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Month: April 2015

Posted on April 24, 2015September 20, 2020

The Normal Unfolding of Things

5Big River mouth, Mendocino, CAA funny thing happened after I wrote my last post. I found myself observing my breath, not in terms of the movement of the diaphragm and chest, but in terms of activity around the fluid ball of the abdomen and support for the spine. read more

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Posts

  • The Early Record

  • “About”, “Disclaimer”

  • What Remains

  • Moving from the Source

  • Nothing but Happiness

  • “Does anyone else out there struggle with a good seated position?” (“American Zen” Facebook group)

  • Free and Clear Function

  • The Interval of Practice

  • A Quote From Pablo Neruda

  • “Does Nonthinking Require Effort?”

  • Attained Through the Body

  • The Diamond Sutra

  • Putting the Dharma Body to Work

  • The Center of Gravity

  • Action That Arises in the Breath

  • From Letters to Friends

  • Drawing Water and Chopping Wood

  • The Mudra of Zen

  • Four Points of Ki Aikido

  • Comment on “What’s So Special About the Lotus”, from Dao Bums

  • “Is the Suffocation Response Something You Experience While Sitting?”

  • Response to Comment on “What is So Special About the Lotus?” (The Dao Bums)

  • Old Habits

  • Aching-Legs Buddhism (comment on “The Dao Bums”)

  • About Completed Infinities (“True Nature”)

  • “The Cessation of In-breathing and Out-breathing” (comment on Tao Bums, edited)

  • Zen, Part Three–from “Dao Bums” (edited)

  • Zen (and Mindfulness), Part Two–from “Dao Bums” (edited)

  • Zen (and Mindfulness), Part One–from “Dao Bums”

  • Denko-e

  • Twenty-second Case: Hsueh Feng’s Turtle-Nosed Snake

  • The Job (comment on “No Zen in the West”)

  • How I Learned to Dance

  • The Case of the Suffocating Woman

  • Reverse Breathing (initial response on “Questions to Spring Forest Qigong students”, Dao Bums)

  • Reverse Breathing (response on “Questions to Spring Forest Qigong students”, Dao Bums)

  • Comment on “Rotating the Lower Dan Tien”, on Dao Bums

  • Effort, Effortlessness, Reconciliation

  • Chih Men’s Lotus Flower, Lotus Leaves

  • “Turning to the Left, Turning to the Right, Following Up Behind”

  • “The Secret of the Golden Flower”

  • “Zen Catholic Nun – Sister Elaine MacInnis”

  • Finding the “I”

  • The Gospel of Thomas, Saying 22

  • Comment on “Mindfulness or Menmitsu?” (from Rutschman-Byler’s blog)

  • Conversation with Apech (Dao Bums)

  • Consciousness and the Mind

  • A Natural Mindfulness

  • An Image in the Place of an Image

  • The Rhythm of Things in a Natural Way of Living

  • Concentration, contemplation: response to “French Roast” (from Hardcore Zen)

  • Things as They Are & Logic

  • “What really matters at the end of life”

  • What was it?

  • How so?

  • The Backward Step of Turning the Light

  • Dogen’s “Genjo Koan”

  • Addendum to ‘D. L. Bartilink, “No Special Effort”, and the “Best of Ways”‘

  • The Normal Unfolding of Things

  • Limbering Up

  • Bat on a City Street

  • “Breath Gets Cut Off During Meditation”

  • “How do you properly drop your Brain into the Lower Dan Tien?”

  • About the Anatomy in “Fuxi’s Poem”

  • Fuxi’s Poem

  • Aviation Terms: A Conversation

  • The “Turning Phrase” of Zen

  • Not Knowing Isn’t Necessarily Not Doing

  • Study and Relaxation

  • The Way the Chi Returns

  • Consciousness as the Result of Contact

  • From the Start

  • The Circle of the Way

  • The Eyes Are Open in Zazen (Reprise)

  • The Eyes Are Open in Zazen

  • Remembering How to Breathe

  • Soto Zen and the Left Knee (Reply from Hardcorezen.info)

  • Research on the Sense of Self

  • Mind, Having No Fixed Abode, Should Flow Forth

  • Hearing the Sutra: the Lankavatara

  • Belief is a Part of Practice

  • Shikantaza

  • No Latent Conceits

  • Mind Like a Wall

  • What I’m Saying

  • Discrete as Opposed to Infinite Reality

  • Walking with a Compass and a Map

  • Self as a Function of the Senses

  • “Non-Thinking” (comment on Nyoho Zen)

  • The State of Mind Where Here is Moving (Reply on Brad’s Blog)

  • “Why Can’t the Tail Pass Too?”

  • Letting Go in Action: the Practice of Zazen

  • Skill and the Taking of Vows

  • The Measure of the Hall

  • “Good morning- where am I?”

  • “Something Other Than”

  • From the Temples in Egypt

  • Walking on the Ground of Reality

  • The Link Between the Waking and the Sleeping States

  • Crossing the Line

  • Does Practice Deepen In Retreat? (Comment on Brad Warner’s Blog)

  • The Necessity Is There

  • Proprioception, From Latin Proprius, Meaning “One’s Own”, “Individual”

  • Stretch at the Sacrum

  • The Heart of the Practice

  • The Real Zen (Comment on Brad Warner’s “Hardcore Zen” blog)

  • From My Own Experience

  • Mind and Bones and Breath

  • The Place the Zen Teacher’s Action Comes From

  • Shift or Flow?

  • “Written on a Match Box, It Would Be?”

  • The Focus of Attention on Where I Am, Excluding Nothing

  • Exhalation to Inhalation

  • How Seeing Things as They Really Are is Zazen Sitting Zazen

  • Suffering and the Five Groups

  • Being Absorbed in Cleaning the Desk

  • Feeling to the Surface of the Skin

  • Buddha Nature and Weird Conversations (comment on hardcore zen)

  • Consciousness Taking Place Without Motor Ability

  • Coming Back to Location

  • A Turning Point For Me

  • The Practice of Zazen in Words

  • The Working Ingredient of the Precepts

  • The Basis of All Actions

  • Riding the Ox Home

  • Houdini Developed an Ability to Feel

  • The Cranial-Sacral Rhythm and the Location of Consciousness (comment on Tao Bums)

  • What We Truly Believe (comment on “Hardcore Zen”)

  • Necessity that Places the Mind Just So

  • “A Lamp Onto Oneself”

  • Why the Lotus

  • How psychics receive their visions

  • What is this Zen-Stuff for? (from the comments on “Hardcore Zen”)

  • ‘My Connection to Everything Around Me’

  • “Could you explain a bit more”, from Tao Bums

  • More on Waking Up and Falling Asleep

  • question on hypnogogic states during the day

  • “I tried your practice last night”- humbleone, from Tao Bums

  • “If You Can, Please Give an Example”- from Tao Bums

  • Referred Sensation (comment on Hardcore Zen)

  • A Morning Reflection

  • The Left Knee

  • Comment on Gudo Nishijima Video (Carapeto)

  • Visual Thinking

  • Sitting the lotus- from the full lotus thread on Tao Bums

  • “Wu Wei” and impeccability, from Tao Bums

  • Wu Wei

  • A bowl with a dusting of soap powder- comment on Brad Warner’s “Hardcore Zen”

  • How do we inspire ourselves to sit?- comment on Brad Warner’s Hardcore Zen

  • Storing Ch’i in the Tan-T’ien (Response to Drew Hempel, from The Tao Bums)

  • Autogenic training and Nishijima’s SNS-PNS balance

  • The Meaning of the Ankh (reply on Tao Bums)

  • Storing chi at the tan-t’ien, from Tao Bums

  • response to “The Full Lotus”, “sex energy”, on Tao Bums

  • How I sit the lotus (from “Tao Bums”)

  • On the full lotus, from “Tao Bums”

  • Shunryu Suzuki, “Don’t Spend Your Time in Vain”

  • How continuity enters practice- (a letter to a friend, rethought)

  • Why the cross-legged posture?

  • Comment on Brad Warner’s blog entry, “Sitting In Chairs Is Not Zazen”

  • The feeling of mind

  • Letter to a friend, about “Remembering Kobun”

  • from a letter to a friend

  • The difficulty of practice, a note to Apech- from Tao Bums

  • email to Adam Tebbe, editor of Sweeping Zen

  • Defining Enlightenment, from “The Tao Bums” Discussion

  • Certifying Zen

  • ‘Zazen’, from “The Mudra of Zen”

  • On the effectiveness of mudras (response on Tao Bums)

  • what we’re debating here

  • Waking Up and Falling Asleep

  • On the Egyptian ‘akh’

  • from a letter to a friend

  • 2nd Life, The Online Sangha, and zazen

  • the cessation that the Gautamid described

  • Muho of Antaiji takes a swing at Brad in ‘The Truth About Hardcore Zen’

  • ‘At some point within Buddhism do you lose the structure?’- manitou, on Tao Bums

  • “to be actualized by the myriad things” (Dogen)

  • on dreaming- from the Castaneda thread, on Tao Bums

  • “…where we are sits, stands, and moves beyond doubt.”

  • the breathing techniques..are they supposed to help you achieve a certain state of mind

  • response to ‘why does it happen to me’, from Tao Bums

  • seeing true nature- from Ted Biringer’s Flatbed Sutra blog

  • response to question, from Tao Bums

  • Reverse breathing

  • Response to Chunyi Lin interview, on Tao Bums

  • isolating the motion of the sacrum

  • what I am as where I am

  • response to Rainbow_Vein on Tao Bums

  • asleep/awake, from Tao Bums

  • response to question, from cat on Tao Bums

  • consciousness conditioned by ignorance, attachment, or aversion

  • hypnosis + ‘the most important thing’

  • from Hardcore Zen comments

  • Last time I saw Kobun

  • comment, Warner’s “Hardcore Zen”

  • The End of Suffering, from Brad Warner’s site

  • “attunement”- comment on double-binds, from Tao Bums

  • zazen (animation)

  • Have you ever really practiced non-thinking?

  • The Lancet of Seated Meditation (Zazenshin)

  • in Gospel of Thomas, Jesus says, “make the inner like the outer” (Tao Bums)

  • from a Tao Bums discussion of moving objects with the mind

  • words from Shunryu Suzuki

  • the long and the short of inhalation and exhalation (from Brad Warner’s Hardcore Zen blog)

  • Has anyone come anywhere close to ‘the end of all suffering’ even after decades of practice?

  • THE END OF SUFFERING IS POSSIBLE FOR YOU (from Brad Warner s Hardcore Zen blog)

  • Connecting the upper thighs and the perineum (from Tao Bums)

  • what I needed to learn myself was how to let it all fall together (from Tao Bums)

  • is enlightenment obtained with the body, or the mind (from Tao Bums)

  • How important is it to have one’s back completely (as much as possible) straight during meditation? How important are these postures anyway? (from Tao Bums)

  • can someone recommend some stretching program to get closer to full lotus? (from Tao Bums)

  • straighten the clothes and sit precariously

  • …about full lotus (part 2)

  • …about full lotus

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