Levitation

July 2, 2013

HI,

    There is no question that life's hard knocks provide opportunities for overcoming challenges from life; from turning negative into positive.
You talk about the lessons learned from living a few excesses...well, this is of course true (the Prodigal Son story, eh). I know I certainly lived in huge excess (substance abuse-alcoholism, etc.)
    After being labeled by mental health in an unfavorable way, being forced to live as a homeless person myself for a few years it wasn't until I "escaped" to Asia to live for half a decade that I learned anything about myself and the world around me (even though I truly thought I had learned a lot previously). However, it wasn't until last year after I came back to Canada and found out I had developed cancer that I really learned what is important in life.
   I have never studied the Buddha although there was a Buddhist monastery I visited regularly on a mountainside in Korea when I was there for a couple of years (it was a great atmosphere to meditate in). Many Buddhist sects have developed very wonderful physical exercises to counter the unhealthy physical conditions that might otherwise result from long periods of inactivity (while meditating for example) but in fact Taoism takes a very physically interactive approach with the energetic (physical) world.
    Anyway, it wasn't until I truly faced actual death that life came together for me. Thanks for giving me an opportunity to share this.

Cheers, Whitewolf

Damn, I've lost too many friends to cancer. Feel for ya whitewolf. Hope you go into remission.

?

Ah, now I have more time to respond...

Thanks for the hopeful words. Actually, last year’s operation appears to have been successful so far and I'm living as healthy a lifestyle as possible.

I'd like to comment on a few things:
(Tennessee_Arborist )…”Primarily it seems if you view the Tibetan culture where Buda came from you learn that through abstinence you understand how to deal with the trials of life and control of the body, but Buda was right. You need to fulfill the body's desires and longings to properly set them aside or they constantly plague you. From the two split views however there are hidden lessons to learn about excess. Buda might have been a great teacher, but his life seemed to lack much due to obesity and lack of honing his body to it's full potential, and the opposite true with other Tibetans. They train their mind as sharp as possible while letting their own body's begin to wither. It seems the hidden lesson is the only way to truly achieve one's own potential is to understand and accept your own frailties. You have to experience the physical pain and pleasure and understand how to fulfill both needs for self control and to grant what is needed to fulfill your needs while becoming your own master and understand when to tell yourself enough.”

From what I’ve been told and what I’ve read in fact Siddhārtha Gautama (the Buddha) who came from India, at first practiced asceticism and later the middle way.  He was not a fat man and from all accounts was in fact the epitome of health once he developed the middle way (although physically he was a pretty skinny individual when he practiced asceticism). He experienced life more fully than most are capable of.
    However, the statues and images we see of a Buddha with a fat belly and jolly smile are stylized images that portray certain philosophical, meditational and spiritual qualities. His wisdom (or the wisdom attributed to him) and the very healthy physical, psychological and spiritual effects of his example and teachings are still very much recognized today by intelligent people all over the world.

When it comes to living our excesses (before being able to do away with them), the fact is, in true meditation one encounters these excesses to the extreme. This is why true students of meditation should have experienced teachers to confer with when necessary and to guide them, because as one begins to truly enter in the deep individual and especially collective mind, what is encountered  (at first) is anything but blissful or moderate!  An individual can live out their excesses but it can be done through meditation rather than physically (alas I learned this too late in my life). To use a biblical idea, one can learn the lessons of the prodigal son without necessarily actually doing anything wrong (or to excess) in a material sense.

One other thing I’d like to comment on is about old texts and perspectives on the occult.  Some people today think they are outdated tomes, nonsense that can be displaced by more modern perspectives. The fact is the authors and practitioners described in these old (perhaps ancient) sources lived at a time when people’s powers of perception and sensitivity to “what is” was far more powerful and clear compared to todays minds, many of which have been desensitized from mass media, radio wave pollution, chemical pollutants, computer games, TV programing, etc, etc. Today, people are immersed in a materialism and literalism that distorts the one reality from which all emanates: consciousness and the creative source.

Well, I must go for a bicycle ride out in the country, bye for now

Cheers, Whitewolf