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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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Jun 30, 2015 - 07:31am PT
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Supposedly an ecumenical group organized by the Dalai Lama is working on putting together a dictionary if not encyclopedia, about different mental states. Having a common vocabulary would surely help. I suspect that vocabulary will consist of many Sanskrit and Tibetan words which simply have no English equivalent.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Jun 30, 2015 - 10:04am PT
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Words matter, even when they refer to the same thing.
"I am meditating."
"You are in a trance."
"So-and-so is zoned out."
The reason why a teacher and a program are indicated for meditation is that for many people who have never done brain training of any kind, if they are not thinking they plunge into a trance (observation is either idling in a kind of dead zone, or is fused with thoughts etc). Clear detachment is not natural for most people - sort of like off width climbing - and requires practice to even know what it feels like.
In the Rinzai Zen tradition, which retains traces of martial arts, anyone suspected of zoning out, usually betrayed in a lax posture, is swatted with the bamboo stick - though this ritual is largely misunderstood. But it's a good trance breaker for sure.
JL
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Jun 30, 2015 - 10:10am PT
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Brain training. Hear, hear!
I am very thankful for my 50-plus years of brain training.
Wouldn't want to face a single day in this mean world red in tooth and claw without it.
Let's all keep an eye on Greece together.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Jun 30, 2015 - 08:04pm PT
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To me, this is still the most fascinating form of trance: the formation of a "thoughtform" or Tulpa.
The term is used in the works of Alexandra David-Néel, a Belgian-French explorer, spiritualist and Buddhist, who observed these practices in 20th century Tibet. Alexandra wrote that “an accomplished Bodhisattva is capable of effecting ten kinds of magic creations. The power of producing magic formations, tulkus or less lasting and materialized tulpas, does not, however, belong exclusively to such mystic exalted beings. Any human, divine or demoniac being may be possessed of it. The only difference comes from the degree of power, and this depends on the strength of the concentration and the quality of the mind itself.”
Alexandra also wrote of the tulpa's ability to develop a mind of its own: “Once the tulpa is endowed with enough vitality to be capable of playing the part of a real being, it tends to free itself from its maker's control. This, say Tibetan occultists, happens nearly mechanically, just as the child, when his body is completed and able to live apart, leaves its mother's womb.”[11] Alexandra claimed to have created a tulpa in the image of a jolly Friar Tuck-like monk which later developed a life of its own and had to be destroyed.[12] Alexandra raised the possibility that her experience was illusory: “I may have created my own hallucination.” (Wiki)
Is anyone on this thread a tulpa?
If so, who was your creator?
;>)
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cintune
climber
The Utility Muffin Research Kitchen
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Jun 30, 2015 - 08:18pm PT
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Magic and Mystery in Tibet is a fun read, if you can find a copy.
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Jun 30, 2015 - 08:35pm PT
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Jgill: Is anyone on this thread a tulpa? If so, who was your creator?
Hmmmm, I would suppose that would be me. I are one. I call it MikeL. (I lose control of that thing all the time.)
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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Jun 30, 2015 - 08:41pm PT
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I always thought Alexandra David Neel was a magician. How else do you explain that she was married and supported by her husband who was perfectly content to not see her for years at a time while she explored Asia, yet kept the money flowing anyway. Unfortunately she never wrote about how she pulled off that trick.
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Jun 30, 2015 - 08:43pm PT
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^^^^^
Are you looking for a benefactor, Jan?
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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Jun 30, 2015 - 09:18pm PT
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A no strings attached benefactor? Isn't everyone looking for one of those?
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Jun 30, 2015 - 10:30pm PT
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Jan:
Thinking about this in the broadest of senses, . . . no, I don’t think so. We are searching for ourselves. Call it what you will. There is a yearning for completeness. We are missing something. We seek to “re - member,” atonement (“at-one-ment”). Many people here think it’s evolution that’s driving everything. That doesn’t “feel” right to me. It’s not what I feel in deep reflection, when I sit, when I climbed.
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Jun 30, 2015 - 10:55pm PT
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i can tell ya what your missing MikeL;)
there was long periods of times and short periods that i was missing it.
anymore i can't go half a day without feeling starved.
how come you haven't tried it?
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Ward Trotter
Trad climber
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Finally caught Marlow's post The Dead Can Dance. a few pages back.
great post Marlowe.As usual for you.
[Click to View YouTube Video]
The music featured, as a transitional dynamic between nearby regions, perfectly illustrates the point I made about the connection between the percussive aspect of traditional middle eastern music and its incorporation of African rhythms.
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WBraun
climber
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The all pervading truth is Knowledge.
Everything else is mental speculation and temporary.
The atheist can say anything and speak.
But without God first the atheist can never utter even one simple sound nor ever even be conscious period ........
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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Superb, Ward!
I still would have thought Indian rhythms and tabla myself.
What was most striking about the music to me however, was the beginning before the drums began. That melody is one that has been played in the Armenian Orthodox churches for two millenia, centuries before Islam. I have heard Greek Orthodox priests say that a lot of Arabic music was borrowed from the Byzantine Empire, but now I think they were right. I listened to some Sufi music that came up afterwards, and the first video scenes were from Hagia Sophia?!
The video you posted reminded me again of how important music, dance, and communal rituals are to almost everyone on this planet. We ignore those "primitive" forms at our own psychological cost.
And speaking of psychology Mike L, I was joking!
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Thanks, Blu.
Let’s just call it peace. In my experience, peace isn’t anything that can be tried. It’s what’s left when one drops every thing else. It’s what’s been there all the while—when all the embellishments and contrivances are let go of.
Love is like that, too. So is compassion.
None of these qualities are anything that one can talk themselves into or “try.” It’s not a “doing” or a choice that one can make, least not as it’s shown up for me. As Werner says, they are all-pervading.
A person looks, looks, looks most of their lives for what will complete them or make them happy or contented, only to stumble on them always right at their feet. The situation is laughable, absurd.
Jan:
:-D
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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i was referring to jesus
who btw is the king of peace:)
Loveofgas, i know june is over! man time flies by
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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HAVING FUN THROUGH LANGUAGE
“We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question which divides us is whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of being correct. My own feeling is that it is not crazy enough.”
“Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think.”
“It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how Nature is. Physics concerns what we say about Nature.”
“There are some things so serious that you have to laugh at them.”
“Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real.”
“No, no, you’re not thinking; you’re just being logical.”
“There are trivial truths and the great truths. The opposite of a trivial truth is plainly false. The opposite of a great truth is also true.”
(Niels Bohr)
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Blu:
I know.
Lovegasoline: What is knowledge?
Realization or recognition.
What sees this, is this. And this is you as far as you know. You have to be the this that is you seeing this. That’s where the recognition comes in. (Peter Brown)
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