<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <rss xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" version="2.0"> <channel> <title>Zen</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_category?p_l_id=&amp;mbCategoryId=77842</link> <description>Zen-specific practices and techniques should go here.</description> <pubDate>Sun, 19 Oct 2014 00:31:33 GMT</pubDate> <dc:date>2014-10-19T00:31:33Z</dc:date> <item> <title>RE: Shinzen Young: 4 ways enlightenment can arise</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5572780</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Pablo . P:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;As much as I like SY&amp;#039;s 4 combos of inner/outer activity, I believe there&amp;#039;s a missing part in the model. It&amp;#039;s the boundary/edge between outer and inner what&amp;#039;s missing.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Funny you should mention that. It&amp;#039;s one of the things I&amp;#039;ve been playing with on the cushion. As I just wrote in another thread - I have gotten some use out of the meditative tinnitus as I use it to compare internal sound with external sounds and use both to find the transition point between the arbitrary perceived internal/external duality. The transition point gets all vague but I figure I might be able to see it more clearly and add the 3&amp;#039;c to it and vipassanize it till it pops. This is what I did with the perceived center point, outside diameter and personal bubble spaces. I am happy with the results of that.&lt;br /&gt;I am also trying to catch the chooser/choice making...not as much luck seeing that clearly enough to do anything with it yet.&lt;br /&gt;Thanks,&lt;br /&gt;~D</description> <pubDate>Sun, 24 Aug 2014 05:40:19 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5572780</guid> <dc:creator>Dream Walker</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-08-24T05:40:19Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Shinzen Young: 4 ways enlightenment can arise</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5572768</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Dream Walker:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;Thanks Pablo,&lt;br /&gt;Nice find. I&amp;#039;ve been contemplating the switchboard in the mind that seems to prioritize certain sensations over others; such as selfing processes or sensation routines where internal stuff gets a higher ratio of importance. I&amp;#039;m thinking that the fight or flight/dhukka/stress center in the brain is the switchboard that we are hacking. By modifing this switchboard in different ways it seems that sensations get rerouted around this center and can cleanly and clearly get to the awareness center of the brain without the extra layers adding stress and obscuring it. I have not thought about the four ways in which such hacking could be accomplished. This reminds me of AEN&amp;#039;s &lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;awakeningtoreality&amp;#x2e;blogspot&amp;#x2e;com&amp;#x2f;2007&amp;#x2f;03&amp;#x2f;thusnesss-six-stages-of-experience&amp;#x2e;html"&gt;Stage 2: The Experience of “I AM Everything”&lt;/a&gt; vs the Buddhist take of everything isn&amp;#039;t me. Different internal vs external modifications of the priorities rule set in the switchboard? Interesting to think about. It tends to line up with Daniels advice for fourth path - to put all sensations in the same space with equanimity including the putting itself.&lt;br /&gt;Gotta think about this a bit more, it might explain a whole bunch of the differences between types of enlightenment.&lt;br /&gt;~D&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Yes D, I believe that dealing with the fight/flight response is the key, at least it&amp;#039;s what shows up in my sits and daily mindfullness. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;As much as I like SY&amp;#039;s 4 combos of inner/outer activity, I believe there&amp;#039;s a missing part in the model. It&amp;#039;s the boundary/edge between outer and inner what&amp;#039;s missing. And I mean it literally, ha! Call me crazy, but these practices we&amp;#039;re doing  (eg. letting go) are meant to shrink the electric resistance in the fascia grid (meridians, etc) and spine (energetic centers and the like), so that any excess internal mind processing finds a way out of the brain (and thus preventing from triggering new stimuli to other parts of the brain), plus building a &lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;en&amp;#x2e;wikipedia&amp;#x2e;org&amp;#x2f;wiki&amp;#x2f;Faraday_cage"&gt;Faraday Cage&lt;/a&gt;  that filters/blocks outer noxious electromagnetic input and facilites inocous/healthy ones.  So, this boundary/edge kills two birds with the same arrow. This is my working hypothesis, may be in the future I would be able to develop it.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Best,&lt;br /&gt;Pablo </description> <pubDate>Sun, 24 Aug 2014 05:18:13 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5572768</guid> <dc:creator>Pablo . P</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-08-24T05:18:13Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Shinzen Young: 4 ways enlightenment can arise</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5572111</link> <description>Thanks Pablo,&lt;br /&gt;Nice find. I&amp;#039;ve been contemplating the switchboard in the mind that seems to prioritize certain sensations over others; such as selfing processes or sensation routines where internal stuff gets a higher ratio of importance. I&amp;#039;m thinking that the fight or flight/dhukka/stress center in the brain is the switchboard that we are hacking. By modifing this switchboard in different ways it seems that sensations get rerouted around this center and can cleanly and clearly get to the awareness center of the brain without the extra layers adding stress and obscuring it. I have not thought about the four ways in which such hacking could be accomplished. This reminds me of AEN&amp;#039;s &lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;awakeningtoreality&amp;#x2e;blogspot&amp;#x2e;com&amp;#x2f;2007&amp;#x2f;03&amp;#x2f;thusnesss-six-stages-of-experience&amp;#x2e;html"&gt;Stage 2: The Experience of “I AM Everything”&lt;/a&gt; vs the Buddhist take of everything isn&amp;#039;t me. Different internal vs external modifications of the priorities rule set in the switchboard? Interesting to think about. It tends to line up with Daniels advice for fourth path - to put all sensations in the same space with equanimity including the putting itself.&lt;br /&gt;Gotta think about this a bit more, it might explain a whole bunch of the differences between types of enlightenment.&lt;br /&gt;~D</description> <pubDate>Fri, 22 Aug 2014 18:36:52 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5572111</guid> <dc:creator>Dream Walker</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-08-22T18:36:52Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Shinzen Young: 4 ways enlightenment can arise</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5572096</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Richard Zen:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;Whoa just checking Wikipedia...what a crazy guy:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #252525"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: sans-serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;Followers of the Way [of Chán], if you want to get the kind of understanding that accords with the &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;Dharma&lt;span style="color: #252525"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: sans-serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;, never be misled by others. Whether you&amp;#039;re facing inward or facing outward, whatever you meet up with, just kill it! If you meet a &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;buddha&lt;span style="color: #252525"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: sans-serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;, kill the buddha. If you meet a &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;patriarch&lt;span style="color: #252525"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: sans-serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;, kill the patriarch. If you meet an &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;arhat&lt;span style="color: #252525"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: sans-serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;, kill the arhat. If you meet your parents, kill your parents. If you meet your kinfolk, kill your kinfolk. Then for the first time you will gain emancipation, will not be entangled with things, will pass freely anywhere you wish to go.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #252525"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: sans-serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;Those who have fulfilled the &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;ten stages&lt;span style="color: #252525"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: sans-serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt; of &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;bodhisattva&lt;span style="color: #252525"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: sans-serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt; practice are no better than hired field hands; those who have attained the enlightenment of the fifty-first and fifty-second stages are prisoners shackled and bound; arhats and &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;span style="color: #252525"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: sans-serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;pratyekabuddha&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;span style="color: #252525"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: sans-serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;s are so much filth in the latrine; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;span style="color: #252525"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: sans-serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;bodhi&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;span style="color: #252525"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: sans-serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt; and &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;nirvana&lt;span style="color: #252525"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: sans-serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt; are hitching posts for donkeys.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;ol style="list-style: decimal outside;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #252525"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: sans-serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;li&gt;The First Gate is the &amp;#034;mystery in the essence&amp;#034;,the use of Buddhist philosophy, such as Yogacara to explain the interpenetration of all phenomena.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;The Second Gate is the &amp;#034;mystery in the word&amp;#034;, using the Hua Tou&lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;en&amp;#x2e;wikipedia&amp;#x2e;org&amp;#x2f;wiki&amp;#x2f;Linji_Yixuan&amp;#x23;cite_note-12"&gt;&lt;/a&gt; for &amp;#034;the process of gradually disentangling the students from the conceptual workings of the mind&amp;#034;.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;The Third Gate is the &amp;#034;mystery in the mystery&amp;#034;, &amp;#034;involving completely nonconceptual expressions such as striking or shouting, which are intended to remove all of the defects implicit in conceptual understanding&amp;#034;.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;Yeap, what a character! Kind of an extremist method. First, feeding the minds of the students with a lot of theory to then, Second, show them the limits of intelectual comprehension through meaningless koans and then, Third, force them to deal with non-conceptual situations &amp;amp; mind-reactions to their own-reactions. Something like forcing them to climb up a mountain, and beat them at the top until they jump off the cliff, killing theirs &amp;#034;selves&amp;#034;. I would rather say that noting vanishings is a much much gentler method &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/happy.gif" &gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Later I&amp;#039;ll add some comments on SY&amp;#039;s letter.</description> <pubDate>Fri, 22 Aug 2014 17:52:43 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5572096</guid> <dc:creator>Pablo . P</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-08-22T17:52:43Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Shinzen Young: 4 ways enlightenment can arise</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5571960</link> <description>Whoa just checking Wikipedia...what a crazy guy:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #252525"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: sans-serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;Followers of the Way [of Chán], if you want to get the kind of understanding that accords with the &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;Dharma&lt;span style="color: #252525"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: sans-serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;, never be misled by others. Whether you&amp;#039;re facing inward or facing outward, whatever you meet up with, just kill it! If you meet a &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;buddha&lt;span style="color: #252525"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: sans-serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;, kill the buddha. If you meet a &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;patriarch&lt;span style="color: #252525"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: sans-serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;, kill the patriarch. If you meet an &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;arhat&lt;span style="color: #252525"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: sans-serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;, kill the arhat. If you meet your parents, kill your parents. If you meet your kinfolk, kill your kinfolk. Then for the first time you will gain emancipation, will not be entangled with things, will pass freely anywhere you wish to go.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: #252525"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: sans-serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;Those who have fulfilled the &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;ten stages&lt;span style="color: #252525"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: sans-serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt; of &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;bodhisattva&lt;span style="color: #252525"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: sans-serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt; practice are no better than hired field hands; those who have attained the enlightenment of the fifty-first and fifty-second stages are prisoners shackled and bound; arhats and &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;span style="color: #252525"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: sans-serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;pratyekabuddha&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;span style="color: #252525"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: sans-serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;s are so much filth in the latrine; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;span style="color: #252525"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: sans-serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;bodhi&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;span style="color: #252525"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: sans-serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt; and &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;nirvana&lt;span style="color: #252525"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: sans-serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt; are hitching posts for donkeys.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;ol style="list-style: decimal outside;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #252525"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: sans-serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;li&gt;The First Gate is the &amp;#034;mystery in the essence&amp;#034;,the use of Buddhist philosophy, such as Yogacara to explain the interpenetration of all phenomena.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;The Second Gate is the &amp;#034;mystery in the word&amp;#034;, using the Hua Tou&lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;en&amp;#x2e;wikipedia&amp;#x2e;org&amp;#x2f;wiki&amp;#x2f;Linji_Yixuan&amp;#x23;cite_note-12"&gt;&lt;/a&gt; for &amp;#034;the process of gradually disentangling the students from the conceptual workings of the mind&amp;#034;.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;The Third Gate is the &amp;#034;mystery in the mystery&amp;#034;, &amp;#034;involving completely nonconceptual expressions such as striking or shouting, which are intended to remove all of the defects implicit in conceptual understanding&amp;#034;.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</description> <pubDate>Fri, 22 Aug 2014 14:06:40 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5571960</guid> <dc:creator>Richard Zen</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-08-22T14:06:40Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Shinzen Young: 4 ways enlightenment can arise</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5571929</link> <description>I should check out Master Linji.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Thanks!&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Richard</description> <pubDate>Fri, 22 Aug 2014 13:59:55 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5571929</guid> <dc:creator>Richard Zen</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-08-22T13:59:55Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>Shinzen Young: 4 ways enlightenment can arise</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5571885</link> <description>This is Shinzen Young&amp;#039;s answer to a question posted by a fellow meditator. What&amp;#039;s seems to be implied (or so think I) is that enlightenment means achieving all four of the possibilities mentioned below.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Georgia&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;Times&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Georgia&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;Times&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;Dear Meng,&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Georgia&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;Times&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Georgia&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;Times&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;Thanks for the report. Clearly you are making significant progress (but you don&amp;#039;t need me to know that &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/happy.gif" &gt; ).&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Georgia&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;Times&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Georgia&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;Times&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Georgia&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;Times&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;In terms of the way I like to formulate things, the insights that you&amp;#039;re having are related to the interplay of inner activity (See In, Hear In, Feel In) and outer activity (See Out, Hear Out, Feel Out).&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Georgia&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;Times&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Georgia&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;Times&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Georgia&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;Times&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;Attention is in some ways like a pendulum. Sometimes it gets tugged towards inner activity. Sometimes it gets tugged towards outer activity. However the physical pendulum metaphor is incomplete and misleading because for the attention pendulum there are two other possibilities. For one thing, it can be pulled in both directions at once (outer activates and at the same time inner also activates -- usually in reaction to outer). A fourth possibility is that both inner and outer activity contract to Rest/Gone simultaneously.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Georgia&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;Times&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Georgia&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;Times&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Georgia&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;Times&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;When outer expands but inner contracts, one has that delicious experience that you described. When inner expands and outer contracts, people typically are lost in the default mode network--memory, plan, fantasy, judgment, problem solving, confusion, etc. However, it is possible for outer activity to contract and inner activity to expand without necessarily being caught in our thoughts and emotions. The Focus In technique is designed to allow that to happen. This is one instance of the &amp;#034;divide and conquer&amp;#034; paradigm for enlightenment.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Georgia&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;Times&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Georgia&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;Times&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Georgia&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;Times&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;So one way that enlightenment can occur is when outer completely expands and inner collapses to zero, and we notice it. You&amp;#039;re starting to taste that. Another way that enlightenment can arise is that inner expands, outer contracts, but there&amp;#039;s huge concentration, clarity, and equanimity with regards to the arising of inner. Another way that enlightenment can occur is that outer and inner both simultaneously expand into activity but they&amp;#039;re both in a flow state, so they become a single wave of emptiness. Another way that enlightenment can arise is that both outer and inner both simultaneously contract. There&amp;#039;s no self and there&amp;#039;s no world. One abides in the Unborn. Zen Master Línjì (Rinzai臨濟義玄) describes this in his Four-Fold Summary (四料简). (See addendum below.)&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Georgia&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;Times&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Georgia&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;Times&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Georgia&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;Times&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;In your report, you describe how, when inner activity contracted, outer activity became more salient. But you also described how &amp;#034;giving yourself&amp;#034; to outer activity can cause inner activity to contract. And yes, you&amp;#039;re right on both accounts, these are two sides of the same process. &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Georgia&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;Times&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Georgia&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;Times&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Georgia&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;Times&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;Couched in my language, your experience of “seeing without seeing”, came about through expansion of conscious See Out and contraction of subconscious See In. By subconscious See In I mean the subliminal spread of visual associations. Hence the phrase &amp;#034;see without seeing&amp;#034; is logically correct. There are analogous experiences of hearing without hearing and feeling without feeling. (Or more generically “outing” without “ining.”)&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Georgia&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;Times&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Georgia&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;Times&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Georgia&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;Times&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;Also, you got an important insight into the complimentary nature of samatha and vipassana. Actually, one of my pet peeves is that many people inappropriately separate these two aspects of practice. There are circumstances where the distinction between samatha and vipassana can be helpful but there are also circumstances where it makes no sense and can actually be misleading. My personal approach to this issue was called samathavipassana yuganaddha by Ananda (see Yuganaddha sutta) and Zhǐguān Shuāngyùn (止观双运) by the Tiāntái masters.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Georgia&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;Times&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Georgia&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;Times&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Georgia&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;Times&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;Another one of my pet peeves is the use of the phrase &amp;#034;direct experiencing.&amp;#034; (Sorry about that &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/happy.gif" &gt; ).  A more accurate phrase would be &amp;#034;experiencing outer activations without inner reactions.&amp;#034; The reason why I object to the phrase direct experiencing is that it seems to imply that &amp;#034;experiencing outer activations without inner activations&amp;#034; in and of itself is the ultimate goal of the practice. As I see it, the ultimate goal of the practice is to dramatically elevate the base levels of concentration, clarity, and equanimity. A consequence of achieving that is the ability to experience outer activations without inner activations. But another consequence of that is the ability to totally allow inner activations to occur but without any identification or coagulation or unconsciousness around them and experiencing inner activity in such a state also deserves to be called direct experiencing. To eulogize Out and demonize In could cause an imbalance in a person&amp;#039;s practice.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Georgia&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;Times&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Georgia&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;Times&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Georgia&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;Times&amp;#x2c;&amp;#x20;serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 16px"&gt;Having said that, I also must acknowledge another fact: by consistently experiencing outer activity without inner reactions, one can, with time, develop the generic skills needed to do exactly the opposite. And that&amp;#039;s precisely the breakthrough that you&amp;#039;re reporting. So good work and thanks.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;...&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;www&amp;#x2e;mengstupiditis&amp;#x2e;com&amp;#x2f;2013&amp;#x2f;06&amp;#x2f;shinzen-young-on-in-and-out-of&amp;#x2e;html"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;http://www.mengstupiditis.com/2013/06/shinzen-young-on-in-and-out-of.html&lt;/a&gt;</description> <pubDate>Fri, 22 Aug 2014 12:24:37 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5571885</guid> <dc:creator>Pablo . P</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-08-22T12:24:37Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: The Hsin Shin Ming</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5384312</link> <description>Thanks! Here there are another three translations of the &lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;www&amp;#x2e;selfdiscoveryportal&amp;#x2e;com&amp;#x2f;cmSengTsan&amp;#x2e;htm"&gt;text&lt;/a&gt;.</description> <pubDate>Fri, 04 Apr 2014 22:02:47 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5384312</guid> <dc:creator>Pablo . P</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-04-04T22:02:47Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>The Hsin Shin Ming</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5378037</link> <description>The following was sent to me some time ago by a friend, and I thought I would share it here. Hopefully I&amp;#039;m not violating copyright too egregiously. (At least, I&amp;#039;ve found this elsewhere on the Internet, so if it&amp;#039;s a violation I&amp;#039;m not the first!)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: Times&amp;#x20;New&amp;#x20;Roman"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 24px"&gt;Trust in Mind&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 24px"&gt;The &lt;em&gt;Hsin Shin Ming&lt;/em&gt; of Tseng Ts&amp;#039;an, Third Patriarch of Zen&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The Great Way is not difficult:&lt;br /&gt;Just don’t pick and choose.&lt;br /&gt;Cut off all likes and dislikes&lt;br /&gt;And it is clear like space.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The slightest distinction&lt;br /&gt;Splits heaven from earth.&lt;br /&gt;To see the truth&lt;br /&gt;Don’t be for or against.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Likes and dislikes&lt;br /&gt;Are the mind’s disease.&lt;br /&gt;If you miss the deep meaning,&lt;br /&gt;It is useless to still your thoughts.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;It is clear as vast space,&lt;br /&gt;Nothing missing, nothing extra.&lt;br /&gt;If you choose or reject,&lt;br /&gt;You cannot see things as they are.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Outside, don’t get tangled in things.&lt;br /&gt;Inside, don’t get lost in emptiness.&lt;br /&gt;Be still and become One,&lt;br /&gt;And confusion stops by itself.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Stop moving to become still&lt;br /&gt;And the stillness will move.&lt;br /&gt;If you hold on to opposites,&lt;br /&gt;You cannot understand One.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;If you don’t understand One,&lt;br /&gt;This and that cannot function.&lt;br /&gt;Denied, the world goes on.&lt;br /&gt;Pursued, emptiness is lost.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The more you think and talk,&lt;br /&gt;The more you lose the Way.&lt;br /&gt;Cut off all thinking&lt;br /&gt;And pass freely anywhere. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Return to the root and understand,&lt;br /&gt;Chase outcomes and lose the source.&lt;br /&gt;One clear moment within&lt;br /&gt;Illumines the emptiness before you.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Emptiness changing into things&lt;br /&gt;Is only our deluded view.&lt;br /&gt;Do not seek the truth,&lt;br /&gt;Only put down your opinions.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Do not live in the world of opposites.&lt;br /&gt;Be careful! Never go that way.&lt;br /&gt;If you make right and wrong,&lt;br /&gt;Your mind is lost in confusion.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Two comes from One,&lt;br /&gt;But do not cling even to this One.&lt;br /&gt;If one mind does not arise,&lt;br /&gt;The ten thousand things are without fault.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;No fault, no ten thousand things,&lt;br /&gt;No arising, no mind.&lt;br /&gt;No world, no one to see it,&lt;br /&gt;No one to see it, no world.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This comes when that goes.&lt;br /&gt;That rises when this sinks.&lt;br /&gt;Understand both&lt;br /&gt;As originally one emptiness.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;In emptiness the two are the same,&lt;br /&gt;And each holds the ten thousand things.&lt;br /&gt;If you do not see great or small,&lt;br /&gt;How can you prefer one to the other?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The Way is calm and wide,&lt;br /&gt;Not easy, not difficult.&lt;br /&gt;But small minds get lost.&lt;br /&gt;Hurrying, they fall behind.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Clinging, they go too far,&lt;br /&gt;Sure to take a wrong turn.&lt;br /&gt;Just let it be! In the end,&lt;br /&gt;Nothing goes, nothing stays.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Follow nature and find the Way,&lt;br /&gt;Free, easy, and undisturbed.&lt;br /&gt;Tied to your thoughts, you lose the truth,&lt;br /&gt;Become heavy, dull, and unwell.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Not well, the mind is troubled,&lt;br /&gt;So why hold or reject anything?&lt;br /&gt;To ride the One Vehicle,&lt;br /&gt;Do not despise the six senses.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Not despising the six senses&lt;br /&gt;Is already enlightenment.&lt;br /&gt;The wise do not act,&lt;br /&gt;Fools bind themselves.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;In true Dharma there is no this or that,&lt;br /&gt;So why blindly chase desires?&lt;br /&gt;Using mind to grasp mind&lt;br /&gt;Is the original mistake.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Peaceful and troubled are only ideas.&lt;br /&gt;Enlightenment has no likes or dislikes.&lt;br /&gt;All opposites arise&lt;br /&gt;From faulty views.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Illusions, flowers in the air&amp;#x2014;&lt;br /&gt;Why try to grasp them?&lt;br /&gt;Win, lose, right, wrong&amp;#x2014;&lt;br /&gt;Put it all down!&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;If the eye never sleeps&lt;br /&gt;Dreams disappear by themselves.&lt;br /&gt;If the mind makes no distinctions&lt;br /&gt;The ten thousand things are one essence.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;See the deep and dark essence&lt;br /&gt;And be free from entanglements.&lt;br /&gt;See the ten thousand things as equal&lt;br /&gt;And return to true nature.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Without any distinctions&lt;br /&gt;There can be no comparisons.&lt;br /&gt;Stop and there is no motion.&lt;br /&gt;Move and there is no stillness.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Without motion or stillness&lt;br /&gt;How can a single thing exist?&lt;br /&gt;In true nature&lt;br /&gt;There are no goals or plans.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;In the mind before thinking&lt;br /&gt;No effort is made.&lt;br /&gt;Doubts and worries disappear&lt;br /&gt;And faith is restored.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Nothing is left behind, &lt;br /&gt;Nothing stays with us.&lt;br /&gt;Bright and empty, &lt;br /&gt;The mind shines by itself.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;In the mind without effort&lt;br /&gt;Thinking cannot take root.&lt;br /&gt;In the true Dharma world&lt;br /&gt;There is no self or other.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;To abide in this world&lt;br /&gt;Just say “Not two.”&lt;br /&gt;“Not two” includes everything,&lt;br /&gt;Excludes nothing.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Enlightened beings everywhere&lt;br /&gt;All return to the Source.&lt;br /&gt;Beyond time and space,&lt;br /&gt;One moment is ten thousand years.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Nothing here, nothing there,&lt;br /&gt;But the universe is always before you.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Infinitely small is infinitely large:&lt;br /&gt;No boundaries, no differences.&lt;br /&gt;Infinitely large is infinitely small:&lt;br /&gt;Measurements do not matter here.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;What is, is what is not.&lt;br /&gt;What is not, is what is.&lt;br /&gt;Where it is not like this,&lt;br /&gt;Do not bother staying.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;One is all,&lt;br /&gt;All is one.&lt;br /&gt;When you see things like this,&lt;br /&gt;You are already complete.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Trust and Mind are not two.&lt;br /&gt;Not-two is Trust in Mind.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The Way is beyond all words.&lt;br /&gt;Not past, future, or present.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Translator’s Postscript&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Seng Ts’an was the third patriarch of Zen, having received transmission from Bodhidharma’s successor, Hui K’o. He was suffering from leprosy when he met Hui K’o. The Transmission of the Lamp records their moment of truth, which echoes Hui K’o’s famous encounter with Bodhidharma:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Seng Ts’an went to Hui K’o and said, “My body is gripped by a fatal disease. Please, master, wipe away my sins.” Hui K’o said: “Bring your sins out here and I will wipe them away for you.” Seng Ts’an sat for a while and then said: “When I look for my sins I cannot find them.” Hui K’o answered: “I have wiped away your sins.”&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;After Seng Ts’an received transmission, Buddhism was persecuted in China, and he spent fifteen years wandering and hiding in the mountains. Out of all of this hard training comes this poem&amp;#x2014;the first on record attributed to a Ch’an master.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The title Hsin Shin Ming has the literal meaning “Trust Mind Inscription,” The character for hsin is composed of two parts, showing a man standing by his words. Shin is the character for heart-mind. Blending Taoist and Buddhist teachings on oneness, equality, suchness, and interpenetration, the Hsin Shin Ming introduces us to a vast and meticulous world that is completely open to the human mind.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The poem consists of 146 lines and differs from standard Chinese verse in that the lines are unrhymed and contain only four characters each instead of the usual five or seven, creating a terse, no-nonsense movement that I have tried to capture in the translation.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;em&gt;Stanley Lombardo&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/span&gt;</description> <pubDate>Fri, 04 Apr 2014 11:51:39 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5378037</guid> <dc:creator>Chris G</dc:creator> <dc:date>2014-04-04T11:51:39Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Shinzen Young's 10 steps towards Enlightenment</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5083644</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Pablo . P:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;Ha ha, it&amp;#039;s probably his best article, summing up in a concise wording most of his video talks. Actually, most of the article is about equanimity and positive change of behavior, which I think resonates with your quest, as I get from your practice thread, isn&amp;#039;t it? In fact, there&amp;#039;s little room in the article about maps, stages and what perceptual changes occur when going deep in the practice. I thought that it get lost in the +70 pages and it would be of interest to DhO fellows, in order to trace similarities and differences with other maps exposed in MCTB, the Taoist map added at the Wiki section, and Hokai Sobol explanation of his &lt;strike&gt;Zen map&lt;/strike&gt; Japanese Vajrayana map. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;For a comparative perspective, as far as I understand, this SY Zen Map it&amp;#039;s heavy sided on Impermanence, which goes deep into the nature and arising &amp;amp; passing of Formations (polarizations) and recognize the use of concentration to sew a string of Fruitions (Nothingness), focusing in its just before &amp;amp; after moments (creation and cancellation), which finally coalesce into a single polarization (Time begins to Warp), ending in a full No-Self participating in the flow of the Source. Interesting isn&amp;#039;t it?&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;It may be long but it&amp;#039;s worth a read.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Without an improvement in behaviour it&amp;#039;s useless so I&amp;#039;d be interested in how mindfulness can help. Despite seeing the no-self Shinzen still needed psychotherapy to let go of drug addiction so that&amp;#039;s an eye-opener on how developing the right beliefs is very important while doing this practice.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&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;_N7A5kAESTQ"&gt;How Shinzen Broke Through Addiction&lt;/a&gt;</description> <pubDate>Sat, 28 Dec 2013 05:17:26 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5083644</guid> <dc:creator>Richard Zen</dc:creator> <dc:date>2013-12-28T05:17:26Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Shinzen Young's 10 steps towards Enlightenment</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5083294</link> <description>Ha ha, it&amp;#039;s probably his best article, summing up in a concise wording most of his video talks. Actually, most of the article is about equanimity and positive change of behavior, which I think resonates with your quest, as I get from your practice thread, isn&amp;#039;t it? In fact, there&amp;#039;s little room in the article about maps, stages and what perceptual changes occur when going deep in the practice. I thought that it get lost in the +70 pages and it would be of interest to DhO fellows, in order to trace similarities and differences with other maps exposed in MCTB, the Taoist map added at the Wiki section, and Hokai Sobol explanation of his &lt;strike&gt;Zen map&lt;/strike&gt; Japanese Vajrayana map. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;For a comparative perspective, as far as I understand, this SY Zen Map it&amp;#039;s heavy sided on Impermanence, which goes deep into the nature and arising &amp;amp; passing of Formations (polarizations) and recognize the use of concentration to sew a string of Fruitions (Nothingness), focusing in its just before &amp;amp; after moments (creation and cancellation), which finally coalesce into a single polarization (Time begins to Warp), ending in a full No-Self participating in the flow of the Source. Interesting isn&amp;#039;t it?</description> <pubDate>Sat, 28 Dec 2013 00:44:43 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5083294</guid> <dc:creator>Pablo . P</dc:creator> <dc:date>2013-12-28T00:44:43Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Shinzen Young's 10 steps towards Enlightenment</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5082375</link> <description>Thanks. Really good PDF, but I still have to note &amp;#034;seeing&amp;#034; in order to not attach to the concept of enlightenment while reading it. LOL!</description> <pubDate>Fri, 27 Dec 2013 16:14:35 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5082375</guid> <dc:creator>Richard Zen</dc:creator> <dc:date>2013-12-27T16:14:35Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>Shinzen Young's 10 steps towards Enlightenment</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5080083</link> <description>Shinzen Young, in his own words.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;In order to see the text with diagrams, &lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;www&amp;#x2e;shinzen&amp;#x2e;org&amp;#x2f;Articles&amp;#x2f;WhatIsMindfulness_SY_Public&amp;#x2e;pdf"&gt;check pages 40-45.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;--&amp;amp;--&amp;amp;--&amp;amp;--&amp;amp;--&amp;amp;--&amp;amp;--&amp;amp;--&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I’m going to describe a series of experiences that you might go through as your mindfulness skills deepen over time. Not everyone will pass through all or only these stages. I’m just using them to give you the general idea. Also, although it’s presented as a single linear progression, people typically cycle through these stages many, many times, with the process becoming clearer at each iteration. Finally, when I use phrases like “Absolute Now,” I’m not implying that you are literally experiencing a mathematical point on the continuum of time. I only mean that sensorially you seem to abide in an Eternal Present.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;1. Just starting &lt;br /&gt;2. Got the form &lt;br /&gt;3. Detect coarse impermanence &lt;br /&gt;4. Detect subtle impermanence &lt;br /&gt;5. Detect underlying wavelets &lt;br /&gt;6. Rhythmic arising and passing &lt;br /&gt;7. Passing becomes rich &lt;br /&gt;8. Arising becomes rich &lt;br /&gt;9. Time begins to warp &lt;br /&gt;10. Dance at the Source&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;1. &lt;strong&gt;Just Starting &lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;You attempt to keep track of what’s going on but spend a lot of time wondering what you’re supposed to be doing. You get lost in thoughts and preoccupied with bodily discomforts. You do a lot of thinking about thinking about thinking about…. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;2. &lt;strong&gt;Got the Form &lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;You’re familiar with the form of the technique. You can settle in and just do it. You track the sequence of &lt;br /&gt;sensory experiences in a matter-of-fact way without “tripping out” on the process too much. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;3. &lt;strong&gt;Detect Coarse Impermanence &lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;You start to get a sense that experiences come and go.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;4. &lt;strong&gt;Detect Subtle Impermanence &lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The individual sensory events are themselves ripply and vibratory.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;5. &lt;strong&gt;Detect Underlying Wavelets &lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Each vibration and ripple has its own arising and passing. Sensory events are a sort of “Fourier Synthesis” of component frequencies.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;6. &lt;strong&gt;Rhythmic Arising and Passing&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Preconsciousness experience becomes conscious at this stage. Nothingness is noted, from which each wavelet arises and to which it returns. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;7. &lt;strong&gt;Passings Become Rich&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The Nothing to which each wave and wavelet returns becomes rich, providing: tranquility, safety, fulfillment, love. Notice also that less and less does experience need to be “born,” i.e., arise into surface events. Ordinary surface experience is less salient. Subtle preconscious experience now dominates awareness. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;8. &lt;strong&gt;Arising Becomes Rich &lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Nothingness polarizes into expansive and contractive forces. Experiences arise when Nothing divides into future (expansion, yáng) and past (contraction, yīn). They disappear when that cleft collapses, reuniting future and past into the Absolute Present of Nothing. This special Nothing is known to contemplative traditions around the world (eg. śunyatā (Buddhism), xū (Daoism), etc).&lt;br /&gt; &lt;br /&gt;9. &lt;strong&gt;Time Begins to Warp&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;All arisings tend to coalesce into a single polarization. All passings tend to coalesce into a single neutralization. Subjective time begins to feel less like a linear extension. Very little is happening and everything is happening.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;10. &lt;strong&gt;Dance at the Source &lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;One abides in a metaphoric black hole outside time and space, participating in the pure flow of the Source. The One Nothing is metaphorically a gravitational singularity. The boundary between surface and deep consciousness (represented by the dotted line) is metaphorically the Event Horizon.</description> <pubDate>Thu, 26 Dec 2013 13:53:52 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=5080083</guid> <dc:creator>Pablo . P</dc:creator> <dc:date>2013-12-26T13:53:52Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Reconsidering Zen at my Paradox Roadblock in EQ</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=4597719</link> <description>Hi MOE, I&amp;#039;ve been meaning to get this down for people for awhile, so please excuse the info-dump. Tbh, when I was going through this, I never had the nerve to disclose my progress on the DhO for fear of creating a desire to fulfill expectation (however imaginary) on some level. It baffles me that people could keep online practice journals of this stuff! &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;FWIW, I got SE in daily life with only 3 hours practice a day at most. Some general points that I think benefited me:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;ul style="list-style: disc outside;"&gt;&lt;li&gt;Realizing that the 3C&amp;#039;s apply just as fully post-SE as pre-. As in, enlightenment-with-remainder is never going to satisfy. It&amp;#039;s best to see it in terms of how it can better help you to help others. In other words: being okay with the idea of spending the rest of your life striving in vain for this.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;A near-suicidal, un-thinking, utterly defeated desperation, to the point where, in the end, I never even used any specific, widely-accepted technique - not out of arrogance that I didn&amp;#039;t need one, but the exact opposite - the kind of careless desperation you might see in an alcoholic asking random passers-by for spare change ...except it felt more like throwing down my sword and shield and utterly surrendering my being to the burning, blinding white of God. It got to the point where I would try anything that might just work - like shooting imaginary arrows through my eyes in order to somehow hit my &amp;#039;self&amp;#039;. Just attacking it directly with everything I had, repeatedly forcing the self to re-locate in my head.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Not obsessing over having the ideal 11th nana &amp;#034;experience&amp;#034; - like noticing subtle vibrations wherever I looked (though admittedly they were present for the most part, especially in the visual field), having the skandhas meld under super-charged concentration, being on a 2-month retreat in some beautiful Thai monastery, etc. &lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Having a certain degree of faith, along with the desperation, that gave me the confidence to know I was seeing the 3C&amp;#039;s in everything without being able to perceive every single kalapa. IIRC, there was almost a simple-mindedness to it, so that after an hour of samatha and vipassana one night, I sort of concluded &amp;#034;OK, I get this now. I guess I&amp;#039;ll try turning my awareness on itself then, seeing as that&amp;#039;s supposed to be the lowest level of it.&amp;#034; Then shortly after, I was lying in bed, maintaining a low-level bodily awareness (as Goenka advises doing at night, IIRC), starting to drift off, when the discontinuity occurred.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Well known among DhO-ers, but still worth keeping in mind: trying to see the 3C&amp;#039;s as broadly and inclusively as possible, so that I was feeling the 3C&amp;#039;s-ness of things I couldn&amp;#039;t even articulate. In fact, I&amp;#039;ve just remembered that after that very last sit, the (relatively) boundary-less, non-dual, self-less perspective I had acquired through investigation persisted for possibly the first time - certainly to a much greater extent than any had before. &lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Seeing sensations that implied &amp;#039;self&amp;#039; as not only not &amp;#039;self&amp;#039;, but not &amp;#039;me&amp;#039; at all. An accumulation of these kinds of pithy realizations, leading to ever-greater confidence, understanding, and dispassion.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul style="list-style: disc outside;"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;To sum-up: cessation generally non-occurs for people when they least expect it - on emerging from a daydream, drifting off to sleep, just sitting, etc. The question is, how do you think and understand your way into this state of mind? Clearly, there&amp;#039;s a near-total absence of desire for SE, for further progress, or to not slip back into re-observation. Yet there&amp;#039;s also sufficient understanding to show the illusion of &amp;#039;self&amp;#039; the door and let it step through of its own accord. There&amp;#039;s a confidence there that the work has been done, which is why too many failed attempts can compound into a major problem for people. It&amp;#039;s just a semi-intellectual understanding that&amp;#039;s required - enough to make you indifferent to it, just as John Nash eventually became indifferent to his imaginary friends (at least based on that film). In the end you&amp;#039;ve got to let the imaginary friend see that it&amp;#039;s no longer wanted and exit stage left.</description> <pubDate>Tue, 20 Aug 2013 21:39:12 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=4597719</guid> <dc:creator>B B</dc:creator> <dc:date>2013-08-20T21:39:12Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Reconsidering Zen at my Paradox Roadblock in EQ</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=4596870</link> <description>I&amp;#039;m in the same boat as you as far as progress is concerned. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I recently realized that by thinking the way you&amp;#039;re thinking right now, I was creating dissatisfaction in the present moment and wandering away from it into a fantasy of a probable future where I will be better off. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The thing is, at this junction, we need to accept everything that IS with a complete YES without imagining things to be any different. I am starting to see micro sub reactions that together create one subconscious reaction, and all of these micro reactions are nothing but unwholesome states of mind such as jealousy, greed, anger, ill will, lust, etc. Maybe Zen is appealing to you right now because this is what Zen asks you to do (Just be/Acceptance). &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;In my opinion, you&amp;#039;re not &amp;#034;blocked&amp;#034; in EQ. You simply have to fully accept this state of being and master being in this state before you move ahead. This is similar to how A&amp;amp;P took a tremendous amount of concentration, but this takes subtle acceptance. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So if you still want to *push* through the &amp;#034;roadblock&amp;#034;, and if you have that much will, try doing strong determination sittings instead of regular sittings. If you sit for 2-3 hours without movements instead of the regular 1 hour, I guarantee you&amp;#039;ll develop in equanimity rapidly. If you wanna go Zen, by all means do so but to me there&amp;#039;s not much difference.</description> <pubDate>Tue, 20 Aug 2013 17:04:39 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=4596870</guid> <dc:creator>Sweet Nothing</dc:creator> <dc:date>2013-08-20T17:04:39Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Reconsidering Zen at my Paradox Roadblock in EQ</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=4595023</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Mind over easy:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;I&amp;#039;m frustrated with the sense that I can&amp;#039;t do anything about this barrier in EQ. Noting seems to lose traction, and investigation feels like exactly the wrong thing, like the suffering is embedded in the investigation itself, therefore the investigation has to stop or change in some way. I&amp;#039;m entirely glad to have used the techniques I did to get to this point, as it is obviously progress and seemingly close to the source of the problem, but I really do get the &amp;#034;chasing my tail&amp;#034; feeling. When I move closer to it, it moves away, but when I stop, it doesn&amp;#039;t seem like things synch up, and there&amp;#039;s still a blaring dissonance. In 3rd vipassana jhana, my mantra was something like, &amp;#034;no going back (giving up), have to just come to acceptance and calmly go forward&amp;#034;. Now, it feels more like there is no way out, no tangible endpoint, like every step I take forward is making the thing I&amp;#039;m looking for one step farther away. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I don&amp;#039;t know if you read any of my posts related to some bits and scraps from Dan but you should do Shikantaza (or noting - if done subtly) but in doing this (or not doing) you just tune into what is hitting your consciousness already including letting your attention go where it wants to go and seeing intentions (including the intention to meditate) and paying attention or interest arise and passaway. By not blocking experience you won&amp;#039;t be repressing and by not forcibly stopping rumination or actions the rumination or actions will quiet on their own. When you&amp;#039;re &amp;#034;lost in thoughts&amp;#034; you let them come back to presence on their own. Don&amp;#039;t need to stop it. I&amp;#039;ve also read from other posts where people lamented how overly complex they were and just leaving the brain to let go on it&amp;#039;s own got what they needed for stream entry. The only investigation is what is hitting consciousness (the knowing part of your mind that knows there is thinking seeing touching etc). Thoughts try to sense other senses when really thoughts just hit consciousness.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Hopefully that&amp;#039;s helpful.</description> <pubDate>Tue, 20 Aug 2013 03:33:32 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=4595023</guid> <dc:creator>Richard Zen</dc:creator> <dc:date>2013-08-20T03:33:32Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Reconsidering Zen at my Paradox Roadblock in EQ</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=4594205</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;There get a point in EQ where the dukkha is too soft to really kick us in the butt, we then to get lost in some labyrinth of the mind, we try to come back again and again. I suppose developping strong concentration combined with strong resolve on a retreat,&lt;br /&gt;(...)&lt;br /&gt;This stage is quite bittersweet. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt; I like how this is put. I also like that plan, the tension drives up one&amp;#039;s resolve (hopefully after some soft period, so there&amp;#039;s not too much strain/pressure).</description> <pubDate>Mon, 19 Aug 2013 21:26:06 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=4594205</guid> <dc:creator>katy steger</dc:creator> <dc:date>2013-08-19T21:26:06Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Reconsidering Zen at my Paradox Roadblock in EQ</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=4594177</link> <description>I get the same problem and I&amp;#039;m still working on it. There get a point in EQ where the dukkha is too soft to really kick us in the butt, we then to get lost in some labyrinth of the mind, we try to come back again and again. I suppose developping strong concentration combined with strong resolve on a retreat, with a mix of sitting and walking meditation, would eventually do the trick. But when we only get there for a few hours every other day, that we need to deal with real life while working on this, it seems that another approach is needed. I think there is two ways to look at it. There is techniques to go after the dukkha and there is techniques to make dukkha more predominent or bubble up to the surface. Vipassana and concentration is all about going after the dukkha. Giving up, dwelling in the Buddha mind, self-inquiry, mantras (like humming sound) are more about the bubbles. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This stage is quite bittersweet. We can turn our mind toward the bitter or toward the sweet. We can let our mind oscillate more naturally between the two. Recently, I moved to simply doing a strong humming sound that make all my body vibrate when I get in this part of equanimity. It helps to break tiny tensions all over the body. It make me challenge my resolve and patience in a gentle way, which ultimately highlight the bitterness of the non-enlightened state without injecting unnecessary tention from too much effort. The lower back is also an important spot in this stage as the last bastion of tension remain there. Also, it helps avoid getting lost is some fantasies. I believe that not only insight is needed to move up the ladder, that is, seeing clearly something in the center of attention, but also complete relaxation to allow the energy flow. I hope someone with more experience will chime in on that matter as I&amp;#039;m as puzzled as your are those days.</description> <pubDate>Mon, 19 Aug 2013 21:11:18 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=4594177</guid> <dc:creator>Simon T.</dc:creator> <dc:date>2013-08-19T21:11:18Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Reconsidering Zen at my Paradox Roadblock in EQ</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=4593982</link> <description>Hi M.O.E.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I totally agree with you about zen; in my own words I think it does speak well to these kinds of &amp;#034;practice&amp;#034; paradoxes.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;My thought are &lt;br /&gt;a) wow, useful, clear post.&lt;br /&gt;b) just sit.&lt;br /&gt;c) I&amp;#039;m sure that sucks as a contribution.&lt;br /&gt;d) it was when I sat a few months after giving up, and just sat, something had changed.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;To use tangled yarn analogy, the ball definitely got tighter and messier, before I just approached sitting one day with nothing. More like flat exasperation, more out of habit. So when zen has to call sitting something (unavoidable to reify doing nothing into something) it&amp;#039;s called shikantaza. Just sitting. And I think a person does this when they are fed up, but also calm and they just sit one morning, because why not. It&amp;#039;s like sitting at a bus station in an abandoned town. Analogies...&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Good luck. I personally feel like this is a perfect example of correct tension arising. The useful aspect of noting and vipassana before this moment is that the mind should have fatigued itself of looking for other escapes, ideologies -- and that it will have a few moments of stilling itself without moodiness. Anyway, with the tension this high it&amp;#039;s like the mind, having nothing else to do, with start to work the tight ball of yarn in a loose completely patient way, so equanimous it&amp;#039;s nearly subconscious. Anyway, sounds right on to me, what you&amp;#039;re saying now.</description> <pubDate>Mon, 19 Aug 2013 19:15:00 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=4593982</guid> <dc:creator>katy steger</dc:creator> <dc:date>2013-08-19T19:15:00Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>Reconsidering Zen at my Paradox Roadblock in EQ</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=4593938</link> <description>So I&amp;#039;ve been doing vipassana for awhile, seemingly going up and down the nanas, getting some jhanas, going through periods of higher and lower motivation, points of higher and lower energy, points of more dedicated practice to points of laxity, points of confidence to points of confusion and stuck-ness, points of understanding and clarity, to points of uncertainty and vagueness.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;First breakthrough- Realizing that I had to watch and accept the negative bodily sensations. I then crossed the A&amp;amp;P.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Second breakthrough- Realizing the pitfalls of the A&amp;amp;P (related to the corruptions of insight), releasing desire for energetic stuff, releasing the tendency to grasp at the A&amp;amp;P stuff. This got me more able to tune into the 3rd vipassana jhana as it naturally arose after the A&amp;amp;P, rather than just feeling like I had dropped off and lost it.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Third breakthrough- Learning to surrender to overwhelming negativity in many forms during the DN. This got me tasting equanimity, but this is still an ongoing battle to some extent. As I learned on retreat recently, after ping-ponging back and forth between re-observation and EQ, there are layers and layers and layers of surrender that have to occur. However, I started landing more consistently in EQ in my sits, and having little trouble going through the DN to get there, and having less of a problem with going back and forth between re-observation and equanimity.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I realized that I was getting stuck in EQ, by holding onto the peace that resulted, which would then fling me back into re-observation with a vengeance. Then, I started to release attachment to the peace of EQ. Equanimity started seeming less profound and more like a drop off into a very wide, quiet, subconscious realm. When I would cycle back to re-observation, it wasn&amp;#039;t a big deal and didn&amp;#039;t have much psychological impact at all.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;And here&amp;#039;s the point where I feel stuck more than ever. After trying to release attachment to effort, equanimity, thoughts of maps and progress, high energy and low energy, etc..., I&amp;#039;m left feeling like I&amp;#039;m doing nothing at all, except watching and investigating. But it feels like a big roadblock. And yes, I&amp;#039;ve investigated the sense of roadblock. But at the end of the day, for better or for worse, I am aware of stream entry, and it&amp;#039;s my goal, and I have the intention to get it. So after I try to see through intention, map-based thoughts, desire for enlightenment, investigation, what is there to do? It feels great and equanimous, but I&amp;#039;ve long since realized that this is useless in a way. Equanimity can fade so fast, and it&amp;#039;s right next to re-observation. I feel like I had a motor (noting and noticing practice), but I feel like I&amp;#039;ve deconstructed the motor, that I&amp;#039;ve had to stop fueling the effort for getting somewhere, since it seems like I get to equanimity and then hit the end of the line. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I feel stuck in very paradoxical thinking now. I have to make effort and investigate to get enlightened, but at the same time, the investment in those things is an obvious impediment to seeing things clearly in some way. I have to see the nature of things, but even in equanimity, there&amp;#039;s this sense that something is just straight-up wrong (maybe this is seeing into dukkha). I try to investigate, but it feels like the investigation itself is related to the wrong-ness, that the problem is at a level deeper than the investigation itself. So how can investigation reveal and fix the problem, when the problem is so skin deep that the investigation itself feels corrupted? I keep going and I keep trying to cultivate equanimity to the efforts related to practice and the stress related to knowing that there is indeed a goal to achieve. Maybe it&amp;#039;s just continuing to do this that will crack it.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;But then, enter Zen. I&amp;#039;m still critical of the notion that &amp;#034;you are already enlightened&amp;#034;, that practice is non-practice, that there is nothing to attain. After reading enough stories of people getting progressive paths (even in some Zen traditions), it&amp;#039;s clear that there is a river to cross, so to speak. But at this odd, paradoxical point in my practice, some of the Zen sayings are actually seeming very appealing, addressing a lot of my fundamental concerns about my practice. I&amp;#039;m not referring to the notion that practice is futile, that we should just live and be happy that we&amp;#039;re already enlightened. I&amp;#039;m more referring to the notions that all is Buddha-nature, that mind needs to look back at itself to see it&amp;#039;s true nature, that enlightenment takes some kind of non-effort, that the thing we&amp;#039;re trying to do takes abandonment of all investment, and that you just have to step out of the way to let the natural mind shine through. I know little to nothing about actual Zen practice, but I feel like a lot of the Zen stuff I&amp;#039;ve heard is directly addressing these paradoxes/roadblocks I&amp;#039;m running into.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I&amp;#039;m frustrated with the sense that I can&amp;#039;t do anything about this barrier in EQ. Noting seems to lose traction, and investigation feels like exactly the wrong thing, like the suffering is embedded in the investigation itself, therefore the investigation has to stop or change in some way. I&amp;#039;m entirely glad to have used the techniques I did to get to this point, as it is obviously progress and seemingly close to the source of the problem, but I really do get the &amp;#034;chasing my tail&amp;#034; feeling. When I move closer to it, it moves away, but when I stop, it doesn&amp;#039;t seem like things synch up, and there&amp;#039;s still a blaring dissonance. In 3rd vipassana jhana, my mantra was something like, &amp;#034;no going back (giving up), have to just come to acceptance and calmly go forward&amp;#034;. Now, it feels more like there is no way out, no tangible endpoint, like every step I take forward is making the thing I&amp;#039;m looking for one step farther away. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I normally dislike writing (or reading) things that seem lost in paradoxical thought, because I normally think that just practicing is the solution. But after getting stuck in EQ again and again, I can&amp;#039;t help but feel like practice is paradoxically flawed somehow. I&amp;#039;m also at odds with Daniel Ingram&amp;#039;s claim that once someone hits EQ, they are so close and that continued practice is all it takes. I&amp;#039;m finding that practice is radically different in EQ, and that my previous methods of just noting the shit out of things, cultivating EQ, and removing investment in any of the stuff that comes up is lacking somehow. It was a great and massively effective approach all the way up to EQ, but now it seems like something must be tweaked. I&amp;#039;m interested in refining my practice, since I do know that once the practice is right, the fruit will follow, as demonstrated by many people here and anecdotes elsewhere.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;One step forward seems like one step back, and standing still feels like missing the point of investigation. I&amp;#039;ve uncovered a few stuck in EQ threads but it seems like people only understand what was wrong after they get stream entry. How do I crack this thing??? I promise, I am practicing and not just philosophizing. I&amp;#039;m just stuck at EQ.</description> <pubDate>Mon, 19 Aug 2013 18:55:02 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=4593938</guid> <dc:creator>Mind over easy</dc:creator> <dc:date>2013-08-19T18:55:02Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: "Sitting is Zen. Not sitting, is also Zen"</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=4049460</link> <description>&amp;#034;The other piece is: I don&amp;#039;t have any crazy &amp;#034;enlightenment&amp;#034; experience due to my sitting practice.&amp;#034; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;That&amp;#039;s actually a good thing, seeing as how these experiences can mess up your life.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&amp;#034;The closest I can come to any &amp;#034;experience&amp;#034; I&amp;#039;ve had as a result of my meditation is that I&amp;#039;m able to feel life happening a little more fully; and by &amp;#034;little&amp;#034; I mean bit by bit, piece by piece, my experience of life gains a modicum of depth to it.&amp;#034;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Sounds very much like you&amp;#039;re on the right track.</description> <pubDate>Wed, 27 Feb 2013 22:35:17 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=4049460</guid> <dc:creator>Brother Pussycat</dc:creator> <dc:date>2013-02-27T22:35:17Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: "Sitting is Zen. Not sitting, is also Zen"</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=4046737</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Joshua ..:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;Frankly I&amp;#039;d say forget about Zen. First of all it is all meant in the context of the relationship between the student and the enlightened teacher, and second of all it is misunderstood by basically everyone. I believe that to be a fault of the tradition, not those curious about it.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I very much agree with you here in the fact that Zen is widely misunderstood. I am often confused by it&amp;#039;s teachings as well, and I&amp;#039;m certainly not going to sit here and try to explain my understanding of all the ins and outs of it. To say that I would even begin to have a clue would be a huge misstatement.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Zen tradition in and of itself is contradictory and I&amp;#039;m not quite sure if that&amp;#039;s by design? (The folks of Zen like to be vague and mysterious, I think it comes with the territory. It&amp;#039;s like &amp;#034;here is your ceremonial bowl and robes, and from now on you must answer questions only in vague references and riddles.&amp;#034;) One hang up I have of Zen is that it&amp;#039;s supposed to be passed down by an &amp;#034;enlightened&amp;#034; teacher, but then when you speak with a teacher they tell you:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&amp;#034;... any experience you have has meant nothing. Anything you think you know, means nothing. Even I, as you teacher, know nothing that you don&amp;#039;t already know. But until I tell you that you know that which you do not know, that which you cannot know, and that which I don&amp;#039;t even know to teach you, you cannot even speculate to know anything. Except for the fact that you already know everything. Oh... and there is no enlightenment; at least it&amp;#039;s not what you think it is, so it&amp;#039;s best not to even concern yourself with it.&amp;#034; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;At which point I look a little something like: &lt;br /&gt; &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/blink.gif" &gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This may be more of a response than what you were hoping for, but thanks for your comment and thanks for listening. I appreciate it, it really has helped me.</description> <pubDate>Wed, 27 Feb 2013 06:05:51 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=4046737</guid> <dc:creator>Rich Silva</dc:creator> <dc:date>2013-02-27T06:05:51Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: "Sitting is Zen. Not sitting, is also Zen"</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=4046727</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Fitter Stoke:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;Other traditions don&amp;#039;t bother with the coming or going at all. They make a b-line for being. You just sit. You just drop things. And if you&amp;#039;re not just sitting or just dropping things, that&amp;#039;s still beingness, too, so realization is possible there as well. I literally don&amp;#039;t know how well that works. Is that easier than taking the developmental path? When I talk to practitioners who only take that approach, I feel like a person who has reached the summit of a mountain by going up a winding road, and the other person says to me, &amp;#034;Yeah, but you could have walked straight up the mountain,&amp;#034; and I think, &amp;#034;Yeah, but that was is so thick with trees and thorns that it&amp;#039;s hard to find a way through.&amp;#034; But maybe that&amp;#039;s just my impression. Since I&amp;#039;ve only taken a developmental approach, I can&amp;#039;t say what it would have been like to have done something so different.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I think I understand what you&amp;#039;re saying here, and I don&amp;#039;t see any harm in checking out some other means to &amp;#034;climb the mountain.&amp;#034; What I enjoy about the Zen tradition is the importance it seems to hold on the noticing of everyday, run-of-the-mill occurrences. Since our lives are mostly made up of seemingly small, insignificance&amp;#039;s, I&amp;#039;ve found it doesn&amp;#039;t hurt to add some depth and meaning to it all through careful investigation. Which, upon doing my own investigation, Zen seemed to resonate the most with me and my understanding of what it all means: Buddhism, life, existence, so on and so forth.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;My practice is very secular and agnostic. I sometimes agree with the term &amp;#034;atheist&amp;#034; but I shy away from this approach since in recent events it&amp;#039;s taken almost as dogmatic of an approach to &amp;#034;reason and science&amp;#034; as religion has to spirituality and the supernatural; which I don&amp;#039;t find I can follow easily in either case. Zen, to me, takes the most practical and non-spiritual/non-supernatural approach to &amp;#034;enlightenment&amp;#034; or &amp;#034;awakening&amp;#034;, which I find also resonates with me quite well. I may be mistaken in this disposition, and if so please point me in the direction of more information; for if I&amp;#039;ve learned nothing from my practice it&amp;#039;s that I should always be open to any opportunity to deepen my understanding of the nature of being. I mean, why else do anything? If I did have a goal of my practice, it&amp;#039;d have to be: understanding.</description> <pubDate>Wed, 27 Feb 2013 05:48:28 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=4046727</guid> <dc:creator>Rich Silva</dc:creator> <dc:date>2013-02-27T05:48:28Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: "Sitting is Zen. Not sitting, is also Zen"</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=4046610</link> <description>Frankly I&amp;#039;d say forget about Zen. First of all it is all meant in the context of the relationship between the student and the enlightened teacher, and second of all it is misunderstood by basically everyone. I believe that to be a fault of the tradition, not those curious about it.</description> <pubDate>Wed, 27 Feb 2013 03:00:39 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=4046610</guid> <dc:creator>Joshua, the solitary</dc:creator> <dc:date>2013-02-27T03:00:39Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: "Sitting is Zen. Not sitting, is also Zen"</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=4045975</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Rich Silva:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt; Or is the point the fact that there is no point? (which is pretty much the conclusion I&amp;#039;ve come to lately, and that&amp;#039;s not a bad thing.) &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Thanks in advance for any insight.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;One of the key messages of the hardcore dharma movement is that there definitely is a point. The point is enlightenment/awakening/radical liberation from dhukka/stress/suffering. The &amp;#034;enlightenment experiences&amp;#034; (I think) you&amp;#039;re referring to are just signposts along the way. There are a lot of ideas about what that all means and how to get there.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I don&amp;#039;t know much about Zen, but I&amp;#039;ve had the impression that some of the riddles and paradoxes can be mistaken to be mean that the best you can hope for is acceptance. If that&amp;#039;s the path you&amp;#039;re on, I would encourage you to look around, read some journals here and at kennethfolkdharma, read MCTB. I don&amp;#039;t want to convert you, but there may be some insight here that can shed light on what you&amp;#039;re already doing.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Jason</description> <pubDate>Tue, 26 Feb 2013 20:51:48 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=4045975</guid> <dc:creator>Some Guy</dc:creator> <dc:date>2013-02-26T20:51:48Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: "Sitting is Zen. Not sitting, is also Zen"</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=4045530</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Rich Silva:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;I&amp;#039;m not entirely sure if I&amp;#039;m in the right thread here, but my practice most closely aligns with Zen practice, not to mention Zen Buddhism is what I study and the path I work to follow. With that being said, I often hear about people having &amp;#034;experiences&amp;#034; as a result of meditating, often relating these to &amp;#034;enlightenment&amp;#034;, but I don&amp;#039;t meditate for any sort of &amp;#034;experience&amp;#034;. I meditate for the sake of meditating. I notice that when I maintain a continual meditation practice, the meditation itself becomes something I sometimes enjoy doing, but not always. I often think the results of my meditation are more like side effects of the actual practice, and are not the goals as to why I should sit on my cushion. I may be way off base here, but I sit on the cushion because when I do I notice a change in my everyday life, and because of these very subtle changes, it motivates me to sit on my cushion again. However the motivation is not necessarily the reason why I do it. I don&amp;#039;t know if I&amp;#039;m making much sense here but it&amp;#039;s the best I can do to explain why I do what I do. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The other piece is: I don&amp;#039;t have any crazy &amp;#034;enlightenment&amp;#034; experience due to my sitting practice. The closest I can come to any &amp;#034;experience&amp;#034; I&amp;#039;ve had as a result of my meditation is that I&amp;#039;m able to feel life happening a little more fully; and by &amp;#034;little&amp;#034; I mean bit by bit, piece by piece, my experience of life gains a modicum of depth to it. I did experience sort of an &amp;#034;aha&amp;#034; moment when I started looking into no-self or non-duality, but that was more because it just sort of makes sense. It&amp;#039;s like spending all this time swimming upstream and then someone says &amp;#034;hey dummy! Turn around, it&amp;#039;s much easier that way.&amp;#034; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So my question is: am I on target here with my practice? Should I even have a target? Is that the point of this? Or is the point the fact that there is no point? (which is pretty much the conclusion I&amp;#039;ve come to lately, and that&amp;#039;s not a bad thing.) &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Thanks in advance for any insight.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Different people meditate for different reasons, and different traditions offer different rationales for why one should meditate. If you have an informed view of what&amp;#039;s out there, and if you&amp;#039;re pleased with what you&amp;#039;re doing, then I don&amp;#039;t see why you should change what you&amp;#039;re doing. It seems sort of strange that you&amp;#039;d profess to enjoying meditation for its own sake but then post a question like this. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;What you&amp;#039;re talking about here is something I&amp;#039;ve referred to elsewhere as &amp;#034;throwing away the ladder&amp;#034;. We all get into meditation for this reason or that. We read that it helps with stress, or maybe we heard you can get into altered states with it, so we went after it. There&amp;#039;s nothing wrong with that. People do things for reasons (either good or bad), and it would be weird to get into some new activity - particular an activity that is as irritating as meditation often is - without a reason. Hardcore dharma distinguishes itself as being very focused on attainment and the &amp;#034;can do&amp;#034; attitude to a degree that I&amp;#039;ve seen in no other tradition. However, everyone gets into this for some goal-oriented reason or another, not just the yogis here.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;That being said, there comes a point, even in an attainment-oriented practice - usually after one has gotten to a pretty advanced point - where the selfing behind the intention to practice has to dissolve and fall away. This is the part where the ladder you just climbed up is no longer there. Or if it was, it doesn&amp;#039;t matter, because there couldn&amp;#039;t have been a climber. This is a profound moment. It coincides with a very close approach to beingness itself: an experience where there is no coming, there is no going, and there certainly is no one who could be coming or going. The mind turns away from the arising and passing of mere phenomena and goes for something else entirely, something truly restful, something which brings resolution to all the tension and distress. And after that, it can seem pretty foolish to &amp;#034;go&amp;#034; or &amp;#034;try&amp;#034; for anything, even though one is very aware that at some point that going or trying seemed to make sense.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Other traditions don&amp;#039;t bother with the coming or going at all. They make a b-line for being. You just sit. You just drop things. And if you&amp;#039;re not just sitting or just dropping things, that&amp;#039;s still beingness, too, so realization is possible there as well. I literally don&amp;#039;t know how well that works. Is that easier than taking the developmental path? When I talk to practitioners who only take that approach, I feel like a person who has reached the summit of a mountain by going up a winding road, and the other person says to me, &amp;#034;Yeah, but you could have walked straight up the mountain,&amp;#034; and I think, &amp;#034;Yeah, but that was is so thick with trees and thorns that it&amp;#039;s hard to find a way through.&amp;#034; But maybe that&amp;#039;s just my impression. Since I&amp;#039;ve only taken a developmental approach, I can&amp;#039;t say what it would have been like to have done something so different.</description> <pubDate>Tue, 26 Feb 2013 16:53:06 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=4045530</guid> <dc:creator>Fitter Stoke</dc:creator> <dc:date>2013-02-26T16:53:06Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>"Sitting is Zen. Not sitting, is also Zen"</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=4045485</link> <description>I&amp;#039;m not entirely sure if I&amp;#039;m in the right thread here, but my practice most closely aligns with Zen practice, not to mention Zen Buddhism is what I study and the path I work to follow. With that being said, I often hear about people having &amp;#034;experiences&amp;#034; as a result of meditating, often relating these to &amp;#034;enlightenment&amp;#034;, but I don&amp;#039;t meditate for any sort of &amp;#034;experience&amp;#034;. I meditate for the sake of meditating. I notice that when I maintain a continual meditation practice, the meditation itself becomes something I sometimes enjoy doing, but not always. I often think the results of my meditation are more like side effects of the actual practice, and are not the goals as to why I should sit on my cushion. I may be way off base here, but I sit on the cushion because when I do I notice a change in my everyday life, and because of these very subtle changes, it motivates me to sit on my cushion again. However the motivation is not necessarily the reason why I do it. I don&amp;#039;t know if I&amp;#039;m making much sense here but it&amp;#039;s the best I can do to explain why I do what I do. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The other piece is: I don&amp;#039;t have any crazy &amp;#034;enlightenment&amp;#034; experience due to my sitting practice. The closest I can come to any &amp;#034;experience&amp;#034; I&amp;#039;ve had as a result of my meditation is that I&amp;#039;m able to feel life happening a little more fully; and by &amp;#034;little&amp;#034; I mean bit by bit, piece by piece, my experience of life gains a modicum of depth to it. I did experience sort of an &amp;#034;aha&amp;#034; moment when I started looking into no-self or non-duality, but that was more because it just sort of makes sense. It&amp;#039;s like spending all this time swimming upstream and then someone says &amp;#034;hey dummy! Turn around, it&amp;#039;s much easier that way.&amp;#034; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So my question is: am I on target here with my practice? Should I even have a target? Is that the point of this? Or is the point the fact that there is no point? (which is pretty much the conclusion I&amp;#039;ve come to lately, and that&amp;#039;s not a bad thing.) &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Thanks in advance for any insight.</description> <pubDate>Tue, 26 Feb 2013 14:52:14 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=4045485</guid> <dc:creator>Rich Silva</dc:creator> <dc:date>2013-02-26T14:52:14Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>The Five Varieties of Zen - The Three Stages in Zen's Training</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=4043449</link> <description>I stumbled upon this webpage following LAYA&amp;#039;s definition in another thread. I don&amp;#039;t know anything about Zen but thought that the text below could be of interest for fellow posters, and perhaps someone would like to comment on the subject.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;--------------------------------------------------&amp;amp;&amp;amp;--&amp;amp;--&amp;amp;&amp;amp;------------------------------------------------------------&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;www&amp;#x2e;angelfire&amp;#x2e;com&amp;#x2f;electronic&amp;#x2f;awakening101&amp;#x2f;fivetypes&amp;#x2e;html"&gt;Link&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 24px"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Five Varieties of Zen&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Among the various types of Zen presented to the people of today there are some which are profound and some shallow, some that lead to Enlightenment and some that do not. It is said that during the time of the Buddha there were ninety or ninety-five schools of philosophy or religion in existence. Each school had its particular mode of practice, each was slightly different from the other. Since most religions have prayer in some form or another and prayer needs concentration of mind, most religions have at least a whiff of Zen. The different methods of concentration, almost limitless in number, come under the broad heading of Zen. Rather than try to specify all of them, the five main divisions of Zen as classified by Kuei-feng Tsung-mi (AKA: Keiho Shumitsu Zenji, 780-841. A Chan Master of Shenhui’s early Heze school and Fifth Ancestor of the Chinese Huayan school) whose categories are still valid and useful, will be discussed here. Outwardly these five kinds of Zen scarcely differ, however beginners need to bear in mind that in the substance and purpose of these various types there are distinct differences.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I. BOMPU&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The first of these types is called bompu, or &amp;#034;ordinary,&amp;#034; Zen as opposed to the other four, each of which can be thought of as a special kind of Zen suitable for the particular aims of different individuals. Bompu Zen, being free from any philosophic or religious content, is for anybody and everybody. It is a Zen practiced purely in the belief that it can improve both physical and mental health. Since it can almost certainly have no ill effects, anyone can undertake it, whatever religious beliefs he happens to hold or if he holds none at all. Bompu Zen is bound to eliminate sickness of a psychosomatic nature and to improve the health generally.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Through the practice of bompu Zen you learn to concentrate and control your mind. It never occurs to most people to try to control their minds, and unfortunately this basic training is left out of contemporary education, not being part of what is called the acquisition of knowledge. Yet without it what we learn is difficult to retain because we learn it improperly, wasting much energy in the process. Indeed, we are virtually crippled unless we know how to restrain our thoughts and concentrate our minds. Furthermore, by practicing this very excellent mode of mind training you will find yourself increasingly able to resist temptations to which you had previously succumbed, and to sever attachments which had long held you in bondage. An enrichment in personality and a strengthening of character inevitably follow since the three basic elements of mind - that is, intellect, feeling, and will - develop harmoniously. The quietist sitting practiced in Confucianism seems to have stressed mainly these effects of mind concentration. However, the fact remains that bompu Zen, although far more beneficial for the cultivation of the mind than the reading of countless books on ethics and philosophy, is unable to resolve the fundamental problem of man and his relation to the universe. Why? Because it cannot pierce the ordinary man&amp;#039;s basic delusion of himself as distinctly other than the universe. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;strong&gt;II. GEDO&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The second of the five kinds of Zen is called gedo. Gedo means literally &amp;#034;an outside way&amp;#034; and so implies, from the Buddhist point of view, teachings other than Buddhist. Here we have a Zen related to religion and philosophy but yet not a Buddhist Zen. Hindu yoga, the quietist sitting of Confucianism, contemplation practices in Christianity, all these belong to the category of gedo Zen. Some examples that might meet the Gedo &amp;#034;outside way&amp;#034; criteria, that is, they are flirting with Zen --- but not embracing Buddhism in a classical or formal sense --- can be found in the works of F.M. Alexander, Franklin Merrell-Wolff, Madame H.P. Blavatsky, and Alfred Pulyan. Please note that the so-called Gedo &amp;#034;outside way&amp;#034; is NOT to be confused with Zen and &amp;#034;outside the Doctrine.&amp;#034;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Another feature of gedo Zen is that it is often practiced in order to cultivate various supranormal powers or skills, or to master certain arts beyond the reach of the ordinary man. It has been reported that some who have practiced this Zen have attained the ability to make people act without them having to say a word or move a muscle. There is something called the Emma Method which aims to accomplish such feats as walking barefooted on sharp sword blades or staring at sparrows so that they become paralyzed. All these miraculous exploits are brought about through the cultivation of Joriki the particular strength or power which comes with the strenuous practice of mind concentration. A Zen that aims exclusively at the cultivation of Joriki for such ends is NOT a Buddhist Zen. See also Siddhis.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Another object for which gedo Zen is practiced is Rebirth in various heavens. Certain sects practice Zen in order to be reborn in heaven. This is NOT the object of Zen Buddhism. While the Zen Buddhist does not quarrel with the idea of various strata of heaven and the belief that one may be reborn into them through the performance of ten kinds of meritorious deeds, he himself does not crave rebirth in heaven. Conditions there are altogether too pleasant and comfortable and he can all too easily be lured from Zazen. Besides, when his merit in heaven expires he can very well land in hell. Zen Buddhists therefore believe it preferable to be born into the human world and to practice Zazen with the aim of ultimately becoming Buddha. (BACK)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;strong&gt;III. SHOJO&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The third type of Zen is shojo, literally meaning &amp;#034;Small Vehicle.&amp;#034; This is the vehicle or teaching that is to take you from one state of mind (delusion) to another (Enlightenment). This small vehicle is so named because it is designed to accommodate only one&amp;#039;s self. You can perhaps compare it to a bicycle. The large vehicle , on the other hand, is more like a car or bus: it takes on others as well. Hence shojo is a Zen which looks only to one&amp;#039;s own peace of mind (see Pratyeka Buddha).&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Here we have a Zen which is Buddhist but a Zen not in accord with the Buddha&amp;#039;s highest teaching. It is rather an expedient Zen for those unable to grasp the innermost meaning of the Buddha&amp;#039;s Enlightenment, i.e., that existence is an inseparable whole, each one of us embracing the cosmos in its totality. This being true, it follows that we cannot attain genuine peace of mind merely by seeking our own salvation while remaining indifferent to the welfare of others.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;There are those, however, who simply cannot bring themselves to believe in the reality of such a world. No matter how often they are taught that the relative world of distinctions and opposites to which they cling is illusory, the product of their mistaken views, they cannot but believe otherwise. To such people the world can only seem inherently evil, full of sin and strife and suffering, of killing and being killed, and in their despair they long to escape from it. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;strong&gt;IV. DAIJO&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The fourth classification is called daijo, Great Vehicle Zen, and this is a truly Buddhist Zen, for it has as its central purpose Kensho, that is, seeing into your essential nature and realizing the Way in your daily life. For those able to comprehend the import of the Buddha&amp;#039;s own Enlightenment experience and with a desire to break through their own illusory view of the universe and experience absolute, undifferentiated Reality, the Buddha taught this mode of Zen. Buddhism is essentially a religion of Enlightenment. The Buddha after his own supreme Awakening spent some fifty years teaching people how they might themselves realize their Self-nature. His methods have been transmitted from master to disciple right down to the present day. So it can be said that a Zen which ignores or denies or belittles Enlightenment is not true daijo Buddhist Zen.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;In the practice of daijo Zen your aim in the beginning is to awaken to your True-nature, but upon Enlightenment you realize that Zazen is more than a means to Enlightenment - it is the actualization of your True-nature. In this type of Zen, which has as its object Satori, it is easy to mistakenly regard Zazen as but a means. A wise teacher, however, will point out from the onset that Zazen is in fact THE actualization of the innate Buddha-nature and not merely a technique for achieving Enlightenment. If Zazen were no more than such a technique, it would follow that after Satori, Zazen would be unnecessary. But as Dogen-zenji himself pointed out, precisely the reverse is true; the more deeply you experience Satori, the more you perceive the need for practice.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;strong&gt;V. SAIJOJO&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The last of the five types is saijojo Zen, the highest vehicle, the culmination and crown of Buddhist Zen. This Zen was practiced by the Buddha - Shakyamuni - and is the expression of Absolute Life, life in its purest form. It is the Zazen which Dogen-zenji chiefly advocated and it involves no struggle for Satori or any other object. It is called Shikantaza.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;In this highest practice, means and end coalesce. Daijo Zen and Saijojo Zen are, in point of fact, complementary. The Rinzai sect places daijo uppermost and saijojo beneath, whereas the Soto sect does the reverse. In saijojo, when rightly practiced, you sit in the firm conviction that Zazen is the actualization of your undefiled True-nature, and at the same time you sit in complete faith that the day will come when, exclaiming, &amp;#034;Oh, this is it!&amp;#034; you will unmistakably realize this True-nature. Therefore you need not self-consciously strive for Enlightenment.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Today many in the Soto sect hold that since we are all innately Buddhas, Satori is unnecessary. Such an egregious error reduces Shikantaza, which properly is the highest form of sitting, to nothing more than Bompu Zen, the first of the five types.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;--------------------------------------------------&amp;amp;&amp;amp;--&amp;amp;--&amp;amp;&amp;amp;------------------------------------------------------------&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 24px"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There are also three phases or stages of training typically found common to Zen: &lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I The First Phase is shojin, the period of training in which the will and conscious effort are involved, and may take three to five years of diligent practice.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;II The Second Phase is the period of concentration without conscious effort. The disciple is at peace. He can become an assistant to the master and later become a master himself and teach others in his turn.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;III The Third Phase the spirit achieves true freedom, Enlightenment. Over and over it is found Zen historians citing the experience of full liberation being brought about by (but not limited to) hsing-chiao which consists of sending the learner traveling from one hill to another, from one school to another, studying under one master and then another.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The Japanese word for the First Phase, Shojin, translates as &amp;#034;ceaseless effort&amp;#034; or &amp;#034;constant effort.&amp;#034; Said to be from the Sanskrit word &amp;#034;Virya&amp;#034; (in Pali: Viriya)</description> <pubDate>Mon, 25 Feb 2013 18:35:17 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=4043449</guid> <dc:creator>Pablo . P</dc:creator> <dc:date>2013-02-25T18:35:17Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Huatou: an overlooked practice?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=3160175</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Stian Gudmundsen Høiland:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Does &amp;#039;wonder&amp;#039; fit in this list, TJ?&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;hi Stian,&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;i think good &amp;#034;bare awareness&amp;#034; practice should ideally have an element of wonder(curiosity) in it, but i wouldn&amp;#039;t say that every type of wonder fits in the list. for instance, wondering about your personal dramas and stories that rationalize arising tensions would not fit here. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Stian Gudmundsen Høiland:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Although off-topic, I&amp;#039;d like to see a thorough discussion on &amp;#039;apperception&amp;#039;. Maybe I&amp;#039;ll start a new thread... Does your understanding of &amp;#039;apperception&amp;#039; fit in this list?&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;yes, my understanding of apperception is the same as my understanding of mindfulness or sati...i just realized that the items in the list aren&amp;#039;t exactly parallel because the -ing verbs are more like practices to help the practitioner access the mode of awareness while words like &amp;#034;mindfulness&amp;#034; or &amp;#034;sati&amp;#034; refer to the mode of awareness itself.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;jill</description> <pubDate>Thu, 24 May 2012 14:49:42 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=3160175</guid> <dc:creator>TJ Broccoli</dc:creator> <dc:date>2012-05-24T14:49:42Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Huatou: an overlooked practice?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=3158690</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;TJ Broccoli:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;-sati&lt;br /&gt;-mindfulness&lt;br /&gt;-maintaining bare awareness&lt;br /&gt;-remembering (to stay aware)&lt;br /&gt;-HAIETMOBA&lt;br /&gt;-curiosity+naivete&lt;br /&gt;-as it actually is&lt;br /&gt;-noticing feelings and emotions as unlabeled qualities/phenomena, not as evaluations or judgements&lt;br /&gt;-paying attention&lt;br /&gt;-being attentive&lt;br /&gt;-resting alert&lt;br /&gt;-wondering, not assuming or concluding&lt;br /&gt;-mimicking the PCE&lt;br /&gt;-observing sensations&lt;br /&gt;-observing, not knowing&lt;br /&gt;-&amp;#034;unknowifying&amp;#034;&lt;br /&gt;-accessing and generating equanimity&lt;br /&gt;-noting without labels&lt;br /&gt;-sense sense sense&lt;br /&gt;-what is this&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Does &amp;#039;wonder&amp;#039; fit in this list, TJ?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Although off-topic, I&amp;#039;d like to see a thorough discussion on &amp;#039;apperception&amp;#039;. Maybe I&amp;#039;ll start a new thread... Does your understanding of &amp;#039;apperception&amp;#039; fit in this list?</description> <pubDate>Wed, 23 May 2012 19:41:10 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=3158690</guid> <dc:creator>Stian Gudmundsen Høiland</dc:creator> <dc:date>2012-05-23T19:41:10Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Huatou: an overlooked practice?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=3158557</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Steph S:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Could you please explain further what I put in bold?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I&amp;#039;ve never used the &amp;#034;Who am I?&amp;#034; question and I basically agree with what Jill says here for why I&amp;#039;m not sure it would work.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;one practice that does sound different to me is the &amp;#034;who am i&amp;#034; question, because it seems to assume that there is a certain &amp;#039;i&amp;#039; somewhere that needs to be figured out and matched with a yet to be found &amp;#039;who&amp;#039;.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;There can be utter certainty in the absence of all conceptual thoughts, pure certainty arises in directness, and has nothing to do with the mind figuring things out conceptually by comparison, matching and so on. No inference can touch that realm. Every koan, hua tou, or inquiry must be designed to lead to that direct realization, but different koans or hua tou can lead to a particular or different insight/realization such as Tozan&amp;#039;s five ranks. &amp;#034;Who am I?&amp;#034; is likened by Ramana Maharshi to a stick that when burnt leaves nothing behind - not including the flame or the stick, i.e. self-inquiry leads to a realization where not even the question or the &amp;#039;I&amp;#039; thought remains. So when the I-thought is traced to its source by inquiring &amp;#034;Who am I?&amp;#034; What remains is no (conceptual) thought, only Presence, a pure conceptual-less sense of existence which is utterly doubtless and certain. In other words, it is Presence as a non-conceptual thought. There is nothing to be figured out as it is only in the absence of all conceptual thoughts, in direct presence, that there is self-realization. But it is true that &amp;#034;Who am I?&amp;#034; already presumes a pure identity, so what is realized is reified into a pure identity and one will be inclined to always seek to abide in that purest realm of presence. It is a non-dual, non-conceptual, direct and immediate mode of perception but only pertains to the pure thought realm. Such practitioner may not be able to see the one taste of luminosity in all 18 dhatus but cling to a purest state of presence which is seen as the background source of everything.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;As for HAIETMOBA, it leads to similar experience but instead of seeking the realm of pure, the mind realm, rather the inquiry is directed to the immediate experience of aliveness in the foreground, in the senses, which is very important and essential. But even when all sense of self/Self goes into abeyance in the experience of PCE, one can be led (due to faulty view) to attach to an ultimate ground, to being &amp;#034;actual&amp;#034;, to an objective universe. When it is seen that there is something &amp;#034;actual&amp;#034; and &amp;#034;objective&amp;#034;, one will seek to ground oneself/be grounded in the here and now, the objective, the actual. The PCE becomes treated as ultimate like in the previous case, but now it is being &amp;#034;actual, objective, here/now&amp;#034; while the &amp;#034;I AM&amp;#034; is reifying a subjective self. Both are a form of self-view, one subject the other object. Also, PCE will not be effortless until some insight arise. And depending on one&amp;#039;s practice and insight, even if insight into anatta arises one may be skewed to the second stanza and overlook the first stanza and the aspect of emptiness, i.e. http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/2009/03/on-anatta-emptiness-and-spontaneous.html - in this case it is very much like those trying to ground themselves in the actual, direct experience of aliveness all day. Aliveness is important but should be complemented with the insight into emptiness, for if one does not go through two fold emptiness (of self and emptiness), how is a dual and inherent view going to lead one to that uncontrived awareness as this moment of suchness and which self-releases? There will always be contrivance and grasping instead of naturalness and release owing to faulty view.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;When one penetrates first stanza and emptiness, then nothing is clung to as ultimate, whether subject or object, all are thoroughly deconstructed and emptied, one experientially realizes the insubstantial, unsupported, disjoint, self-releasing, coreless nature of everything, and also one understands that everything is &amp;#034;merely imputed&amp;#034; - from self, to awareness, to universe, everything is a mere imputation, convention, label in the same way that &amp;#034;weather&amp;#034; is a convention or imputation on a process of everchanging forming and departing clouds, rain, wind, etc. One has a better understanding of the implication of view, and one does not cling to anything subjective or objective (both are views, mere imputation). Whatever manifest is vividly luminous and present but nothing to cling as there isn&amp;#039;t anything truly &amp;#039;there&amp;#039; or &amp;#039;here&amp;#039; - empty. Luminosity and emptiness are without hierarchy in terms of importance - there is no true understanding of emptiness without direct realization of luminosity (one can study madyamika teachings but without true experience of luminous presence whatever understood is merely intellectual views), no true understanding of luminosity without realizing its empty nature (despite having had direct experience of it).</description> <pubDate>Wed, 23 May 2012 16:37:28 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=3158557</guid> <dc:creator>An Eternal Now</dc:creator> <dc:date>2012-05-23T16:37:28Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Huatou: an overlooked practice?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=3158047</link> <description>I think Ken covers &amp;#034;Who am I?&amp;#034; somewhere in his &lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;www&amp;#x2e;unfetteredmind&amp;#x2e;org&amp;#x2f;category&amp;#x2f;retreats&amp;#x2f;buddhahood-without-meditation"&gt;Buddhahood without meditation&lt;/a&gt; series of talks. As answers occur to you, you investigate them. (&amp;#034;Am I my name?&amp;#034; &amp;#034;Am I my fingers?&amp;#034; &amp;#034;Am I the observer?&amp;#034; &amp;#034;Am I the controller of my behavior?&amp;#034; &amp;#034;Am I my experience?&amp;#034;) Of course, the answer is always &amp;#034;No.&amp;#034; Eventually, you run out of answers and are just left with the question. If you attach to an answer, it&amp;#039;s up to your teacher to undermine it. So it really ends up working the same way.</description> <pubDate>Wed, 23 May 2012 12:28:29 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=3158047</guid> <dc:creator>fivebells .</dc:creator> <dc:date>2012-05-23T12:28:29Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Huatou: an overlooked practice?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=3157538</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;An Eternal Now:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&amp;#034;Who am I?&amp;#034; has a similar function of leading to the &amp;#034;bare pause&amp;#034; and discovering what is present in the pause, i.e. without even a single thought what am &amp;#034;I&amp;#034;. What remains is a pure presence, pure existence, pure consciousness, which is no different from PCE, but now it is the PCE of mind itself, as a non-conceptual thought, as a thought. (but it is not the ordinary conceptual thoughts) Owing to the nature of this inquiry and framework of the person (when one inquires &amp;#034;Who am I?&amp;#034; - one tries to trace the thought of &amp;#034;I&amp;#034; to its pure source), &lt;strong&gt;one clings to the moment of beingness as one&amp;#039;s purest identity&lt;/strong&gt;. Similarly HAIETMOBA is able to lead to a direct pure experience of PCE... &lt;strong&gt;but then apart from this it is also important to arise insight that deconstructs our view of an ultimate ground&lt;/strong&gt; (whether it is a substantial mind, or an actual world here/now).&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Could you please explain further what I put in bold?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I&amp;#039;ve never used the &amp;#034;Who am I?&amp;#034; question and I basically agree with what Jill says here for why I&amp;#039;m not sure it would work.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;one practice that does sound different to me is the &amp;#034;who am i&amp;#034; question, because it seems to assume that there is a certain &amp;#039;i&amp;#039; somewhere that needs to be figured out and matched with a yet to be found &amp;#039;who&amp;#039;.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</description> <pubDate>Wed, 23 May 2012 05:47:59 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=3157538</guid> <dc:creator>Steph S</dc:creator> <dc:date>2012-05-23T05:47:59Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Huatou: an overlooked practice?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=3156992</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&amp;#034;It is my will to render Justin Bieber mute&amp;#034;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;this must be the way to freedom!</description> <pubDate>Wed, 23 May 2012 00:49:08 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=3156992</guid> <dc:creator>Adam . .</dc:creator> <dc:date>2012-05-23T00:49:08Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Huatou: an overlooked practice?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=3156655</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;yet what actually happens in practice still seems simpler than when it&amp;#039;s spelled out in words...&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Hahahahaha, well said!</description> <pubDate>Tue, 22 May 2012 22:36:41 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=3156655</guid> <dc:creator>Tommy M</dc:creator> <dc:date>2012-05-22T22:36:41Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Huatou: an overlooked practice?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=3156651</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;the &amp;#034;unknowing&amp;#034; attention that i often describe is a that habit/perspective/mode of awareness that initially has to be adopted and exercised repeatedly until it becomes more possible, then more manageable, more frequent, more fun, more detailed, then more effortless, then more natural, more automatic, until it becomes the continuous default mode, until it becomes impossible to not pay bare attention. whether it&amp;#039;s totally forced or totally automatic or something in between, the same type of attention can be accessed, provided it has been seen to make sense. &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I&amp;#039;m in the process of writing something about the word &amp;#034;attentiveness&amp;#034; right now and this paragraph right here sums it all up wonderfully, it&amp;#039;s this sort of quality that I&amp;#039;ve been trying to describe! I&amp;#039;m even digging into the synonyms and metaphoric representations for this, comparing models and various ways of expressing the same thing...then I read this:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;in actual practice, as in whenever i&amp;#039;ve actually &amp;#034;exercised&amp;#034; or &amp;#034;forced&amp;#034; or &amp;#034;inclined&amp;#034; towards or &amp;#034;allowed&amp;#034; or &amp;#034;accessed&amp;#034; or &amp;#034;maintained&amp;#034; this attentiveness, i could see no difference whatsoever in the following pointers for it:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;-sati&lt;br /&gt;-mindfulness&lt;br /&gt;-maintaining bare awareness&lt;br /&gt;-remembering (to stay aware)&lt;br /&gt;-HAIETMOBA&lt;br /&gt;-curiosity+naivete&lt;br /&gt;-as it actually is&lt;br /&gt;-noticing feelings and emotions as unlabeled qualities/phenomena, not as evaluations or judgements&lt;br /&gt;-paying attention&lt;br /&gt;-being attentive&lt;br /&gt;-resting alert&lt;br /&gt;-wondering, not assuming or concluding&lt;br /&gt;-mimicking the PCE&lt;br /&gt;-observing sensations&lt;br /&gt;-observing, not knowing&lt;br /&gt;-&amp;#034;unknowifying&amp;#034;&lt;br /&gt;-accessing and generating equanimity&lt;br /&gt;-noting without labels&lt;br /&gt;-sense sense sense&lt;br /&gt;-what is this&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;...none of which brings fruit without continuity, and the wide range of mental tools used to develop continuity are often seen as very different practice techniques.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;And I am grinning like a Cheshire cat &amp;#039;cause you&amp;#039;ve just summed it up really, really clearly and quite comprehensively.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Thank you, this is really helpful!&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;but there have been periods when certain words resonated better than others as good practice reminders or explanations.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt; &lt;br /&gt;This is also what happens in my experience, I&amp;#039;m curious as to why that is and how to utilize it in some way to help those still dealing with affect.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Thanks again for this post, you have no idea how useful it&amp;#039;s been in clarifying my thinking on this stuff.</description> <pubDate>Tue, 22 May 2012 22:35:43 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=3156651</guid> <dc:creator>Tommy M</dc:creator> <dc:date>2012-05-22T22:35:43Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Huatou: an overlooked practice?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=3156602</link> <description>p.s.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;End in Sight:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;* What is this? [+ mental motion of finding a &amp;#039;this&amp;#039;, as the field of experience, for the question to be about]&lt;br /&gt;* What is this?&lt;br /&gt;* What?&lt;br /&gt;* ?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;i used that exact phrase &amp;#039;what is this&amp;#039; now and then--it&amp;#039;s the closest explanation to the mental-reminder-process i was using at some vipassana retreats. your shortening above articulates that mental momentum/simplification well. yet what actually happens in practice still seems simpler than when it&amp;#039;s spelled out in words...</description> <pubDate>Tue, 22 May 2012 22:25:01 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=3156602</guid> <dc:creator>TJ Broccoli</dc:creator> <dc:date>2012-05-22T22:25:01Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Huatou: an overlooked practice?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=3156575</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;End:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;Was your experience of charging sigils different, and if so, why?&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;With the charging of sigils, one of the techniques was to formulate and write down your intent, for example: &amp;#034;It is my will to render Justin Bieber mute&amp;#034;; reduce it to the consonants and remove any repeating letters: ITSMYWLORDJUNBE; then jumble the letters up so that the original intent is no longer discernible: JUNILO WRYST B&amp;#039;DEM; you repeat it continually like a mantra until you get into &amp;#034;gnosis&amp;#034; which is like a mental spasm wherein the intent is forgotten, after which it&amp;#039;s customary to banish with laughter. Fun stuff.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The moment of &amp;#034;gnosis&amp;#034;, I speculate, may be a momentary exhaustion of the entire semantic/symbolizing faculties of the brain via overload, i.e. continuous repetition of a word or phrase. It simply ceases to have any meaning, it&amp;#039;s becomes a mentally repeated sound with no concept attached; from an insight perspective, it&amp;#039;s a fine opportunity to investigate the emptiness aspect of phenomena. In my experience, there are several ways to &amp;#034;enter gnosis&amp;#034; ranging from that mantra method I mentioned, to finding numerological correspondences between different words really quickly; the latter method led to me experience what I think were &amp;#034;satori&amp;#034; on a few occasions, flashes of insight where subject and object would become one leaving just the sensate...hang on, that sounds a hell of a lot like apperception! Hmmmmm, I hadn&amp;#039;t even thought about that until just now...I&amp;#039;ll get back to you &amp;#039;cause there&amp;#039;s something interesting there that I just picked up on. My idea here isn&amp;#039;t clear enough, I&amp;#039;ll need to think about this.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;End:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;Does the lack of verbalization (in the case of charging sigils) have some kind of exoteric or esoteric significance, apart from a sign of having performed the task?&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Nothing that I&amp;#039;d consider applicable in a practical way, it&amp;#039;s mainly about either concentration or excitation and then &amp;#039;releasing&amp;#039; the sigil into the &amp;#034;subconscious&amp;#034; (which I place in quotation marks because I&amp;#039;m not entirely certain that the chaos magick model has an accurate interpretation of the terms it uses sometimes).&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Edit: After thinking back on that &amp;#034;satori&amp;#034; comment, I&amp;#039;ve remember one specific instance of experiencing this same thing when I was about 8 or 9 years old; there was a playground (we call them &amp;#034;swingparks&amp;#034;) along the street from my parents house and in it there was this sort of monkey-bar/swinging thingy, wooden and vandalized heavily. Anyway. On the swinging thing, there were these thing that looked kinda like handcuffs to swing on, weird I know but this was a rough council scheme [1] and some things are better left unquestioned, and if you dangled upside down on the middle one you could see that someone had written this: If you notice this notice then you&amp;#039;ll notice that this notice is not worth noticing at all. Someone had also drawn a cock, but that&amp;#039;s just mentioned for further comedy value. I&amp;#039;m rambling...so, I became quite obsessed with this sentence and used to run it over and over in my mind until one day &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt; different happened, I&amp;#039;m fairly certain I had a PCE around this time too but I can&amp;#039;t be certain. It just seemed interesting to mention.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;[1] Found &lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;www&amp;#x2e;motherwelltimes&amp;#x2e;co&amp;#x2e;uk&amp;#x2f;webimage&amp;#x2f;1&amp;#x2e;2131937&amp;#x2e;1329924147&amp;#x21;image&amp;#x2f;1837538625&amp;#x2e;jpg_gen&amp;#x2f;derivatives&amp;#x2f;landscape_595&amp;#x2f;1837538625&amp;#x2e;jpg"&gt;this picture&lt;/a&gt; of the actual park as it looks now. It looked &lt;strong&gt;worse&lt;/strong&gt; back then!</description> <pubDate>Tue, 22 May 2012 22:18:49 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=3156575</guid> <dc:creator>Tommy M</dc:creator> <dc:date>2012-05-22T22:18:49Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Huatou: an overlooked practice?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=3156561</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;End in Sight:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Nikolai .:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;Does this questioning lead to what Jill referred to as &amp;#039;unknowing&amp;#039;? (...)&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Maybe.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The strongest effect of this practice for me, so far, was the temporarily loss of any clear context for experience (like waking up from sleep and not knowing where you are, minus the disorientation); sounds similar to what Jill says, except the ability to entertain the idea &amp;#034;I&amp;#039;m on a mission to observe things&amp;#034; (and any sort of active investigation based on that) is gone too.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;it should.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;the idea of a &amp;#034;mission&amp;#034; or &amp;#034;task&amp;#034; or &amp;#034;effort&amp;#034; or &amp;#034;exercising&amp;#034; or even &amp;#034;forcing&amp;#034; usually applies more when someone is relatively new to insight practice and has to fight a lot of tense habit patterns.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;the &amp;#034;unknowing&amp;#034; attention that i often describe is a that habit/perspective/mode of awareness that initially has to be adopted and exercised repeatedly until it becomes more possible, then more manageable, more frequent, more fun, more detailed, then more effortless, then more natural, more automatic, until it becomes the continuous default mode, until it becomes impossible to not pay bare attention. whether it&amp;#039;s totally forced or totally automatic or something in between, the same type of attention can be accessed, provided it has been seen to make sense. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;in actual practice, as in whenever i&amp;#039;ve actually &amp;#034;exercised&amp;#034; or &amp;#034;forced&amp;#034; or &amp;#034;inclined towards&amp;#034; or &amp;#034;allowed&amp;#034; or &amp;#034;accessed&amp;#034; or &amp;#034;maintained&amp;#034; this attentiveness, i could see no difference whatsoever in the following pointers for it:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;-sati&lt;br /&gt;-mindfulness&lt;br /&gt;-maintaining bare awareness&lt;br /&gt;-remembering (to stay aware)&lt;br /&gt;-HAIETMOBA&lt;br /&gt;-curiosity+naivete&lt;br /&gt;-as it actually is&lt;br /&gt;-noticing feelings and emotions as unlabeled qualities/phenomena, not as evaluations or judgements&lt;br /&gt;-paying attention&lt;br /&gt;-being attentive&lt;br /&gt;-resting alert&lt;br /&gt;-wondering, not assuming or concluding&lt;br /&gt;-mimicking the PCE&lt;br /&gt;-observing sensations&lt;br /&gt;-observing, not knowing&lt;br /&gt;-&amp;#034;unknowifying&amp;#034;&lt;br /&gt;-accessing and generating equanimity&lt;br /&gt;-noting without labels&lt;br /&gt;-sense sense sense&lt;br /&gt;-what is this&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;...none of which brings fruit without continuity, and the wide range of mental tools used to develop continuity are often seen as very different practice techniques. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;if there&amp;#039;s actually any difference in how the various &amp;#034;practices&amp;#034; above are supposed to get rolling for progress towards freedom from suffering then i must be missing something. for the most part i&amp;#039;ve found it impossible or absurd to separate them, but there have been periods when certain words resonated better than others as good practice reminders or explanations. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;one practice that does sound different to me is the &amp;#034;who am i&amp;#034; question, because it seems to assume that there is a certain &amp;#039;i&amp;#039; somewhere that needs to be figured out and matched with a yet to be found &amp;#039;who&amp;#039;. maybe &amp;#034;who am i&amp;#034; is also supposed to open up the same inquisitive investigation but the wording just happens to throw me off conceptually?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;jill</description> <pubDate>Tue, 22 May 2012 22:14:18 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=3156561</guid> <dc:creator>TJ Broccoli</dc:creator> <dc:date>2012-05-22T22:14:18Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Huatou: an overlooked practice?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=3155688</link> <description>No, you don&amp;#039;t hold an answer in attention, except in as much as the answer is the looking itself. That would undermine the intent of the practice by giving you something to cohere around.</description> <pubDate>Tue, 22 May 2012 14:43:28 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=3155688</guid> <dc:creator>fivebells .</dc:creator> <dc:date>2012-05-22T14:43:28Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Huatou: an overlooked practice?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=3155651</link> <description>Thanks for the pointer. That thread was extremely interesting. Ideally it does, but first it usually kicks a lot of reactivity into high gear.</description> <pubDate>Tue, 22 May 2012 14:32:45 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=3155651</guid> <dc:creator>fivebells .</dc:creator> <dc:date>2012-05-22T14:32:45Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Huatou: an overlooked practice?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=3155225</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Nikolai .:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;Does this questioning lead to what Jill referred to as &amp;#039;unknowing&amp;#039;? (...)&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Maybe.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The strongest effect of this practice for me, so far, was the temporarily loss of any clear context for experience (like waking up from sleep and not knowing where you are, minus the disorientation); sounds similar to what Jill says, except the ability to entertain the idea &amp;#034;I&amp;#039;m on a mission to observe things&amp;#034; (and any sort of active investigation based on that) is gone too.</description> <pubDate>Tue, 22 May 2012 13:06:22 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=3155225</guid> <dc:creator>End in Sight</dc:creator> <dc:date>2012-05-22T13:06:22Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Huatou: an overlooked practice?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=3155217</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;fivebells .:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;Hmm, I missed the &amp;#034;focusing on the questioning-ness of the question&amp;#034; parenthesis the first time through. You do hold the question in attention, though you don&amp;#039;t repeatedly internally re-verbalize it the way your OP seems to suggest. I haven&amp;#039;t tried repeated internal reverbalization, in fact I think there&amp;#039;s advice in &lt;em&gt;Wake Up to Your Life&lt;/em&gt; discouraging that.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;It sounds like what you were describing is asking the question &amp;#034;What is experiencing this?&amp;#034; as a pointer towards the answer to the question (&amp;#034;just the experiencing&amp;#034;), which you then stay with. I wanted to confirm that this is what you meant, because (to me, so far) it seems like a very different practice from asking the question and focusing on the questioning-ness without looking for an answer or interacting with the meaning of the question.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;It would be interesting to know if there were different results from each approach.</description> <pubDate>Tue, 22 May 2012 13:01:17 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=3155217</guid> <dc:creator>End in Sight</dc:creator> <dc:date>2012-05-22T13:01:17Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Huatou: an overlooked practice?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=3155135</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Steph S:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;Dude, this kind of sounds like HAIETMOBA. The initial phases of repeatedly asking HAIETMOBA got me to look at whether I was feeling good, neutral, or bad. That&amp;#039;s clearly different than the practice you describe here. The more I asked this question and the closer I got to a point when things were very good the vast majority of the time, HAIETMOBA changed course in a distinct way, though. Examining whether things were good became redundant. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So following the asking of it pointed directly to apperception. It&amp;#039;s not that the moment of apperception didn&amp;#039;t occur when I was moreso using HAIETMOBA to examine how I was feeling - it&amp;#039;s just the moment of apperception seemed more vague and I would skip over it too quickly to get to &amp;#034;feeling things out.&amp;#034; This tip you wrote seems to apply: &amp;#034;Don&amp;#039;t focus on any idea you have about the question or its parts; focus on the question mark.&amp;#034; What happens *at* the question mark is the question has passed and everything drops, except what&amp;#039;s happening right then. So it&amp;#039;s like, focus on words, a string of meaning, then the mind gets to the question mark point and can&amp;#039;t focus on anything conceptual because a question mark is basically a bare pause. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;And what&amp;#039;s bare pause? Apperception. Conceptual definitions automatically drop with apperception. There isn&amp;#039;t a looking for definitions or a trying to cognize. With practice, the moment of apperception becomes more clear, recognizable, and extended. At my smoothest and most diligent, I don&amp;#039;t even really need to ask HAIETMOBA because it&amp;#039;s obvious when apperception is or is not happening. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Steph&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;Yes, HAIETMOBA leads to direct experience of aliveness.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;If you ask, how am I experiencing this moment of hearing? It leads to the direct, non-dual, non-conceptual, immediate experience of hearing.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So on for seeing, smelling, thinking.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&amp;#034;Who am I?&amp;#034; has a similar function of leading to the &amp;#034;bare pause&amp;#034; and discovering what is present in the pause, i.e. without even a single thought what am &amp;#034;I&amp;#034;. What remains is a pure presence, pure existence, pure consciousness, which is no different from PCE, but now it is the PCE of mind itself, as a non-conceptual thought, as a thought. (but it is not the ordinary conceptual thoughts) Owing to the nature of this inquiry and framework of the person (when one inquires &amp;#034;Who am I?&amp;#034; - one tries to trace the thought of &amp;#034;I&amp;#034; to its pure source), one clings to the moment of beingness as one&amp;#039;s purest identity. Similarly HAIETMOBA is able to lead to a direct pure experience of PCE... but then apart from this it is also important to arise insight that deconstructs our view of an ultimate ground (whether it is a substantial mind, or an actual world here/now).</description> <pubDate>Tue, 22 May 2012 12:05:51 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=3155135</guid> <dc:creator>An Eternal Now</dc:creator> <dc:date>2012-05-22T12:05:51Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Huatou: an overlooked practice?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=3155038</link> <description>Does this questioning lead to what Jill referred to as &amp;#039;unknowing&amp;#039;?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;CAUSE: (a shadow side of insight mentioned above) being fixated on knowing that certain sensations are tensions, thus creating a mental processing of &amp;#034;i&amp;#039;m tense/i&amp;#039;m too tense/i&amp;#039;m still tense&amp;#034;, an unsatisfactory evaluation/negative judgement which can keep subtly feeding and compounding the tensions more.&lt;br /&gt;REMEDY: impose some more innocence, or what i like to call &amp;#034;unknowing&amp;#034; or &amp;#034;unknowifying&amp;#034; to every step of paying attention. also called &amp;#034;naivete&amp;#034;, &amp;#034;curiosity&amp;#034;, or &amp;#034;observing objectively&amp;#034; in my understanding. observe things as if you&amp;#039;re an alien consciousness visiting this earth realm to observe what it&amp;#039;s like to operate through the human body and its senses. the alien knows nothing about what anything is, but it has been sent to perceive everything possible in the most detail (otherwise it will get banished by the mothership). there is nothing wrong with knowing too little, but &amp;#034;knowing&amp;#034; too much can be a hindrance to effective investigation. &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;3007184"&gt;http://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/message_boards/message/3007184&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</description> <pubDate>Tue, 22 May 2012 09:56:51 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=3155038</guid> <dc:creator>Nikolai .</dc:creator> <dc:date>2012-05-22T09:56:51Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Huatou: an overlooked practice?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=3154607</link> <description>Hmm, I missed the &amp;#034;focusing on the questioning-ness of the question&amp;#034; parenthesis the first time through. You do hold the question in attention, though you don&amp;#039;t repeatedly internally re-verbalize it the way your OP seems to suggest. I haven&amp;#039;t tried repeated internal reverbalization, in fact I think there&amp;#039;s advice in &lt;em&gt;Wake Up to Your Life&lt;/em&gt; discouraging that.</description> <pubDate>Tue, 22 May 2012 02:29:46 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=3154607</guid> <dc:creator>fivebells .</dc:creator> <dc:date>2012-05-22T02:29:46Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Huatou: an overlooked practice?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=3154470</link> <description>So far I&amp;#039;ve found that asking &amp;#034;What is this?&amp;#034; is very different from any ways that I&amp;#039;ve used pointers or inclined my mind towards modes of functioning.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Have you ever tried focusing purely on a question, and if so, was the result the same or different?</description> <pubDate>Tue, 22 May 2012 01:08:02 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=3154470</guid> <dc:creator>End in Sight</dc:creator> <dc:date>2012-05-22T01:08:02Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Huatou: an overlooked practice?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=3154449</link> <description>Yes, that&amp;#039;s roughly how it works, though of course you don&amp;#039;t actually try to stabilize anything, you rest. When it decays into thoughts or emotional reactivity, you start over.</description> <pubDate>Tue, 22 May 2012 00:53:58 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=3154449</guid> <dc:creator>fivebells .</dc:creator> <dc:date>2012-05-22T00:53:58Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Huatou: an overlooked practice?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=3154403</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Tommy M:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Tommy:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;[1] I&amp;#039;m saying &amp;#034;mantra-like&amp;#034; &amp;#039;cause it&amp;#039;s not actually a mantra, it&amp;#039;s more about the repetition and observation of how mind moves than using it to fix concentration as you would with a mantra.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;End:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;Can you say more about this?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;That there are connections and similarities between this practice and magick, Kabbalah, etc. surprises me, but maybe it shouldn&amp;#039;t. There seem to be connections and similarities between so many different traditions...&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The particular technique I mentioned uses the Shem Ha-Mephorash, or &amp;#034;72-Fold Name of God&amp;#034;, as a sort of audible mantra but it&amp;#039;s divided over 18 breaths and involves a series of gestures to be made with the head until the &amp;#034;divine influx&amp;#034; causes you to stop. It&amp;#039;s not a technique I have a lot of experience with, but in the times I have used it I found it natural to observe the way the mind moved between the sound, the mental concept of &amp;#034;God&amp;#034; and the sensate experience.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Any technique I&amp;#039;ve ever worked with that involved any sort of repeated phrase or question has always led me to observe those mind movements, the concentration part always seemed like a side-effect to me, possibly because I was always &amp;#034;looking for&amp;#034; something (insight) instead of just &amp;#034;looking at&amp;#034; something (concentration).&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Was your experience of charging sigils different, and if so, why?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Does the lack of verbalization (in the case of charging sigils) have some kind of exoteric or esoteric significance, apart from a sign of having performed the task?</description> <pubDate>Tue, 22 May 2012 00:24:38 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=3154403</guid> <dc:creator>End in Sight</dc:creator> <dc:date>2012-05-22T00:24:38Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Huatou: an overlooked practice?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=3154204</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;fivebells .:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;As I understand them, this is basically the insight step in mahamudra/dzogchen practice. I&amp;#039;ve done a lot of this in the context of what Ken McLeod calls the &lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;www&amp;#x2e;unfetteredmind&amp;#x2e;org&amp;#x2f;deepening-practice-mahamudra-dzogchen-2"&gt;primary practice&lt;/a&gt;, but with the question &amp;#034;What is experiencing this?&amp;#034; The trick is to look and see nothing, and rest in the looking. This is essentially the same capability that the &amp;#034;What is the sound of one hand clapping?&amp;#034; koan develops, but with the &amp;#034;mind sense&amp;#034; rather than hearing. A good book on the topic is &lt;em&gt;Clarifying the Natural State&lt;/em&gt; or the second last chapter of &lt;em&gt;Wake Up to Your Life&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I&amp;#039;ve given it a rest for the last few months because that head tension would just get worse and worse as I did it, and insight was clearly no longer the way forward for the time being. But I did it for years prior to that.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Would you say it&amp;#039;s accurate to summarize what you did as using &amp;#034;What is experiencing this?&amp;#034; as a way of pointing the mind towards a mode of functioning that you then try to stabilize or keep stable (vs. focusing on the questioning-ness of the question)?</description> <pubDate>Tue, 22 May 2012 00:10:06 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=3154204</guid> <dc:creator>End in Sight</dc:creator> <dc:date>2012-05-22T00:10:06Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Huatou: an overlooked practice?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=3154104</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Tommy M:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The connections and similarities are, as I&amp;#039;ve come to realize lately, the very reason I became obsessed with all of this stuff and why it is that I&amp;#039;ve never been able to walk away from these investigations. I suspect that if we take away all the concepts, models, metaphors and language, strip things right back to the direct sensate experience of what each of these symbols actually represent, which is all words and language are: symbolic representations of pure sensate data, then there&amp;#039;s a good chance we&amp;#039;re talking about the same territory. This is one of the reasons why I continue to doubt Richard&amp;#039;s claims to the uniqueness of his &amp;#034;discovery&amp;#034;, not that it really matters anyway, but it seems highly improbable that an entirely new mode of consciousness could have gone undiscovered since mankind evolved the ability to record information.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Yea, the question of who did it first sounds like a bunch of nitpicky fanboy/fangirl talk to me. I think most of the difference is probably conceptual like you mention here. For example, the reason I think I started trying to stick with the Actualist stuff exclusively is because it was getting too confusing going back and forth between all the conceptual stuff of the various traditions &amp;amp; methods. I got to a point where I was like.... Who gives a shit? What&amp;#039;s the fastest way to simply be happy right now? Well, I put a ton of legwork into this one method so far, might as well keep using that. So then, a whole heap of conceptual stuff dropped away after making a firm decision to just go with that. Freed up mental space to pay attention to get to apperception because I didn&amp;#039;t have to rationalize how things might be causing mental movements of one kind or another. Said another way... I think a huge obstacle for me, then, was that I had started creating an extra system of thought so it was like a triple whammy of Buddhism, Actualism, and Reconciliation (of those two). It&amp;#039;s funny how that tendency still shows up sometimes... like me posting in this thread asking, hey isn&amp;#039;t this Buddhist question thing just like Actualism? LOL.</description> <pubDate>Mon, 21 May 2012 23:20:28 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=3154104</guid> <dc:creator>Steph S</dc:creator> <dc:date>2012-05-21T23:20:28Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Huatou: an overlooked practice?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=3153859</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Tommy:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;[1] I&amp;#039;m saying &amp;#034;mantra-like&amp;#034; &amp;#039;cause it&amp;#039;s not actually a mantra, it&amp;#039;s more about the repetition and observation of how mind moves than using it to fix concentration as you would with a mantra.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;End:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;Can you say more about this?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;That there are connections and similarities between this practice and magick, Kabbalah, etc. surprises me, but maybe it shouldn&amp;#039;t. There seem to be connections and similarities between so many different traditions...&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The particular technique I mentioned uses the Shem Ha-Mephorash, or &amp;#034;72-Fold Name of God&amp;#034;, as a sort of audible mantra but it&amp;#039;s divided over 18 breaths and involves a series of gestures to be made with the head until the &amp;#034;divine influx&amp;#034; causes you to stop. It&amp;#039;s not a technique I have a lot of experience with, but in the times I have used it I found it natural to observe the way the mind moved between the sound, the mental concept of &amp;#034;God&amp;#034; and the sensate experience.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Any technique I&amp;#039;ve ever worked with that involved any sort of repeated phrase or question has always led me to observe those mind movements, the concentration part always seemed like a side-effect to me, possibly because I was always &amp;#034;looking for&amp;#034; something (insight) instead of just &amp;#034;looking at&amp;#034; something (concentration).&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The connections and similarities are, as I&amp;#039;ve come to realize lately, the very reason I became obsessed with all of this stuff and why it is that I&amp;#039;ve never been able to walk away from these investigations. I suspect that if we take away all the concepts, models, metaphors and language, strip things right back to the direct sensate experience of what each of these symbols actually represent, which is all words and language are: symbolic representations of pure sensate data, then there&amp;#039;s a good chance we&amp;#039;re talking about the same territory. This is one of the reasons why I continue to doubt Richard&amp;#039;s claims to the uniqueness of his &amp;#034;discovery&amp;#034;, not that it really matters anyway, but it seems highly improbable that an entirely new mode of consciousness could have gone undiscovered since mankind evolved the ability to record information. Anyway, I&amp;#039;m rambling here... &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/laugh.gif" &gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Edit: By the way, you may be interested in having a look at &lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;hermetic&amp;#x2e;com&amp;#x2f;crowley&amp;#x2f;libers&amp;#x2f;liber148&amp;#x2e;pdf"&gt;The Soldier &amp;amp; The Hunchback&lt;/a&gt; by Crowley. It&amp;#039;s not entirely related to what we&amp;#039;re talking about here but I think it&amp;#039;s a good read regardless.</description> <pubDate>Mon, 21 May 2012 21:03:13 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=3153859</guid> <dc:creator>Tommy M</dc:creator> <dc:date>2012-05-21T21:03:13Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Huatou: an overlooked practice?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=3153694</link> <description>Dude, this kind of sounds like HAIETMOBA. The initial phases of repeatedly asking HAIETMOBA got me to look at whether I was feeling good, neutral, or bad. That&amp;#039;s clearly different than the practice you describe here. The more I asked this question and the closer I got to a point when things were very good the vast majority of the time, HAIETMOBA changed course in a distinct way, though. Examining whether things were good became redundant. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So following the asking of it pointed directly to apperception. It&amp;#039;s not that the moment of apperception didn&amp;#039;t occur when I was moreso using HAIETMOBA to examine how I was feeling - it&amp;#039;s just the moment of apperception seemed more vague and I would skip over it too quickly to get to &amp;#034;feeling things out.&amp;#034; This tip you wrote seems to apply: &amp;#034;Don&amp;#039;t focus on any idea you have about the question or its parts; focus on the question mark.&amp;#034; What happens *at* the question mark is the question has passed and everything drops, except what&amp;#039;s happening right then. So it&amp;#039;s like, focus on words, a string of meaning, then the mind gets to the question mark point and can&amp;#039;t focus on anything conceptual because a question mark is basically a bare pause. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;And what&amp;#039;s bare pause? Apperception. Conceptual definitions automatically drop with apperception. There isn&amp;#039;t a looking for definitions or a trying to cognize. With practice, the moment of apperception becomes more clear, recognizable, and extended. At my smoothest and most diligent, I don&amp;#039;t even really need to ask HAIETMOBA because it&amp;#039;s obvious when apperception is or is not happening. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Steph</description> <pubDate>Mon, 21 May 2012 19:39:07 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=3153694</guid> <dc:creator>Steph S</dc:creator> <dc:date>2012-05-21T19:39:07Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Huatou: an overlooked practice?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=3153691</link> <description>As I understand them, this is basically the insight step in mahamudra/dzogchen practice. I&amp;#039;ve done a lot of this in the context of what Ken McLeod calls the &lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;www&amp;#x2e;unfetteredmind&amp;#x2e;org&amp;#x2f;deepening-practice-mahamudra-dzogchen-2"&gt;primary practice&lt;/a&gt;, but with the question &amp;#034;What is experiencing this?&amp;#034; The trick is to look and see nothing, and rest in the looking. This is essentially the same capability that the &amp;#034;What is the sound of one hand clapping?&amp;#034; koan develops, but with the &amp;#034;mind sense&amp;#034; rather than hearing. A good book on the topic is &lt;em&gt;Clarifying the Natural State&lt;/em&gt; or the second last chapter of &lt;em&gt;Wake Up to Your Life&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I&amp;#039;ve given it a rest for the last few months because that head tension would just get worse and worse as I did it, and insight was clearly no longer the way forward for the time being. But I did it for years prior to that.</description> <pubDate>Mon, 21 May 2012 19:28:11 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=3153691</guid> <dc:creator>fivebells .</dc:creator> <dc:date>2012-05-21T19:28:11Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Huatou: an overlooked practice?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=3153634</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Tommy M:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;[1] I&amp;#039;m saying &amp;#034;mantra-like&amp;#034; &amp;#039;cause it&amp;#039;s not actually a mantra, it&amp;#039;s more about the repetition and observation of how mind moves than using it to fix concentration as you would with a mantra.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Can you say more about this?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;That there are connections and similarities between this practice and magick, Kabbalah, etc. surprises me, but maybe it shouldn&amp;#039;t. There seem to be connections and similarities between so many different traditions...here&amp;#039;s another possible one (in relation to the &amp;#034;attitude of questioning&amp;#034; being cultivated):&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;[quote=Trent, &lt;em&gt;Between Chaos and Order Lies Wonder&lt;/em&gt;]&lt;br /&gt;This wonder I speak of is not of the same meager intensity ‘I’ experienced while ‘normal,’ nor when ‘I’ was ‘enlightened’, but is of an entirely new level. It is as though one is perpetually questioning all things sensed and experienced and also answering all of those questions in some sort of elegant (and mostly subconscious) ‘dance duet’. It is as though one’s mind is always on the “edge of its seat.” And this scintillating, peerless, wonderful awareness is just part of what it means to be fully alive!&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;It is as a result of this wonder-full awareness that one may find one’s day to day dealings increasingly dominated by question, rather than by statement. (This seems to be a reflection of the intellect’s fundamental function, viewed at a macro level rather than a micro level). One’s interaction with other people shifts from judgment, accusation and wild-eyed guessing to one of sensitive acceptance and gentle (although often quite persistent) questioning. Further, I find that the majority of my conscious thought is phrased in the form of a question…</description> <pubDate>Mon, 21 May 2012 19:00:00 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=3153634</guid> <dc:creator>End in Sight</dc:creator> <dc:date>2012-05-21T19:00:00Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Huatou: an overlooked practice?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=3153453</link> <description>I&amp;#039;ve got more to add about this as it&amp;#039;s very similar to practices I&amp;#039;ve worked with, although didn&amp;#039;t know them by this name. One thing I wanted to say though was in relation to this:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;End:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;The basic idea seems to be to redirect all thinking, all mental inclinations, all proliferation of ideas, etc. back to one single thing, namely, the question. If done assiduously, it seems to undercut normal cognition quite profoudly; first, by removing wandering thoughts; then, by removing the mind&amp;#039;s overt reactions to the outside world; then, by removing a great deal of cognition (resulting in the loss of the ability to formulate the question as a sentence); then, by removing a great deal of the sense of where one is, what one is doing, etc. (Other things may happen with further practice that I don&amp;#039;t know of yet.) All of these things are replaced by the question.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;That part about losing the ability to formulate the question as a sentence is something I used to notice when working with mantra, it&amp;#039;s also part of a certain method of &amp;#039;charging&amp;#039; sigils wherein one repeats a phrase until the ability to consciously, inwardly or outwardly, verbalize switches off completely. Clearly there are various possible routes to take in terms of outcomes but it&amp;#039;s interesting that all of these things seem to be methods to bring the semantic mapping/conceptualizing mind to a halt and expose the clarity of what these words truly mean &lt;em&gt;experientially&lt;/em&gt;; even more interesting is the fact that similar, repetitive mantra-like [1] chains of sound such as the &amp;#034;Shem ha-Mephorash&amp;#034; are found in Western contemplative traditions like Kabbalah. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Interesting stuff, thanks for posting it! I&amp;#039;ll post something else later on when I get the chance to.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;[1] I&amp;#039;m saying &amp;#034;mantra-like&amp;#034; &amp;#039;cause it&amp;#039;s not actually a mantra, it&amp;#039;s more about the repetition and observation of how mind moves than using it to fix concentration as you would with a mantra.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Edited to correct: &amp;#034;72 Names of God&amp;#034; - It&amp;#039;s actually the 72-lettered name of God a.k.a. &amp;#034;Shem ha-Mephorash&amp;#034;.</description> <pubDate>Mon, 21 May 2012 16:02:35 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=3153453</guid> <dc:creator>Tommy M</dc:creator> <dc:date>2012-05-21T16:02:35Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Huatou: an overlooked practice?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=3153427</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Eran G:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;End in Sight:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;.&lt;br /&gt;* Traditional explanations of this practice say that one is cultivating a sense of doubt, but I suspect that this should be interpreted differently; not cultivating the hindrance of doubt, i.e. the experience of worrying or having second thoughts or reservations about something, but cultivating a sense of not knowing set in context of clarity. But, perhaps this depends on the stage of practice one is in, or something else.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I&amp;#039;ve heard this doubt described as an attitude of questioning. To me, this sounds a lot like the enlightenment factor of investigation.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&amp;#034;Attitude of questioning [that isn&amp;#039;t worrying or having second thoughts or reservations about something]&amp;#034; sounds pretty apt to me, a better phrasing than I could figure out at the time, thanks.</description> <pubDate>Mon, 21 May 2012 15:40:31 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=3153427</guid> <dc:creator>End in Sight</dc:creator> <dc:date>2012-05-21T15:40:31Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Huatou: an overlooked practice?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=3153423</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;End in Sight:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;.&lt;br /&gt;* Traditional explanations of this practice say that one is cultivating a sense of doubt, but I suspect that this should be interpreted differently; not cultivating the hindrance of doubt, i.e. the experience of worrying or having second thoughts or reservations about something, but cultivating a sense of not knowing set in context of clarity. But, perhaps this depends on the stage of practice one is in, or something else.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I&amp;#039;ve heard this doubt described as an attitude of questioning. To me, this sounds a lot like the enlightenment factor of investigation.</description> <pubDate>Mon, 21 May 2012 15:32:49 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=3153423</guid> <dc:creator>Eran G</dc:creator> <dc:date>2012-05-21T15:32:49Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>Huatou: an overlooked practice?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=3153333</link> <description>Very recently I&amp;#039;ve been experimenting with the practice of continually asking myself a simple question (&amp;#034;what is this?&amp;#034;) and allowing the mind to dwell on the sense of the questioning, rather than the conceptual meaning of the question. This has had some surprisingly powerful effects. I&amp;#039;ve heard of practices like these in the past, but (due to hearing a dharma talk a long time ago about it, and perhaps misinterpreting it) assumed that it was a fairly introductory sort of practice, not worth pursuing beyond a certain point; this may not be true after all. (I also had an ultrabrief exchange with AEN about the power of koans here on the DhO not long ago; my position there may have been founded on the same ignorance.)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The basic idea seems to be to redirect all thinking, all mental inclinations, all proliferation of ideas, etc. back to one single thing, namely, the question. If done assiduously, it seems to undercut normal cognition quite profoudly; first, by removing wandering thoughts; then, by removing the mind&amp;#039;s overt reactions to the outside world; then, by removing a great deal of cognition (resulting in the loss of the ability to formulate the question as a sentence); then, by removing a great deal of the sense of where one is, what one is doing, etc. (Other things may happen with further practice that I don&amp;#039;t know of yet.) All of these things are replaced by the question.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The effect is fairly profound, dragging my mind towards the senses in a very non-conceptual way (though it&amp;#039;s not conceived of as doing that during the practice). It seems similar in a way to fast, MCTB-style noting, except that it doesn&amp;#039;t exaggerate the attention wave by directing the mind to grasp at the objects being noted; but it still builds a stream of concentrated moments (khanika samadhi) through the mind&amp;#039;s insistence on continually re-generating the question.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;As the mind becomes more concentrated, the question seems to refine itself progressively, i.e.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;* What is this? [+ mental motion of finding a &amp;#039;this&amp;#039;, as the field of experience, for the question to be about]&lt;br /&gt;* What is this?&lt;br /&gt;* What?&lt;br /&gt;* ?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This seems to be because, as concentration grows, the ability to fabricate more complex thoughts becomes impossible.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I suspect that this practice may be especially suited to people who are very poor at concentrating in the traditional, eyes-closed sitting meditation sort of way. This is often true of beginners and would probably be effective for them in the same way that Mahasi-style noting is (by providing a roundabout way to obtain concentration), but in principle applies to anyone.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;(EDIT: Similarly, it may be especially suited to people who have a high degree of restlessness or wandering mind, as it appears to offer a way to re-direct that useless mental activity towards something useful. cf. my post on &amp;#034;Drunken Vipassana Fist&amp;#034; on KFD.)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The basic tips that I have found effective so far are:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;* Pick one question and stick with it. (Find a list online, or just use &amp;#034;what is this?&amp;#034;)&lt;br /&gt;* Use unwavering intensity; 100% commitment to the practice. (Think deeply on what &amp;#034;100%&amp;#034; means.)&lt;br /&gt;* Anytime you think a stray thought or experience a mental reaction, you&amp;#039;re using mental energy on something that could be re-directed into asking the question; try harder. (Refine your discernment of these things to ever-subtler levels.)&lt;br /&gt;* Approach the practice without a sense of effort; the sense of effort is only a distraction from the question (see point above). (Intensity without effort, as much as possible.)&lt;br /&gt;* Don&amp;#039;t focus on any idea you have about the question or its parts; focus on the question mark.&lt;br /&gt;* Traditional explanations of this practice say that one is cultivating a sense of doubt, but I suspect that this should be interpreted differently; not cultivating the hindrance of doubt, i.e. the experience of worrying or having second thoughts or reservations about something, but cultivating a sense of not knowing set in context of clarity. But, perhaps this depends on the stage of practice one is in, or something else.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Presumably someone who has experience with this practice would be better qualified to give advice. (Anyone here, with advice or experiences of their own to share?)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;If anything interesting develops from this I&amp;#039;ll post further comments then.</description> <pubDate>Mon, 21 May 2012 15:07:55 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=3153333</guid> <dc:creator>End in Sight</dc:creator> <dc:date>2012-05-21T15:07:55Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Life is a poem</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=2725616</link> <description>J I M I you made poets&lt;br /&gt;M M A&lt;br /&gt;D Z&lt;br /&gt;N A&lt;br /&gt;The Meditator</description> <pubDate>Tue, 17 Jan 2012 21:53:45 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=2725616</guid> <dc:creator>The Meditator</dc:creator> <dc:date>2012-01-17T21:53:45Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Life is a poem</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=2725601</link> <description>Could I again about life?&lt;br /&gt;I try very, really very hard&lt;br /&gt;I think our poem is rife&lt;br /&gt;There&amp;#039;s death, its part.</description> <pubDate>Tue, 17 Jan 2012 21:46:30 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=2725601</guid> <dc:creator>The Meditator</dc:creator> <dc:date>2012-01-17T21:46:30Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Life is a poem</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=2723614</link> <description>life&amp;#039;s a poem and then you die&lt;br /&gt;that&amp;#039;s why we get high&lt;br /&gt;cause you never know, when you&amp;#039;re gonna go&lt;br /&gt;&lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/cool.gif" &gt;</description> <pubDate>Tue, 17 Jan 2012 06:05:32 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=2723614</guid> <dc:creator>N A</dc:creator> <dc:date>2012-01-17T06:05:32Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Life is a poem</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=2723436</link> <description>&lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/smile.gif" &gt;...&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Life is such that,&lt;br /&gt;the poet is the poem.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;But there is no poet,&lt;br /&gt;so there is no poem.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The eyes tell such,&lt;br /&gt;pretty little lies.</description> <pubDate>Tue, 17 Jan 2012 03:43:40 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=2723436</guid> <dc:creator>(D Z) Dhru Val</dc:creator> <dc:date>2012-01-17T03:43:40Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Life is a poem</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=2721496</link> <description>poem of life&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;it is a mess&lt;br /&gt;but no more less&lt;br /&gt;I want to live&lt;br /&gt;I want to breath&lt;br /&gt;I want, I want, I want.</description> <pubDate>Mon, 16 Jan 2012 19:59:56 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=2721496</guid> <dc:creator>The Meditator</dc:creator> <dc:date>2012-01-16T19:59:56Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Life is a poem</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=2716712</link> <description>but what is a poem&lt;br /&gt;if not a concept&lt;br /&gt;how could life be anything?&lt;br /&gt;when there is no-one to live it</description> <pubDate>Sun, 15 Jan 2012 16:55:43 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=2716712</guid> <dc:creator>m m a</dc:creator> <dc:date>2012-01-15T16:55:43Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Life is a poem</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=2716675</link> <description>Nice</description> <pubDate>Sun, 15 Jan 2012 16:27:36 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=2716675</guid> <dc:creator>Adam Bieber</dc:creator> <dc:date>2012-01-15T16:27:36Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: 46 years Soto Zen.40 years of psychiatry. Breaking Free.</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=2178591</link> <description>&lt;span style="font-size: 24px"&gt;Fictional characters? Which one - this or all that I posted? Look up - 5 or 6 of them were from this forum. One very easy to locate - look up Direct Pointing section - Paul:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;dharmaoverground&amp;#x2e;org&amp;#x2f;web&amp;#x2f;guest&amp;#x2f;discussion&amp;#x2f;-&amp;#x2f;message_boards&amp;#x2f;message&amp;#x2f;2063058"&gt;Paul from this Forum&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Other 5 was with me on email and asked me to use only 1 letter of their name, all can be located here:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;dharmaoverground&amp;#x2e;org&amp;#x2f;web&amp;#x2f;guest&amp;#x2f;discussion&amp;#x2f;-&amp;#x2f;message_boards&amp;#x2f;message&amp;#x2f;2042440"&gt;5 people from this forum &lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I did located professor on the Internet by his real name, and checked his credentials - all clean. But I will not disclose, sorry. So you just need to work on your doubt. Just doubt arisen, no big deal. With this guy was about 67 emails back and forth, and was really difficult to compile something readable. Why would I do that if I make it up? I would just write nice story that everybody like&lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/happy.gif" &gt; As I already was suggested by one man on facebook why dont I make a nice strory instead of posting boring threads.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Oh, yes, and many people in the blog posts I have from facebook, they are live people, real, if we can say like that, and can be interacted with.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;On my blog I have about 20 real working threads. Have another 2 to put up. So if you want, you can check with some people. But the best is to check with your own arisen doubt. I would say, just to notice it already will be enough.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I appreciate you like my vibe!&lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/happy.gif" &gt; Yey! So come on Facebook to chat!&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Much Love! &lt;br /&gt;Elena&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 24px"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Oh, and why don&amp;#039;t you put your real picture and name on this forum? So we can talk like 2 real people? I am very curious how you look ccc! &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;</description> <pubDate>Tue, 23 Aug 2011 03:11:02 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=2178591</guid> <dc:creator>Elena Joy</dc:creator> <dc:date>2011-08-23T03:11:02Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: 46 years Soto Zen.40 years of psychiatry. Breaking Free.</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=2178282</link> <description>elena, you&amp;#039;re a pleasant person, that&amp;#039;s easy to see. I like your vibe. But if you&amp;#039;re going to use fictional characters as part of your teaching method, it&amp;#039;s better to be upfront about it. Personally I like spiritual fiction as a genre (McKenna, Chopra, Rowling, etc.) but it should be stated as such.</description> <pubDate>Tue, 23 Aug 2011 01:12:11 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=2178282</guid> <dc:creator>C C C</dc:creator> <dc:date>2011-08-23T01:12:11Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: 46 years Soto Zen.40 years of psychiatry and psychoanalysis.Breaking Fr</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=2176509</link> <description>&lt;span style="font-size: 24px"&gt;And Daniel Ingram already answered to you on another thread, if you didn&amp;#039;t read, here it is:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&amp;#034;In response to the notion that this is anti-traditional or that this is not fundamentalist Theravadan stuff in some way: if you look at the old texts, the practice instructions for insight again and again are: &amp;#034;That is not self, that is not me, that is not mine, that is impermanent, that is causal, that is empty. This is not self, this is not me, this is not mine, this is impermanent, this is causal, this is empty.&amp;#034; Again and again, they were asked to observe this, contemplate this, experience this, know this directly for everything, exactly as these Direct Pointers are onto, and more power to them.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I don&amp;#039;t know what people are doing in vipassana, but if it is something other than seeing the Three Characteristics, of which two are strongly emphasized by the Direct Pointers, then I would say that isn&amp;#039;t vipassana, and is something else being sold as vipassana but isn&amp;#039;t.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I like this very immediate, very hardcore, very straightforward approach. I have this feeling that there are levels to it beyond the obvious, but this is a discussion for another time. Regardless, good stuff.&amp;#034;&lt;/span&gt;</description> <pubDate>Mon, 22 Aug 2011 07:04:59 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=2176509</guid> <dc:creator>Elena Joy</dc:creator> <dc:date>2011-08-22T07:04:59Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: 46 years Soto Zen.40 years of psychiatry. Breaking Free.</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=2176494</link> <description>&lt;span style="font-size: 24px"&gt;Dear ccc, look up with more concentration - he did not write that he corresponded with Jed. And it was his first post that you couldn&amp;#039;t read clearly, so what can you tell about further correspondence? He said he can&amp;#039;t type, he was dictating, but I made him type to break the associations in the mind, so he said in the thread that he is looking for the letters and pecking. What you expect his style be? His style was just enough for him to break free. Before you write any review, you just read, I would say.&lt;br /&gt;His name changed. And no personal info will be disclosed. Ask yourself why you need it. And what was the intention under writing this.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;</description> <pubDate>Mon, 22 Aug 2011 06:58:25 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=2176494</guid> <dc:creator>Elena Joy</dc:creator> <dc:date>2011-08-22T06:58:25Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: 46 years Soto Zen.40 years of psychiatry and psychoanalysis.Breaking Fr</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=2176287</link> <description>He doesn&amp;#039;t write &lt;em&gt;anything like&lt;/em&gt; a 72 yo. professor of psychiatry. The style and tone are all wrong. &lt;img alt="emoticon" src="http://www.dharmaoverground.org/dho-theme/images/emoticons/laugh.gif" &gt; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;At which university does/did he work? What is his name? [don&amp;#039;t expect and answer here, dear readers].&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Corresponding with Jed McKenna, that would be a world first! &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Shit, this stuff is amazing. I know there&amp;#039;s a high gullibility factor amongst members of dho, but do you really think this will fly?</description> <pubDate>Mon, 22 Aug 2011 02:34:22 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=2176287</guid> <dc:creator>C C C</dc:creator> <dc:date>2011-08-22T02:34:22Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>46 years Soto Zen. 40 years of psychiatry. Breaking Free!</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=2174279</link> <description>&lt;span style="font-size: 32px"&gt;This is really worth to read, my friends. 72 years old academic professor of psychiatry with 46 years of Soto Zen practice breaking free. Chills, guys.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;completehumanity&amp;#x2e;blogspot&amp;#x2e;com&amp;#x2f;2011&amp;#x2f;08&amp;#x2f;professor-i-am-ready-please-take-my&amp;#x2e;html"&gt;Professor Breaking Free&lt;/a&gt;</description> <pubDate>Sun, 21 Aug 2011 08:27:56 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=2174279</guid> <dc:creator>Elena Joy</dc:creator> <dc:date>2011-08-21T08:27:56Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>Life is a poem</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=1656750</link> <description>Here is a poem I wrote:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&amp;#034;Life is a poem&amp;#034;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Of course life is a poem&lt;br /&gt;Writing the poem is life&lt;br /&gt;Reading the poem is life&lt;br /&gt;So how could life not be a poem&lt;br /&gt;From beginning to end?&lt;br /&gt;Concepts are tricksters.&lt;br /&gt;Don&amp;#039;t be taken in!</description> <pubDate>Mon, 21 Mar 2011 02:56:12 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=1656750</guid> <dc:creator>Jimi Patalano</dc:creator> <dc:date>2011-03-21T02:56:12Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: More Zen Sayings</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=1635261</link> <description>This is a poem my Zen teacher recited for us during a Dharma talk on the subject of Impermanence, one day after Zazen:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;...&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&amp;#034;A flower does not talk&amp;#034; by Shibayama Zenkei (柴山 全慶, 1894 - 1974):&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Silently a flower blooms,&lt;br /&gt;In silence it falls away.&lt;br /&gt;Yet here now, at this moment, at this place, the whole of the flower, the&lt;br /&gt;whole of the world is blooming.&lt;br /&gt;This is the talk of the flower, the truth of the blossom.&lt;br /&gt;The glory of eternal life is fully shining here.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;...&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Zenkei was a Japanese Rinzai master.</description> <pubDate>Mon, 14 Mar 2011 10:22:44 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=1635261</guid> <dc:creator>Jimi Patalano</dc:creator> <dc:date>2011-03-14T10:22:44Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Is zazen meditation?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=1534258</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt; &amp;#034;We don&amp;#039;t meditate we just sit. We don&amp;#039;t use a method because we don&amp;#039;t wish to achieve anything. Methods are designed for attainments. We don&amp;#039;t have any goal orientation. Zazen doesn&amp;#039;t lead to enlightenment - Zazen ist enlightenment.&amp;#034;&lt;br /&gt;How can you speak with such people?&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Speak to these people by being honest, and speaking of what your actual experience of practice is; not some idealistic pretty sounding philosophical crap. I would ask your friends, Oh really, you don&amp;#039;t meditate, you just sit, why do you sit? Why do you really sit? Why do you practice? Keep asking till you get an answer that a Five-year-old would understand. Anything less doesn&amp;#039;t yet get to the heart.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;They speak of not wishing to attain something, not having any goal orientation. That&amp;#039;s great, but is it true? Is it what they really experience? The fact that they want to &amp;#034;not wish to attain something&amp;#034; is itself an attainment. &amp;#034;Having no goal&amp;#034; is a goal. It they think they&amp;#039;re really there, they&amp;#039;re probably full of crap. If they truly realized no goal/no attainments, that they would right now drop off body and mind of self and other and see into their true nature. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The non-attainment, non-goal orientation of Soto Zen is a teaching style or upaya, the Sanskrit term meaning &amp;#034;skillfull means.&amp;#034; These are the different ways of teaching different people. Soto is a school of Buddhism, of the Buddha dharma; the Buddha dharma is the way, the path to enlightenment. Even in Soto, the goal, the attainment is Enlightenment. Their means of teaching this, of realizing this is through letting go of the goal oriented, attainment oriented mind, this mind which seeks something outside of themselves. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Non-enlightenment talk comes from the Zen and the Mahayana tradition at large. In some schools of Buddhism only the realization of the Absolute is seen as what matters. This is seen from the Zen perspective as the &amp;#034;stink&amp;#034; of enlightenment, the &amp;#034;stink&amp;#034; of Zen. When this realization is embodied in everything one does, when the Absolute and the Relative are in perfect accord, then, no trace of enlightenment remains, and this traceless enlightenment which continues endlessly is what is spoken about in Zen, and the Soto school. Your friends seem to be using the words of the dharma to justify their own views and practices. This is why the eightfold path begins with Right View. To steer clear of this kind of confusion. The dharma can easily be used as a means of defending our prejudices and our attachments. This is among the reasons that working with a teacher is so important. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Back to the question of &amp;#034;Is Zazen Meditation?&amp;#034; The real question is, is that question important? If so, why is it important? If Zazen is meditation, what does that mean? Many masters have given Zazen, or Zen Meditation instructions. The word literally means &amp;#034;seated meditation.&amp;#034; Does that make is meditation? If Zazen is not meditation, what does that mean? What are the implications of that view? My teacher Shugen once told me, &amp;#034;Whatever you do, don&amp;#039;t think you know Zazen.&amp;#034; His teacher Daido Roshi once taught &amp;#034;Whatever we are running away from, whatever we desire, whatever side we&amp;#039;re falling into, we&amp;#039;ve got to see the other side as part of the process. When finally neither side gets in the way, that&amp;#039;s when the golden body of the Buddha manifests of itself.&amp;#034; How do we not get caught in Zazen is meditation, or is not meditation? The truth doesn&amp;#039;t lie in either side. It doesn&amp;#039;t lie in both sides. Where do you find yourself?</description> <pubDate>Wed, 26 Jan 2011 20:45:10 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=1534258</guid> <dc:creator>Michael D. Kaup</dc:creator> <dc:date>2011-01-26T20:45:10Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Is zazen meditation?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=1329787</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Fabian P.:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;J Groove:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;Also, Adyashanti talks very amusingly about how hard it is to deal with &amp;#034;non-dual fundamentalists.&amp;#034; Good stuff if you haven&amp;#039;t read it. It seems like the Zen friends of yours in question might fall into this category!&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Hello,&lt;br /&gt;might be... They say: &amp;#034;We don&amp;#039;t meditate we just sit. We don&amp;#039;t use a method because we don&amp;#039;t wish to achieve anything. Methods are designed for attainments. We don&amp;#039;t have any goal orientation. Zazen doesn&amp;#039;t lead to enlightenment - Zazen ist enlightenment.&amp;#034;&lt;br /&gt;How can you speak with such people?&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;As Kenneth Folk would point out, these guys are absolutely correct, on one level.&lt;br /&gt;However, if they haven&amp;#039;t ever done any vipassana and really investigated gross-level objects of awareness, including all of the mind states that arise as objects when one is doing close investigation, they are very likely embedded in or identified with those phenomena. Adyashanti did all kinds of journaling, self-inquiry and other work that would very definitely NOT fall into the category of just resting the mind in suchness. It was active investigation, along the lines of vipassana. It could be that your friends are doing this kind of stuff, but it sounds like they fall into the non-dual fundamentalist camp to me. Zen has some really cool forms of investigation--koan practice and stuff, so who knows? I think the Three Trainings as taught in MCTB is really helpful. You&amp;#039;ve got to have sila, samatha--and vipassana.</description> <pubDate>Tue, 07 Dec 2010 12:39:33 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=1329787</guid> <dc:creator>J Groove</dc:creator> <dc:date>2010-12-07T12:39:33Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Is zazen meditation?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=1329342</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;J Groove:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;Also, Adyashanti talks very amusingly about how hard it is to deal with &amp;#034;non-dual fundamentalists.&amp;#034; Good stuff if you haven&amp;#039;t read it. It seems like the Zen friends of yours in question might fall into this category!&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Hello,&lt;br /&gt;might be... They say: &amp;#034;We don&amp;#039;t meditate we just sit. We don&amp;#039;t use a method because we don&amp;#039;t wish to achieve anything. Methods are designed for attainments. We don&amp;#039;t have any goal orientation. Zazen doesn&amp;#039;t lead to enlightenment - Zazen ist enlightenment.&amp;#034;&lt;br /&gt;How can you speak with such people?</description> <pubDate>Tue, 07 Dec 2010 06:38:14 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=1329342</guid> <dc:creator>Fabian P.</dc:creator> <dc:date>2010-12-07T06:38:14Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Is zazen meditation?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=1327691</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Beoman Beo Beoman:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;I don&amp;#039;t know what else you&amp;#039;d call it... maybe they are doing it wrong? The instructions are to &amp;#034;sit and do nothing,&amp;#034; but how do you do nothing? You might start thinking about something.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href="http&amp;#x3a;&amp;#x2f;&amp;#x2f;dharmaoverground&amp;#x2e;org&amp;#x2f;web&amp;#x2f;guest&amp;#x2f;discussion&amp;#x2f;-&amp;#x2f;message_boards&amp;#x2f;message&amp;#x2f;88985&amp;#x3b;jsessionid&amp;#x3d;D39B3D7B094B386FBCA24CED66AC1F8E"&gt;This discussion &lt;/a&gt; has a link to a Shinzen Young article on doing nothing and the ensuing discussion.</description> <pubDate>Mon, 06 Dec 2010 19:23:52 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=1327691</guid> <dc:creator>Andy R</dc:creator> <dc:date>2010-12-06T19:23:52Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Is zazen meditation?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=1327579</link> <description>Also, Adyashanti talks very amusingly about how hard it is to deal with &amp;#034;non-dual fundamentalists.&amp;#034; Good stuff if you haven&amp;#039;t read it. It seems like the Zen friends of yours in question might fall into this category!</description> <pubDate>Mon, 06 Dec 2010 17:53:58 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=1327579</guid> <dc:creator>J Groove</dc:creator> <dc:date>2010-12-06T17:53:58Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Is zazen meditation?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=1327572</link> <description>I like Wilber&amp;#039;s idea of the objects of awareness as existing along a spectrum. So, for example, a kasina might be an example of one end of the spectrum--the focus of attention is one-pointed and involves a literal, physical object. As you move up this spectrum in both subtlety and broadness of focus, you start to get to objects like those listed in the later Pali commentaries (&amp;#034;boundless space,&amp;#034; &amp;#034;neither perception nor non-perception,&amp;#034; etc.). Someone sitting with no technique at all, other than to pay attention to this moment, is still focused on an object, in a certain sense--the object just happens to be suchness or &amp;#034;this, this&amp;#034; or whatever words you want to use. Seems to me that whatever part of the spectrum you choose to explore should be determined by your needs at whatever stage of the path you are on. You wouldn&amp;#039;t want to spend your entire life doing nothing but candle-flame meditation, for example, and never wavering from that out of a sense that you&amp;#039;d discovered the &amp;#034;one true path&amp;#034; to meditation. The problem with some Zen students is that it never occurs to them to do anything other than &amp;#034;just sitting.&amp;#034; It&amp;#039;s an oversimplification. By no means do I think all Zen students or teachers are stuck in this place, but I&amp;#039;ve heard enough Zen folks complaining about this, having discovered MCTB and noting practice, to feel that it is a common-enough phenomenon. Likewise, some vipassana students never get to a place where there is &amp;#034;nothing to do, nowhere to go&amp;#034; as would be the instruction in Zen.</description> <pubDate>Mon, 06 Dec 2010 17:51:00 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=1327572</guid> <dc:creator>J Groove</dc:creator> <dc:date>2010-12-06T17:51:00Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Is zazen meditation?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=1327537</link> <description>I&amp;#039;ve allways considered zazen a form of meditation too... Some kind of technique must be there... The objects will arise, whether you like it or not. Now the point is: how to deal with them. Ignoring, surpressing, noting, smiling at them...&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&amp;#034;Zazen is not meditation&amp;#034; - maybe this is &amp;#034;Zen-Speech&amp;#034;... A language, which I don&amp;#039;t master yet.</description> <pubDate>Mon, 06 Dec 2010 16:59:40 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=1327537</guid> <dc:creator>Fabian P.</dc:creator> <dc:date>2010-12-06T16:59:40Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Is zazen meditation?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=1327270</link> <description>I don&amp;#039;t know what else you&amp;#039;d call it... maybe they are doing it wrong? The instructions are to &amp;#034;sit and do nothing,&amp;#034; but how do you do nothing? You might start thinking about something. Don&amp;#039;t do that! You&amp;#039;ll notice painful sensations and want to move. Don&amp;#039;t do that! You&amp;#039;ll notice something going on visually and start to take interest. Don&amp;#039;t do that! I think the goal is to &amp;#034;do&amp;#034; nothing while observing everything, which sounds like a vipassana technique, but I don&amp;#039;t know much about it so someone correct me if I&amp;#039;m wrong.</description> <pubDate>Mon, 06 Dec 2010 13:51:32 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=1327270</guid> <dc:creator>Beoman Claudiu Dragon Emu Fire Golem</dc:creator> <dc:date>2010-12-06T13:51:32Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>Is zazen meditation?</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=1323503</link> <description>Some Zen-buddhists recently surprised me by maintaining that they don&amp;#039;t consider zazen to be a meditation practice. How do you see that? If zazen is not meditation what is it? Why isn&amp;#039;t it meditation? &lt;br /&gt;Fabian</description> <pubDate>Sun, 05 Dec 2010 17:37:19 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=1323503</guid> <dc:creator>Fabian P.</dc:creator> <dc:date>2010-12-05T17:37:19Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: More Zen Sayings</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=184683</link> <description>Q: How does zazen benefit creativity?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;A: Roshi: Zazen is very good for creativity!&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Fukushima Keido Roshi, Head Abbott, Tofukuji Sect, Kyoto; in Lawrence, Kansas, at Spencer Art Gallery, University of Kansas 2002(?)</description> <pubDate>Thu, 15 Oct 2009 06:42:17 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=184683</guid> <dc:creator>Eric Alan Hansen</dc:creator> <dc:date>2009-10-15T06:42:17Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: More Zen Sayings</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=172262</link> <description>&amp;#034;There are two kinds of students of Zen, those that seeks solitude and meditation, and those who, without shaking the dust from their feet, enter the marketplace and help others. The latter is much appreciated in Zen circles.&amp;#034;</description> <pubDate>Wed, 30 Sep 2009 23:46:49 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=172262</guid> <dc:creator>Eric Alan Hansen</dc:creator> <dc:date>2009-09-30T23:46:49Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: More Zen Sayings</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=166918</link> <description>The history of Japanese Zen makes an interesting study. While in China, Ch&amp;#039;an is very syncretic, absorbing Taoist, Tibetan, Shamanistic and Hua Yen, other Chinese philosophical schools, and Pure Land, once exported to Japan it tends to solidify and is less prone to mutation over the centuries. However, that does not mean that it does not act in a relationship with Shinto, Pure Land, and Vajrayana influences particular to Japan.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The way in which meditation practices is incorporated into the sect is also highly idiosyncratic. One may or may not be taught anything about meditation beyond sitting times, schedules, and correct, unmoving postures.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The general belief in Zen is that individuals have to work their own Zen out for themselves, including how to meditate. In Soto Zen, the branch initiated by Dogen after his journey to China, one sits just to sit. This is based on a polemic that everyone already possesses the essential interdependent ultimate of life but just doesn&amp;#039;t know it. It is kind of like allowing the mind to be still and then the mud settles out kind of theory. Meditation retreats are usually for novices; intensive meditation practice is reserved mostly novices. Zen normally is not a path of life-long practice. But then there are always those who know better, and act accordingly. The history of Zen is a bit like the old testament prophets in that there is this herd mind-set moving in the wrong direction and periodically there is a great leader to emerge from the pack and get them moving again. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Zen in Japan has no hermit tradition, but in Korea and China it does.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;In the west, Zen and Insight are often erroneously linked. Zen is Pure Land Mahayana with a strong emphasis on Prajnaparamita sutras, is opposed to gradualism, and accepts some kind of notion that Nirvana is already de facto attained. One takes Bodhisattva vows to promise to keep returning to incarnations until all sentient beings are saved.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;p e a c e&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;h a n s e n</description> <pubDate>Fri, 25 Sep 2009 22:00:53 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=166918</guid> <dc:creator>Eric Alan Hansen</dc:creator> <dc:date>2009-09-25T22:00:53Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: More Zen Sayings</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=162523</link> <description>Roshi was visiting from Japan to the location in China where his sect originated. He is an abbot with hundreds of temples in his jurisdiction. He is also a Zen calligrapher. When the locals in China discovered his gift for calligraphy they proclaimed &amp;#034;we have a calligrapher in our village too!&amp;#034; and brought him out. Here the burden is set down, here the burden is again picked up. This reminded Roshi of the famous Zen story &amp;#034;Old Calligrapher&amp;#034; It picks up where the other story, above, leaves off. They bring out Old Calligapher who proceeds to demonstrate his skill. He draws forth from his robe an old bamboo brush with only a few remaining hairs, all glued together with dried ink. He opens his mouth - just one tooth! - and proceeds to chew on the brush to soften it. Roshi, amazed, asks, &amp;#034;But how can you write with a brush like that?&amp;#034; Old calligrapher replies &amp;#034;one tooth full at a time!!&amp;#034;</description> <pubDate>Wed, 23 Sep 2009 09:36:15 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=162523</guid> <dc:creator>Eric Alan Hansen</dc:creator> <dc:date>2009-09-23T09:36:15Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>More Zen Sayings</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=138681</link> <description>&amp;#034; Today&amp;#039;s enlightenment is tomorrow&amp;#039;s mistake &amp;#034;</description> <pubDate>Fri, 18 Sep 2009 10:17:34 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=138681</guid> <dc:creator>Eric Alan Hansen</dc:creator> <dc:date>2009-09-18T10:17:34Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>"Every Day is a Fine Day"</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=134547</link> <description>&amp;#034;Every place is a dojo, a place of enlightenment&amp;#034;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;h&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;a&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;n&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;s&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;e&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;n</description> <pubDate>Wed, 16 Sep 2009 09:36:01 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=134547</guid> <dc:creator>Eric Alan Hansen</dc:creator> <dc:date>2009-09-16T09:36:01Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>How to Wash Rice</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=126509</link> <description>Normally I place the quantity of rice (brown rice, organically grown) in a colander and rise it with cold water before boiling it. The correct method at this point os to carefully sift through the rice, removing all the stray husks and pebbles that may have eluded the packaging process. This ensures that you don&amp;#039;t accidentally bite into a rock while eating, which helps to keep your teeth from breaking. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Tenzo cooking practices link you to active samadhi in all your daily activities. It could be doing the dishes, changing a tire, or mowing the lawn, it doesn&amp;#039;t matter.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I&amp;#039;m off to read the MCTB and might not post too much in the interim -&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;h a n s e n</description> <pubDate>Sun, 13 Sep 2009 12:43:17 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=126509</guid> <dc:creator>Eric Alan Hansen</dc:creator> <dc:date>2009-09-13T12:43:17Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: The Cool Side of the Egg</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=114467</link> <description>Mike L: Oh are you thinking ida nadi? Well, yeah - the typical yogi charges right into where angels fear to tread - all that macho energy, get overloaded into the pingala right away. Then they write their story and leave that part out - haha&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Cool Side of the Egg: It came from a book from Shambhala called &amp;#034;How to Cook Your Life&amp;#034; by Dogen &amp;amp; Uchiyama Roshi, one of the few Soto texts (besides Tassajara Bread Book) that I have taken to heart.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I think I read here at DhO that two of the most widely used koans are &amp;#034;Who Am I&amp;#034; and &amp;#034;What Is MInd&amp;#034; - now that is damn interesting&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;p e a c e&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;h a n s e n</description> <pubDate>Thu, 10 Sep 2009 10:06:25 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=114467</guid> <dc:creator>Eric Alan Hansen</dc:creator> <dc:date>2009-09-10T10:06:25Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: The Cool Side of the Egg</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=113674</link> <description>&lt;div class="quote-title"&gt;Eric Alan Hansen:&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;&lt;div class="quote-content"&gt;A certain species of warm climate birds tends to its eggs by rolling them in the nest, which allows uniform warming of the egg to happen. The reason given for why the bird does this is because the bird is cooling itself, sitting on the cool side of the egg.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;what a coincidence ... thats exactly what i do with my zafu.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;-emory</description> <pubDate>Thu, 10 Sep 2009 06:12:53 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=113674</guid> <dc:creator>Emory Smith</dc:creator> <dc:date>2009-09-10T06:12:53Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: The Cool Side of the Egg</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=113398</link> <description>I&amp;#039;m thinking: &amp;#034;... and ... ?&amp;#034; Then I see &amp;#034;... &amp;#187; *Zen*&amp;#034; at the top of the page. Bless DhO 2.0.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;(balanced, steady, continuous?) progress via noticing the A&amp;amp;P (3 characteristics implied) of the cool side (sensations)?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;[do not hit] ;-)</description> <pubDate>Thu, 10 Sep 2009 04:56:48 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=113398</guid> <dc:creator>Mike L</dc:creator> <dc:date>2009-09-10T04:56:48Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>The Cool Side of the Egg</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=109726</link> <description>A certain species of warm climate birds tends to its eggs by rolling them in the nest, which allows uniform warming of the egg to happen. The reason given for why the bird does this is because the bird is cooling itself, sitting on the cool side of the egg.</description> <pubDate>Wed, 09 Sep 2009 21:42:43 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=109726</guid> <dc:creator>Eric Alan Hansen</dc:creator> <dc:date>2009-09-09T21:42:43Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Shikantaza as the Internalization of the Buddha Nature Model of Being</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=87480</link> <description>My take, the same piano works for classical, jazz, r&amp;amp;b, etc.. doesn&amp;#039;t change the nature of sound one whit. But the conditions of training and the affect on conditions of the training follow curves. You plonk out the notes, then you repeat, then the body just does it while you feel it and tweak it beyond belief, then it is just the pure joy of letting it happen to you.</description> <pubDate>Sat, 11 Apr 2009 02:17:00 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=87480</guid> <dc:creator>triple think</dc:creator> <dc:date>2009-04-11T02:17:00Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Shikantaza as the Internalization of the Buddha Nature Model of Being</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=87477</link> <description>Author: Adam_West&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Hi Vince!&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Thanks alot mate, I really appreciate the candid sharing of your process through the exploration of the Dharma. I too, have spent many years in different traditional practices, both in and outside of Buddhism. Many, many different practices. I completely agree with your assessment of the multifaceted nature of practice and Being. I guess you could say that over the years I have become a minimalist. Hahaha.... perhaps I have just become lazy! I guess one of the essential realizations that has developed in my practice has been that I am essentially that. And as such, there is little I need to do in order to realize that, once it is already realized. Hence the minimalist just sitting. Instead, in practice there seems to be an allowing of the deeping of direct experience of that.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I do not dispute the effectiveness of many different methods. I used them to good effect myself over years, with minor kensho follow from most of them. Mostly it seemed like it was the intensity and consistency of practice that gave results, rather than method per se. Indeed, I am thinking of putting to the test an intense experiment in concentration-investigative practice that may result in, as you say, an expadited break through of further obstructions.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Much to think about!&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Thanks again for sharing your perspective!&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;In kind regards,&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Adam.</description> <pubDate>Fri, 10 Apr 2009 20:27:00 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=87477</guid> <dc:creator>Wet Paint</dc:creator> <dc:date>2009-04-10T20:27:00Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Shikantaza as the Internalization of the Buddha Nature Model of Being</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=87474</link> <description>Adam, you&amp;#039;ve framed the debate nicely. I think of it as development vs. realization: getting it done vs. realizing that nothing need be done. Each of these viewpoints is lord of its own realm. As soon as you admit the existence of time, you see the suffering within and around you and you are bound to try to remedy that. Realization of the timeless, on the other hand, leaves nothing undone in the moment of realization. It&amp;#039;s always already done. The developmentalist will point out that it is impractical to spend every waking moment communing with the timeless and therefore development must be attended to. The &amp;#034;now-ist&amp;#034; will say that this is beside the point, as the timeless perspective is always available.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I can&amp;#039;t imagine any possibility of reconciling these two perspectives, as to look through either lens in any given moment precludes the possibility of looking through the other. Thousands of years of debate have brought us no closer to a unified field theory of dharma. The best that humans have been able to come up with is a stratified teaching, e.g. Tibetan Buddhism, that values both approaches.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Personally, I agree with the Tibetans that both approaches are invaluable, and have set for myself the goal of mastering the lot. To argue for either to the exclusion of the other is an affront to my aesthetic sense; balance is good, and both the extreme developmentalist and the extreme non-dualist appear lop-sided to my eyes.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;To say that these two lenses are irreconcilable is not to say that they are incompatible or in conflict. To the contrary, I find that they go together as naturally as inhalation and exhalation; they complement and complete one another.</description> <pubDate>Fri, 10 Apr 2009 16:48:00 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=87474</guid> <dc:creator>Kenneth Folk</dc:creator> <dc:date>2009-04-10T16:48:00Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Shikantaza as the Internalization of the Buddha Nature Model of Being</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=87471</link> <description>As far as &amp;#034;Buddha nature&amp;#034; goes, in my experience deity yoga may easily be the most efficient and direct route, especially when stripped from arcane conceptual forms and ritual protocols. More options worth mentioning: compassion (e.g. as in tonglen) and attitude adjustment (e.g. as in lojong).&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;W/r/t shikantaza and dzogchen: shikantaza takes place in a specific context, namely Zen training as a whole, and even if &amp;#034;awareness is practice&amp;#034; you don&amp;#039;t want to drop the whole training; Dzogchen practice, on the other hand, IS a whole context - with a half-dozen methods of meditation, none of which is called &amp;#034;dzogchen&amp;#034;, and physical practices, sadhanas etc. In short, we can&amp;#039;t discuss these as simply techniques, because they&amp;#039;re not, and neither do their originators discuss them as such.</description> <pubDate>Fri, 10 Apr 2009 14:19:00 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=87471</guid> <dc:creator>Hokai Sobol</dc:creator> <dc:date>2009-04-10T14:19:00Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Shikantaza as the Internalization of the Buddha Nature Model of Being</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=87468</link> <description>Vince,&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Thanks for this! I&amp;#039;ve been experimenting with different types of practice as well, but haven&amp;#039;t been sure which practice will really deepen my practice from my current vantage point. I think Jack&amp;#039;s advice is as good as it gets in this case. I&amp;#039;ll keep up rocking the shamatha practice.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Jackson</description> <pubDate>Fri, 10 Apr 2009 12:06:00 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=87468</guid> <dc:creator>Jackson Wilshire</dc:creator> <dc:date>2009-04-10T12:06:00Z</dc:date> </item> <item> <title>RE: Shikantaza as the Internalization of the Buddha Nature Model of Being</title> <link>http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=87465</link> <description>So, my view now, after having tried many different practices for considerable periods (mahasi noting, shamatha, self enquiry, &amp;amp; choiceless awareness) is that each are useful and valuable. I think it can actually be a little lop-sidded to get honed in on only one practice and not explore the vastness of the dharma. As Jack Kornfield often says, &amp;#034;there are many facets to the crystal of the awakened mind.&amp;#034; Each practice, I think, helps bring into focus different facets and dimensions of that crystal, so I&amp;#039;m in the process of exploring each of them.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I don&amp;#039;t think everyone needs to do that, or that it is necessary for enlightenment, but I personally find that approach really meaningful and fulfilling. To each their own.</description> <pubDate>Fri, 10 Apr 2009 11:32:00 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.dharmaoverground.org/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&amp;messageId=87465</guid> <dc:creator>Vincent Horn</dc:creator> <dc:date>2009-04-10T11:32:00Z</dc:date> </item> </channel> </rss> 