just a few thoughts that might help:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;1) The ideal that the ordinary wandering mind isn&amp;#039;t a good object should be questioned. Watch what it does on its own, see where it goes, see where it arises. Giving up the sense of control is part of the thing.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;2) Objectifying everything only works to a point. At some point, everything that seems to be you, subject, watcher, observer, doer, controller, practicer, etc, also needs to be included, and those things can&amp;#039;t actually be objectified in a normal way, with them &amp;#034;out there&amp;#034; as they are &amp;#034;in here&amp;#034;. It is not about constantly finding some reference point that makes everything objects, and instead is seeing how all the things through space are just where they are. This is a very strange thing to explain when you are used to making everything observed, but at some point it doesn&amp;#039;t work anymore, and you just have to figure out how to notice that things that you take to be you, through the space in what appears to be your head, neck, chest, abdomen, back, skull, nose, eyes, etc is all just fluxing stuff where it is, and it is the motion of attention that reveals the fluxing, as they are the same thing.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Thus: flux attention through the thing, which is to say the thing is the fluxing attention and there is no attention, just the fluxing stuff as it arises and changes. Notice this. It sounds mystical-mumbo-jumboish until it is not.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I like the following exercise. While sitting with eyes open, imagine that your arms contain bo staffs and you are twirling them in patterns that would be peacefully and painlessly cutting through your body, through your head, through your chest, through your back, through your sides. Really feel the imaginary arms moving the attention bo staffs through everything, feeling things gently synchronizing with the moving attention bo staffs as they slice through space, and in fact are part of space, which is to say they are attention, which is the same as space, and the moving attention space synchronizes with itself and the whole thing vanishes just like that and reappears. See if that helps.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Daniel</description> <pubDate>Fri, 27 Jan 2012 04:32:07 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=2791466</guid> <dc:creator>Daniel M. Ingram</dc:creator> <dc:date>2012-01-27T04:32:07Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Mantras! Don't know if this goes here...</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=2790724</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Mike Kich:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;I&amp;#039;ve touched upon Choiceless Awareness, but in practice it makes literally no sense to me. Choiceless Awareness, as in taking any object as those objects rise and fall, would just mean everyday-waking-experience, right?&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Well, no, cause you aren&amp;#039;t noticing those things. They&amp;#039;re just happening and you&amp;#039;re kind of ignoring them. Though sometimes you can peep your head out and be like &amp;#039;oh that happened!&amp;#039;, but usually it&amp;#039;s just a non-stop torrent of mindlessness (as opposed to mindfulness).&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Mike Kich:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;Choiceless Awareness is, well, not meditating. I simply can&amp;#039;t actually *think* a thought or sense things in general for long and maintain the kind of aloofness from it all, the simple observational quality, that&amp;#039;s apparently needed, and I can&amp;#039;t loving figure out why.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;Why not investigate why, directly? Try to just be aware of stuff. And, when you notice you stopped being aware of stuff, figure out what happened that distracted you, and why it distracted you. And just do that for your entire waking experience.</description> <pubDate>Fri, 27 Jan 2012 01:52:36 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=2790724</guid> <dc:creator>Beoman Claudiu Dragon Emu Fire Golem</dc:creator> <dc:date>2012-01-27T01:52:36Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>Mantras! Don't know if this goes here...</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=2790525</link> <description>Heya everyone,&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I&amp;#039;m curious about doing more with mantras than I historically have, and I&amp;#039;ve recently been toying around with &amp;#039;Om Mani Padme Hum&amp;#039;. I was told by a teacher once (who shrugged before answering) that it would at least up my concentration, though his tone of voice implied then that as far as insight-practice goes, mantras (of any tradition) aren&amp;#039;t as potent. I dunno if I&amp;#039;m as doubtful about it as he seemed (hence my curiosity), but what&amp;#039;re some experiences you guys have had with that? &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;On a completely separate (but yet related) note (feel free to move this part of the post), I&amp;#039;m trying to figure out what the fact that I&amp;#039;m still toying around with techniques and haven&amp;#039;t really settled on one or another as being very preferable, well, means. There doesn&amp;#039;t seem to be any technique or tradition in particular that I&amp;#039;m actually very interested in consistently &lt;em&gt;doing&lt;/em&gt;, and during meditation I even have to struggle against the impulse to switch techniques in the middle of a sitting. I&amp;#039;ve never been under the impression that meditation of any kind should be &amp;#039;easy&amp;#039;, but it should be definitely more interesting. I mean, I know what all of this &lt;em&gt;means&lt;/em&gt; in the sense of &amp;#039;yes, I know it at least has somewhat to do with my Dark-Nighting&amp;#039;, but what to do about it practically speaking still has me stumped. Like I said, it just doesn&amp;#039;t seem intuitively right that meditation should be characterized by this kind of grim struggling with even the technique itself and horrible problems with the posture and limbs constantly falling asleep and the mind just refusing at a certain point to stay on task. It just seems there&amp;#039;s something flawed about my basic assumptions about what my attention and concentration should be like, optimally speaking. I do all kinds of practices actually, maybe too many, almost every day: Yoga, Tai-Chi, Karate again (which is also somewhat the same deal), and formal meditation. And all of them definitely have benefits, and I really enjoy Karate for example...but there&amp;#039;s this kind of passionlessness that being in the Dark Night just seems to unavoidably engender. Something has to *stand out*, and that quality of standing out just seems to have left the boat at the A+P. I want to find technique or practice that I really *click* with, because it seems like that&amp;#039;s the only way to inspire real progress, and yet that isn&amp;#039;t possible it seems. I don&amp;#039;t find it acceptable that the whole rest of my journey should be this uninspired and difficult, and that implies I&amp;#039;m working from a wrong-basis. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I&amp;#039;ve touched upon Choiceless Awareness, but in practice it makes literally no sense to me. Choiceless Awareness, as in taking any object as those objects rise and fall, would just mean everyday-waking-experience, right? Choiceless Awareness is, well, not meditating. I simply can&amp;#039;t actually *think* a thought or sense things in general for long and maintain the kind of aloofness from it all, the simple observational quality, that&amp;#039;s apparently needed, and I can&amp;#039;t loving figure out why.</description> <pubDate>Fri, 27 Jan 2012 00:36:52 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=2790525</guid> <dc:creator>Mike Kich</dc:creator> <dc:date>2012-01-27T00:36:52Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>xcintas practice journal</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=2194923</link> <description>Hi, I am going to write my vajrayana practice notes. Currently, I am practicing ngondro: prostrations, diamond mind.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I am not very much familiar with maps and all stuff here, but I&amp;#039;ll try to express in the most simple and direct form. &lt;br /&gt;I would greatly appreciate any comments, so feel free to join and give your all.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;PS. and you have to deal with my english mistakes :p&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Best wishes, xcintas</description> <pubDate>Tue, 30 Aug 2011 16:36:28 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=2194923</guid> <dc:creator>Andrius Mikalauskas</dc:creator> <dc:date>2011-08-30T16:36:28Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Jhana &amp; a brief introduction</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=133204</link> <description>Hi kris, welcome to the site. We&amp;#039;ve just moved over from our old website so some things are still a little un-organised here but it&amp;#039;s coming together quickly. If you were interested in some more information on samatha jhanas, here are some great practical guides from the old site:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;dharmaoverground&amp;#x2e;wetpaint&amp;#x2e;com&amp;#x2f;page&amp;#x2f;Jhana&amp;#x2b;and&amp;#x2b;&amp;#x25;C3&amp;#x25;91ana"&gt;Jhana and Nana&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;dharmaoverground&amp;#x2e;wetpaint&amp;#x2e;com&amp;#x2f;page&amp;#x2f;Deeper&amp;#x2b;into&amp;#x2b;Jhana"&gt;Deeper in Jhana&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;[url=http://dharmaoverground.wetpaint.com/page/The+Arupa+(immaterial)+Jhanas]The Arupa (immaterial) Jhanas&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;dharmaoverground&amp;#x2e;wetpaint&amp;#x2e;com&amp;#x2f;page&amp;#x2f;Simple&amp;#x2b;Instructions&amp;#x2b;for&amp;#x2b;Attaining&amp;#x2b;Concentration&amp;#x2b;Jhanas&amp;#x2b;1-8"&gt;Simple instructions for attaining concentration jhanas 1 to 8&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;If you have any more specific jhana-related questions, I hear Trent has just put up an offer to answer all and everything regarding concentration practice! &lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;www&amp;#x2e;dharmaoverground&amp;#x2e;org&amp;#x2f;web&amp;#x2f;guest&amp;#x2f;discussion&amp;#x2f;-&amp;#x2f;message_boards&amp;#x2f;message&amp;#x2f;132307"&gt;Take a look&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I don&amp;#039;t think we have many people here experienced in the Tibetan traditions, but I may be wrong.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;P.S. I moved your thread from the &amp;#034;Claims to Attainment&amp;#034; section to the Tibetan section, as this is a question about a particular tradition rather than a claim to attainment.</description> <pubDate>Tue, 15 Sep 2009 21:42:36 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=133204</guid> <dc:creator>Dan Bartlett</dc:creator> <dc:date>2009-09-15T21:42:36Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>Jhana &amp; a brief introduction</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=133038</link> <description>Hi All,&lt;br /&gt;I was encouraged to join up after reading the mission statement. If this site can achieve half of that, then it will be a unique place indeed. Much of what I have read here resonates with me. I have managed to get through the form Jhanas and have arrived at some point within the formless ones, but I&amp;#039;m not altogether sure where exactly, as the formless states are for me not as delineated as the form ones.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I currently have no inclination to go all the way into nirodha. I&amp;#039;m not a monk but a middle aged bloke, married with kids.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;My background is originally Tibetan Buddhism and I hold HYT empowerments. Having got where I am in Jhana, I now wish to gain experience in Tummo. I once experienced the &amp;#039;great bliss&amp;#039; mentioned in this system within the dream state, so I know it&amp;#039;s true but I have been unable to replicate it ever again.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I am also tired of sectarianism and BS I find on various sites. It upsets me, as it prevents many more people from gaining experience in Jhana. Why people can&amp;#039;t help one another and share experience is a mystery to me.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So, that&amp;#039;s my very quick intro. Feel free to ask anything.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Namaste&lt;br /&gt;Kris</description> <pubDate>Tue, 15 Sep 2009 20:19:28 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=133038</guid> <dc:creator>kris palau</dc:creator> <dc:date>2009-09-15T20:19:28Z</dc:date> </item> </channel> </rss> 