Sunday 15 December 2013

reddit zen !

53 comments:

  1. "Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster."

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. zakaj, battle not with monsters unless you can spare the time :o)(

      Delete
    2. Well but don't forget to teach us. That's what the 6th gave you the Patriarchal mandate for.

      Delete
    3. I think "teaching" is the wrong perspective, basically I am just sorting myself out and if people don't take the benefit available to them by seriously taking on board what I say, well that's their issue !

      Delete
    4. Why do you mix health topics & Zen on this same board? Traditionally, Zen had nothing to do with health; except when under Daoist influences. Rinzai has some of that mixed because Hakuin tried to cure himself with Daoist methods. - Are you a doctor? I take Vitamin D-3 but beyond that, I don't much about supplements and medicine. Do you have qualifications in the field?

      Delete
    5. This comment has been removed by the author.

      Delete
    6. Catherine of siena was anorexic, dogen had Tb, john of the cross died youngish from staph................. people in good health and sound mind breed, the rest of us on the outer edge of some half life try to muddle through the survival nightmare as best we can ................ :o()

      the bcd diet and supplement program is my and others experience in surviving health problems that would have taken me/us down by this point............

      :o()

      it could not have been written and developed by some-one with qualifications in the medical field, medicine is S O wrong minded for this..............

      http://mueller_ranges.tripod.com/links/compendium/compendium.html

      Delete
    7. Interesting. I'll look into it. However my self-diagnosis is that my main problem isn't health-related but being attached to abstract thinking which steals so much of my energy. The brain spins around and around like the ouroboros. The Song era guys advised single-minded focus on a koan to halt this, a counter-measure for those who can't stop it otherwise. "dog, buddha-nature, has? zhaouzhou said: not" - it's impenetrable for the philosophical/abstract mind. 'oak tree in the garden'. Focusing simply on the critical phase, wu, halts the concept-forming mind and releases lots of energy. That energy sometimes feels like burning doubt, but other times as light-heat-bliss. What's the 7th Patriarch take on this?

      Delete
    8. the brain is a biological machine and no "cognitive therapy" will even slightly offset a/the failing mechanism !

      you could look at chromium to help with brain blood sugars

      http://mueller_ranges.tripod.com/links/compendium/myminerals.html#chromium

      and msc krill oil for dha, epa and phospholipids in the brain !

      plus in Slovakia you may be able to get offal like sweetbreads and testicles ?

      Delete
    9. I'm in Slovenia, not Slovakia. I don't know what is sweetbread but it sounds disgusting; let alone the testicles! I think I'd rather go with pills.

      It's a bit complicated, so many different things, phospholipids, dha, epa, krill oil, it's all very voynichy to me, I'm not educated in this field.

      To put it in very simple terms, would this:

      http://www.amazon.com/Foods-Chromium-Picolinate-200mcg-Capsules/dp/B0019LPNLK/ref=pd_sbs_hpc_2

      Be a good start?

      Delete
    10. (Sorry for not doing the research but it would/will take me years to understand your compendium so I ask for a simple 'tutorial' so that I 'kickstart' the process and test it myself if I see some results that will definitely motivate me further. If it's not too much to ask.)

      Delete
    11. This comment has been removed by the author.

      Delete

    12. I am not so keen on the chromium picolinate and prefer the solaray gtf chromium of which I take 1/4 to 1/2 a capsule once every two or three days and pasturize it to about 62C
      just to make sure any biofilm is killed !

      effective supplement taking requires a lot of attention to the right forms and brands, you just can't guess and take pot luck !

      your grandparents ate offal, don't be so fussy !

      Delete
    13. Thank you. Isn't the pasturizing a bit OCDish?

      Delete
    14. This comment has been removed by the author.

      Delete
    15. you are now at the second stage of understanding what the bcd is about which is basically that uncontrolled gut flora is a problem !





      my personal experience is that I need the chromium gft yeast pasturized because it feeds malign/bad gut flora !

      Delete
    16. http://www.digitaljournal.com/life/health/new-link-between-gut-bacteria-and-autism/article/364046

      Delete
    17. http://mueller_ranges.tripod.com/links/compendium/biofilms.html

      Delete
  2. Andr3w, you are practicing magick moreso than Chan/Zen. Many Westerners who get into Zen/Chan, Sufism, Gnostic Christianity, and etc. tend to make this mistake. You cannot derive anything from choiceless awareness, the abeyance wherein concepts and ideations dissolve. Not even poetry or spoken words have prominence in the transience of life.

    You cannot reconcile substitution and union.

    You fixate too much on intellectual understanding and reading... While they are great tools, they do not provide the "solution" to sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, and despair. You emphasize a lot on the importance of the "creative potentiality" and its relation to Zen/Chan practice, but the issue arises when one reifies their "creations" or ideas and views them as permanent or "worthy" within their narrative flux. In this sense, you remind me more of a Chaos magick practitioner.

    The best way to explain Chan/Zen is when "some" experience happens that destroys all hope (e.g., divorce or getting cheated on) and losing what one holds dear. Then standing outside on the wide, expansive field, where the cross-roads are, and looking out to the horizon without thinking about anything. There is no reflection on thought processes or memory processes going on, just a mournful ambiance where "you" realize "you" never had what "you", supposedly, let go of... that the fact this idea or "picture" were to be reified, concretized, or whatever... is the true source of all suffering.

    You are a magick practitioner, Andrew, not a Chan/Zen Buddhist:

    "What is personal death?
    Asking this question and pausing to look inward - isn't personal death a concept? Isn't there a thought-and-picture series going on in the brain? These scene of personal ending take place solely in the imagination, and yet they trigger great mental ad physical distress - thinking of one's cherished attachments an their sudden, irreversibe termination.
    Similarly, if there is 'pain when I let some of the beauty of life in' - isn't this pain the result of thinking, 'I won't be here any longer to enjoy this beauty?' Or, 'No one will be around and no beauty left to be enjoyed if there is total nuclear devastation.'
    Apart from the horrendous tragedy of human warfare - why is there this fear of 'me' not continuing? Is it because I don't realize that all my fear and trembling is for an image? Because I really believe that this image is myself?
    In the midst of this vast, unfathomable, ever-changing, dying, and renewing flow of life, the human brain is ceaselessly engaged in trying to fix for itself a state of permanency and certainty. Having the capacity to think and form pictures of ourselves, to remember them and become deeply attached to them, we take this world of pictures and ideas for real. We thoroughly believe in the reality of the picture story of our personal life. We are totally identified with it and want it to go on forever. The idea of "forever" is itself an invention of the human brain. Forever is a dream.
    Questioning beyond all thoughts, images, memories, and beliefs, questioning profoundly into the utter darkness of not-knowing, the realization may suddenly dawn that one is nothing at all - nothing - that all one has been holding on to are pictures and dreams. Being nothing is being everything. It is wholeness. Compassion. It is the ending of separation, fear, and sorrow.
    Is there pain when no one is there to hold on?
    There is beauty where there is no "me"."
    - Toni Packer "Work of this Moment" page 95

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. sepehr. g did you really write that bilge or has someone hacked your id?

      I wish I did practice magic, be more sense to that than replying to the know all morons here/in zen :o)

      Delete
    2. "I wish I did practice magic,"

      You serious...?

      Delete
    3. sepehr. g when I had my first "awakening experience"/dai kensho out by myself on the farm at the age 4 to 7? it was completely spontaneous and complete, my thought at the time was "that must be what people call god"

      there was no abandonment of hope or the "I" or anything at all.................

      I was favoured by god and what I had yet to learn was that meant that life and people will do nothing (almost ! can't claim it is 100% :o) will do nothing but kick you in the head :o)(

      my experience is not available to you and if you disbelieve it fine, and if you believe it why not listen a bit to what I say instead of giving a long toni packer quote that is half voynich !

      she had her issues, one of which is not being confident enough in her own expression and sought the cloak of conformity of neo-advaita/non dualit/ykrishnamurti to the detriment of making herself clear ! :o()

      Delete
    4. spend several years sorting out health issues and forget about zen !

      http://mueller_ranges.tripod.com/links/compendium/compendium.html

      http://mueller_ranges.tripod.com/links/compendium/sleep.html

      http://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/who_knows/

      Delete
    5. You think I have health issues?

      Delete
    6. what do you sleep like? do you mood swing ?

      Delete
    7. I don't have frequent mood swings.

      My sleep has been pretty bad though recently because of tedious school work.

      Delete
    8. I can understand how there was no abandonment of hope. I worded mysef incorrectly, dang.

      But there has to be a dissolution of the "I-me-mine":

      Read James Austin's experience:
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_H._Austin#Experience_with_Zen

      Delete
    9. the neurons start to die when you don't get enough sleep, sleep is a brain function.....................!

      I have given you the link, you won't help yourself .........!

      what I notice is I am spending way too much time on the web with people who don't listen and can't or won't help themselves !

      it's some sort of endless circle and I am very concerned about being caught up in it and am not really sure what to do about it because it is sure costing me !

      you may need to rethink your life situation !

      Delete
    10. james Austin is not too bad !

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4HmSKyCokg

      there is another level however, like dylan Thomas !

      you get lifted out of the voynich of "But there has to be a dissolution of the "I-me-mine"

      Delete
    11. I agree sleep is very important. I used to be very healthy when I was running and eating well. I would eat grass-fed offal and good veggies, fermented food, and raw dairy from good sources. I was really healthy at that time.

      I am listening to you... I read your poetry and take what you say seriously. Also, I was the one who introduced you to Cioran, even though I don't like him that much. I read a lot too, even though it is not 100 percent the same as you.

      I don't get what's your problem about my life situation. You actually don't know much about it... I'm going to school and working to the point I can get a stable source of income. I regret my choice in the field...

      I've also had a "transformative" experience once. I was dreaming and I fell into this "black hole". I then saw the "silhouette" of another "me" and he asked, "What do you want?" I told him, "I want to know the true nature of reality." He lifted his arm, and I noticed lines appear. I then saw my body, in third person, shaking on the bed. Afterwards, the lines appeared once more and I saw the silhouette of a surgeon asking, "Are you awake yet?" I saw the lines appear once more and then there was this big ball of light... which felt like it possessed some depth. At this point, I was becoming scared... As "I" was going deeper into the light I said, "What is my name? Who am "I"? I don't want to forget who I am!" It felt like personality disintegration or something to that effect... I woke up sweating. Before this, I had never read anything on Advaita or Zen or much on Sufism, but I can tell you relinquishment of the "I-me-mine" is central to the religious life. Even the Gospel of Thomas points at this with how it hints at the collapse of dualistic categories being essential. I agree that one should still "remain" creative, but the stuff Sri Ramanaha Maharshi, J. Krishnamurti, and Dogen espouse regarding the importance of the inseparability of self and other (i.e., the "observer is the observed") is central to this practice. Why do you want to distance yourself from non-dualism when it's obvious Zen/Chan, Sufism, Gnostic Christianity (in some of its forms), and etc. are all non-dualistic? Heck, even Diogenes of Sinope seems to hint at non-dualism. Even Schopenauer is non-dualistic of a different variety, and he admitted to being greatly influenced by the Vedas... Even Saadi was non-dualistic... Man, everyone you read and praise seems to have non-dualistic leanings, but you, yourself, seem to oppose it?

      Also, you kept saying Toni Packer was the one with the closest understanding, but now... you take that back? You confuse me!

      Delete
    12. you imagine that what this is about can be got through "sense" but really you need the senseless and meaningless as well that makes sense

      I don't know how else to put it !

      you really need to focus on the sleep and health, you are making absolutely zero progress in terms of what I am talking about so you might as well flag it !

      you made some progress when you escaped the orbit of the hardcore zen blog, but it stopped soon after that !

      why talk to me ? you don't agree with what I say ? !

      really at this point you are saying I am wrong so why keep telling me when we so profoundly disagree ?

      I don't think the dream was meaningful ! :o(

      lol I am liking emile cioran better the more I look, a deeply pessimistic man :o)(

      Delete
    13. What were the translations of Saadi you read?

      Delete
    14. just what I could find on the web

      http://mueller_ranges.tripod.com/links/book_list.html#sadi

      Delete
    15. I'm going to read your best of list (the sea-shell, ode to west wind, lorelei), and also read The Orchard and Gullistan by Saadi this Winter Break. I will also watch videos of Derrida!

      I will also slowly trudge through the Blue Cliff Record. I'll get back to you then with valuable stuff to ask.

      Delete
    16. if you don't enjoy it i'd skip the blue cliff record !

      in truth zen makes a lot more sense after you come to understand what it is all about rather than before because what we read is so distorted, mistranslated and misrecorded !

      when you understand it truly you are treated to the amazing spectacle of a whole religion operating like reddit zen, complete nutcases repeating voynich like it had (a?) real meaning !

      Delete
    17. Your sea shell hyperlink doesn't work. What was the translation you read?

      Delete
    18. This comment has been removed by the author.

      Delete
    19. Here are 3 random poems I wrote recently:

      Poem 1: "That moment of the Ungraspable"

      Do children see
      what I see?

      Children laugh and play,
      I chime and flay.

      My child is my own child,
      this possessiveness is only mild.

      "My" child in the wide-open field guffaws,
      how awful...
      this feeling of my dismay
      towards "that" child

      Poem 2: "The Dead Say They Can Love"

      The brain is in bloody brambles,
      This festering mouth rambles

      People speak of love,
      but when push comes to shove
      You are dead.

      In fierce competition without end,
      you hold the knife to this head,
      our love was always to a short end.

      In a city of madness,
      dogs look up to the cats' righteousness
      the squirrels wishing for an end,
      but they all forget we have always been dead.

      Poem 3: "I thought this was the Way?"

      Aching knees
      in pain
      in vain
      "Teacher is this truly the Way?"

      The knee crumbles,
      with angst he says,
      "It was the Way."

      What a shame that in May,
      his inept Way went away.

      Delete
    20. Sepehr Hakuin wrote you a poem and he said you should reply to it before reading the Blue Cliff Record:

      You can hear the sound of two hands when they
      clap together
      Now show me
      the sound of one hand

      Delete
    21. This comment has been removed by the author.

      Delete
    22. fixed the sea-shell link in the book list

      http://mueller_ranges.tripod.com/links/book_list.html

      Delete
    23. This comment has been removed by the author.

      Delete
    24. Alright, here's my plan from 12/19 to 1/13, an3drew:

      PHASE 1 - WEEK I

      I'm going to print & read these:
      1. Wang Wei
      http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Chinese/AllwaterWangWei.htm
      2. Gullistan by Saadi
      http://www.thesufi.com/sufi_ebooks/Shaykh_Saadi/
      I'm going to buy and read:
      3. Conference of the Birds by Attar
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Conference_of_the_Birds
      4. The Pleasures of the Damned: Poems, 1951-1993 - Charles Bukowski

      PHASE II - Week II

      Read:
      1. Keat's Ode on a Grecian Urn
      http://www.bartleby.com/101/625.html
      2. Mandelshtam's The Sea-Shell
      http://www.forpoetry.com/Archive/osip_mandelshtam.htm
      3. Sylvia Plath's Lorelei
      http://www.angelfire.com/tn/plath/lorelei.html
      4. Shelley's Ode to the West Wind
      http://www.bartleby.com/106/275.html
      5. Keats's Ode on a Grecian Urn
      http://www.bartleby.com/101/625.html

      I also read these books:
      1. Aleph from Collected Fictions by Borges (already own this)
      2. First and Last Freedom by J. Krishnamurti (already own this)

      -. spend three hours watching Derrida videos.

      Phase III
      I'm going to use all this time to read most of your poems, Andrew, and then write an essay in which I explain why poetic expression has more importance than turgid explanations of "non-duality". Why verbose explanations always become voyneuchy, and then I will write my own poetry.

      I will start my own blog and write analyses on poetry I read.

      ---

      Some of my favorite books/novellas I've read in the past was The Plague by Albert Camus, Death of Ivan Ilyich by Tolstoy, Teatro Grottesco by Thomas Ligotti, and etc. I've never really read any poetry besides a RA Nicholsan translation of Rumi. I've also read lots of Mahayana sutras and J. Krishnamurti.

      Delete
    25. This comment has been removed by the author.

      Delete
    26. the conference of the birds i found not really worthwhile reading tho there was something there :o)(

      Delete
    27. I suspect Sepehr G. is trolling ... what's up with that detailed plan?

      Delete
    28. 625. Ode on a Grecian Urn


      THOU still unravish'd bride of quietness,
      Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time,
      Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
      A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
      What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape 5
      Of deities or mortals, or of both,
      In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
      What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
      What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
      What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy? 10

      Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
      Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
      Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,
      Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
      Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave 15
      Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
      Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
      Though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve;
      She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
      For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair! 20

      Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
      Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
      And, happy melodist, unwearièd,
      For ever piping songs for ever new;
      More happy love! more happy, happy love! 25
      For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd,
      For ever panting, and for ever young;
      All breathing human passion far above,
      That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd,
      A burning forehead, and a parching tongue. 30

      Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
      To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
      Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
      And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
      What little town by river or sea-shore, 35
      Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
      Is emptied of its folk, this pious morn?
      And, little town, thy streets for evermore
      Will silent be; and not a soul, to tell
      Why thou art desolate, can e'er return. 40

      O Attic shape! fair attitude! with brede
      Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
      With forest branches and the trodden weed;
      Thou, silent form! dost tease us out of thought
      As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral! 45
      When old age shall this generation waste,
      Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
      Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
      'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
      Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'

      Delete

    29. Dream Song 14

      Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.
      After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns,
      we ourselves flash and yearn,
      and moreover my mother told me as a boy
      (repeatingly) "Ever to confess you're bored
      means you have no

      Inner Resources." I conclude now I have no
      inner resources, because I am heavy bored.
      Peoples bore me,
      literature bores me, especially great literature,
      Henry bores me, with his plights & gripes
      as bad as Achilles,

      who loves people and valiant art, which bores me.
      And the tranquil hills, & gin, look like a drag
      and somehow a dog
      has taken itself & its tail considerably away
      into the mountains or sea or sky, leaving
      behind: me, wag.

      Delete
  3. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  4. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  5. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete