A friend, who cultivates, told me the following story.

He went to China and met an old Taoist in a cave who had him lie down and did something to his body to "help" his cultivation. That night, despite the fact that he was wearing heavy clothes, a coat, and bundled in a warm sleeping bag, his whole body started to shake and he was extremely cold.

"What was that?" he asked.

"Simple," I replied. "The guy helped you open up some the chi mai in your feet, and the cold chi locked up in your legs started to come out. It sometimes happens if you do deep bodywork, or REALLY deep yoga, and used to happen to me when I first started practicing seriously and would sit for hours. Usually several days into that sort of practice, I would spontaneously start to release that trapped cold chi from the legs and I would feel so cold and my teeth would chatter so much that I’d have to climb into bed to stay warm.

My teacher, when it happened, would simply give me some Chinese herbs to help open up the body and help this cold wind escape quicker. Basically they were cold medicine herbs to help drive the wind out of the body, because that’s what this is — wind chi escaping. Sometimes my teeth would shake and chatter uncontrollably for 15 minutes when this happened, and of course it had nothing to do with the weather or sickness. Even if you lived in the desert, this would happen if you finally started to open up some chi channels in your legs. At even a higher stage, you can start to realize chi poisons being extruded out your toes.

Everyone, I mean everyone has this cold chi trapped in their legs without knowing it and you have to get rid of it to transform the body and eliminate the cause of diseases like arthritis or even cancer. That’s why we say that the earliest stages of the spiritual path, regardless  of your meditation method, are to help you transform your chi (qi) and open up your chi channels. You’re trying to transform the physical body and harmonize the five elements. When this phenomenon occurs,  now you know about just one of these transformations."

You see, it’s very hard to open up the chi channels running into the legs. That’s why you rarely see ghosts with feet, because they cannot get the chi to extend all the way to the bottom of the feet. In Taoism it’s well known that you cannot become an immortal unless you open up the chi channels to the bottom of the feet, too. This task is so difficult that one of the holy names for the Buddha has to do with the feet because he has opened them.

Continued at Cold Leg Chi …

A lot of times my teacher would say that your first thought is usually right, and then we cover it over.

Well, research now says "trust your gut" — you’re processing the right decision, but don’t know why. Here’s why simple wisdom is often best:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/28/science/28conv.html?_r=1&ref=science&oref=slogin

Shinto, a popular religion in Japan that recognizes the existence of invisible (but existent) nature spirits, is really the heart and soul of the Japanese people. Shinto  has no official  founder nor scriptures as in Hinduism or Christianity. However, although the Japanese would deny it,  over the centuries it has been influenced by  the Chinese school of Taoism.

The  "Shinto gods" are called kami, and basically these are the protector gods or protector deities we find mentioned in many cultures. Every city, state, town and country has them….whether or not you believe in them, whether or not your religion acknowledges them. An invisible world of chi beings exists (doing their thing ) alongside our own.  The "Dragon King," supposedly in charge of rain for a region, is one such example as are some other powerful spiritual beings that make their homes in rocks, lakes and so forth.

Cultivate a bit and you’ll start to encounter these beings, made of chi, who have their own jobs in the world separate from your own. For instance, one of the watchman deities for a city looks like a walking stick with wings that flies from here to there checking on things  see if there are any problems. Other deities have human forms, and others not. There are beings  that produce plagues, beings involved with natural disasters like hurricanes and floods, … the categories of beings are too numerous to enumerate.

There are countless such beings in  the world that you can only see once you open up your chi channels and attain samadhi, and there is an intersection of interlocking interests between the kami and human world at times. Not always, but at times. If you cultivate you can make friends with such beings on a personal level. If you have the Tao, you end up teaching them.

Shinto shrines are simply  places of worship or places that pay homage to the kami.  Not places of worshipping the kami, as they don’t have the Tao either, but of respecting them and hopefully creating better relationships with them.

When a king went to a mountain in ancient times to make offerings to heaven, the kami would be there to observe the proceedings, as would the higher level Desire Realm beings responsible for protecting the nation. A nation has karma, and some of it can be changed by human and non-human efforts. If the king offered sacrifice and asked for assistance in case of a famine, drought, flood and so forth, they’d do what they could in their power to help matters if the karma of the people merited it. That’s why the prophets in the Bible would urge people to repent and change their ways, because  only then would they develop the merit for a new fortune to arise. All nations have protector deities….what happens is not just the result of human affairs.

Do kami exist? Of course. Most cultures do recognize them, but remember – they do not have the Tao. Even most heavenly gods and goddesses don’t have the Tao.

There are thousands of types of invisible sentient beings in this world alone, not to mention other worlds and realms. Even Christianity recognizes invisible higher celestial beings  – angels, archangels, archai, thrones, dominions, powers, cherubim and seraphim – which can sometimes, according to Aquinas, assume corporeal forms. Kami, if they cultivate, can sometimes do this as well, including the protector deities of towns and villages….and countless stories from countless cultures talk of a kami who suddenly appears out of nowhere to a good, virtuous man and advises him on some problem or difficulty. India and China are full of such stories.

Of course, the kami are still very low level beings in terms of the cosmic scheme of things. Most are still just Desire Realm inhabitants without any major degree of samadhi. Make friends, but don’t worship. They’re still trying to cultivate to the Tao, too.

So that’s kami for you.

When the first Zen master to China, Bodhidharma, observed the monks at Shaolin temple, he found them all weak and unable to defend themselves because of lack of exercise. Thus he taught them tendon stretching exercises, and the beginning of kung-fu. If all you do is meditate, you’ll still have problems if you don’t stretch or exercise, but as we all know, it’s a pain. So what do you do?

I’m always looking for the best of the best, and in terms of a quick exercise plan for joint mobility that will

1) help you eliminate pain and

2) attain full range of motion in ALL your joints, and works your entire body without having you break a sweat

3) which is based on studying the athletic performance of superstar athletes,

4) which only takes 10 minutes per day – incredible but true!!!

5) and basically smoothes the whole chi of your body so that sexual desire will not bother you so much (if you’re cultivating),

I recommend Z-health. In just days you’ll see a tremendous improvement with this 10 minute routine per day that doesn’t involve lifting weights, running or anything more strenuous other than flexing your joints, in a standing position, 3 times each way.

Incredible results. The best of the best. I recommend this for all cultivators, or for parents who want their children to excel in sports. These routines are the basis of Olympic results.

In India we have yoga muscle work. China has Tai chi and kung-fu exercises and its own form of bonesetting. Russia has its own form of exercise yet different than these (see the work of Sonnon and Pavel Tsatsouline). And int he  West we have our own peculiar forms of bodywork (Rolfing, IMT, Barnes method, visceral massage, lymph drainage, strain-counterstrain, etc.) and athletic peak performance studies … and now Zhealth.

If you are a cultivator fighting sexual desire, one of the problems is often that your chi is not evenly balanced or smooth. This can help you eliminate or reduce the problem when it bothers you, and it only takes 10 minutes. Finally, something that can help all the men who write me for advice. For that alone it’s a Godsend, but the results of correcting mobility problems from working at the computer, past accidents and so forth is incredible.

Check it out…

 

People sometimes ask me how to study history, and I always advise them to pay particular attention to studying the policies and management and results of ancient empires. There are several in particular to study: Roman, Byzantium, Chinese, Assyrian. 

Yes study modern and medieval history — that’s easy — but particularly study the rulership policies and results of empires.

Unfortunately, there are  no good records for studying Mayan, Aztec, Egyptian and several other great empires that no longer exist. People always focus on just the Roman or just the Chinese empires, but you should study both along with Byzantium and Assyrian. For a time, the Assyrians were world leaders and many of their policy results provide  insights to today’s world.

Now, here are some books and authors of use for Roman study: Herodotus, Thucydides and Tacitus and Gibbons. For Chinese history, Records of the Historian, and various other texts, especially texts by sages. For Byzantium, Assyrian and other studies, you have to turn to modern scholarship.

What your really want to study are WISDOM works by sages discussing policies, the flow of yin to yang and yang to yin, and thereby learn wisdom and the REAL results of policies — the unintended (but intended) effects that accumulate unseen like compound interest.  The idea of putting all your banking records on a chip and embedding it in you is one such policy you’ll eventually see that has the ultimate purpose of controlling you — you disagree with the government and they just turn off your chip and your access to money and the ability to buy anything. Cattle are chipped; human beings should not be despite any reasons you can think of as to the "benefits". Ridiculous.

If you accept chips or tagging in any way, you’ll suffer the same poor fate the of Israelites who become slaves to their Egyptian taskmasters for survival purposes, or the evil fate of the Jews in Germany who were marked by the Nazis for prison camps and the like. Atrocity! Power corrupts … what seems innocent will eventually be used against you, for sure. The only cure is the prevention of never letting it start. Someone always comes along who subverts the system, the proof being the present, and keeps everyone under wraps through fear of reprisals. Don’t let it happen by not letting it start. Wisdom teaches you to squash things in the bud before they even start.

Additionally, by the way, you don’t want ANY foreign body embedded in your body (pins, plates, chips, etc) because you CANNOT transform them, and you HAVE to transform your whole body through spiritual practice. My teacher was always worried about real cultivators who needed an operation worrying they’d leave in pinsm screws, plates  and so forth in the body, because these are an impediment to spiritual practice for the REAL CULTIVATORS you cannot overcome. I remember the first time I met him he was very worried I might have had an operation in the past wherein they might have used surgical pins or whatever, because you cannot and should not leave them in the body if you want to succeed at spiritual cultivation and he wanted me sto succeed. They are not your physical body, so you cannot transform them no matter what meditation technique or spiritual practice you undertake.

So for religious religions, no one should never let a chip be embedded in them. No matter how many reasons they can think of — "you’ll always know where your kids are," "no identity theft," "anti-terrorism " [another big lie], "anti-drug money prevention," "convenient access to your money," "we’ll keep your records private," "no one can rob  you," "we’ll give you accounting so you have control over your life," "we have to do this because there’s no toher way" –there is NO good reason, and you know that in better words than I can ever say. If you DON’T WANT IT TO EVER HAPPEN, you should wax eloquent yourself on this in blogs, Congress, everywhere and never let the sfrist steps happen!

Anyway…

To illustrate wisdom planning, as the Aaron Russo – Rockefeller video just showed, the reason the Rockefeller Foundation supported the woman’s liberation movement was two-fold (it was NOT for woman’s rights!): so that there was a second person to tax, and so that kids could be indoctrinated earlier in life to start thinking of the state as their parent. It was designed to have subsequent generations start thinking of the state as their family…something that interestingly enough, my teacher Master Nan often said would  probably happen – people would have babies and then just give them up to the state to take care of because of how they’re training people to think.

Only a wisdom view can think up with such strategies in the first place. I’m not saying this was moral, I’m just saying open your eyes. The motivation is actually deplorable, and if it was designed a different way, a different outcome more beneficial could be achieved. Watch the Aaron Russo video….one of the best in a LONG TIME I’ve seen and it’s instructive on what I’m always stressing if you want to learn cultivation. You need to learn wisdom.

Another unrelated instance just to illustrate this sort of wisdom planning, when the Chinese Emperor wanted to control Tibet, reports came back of all sorts of strange sexual practices  in the country because of the practice of tantra, which were creating social problems in the relationships between people. Rather than outlaw it, the Chinese Emperor said, " Leave it alone. They will weaken themselves this way which will make them easier to control." That, my friends, is a wisdom view.

When the US government forbid welfare payments to women if there was a man in the house, it destroyed black families and led to more illegitimate kids, destroying the fabric of families. And today — the championing of condom usage everywhere (despite the good intentions) will basically  lead to a DRAMATIC increase in the sexual promiscuity of both sexes and a further breakdown of marital relations as well. 

In essence, you’re training both partners that sex has no consequences, no commitments and a variety of things which weaken the marriage bond in so many ways…I’ll leave you to exercise your wisdom muscles here. 

And by the way, don’t misinterpet any of this as me promoting or not promoting these policies — I’m only enlightening you as to how to think because the planners BEHIND them do think this way. Only the unthinking public is fooled by great PR campaigns and talking heads who push the "good aspects" without mentioning the ultimate bad consequences that will invariably accumulate over time, like compound interest.

These are all Taoist type strategies that people institute, without the public realizing the REAL aims or objectives or results, in order to control things and accomplish social engineering. The British are the best in the world at this. The problem is, it’s always done for NEGATIVE PURPOSES instead of positive purposes. Chinese strategy books are the best guides for teaching how this can be done for positive purposes, such as building up a state.

Sages propose remedies and policies only for positive purposes, positive targets, stronger people and stronger countries, like my Kuan Tzu book on how to turn a state into a superpower. People all focus on Sun Tzu … silly! He was a mere tactician, whereas Kuan Tzu was a strategist and teaches EXACTLY what we are referencing here. So did the Yellow Stone Master.

Conclusion, or caveat: Beware people who institute policies saying its for reason XX when the real eventual result is reason YY. Wisdom will teach you this, but a simplistic intelligence view of the matter won’t.

Study history.  

I always teach you to stretch your wisdom muscles and realize how the world really works, rather than simply swallow the hollow words of established powers and talking heads who know nothing, but get paid for making sure you continue in ignorance. Mostly I show you how this applies to the realm of spiritual cultivation, which explains people’s lack of progress even though they want it (othewise why WOULD you continue going to church every Sunday, etc.). However, every now and then I comment on real world affairs just as my own teacher would do in order to teach people and awaken their wisdom. That’s why I encourage people to read and study history.

This video was just sent to me and falls into this category. Boy is it  worth the watch — especially the part about the Rockefellers. Watch the video at the bottom of the page….as the individual wrote who sent it to me, "It’s worth your time."

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/august2007/240807_b_aaron.htm

Related videos arealso found here in pieces:    http://www.surfingtheapocalypse.tv/f2f.php

This is all 100% true. Just examine the evidence, connect the dots and think for yourself. I’ve known all this for a long time, but have you? If not, where have you been? Understanding such things is the beginning of wisdom. Freedom is what spiritual cultivation is supposed to give you, but how can you get it if …

TIME magazine is reporting on Mother Teresa’s "Crisis of Faith" , misinterpreting her private writings to her confessor and reporting that she could not find Jesus in her life: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1655415,00.html

One such quote is as follows:

"Jesus has a very special love for you," she assured Van der Peet. "[But] as for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great, that I look and do not see, — Listen and do not hear — the tongue moves [in prayer] but does not speak … I want you to pray for me — that I let Him have [a] free hand." In her letters, Mother Teresa  often bemoaned  the "dryness," "darkness," "loneliness," and "emptiness,"  she suffers. Naturally, it all started once she gave herself over to a life of selfless charity work in India.

This is all very simple to explain, and once again proves my point that (1) Christians don’t know the stages of the spiritual path, so misinterpret things as they do here … BIG TIME … including the religious officials and the rest of the establishment. If they don’t know this stuff, how can they guide you? What are you going to them for?

Also, as I have often pointed out,  (2) Christian cultivators (Mother Teresa) have failed to get the Tao or scale higher spiritual heights time after time throughout Western history because they lacked good teachers. That’s a major reason. In the East, however, practitioners had good teachers available whereas most Christian cultivators did not. Had they had good teachers, they would have known how to jump through this phase to reach samadhi and the Tao along with experiencing inner joy, physical bliss and all the characteristics of samadhi-dhyana I always talk about. Why did Mother Teresa not achieve this?

Once again — Why have there been fewer saints in the Christian tradition getting the higher stages of the path? For lack of good teachers and proper teachings. Why are there no saints appearing in today’s Christian (or prophets in today’s Jewish)  traditions? Because of that and no practice!

People memorize the Bible but they never investigate the principles of spiritual cultivation, match it with the autobiographical or biographical accounts of saints in their tradition, and then match those ("Investigate") with those from other traditions to see the common WAY. That’s what Sunday school should be about, but God forbid…"there isn’t a common way; only our sect is right."

So let’s look at Mother Teresa…

There are two things you need to get the Tao– merit from performing selfless charity in service of others, and realization (attained through meditation of shedding thought) that thee is no such thing as an ego, being or life…those are just thoughts. For more information, go read the Diamond Sutra. If you just cultivate empty mind as the route to the Tao, it’s easy to get. If you just cultivate charity, it’s harder to get in that it takes longer, but you can also use that pathway to get there….only it may take an eon. My teacher always says it takes almost forever to get there by charity alone, which is why you must practice meditation, but it can be done.

Just by practicing selflessness, charity, offering you will start to realize minor stages of emptiness, especially if you have religious practice on top of this, together with this. But if you don’t know the principles of the path, you will still be clinging to thoughts and crimping your chi channels even as they are struggling to open and propel you into samadhi-dhdyana. So on the one hand you’re making progress, and on the other hand you’re fighting it. Your chi channels are starting to open, and on the other hand you’re crimping them shut.

So what happens? You’re not letting transformation take place by ignoring the body, and stay in a sort of limbo land transformative period FAR LONGER than you should. You feel empty inside because thoughts are gone, but you don’t know how to let go … your chi doesn’t circulate smoothly so you cannot give birth to physical bliss and only attain a small view of dry emptiness wondering what’s going on and what’s wrong.

If you read the story of Suzanne Segal, Collision with the Infinite, you’ll find the same thing!

On the other hand, if you knew how to let go because you had the right teachings, you could be free and happy instantly. It’s the clinging that puts you in torture — clinging to the old mental echos wandering what’s wrong. You keep trying to cling to thoughts and images of some expectation that isn’t there… it’s never been there. For regular people they cling to thoughts and emotions and then feel loved, etc. but you’re stuck in limbo land between real freedom and real bliss and regular mentality, so you feel cut off.

It’s like a couple that marries and then has kids. For years they busy themselves and their thoughts taking care of their kids, and one day wake up when the kids are gone out of college, and realize there’s a big emptiness there. That emptiness was there all along, but they just masked it by busying themselves with distractions. Now without the daily concerns, they realize it but cannot solve it. Result? Pain, suffering, loneliness, a search for meaning.

Now to explain more about Mother Teresa’s case, especially to someone without any knowledge of spiritual cultivation, would take more  time and energy than is possible in a blog.  All I can say is what ‘ve consistently said all along: (1) even the scholars and academics cannot recognize the Tao or stages to the Tao or common meditation techniques and methods of cultivation. This new book on Mother Teresa and the articles written about it are just another bit of proof. These guys know nothing about the spiritual path, and they’re the ones in charge.

Second, (2) poor Mother Teresa needed a good teacher, but didn’t have one. Even when you read the story of Ramakrishna, he had to wait to find a teacher who could teach him how to realize emptiness and the fact it was the goal (non-duality), and then he got it immediately. Prior to that he just flayed around here and there with this cultivation method and that one. 

She just needed to have someone to teach her to turn her awareness around and see what was behind it.  Then just let it all go, and let the mind function and not cling to any thoughts or emotions.  How great would it have been for her to be in the world doing her charity (grand mercy) and to see the wonderful function of mind but not be that function in itself. 

CONCLUSION – YOU NEED THE PROPER TEACHINGS, and poor Mother Teresa  didn’t have access to anything.

Now there’s something  interesting …

There is something you can expect if you were to cremate Mother Teresa’s body. When you cremate the body of a samadhi master or sage, you usually find sariras – the relics of saints. If you cremate the body of regular people, you won’t find any because they only form in the body of cultivators. However, if someone was a virtuous, selfless person, like Mother Teresa, if you cremate her body you will likely find very crude sariras. They won’t be smooth and shiny like those for samadhi masters, but you will ind crude versions nonetheless.

 Just another interesting fact about spiritual cultivation.

 

One of the  most interesting economic books in the last few years is Freakonomics, by Levitt and Dubner.

When people tell me they read the book, I’ve never had a case where they did not excitedly talk about the same example. Seems this example always strikes people, and if true, shows the benefits of cultivating your wisdom understanding of things, events, affairs. In Freakonomics, p. 139-141:

"In the early 1990s, just as the first cohort of children born after Roe v. Wade was hitting its late teen years –the years during which young men enter their criminal prime — the rate of crime began to fall. What this cohort was missing, of course, were the children who stood the greatest chance of becoming criminals. And the crime rate continued to fall as an entire generation came of age minus the children whose mothers had not wanted to bring a child into the world. Legalized abortion led to less unwantedness; unwantedness leads to high crime; legalized abortion, therefore, led to less crime."

People don’t believe this upon first reading it, but then the authors go into case after case lending weight to its veracity. Makes sense to me. Despite what each city mayor claimed during that time, thumping his or her chest during re-election campaigns, they probably had very little to do with stemming the crime rate. It was probably this and a general economic buoyancy rather than any actions on their part.

Go read the book. Controversial. Jarring results. Lots of wisdom in teaching you how to think.

And as we get near election time, don’t just trust the politicians with similar claims and trumping. I remember Al Gore claiming he invented the interent. Sheez.

I always emphasize that people understand the 5 stages  of the spiritual path, laid out by Nagarjuna and the Madhyamaka school of Buddhism, because without this understanding, I guarantee people have no clue as to the actual target of  spiritual cultivation, the non-denominational stages of the path and how to get there. Most people don’t know that their religious convictions and efforts are virtually useless unless they  fit within the higher stages of this framework.

In  Measuring Meditation and the Stages course I show how this 5 Stages scheme accurately describes the yoga school, Buddhism, Taoism, the esoteric school, Sufi Islam,  certain Christian sects and so forth. Now I can add Sikkhism to the list.

Sikkhism divides the spiritual path into five stages, realms or khands. These are:

1. dharam-khan  (dharma-khanda) – the realm/stage of virtue
2. gyan-khand (jnana-khanda) – the stage of knowledge
3. saram-khand (shrama-khanda) – the stage of effort
4. karam-khand (karma-khanda) – the stage of divine action
5. sac-khand (satya-khanda)- the realm of truth

Our 5 Stages mp3 CD tells more! You need to know these five stages, if nothing else, to make sure you don’t waste any more years of searching, running from teacher to teacher and method to method, without knowing what you’re seeking.

Few people know that Edgar Cayce, the "Sleeping Prophet," was an often invited visitor of the White House during President Woodrow Wilson’s presidency. He was called in for consultations after a stroke had hit the president (source: The Haunting of the Presidents). Mrs. Wilson was so afraid of the publicity that she  always had Cayce ushered in through  the White House side door. I don’t know how true it is, but it’s said he even helped formulate the presidential policies during this period.

Nancy Reagan took great pains to conceal her constant phone calls to astrologer Joan Quigley (What does Joan Say?), who was responsible for so many things in the Reagan administration including the strange take-off times of Airforce One. Of course, consulting astrologers is done all the time by Indian politicians, as well as high Taiwanese mucky-mucks. And I’m told the upper echelons of the British are no strangers to intense dabbling.

Newspapers had a field day when they revealed that Hillary Clinton — yes, the Hillary Clinton — often consulted Jean Houston to guide imaginary conversations with lady Eleanor Roosevelt, one of the most beloved first ladies.

The occult involvement of high members of the Third Reich is well documented, and we need not go into it here. Turning north, the longest serving prime minister in Canadian history was Kinsey King, who served as Prime Minister for more than 20 years. After he died, people found his diaries inside of which he revealed that he made his political decisions by consulting a crystal ball, and by contacting spirits.  And you thought this stuff didn’t happen, did you? Let me tell you, with what little I know about the ruling generals in Burma, and the rulership of Ethiopa and stories from all sorts of other countries by first hand accounts, this is not unusual.

The Russian KGB is known to have spent millions investigating paranormal phenomena to see if special abilities could be harnessed for the state. The CIA has done likewise, and other covert US agencies. Books from China on qi-gong investigations have shown the strong opposition by the government to the acceptance of any conclusions on such topics   (since their truthfulness goes against the basic Communist assertions that everything is materialism and has little to do with the mind), so at least one large nation is left out of the equation … so far.

In short, the public doesn’t realize the extent to which the elite are involved with psychics, astrologers, feng shui, seances and so forth. The  talking heads ridicule this, but I can assure you that in most every country I’ve been in,  the involvement is not as non-existent as people think. Having talked to Greeks and read about their modern spiritual teachers and schools, it’s just another country where the involvement is commonplace and extensive. If I told you about the witchcraft that goes  on in places like Malaysia, Lebanon and Indonesia, you’d probably flip out.

I have astrologer friends with billionaire – BILLIONAIRE, not millionaire – clients including Wall Street billion dollar hedge fund managers. I kid you not – but those managers want to keep things secret. When I stayed with my Zen master in Asia, I had the bigwigs of politics and industry, CEO’s of listed stock exchange companies, generals and so forth all relate their own experience with these things. 

I know of Egyptians who also involve themselves with this, and don’t fool yourself into thinking that the Arab royal families don’t have their own advisors in these areas.

The involvement runs deep!

The problem is, this is all the low level stuff these folks are involved with, not the  involvement with sages which can help you dissolve karma and truly guide nations. Many strategy books in ancient China were written by sages offering guidance  on how to run a country; the Indian counterpart manuals are more tactic-like rather than strategic.

Chinese and Indian Emperors, when they found a samadhi-sage or enlightened-sage, would always call on them for advice in guiding the nation because a sage can know the karma of a policy before if’s instituted. It’s too bad that today all these people don’t even know what a sage is, or how to differentiate the merely psychic from the spiritual stages of attainment, or the intelligent from the wise. That’s difficult for most people to do – to differentiate between wisdom, intelligence and knowledge.

I recommend the Asiapac comic series for quick lesson reads of famous books by sages. My Kuan Tzu is one such book written by a sage.  The Art of Government : Three Strategies of Huang Shi Gong, are lessons from the Yellow Stone Master. The Master of Demon Valley is more intellectual than sagely, but is useful, too. Sixteen Strategies of Zhuge Liang is useful, because along with Kuan Tzu he was one of the few Chinese Prime Ministers really concerned about the welfare of the people, and is commonly considered a Taoist sage. There is a special form of the I-Ching, that bears his name, and is held in the highest respect and awe by most i-Ching masters in Hong Kong for reasons we won’t get into — and no it’s never been translated into English.

Chinese Eunuchs : Inside Stories of the Chinese Court  talks about corruption brought about when eunuchs secretly got in control of the government, and schemed to control the court. There are many cases in both Asian and Roman history where eunuchs close to the emperor ended up controlling his thoughts, policies and power, and led to the destruction of the country. It’s useful to know these lessons, too, although they’re more mundane. Why? Wisdom once again.

Over and over again I will stress to you — don’t be complacent but understand what goes on in the world by please exercising your wisdom muscles.

Wyeth Pharmaceuticals has produced a new form of birth control pill that eliminates a woman’s periods. They’ve only tested it for one year, and are ready to roll it out.

Only one year of testing? No known long term side effects????? And you want to sell it already? Has ethics gone out the window or something?

The reason to bring up this birth control pill is because as I always mention, to succeed at the Tao a woman has to meditate to the stage where her period naturally stops, and then she must continue meditating until it starts again. That cessation marks a change in her hormones, and an advanced transformation of jing to chi as she builds her own immortal fetus. Taoism discusses this a lot. It’s called returning to the state of a chaste maiden, or slaying the dragon.

Studies show that two-thirds of women would gladly give up their period. Meditation, with the target of success, is one way to go afterthis target but I’m not sure if this new birth control is.

Want to  know more about the gong-fu stages of the meditation path? I include a free 180+ page report of these stages on my website.

People often ask why they should study things other than just meditation, if that’s why they’ve come to MeditationExpert.com.

The answer is simple.

To become a Bodhisattva, or enlightened adept who can help others, according to Buddhism there are 5 areas of learning you need to master (Confucianism has a different list of three areas of study for becoming a "gentleman"):

1. meditation – spiritual cultivation
2. psychology
3. medicine and healing
4. arts and literature
5. technology and science

In other words, you have to become well rounded in your learning — more of a Renaissance man. When you read the teachings  of all sorts of sages, you quickly learn they could talk about all sorts of topics because they had multiple skills and knowledge sets other than just meditation. They always studied to increase their wisdom.

In fact, the great Zen masters of China, such as Yun-men and Lin-chi, Huang-po and Ma-tsu, were even so skilled they could just as easily have been kings as meditation masters.

These are your role models if you really want to succeed in meditation. Knowledge and learning from other fields can actually help you understand many things in the field of cultivation.

However, don’t get lost in external learning, even just studying meditation techniques. Practice, practice, practice is the key to progress and success.

There’s been a lot written about the "lottery curse" – after winning a large sum of money, people’s lives seem to destruct. In other words, it almost seems that bad fortune follows good.

Now why is that?

Let me first relate what my teacher always says when he sees a foolish couple spending mega-bucks on their wedding: "Those silly people are using up all their good fortune with such extravagance."

Even Oprah says people are going too overboard and should be saving the money rather than spending it (people will listen to Oprah spouting commonsense more so than if I said the same thing or even a sage said it).

You see, in life you have a stock of accumulated good fortune from past lives, and accumulated good fortune from things you do in this life. If you spend it – that’s using it up and less is left. All that’s left is then a relatively larger proportion of bad fortune now that the good fortune is gone. Hence, trouble.

So when someone in this life wins the lottery, which is "spending" their good fortune from past karma since that  merit now expresses itself in their winnings, their stock of good fortune decrease a LOT. They have less good fortune left. AND if in this life they were not doing anything extraordinary to create a new stock of merit (good fortune) in this life to replenish things on a grand scale, then lots of their good fortune was… as my teacher  put it .. used up.

That explains the lottery curse!

In the Zen school there is a commonly used koan, "Who am I?" or "What am I?"

Similarly, "What is your original face before you were born?" or What is your original face before your parents were born?" Or, "Before the question ‘Who am I?’ arises, what are you?"

These are questions you use in meditation to penetrate through fixed false thoughts of delusion. Without going into the details, you need to know that Zen Buddhists use this contemplation method to tie up thoughts and then abandon them. So do Tibetan Buddhists. Hindus and Sufis also use this practice technique. 

That’s a lot of different schools, which attests to its great effectiveness in helping you penetrate through to the ultimate substrate of being (i.e God).

Here’s the biggie: Pope Jean Paul II also said Christians should ponder this question (source: Hakuin on Kensho, Albert Low, p. 73). So we also have a Catholic Pope telling Christians to use this cultivation technique.

The sage Nisargadatta instructed: "Give up all questions except one: ‘Who am I?’ After all, the only fact that you are sure of it is that you are. The ‘I am’ is certain. The ‘I am this’ is not. Struggle to find out what you are in reality." [Source: I am That, trans. Maurice Frydman, Durham: NC, Acorn Press, 1973, p. 70].

Ramana Maharshi, another enlightened sage, said,

The mind will subside only by means of the inquiry, "Who am I?" The thought "Who am I?", destroying all other thoughts, will itself finally be destroyed like the stick used for stirring the funeral pyre. If other thoughts rise one should, without attempting to complete them, inquire, "To whom did they rise?" What does it matter however many thoughts rise? At the very moment that each thought rises, if one vigilantly inquires "To whom did this rise?", it will be known "to me." If one then inquires "Who am I?", the mind will turn back to its source (the Self) and the thought which had risen will also subside. By repeatedly practicing this, the power to abide in its source increases. [Source: Be As you Are, ed. David Godman, London, Arkana, 1985, p. 59].

Just another  meditation method you can use.

Latest news: Bishop Urges Christians to Call God "Allah"

In order to  reduce tensions between Christians and Moslems, a Bishop has suggested Christians call God "Allah."

Let’s put aside the issue whether this is good or bad. On that I have no comment. But consider the accurate point the Bishop does make — if it IS the same original entity, the name does refer to the same thing.

Of course, as I’ve alwasy pointed out, when people say "God" they’re thinking of a person-type being or individual God with a personality, as on the ceiling of the Sistene Chapel. When they say "Allah" they’re thinking of a being, a god, a living-breathing (so-to-speak) entity as well. Your first gut reaction to the Bishops remarks, if anything negative, was probably proof you’ve already locked on to  this notion in your mind. That’s one reason behind religious wars and  fighting — both sides are thinking of entity-beings and saying "your God is not my God." 

As the saints, sages, gurus, and so forth  say — those with either the Tao (enlightenment) or high samadhi attainments — the original nature is not a being, but is beyond both being and non-being, existence and non-existence. In spiritual cultivation, you try to reach realization of THAT original nature. If you hold an image in your mind, however, that’s already wrong.