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Originally posted by lowki
Here in this thread we with you,
will guide as many as we with you can,
through the corridors of mind and experience,
to get to Paradise Now.
I'm already at Paradise Now.
I got here by getting to nowhere by zen meditation ...
Originally posted by schrodingers dog
reply to post by Unity_99
Just to be more clear about that which I am trying to express ...
Have you ever sat in a room you thought was silent, then some at first imperceptible background noise like the air conditioning stops and you realize that a room you thought was silent really wasn't?
Alternatively imagine that unbeknownst to you you've been wearing and carrying a hundred layers of clothing that don't belong to you on your person your entire life ... then one day the realization/epiphany comes that you are heavy with all these external mental and conceptual layers and that there's no need to carry them any more.
So you start stripping them away ... one by one ... but the mind resists because those layers give it meaning ... a mind made sense of self and purpose.
What happens is, and what I was pointing to in my response to the OP, is that because when the first layers are removed one will get a sense of liberation, the mind will trap one in believing that they are naked when if fact there are many more layers to be stripped away. But unless one is attentive to this, and because they feel relatively light compared to where they began, their mind will convince them that they're "there."
Wishing to "help" others is a typical manifestation of the self and ego when but a few top layers have been stripped. For such is the immediate difference to the person that a need arises to share it with others. But it is still the ego.
Meditation, manifestation, visualization are all helpful tools in the process but they need to be shed as well ... for they are temporary shortcuts to a state that is permanently available because it is in fact our natural state stripped of all the layers. But that's why folks get addicted to meditation, because it is easier to use a shortcut tool to the I than it is to do the permanent work of stripping all the layers ... also because each layer becomes exponentially more difficult to identify and let go of.
But meditation, visualization, manifestation, etc are merely there as pointers to realize what lies within so that it may be without them.
Does that make sense?
[edit on 29 Apr 2010 by schrodingers dog]
Originally posted by KyoZero
I have a very hard time with anyone trying to define my paradise. Not to take offense of course OP I love the thread but my paradise isn't yours.
For some paradise might be true zen and spiritual calm, for others perhaps it is lively conversation with a true friend and yet for others it might indeed be that steak. How can we define what is paradise for another?
I've read and studied zen behavior and true spiritual silence and I think the Bhudda was trying to convey that zen can be in any form so long as it is zen. A calligrapher from the ancient Orient could find zen in a perfectly realized brush stroke. I think zen is the hardest and yet easiet thing in the world to achieve. The point is it has to be pure in order to reach such a paradise. Who is to say the man with his steak hasn't reached it, at least for a moment?
To answer your question, no I am not at paradise...not even close
-Kyo
Originally posted by lowki
I much prefer being vegan.
that it didn't work for someone addicted to meat and cheese.
- Lowki
Originally posted by shanlung
Originally posted by lowki
I much prefer being vegan.
that it didn't work for someone addicted to meat and cheese.
- Lowki
I cannot bear the scream of tomatoes when my knife cut into them. Neither can I stand the squeal of the peas when I pop them into my mouth.
That is why I remain a carnivore. Good juicy meat done medium with wonderful sauces or curried.
That is my idea of paradise.
Shanlung
Originally posted by lowki
Originally posted by shanlung
Originally posted by lowki
I much prefer being vegan.
that it didn't work for someone addicted to meat and cheese.
- Lowki
I cannot bear the scream of tomatoes when my knife cut into them. Neither can I stand the squeal of the peas when I pop them into my mouth.
That is why I remain a carnivore. Good juicy meat done medium with wonderful sauces or curried.
That is my idea of paradise.
Shanlung
I used to also be a carnivore, meat and starch.
Unfortunately meat (industrial grown) nowadays doesn't have much nutrients,
so I was constantly malnutritioned,
ate really voraciously so was overweight.
Now my favorite is salad.
To me screaming of animals or people is equally rewarding,
my reptilian carnivorous self is strongly activated,
gets me salivating.
I was a pirate for a while,
as well as a carnivorous reptilian.
So beginning a meal by with carnivorous teeth ripping out someones pulsing neck,
is quite hospitable as a past experience that happened often enough.
My main motivation for veganism is purely for health and nutrition.
[edit on 30-4-2010 by lowki]
[edit on 30-4-2010 by lowki]
Originally posted by shanlung
Pirate for a while!
Good for you that you got out of Somali , or Goldman Sachs. Piracy not so rewarding nowadays.
I am good friend of a Jain family. To them and their standard, vegan like you is a lot closer to me, a pure carnivore than to them. Yet I have been invited a few times to take dinner with them.
The tomatoes were already cooked with the peas so they stop screaming and squealing when I stuffed them into my mouth.
I wonder if you know the Tao Te Ching, the Taoist bible. The first 2 sentences go like this
Tao ker Tao, fei chang Tao
Ming ker Ming, fei chang Ming
or
The Tao that you think is the Tao, is not the true Tao
The Name that you think is the Name, is not the Name.
Likewise the worthy experience that you might have, is not likely to be the Paradise that you think.
The Paradise that you think is the Paradise, is not the true Paradise.
I feel so sorry to say that to you.
Originally posted by lowki
I wonder if you know the Tao Te Ching, the Taoist bible. The first 2 sentences go like this
Tao ker Tao, fei chang Tao
Ming ker Ming, fei chang Ming
or
The Tao that you think is the Tao, is not the true Tao
The Name that you think is the Name, is not the Name.
It's actually
" The Tao that can be trodden is not the enduring and
unchanging Tao. The name that can be named is not the enduring and
unchanging name."
www.thetao.info...
[edit on 2-5-2010 by lowki]
ROTFLOL!
It looks like spin-doctors are not just in the halls of government and regimes and corporations and banks. They also can be found all over in places claiming to hand out info.
What I gave you is the most direct translation from Chinese, from the hand that pen those words.
Without the layers upon layers of interpretations added on interpretations that almost all but obscure the meaning of the words.
But if you chose to believe what you read there, by all means.
I who know perhaps 0.01 % of what I think I know, can I make judgement on paths that others chose to walk. I am only a simple Taoist, idiotic at times.
And by the way, Taoism is the 'Zen' in Zen Buddhism.
I reserve my judgment only on mundane things like whether I order lamb chops , T bone or rump steak.
You should find out more on Jains.
Warmest regards
Shanlung
aka
Taoistic Idiot
[edit on 2-5-2010 by shanlung]
[edit on 2-5-2010 by shanlung]
Originally posted by shanlung
What I gave you is the most direct translation from Chinese, from the hand that pen those words.
Without the layers upon layers of interpretations added on interpretations that almost all but obscure the meaning of the words.
And by the way, Taoism is the 'Zen' in Zen Buddhism.
[edit on 2-5-2010 by shanlung]
Originally posted by Astyanax
reply to post by lowki
Is there anyone in Paradise with a sense of humour?
Originally posted by shanlung
Lowki,
I do not even need to look East. Isn't there this Western saying that urge you not to try to make a silk purse from a sow's ear? Your trying to make a sage out of a self declared idiot is just about as futile.
Long time ago, I came across a very slim book. That was Sun Tzu Ping Fa, better known as Sun Tzu ' Art of War'. That was maybe 20 pages long, lots of blank spaces in the page too. A direct translation of the treatise written by Sun Tse himself. That was such a profound book that I urge you to read in case you chose to return to your former piratical ways.
Since then, I saw in book shops more and more translations of 'Art of War'. Those 'translations' grew to 100 pages, to 150 pages, to 300 pages.
Poor Sun Tzu ideas became buried in a whole heap of verbal diarrhea.
I think those authors did not stop there and went on to the Tao Te Ching.
The best road to paradise will be by reading the slimmest book of Tao Te Ching that you can find.
Do send me an email when you reached there.