If I understand it correctly buddhist practice is designed to divert the practitioner's attention away from the mundane drama of seeking satisfaction through the acquisition of favorable external conditions. Instead his attention is directed internally and he is encouraged to pursue a more stable satisfaction namely the fruits of concentration, morality, and insight.

I guess my question is.. if that actually starts to happen.. wouldn't that completely wreck a modern romantic relationship ? Every romantic relationship I've ever been a part of or observed was based around a mutal emotional co-dependency. If you talk to any relationship therapist they will also say the same thing. Both parties are helping each other not only fulfill sexual desires but also to find some sort of emotional satisfaction in each other. Both parties want to feel that the other person needs them in order to be fulfilled.

If a woman doesn't feel like she is needed emotionally then she will say that the relationship has died and she will move on to look for some situation where she feels needed. The number one thing a woman wants to hear in a relationship is "I need you in order to be happy" yet doesn't that kind of thing run contrarary to the whole spirit of buddhist practice ?

If I am being unfair then please let me know. If you take the generalizations I have made above as true then does that mean buddhist practice is fundamentally at odds with the notion of a romantic relationship ? That might account for the "sausage party" nature of this web forum aye ? ;)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAFR6V3KvEw

n1kaya

Ah, yes, a long-standing favorite of a topic...

I have seen both male and female practitioners wreck relationships while tossed on the horns of the Dharma, so I don't think there is anything particularly sausagesque about it particularly, and why this place is so male-heavy is also a topic that has been debated. Some blame the theme, some the technical nature of the culture and language here, some have incriminated the lack of recipe-trading and more friendship-like sharing, and other theories have been proposed as well. I have no firm opinions but hope all feel welcome here to benefit from this fantastic community of dedicated and accomplished individuals.

As to attachment, it is a strange thing, as are relationships and their bases and the pros and cons of monogamy, commitment, etc.

I think that the older one gets, and the longer one is in a relationship, the smaller some of those issues become as a relationship matures, and then the question becomes how tolerant one is of that particular set of trade-offs.

Further, the Dark Night can be a serious relationship destroyer, as can the fervent, hair-on-fire attitude that is so appreciated here but which can so screw up relationships when every moment is spent thinking about retreats, practice and the like, while they are wanting to go to the beach and the movies or whatever. No easy solution. Worse is when both are practitioner or at least above the A&P, as is common, as they tend to be attracted to each other, and both are swinging through cycles and various relationships to their relationships.

One important point: I mastered all paths and jhanas while married, so it can be done, though I have my share of melodharmatic stories to tell as well owing to various mistakes I made along the way as well as just unfortunately collisions of circumstances.

Both my former and current wife were/are above the A&P, so I have had exposure to being on the other side of the cycles as well and their complexities.

Anyway, no great answer to this question, but general advice: avoid screwing up a good thing when the Dark Night strikes, be it a good job, good romantic relationship, good school program, good family relationship, etc. as the Dark Night will pass, but that doesn't mean you can pick up all the pieces of whatever you broke, and to, to avoid regrets, keep the standard advice for dealing with the Dark Night in mind and be kind in your speech when possible.

As to exactly what to say: keep language conventional when possible, that is my advice. Keep up social niceties during times of internal struggle and complexity, even if they sometimes feel like a bit of a stretch. That doesn't mean we can't be honest with ourselves and those we love, but not everyone will understand what you are going through and how it relates to them and this can scare and confuse people, and the chances of you understanding exactly what you are actually going through is low also, so be wary of fixed conclusions and of assuming that whatever wave of the thing is hitting you now will always be the way you feel, as some things, once said, are hard to take back.

Hi Secret,

Welcome.

That's a common understanding of buddhist practice which you allude to. Let me point out that skillfully participating in the "mundane drama" *is* training in morality; and that insight training, when done at all, will encompass all of experience, and not just some secluded meditation experience. This leaves concentration training which is all about cultivating mind states and thus closest to the common picture of "internally directed" buddhist practitioners.

So how do relationships figure in this picture?

First of all, the idea that a romantic relationship consists of repeatedly asserting mutual dependency is junk psychology. If that were so, I'd be in a romantic relationship with my boss because I need him to pay my wages (without which I'd be rather un-fulfilled, even emotionally), while he keeps telling me he needs me to do this or that. While he's a nice guy, I wouldn't want to swap my relationship with my wife for a relationship with him.

It kind of comes naturally, in a romantic relationship, to express appreciation for the other party, and saying "I need you in order to be happy and fulfilled" may be appropriate but there are certaily many more ways to express this.

With that little rant over, there *is* something to what you say. Often, when someone discovers meditation and starts to practice in earnest, this will introduce a new, unknown factor into the relationship, something only one of them is doing. This alone can be a strain on a relationship, but this also happens with other, newly discovered interests such as starting to play a musical instrument and spending time to practice in seclusion, or doing some kind of evening school, or whatever. But meditation also tends to dislodge a lot of psychological "stuff", and in this it's different from learning to play the guitar, for example. This can give rise to "I want the old you back" sentiments, and yes, this can be a major strain on a relationship.

There are some very good threads in the archive on this very topic.

So there is slightly more to it than "buddhist navel-gazing harmful to romantic relationships". I'm not theoretizing, btw: I'm married, I meditate a lot, and together with my wife we've dealt with many challenges to our relationship, not just this meditation thing.

Finally, yes, the male geek percentage is pretty high around here, for various reasons. I don't think it boils down to "women want to be fulfilled, men want to be free" just like that, however.

Cheers,
Florian

Hey thanks it's great to be here



Fair enough.. with all the talk about concentration it's easy to overlook the little old morality and insight trainings which as you rightly point out have an infinitely broad scope.

Although it's a common understanding the "internally directed buddhist practitioner" is a meme with it's roots planted squarely in the early suttas. From what I understand the Buddha pretty much recommended that the skillful thing to do is to avoid seeking satisfaction from worldly pursuits in favor of the less blameworthy satisfaction that comes from cultivating skillful mind states. The main idea being that people who are only attached to skillful mind states will be in a much better position to make certain insight realizations than those people who are attached to myriad worldly desires.



Now if you go back and read what I actually wrote I didn't say "mutual dependency" I said "mutual emotional dependency" which is a phrase I made up that implies something completely different. Mutual emotional dependency means Alice depends on Bob in order to feel certain emotions which she has a strong craving for, and Bob depends on Alice to feel certain emotions for which he has a strong craving. Your boss would not fit into this picture because he's not feeding you these particular emotions. Your wife for example might be. She might be constantly flattering you for example, or doing any number of other things to stroke your ego, reenforce certain aspects of your self image, and make you feel certain emotions which you can't get any other way. I'm describing a specific type of mutual codependency centered around a particular type of emotional exchange not something as generic as your interactions with your coworkers.



Yes but if "I need you in order to be happy and fulfilled" is the core message that you transmit to your partner regardless of how you express it then you had better be damn sure you mean it aye ? Otherwise your core communication is bullshit. If the truth is that you know for a fact that you are going to be happy and fulfilled (although disappointed) if she leaves you for another guy then you damn sure better be able to find a way to hide or avoid bringing up that particular truth or she's going to feel hurt, and if asked about it you better lie. This is just common sense though.. every man knows this.

None of this applies to me personally because I do get helplessly emotionally attached to girlfriends despite all the stress it sometimes brings. I don't really bring any concepts or ideas from Buddhism into her world either because who knows how her cultural immune system will react and there are too many pandora's boxes to worry about. You guys don't have to worry that I'm going to let this stuff blow any relationships ;) thanks for the concern though.



I want the neurotic you back he was more fun.



I think it's more like "women want to be desired". It's a universal thing with women for real. If you were to survey a large group of people and ask them if they would rather be universally free or universally desired a much greater percentage of women would choose the latter than men. I know it is true actually this test has been conducted across many cultures, age groups, and geographic areas with similar results.

For women being desired is serious serious business. When they stop playing around and start looking for the partner who is going to be "the one" they must be sure that they have a deep inner psychlogical foothold in the guy's mind at a core level. This is basic stuff that evolved from the caveman time period. The woman needed to be able to tell if the man is going to come back to the cave with food for her and the baby instead of just going off to some other village and forgetting about the cave. Her whole emotional system is designed to be able to discern the guy who would forget about the cave from the guy who wont. How deeply rooted is the desire he feels for me ? At how many different levels do I effect him ? There are the subconscious questions that I think women ask themselves about their potential mates.

I suspect that if a guy is doing certain kinds of concentration/insight practice it can throw off a woman's built in instrumentation in this area. She wants to be able to understand what is making him feel good at all times because she wants for that to be her domain and she wants to understand his complete psychology BUT if there is some mysterious force injecting "feel good" into his system out of thin air then things are not going to add up, he is going to seem too difficult to understand. There will be certain things that don't make sense. A woman might rather have an emotionally predictable mate who is sometimes violent because at least she understands what makes him tick at all times. I'm not saying that guys who meditate are out of luck, I'm just saying we have to be sensitive to this kind of thing and try to compensate for it. I'm glad to hear you're both happily married. I hope I haven't pissed off too many women readers too as it would be nice to have some estrogen around here.

Thanks for the feedback.

n1kaya

Those are all sound insight and reminders. Thanks for them. It is nice to hear a different perspective around here, given how important relationships are.

It was actually getting married the first time that finally completed something in me that suddenly gave me the impetus and internal something to go off and follow my old friend Kenneth's path of getting some insights and so to go on retreats and to get stream entry after thinking about it for a few years.

What is also interesting is that the Dharma can inject "feel bad" into relationships also for no particularly obvious external reason, which can also be very confusing to all involved in just the same way except worse, particularly for those who don't know the maps of insight, which are only a partial defense, and again, some internal compensation for these effects, both good and bad, is of value to weather what can be very strange and surprising swings. If one can find the rare partner who knows and understands this, being supported through these swings can really engender loyalty and gratitude, as such a thing is hard to find and of great value, the sort of kindness one doesn't easily forget.

On the flip side of the same coin, if one is with the sort of partner who just throws fuel on the fire through their own lack of understanding or the practitioner's inability to explain what is going on (not that they will always know, as this stuff can blindside us all), that sort of difficulty is hard to weather and takes even that much more tolerance and patience on the practitioner's side and really can shorten relationships and damage them.

Thus, as you say, communication is key, but part of the key is to recognize what is going on and to explain it in terms that don't put blame for it on the other person when possible, but just describe one's internal experience at a simple, honest, bodily or similar level in a down to earth way.

Thus, the woman or man who is looking to be needed will find much to be gained from supporting and understanding the paramour who is going through whatever and asking them gentle, non-defensive and non-judgemental, body and feeling-based, open-ended questions about their internal world for clues about how to help them stay with where they are and what is going on in a balanced and complete way when their worldview is shaking. This done with enough time to get through the more superficial answers and conclusions and reactions to the good stuff is powerful. While again rare in the same way that 2-hour long back rubs are rare, this is an amazing thing when is happens, can really help produce insights and breakthroughs, and is the sort of thing that significantly increases the chances of returning to the cave and feeling good about it and everyone getting through it with minimal scars, and a lot of learning can take place then also on both sides. That's QT with whipped cream, sprinkles and a cherry on top.

I think one must distinguish between initial attraction & dating versus the commitment stage.

Once you are in an established relationship, it makes sense that the challenges of the path to enlightenment are just one among many.

In attraction/dating, so much is communicated subliminally that I can see a meditative practice totally jamming the others' radar. It seems like having one's one stuff figured out is a prerequisite to effective communication.

N1kaya, if you are interested in this kind of stuff I recommend looking at what people like Mystery and Neil Strauss have figured out. They have a pretty sophisticated understanding of how intimate relations are sparked. Mystery in particular has a pretty good model based on Survival and Reproduction (with women weighing survival more heavily and vice versa) that explains a lot of things.

Good point, the attraction/dating and relationship phases are two totally different things. For me in the attraction/dating stage I'm generally a lot more conscious about exactly what I'm putting out there. I'm not saying it's scripted but a lot of what I do in that stage has been tested and refined in previous interactions. I'm really just executing the strategies and techniques that have proven themselves in the past. Any fluxuation in my "state of consciousness" does not find expression as easily in the attraction/dating stage because I'm playing a part that I'm already intimately familiar with. I know how to not deviate from the tried and true game plan that has worked to get ladies into my bed in the past and will continue to work in the future. However when things move into the relationship phase there tends to be a lot more times when I don't have a game plan and I just want to wing it and let my guard down. It's at this point where things become challenging because I'm slightly less conscious about what I'm putting out there while she remains every bit as sensitive as she was in hour 1 maybe even more so.

At this point if I wanted to play it safe I would put her on the back burner, keep her in a limbo state, and go run attraction game on another set. Some guys go on like that forever never leaving the attraction/dating phase. This is especially a problem among guys who consider themselves to be "pick up artists". They don't actually have whatever it takes to make a relationship work so instead they just juggle lots of women. I'm not knocking it, but I'd like to be able to do both. ;)



thanks KB, yes that is excellent advice. I'm actually already intimately familiar with Mystery's material. I had his books years before Neil Strauss exposed that stuff to a larger audience. His S&R concepts were indeed very enlightening. There is a book called "Sperm Wars" by Robin Baker that also does an excellent job with that subject. I think Mystery's biggest contribution to helping me attract more women was his stuff around "neg theory" or "false disqualifier theory" as they are calling it these days. That stuff really works! Also just having a model for the different stages of "pickup" is a big help and has parallels to what is going on in this community.


p.s. Daniel your reply was jam packed with so much practical advice that it's going to take me at least a couple of days just to even process it.

I might admit to finding this just a teensy bit offensive. My estrogenic reaction aside ... can you describe how this MO aligns with a life of respect and compassion for others, right action, removing craving, etc?

Well I admit that the previous message was half written as a gambit to lure any females out of their hiding places. It's nice to meet you.

In your view is there anything inherently disrespectful about dating more than one person at the same time ? That's all I'm talking about doing here. As far as I understand it this is considered to be the norm unless you have made an agreement with another person to not date other people. Women do this too of course and I suspect they do it more often than men. I only see it as disrespectful if you are lying. I also don't think there is anything disrespectful about making a woman sometimes wonder about exactly where she stands with you. This presents a challenge which helps maintain sexual tension and attraction.

Women actually like this by the way. They are attracted to guys who are preselected by other women and guys who are challenging. If a guy has several women floating around him but no clear girlfriend then that makes him about 10 times more attractive to other women. The fairer sex is not on average attracted to needy guys who will trip over themselves to do whatever they can to please. That's only in the movies. Instead they want the challenging guy who is already being stalked by several women and is not really going out of his way to impress anyone.

To answer your question though.. Dating several women at once in this way aligns with a life of respect and compassion because the goal of it is to ultimately find a partner with whom you are extremely compatible. If such a person can be located then it would in theory be possible for both parties to improve the quality of each others lives to a degree that would be several orders of magnitude greater than what could be achieved when partnering with someone who is less compatible. The only way I know of to do this is to get to know many different women so I structure many lifestyle decisions around that.. out of compassion of course =D

I'm glad to know there is at least one lady on here. You should bring your friends.. you can bring them just to argue with me if you want.

-N1kaya

Lol. Good gambit.

For arguments sake, one can throw in the fact that in the pickup artist dogma, if you actually "crave" a women, you will never have her. Its like karma. If you have "bad" intentions, it will backfire eventually.

Of course, anytime there is the suggestion that one is nothing but a bunch of impersonal processes, people tend to get offended. This goes for the patterns of attraction as well. I don't see anything immoral in becoming conscious and capable of this language.

Still, this seems to be more along the lines of getting bogged down in one's "stuff" than getting further along the path of insight.

Ah yes that is quite a scary and offensive suggestion indeed. So add this Anatta concept to the pile of stuff in Buddhism that must remain well hidden if you don't want it to destroy your relationships.

KB, I've studied attraction in a lot of detail and 'Style' and 'Mystery' are sort of considered a bit out-dated now. Mystery's stuff is incredibly robotic and manipulative. He got laid a lot but only with average 'club chicks'. If you read the first chapter of 'The Game' you will see that he is pretty messed up psychologically. Everything he did (and does) is geared towards trying to appear attractive, rather than actually being attractive.- huge difference. Strauss (aka 'Style') definitely could walk the walk, ie. he is short, bald and physically unattractive and yet for quite a while he had a very pretty, intelligent interesting girlfriend, and he would top the 'tops list' regularly. I'm just not sure about his methodology.

In fact I reckon the whole pick up scene is a bit destructive in the way it teaches guys to be more, more, more! The most successful guys i have ever known simply have a good self esteem and are happy in their own skin, doing what they do. The moment you 'try', you just become a 'try-hard'.

I think the guys at RSD are probably the most progressive, but again, I honestly believe that all a guy needs is to be himself, fully; be authentic in other words. That's always attractive, no matter your looks, job, car or whatever.

Sorry to be off topic. Delete this if you want Daniel, I couldn't fit it in a private message.

I think this fits under training in morality, for those of us who aren't married.

Being yourself and having confidence sounds good on paper, but if "yourself" is a fairly arbitrary construct, and you realize that, then it would make sense to consider more skillful means.

A lot of the robotic stuff is just a vehicle to cross the stream, so to speak, into a world where your ego isn't at stake and getting in the way of authentically engaging others (and also disarming their ego).

I doubt that Mystery is attaining fruitions, but it is an achievement to be able to put oneself out their for judgement over and over again. This is confronting your fear - of being judged as a person by another. Being rejected over and over again is like dying a thousand deaths, and this is encouraged.

Like with most teachings, there are people who will only imitate and perfect the form.

Often one hears that these theories apply to women who are not worthwhile, but I believe that unfair characterization meant to uphold one's notions of what "proper women" are like. Like, every women thinks to herself "I would never fall for this", yet the fact that they know that they have in the past is what causes them to have a visceral and negative reaction to the whole concept.

Yeh I guess 'being yourself' needs definition. I'd describe 'being yourself' as behaving in a way that is totally free of the concern of being judged by others while still being respectful of others.

"Being rejected over and over again is like dying a thousand deaths, and this is encouraged". I definitely agree with this point. Great training.

Sure I get that.. It's analogous to the more common situation where a girlfriend helps you deal with an overwhelming LSD trip. I can totally see how that would be a bonding experience because you're showing her that you're vulnerable and that she can help you cope without completely dragging her into the chaos. I guess the problem I'm dealing with is not so much chaotic ups and downs anymore but rather having at least for now reached a somewhat stable and enjoyable plateau I have come to a place where I've just lost interest in much of the stuff that I had previously connected with women around. The celebrity entertainment complex and the ever-changing intricacies of fashionable consumption for example are just not doing it for me anymore and even the more intellectual chicks are missing the mark for various reasons. I notice a lot of things I wouldn't have noticed before too. I still have the ability to connect with women in the same old ways but I sometimes feel less authentic when doing it.

Some of this probably has nothing to do with Buddhism but I can't help but feel like without my permission my hard drive has been wiped and my operating system replaced. Consumer Capitalism 1.2 was deleted and a customized version of Theravada 2.6.31 was installed. Sure this new system makes more efficient use of my CPU, crashes a lot less, feels great, and still gets everything done, but the downside is it has left me a bit jaded when the time comes to use other people's systems. Sure I'm backwards compatible but I'm not really interested in figuring out how to use the latest version of some crappy program designed for the old system because the new system makes it completely obsolete. There is absolutely no way to convince anyone else to install the new system and even if they did try to install it they would probably run into a problem and be too lazy to look up the instructions on the Internet. So now I go on as usual supporting both systems I just complain sometimes on Internet forums ;)

N1kaya

File under "unsatisfactoriness of all conditioned phenomena."

Often I feel the same way, I wonder if more training in lovingkindness would help on the compassion front.

N1Kaya,

I know what that feeling of disenchantment and paradigm shift is like all too well...

Just curious, practice-wise, what are you up to these days? What happened?

Is it just the standard Theravada stuff about meditating on corpses and desire as the cause of suffering, or did you cross the A&P and now are Dark Nighting, or what do you think did it?

D

Having Karezza style sex can have a very stabilizing effect on relationships.
Karezza is sort of western tantra light. THe key is what sort of orgasm one has.
Instead of going for the normal explosive release, one sits embraced, barely moving
and relaxes and stays away from the edge of orgasm. Whenever one approaches
conventional orgasm one relaxes into the feeling and moves away from orgasm. After
some time one instead experiences a "valley" orgasm. A streaming endless more
blissfull and spiritual orgasm that generally affects the higher chakras more. This
is not necessarily the same as the Mantak Chia male multiple orgasms. His techniques
with clenching the PC muscle etc. can be used to have many explosive style orgasms
without ejaculation. This saves you from energyloss but the quality of energy
produced is different from that of a Karezza or true Tantric/taoist orgasm. Such
orgasms should for a man become multiple by themselves through relaxation and
awareness not through force. These are also as I described different in feel and
more internal and imploding as opposed to external and exploding. THe type of orgasm
advocated by Lao Tzu was more of this kind:
http://www.reuniting.info/wisdom/neotaoism_and_karezza

At this site: reuniting.info they have some fascinating theories about the
consequences of those types of orgasms. I don`t precisely remember the scientific
theories but the key is that the karezza style of orgasm produces a lot more
oxytocin which is the pair bonding hormone. THe explosive orgasm produces much more
dopamin which gives the feeling of a kick and excitement. Dopamine kills oxytocin so
that when one has a normal orgasm one has a surge of oxytocin leading to the
afterglow effect but within ten minutes or so most of this is gone because the
orgasm also produced a lot of dopamine. THe Karezza orgasm on the other hand
produces little dopamine and so the oxytocin and afterglow effect lasts for a very
long time. THe more such orgasms one has the more the bond and loving feelings grow.
On the other hand if one has conventional orgasms the dopamine will over time also
undermine the oxytocin created by being in love not just by the orgasms. THis leads
to couples falling out of love. So by having the Karezza orgasms one avoids this
falling out of love mechanism and the desire for sex and touch with the other
partner remains high continuosly. THis at least is the experience of those that
practice this form of sex.

After a couple of months of this type of sex people also report a significantly
reduced craving for dopamine fixes in other ways such as through chocolate and other
"addictions". It is sort of like when you start eating satvic (neither yin nor yang)
food. Over time you stop craving rajasic (yang) food and find enough stimulation of
the senses through the less extreme satvic tastes.

It is key by the way that also the woman has this type of orgasms.

These theories also match much of the experience of men practicing semen retention
and multiple orgasms. Many of these men find that if they have orgasms but don`t
ejaculate their energy builds a lot but after a longer period of time, a week or two
or three maybe, they start to feel very unbalanced and manic and often aggressive.
THis type of unbalance can corrected through meditation that refines the energy. A
teacher of tantra whom I respect and my own meditation teacher which also teaches
Taoist sexuality, both tell me that ultimately it is the energy of the heart that
balances out the sexual energy saved up. So meditations creating heart energy and
blending it with the sexual energy restores balance. This is precisely what is done
in the "Biels fire and water technique" described on alchemicaltaoism.com to balance
out sexual energy from retention. However, if one has the Karezza style of orgasm
this sort of balance is achieved without extra meditation because the orgasms does
not have the hot, explosive (read dopamine) quality but is more heart orgasmic so to
speak. It is already a refined higher center orgasm so the blending is already
achieved. This at least seems to be the experience of those practicing Karezza as
they experience more balance even when going for long periods without ejaculations
and my teacher agrees with the theory.

You can find a much more precise explanation of how the dopamine oxytocin mechanism
works. How this fits with meditation practice and heart meditation techniques are my
theories but based on observation of the experience of other on the web and talks
with my teacher. I don`t have personal experience with it as after some initial
experimentation with the multiple orgasm techniques I decided to put it of until I
had mastered other non aroused techniques first and I am not there yet.

It would be very interesting if some of you tried out what the Karezza people
describe and see if it fits with your experience. I believe this can have a
revolutionizing effect on relationships. For meditators it can be a great way
strengthen ones practice through sex and to bring ones partner into meditation. THis
type of sex is so meditative and gives such strong meditative experiences that I
believe non practicing partners would start to get what the practicing partners
hobby is all about and slowly be pulled into practice themselves.

Something similar happens with the aneros prostate massager. It gives men such
powerful higher center orgasm that they are described as of a spiritual nature and
they appear to be a gateway into spiritual practice.

David Deida should be a relevant read for meditators struggling with these issues.

By the way my teacher who also practices Vipassana says he does not have the same
experience of the cycles being as violent and destabilizing. As I understood him he
attributed this to having a frequent experience of qigong and tai chi, having done
lots of psychological work and not pushing too hard in Vipassana but being more
about stable effort.

N1kaya, I know what you mean... the idea of starting a relationship nowadays seems almost absurd, given the activities most people around me engage in. I, on the other hand, don't feel very backwards compatible. It is as if a mixture of heightened sensitivity together with newly acquired, peculiar tastes (in movie, music, entertainment, etc) makes any sort of normal "night-out" a terrible bore... and don't get me started on consumerism...

bruno, give us a sample of your newly acquired tastes in music, film and entertainment! Surely they can't be that peculiar?

Music: Free Jazz Improv. What I used to think was "noise" turns out to be pure genius, but most people still thinks it's noise. To quote some names: John Zorn, Fred Frith, Peter Brotzmann, Ken Vandermark, John Coltrane (later years), Earl Howard, etc, etc etc etc. Nowadays pop music sounds like boring, same-old same-old, unoriginal, dull, etc... Even the greats of classical music, or at least their surviving compositions, although great, pale in the face of what current musicians are doing.

Cinema: I became a big fan of european cinema. Fassbinder, Tarkovsky, Pasolini, Ozon, etc, etc, etc.

Entertainment: A walk in the park, a bit of meditation, ...

Most of the time I'm left with choosing between doing what someone else finds entertaining or being alone.

Indulging your desires deeply (ie. having fun) is attractive to others, so i doubt you'd be alone for long. You'd have to be willing to get lost in desire. Might get myself banned for saying that on a buddhist forum!

Some of the hottest girls ( as some function of looks and personality ) are into european cinema. You should move to NYC.

Also, nothing wrong with making new friends in general.

Most of those things are probably less esoteric than buddhism.

I don't care to speculate about how my practice relates to these maps until I finish your book and learn more about them. Thanks for the interest though.

To give you a general idea about my practice.. I'm an arm chair buddhist in the United States. I've never met a lineage holder or interacted with a sangha in any way. I've had a daily meditation practice for about 10 years now and I'm pretty familiar with much of the pop English language buddhist literature. Although I have the "accesstoinsight.org iphone app" I don't wrap myself in a buddhist flag like many people do. I don't own a single buddha statue and now that I think about it nobody outside of Internet circles even knows I'm interested in Buddhism. I became interested in dhamma as a framework to help me cope with various experiences I was having on psychedelic drugs when I was a teenager, and I never put it down.

p.s. the forum was not letting me post for more than a week.. "the message board is temporarily unavailable" so I had to re-register. Kinda strange.. but it seems OK now.

Sorry about the tech glitch, I don't know what happened, but I do know that for all of Liferay's good points, it is not the most stable platform for a forum.

I hope you like the book and would be interested to hear your thoughts when you finish.

Daniel

http://www.liferay.com/community/forums/-/message_boards/message/488173
http://issues.liferay.com/browse/LEP-4683

This describes what I'm experiencing, but I think I figured it out. That error is because I tried to use UTF8 characters when typing certain pali or sanskrit words... liferay doesn't like that.. I'm good now that I know how to get around the problem.