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Month: September 2016

Posted on September 8, 2016March 1, 2021

“The Secret of the Golden Flower”

I’d like to try to describe what I see in the lines of the illustration from “The Secret of the Golden Flower” (a Chinese meditation manual now dated somewhere between 1668 and 1692): read more

 

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Posts

  • A Natural Rhythm

  • The Tree of Knowledge

  • Letter to the Author of “The Dark Side of Dharma” (Anna Lutkajtis)

  • For a Friend

  • Shunryu Suzuki’s “Whole-Body Zazen”

  • At the Berkeley Zendo

  • 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

  • Letting the Mind Move

  • Tohei’s 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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