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An amazing experience. Simply the BEST way to see the Great Wall

bjland3 — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 01:45:01 +0000

On Oct. 23, 2010, both myself and my husband took this great tour to Great Wall Tourof China (near Huang Hua Shang or Shengtengyu). Fortunately for us, we were the only two booked that day, so we felt somewhat spoiled! Andre and another Chinese driver took us on two separate bikes. Both were great drivers and we felt very safe on their old vintage sidecars. We first visited an amazing French castle, then a visit to the Silver Pagodas, meandered through the Chinese countryside and then finally got to the Great Wall, an area of the wall free from tourist crowds. Andre (our guide) provided us with a great insight into China and Beijing. We had wonderful conversations about his homeland of Romania and his new adopted home of Ireland where he will return in the next year. We think he will struggle giving us his wonderful job in Beijing all the same! When we hiked to the top, we stopped for a lunch break where Andre provided us with a wonderful yummy lunch! It included breads, salads, hummus, cheeses, meats, and a lovely bottle of wine. We must have spent over an hour and half enjoying the view, the meal and great talks. The walk down the other side of the Great Wall was a bit more challenging because of its steepness. It had a wonderful view of the lake and village below. Upon return to our parking spot, one of the bikes encountered a flat tire and couldn't be fixed before nightfall. Andre ensured we got back to Beijing on the one bike but he carefully drove and it was another different experience with the three of us on the one bike. Upon return to Beijing, he stopped to show us the Olympic Stadium and Olympic Cube (Pool) which were amazing at night and then a drive down Ghost St. During the entire day, Andre never rushed us when we wanted to stop for photos or take in the sites. The day was ours from start to finish! When one is planning this tour, they may think it is very expensive, but for us, it will always be a "highlight" of our visit to Beijing and to China. Thanks to Gael for his patience and all his emails in organizing this tour for us and especially to Andre for being a wonderful, knowledgeble and enthusiastic guide. We had a great time!

The views from numerous points on this portion of the Great Wall tour was breathtaking. The only caution I would add is you need to be in shape as the climb will get you if not. I enthusiastically recommend James. A great coversationalists and a fun time was had.

with this dependent blogger's advice

hvis4597cy — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 03:00:57 +0000

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The Art of Listening

Tantra Spirituality — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 00:10:58 +0000

1933, The Art of Listening
1st Public Talk. Alpino, Italy; 1st July, 1933
Friends, I should like you to make a living discovery, not a discovery induced by the description of others. If someone, for instance, had told you about the scenery here, you would come with your minds prepared by that description, and then perhaps you would be disappointed by the reality. No one can describe reality. You must experience it, see it, feel the whole atmosphere of it. When you see its beauty and loveliness, you experience a renewing, a quickening of joy.

Most people who think that they are seeking truth have already prepared their minds for its reception by studying descriptions of what they are seeking. When you examine religions and philosophies, you find that they have all tried to describe reality; they have tried to describe truth for your guidance.

Now I am not going to try to describe what to me is truth, for that would be an impossible attempt. One cannot describe or give to another the fullness of an experience. Each one must live it for himself.

Like most people, you have read, listened and imitated; you have tried to find out what others have said concerning truth and God, concerning life and immortality. So you have a picture in your mind, and now you want to compare that picture with what I am going to say. That is, your mind is seeking merely descriptions; you do not try to find out anew, but only try to compare. But since I shall not try to describe truth, for it cannot be described, naturally there will be confusion in your mind.

When you hold before yourself a picture that you are trying to copy, an ideal that you are trying to follow, you can never face an experience fully; you are never frank, never truthful as regards yourself and your own actions; you are always protecting yourself with an ideal. If you really probe into your own mind and heart, you will discover that you come here to get something new; a new idea, a new sensation, a new explanation of life, in order that you may mould your own life according to that. Therefore you are really searching for a satisfactory explanation. You have not come with an attitude of freshness, so that by your own perception, your own intensity, you may discover the joy of natural and spontaneous action. Most of you are merely seeking a descriptive explanation of truth, thinking that if you can find out what truth is, you can then mould your lives according to that eternal light.

If that be the motive of your search, then it is not a search for truth. It is rather for consolation, for comfort; it is but an attempt to escape the innumerable conflicts and struggles that you must face every day.

Out of suffering is born the urge to seek truth; in suffering lies the cause of the insistent inquiry, the search for truth. Yet when you suffer - as every one does suffer - you seek an immediate remedy and comfort. When you feel momentary physical pain, you obtain a palliative at the nearest drug store to lessen your suffering. So also, when you experience momentary mental or emotional anguish, you seek consolation, and you imagine that trying to find relief from pain is the search for truth. In that way you are continually seeking a compensation for your pains, a compensation for the effort you are thus forced to make. You evade the main cause of suffering and thereby live an illusory life.

So those people who are always proclaiming that they are searching for truth are in reality missing it. They have found their lives to be insufficient, incomplete, lacking in love, and think that by trying to seek truth they will find satisfaction and comfort. If you frankly say to yourself that you are seeking only consolation and compensation for the difficulties of life, you will be able to grapple with the problem intelligently. But as long as you pretend to yourself that you are seeking something more than mere compensation, you cannot see the matter clearly. The first thing to find out, then, is whether you are really seeking, fundamentally seeking truth.

A man who is seeking truth is not a disciple of truth. Suppose that you say to me, "I have had no love in my life; it has been a poor life, a life of continuous pain; therefore, in order to gain comfort, I seek truth." Then I must point out that your search for comfort is an utter delusion. There is no such thing in life as comfort and security. The first thing to understand is that you must be absolutely frank.

But you yourself are not certain what you really want: you want comfort, consolation, compensation, and yet, at the same time, you want something that is infinitely greater than compensation and comfort. You are so confused in your own mind that one moment you look to an authority who offers you compensation and comfort, and the next moment you turn to another who denies you comfort. So your life becomes a refined hypocritical existence, a life of confusion. Try to find out what you really think; do not pretend to think what you believe you ought to think; then, if you are conscious, fully alive in what you are doing, you will know for yourself, without self-analysis, what you really desire. If you are fully responsible in your acts, you will then know without self-analysis what you are really seeking. This process of finding out does not necessitate great will power, great strength, but only the interest to discover what you think, to discover whether you are really honest or living in illusion.

In talking to groups of listeners all over the world, I find that more and more people seem not to understand what I am saying, because they come with fixed ideas; they listen with their biased attitude, without trying to find out what I have to say, but only expecting to find what they secretly desire. It is vain to say, "Here is a new ideal after which I must mould myself." Rather find out what you really feel and think.

How can you find out what you really feel and think? From my point of view, you can do that only by being aware of your whole life. Then you will discover to what extent you are a slave to your ideals, and by discovering that, you will see that you have created ideals merely for your consolation.

Where there is duality, where there are opposites, there must be the consciousness of incompleteness. The mind is caught up in opposites, such as punishment and reward, good and bad, past and future, gain and loss. Thought is caught up in this duality, and therefore there is incompleteness in action. This incompleteness creates suffering, the conflict of choice, effort and authority, and the escape from the unessential to the essential.

When you feel that you are incomplete, you feel empty, and from that feeling of emptiness arises suffering; out of that incompleteness you create standards, ideals, to sustain you in your emptiness, and you establish these standards and ideals as your external authority. What is the inner cause of the external authority that you create for yourself? First, you feel incomplete, and you suffer from that incompleteness. As long as you do not understand the cause of authority, you are but an imitative machine, and where there is imitation there cannot be the rich fulfillment of life. To understand the cause of authority you must follow the mental and emotional process which creates it. First of all, you feel empty, and in order to get rid of that feeling you make an effort; by that effort you only create opposites; you create a duality which but increases the incompleteness and the emptiness. You are responsible for such external authorities as religion, politics, morality, for such authorities as economic and social standards. Out of your emptiness, out of your incompleteness, you have created these external standards from which you now try to free yourself. By evolving, by developing, by growing away from them you want to create an inner law for yourself. As you come to understand external standards, you want to liberate yourself from them, and to develop your own inner standard. This inner standard, which you call "spiritual reality", you identify with a cosmic law, which means that you create but another division, another duality.

So you first create an external law, and then you seek to outgrow it by developing an inner law, which you identify with the universe, with the whole. That is what is happening. You are still conscious of your limited egotism, which you now identify with a great illusion, calling it cosmic. So when you say, "I am obeying my inner law", you are but using an expression to cover your desire to escape. To me, the man who is bound either by an external or an inner law is confined in a prison; he is held by an illusion. Therefore such a man cannot understand spontaneous, natural, healthy action.

Now why do you create inner laws for yourself? Is it not because the struggle in everyday life is so great, so inharmonious, that you want to escape from it and to create an inner law which shall become your comfort? And you become a slave to that inner authority, that inner standard, because you have rejected only the outward picture, and have created in its place an inner picture to which you are a slave.

By this method you will not attain true discernment, and discernment is quite other than choice. Choice must exist where there is duality. When the mind is incomplete and is conscious of that incompleteness, it tries to escape from it and therefore creates an opposite to that incompleteness. That opposite can be either an external or an inner standard, and when one has established such a standard, he judges every action, every experience by that standard, and therefore lives in a continual state of choice. Choice is born only of resistance. If there is discernment, there is no effort.

So to me this whole conception of making an effort toward truth, toward reality, this idea of making a sustained endeavour, is utterly false. As long as you are incomplete you will experience suffering, and hence you will be engaged in choice, in effort, in the ceaseless struggle for what you call"spiritual attainment." So I say, when mind is caught up in authority, it cannot have true understanding, true thought. And since the minds of most of you are caught up in authority - which is but an escape from understanding, from discernment - you cannot face the experience of life completely. Therefore you live a dual life, a life of pretence, of hypocrisy, a life in which there is no moment of completeness.

Jiddu Krishnamurti in English
1933, The Art of Listening
1st Public Talk. Alpino, Italy; 1st July, 1933

Jiddu Krishnamurti - Our problems arise because we are conditioned

Tantra Spirituality — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 23:57:50 +0000

Jiddu Krishnamurti - Our problems arise because we are conditioned
Question: Do you have a technique which I can learn from you, so that I, too, can carry your message to those who are full of sorrow?

Jiddu Krishnamurti : Sir, what do you mean by carrying a message? Do you mean repeating the words - propaganda? The very nature of propaganda is to condition the mind. Every form of propaganda - the Communist propaganda, the religious propaganda, and so on - is to condition the mind, is it not? If you learn a technique as you call it, a way, and you learn it by heart and repeat it, you will be a good propagandist; if you are keen, clever, if you are capable of using words, you will condition those that hear you in a new way instead of the old way, but it is still conditioning; it is still limited. And that is our problem, is it not?

Our problems arise because we are conditioned. Our education conditions us. Is it possible for the mind ever to be free from conditioning? You can only discover that state. You cannot say whether it is possible or not possible. When you ask, "Have you a technique?" what do you mean? Perhaps you mean a method, a system, which you learn like a schoolboy and repeat it. Sir, surely the problem is something much more fundamental, radically different, is it not? There is no technique to learn. You do not have to carry my message, what you carry is your message, not mine, sirs.

This existence, this misery, this confusion is your problem. If you understand it, if you can understand the experience of a conditioned mind and go beyond, then you will be the person who is teaching; then there will be no teacher and no disciple. But then, you have to understand yourself, not learn my technique or carry my message.

Sir, what is important is to understand that this is our world, that together we can build this world happily, that we - you and I - are related together, that what you do and what I do inwardly matters, that how we think is important, and that thought, which is always conditioned, will not solve our problem. What will solve our problem is to understand the ways of our thinking.

The moment we understand how we think, there will be a radical change inwardly; we will no longer be Hindus, Christians, Communists, socialists, or capitalists; we shall be human beings, human beings with passion, with love, with consideration. That cannot come about by merely learning a technique or carrying somebody's message.

You cannot have love through technique. You can have sensation through a technique, but that is not love. Love is something that cannot be told, that cannot be carried across through newspapers or through techniques or through propaganda. It must be felt, it must be understood. But if you repeat love, love, love, it has no meaning. You will know of that love when the mind is quiet, when the mind is free from its conditioning, from its anxieties, from its fears. And it is that love which is the true revolution that will alter the whole process of our being.

Source - Jiddu Krishnamurti, First Talk in Bombay 1953

Freedom From the Known Chapter 15

Tantra Spirituality — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 23:12:36 +0000

Freedom From the Known
Freedom From the Known Chapter 15
WE ALL WANT experiences of some kind - the mystical experience, the religious experience, the sexual experience, the experience of having a great deal of money, power, position, domination. As we grow older we may have finished with the demands of our physical appetites but then we demand wider, deeper and more significant experiences, and we try various means to obtain them - expanding our consciousness, for instance, which is quite an art, or taking various kinds of drugs. This is an old trick which has existed from time immemorial - chewing a piece of leaf or experimenting with the latest chemical to bring about a temporary alteration in the structure of the brain cells, a greater sensitivity and heightened perception which give a semblance of reality. This demand for more and more experiences shows the inward poverty of man. We think that through experiences we can escape from ourselves but these experiences are conditioned by what we are. If the mind is petty, jealous, anxious, it may take the very latest form of drug but it will still see only its own little creation, its own little projections from its own conditioned background.

Most of us demand completely satisfying, lasting experiences which cannot be destroyed by thought. So behind this demand for experience is the desire for satisfaction, and the demand for satisfaction dictates the experience, and therefore we have not only to understand this whole business of satisfaction but also the thing that is experienced. To have some great satisfaction is a great pleasure; the more lasting, deep and wide the experience the more pleasurable it is, so pleasure dictates the form of experience we demand, and pleasure is the measure by which we measure the experience. Anything measurable is within the limits of thought and is apt to create illusion. You can have marvellous experiences and yet be completely deluded. You will inevitably see visions according to your conditioning; you will see Christ or Buddha or whoever you happen to believe in, and the greater a believer you are the stronger will be your visions, the projections of your own demands and urges.

So if in seeking something fundamental, such as what is truth, pleasure is the measure, you have already projected what that experience will be and therefore it is no longer valid.

What do we mean by experience? Is there anything new or original in experience? Experience is a bundle of memories responding to a challenge and it can respond only according to its background, and the cleverer you are at interpreting the experience the more it responds. So you have to question not only the experience of another but your own experience. If you don't recognize an experience it isn't an experience at all. Every experience has already been experienced or you wouldn't recognize it. You recognize an experience as being good, bad, beautiful, holy and so on according to your conditioning, and therefore the recognition of an experience must inevitably be old.

When we demand an experience of reality - as we all do, don't we? - to experience it we must know it and the moment we recognise it we have already projected it and therefore it is not real because it is still within the field of thought and time. If thought can think about reality it cannot be reality. We cannot recognize a new experience. It is impossible. We recognize only something we have already known and therefore when we say we have had a new experience it is not new at all. To seek further experience through expansion of consciousness, as is being done through various psychedelic drugs, is still within the field of consciousness and therefore very limited.

So we have discovered a fundamental truth, which is that a mind that is seeking, craving, for wider and deeper experience is a very shallow and dull mind because it lives always with its memories.

Now if we didn't have any experience at all, what would happen to us? We depend on experiences, on challenges, to keep us awake. If there were no conflicts within ourselves, no changes, no disturbances, we would all be fast asleep. So challenges are necessary for most of us; we think that without them our minds will become stupid and heavy, and therefore we depend on a challenge, an experience, to give us more excitement, more intensity, to make our minds sharper. But in fact this dependence on challenges and experiences to keep us awake, only makes our minds duller - It doesn't really keep us awake at all. So I ask myself, is it possible to keep awake totally, not peripherally at a few points of my being, but totally awake without any challenge or any experience? This implies a great sensitivity, both physical and psychological; it means I have to be free of all demands, for the moment I demand I will experience. And to be free of demand and satisfaction necessitates investigation into myself and an understanding of the whole nature of demand.

Demand is born out of duality: `I am unhappy and I must be happy'. In that very demand that I must be happy is unhappiness. When one makes an effort to be good, in that very goodness is its opposite, evil. Everything affirmed contains its own opposite, and effort to overcome strengthens that against which it strives. When you demand an experience of truth or reality, that very demand is born out of your discontent with what is, and therefore the demand creates the opposite. And in the opposite there is what has been. So one must be free of this incessant demand, otherwise there will be no end to the corridor of duality. This means knowing yourself so completely that the mind is no longer seeking.

Such a mind does not demand experience; it cannot ask for a challenge or know a challenge; it does not say, `I am asleep' or `I am awake'. It is completely what it is. Only the frustrated, narrow, shallow mind, the conditioned mind, is always seeking the more. Is it possible then to live in this world without the more - without this everlasting comparison? Surely it is? But one has to find out for oneself.

Investigation into this whole question is meditation. That word had been used both in the East and the West in a most unfortunate way. There are different schools of meditation, different methods and systems. There are systems which say, `Watch the movement of your big toe, watch it, watch it, watch it; there are other systems which advocate sitting in a certain posture, breathing regularly or practising awareness. All this is utterly mechanical. The other method gives you a certain word and tells you that if you go on repeating it you will have some extraordinary transcendental experience. This is sheer nonsense. It is a form of self-hypnosis. By repeating Amen or Om or Coca-Cola indefinitely you will obviously have-a certain experience because by repeti- tion the mind becomes quiet. It is a well known phenomenon which has been practised for thousands of years in India - Mantra Yoga it is called. By repetition you can induce the mind to be gentle and soft but it is still a petty, shoddy, little mind. You might as well put a piece of stick you have picked up in the garden on the mantelpiece and give it a flower every day. In a month you will be worshipping it and not to put a flower in front of it will become a sin.

Meditation is not following any system; it is not constant repetition and imitation. Meditation is not concentration. It is one of the favourite gambits of some teachers of meditation to insist on their pupils learning concentration - that is, fixing the mind on one thought and driving out all other thoughts. This is a most stupid, ugly thing, which any schoolboy can do because he is forced to. It means that all the time you are having a battle between the insistence that you must concentrate on the one hand and your mind on the other which wanders away to all sorts of other things, whereas you should be attentive to every movement of the mind wherever it wanders. When your mind wanders off it means you are interested in something else.

Meditation demands an astonishingly alert mind; meditation is the understanding of the totality of life in which every form of fragmentation has ceased. Meditation is not control of thought, for when thought is controlled it breeds conflict in the mind, but when you understand the structure and origin of thought, which we have already been into, then thought will not interfere. That very understanding of the structure of thinking is its own discipline which is meditation.

Meditation is to be aware of every thought and of every feeling, never to say it is right or wrong but just to watch it and move with it. In that watching you begin to understand the whole movement of thought and feeling. And out of this awareness comes silence. Silence put together by thought is stagnation, is dead, but the silence that comes when thought has understood its own beginning, the nature of itself, understood how all thought is never free but always old - this silence is meditation in which the meditator is entirely absent, for the mind has emptied itself of the past.

If you have read this book for a whole hour attentively, that is meditation. If you have merely taken away a few words and gathered a few ideas to think about later, then it is no longer meditation. Meditation is a state of mind which looks at everything with complete attention, totally, not just parts of it. And no one can teach you how to be attentive. If any system teaches you how to be attentive, then you are attentive to the system and that is not attention. Meditation is one of the greatest arts in life - perhaps the greatest, and one cannot possibly learn it from anybody, that is the beauty of it. It has no technique and therefore no authority. When you learn about yourself, watch yourself, watch the way you walk, how you eat, what you say, the gossip, the hate, the jealousy - if you are aware of all that in yourself, without any choice, that is part of meditation.

So meditation can take place when you are sitting in a bus or walking in the woods full of light and shadows, or listening to the singing of birds or looking at the face of your wife or child.

In the understanding of meditation there is love, and love is not the product of systems, of habits, of following a method. Love cannot be cultivated by thought. Love can perhaps come into being when there is complete silence, a silence in which the mediator is entirely absent; and the mind can be silent only when it understands its own movement as thought and feeling. To understand this movement of thought and feeling there can be no condemnation in observing it. To observe in such a way is the discipline, and that kind of discipline is fluid, free, not the discipline of conformity.

Jiddu Krishnamurti
Freedom From the Known

Sleep and Dreams

Tantra Spirituality — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 23:00:33 +0000

Sleep and Dreams

K'S TEACHINGS:

The psychologists, the fashionable ones and the well established ones, say that you must dream otherwise something is wrong with you. We have never asked ourselves why we dream at all. We have never asked ourselves whether we can give the mind complete rest, not only at those moments when we are alone in solitude with ourselves, but also when we are asleep-but to have complete rest, without any dreams, without any conflict, without any problems. In that state the mind can renew itself, can become fresh, young, innocent. But if the mind is all the time tortured by problems, by conflict, by innumerable contradictory desires, then dreams are inevitable...

Because if you are really awake during the day, watching every thought, every feeling, every movement of the mind, your angers, your bitterness, your envies, your hates, your jealousies, watching your reactions when you are flattered, when you are insulted, when you are neglected, when you feel lonely, watching all that, and the trees, the movement of the water, being greatly aware of everything outside you, inwardly, then the whole of the unconsciousness, as well as the conscious, is opened up. You don't have to wait for the night to sleep, to have the intimations of the unconscious. Then, if you do this, watch your mind in operation, your feelings, your heart, your reactions-that is, if you know yourself as you are in your relationships with the outer and with your own feelings-then you will see that when you go to sleep there is no dreaming at all. Then the mind becomes an extraordinary instrument which is always renewing itself-because there is no conflict at all, it is always fresh.

-Pg 45-47 (July 67 Saanen)
Talks and Dialogues J. Krishnamurti

this whole question is meditation.

Admin — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 21:17:50 +0000

Investigation into this whole question is meditation. That word had been used both in the East and the West in a most unfortunate way. There are different schools of meditation, different methods and systems. There are systems which say, `Watch the movement of your big toe, watch it, watch it, watch it; there are other systems which advocate sitting in a certain posture, breathing regularly or practising awareness. All this is utterly mechanical. The other method gives you a certain word and tells you that if you go on repeating it you will have some extraordinary transcendental experience. This is sheer nonsense. It is a form of self-hypnosis. By repeating Amen or Om or Coca-Cola indefinitely you will obviously have-a certain experience because by repeti- tion the mind becomes quiet. It is a well known phenomenon which has been practised for thousands of years in India - Mantra Yoga it is called. By repetition you can induce the mind to be gentle and soft but it is still a petty, shoddy, little mind. You might as well put a piece of stick you have picked up in the garden on the mantelpiece and give it a flower every day. In a month you will be worshipping it and not to put a flower in front of it will become a sin.

Meditation is not following any system; it is not constant repetition and imitation. Meditation is not concentration. It is one of the favourite gambits of some teachers of meditation to insist on their pupils learning concentration - that is, fixing the mind on one thought and driving out all other thoughts. This is a most stupid, ugly thing, which any schoolboy can do because he is forced to. It means that all the time you are having a battle between the insistence that you must concentrate on the one hand and your mind on the other which wanders away to all sorts of other things, whereas you should be attentive to every movement of the mind wherever it wanders. When your mind wanders off it means you are interested in something else.

Meditation demands an astonishingly alert mind; meditation is the understanding of the totality of life in which every form of fragmentation has ceased. Meditation is not control of thought, for when thought is controlled it breeds conflict in the mind, but when you understand the structure and origin of thought, which we have already been into, then thought will not interfere. That very understanding of the structure of thinking is its own discipline which is meditation.

Meditation is to be aware of every thought and of every feeling, never to say it is right or wrong but just to watch it and move with it. In that watching you begin to understand the whole movement of thought and feeling. And out of this awareness comes silence. Silence put together by thought is stagnation, is dead, but the silence that comes when thought has understood its own beginning, the nature of itself, understood how all thought is never free but always old - this silence is meditation in which the meditator is entirely absent, for the mind has emptied itself of the past.

Wall Photos

Meditation is a state of mind which looks at everything with complete attention,... totally, not just parts of it. And no one can teach you how to be attentive. If any system teaches you how to be attentive, then you are attentive to the system and that is not attention. Meditation is one of the greatest arts in life - perhaps the greatest, and one cannot possibly learn it from anybody, that is the beauty of it. It has no technique and therefore no authority. When you learn about yourself, watch yourself, watch the way you walk, how you eat, what you say, the gossip, the hate, the jealousy - if you are aware of all that in yourself, without any choice, that is part of meditation.

So meditation can take place when you are sitting in a bus or walking in the woods full of light and shadows, or listening to the singing of birds or looking at the face of your wife or child.

In the understanding of meditation there is love, and love is not the product of systems, of habits, of following a method. Love cannot be cultivated by thought. Love can perhaps come into being when there is complete silence, a silence in which the mediator is entirely absent; and the mind can be silent only when it understands its own movement as thought and feeling. To understand this movement of thought and feeling there can be no condemnation in observing it. To observe in such a way is the discipline, and that kind of discipline is fluid, free, not the discipline of conformity.

Jiddu Krishnamurti

Hi And welcome to Tantric Spirituality

Admin — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 21:38:30 +0000

,,where the love of universal wisdom and creating a space to be free and uninhibited is the common goal

Tantra the celebration of life in the present moment, The Balance of Spirit and Nature and Seeing the Spiritual in the Sensual

Some people come into our lives and quickly go. Some people move our souls to dance. They awaken us to new understanding with the passing whisper of their wisdom. Some people make the sky more beautiful to gaze upon. They stay in our lives for awhile, leave footprints on our hearts, and we are never ever the same.
~Flavia Weedn

Thank you for this priceless connection, look forward to sharing and learning…

Although most "spiritual disciplines" insist on evolving into higher states of consciousness by controlling or "denying the senses"and so called lower states of consciousness , Tantra teaches that you cannot experience complete personal and spiritual liberation while restricting a part of your being

How can one experience Total unity whilst denying a part of that Totality ?

"In truth everything in life is about that dance. When the rain goes onto the parched earth, that's sex in a sense, that's creation, that's merging. When the wind blows through trees, that's merging. Everything in life is always dancing with the polarities, with the interchangeable energies. And so expanding your understanding of Tantra beyond the body can open up a world where you're truly living in a very ecstatic state. And then you just become a dancer in that dance. And it doesn't even matter how it turns out, it's the joy of dancing that allows your heart to celebrate every day."

Above all else, the goal of any Tantric experience is joy, happiness and laughter. So much in our world and our lives is so serious. We even take sex so seriously, being a good lover is so important, having bigger and better breasts, Lingams and orgasms is so important.

So Put away your pointless taboos and restrictions on sexual energy , rather help others to truly understand its wonder and beauty, as you let go and realise this freedon this incredible lightness of being, honor the many sensefull moments, this Blissful Tantric unity, that arise, from a mind that is free

Perhaps, What is important on the Tantric journey is to be open, to share and most of all, to love. For love is a choice that we make, every moment of every day.

Remember There is nothing to attain! There is no effort, no goal, and no path. The only thing that might require some effort is to give up, to unlearn our prejudices about sexuality. After this has been done, TANTRA is what remains,

Two bodies, naked and entwined, leap over time, they are invulnerable,
nothing can touch them, they return to the source, there is no you, no I, no tomorrow, no yesterday, no names, the truth of two in a single body, a single soul,
oh total being . . .
Octavio Paz

"Straight away, remove yourself from the field of spiritual progression , stay away from contemplation and skillful discourse, do not do research or meditate on the divinities, and stop concentrating and reciting textbooks! Tell me, what is the absolute nature of reality which allows no room for doubt? Listen carefully! Stop holding on to this or that, inhabit your true absolute nature, and peacefully enjoy the essence of what it is to be alive!" ~Abhinavagupta

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Once Lord Rama asked Lord Hanumana the epitome of knowledge "Gyaaninanaagraganyam" Who are You? " O my master As the Son of AnJani ( body Consious) I am your Slave (Dvaita). As a Jiva I am A part of Yours (Ansa) (Vishishtadvaita) and in the light of Knowledge I am what you are O my Lord (Advaita). Thus it all depends what bhumi (stage) you stand. All Schools were started by avataras, nobody can be wrong and other right. All schools of thought are beautiful flowers of the garden of Vedanta.

I wish through your journey sensefull moments, and many many Tantric experiences

You've been walking in circles, searching. Don't drink by the water's edge. Throw yourself in. Become the water. Only then will your thirst end.
-Jeanette Berson
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Freedom From the Known Chapter 14

Tantra Spirituality — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 23:43:45 +0000

Freedom From the Known

IN THE LIFE we generally lead there is very little solitude. Even when we are alone our lives are crowded by so many influences, so much knowledge, so many memories of so many experiences, so much anxiety, misery and conflict that our mind become duller and duller, more and more insensitive, functioning in a monotonous routine. Are we ever alone? Or are we carrying with us all the burdens of yesterday?

There is a rather nice story of two monks walking from one village to another and they come upon a young girl sitting on the bank of a river, crying. And one of the monks goes up to her and says, `Sister, what are you crying about?' She says, `You see that house over there across the river? I came over this morning early and had no trouble wading across but now the river has swollen and I can't get back. There is no boat.' `Oh,' says the monk, `that is no problem at all', and he picks her up and carries her across the river and leaves her on the other side. And the two monks go on together. After a couple of hours, the other monk says, `Brother, we have taken a vow never to touch a woman. What you have done is a terrible sin. Didn't you have pleasure, a great sensation, in touching a woman?' and the other monk replies, `I left her behind two hours ago. You are still carrying her, aren't you?' That is what we do. We carry our burdens all the time; we never die to them, we never leave them behind. it is only when we give complete attention to a problem and solve it immediately - never carrying it over to the next day, the next minute - that there is solitude. Then, even, if we live in a crowded house or are in a bus, we have solitude. And that solitude indicates a fresh mind, an innocent mind.

To have inward solitude and space is very important because it implies freedom to be, to go, to function, to fly. After all, goodness can only flower in space just as virtue can flower only when there is freedom. We may have political freedom but inwardly we are not free and therefore there is no space. No virtue, no quality that is worth while, can function or grow without this vast space within oneself. And space and silence are necessary because it is only when the mind is alone, uninfluenced, untrained, not held by infinite varieties of experience, that it can come upon something totally new.

One can see directly that it is only when the mind is silent that there is a possibility of clarity. The whole purpose of meditation in the East is to bring about such a state of mind - that is, to control thought, which is the same as constantly repeating a prayer to quieten the mind and in that state hoping to understand one's problems. But unless one lays the foundation, which is to be free from fear, free from sorrow, anxiety and all the traps one lays for oneself, I do not see how it is possible for a mind to be actually quiet. This is one of the most difficult things to communicate. Communication between us implies, doesn't it, that not only must you understand the words I am using but that we must both, you and I, be intense at the same time, not a moment later or a moment sooner and capable of meeting each other on the same level? And such communication is not possible when you are interpreting what you are reading according to your own knowledge, pleasure or opinions, or when you are making a tremendous effort to comprehend.

It seems to me that one of the greatest stumbling blocks in life is this constant struggle to reach, to achieve, to acquire. We are trained from childhood to acquire and to achieve - the very brain cells themselves create and demand this pattern of achievement in order to have physical security, but psychological security is not within the field of achievement. We demand security in all our relationships, attitudes and activities but, as we have seen, there is actually no such thing as security. To find out for yourself that there is no form of security in any relationship - to realize that psychologically there is nothing permanent - gives a totally different approach to life. It is essential, of course, to have outward security - shelter, clothing, food - but that outward security is destroyed by the demand for psychological security.

Space and silence are necessary to go beyond the limitations of consciousness, but how can a mind which is so endlessly active in its self-interest be quiet? One can discipline it, control it, shape it, but such torture does not make the mind quiet; it merely makes it dull. Obviously the mere pursuit of the ideal of having a quiet mind is valueless because the more you force it the more narrow and stagnant it becomes. Control in any form, like suppression, produces only conflict. So control and outward discipline are not the way, nor has an undisciplined life any value.

Most of our lives are outwardly disciplined by the demands of society, by the family, by our own suffering, by our own experience, by conforming to certain ideological or factual patterns - and that form of discipline is the most deadening thing. Discipline must be without control, without suppression, without any form of fear. How is this discipline to come about? It is not discipline first and then freedom; freedom is at the very beginning, not at the end. To understand this freedom, which is the freedom from the conformity of discipline, is discipline itself. The very act of learning is discipline (after all the root meaning of the word discipline is to learn), the very act of learning becomes clarity. To understand the whole nature and structure of control, suppression and indulgence demands attention. You don't have to impose discipline in order to study it, but the very act of studying brings about its own discipline in which there is no suppression.

In order to deny authority (we are talking of psychological authority, not the law) - to deny the authority of all religious organizations, traditions and experience, one has to see why one normally obeys - actually study it. And to study it there must be freedom from condemnation, justification, opinion or acceptance. Now we cannot accept authority and yet study it - that is impossible. To study the whole psychological structure of authority within ourselves there must be freedom. And when we are studying we are denying the whole structure, and when we do deny, that very denial is the light of the mind that is free from authority. Negation of everything that has been considered worthwhile, such as outward discipline, leadership, idealism, is to study it; then that very act of studying is not only discipline but the negative of it, and the very denial is a positive act. So we are negating all those things that are considered important to bring about the quietness of the mind.

Thus we see it is not control that leads to quietness. Nor is the mind quiet when it has an object which is so absorb- ing that it gets lost in that object. This is like giving a child an interesting toy; he becomes very quiet, but remove the toy and he returns to his mischief-making. We all have our toys which absorb us and we think we are very quiet but if a man is dedicated to a certain form of activity, scientific, literary or whatever it is, the toy merely absorbs him and he is not really quiet at all.

The only silence we know is the silence when noise stops, the silence when thought stops - but that is not silence. Silence is something entirely different, like beauty, like love. And this silence is not the product of a quiet mind, it is not the product of the brain cells which have understood the whole structure and say, `For God's sake be quiet; then the brain cells themselves produce the silence and that is not silence. Nor is silence the outcome of attention in which the observer is the observed; then there is no friction, but that is not silence.

You are waiting for me to describe what this silence is so that you can compare it, interpret it, carry it away and bury it. It cannot be described. What can be described is the known, and the freedom from the known can come into being only when there is a dying every day to the known, to the hurts, the flatteries, to all the images you have made, to all your experiences - dying every day so that the brain cells themselves become fresh, young, innocent. But that innocency, that freshness, that quality of tenderness and gentleness, does not produce love; it is not the quality of beauty or silence.

That silence which is not the silence of the ending of noise is only a small beginning. It is like going through a small hole to an enormous, wide, expansive ocean, to an immeasurable, timeless state. But this you cannot understand verbally unless you have understood the whole struc- ture of consciousness and the meaning of pleasure, sorrow and despair, and the brain cells themselves have become quiet. Then perhaps you may come upon that mystery which nobody can reveal to you and nothing can destroy. A living mind is a still mind, a living mind is a mind that has no centre and therefore no space and time. Such a mind is limitless and that is the only truth, that is the only reality.

Jiddu Krishnamurti in English
Freedom From the Known
Freedom From the Known Chapter 14

Vipassana - The Essence Of The Teachings

Tantra Spirituality — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 23:40:54 +0000

Vipassana - The Essence Of The Teachings

Vipassana is an ancient pali word meaning the right way to SEE / the correct way to see / the special way to see / observation / total, holistic observation / meditation / observation of the reality 'as it is' / observing 'what is' / insight. Vipassana is the experiential aspect of the teachings of all Buddhas. Needless to say such an observation, such an enquiry into the truth is universal, non-sectarian, non-ritualistic, non-dogmatic and liberating. It is an art of living.

Vipassana is not a technique or a ritual to be followed mechanically. Vipassana is a process of observation - observing the truth from moment-to-moment - observing the truth as it is.

Looking Within-Living And Dying
From Moment To Moment

(EXCERPTS FROM THE DISCOURSES OF SHRI S N GOENKA AND SAYAGYI U BA KHIN ON VIPASSANA)

Understand what Vipassana is and how it helps us in our day-to-day lives; how it helps us to come out of our misery, the misery of life and death. Everyone wants to come out of misery, to live a life of peace and harmony. We simply do not know how to do this. It was Siddhartha Gotama's enlightenment that made him realize the truth: where misery lies, how it starts, and how it can be eradicated. But we have to realise the truth ourselves.

There were many techniques of meditation prevailing in those days, as there are today. The Bodhisatta Gotama tried them all, but he was not satisfied because he found that he was not liberated from misery. Then he started to do his own research. Through his personal experience he discovered Vipassana, which eradicated misery from his life and made him a fully enlightened person.

There are many techniques that give temporary relief. When you become miserable you divert your attention to something else. Then you feel that you have come out of your misery, but you are not totally relieved. If something undesirable has happened in life, you become agitated. You cannot bear this misery and want to run away from it. You may go to a cinema or a theatre, or you may indulge in other sensual entertainment. You may go out drinking, and so on. All this is running away from misery.

Escape is no solution to the problem, indeed the misery is multiplying.

In Buddha's enlightenment he realized that one must face reality. Instead of running away from the problem, one must face it. He found that all the types of meditation existing in his day consisted of merely diverting the mind from the prevailing misery to another object. He found that practicing this, actually only a small part of the mind gets diverted. Deep inside one keeps reacting, one keeps generating sankharas (reaction or conditioning) of craving, aversion or delusion, and one keeps suffering at a deep level of the mind. The object of meditation should not be an imaginary object, it should be reality-reality as it is. One has to work with whatever reality has manifested itself now, whatever one experiences within one's own body-mind.

In the practice of Vipassana one has to explore the reality within oneself - the material structure and the mental structure, the combination of which one keeps calling "I, me, mine." One generates a tremendous amount of attachment to this material and mental structure, and as a result becomes miserable. To practise Buddha's path we must observe the truth of mind and matter. Their basic characteristics should be directly experienced by the meditator. This results in wisdom.

Wisdom can be of three types: wisdom gained by listening to others, that which is gained by intellectual analysis, and wisdom developed from direct, personal experience Buddha found that one may play any number of intellectual or devotional games, but unless he experiences the truth himself, and develops wisdom from his personal experience, he will not be liberated. Vipassana is personally experienced wisdom. One may listen to discourses or read scriptures. Or one may use the intellect and try to understand: "Yes, Buddha's teaching is wonderful! This wisdom is wonderful!" But that is not direct experience of wisdom.

The entire field of mind and matter-the six senses and their respective objects - have the basic characteristics of anicca (impermanence), dukkha (suffering) and anatta (egolessness). Buddha wanted us to experience this reality within ourselves. To explore the truth within - we have to explore the reality of mind-matter. Matter is the material structure, the corporeal structure, the physical structure. The other is the mental structure-the mind. The mind has 4 factors: consciousness (vinnana), perception (sanna) the part of the mind that feels sensation (Vedana or Samvedna in hindi) and the part of the mind that reacts - the conditioning (Sankhara).

Mind and matter are deeply interrelated-deeply interrelated. To 'completely', 'totally', explore the reality within-to observe - we observe the body, the sensations on the body, the mind and the contents of the mind. Observing the truth-the reality from moment to moment 'as it is' in the field of mind-matter, mindfulness is established (Satipatthana). Mind-matter are deeply interrelated.

Anything that arises in the mind turns into matter, into a sensation in the material field. This was the Buddha's discovery. People forgot this truth, which can only be understood through proper observation. The Buddha said, "Sabbe Dhamma vedana samosarana", anything that arises in the mind starts flowing as a sensation on the body. See from your personal experience how this mind and matter are related to each other. To believe that one understands mind and matter, without having directly experienced it, is delusion. It is only direct experience that will make us understand the reality about mind and matter. This is where Vipassana starts helping us. There are sensations throughout the body, from head to feet. One feels those sensations, and is asked not to react to them. Just observe; observe objectively, without identifying yourself with the sensations. You observe this structure that initially appears to be so solid, the entire physical structure at the level of sensation. Observing, observing you will reach the stage when you experience that the entire physical structure is nothing but subatomic particles: throughout the body, nothing but kalapas (subatomic particles). And even these tiniest subatomic particles are not solid. They are mere vibration, just wavelets. The Buddha's words become clear by experience: Sabbo pajjalito loko, sabbo loko pakampito. The entire universe is nothing but combustion and vibration. As you experience it yourself you experience that the entire material world is nothing but vibration. We have to experience the ocean of infinite waves surging within, the river of inner sensations flowing within, the eternal dance of the countless vibrations within every atom of the body. We have to witness our continuously changing nature. All of this is happening at an extremely subtle level. These kalapas (subatomic particles) according to the Buddha, are in a state of perpetual change or flux. They are nothing but a stream of energies, just like the light of a candle or an electric bulb. The body (as we call it), is not an entity as it seems to be, but is a continuum of matter and life-force coexisting.

You become sensitive to the ongoing processes of his own organism, which in other words are atomic reactions ever taking place in all living beings. When you becomes engrossed with such, sensations, which are the products of nature, you come to the realization, physically and mentally, of the truth that his whole physical being is after all a changing mass. This is the fundamental concept of anicca - the nature of change that is ever taking place in everything, whether animate or inanimate, that exists in this universe. The corollary is the concept of dukkha- the innate nature of suffering or ill-which becomes identified with life. This is true because of the fact that the whole structure of a being is made up of atoms (kalapas) all in a state of perpetual combustion.

The last concept is that of anatta. You call a "substance" what appears to you to be a substance. In reality there is no substance as such. As the course of meditation progresses, the student comes to the realization that there is no substantiality in his so-called self, and there is no such thing as the core of a being. Eventually he breaks away the egocentrism in him-both in respect to mind and body He then emerges out of meditation with a new outlook-ego-less and self-less-alive to the fact that whatever happens in this universe is subject to the fundamental law of cause and effect. He knows with his inward eye the illusory nature of the separate self.

Buddha's teaching is to move from the gross, apparent truth to the subtlest, ultimate truth (from olarika to sukhuma) The apparent truth always creates illusion and confusion in the mind. By dividing and dissecting apparent reality, you will come to the ultimate reality. As you experience the reality of matter to be vibration, you also start experiencing the reality of the mind: vinnana (consciousness), sanna (perception), vedana (sensation) and sankhara (reaction). If you experience them properly with Vipassana, it will become clear how they work.

Suppose you have reached the stage where you are experiencing that the entire physical structure is just vibration. If a sound has come in contact with the ears you will notice that this sound is nothing but vibration. The first part of the mind, consciousness, has done its job: ear consciousness has recognized that something has happened at the ear sense door. Like a gong which, having been struck at one point, begins vibrating throughout its structure, so a contact with any of the senses begins a vibration which spreads throughout the body. At first this is merely a neutral vibration, neither pleasant nor unpleasant. The perception recognizes and evaluates the sound, "It is a word-what word? Praise! Oh, wonderful, very good!" The resulting sensation, the vibration, will become very pleasant. In the same way, if the words are words of abuse the vibration will become very unpleasant. The vibration changes according to the evaluation given by the perception part of the mind. Next the third part of the mind starts feeling the sensation: pleasant or unpleasant.

Then the fourth part of the mind will start working. This is reaction; its job is to react. If a pleasant sensation arises, it will react with craving. If an unpleasant sensation arises, it will react with aversion. Pleasant sensation: "I like it. Very good! I want more, I want more!" Similarly, unpleasant sensation: "1 dislike it. I don't want it." Generating craving and aversion is the part played by the fourth factor of the mind-reaction.

Understand that this process is going on constantly at one sense door or another. Every moment something or the other is happening at one of the sense doors. Every moment the respective consciousness cognizes; the perception recognizes; the feeling part of the mind feels; and the reacting part of the mind reacts, with either craving or aversion. This happens continuously in one's life.

At the apparent, surface level, it seems that I am reacting with either craving or aversion to the external stimulus. Actually this is not so. Buddha found that we are reacting to our sensations. This discovery was the enlightenment of Buddha. He said:

Salayatana-paccaya phasso
phassa-paccaya vedana
vedana-paccaya tanha.

With the base of the six senses-contact arises,
with the base of contact-sensation arises,
with the base of sensation-craving arises.

It became so clear to him: the six sense organs come in contact with objects outside. Because of the contact, a sensation starts in the body that, most of the time, is either pleasant or unpleasant. Then after a pleasant or unpleasant sensation arises, craving or aversion start - not before that. This realization was possible because Buddha went deep inside and experienced it Himself. He went to the root of the problem and discovered how to eradicate the cause of suffering at the root level.
Working at the intellectual level of the mind, we try to suppress craving and aversion, but deep inside, craving and aversion continue. We are constantly rolling in craving or aversion. We are not coming out of misery through suppression.
Buddha discovered the way: whenever you experience any sensation, due to any reason, you simply observe it:

Samudaya dhammanupassi va kayasmim viharati
vaya dhammanupassi va kayasmim viharati
samudaya-vaya-dhammanupassi va kayasmim viharati.

He dwells observing the phenomenon of arising in the body.
He dwells observing the phenomenon of passing away in the body.
He dwells observing the phenomenon of simultaneous arising and passing away in the body.

Every sensation arises and passes away. Nothing is eternal. When you practice Vipassana you start experiencing this. However unpleasant a sensation may be - look, it arises only to pass away. However pleasant a sensation may be, it is just a vibration-arising and passing. Pleasant, unpleasant or neutral, the characteristic of impermanence remains the same. You are now experiencing the reality of anicca. You are not believing it because Buddha said so, or some scripture or tradition says so, or even because your intellect says so. You accept the truth of anicca because you directly experience it. This is how your received wisdom and intellectual understanding turn into personally experienced wisdom.

Only this experience of anicca will change the habit pattern of the mind. Feeling sensation in the body and understanding that everything is impermanent, you don't react with craving or aversion; you are equanimous. Practising this continually changes the habit of reacting at the deepest level. When you don't generate any new conditioning of craving and aversion, old conditioning comes on the surface and passes away. By observing reality as it is, you become free from all your conditioning of craving and aversion.

To a casual observer a piece of iron is motionless. Thc scientist knows that it is composed of electrons all in a state of perpetual change or flux. If this is so with a piece of iron, what will be the case with a living organism, say a human being? The changes taking place inside a human body must be more violent. Does man feel the rocking vibrations within himself? Does the scientist who knows that all the electrons are in a perpetual state of change or flux ever feel that his own body is but energy and vibration? What will be the repercussion on the mental attitude of the man who introspectively sees that his own body is mere energy and vibration?

To quench thirst one may easily just drink a glass of water from a village well. Supposing his eyes are as powerful as microscopes, he would surely hesitate to drink the very same water in which he must see the magnified microbes. Similarly, when one comes to the realization of perpetual change within himself (anicca-impermanence), he must come to the understanding, as a sequel thereto, of the truth of suffering as a consequence of the sharp sense of feeling the radiation, vibration and friction of the atomic units within. Indeed life is suffering, both within and without, to all appearances and in ultimate reality.

Western psychologists refer to the "conscious mind" Buddha called this part of the mind the paritta citta (a very small part of the mind). There is a big barrier between the paritta citta and the rest of the mind at deeper levels. The conscious mind does not know what is happening in the unconscious or half-conscious. Vipassana breaks this barrier, taking you from the surface level of the mind to the deepest level of the mind. This exposes the anusaya kilesa (latent mental defilements) that are lying at the deepest level of the mind.

The so-called ''unconscious" mind is not unconscious. It is always conscious of body sensations, and it keeps reacting to them. If they are unpleasant, it reacts with aversion. If they are pleasant, it reacts with craving. This is the habit pattern, the behaviour pattern, of the so-called unconscious at the depth of the mind.

Here is an example to explain how the so-called unconscious mind is reacting with craving and aversion. You are in deep sleep. A mosquito bites you and there is an unpleasant sensation. Your conscious mind does not know what has happened. The unconscious knows immediately that there is an unpleasant sensation, and it reacts with aversion. It drives away or kills the mosquito. But still there is an unpleasant sensation, so you scratch, though your conscious mind is in deep sleep. When you wake up, if somebody asks you how many mosquito bites you got during the night, you won't know. Your conscious mind was unaware but the unconscious knew, and it reacted.

Another example: Sitting for about half an hour, some pressure starts somewhere and the unconscious mind reacts: "There is a pressure. I don't like it!" You change your position. The unconscious mind is always in contact with the body sensations. You make a little movement, and then after some time you move again. Just watch somebody sitting for fifteen to twenty minutes. You will find that this person is fidgeting, shifting a little here, a little there. Of course, consciously he does not know what he is doing. This is because he is not aware of the sensations. He does not know that he is reacting with aversion to these sensations. This barrier is ignorance.

Vipassana breaks this ignorance. Then one starts understanding how sensations arise and how they give rise to craving or aversion. When there is a pleasant sensation, there is craving. When there is an unpleasant sensation, there is aversion, and whenever there is craving or aversion, there is misery.

If one does not break this behaviour pattern, there will be continual craving or aversion. At the surface level you may say that you are practicing what Buddha taught, but in fact, you are not practicing what Buddha taught! You are practicing what the other teachers at the time of Buddha taught. Buddha taught how to go to the deepest level where suffering arises. Suffering arises because of one's reaction of craving or aversion. The source of craving and aversion must be found, and one must change one's behaviour pattern at that level.

Buddha taught us to observe suffering and the arising of suffering. Without observing these two we can never know the cessation of misery. Suffering arises with the sensations. If we react to sensations, then suffering arises. If we do not react we do not suffer from them. However unpleasant a sensation may be, if you don't react with aversion, you can smile with equanimity. You understand that this is all anicca, impermanence. The whole habit pattern of the mind changes at the deepest level.

Make use of the teaching of Buddha at the deepest level. Don't just remain at the surface level of the teaching of Buddha. Go to the deepest level where your craving arises:

Vedana paccaya tanha;
vedana-nirodha tanha-nirodho;
tanha-nirodha dukkha-nirodho.

Sensations give rise to craving.
If sensations cease, craving ceases.
When craving ceases, suffering ceases.

When one experiences the truth of nibbana-a stage beyond the entire sensorium-all the six sense organs stop working. There can't be any contact with objects outside, so sensation ceases. At this stage there is freedom from all suffering. When one comes out of such a nibbanic experience-he is a changed person-his life becomes different. First you must reach the stage where you can feel sensations. Only then can you change the habit pattern of your mind. If you work on the surface level of the mind you are only changing the conscious part of the mind, your intellect. You are not going to the root cause, the most unconscious level of the mind; you are not removing the anusaya kilesa - (deep-rooted defilements of craving and aversion). They are like sleeping volcanoes that may erupt at any time. You continue to roll from birth to death; you are not coming out of misery.

Moden science has given us, for what it is worth, the atomic bomb, the most wonderful and yet at the same time the most dreadful product of man's intelligence. Is man using his intelligence in the right direction?

Why not use intelligence to look within? Know ourselves? This will give us the "peace within" and enable us to share it with all others. We will then radiate such powerful and purified mental forces as will successfully counteract the evil forces which are all around us. Just as the light of a single candle has the power to dispel darkness in a room, so also the light developed in one man can help dispel the darkness in several others.

To imagine that good can be done by the means of evil is an illusion, a nightmare. For all the loss of lives, bloodshed and war, are we nearer to, or further away, from peace? These are the lessons which we have learnt. Change of mankind's mental attitude alone is the solution. What is necessary at the moment is mastery over the mind and not only mastery over matter. In Dhamma we differentiate between loka dhatu and Dhamma dhatu. By dhatu is meant the nature- elements or forces. Loka dhatu is therefore matter (with its nature-elements) within the range of the physical plane. Dhamma dhatu, however, comprises mind, mental properties and some aspects of nature-elements which are not in the physical but in the mental plane. Modem science deals with what we call loka dhatu. It is just a base for Dhamma dhatu in the mental plane. A step further and we come to the mental plane; not with the knowledge of modem science, but with the knowledge of Buddha-Dhamma in practice.
At least Mr. H. Overstreet, author of The Mature Mind (W.W Norton & Co., Inc., New York) is optimistic about what is in store for mature Minds. He writes:

The characteristic knowledge of our century is psychological. Even the most dramatic advances in physics and chemistry are chiefly applications of known methods of research. But the attitude toward human nature and human experience that has come in our time is new. This attitude could not have come earlier. Before it came, there had to be long preparation. Physiology had to be a developed science; for the psychological person is also physiological. His makeup, among other things, is a matter of brain tissue, of nerves, of glands, of organs of touch, smell and sight. It was not until about seventy years ago that physiology was sufficiently developed to make psycho-physical research possible, as in the laboratories of the distinguished German psychologist, William Wundt. But before physiology there had to be a developed science of biology. Since brain, nerves, glands and the rest depend upon all processes, the science of the living cell had to have its maturing before a competent physiology could emerge.

But before biology, there had to be chemistry; and before chemistry, physics; and before physics, mathematics. So the long preparation goes back into the centuries.

There is, in short, a time clock of science. Each science has to wait until its hour strikes. Today, at least, the time clock of science strikes the hours of psychology, and a new enlightenment begins.

To be sure, the interests explored by this latest of the sciences are themselves old; but the accuracy of research is new. There is, in brief, a kind of iron logic that is in control. Each science has to wait for its peculiar accuracy until its predecessor has supplied the data and tools out of which its accuracy can be made.

The time clock of science has struck a new hour: a new insight begins to be at our service.
May 1 say that it is the Buddha Dhamma which should be studied by one and all for a new insight into the realities of human nature. In Dhamma we have the cure for all the mental ills that affect mankind. It is the evil forces of the mind, past and present, that are responsible for the present state of affairs all over the world.

Nowadays, there is dissatisfaction almost everywhere. Dissatisfaction creates ill feeling. Ill feeling creates hatred. Hatred creates enmity. Enmity creates war. War creates enemies. Enemies create war. War creates enemies, and so on. It is now getting into a vicious cycle. Why? Certainly because there is lack of proper control over the mind.
What is man? Man is after all mental forces personified. What is matter? Matter is nothing but mental forces materialized, a result of the reaction of the moral (positive) and immoral (negative) forces.

Buddha said: Cittena niyate loko (the world is mind-made). Mind therefore predominates everything. Let us then study the mind and it's peculiar characteristics and solve the problem that is now facing the world. Vipassana helps you to come out of your misery, come out of the bondages and enjoy real peace, real harmony, real happiness.

May all of you enjoy real peace, real harmony, real happiness.
-Sayagyi U Ba Khin
-Shri S N Goenka

(Sourced from ''Buddha's path is to experience reality'' by S N Goenka OCT 95 Vipassana english news letter, ''Samma Samadhi'' April 95 hindi Vipassana patrika, discourses of Sayagyi U Ba Khin-Sayagyi U Ba Khin Journal-VRI Igatpuri)

Freedom From the Known Chapter 13

Admin — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 00:20:39 +0000

Freedom From the Known Chapter 13
LET US NOW go into the question of what is thinking, the significance of that thought which must be exercised with care, logic and sanity (for our daily work) and that which has no significance at all. Unless we know the two kinds, we cannot possibly understand something much deeper which thought cannot touch. So let us try to understand this whole complex structure of what is thinking, what is memory, how thought originates, how thought conditions all our actions; and in understanding all this we shall perhaps come across something which thought has never discovered, which thought cannot open the door to.

Why has thought become so important in all our lives - thought being ideas, being the response to the accumulated memories in the brain cells? Perhaps many of you have not even asked such a question before, or if you have you may have said, `It's of very little importance - what is important is emotion.' But I don't see how you can separate the two. If thought doesn't give continuity to feeling, feeling dies very quickly. So why in our daily lives, in our grinding, boring, frightened lives, has thought taken on such inordinate importance? Ask yourself as I am asking myself - why is one a slave to thought - cunning, clever, thought which can organize, which can start things, which has invented so much, bred so many wars, created so much fear, so much anxiety, which is forever making images and chasing its own tail - thought which has enjoyed the pleasure of yesterday and given that pleasure continuity in the present and also in the future - thought which is always active, chattering, moving, constructing, taking away, adding, supposing?

Ideas have become far more important to us than action - ideas so cleverly expressed in books by the intellectuals in every field. The more cunning, the more subtle, those ideas are the more we worship them and the books that contain them. We are those books, we are those ideas, so heavily conditioned are we by them. We are forever discussing ideas and ideals and dialectically offering opinions. Every religion has its dogma, its formula, its own scaffold to reach the gods, and when inquiring into the beginning of thought we are questioning the importance of this whole edifice of ideas. We have separated ideas from action because ideas are always of the past and action is always the present - that is, living is always the present. We are afraid of living and therefore the past, as ideas, has become so important to us.

It is really extraordinarily interesting to watch the operation of one's own thinking, just to observe how one thinks, where that reaction we call thinking, springs from. Obviously from memory. Is there a beginning to thought at all? If there is, can we find out its beginning - that is, the beginning of memory, because if we had no memory we would have no thought?

We have seen how thought sustains and gives continuity to a pleasure that we had yesterday and how thought also sustains the reverse of pleasure which is fear and pain, so the experiencer, who is the thinker, is the pleasure and the pain and also the entity who gives nourishment to the pleasure and pain. The thinker separates pleasure from pain. He doesn't see that in the very demand for pleasure he is inviting pain and fear. Thought in human relation. ships is always demanding pleasure which it covers by different words like loyalty, helping, giving, sustaining, serving. I wonder why we want to serve? The petrol station offers good service. What do those words mean, to help, to give, to serve? What is it all about? Does a flower full of beauty, light and loveliness say,`I am giving, helping, serving'? It is! And because it is not trying to do anything it covers the earth.

Thought is so cunning, so clever, that it distorts everything for its own convenience. Thought in its demand for pleasure brings its own bondage. Thought is the breeder of duality in all our relationships: there is violence in us which gives us pleasure but there is also the desire for peace, the desire to be kind and gentle. This is what is going on all the time in all our lives. Thought not only breeds this duality in us, this contradiction, but it also accumulates the innumerable memories we have had of pleasure and pain, and from these memories it is reborn. So thought is the past, thought is always old, as I have already said.

As every challenge is met in terms of the past - a challenge being always new - our meeting of the challenge will always be totally inadequate, hence contradiction, conflict and all the misery and sorrow we are heir to. Our little brain is in conflict whatever it does. Whether it aspires, imitates, conforms, suppresses, sublimates, takes drugs to expand itself - whatever it does - it is in a state of conflict and will produce conflict.

Those who think a great deal are very materialistic because thought is matter. Thought is matter as much as the floor, the wall, the telephone, are matter. Energy functioning in a pattern becomes matter. There is energy and there is matter. That is all life is. We may think thought is not matter but it is. Thought is matter as an ideology. Where there is energy it becomes matter. Matter and energy are interrelated. The one cannot exist without the other, and the more harmony there is between the two, the more balance, the more active the brain cells are. Thought has set up this pattern of pleasure, pain, fear, and has been functioning inside it for thousands of years and cannot break the pattern because it has created it.

A new fact cannot be seen by thought. It can be understood later by thought, verbally, but the understanding of a new fact is not reality to thought. Thought can never solve any psychological problem. However clever, however cunning, however erudite, whatever the structure thought creates through science, through an electronic brain, through compulsion or necessity, thought is never new and therefore it can never answer any tremendous question. The old brain cannot solve the enormous problem of living.

Thought is crooked because it can invent anything and see things that are not there. It can perform the most extraordinary tricks, and therefore it cannot be depended upon. But if you understand the whole structure of how you think, why you think, the words you use, the way you behave in your daily life, the way you talk to people, the way you treat people, the way you walk, the way you eat - if you are aware of all these things then your mind will not deceive you, then there is nothing to be deceived. The mind then is not something that demands, that subjugates; it becomes extraordinarily quiet, pliable, sensitive, alone, and in that state there is no deception whatsoever.

Have you ever noticed that when you are in a state of complete attention the observer, the thinker, the centre, the 'me', comes to an end? In that state of attention thought begins to wither away. If one wants to see a thing very clearly, one's mind must be very quiet, without all the prejudices, the chattering, the dialogue, the images, the pictures - all that must be put aside to look. And it is only in silence that you can observe the beginning of thought - not when you are searching, asking questions, waiting for a reply. So it is only when you are completely quiet, right through your being, having put that question, `What is the beginning of thought?', that you will begin to see, out of that silence, how thought takes shape.

If there is an awareness of how thought begins then there is no need to control thought. We spend a great deal of time and waste a great deal of energy all through our lives, not only at school, trying to control our thoughts - `This is a good thought, I must think about it a lot. This is an ugly thought, I must suppress it.' There is a battle going on all the time between one thought and another, one desire and another, one pleasure dominating all other pleasures. But if there is an awareness of the beginning of thought, then there is no contradiction in thought.

Now when you hear a statement like 'Thought is always old' or `Time is sorrow', thought begins to translate it and interpret it. But the translation and interpretation are based on yesterday's knowledge and experience, so you will invariably translate according to your conditioning. But if you look at the statements and do not interpret them all but just give them your complete attention (not concentration) you will find there is neither the observer nor the observed, neither the thinker nor the thought. Don't say, `Which began first?' That is a clever argument which leads nowhere. You can observe in yourself that as long as there is no thought - which doesn't mean a state of amnesia, of blankness - as long as there is no thought derived from memory, experience or knowledge, which are all of the past, there is no thinker at all. This is not a philosophical or mystical affair. We are dealing with actual facts, and you will see, if you have gone this far in the journey, that you will respond to a challenge, not with the old brain, but totally anew.

Jiddu Krishnamurti

On Waking Up

Tantra Spirituality — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 00:56:52 +0000

On Waking Up

Spirituality means waking up. Most people, even though they don’t know it, are asleep. They’re born asleep, they live asleep, they marry in their sleep, they breed children in their sleep, they die in their sleep without ever waking up. They never understand the loveliness and the beauty of this thing that we call human existence. You know ~ all mystics ~ Catholic, Christian, non-Christian, no matter what their theology, no matter what their religion ~ are unanimous on one thing: that all is well, all is well. Though everything is a mess, all is well. Strange paradox, to be sure. But, tragically, most people never get to see that all is well because they are asleep. They are having a nightmare.

Last year on Spanish television I heard a story about this gentleman who knocks on his son’s door. "Jaime," he says, "wake up!" Jaime answers, "I don’t want to get up, Papa."

The father shouts, "Get up, you have to go to school." Jaime says, "I don’t want to go to school." "Why not?" asks the father. "Three reasons," says Jaime. First, because it’s so dull; second, the kids tease me; and third, I hate school. And the father says, "Well, I am going to give you three reasons why you must go to school. First, because it is your duty; second, because you are forty-five years old, and third, because you are the headmaster." Wake up! Wake up! You’ve grown up. You’re too big to be asleep. Wake up! Stop playing with your toys.

Most people tell you they want to get out of kindergarten, but don’t believe them. Don’t believe them! All they want you to do is to mend their broken toys. "Give me back my wife. Give me back my job. Give me back my money. Give me back my reputation, my success." This is what they want; they want their toys replaced. That’s all. Even the best psychologist will tell you that, that people don’t really want to be cured. What they want is relief; a cure is painful.

Waking up is unpleasant, you know. You are nice and comfortable in bed. It is irritating to be woken up. That’s the reason the wise guru will not attempt to wake people up. I hope I’m going to be wise here and make no attempt whatsoever to wake you up if you are asleep. It is really none of my business, even though I say to you at times, "Wake up!" My business is to do my thing, to dance my dance. If you profit from it fine; if you don’t, too bad! As the Arabs say, "The nature of rain is the same, but it makes thorns grow in the marshes and flowers in the gardens."

~ Anthony de Mello

The Mysterious Palace of Brahman

Tantra Spirituality — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 00:04:46 +0000

The Mysterious Palace of Brahman
Swami Sivananda Saraswati

The mason builds a house out of stones, small bricks, chunam (lime) and cement. He keeps big pieces of stones in the construction of the main walls and puts small bricks and pebbles to fill up the crevices in the wall, plasters the wall with chunam and eventually puts a layer of cement. He polishes the wall with finishing touches and gives a coloring in the end to attract the eyes. Even so, the Divine Architect, Ishwara, has constructed this human body with the help of Mother Prakriti. The bones represent the big stones; the muscles represent the pebbles; the fat the bricks; dermic or white skin the chunam; the skin or epidermis the cement; the pigment of the skin coloring matter. Look at the marvellous skill of the Divine Engineer, Engineer of all engineers. The muscles are fixed to the bones by means of tendons. The joints are kept intact by ligaments. Deposition of fat gives good shape to the limbs, trunk and abdomen and gives beauty. The pigment in the skin attracts the eyes of the onlookers and people are deluded by the false beauty of the perishable body. They cling to this body and through this clinging they are caught up in the round of births and deaths.

The body Is a mysterious moving palace. His Divine Majesty, Brahman, dwells here. Brahman is the immortal soul or atma. Buddhi or intellect is His prime minister. Mind is the commander. The ten indriyas are the soldiers or servants. The eyes are the marvellous windows of the palace. Mouth is the way out. Eyes and ears are the way in. The devatas who preside over the indriyas–eyes, ears, nose, etc.–are the gate-keepers.

The nerves are the wires. Brain is the receiver. It receives all messages. It contains a wonderful switchboard, also. Prana is the electricity. The bones are the mountains. Veins are the rivers. Bladder is the ocean. The bowels and urethrae are the sewers. Heart is the waterworks. Arteries are the pipes. The astral heart is the garden of Brindaban. Sushumna is the Kunigalli of Brindaban. The jiva is sweet Radha who wants to unite with Lord Krishna or Brahman through yogic samadhi. Sahasrara or the crown of the head is the place where Radha and Krishna or the individual soul and Brahma unite. The different chakras are the resting-places with Kadamba trees.

The body is made up of five elements. Bone is nothing but earth or clay. Blood or flesh is nothing but water. The shining in the skin and the eyes is nothing but fire. The prana that moves in the nostrils and lungs is nothing but air. This air rests on ether. Ether is the support for all the other four tattwas. Air, fire, water and earth have emanated from ether. When the body is buried, the bones become one with the earth. They go back to their source. Through the practice of layachintan if you reduce the earth into water, water into fire, fire into air, and air into ether, the body does not really exist. It dwindles into airy nothing. Through the mayic jugglery, you perceive this body. In reality the imperishable soul which is the support for this body and mind really exists.

The body is inert and insentient. It remains as a log of wood as soon as the prana leaves the body. It appears to be sentient through contact with prana, mind and reflected intelligence, just as a ball of iron appears to be a ball of fire through contact with fire. The reflected intelligence or chaitanya galvanizes the inert intellect first as it is very subtle and as the intellect is in close contact with it, and through intellect this inert body also is galvanized. So the body mortal feels and does various sorts of actions. After all, mortal flesh is clay; bone is only a modification of earth. O man: Do not cling to this body of flesh and network of bones. Give up moha for this body. Destroy ignorance. Realize the immortal self and be free.

The Lord is hiding himself in the inner chambers of this mysterious palace. He is playing the game of “hide and seek” with you. Find Him out. Search Him out. Search Him in the chambers of your heart by withdrawing the mind and the indriyas from the external objects and practising concentration and meditation.

Osho on difference in Normal Sex and tantric Sex

Tantra Goddess — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 09:45:59 +0000

Question : What's the difference between Normal sex & Tantric sex ?

Osho : Your sex act and the tantric sex act are basically different. Your sex act is to relieve; it is just like sneezing out a good sneeze. The energy is thrown out and you are unburdened. It is destructive, it is not creative. It is good -- therapeutic. It helps you to be relaxed, but nothing more. The tantric sex act is basically, diametrically opposite and different. It is not to relieve, it is not to throw energy out. It is to remain in the act without ejaculation, without throwing energy out; to remain in the act merged -- just at the beginning part of the act, not the end part.

This changes the quality; the complete quality is different then. Try to understand two things. There are two types of climaxes, two types of orgasm. One type of orgasm is known. You reach to a peak of excitement, then you cannot go further: the end has come. The excitement reaches to a point where it becomes non-voluntary. The
energy jumps into you and goes out. You are relieved of it, unburdened. The load is thrown; you can relax and sleep. You are using it like a tranquilizer.

It is a natural tranquilizer: a good sleep will follow -- if your mind is not burdened by religion. Otherwise even the tranquilizer is destroyed. If your mind is not burdened by religion, only then can sex be a tranquilizing thing. If you feel guilt, even your sleep will be disturbed. You will feel depression, you will start condemning yourself and you will begin to take oaths that now you won't indulge anymore. Then your sleep will become a nightmare afterwards.

If you are a natural being not too much burdened by religion and morality, only then can sex be used as a tranquilizer. This is one type of orgasm -- coming to the peak of excitement. Tantra is centered on another type of orgasm. If we call the first kind a peak orgasm, you can call the tantric orgasm a valley orgasm. In it you are not coming to the peak of excitement, but to the very deepest valley of relaxation. Excitement has to be used for both in the beginning. That is why I say that in the beginning both are the same, but the ends are totally different.

Excitement has to be used for both: either you are going toward the peak of excitement or to the valley of relaxation. For the first, excitement has to be intense -- more and more intense. You have to grow in it; you have to help it to grow towards the peak. In the second, excitement is just a beginning. And once the man has entered, both lover and beloved can relax. No movement is needed. They can relax in a loving embrace.

When the man feels or the woman feels that the erection is going to be lost, only then is a little movement and excitement required. But then again relax. You can prolong this deep embrace for hours with no ejaculation, and then both can fall into deep sleep together. This -- THIS -- is a valley orgasm. Both are relaxed, and they meet as two relaxed beings. In the ordinary sexual orgasm you meet as two excited beings -- tense, full of excitement, trying to unburden yourselves. The ordinary sexual orgasm looks like madness; the tantric orgasm is a deep, relaxing meditation.

You may not be aware of it, but this is a fact of biology, of bio-energy, that man and woman are opposite forces. Negative-positive, yin-yang, or whatsoever you call them, they are challenging to each other. And when they both meet in a deep relaxation, they revitalize each other. They both revitalize each other, they both become generators, they both feel livelier, they both become radiant with new energy, and nothing is lost. Just by meeting with the opposite pole energy is renewed.

The tantric love act can be done as much as you like. The ordinary sex act cannot be done as much as you like because you are losing energy in it, and your body will have to wait to regain it. And when you regain it, you will only lose it again. This looks absurd. The whole life is spent in gaining and losing, regaining and losing: it is just like an obsession. The second thing to be remembered: you may or may not have observed that when you look at animals you can never see them enjoying sex. In intercourse, they are not enjoying themselves.

Look at baboons, monkeys, dogs or any kind of animals. In their sex act you cannot see that they are feeling blissful or enjoying it -- you cannot! It seems to be just a mechanical act, a natural force pushing them towards it. If you have seen monkeys in intercourse, after the intercourse they will separate. Look at their faces: there is no ecstasy in them, it is as if nothing has happened. When the energy forces itself, when the energy is too much, they throw it. The ordinary sex act is just like this, but moralists have been saying quite the contrary.

They say, "Do not indulge, do not `enjoy'." They say, "This is as animals do." This is wrong! Animals never enjoy; only man can enjoy. And the deeper you can enjoy, the higher is the kind of humanity that is born. And if your sex act can become meditative, ecstatic, the highest is touched. But remember tantra: it is a valley orgasm, it is not a peak experience. It is a valley experience!

In the West, Abraham Maslow has made this term "peak experience" very famous. You go into excitement towards the peak, and then you fall. That is why, after every sex act, you feel a fall. And it is natural: you are falling from a peak. You will never feel that after a tantric sex experience. Then you are not falling. You cannot fall any further because you have been in the valley. Rather, you are rising.

When you come back after a tantric sex act, you have risen, not fallen. You feel filled with energy, more vital, more alive, radiant. And that ecstasy will last for hours, even for days. It depends on how deeply you were in it. If you move into it, sooner or later you will realize that ejaculation is wastage of energy. No need of it -- unless you need children. And with a tantric sex experience, you will feel a deep relaxation the whole day.

One tantric sex experience, and even for days you will feel relaxed -- at ease, at home, non-violent, nonangry, non-depressed. And this type of person is never a danger to others. If he can, he will help others to be happy. If he cannot, at least he will not make anyone unhappy. Only tantra can create a new man, and this man who can know timelessness, egolessness and deep non-duality with existence will grow.

Love Inner Self

Tantra Spirituality — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 23:46:30 +0000

The love of the Self is selfless and unconditional. It is not relative. It is completely free. It is self-generated and it never dies. This kind of love knows no distinction between high and low, between man and woman. Just as the earth remains the same no matter who comes and goes on it, so true love remains unchanging and independent. Love penetrates your entire being. Love is Consciousness. Love is bliss. It does not exist for the sake of something else. It is supremely free. As a person walks on this inner path of love, he not only attains love, but merges in the ocean of love.

If you want to experience love, you have to start by loving yourself. First you have to love your body, then those who are related to your body, and then the master of the body, the inner Self . . . that would be enough to bring you liberation.

It is not surprising that we keep looking for love, because we are all born of love. We come out of love. All of us are nothing but vibrations of love. We are sustained by love, and in the end we merge back into love…. This world is nothing but a school of love; our relationships with our husband or wife, with our children and parents, with our friends and relatives are the university in which we are meant to learn what love and devotion truly are.
Yet the love we experience through other people is just a shadow of the love of the inner Self. There is a sublime place inside us where love dwells…. The love that pulses in the cave of the heart does not depend on anything outside. It does not expect anything. It is completely independent.

The truth is that God has no physical body; the only body He has is the body of love. If the love you experience in your daily life-the little love you feel for your friends, your relatives, your pets, and even your possessions-could be turned toward the inner Self, that would be enough to bring you liberation.
Swami Muktananda

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