"It is apparent that in the not too distant future nature must institute bankruptcy proceedings against industrial civilization, and perhaps against the standing crop of human flesh, just as nature has done many times to other detritus-consuming species following their exuberant expansion in response to the savings deposits their ecosystems had accumulated before they got the opportunity to begin their drawdown".

Catton, 'Overshoot', Page 172

"The world of mechanism is not a manufactory, in which energy iscreated, but rather a mart, into which we may bring energy of one kindand change or barter it for an equivalent of another kind, that suitsus better - but if we come with nothing in hand, with nothing we willmost assuredly return."

[Balfour Stewart, 1883, pp. 26-7; 34]

A definition for loving-kindness and samadhi
ericparoissien

...

an attitude where you let everyone around you believe in the niceynessthat "has to be" found at the heart of each creature ... thusminimizing the risk of being rejected, ignored, misunderstood, takenfor a fool, a madman or a simpleton. Considering that there is no mystery, no beyond, no transcendence, nocore to experience or humankind, thus no hope for evolution (thereforeno dissatisfaction or disillusion) ...at Dante's inferno's gate:"Leave all hope behind you, you who enter here"is a message of freedom .. but inferno for the seeker of truth; surely when nothing i carry or believe is my heart, is taken seriously, each moment takes care of itself. What if Buddha was so enlightenend that he did not need to believe in heavens and afterworlds and tomorrow will be better because of today's effort and meritorious deeds.

Why do all these teachers have to prepare us for something glorious to come, or take us out of an undesirable state in which we are enmuddled. As soon as we had the need/fear, we rushed out to a specialist...

Do we rely on him to tell us to question the need/fear, and how to achieve that? thus entrapping us in his wisdom to tell us how much wedon't need anybody's wisdom to make it on our own. Please don't give us, any more samadhis, trips, thrills, higher states, orgasms, experiences ...WE ARE FINE... all there is to know about the world is contained in one pause. Hey teachers leave those kids alone!

Do I use a fist or a fancy theory to knock down people in my way? It doesn't matter.

Mystery and transcendence is where the lazyness settles of not wanting to be just what is there.

That's the beginning of wisdom - when one can discard a figment of one's imagination and choose better figments.

it reminds me of a story Stephen Gaskin used to tell,
> about how he came to be enlightened. He said he was living
> with a bunch of people and he didn't like any of them. And
> he was kind of wrestling with this, because it was actually
> more than not liking the people in his household, it was
> more like he hated everyone and it was tearing him apart to
> borrow a phrase from James Dean. And he knew this feeling
> was crazy and he needed to come to some sort of resolution
> about it because it was destroying him to have this kind
> of feeling inside of him. And he went and meditated on this
> idea and feeling and eventually saw that having that kind of
> feeling created the foundation for his ground of being and
> everything was being extruded out of that and seeing this
> exploded his mind and he became enlightened, kind of a version
> of who am I? only what is this feeling?

*_* That's interesting.Could you elaborate?

-ok, sure, here's my understanding.

He said that reality ismultidimensional and the key element is the feeling/tone. Thatyou have your own personal one plus if there's more than one person in an area, there's a collective feeling/tone, similarto having an orchestra. A collective vibration. And this is the most important part of beingness. Rather than the thoughts part being the most important. If one can be shown or sees the truth of this, it 'could' cause a shift of consciousness from being anchored in thought, the usual place of anchorage. So, using this new model, attention is routed thru awareness of the energy body at all times to accurately measure the quality of one's thoughts.

GJC: The concept that cuts through the fog of ignorance and secrecy, the concept that allows the student to use Chi with purpose, to cultivate Jing, to develop and "burn" it into form, to become a dynamic self-powered individual is "The Condensing Principle." "The Condensing Process" is one of creating an inner vacuum with Chi, Jing, and Shen all at the same time. It's the process of packing the essence of things into every thought, intention, and action. Here's one basic condensing technique for developing Jing: whatever the posture, on the inhale focus on the body to expand, and at the same time focus on the inhaled Chi to contract, to condense, into the core of the body; then, on the exhale focus on the body to contract, and at the same time focus on the inhaled Chi to expand. On each inhale and exhale there is a simultaneous mental focus to expand and contract. This particular technique does two things: first, it sensitizes you to where you are in space as a physical, material body, and second, it introduces you to the first glimmer of Chi sensation, so much used in later training. This is just step one. As we go on and on, what we're doing is refining this same basic technique to the point where it goes from as gross as the body contracts, to where all the molecules in your body condense into one single atom.
(Gary Clyman)

I just had some fucker come into the gym the other day telling me that this one grandmaster's "chi" is so fucking great that my bones would melt. I'm like get the fuck out before I show you how to break bones the easy way.

--Omega

The perfect man has no self
The spiritual man has no achievement
The sage has no name

- Chuang Tzu

plane has its own illusion, which can be destroyed only by another illusion on the same plane. For example, a man takes a full meal and goes to sleep. He dreams of being hungry in spite of the jagrat food in his stomach. To satisfy the dream hunger, he has to take dream food.

Similarly the illusion of ajnana (ignorance) can be destroyed only by the illusion of guru upadesa (the Master's teaching). Mukti (liberation) is ever present, and bondage is for ever absent, yet the universal experience is the reverse.

- Ramana Maharshi, Thus Spake Ramana

He Sees the Truth

O Rama, he sees the truth who sees the body as a product of deluded understanding and as the fountain-source of misfortune, and who knows that the body is not the Self.
He sees the truth who sees that this body pleasure and pain are experienced on account of the passage of time and the circumstances in which one is placed; and that they do not pertain to him.
He sees the truth who sees that he is the omnipresent infinite consciousness which encompasses within itself all that takes place everywhere at all times.
He sees the truth who knows that the Self, which is as subtle as the millionth part of the tip of a hair divided a million times, pervades everything.
He sees the truth who sees that there is no division at all between the self and the other, and that the one infinite light of consciousness exists as the sole reality.
He sees the truth who sees that the non-dual consciousness which indwells all beings is omnipotent and omnipresent.
He sees the truth who is not deluded into thinking that he is the body which is subject to illness, fear, agitation, old age and death.
He sees the truth who sees that all things are strung together in the Self as beads are strung on a thread, and who knows ‘I am not the mind’.
He sees the truth who sees all beings in the three worlds as his own family, deserving of his sympathy and protection.
He sees the truth who knows that the Self alone exists and that there is no substance in objectivity.
He is unaffected who knows that pleasure, pain, birth, death, etc., are all the Self only.
He is firmly established in the truth who feels: ‘What should I acquire, what should I renounce, when all this is the one Self?’
Salutations to that abode of auspiciousness, who is filled with the supreme realization that the entire universe is truly Brahman alone, which remains unchanged during all the apparent creation, existence and dissolution of the universe.
— Vasistha’s Yoga, translated by Swami Venkatesananda

Do what you feel like doing. Don't bully yourself. Violence will make you hard and rigid. Do not fight with what you take to be obstacles on your way. Just be interested in them, watch them, observe, enquire. Let anything happen - good or bad. But don't let yourself be submerged by what happens.

- Nisargadatta Maharai I Am That: Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

"When girls sense hesitation they get all weirded out and think you're a freak."

The Four Basic Truths of Violent Assault

By Rory A. Miller

I responded to an incident between two inmates. The first inmate was brushing his teeth. The second inmate came up from behind and struck the first on the right side of his head. The tooth brusher tried to turn, but was pressed into the corner, punched again and again with hard rights until he eventually curled into a fetal ball. Blood splashed (not smeared) onto the wall at shoulder height. Do you train for this? Do you respect the power of a sudden attack and a constant barrage?

The attacker broke several bones in his hand and did not know it. Not just the metacarpals of a boxer's fracture either. Also, one of his fingers became deformed. Something he did not realize during the attack. He just kept hitting. He only started complaining of the pain several hours later. Do you ever teach that pain alone will stop a committed attacker? That if you break a bone, it is over? I told the attacker that he was lucky- if the other guy had fallen or hit his head on the wall and suffered more serious injury, he could be looking at some heavier charges. He said, "Nah, I held his head with my other hand so it wouldn't hit the wall. I know how you guys trump up charges and if I'd let him hit the wall you'd try to get me for attempted murder."

Do you and your students realize how rational and how planned a sudden assault can be? It is only sudden for the defender. For the attacker, far too often, it is part of his plan. Do you understand that there is a sub-group of human beings who can savagely beat another human being all the while coolly thinking of their eventual court case? Assaults happen closer, faster, more suddenly, and with more power than most people can understand.

Closer: Most self-defense drills are practiced at an optimum distance where the attacker must take at least a half step to contact. This gives techniques like blocks enough time to have an effect. You rarely have this time or this distance in an assault. Give some thought as to how your technique will work if there is no room to turn or step. Remember that the attacker always chooses the range and location and will pick a place and position that hampers your movements.

Faster: When your martial arts students spar, use a stop watch and count how many blows are thrown in a minute. Even in professional boxing the number is not that impressive. Use the stop watch again, this time counting how many blows you can land on a heavy bag in a single second. Six to eight times per second is reasonable for a decent martial artist. An assault is comparable to that number. Because the threat chooses a time when the victim is off-guard, he can attack all-out with no thought of defense. A competent martial artist, who is used to the more cautious timing of sparring, is completely unprepared for this kind of speed. You can strike ten times a second, but you can’t block ten times a second. More suddenly: An assault is based on the threat’s assessment of his chances. If he cannot use surprise, he often will not attack. Some experts say that there is always some intuitive warning. Possibly, but if the warning was noted and heeded, the attack would have been prevented. When the attack happens, it is always a surprise.

More power: There is a built-in problem with all training - you want to recycle your partners. If you or your students hit as hard as they can every time they hit, you will quickly run out of students. The average criminal does not hit as hard as a good boxer or karateka can hit, but they do hit harder than the average boxer (because of gloves) or karateka has ever felt. More often than not, the first strike in an ambush lands cleanly. Fighting with a concussion is much more different than sparring.

Responses to the Four Basic Truths

There are specific ways to train in order to deal with these truths about assault. You must get used to working from a position of disadvantage. Put yourself and your students in the worst positions you can imagine (face down, under a bench, blindfolded to simulate blood in the eyes or with one arm tied in your belt) and start the training from there. No do-overs. Work from the position you find yourself in. There is no “right” move anyway, just moves that did work or did not work that one time.

Contact-response training: Condition (as in operant conditioning) for a quick, effective response to any unexpected aggressive touch. When properly trained, a counter-attack will kick in before the chemical cocktail of stress hormones does. Contact-response training allows the expected victim to perform one technique at 100% and may give the initiative to the victim instead of the assailant. What is occuring is that through operant conditioning, you can get to near-reflex speed. If that occurs, and the student is trained to counter-attack, the first response will not have the 80% degradation caused by stress hormones therefore the first response can be at 100% skill which can turn the tables.

Train to “flip the switch.” Have your students practice going from friendly, distracted or any other emotion to full-on assault in an instant. Make them play music, converse, fold clothes, write or pour tea as an armored assailant attacks. The key is that the distraction must be natural and relaxed, not the jerky half-preparation of someone who expects an attack. When slow motion training, use realistic time-framing. Do not let the students pretend that “Monkey plucks jade lotus and presents to golden Buddha” is one move and do not let them pretend that a spinning kick is just as fast as a jab.

Get you and your students used to being hit and get used to being touched, especially on the face. For various reasons face contact between adults is loaded with connotations. Accidental face contact almost always results in both students freezing and can cause an outpouring of emotional sludge. Criminals use this by starting with an open-hand attack to the face (called a “bitch slap”) that has paralyzing psychological effects.

Teach common sensitivity. Students must respond to what is happening, not to their expectations or fears. The point is that students in self-defense training often pretend that things that are there (such as weapons on the wall or exits) aren't and that's a bad habit. This isn't about sparring, but about training for violent assault. It's one of the most important things to learn to keep from being stuck trying to make a "dojo solution" work.

Forbid giving up. Winning is a habit. Fighting is a habit. Put your students in positions where they are completely immobilized and helpless and set the expectation to keep fighting.

The Flaw in the Drill

In the end, a martial artist is training to injure, cripple or kill another human being. In any drill where students are not regularly hospitalized there is a DELIBERATE flaw, a deliberate break from the needs of reality introduced in the name of safety. In every drill you teach, you must consciously know what that flaw is and make your students aware of it.

A child on a farm sees a plane fly by overhead and dreams of a faraway place A traveler on the plane sees the farmhouse and dreams of home

- Carl Burns

And if there were a contest, and he had to compete in measuring the shadows with the prisoners who had never moved out of the den, while his sight was still weak, and before his eyes had become steady (and the time which would be needed to acquire this new habit of sight might be very considerable), would he not be ridiculous? Men would say of him that up he went and down he came without his eyes; and that it was better not even to think of ascending; and if any one tried to loose another and lead him up to the light, let them only catch the offender, and they would put him to death.

-Socrates (Plato The Republic Book VII)

Waves appear to be born, and to die.
But if we look more deeply, we see that the waves,
Although coming and going, are also water,
Which is always there.
Notions like high and low, birth and death,
Can be applied to waves,
But water is free of such distinctions.

Enlightenment for the wave
Is the moment the wave realizes that it is water.

- Thich Nhat Hahn

When men dream, each has his own world.
When they are awake, they have a common world.
- Heraclitus

I Have Come to Shine
I have come to pull you by your ear, and bring you to myself.
I will make you selfless, I will make you fearless,
then I will place you in the heart and the soul of the king of Souls.

I have come like a breeze of Spring to you, oh, field of flowers, so I can keep you by my side, and hold you tight.
I have come to shine on you, as you walk this path.
Like the prayer of lovers, I will help you reach the roof of the heavens.
I have come to take back that kiss
that you stole from me.

You are my catch, my game, my prey, my hunt.
You have escaped my trap so far, but run toward that trap once again. Run, run, or I will chase you there.

Remember what the lion said to the deer. "You are so beautiful, you are so lovely run in front of me,so I can catch you and tear you to pieces."

Be like the deer, accept the wounds
like a shield of a warrior. Don't listen to anything but the whooshing of the arrows heading toward you.

From the dust of the Earth to a human being
there are a thousand steps
I have been with you through these steps,
I have held your hand and walked by your side.
You may think that I have left you on the side of the road.
Don't complain, don't become mad, and don't open the lid of the pot.

Boil happily and be patient. Remember what you are being prepared for.

You are a lion's cub, hidden inside a deer's body, with one strike I will wipe that illusion
and rid you of it.

You are my ball, and you roll because of the strike of my polo mallet. Just remember, it is me who is chasing you even though it is me who is helping you run.

- Rumi, from Hush - Don't Say Anything to God - Passionate Poems of Rumi by Shahram Shiva