Bodhitree

I would recommend getting a thorough grounding in drugs before trying a psychedelic. Listen to at least 30 hours of Terence McKenna on YouTube, then you will have some idea of what you’re getting yourself into.

As I understand it, psychedelics allow you to free yourself from the layers of belief that you have built up. The hallucinations seem to take a cue from your state of mind, set-and-setting, and so can either lead you to truth or falsehood. That is why integrating what you experience during a trip can take a long time. It affects the mind, so it takes time to settle, and then what you remember needs to be given a place. But I am not an expert on psychedelics.

@Buba I’m going to let you do your own research, it’s more fun that way. Since you live in Azerbaijan, you might know more about Buddhism in that part of the world than I do, but I thought there was one country where they are predominantly buddhists. I think it was the Kalmykia region in Russia.

@Nahm I don’t think it is a question of fault, exactly. Grace is not something you consciously express, it flows from within as a sign of the achievement of your spirit. As I understand it anyway.

My background is kinda totally different, so maybe my reply to this is not so much in line with what Leo teaches in his video’s, but usually this kind of feeling happens slowly. These things take time to think over and integrate, so maybe you just want to go a bit too fast. I’d take a break from all this existential skulduggery and let things settle, come to rest.

Well I have heard that grace is only visible to those who are ready to see it, those who are receptive. So I am not surprised the concept causes a little bit of a stir.

So you think that grace is just a function of image? Why then does an picture of Papaji show me a kind of shine, his way of sitting, his smile — they just speak. While even the best PR shots of Tom Cruise show that he is just an actor. I don’t think the world is as simple as it all being just good PR, there is a genuine quality in these things.

Well, Ramana’s reply when he was asked about the cancer on his arm was that the cancer, too, has a right to live. I think he was absolutely right to do what he did. I’m absolutely perplexed by how far some humans are willing to go to preserve their lives. After all, death is not the end.

@The Buddha I know what you mean, I too have known a few very rare individuals who had this grace, like a full moon shining all around them. It’s immediately obvious. I have read that progress of the disciple happened with the grace of the guru, its why thousands of people would come and hear Osho speak his discourses live. I have even known a few English sannyasins who were told by him to attend the Hindi discourses, because the silences mattered more than the words.

You might want to read Stephen Batchelor’s book Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist, it is a good read and details his 12 years as a Tibetan Buddhist monk before he disrobed, returned to England and eventually married an ex-nun.

Yes it is possible. If you go and look at the Plum Village website, that is for the tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh, you will find arrangements for a temporary stay (there is some payment expected) or you can choose to become a monk and stay as long as you wish. There are some pretty stringent rules for monkhood, such as celibacy and having a bare minimum of personal possessions. I imagine it would vary from community to community. If you were to go to Thailand, temporary arrangements are quite normal there, many people become a monk for six months or a few years.

Well, when you are daydreaming or asleep you can still be startled awake by a loud noise or a shake of the shoulder. So there is still some form of awareness even if attention is absorbed elsewhere.

I have found it tricky to differentiate between the two, it’s a question of just trying a few things and seeing what resonates. I read Papaji’s book of satsang questions, The Truth Is, and I found that helpful. Papaji was the student of Ramana Maharshi and in his turn the teacher of others. I’ve investigated a few of the rest, Mooji, Rupert Spira, Robert Adams, a few more but there wasn’t a strong connection. You read this material, and there is an instinctive recognition for certain things that they are true. Other things you may be inclined to think they are horse manure. I am not inclined to just accept all of it at face value, some of what they claim is quite outlandish. Test the teachings as if you were a goldsmith buying gold at the market, as the Buddha would say.

@Someone here I would advise some cemetary meditation. It may not be as effective as in the Buddha’s time, when you’d literally be sitting with the bones of decomposing corpses, but it’s still good.

Hmm... love not argument is fine, as far as it goes, but at some point one needs to make a start on the truth. I’ve found that many quite hard-headed people can see some truth in the teaching of the Three Poisons. It’s a Buddhist concept, which holds that the roots of all our suffering are within us, and they are Desire (or greed), Aversion (or Hate), and Delusion (which is the chief). This is a thin wedge, a small crack to encourage further discussion of suffering and the processes that lead to it, which eventually gives you the opportunity to discuss deeper spirituality such as interrelatedness, oneness, and other topics.

It’s still an interesting forum. I’ve hung around on a few Buddhist forums, and this is a very different approach to enlightenment. I get the impression that it is a much younger average age who come here.

Some things you only let go of when you are ready... just try to develop the mind of letting go, so that when the time comes letting go is effortless and without suffering. It is good to look at places where you cling to things, where you feel a compulsion to hold on, and to relax those places in yourself and just mindfully be with them. Often clinging has a root, there are reasons why we cling. It could be an old fear, or a daydream, or an intense desire, something from your childhood perhaps. Finding these things and exposing them to full consciousness can alleviate them, allow them to relax and let go. But clinging is one of the links in the chain of suffering — as long as you cling, you suffer when the time of parting comes. So pay attention to where you cling, and to what makes you cling.

You can certainly tie the Big Bang together with the concepts of Hindu spirituality, but that doesn’t mean that seen rationally either of them make sense. The idea of the universe — which is pretty gigantic if you follow recent developments in astronomy — fitting into an area the size of an electron is way out there in the land of unlikely things. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if a few decades from now we think of the Big Bang theory as another of science’s missteps.

It’s certainly possible to confuse yourself by taking in too much. Practice and slow absorption are the key, in my experience, followed by a little meditation. Maybe spend some time listening to perenniallists, the idea that all paths lead up the mountain even if they don’t all reach the summit is a valuable one.

That’s a key lesson for any vision, regardless of its source. Thanks for that, it’s helpful to me. Have you considered whether the vision was telling you that it’s the right time for you to have a wise man in your life as a partner? It seems to me that that is a clear dimension of it, that aya is showing you there is time and energy for you to be together with a male.

I wonder if it is wise to go into this with much in the way of expectations or goals. It seems to me you may all have very different experiences, and what you take away from it could vary.

Hmm, there are a lot of people in psych wards with very similar stories to that one.

I was just listening to Terence McKenna — I’ve been on a bit of a jag of his stuff — and I came across a section where he was talking about the Big Bang, he said something like this... The ultimate singularity is the Big Bang, which physicists believe was responsible for the birth of the universe. We are asked by science to believe that the entire universe sprang from nothingness, at a single point and for no discernible reason. This notion is the limit case for credulity. In other words, if you can believe this, you can believe anything. He had a fair point, I think. The whole notion of a Big Bang seems rather far-fetched, almost as far fetched as the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Reminds me of the stories of Terence McKenna, he said he always had some weed handy for when a mushroom trip would go in a wrong direction, then he’d light up and smoke some in order to correct it. But then he was very seasoned.

If you look at the traditional stories of the Buddha, you find they come to him to learn the dhamma. So I wouldn’t necessarily expect all deities to be wise or very intelligent.