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WBraun
climber
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Dec 20, 2014 - 09:31pm PT
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A sharp blow on the back with a bamboo rod would help.
You can't have one.
You haven't done the work yet ......
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Dec 20, 2014 - 10:05pm PT
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Nice posts MikeL
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Dec 20, 2014 - 11:14pm PT
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And yes, we do seem to be au courant in this thread with all the latest thought on these subjects.
Jan
Do you think America with its rights to individuality and free speech has made an impact on all the worlds religions?
One example, being catholic and needing to confess in a booth to a bishop. Or counting beads. I mean ALL these different ceremony's, what the heck? Can they really think my sins aren't absolved because I went to The Lord personally?
I believe the Spirit is crying for a wake up call..
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Psilocyborg
climber
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Dec 21, 2014 - 01:53am PT
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A mushroom isn't a pill, it's a living thing. It isn't American like Apple pie, more American like the Sierra.
I can assure you there is much magic within the tryptamines that has been produced by a natural chem lab within the mushroom. An alkaloid perfectly built to bind to receptors in our brains. Our brains are a bridge between the material and immaterial, and psychedelics are a vehicle to travel there without decades of sitting. It is a gift from the gods.
Again it doesn't matter. What matters is the act you are putting on right now. Sitting and or tripping is a waste of time. The important thing is what are you doing with your life right now. We know what to do without sitting or tripping. Chop wood, carry water.
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Dec 21, 2014 - 07:44am PT
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Jan: “. . . au courant . . . “
God, I love it when you talk dirty, Jan.
Gomez: Look at her. I would die for her. I would kill for her. Either way, what bliss.
Gomez: [Morticia wakes up] Unhappy, darling?
Morticia: Oh, yes. Yes completely.
[Gomez sits]
Morticia: Gomez... Sun. Il me perce comme un poignard.
Gomez: Oh, Tish. That's French.
Morticia: Oui.
Gomez: Cara mia.
[kisses Morticia's hand]
Gomez: En garde, Monsieur Soleil!
Morticia: Gomez...
Gomez: Querida?
Morticia: Last night, you were unhinged. You were like some desperate howling demon. You frightened me. Do it again.
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Dec 21, 2014 - 07:49am PT
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Randisi: You don't seem to understand the meaning of either term.
Over-intellectualizing often shows up as an argument about the meanings of terms. Surely disciplinary knowledge is a language game, but more probably gets done by paying attention to the object of conversation, the thing being pointed at, rather than the specific words. I do understand that words is all we have. Conversation is a tricky thing.
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WBraun
climber
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Dec 21, 2014 - 07:53am PT
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psychedelics are a vehicle to travel there
On psychedelics you can travel all over the place in the subtle material realm.
But there's nothing spiritual about it what so ever .......
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Dec 21, 2014 - 08:02am PT
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MikeL:
what’s with the incessant focus on “no-thingness,” John?
An apt question for Largo. Mike has been with the discussion long enough to know that it is not jgill who is obsessed with no-thing.
Over the past few years on SuperTopo Largo has laid down a long trail of words round and round the mulberry bush. Here is the basic message:
For people who have done the work, that the mind is fundamentally "empty" is as obvious as "the sky is blue."
Somewhat at odds with that statement:
Being INSIDE no-mind does not render a better evaluation than we can get from the outside. It does not render an evaluation at all
No matter. Zen is indifferent to logic.
We're all wrong about stuff all the time.
The honest truth is:
Any commentary derived from the outside of meditation itself [is] of little value to anyone
but he is in the mode of, "Do as I say, not as I do."
A strange compulsion which Werner has suggested may be motivated by compassion.
Taking the long view, even the limited rational/discursive mind has been with no-thing in the 13 billion years of being un-born and will return to it in the near future.
All statements in italic are posts by Largo from November 2013.
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WBraun
climber
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Dec 21, 2014 - 09:29am PT
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"Billions of unthinking neurons can create the human brain."
Nope ....
There first has to be a Master brain to start the process ......
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PSP also PP
Trad climber
Berkeley
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Dec 21, 2014 - 09:42am PT
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The awkwardness of no-thingness. LOL
From my understanding and meditation experience "No-thingness" is mind before thinking and or mind not attached to thinking or sensation ( a non-biased observer).
This non-biased observing mind is a revolutionary POV IMO. I am thinking a POV is what is coming from your experience (in real time). Most POV's come from I am here and everything else is there. Where the problem comes is when we try to define and analyze "no-thingness " from that POV (it is trying to put the square peg in the round hole).
The beauty of the mushrooms is they let you have a glimpse of the no-thingness which is impossible from the attachment to stuff POV.
But it is only a glimpse; but what a wonderful one.
If you want a longer lasting view you just have to let go of your attachment to I,my me is the zen and christian promise (zen and xmas with the same POV can't believe I said it but in retrospect i'm thinking that was probably T. Merton's view.
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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Dec 21, 2014 - 11:25am PT
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Skeptimistic
Mountain climber
La Mancha
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Dec 21, 2014 - 11:27am PT
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Nope ....
There first has to be a Master brain to start the process ......
Prove it. And actually offer up at least one concrete, irrefutable shred of evidence, not just your usual stupid quacking about how obvious it all is. I'm all ears & eyes if you can.
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rlf
Trad climber
Josh, CA
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Dec 21, 2014 - 11:31am PT
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Would someone please delete this steaming pile of sh#t?
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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Dec 21, 2014 - 11:35am PT
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More merry-can logic:
If the first mover were a real masterbrain everything in this world is perfect, and since there's a lot of suffering in this world and everything is made to bleed, bleeding and suffering is perfect and there's no need for nirvana, just accept suffering and bleeding as perfect. Vote Republican...
Yer gonna die...
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PSP also PP
Trad climber
Berkeley
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Dec 21, 2014 - 12:01pm PT
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Interesting stuff I found on Merton.
Merton believed that contemplative mysticism is the key to Christian unity. He said, “If I can unite in myself the thought and the devotion of Eastern and Western Christendom, the Greek and the Latin Fathers, the Russian with the Spanish mystics, I can prepare in myself the reunion of divided Christians” (Living with Wisdom, p. 129).
From the mystical idolatry of the Roman Catholic variety, it is not a great leap to mystical idolatry of the pagan variety, and Merton made that leap in a big way. He was “a strong builder of bridges between East and West” (Twentieth-Century Mystics, p. 39).
It was a Hindu monk named Bramachari who originally encouraged Merton to pursue the “Christian mystical tradition.” This was before Merton even converted to Catholicism. Bramachari said to Merton: “There are many beautiful mystical books written by the Christians. You should read St. Augustine’s Confessions, and The Imitation of Christ. ... Yes, you must read those books” (The Seven Storey Mountain, pp. 216, 217). Ray Yungen observes, “Bramachari understood that Merton didn’t need to switch to Hinduism to get the same enlightenment that he himself experienced through the Hindu mystical tradition” (A Time of Departing, p. 199).
Merton was also influenced by Aldous Huxley, who found enlightenment through hallucinogenic drugs and was one of the first Westerners to promote Buddhism. Henri Nouwen said that Huxley brought Merton “to a deeper level of knowledge” and was his first contact with mysticism (Thomas Merton: Contemplative Critic, 1991, pp. 19, 20).
“He had read widely and deeply and intelligently in all kinds of Christian and Oriental mystical literature, and had come out with the astonishing truth that all this, far from being a mixture of dreams and magic and charlatanism, was very real and very serious” (Nouwen, Thomas Merton, p. 20).
Alan Altany observes:
“The pre-Christian Merton had come across Aldous Huxley’s book on mysticism, Ends and Means, which sowed an attraction for not only mysticism in general, but for apophatic mysticism--meaning a knowledge of God obtained by negation--that would enable him to later relate to Buddhist teachings about the Void and Emptiness” (“The Thomas Merton Connection,” Fall 2000, http://www.thomasmertonsociety.org/altany2.htm);.
Huxley was Merton’s introduction into Buddhism, a religion that he pursued extensively during his years at Gethsemani beginning in about 1952. Merton studied the teachings of Zen master D.T. Suzuki and Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh.
After meeting Thich Nhat Hanh, Merton said, “... he and I see things in exactly the same way” (Faith and Violence, quoted in Living with Wisdom, p. 215). When Merton wrote to D.T. Suzuki in 1959, he said, “Time after time, as I read your pages, something in me says, ‘That’s it!’ ... So there it is, in all its beautiful purposelessness” (Living with Wisdom, p. 213).
Merton also studied mystical Islamic Sufism. He said, “I’m deeply impregnated with Sufism” (Rob Baker and Gray Henry, Merton and Sufism, 1999, p. 109).
Sufis “chant the name of Allah as a mantra, go into meditative trances and experience God in everything” (Yungen, p. 59). They seek to achieve “fana,” which is “the act of merging with the Divine Oneness.” Some Sufis use dance and music to attain mystical union with God. I observed the “whirling dervish” ritual in Istanbul in April 2008. As they whirl in a trance-like state to the music, the Sufi mystics raise the palm of one hand to heaven and the other to the earth, to channel the mystical experience.
The Yoga Journal makes the following observation:
“Merton had encountered Zen Buddhism, Sufism, Taoism and Vedanta many years prior to his Asian journey. MERTON WAS ABLE TO UNCOVER THE STREAM WHERE THE WISDOM OF EAST AND WEST MERGE AND FLOW TOGETHER, BEYOND DOGMA, IN THE DEPTHS OF INNER EXPERIENCE. ... Merton embraced the spiritual philosophies of the East and integrated this wisdom into (his) own life through direct practice” (Yoga Journal, Jan.-Feb. 1999, quoted from the Lighthouse Trails web site).
Eventually Merton claimed to be both a Buddhist and a Christian. The titles of his books included Zen and the Birds of the Appetite, The Way of Chuang Tzu, and Mystics and the Zen Masters.
Merton also said that he was both a Buddhist and a Hindu:
“I see no contradiction between Buddhism and Christianity. The future of Zen is in the West. I INTEND TO BECOME AS GOOD A BUDDHIST AS I CAN” (David Steindl-Rast, “Recollection of Thomas Merton’s Last Days in the West,” Monastic Studies, 7:10, 1969, http://www.gratefulness.org/readings/dsr_merton_recol2.htm, this report contains quotations from Merton’s talks at the Our Lady of the Redwoods Abbey in Whitethorn, California, in late 1968 on his way to Asia where he died).
“You have to see your will and God’s will dualistically for a long time. You have to experience duality for a long time until you see it’s not there. IN THIS RESPECT I AM A HINDU [here he was saying that he believed in Hindu monism rather than Christian dualism; that God is all and all is God]. Ramakrishna has the solution. ... Openness is all” (“Recollection of Thomas Merton’s Last Days in the West,” Monastic Studies, 7:10, 1969, http://www.gratefulness.org/readings/dsr_merton_recol2.htm);.
“Asia, Zen, Islam, etc., all these things come together in my life. It would be madness for me to attempt to create a monastic life for myself by excluding all these” (quoted by Rob Baker and Gray Henry, Merton and Sufism, p. 41).
“I believe that by openness to Buddhism, to Hinduism, and to these great Asian traditions, we stand a wonderful chance of learning more about the potentiality of our own Christian traditions” (quoted by William Shannon, Silent Lamp, 1992, p. 276).
“I think I couldn’t understand Christian teaching the way I do if it were not in the light of Buddhism” (Frank Tuoti, The Dawn of the Mystical Age, 1997, p. 127).
(On a visit to the Abbey of Gethsemani’s bookstore in June 2009, I saw many books on display that promote interfaith unity. These include Zen Keys by Thich Nhat Hanh, Bhagavad Gita (Hindu scriptures), Buddhists Talk about Jesus and Christians Talk about Buddha, Meeting Islam: A Guide for Christians, and Jesus in the World’s Faiths.)
Merton defined mysticism as an experience with God beyond words. In a speech to monks of eastern religions in Calcutta in October 1968, he said:
“... the deepest level of communication is not communication, but communion. IT IS WORDLESS. IT IS BEYOND WORDS, AND IT IS BEYOND SPEECH, and it is BEYOND CONCEPT” (“Thomas Merton’s View of Monasticism,” a talk delivered at Calcutta, October 1978, The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton, Appendix III, 1975 edition, p. 308).
Of Chuang Tzu (also called Zhuang Tze), a Chinese sage and one of the authors of Taoist principles, Merton said, “Chuang Tzu is not CONCERNED WITH WORDS AND FORMULAS about reality, but with the direct existential grasp of reality in itself” (Merton, The Way of Chuang Tzu, pp. 10-11). Merton called Chuang Tzu “my kind of person.”
http://www.wayoflife.org/database/thomasmerton.html
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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Dec 21, 2014 - 01:10pm PT
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Words, words, words.
Interesting how a couple of French words can carry meaning that English doesn't and symbolize all kinds of different things to different people.
How that reminded blue of Catholicism and the impact of American individualism on the world, I'm not sure. Americans didn't invent Catholicism so perhaps that's why many don't understand the deeper meaning behind confession and rosaries, both of which are just aids to get to a higher plane, just as blue uses his Bible to get to a higher plane, a point which PSP caught and which the Buddhists call skillful means.
I have long been a fan of Thomas Merton, who encountered Tibetan Buddhism and Buddhists in India shortly before his death and found them to be the most profound group he'd met, while they said that he was the first Christian that they considered an equal.
An equally profound person who is the only western religious leader who has ever really understood Hinduism and beautifully captures that spirit in his writings, is a Catholic monk named Bede Griffiths, who spent most of his life in south India,wearing the orange robes of a sadhu and creating a Christian yet ecumenical retreat center there. I visited some years ago and noted the cross of Saint Francis next to a chart of the chakras, depictions of Mary in a sari with a red tika mark and Jesus sitting on a lotus. Needless to say, it was my kind of place.
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WBraun
climber
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Dec 21, 2014 - 02:02pm PT
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Yes Jesus Christ is saktyavesa avatar, nitya siddha, ever liberated soul.
The foolish envious rascals thought they could kill him.
Stoopid fools don't have a clue that it's impossible to kill a saktyavesa avatar.
Gods illusionary energy fools them into thinking Jesus Christ was killed.
The foolish gross materialists under the spell of mayadevi think everyone is just like them.
The Christians are always waiting for Jesus Christ to return.
Due to poor fund of knowledge they do not understand that Christ and his teachings are non different, one and the same.
Thus Jesus Christ has never left .......
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Skeptimistic
Mountain climber
La Mancha
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Dec 21, 2014 - 03:00pm PT
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Yep, just as I expected. Quack, quack, quack...
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