I like this site — it brought back lots of memories because I DO REMEMBER milk being delivered to our house, the transister radio, phonograph records, and the radio songs you can hear here. Plenty to remember and reminisce about.

A wonderful set of memories encapsulated on the web.

http://the60sofficialsite.com/

In August of last year I announced that a recession had begun. This is a good time to revisit that article as most of the warnings have come true:

http://meditationexpert.com/blog/real-world/recession-or-depression-its-here-its-started

I’ve also stated that one of the contributing factors, amongst many, is the fact that we have no strong base of manufacturing jobs because of all the outsourcing. Why? "Free trade."   As I always say, free trade to help the consumer matters not when the consumers are all unemployed - at some level the domestic unemployment rises to a level where it’s ludicrous to keep reciting the mantra of "free trade, free trade" as the salvationist cure for public welfare (because no one has money to buy goods, no matter how cheap they might be).  Somewhere I have an article on this as well…

You will see cracks developing in the free trade arena as this recession deepens, and also within 20-30 years you’ll definitely see cracks develop in the US  between all its constituent parts.  Not from anything I’m doing - but from what the politicians are doing in their policy choices. Already we’ve seen cracks in the US world hegemony because of its dollar policies and military involvements, and we’ll see more and more nations delinking from the dollar and the focus on export economies as they switch to starting to build up their own internal economies rather than export-for-hire. All because   the last several decades of economic policy errors have to have their consequences. Some of these principles I explained in my book on Kuan Tzu.

Another "silent" contributing factor to all this  (that no one has been mentioning) has been the increasing say corporations have been having in White House and Congressional affairs since the end of the Reagan era. Democrats and Republicans have converged in their economic views, and both listen to the mega-corporations who seem a more tangible presence to the politicians (and a more tangible election checkbook) than millions of individual wage earners and small businessmen in a nation. The best bank is to store money amongst the people, but in giving corporations equal say to individuals, the vast money they represent in one entity, and perks they can promise politicians, has diverted the entire legislative system to favoring the corporations over the individuals. What is best for the corporation is not necessarily best for the public when outsourcing is the norm. Now we must switch back to the local economy, local manufacturer, local farmer, local community …

Corporations, unless owned by a single individual/family with strong ethical and moral guiding principles apart from "profit maximization", focus entirely on that — making more money. Whatever makes more money is what is pursued, which means events/goals/targets that may not be good for the public but which are legal and make money. Often the methods used are untheical and illegal because money is the only goal and benchmark.  A pure profit maximiation focus means an weakened public and social fabric/sector  in the long run under such a system that no longer has checks and balances as we once did.

This is just another way of saying that the fat cats on Wall Street have been getting rich because the system over the last two decades has been slowly twisted more and more in their favor to help them make profits, but THEIR profits have little trickle down effects to your livelihood or standard of living. It helps the corporation but not the population of the country, not the wage earners, not the real substance of the country; the country is for the people, not the corporations. NAFTA is a perfect example — it destroyed US jobs. It WAS a great sucking sound, as Ross Perot correctly warned (but people laughed at him). And this is a perfect example of how the corporations are getting richer and the common man, left without a job, is suffering. It will get worse.

So the moral — put some money in cash, invest in agricultural markets (as the need for commodities is growing due to growing world demand, and food is always necessary), expect the last two quarters of 2008 to be brutal, and a trader’s market of ups and downs until then. We might even see a false recovery between now and August, but the last two quarters of this year will be brutal. If President Bush and Cheney get us into Iran, as they hope to do, the situation will turn even worse, but there seems little we can do about that since even the news  organizations no longer criticize the White House or look on events with a discerning eye for the public’s interest.

 

This is a pretty good summary of some main points or issues concerning the US geopolitical actions in recent years.

This IS how the world operates, and how the big boys think. I believe George Bush and Dick Cheney consider themselves as understanding oil like no previous presidents, though of course, their understanding of the best policy to undertake for strategic national economic interests, that will be consistently followed by subsequent US Presidents, shows them (and Donald Rumsfeld) woefuly lacking.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2003/sep/06/september11.iraq

Water is the other large concern so far unaddressed. There is a large global push for corporations to have the ability to privatize, and thus gain control over public water rights. China and India may one day fight a war over just water; it may seem as if it is over some other subject but the real goal will be for control of water. Witness the water problem in US states that has just started, and imagine the pain global warming may bring. Agricultural problems I’m not even getting into, other than we may see the blooming of South American economies (Brazil, etc.) as we saw for Asia in the 80’s because of agricultural output.

Many African nations, by the end of this century, will probably be colonized again by foreign powers who seek their mineral resources but need some way to legitimately grab them. The likely excuse will be that the Africans are doing a terrible job at self-rule because of constant wars, brutality and the terrorizing of their own people. There actually is a great deal of truth to this and the fact that many countries, such as France, England and the Netherlands, might actually do an astronomically better job governing various African countries to the greater benefit of the local populations  even if the whole purpose is to   secure vital resources for themselves. Such may be the foundational rationale or logic promoted to justify such actions. In the past few hundred years of European history we saw all sorts of false rationales to promote the opening of markets or control of markets (grabbing of local resources) - mercantilism, industrialization / modernization, Christianization, promoting democracy, etc - when the real reasons were purely capitalistic. No matter how evil or corrupt a king, he needs a mantle of legitimacy for his acts or rebellion is guaranteed rather than just possible.

So think about these things as you watch the slow turn of the world. Twenty years away is not so far far away. It is not so far fetched, for instance, to consider that the US itself may split into two or three countries in the next three or four  decades based on language lines (history shows this event is an extremely common fate, so thank our politicians for stacking the odds in its favor) and in response to the population’s distaste for the super-encroachment of federal powers into their lives where meddling is not due. Compound this with a war brought to American shors, or recognition that Washington leadership  no longer represents the population’s interests in its acts, or some other such now "implausible" (it always is until it happens, such as the mortgage crisis) set of events. That was the cause for the break from England in the first place — taxation without representation, a governing of a people whose welfare or interests seem divorced from leadership actions. So think carefully about these things as we bobble from one extreme to the next.

 

 

Many of my friends are into Indian dancing, and I thought I’d share one of my favorites that I love watching:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IiIL-w_jD8o

I always recommend that people read history to learn about people, societies, principles of government and social change, particulary the stories of the Chinese emperors, Roman emperors and Byzantium emperors.

As to the early Aztec, Mayan and early Egyptian Empires,  due to a lack of records we really don’t know enough to make them the top priority empires I encourage people to study. The Akkadian and Sumerian empires, however, I would include on the short list of Chinese, Roman and Byzantium empires to particularly study in order to "learn from history" as a lot of material survives from these civilizations.

I also usually recommend the biographies of Plutarch and the Greek histories of Thucydides and Herodotus. I like the Greek histories much better than the Records of the Historian, a Chinese history, and the framers of America’s founding documents studied the Greek histories in order to design a Constitution and Bill of Rights that might last.

Best of all, I usually recommend to people that they read the Muqaddimah, by Ibn Khaldun. This Arab history is pathbreaking with its ideas on the philosophy of history, sociology, and the transformation of societies, power and economics. Much in it reminds me of Chinese Taoist works with their ideas on transformation, but this is an Arab creation and few people read Arabian writings (Ibn Khaldun was from Tunisia).  I believe in reading the best of the best, and this is one of the best historical works out there.

Other notable Arab historians include Ibn Abd-el-Hakem (History of the Conquest of Egypt and North Africa and Spain) whose works were similar in style to Herodotus, and Ali al-Masudi who was actually known as the "Herodotus of the Arabs." Other notable histoprians include Hamdani and Al-Jahiz.

You see, although I write a lot about Chinese and Indian cultivation and cultures, I have no particular inherent bias to Chinese or Indian works, and really wish we had more original works by ancient Indian and Sumerian/Akkadian/Babylonian authors, as these represented immense kingdoms. You learn much about  human behavior and governing by studying histories of empries and man’s development of methods for leading great masses of people, which is why I advise people to study history. I simply focus on Chinese and Indian cultivation because these civilizations have left us the most records on what to do and what will happen. The root of it all for the WORLD is actually India, not China.

On a side note, I really wish someone would take Greek and Roman classics and turn them into cartoons as Chih Tsai Chung did for Chinese works, as it’s a project I’ve long hoped to do. I can write the books but cannot make the cartoons — the beauty or attraction to people is all in the cartoons.

For a short synopsis of the Muqaddimah, which I am particularly recommedning today, you can find more at 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muqaddimah.

You can actually find it here:

http://www.muslimphilosophy.com/ik/Muqaddimah/Int_Mat_Bk_One.htm

 

My short list of history books from different cultures includes, in no particular order:

The History of the Peloponnessian War 
Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans 
Muqaddimah - Ibn Khaldun
Records of the Grand Historian - Sima Qian (Ssu Ma Chien)

Modern Authors you Might Enjoy:

History Begins at Sumer
The Conquest of Mexico, The Conquest of Peru - Prescott
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Gibbon
The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy - Burckhardt

As I state in White Fat Cow, I always recommend to people that they read Liao Fan’s Four Lesson’s and teach it to their children. This has nothing to do with any special love for Chinese literature, because I recommend what I think is best from any culture, and believe in the idea of benchmarking where you should use the best idea or method from anywhere you find it.

Liao Fan’s Four Lessons, which have been copycatted dozens of times throughout the centuries (attesting to its great influence), accurately captures the real principles of how to change your fortune and destiny that the New Age Attraction magic crowd has no clue about.

Now it’s available on video — for FREE:

http://www.amitabha-gallery.org/Liaofan1.htm  (I like the introduction to Liao Fan, and you can see that he was, indeed, like Benjamin Franklin in his desire to study everything. True cultivation people are like that.)

http://www.amitabha-gallery.org/Liaofan2.htm

These were suggested to me in an email from James Chagula who found them on this page:

http://www.amitabha-gallery.org/movies.htm

Lao Tzu’s Treatise on the Response of the Tao is a related work you might read.

So we learned about (1)what it means to "see the tao", (2) sexual cultivation and all the misconceptions today surrounding this topic, then (3) the anapana method in the Anapanasati Sutra for cultivating outstanding gong-fu, then (4) how to use yogic tantra to open up the central channel. Now for (5) Zen.

In The Story of Chinese Zen, and Basic Buddhism, Master Nan corrects many of the strange academic notions about Zen prevalent today. You can also find such insights in Working Towards Enlightenment and To Realize Enlightenment. You can find printed copies of these books on the interent now and then.

The idea I hate the most, aside from the fact that Zen is some sort of flippant mind game or clash of witty remarks, is that Zen is some sort of intellectual mental thought realization — so many writers and academics miss the  point entirely that the great Zen masters were cultivating samadhi dhyana along the way to enlightenment and achieved high states of attendant gong-fu, as just mentioned, but ignored them or wrote about them in only a few short lines.  It was considered a great breach of Buddhist discipline to become attached to  body gong-fu or to demonstrate superpowers, so masters only demonstrated it once or twice (if at all) before they were ready to die.  The higher their stage, the more closely they held to the rules of discipline in this regard.  For instance, if you constantly demonstrated superpowers, people would mistake this for the path, FOR SURE. As a result, academics miss the cultivation picture entirely. You can see this idea corrected in Working Towards Enlightenment and To Realize Enlightenment, but you will hardly find a single writer on Zen or Buddhism today who references any of these books that correct the mistaken notions.

It always makes me laugh to open up the bibliography of the popular spiritual / cultivation books today and to see what other books were referenced in the bibliography in the back, and you will almost always see the real cultivation books missing. Just nonsense books referencing other nonsense books that lack any real cultivation content. But of course, nonsense is what sells — cultivation involves work and that’s just too hard, and the target too lofty. It’s what you’re supposed to be after when you decide to go to the Church, temple or mosque every week, but ceremonial attendance is a lot harder than trying to transform yourself, isn’t it? So who wants to do that, and which set of religious functionaries would dare risk their income flows expouding the true way that hardly attracts anyone?

Go ahead and start flipping through bibliographies to see for yourself who cites whom, and then step back to ponder why. I have previously mentioned several really great Christian cultivation books that recount the gong-fu of Christian monks who cultivated very well, and the same for Jewish kaballah, and you will not find such GOOD books cited anywhere. The establishment ignores these, but these are the saints of those traditions. Why is it that this type of book, of the real cultivation exploits of the adherents in their own tradition, ignored (and it’s not because their stories and gong-fu results match the path results of adherents in other traditions because people don’t even think that hard)?  I’m tired of writing about it — you figure it out yourself this time. I’ve told you the principle over and over again. 

Back to the Zen way to cultivate. As to Zen, the Diamond Sutra of Buddhism opens with Subhuti asking Buddha how to achieve enlightenment. The passage is usually translated incorrectly because the translators don’t know the Zen method themselves, but in a loose translation it has Buddha saying that that very moment anyone wants the Tao it’s already there (THIS moment is IT!)– the true mind is already calm, open, clean, it’s there. (Why? Because we are always using this clean omnipresent perception, we are always in it but just misuse it. You are using it this very instant but don’t realize it.) Subhuti responds that he understands this, but ordinary people do not, so please Buddha do speak more. And then the Buddha goes into a long lecture on cultivation and performing merit to get the Tao because people don’t understand the quick Zen way of directly achieving the Tao in one moment, this very moment. That’s the Zen way of no method, no effort.

In the Surangama sutra, Shakyamuni Buddha also talks about the quick Zen way to realization, but then also talks about cultivating samadhi and all sorts of other topics. You have to search for the quote to find that he talks about how to directly cultivate the true mind to reveal it, to see it, to perceive it, to attain self-realization and see the Tao, gain the Tao, beome enlightened. Then he says the next best way is to cultivate samadhi as a stepping stone. In the Complete Enlightenment Sutra, he also talks about the quick Zen way, but then talks about other topics in case people won’t get it either.

Shakyamuni Buddha always has a back-up plan. When you read the sutras carefully, he always mentions this quick way, and then spends reams and reams of words describing other slower, less advanced ways, too, such as cultivating samadhi, because the high way is only for those with great prajna wisdom who already understand what a non-clinging mind is. But most people need methods because their wisdom isn’t high enough, their mind isn’t clear or open enough already so they think they need a method. Hence the Yoga schools purposefully set out to cultivate samadhi and gong-fu, but with the Zen way you pass through samadhi and end up cultivating gong-fu naturally on the way to enlightenment but without those being the target. It is scenery you pass through rather than the  target. See the difference?

So what is the Zen way to enlightenment? Here it is in a nutshell, and it’s so simple that no one ever believes it so no one practices it because it’s so simple. That’s why they create all these other methods for themselves and drop into them, becoming bound. Nevertheless, if you practice according to this path constantly, continually, learning how to do it every moment (which is why you sit down and take time to meditate, so nothing distracts you as you try to learn this habit of mindfulness which eventually becomes no habit at all since the effort disappears), you can reach enlightenment quickly. What is it? Let go. Let go of the mind that thinks, let go of the mind, let go of thoughts, let clinging drop away. Let go of whatever arises in the mind. If you truly LET GO then you immediately break through the five skandhas without any time requirement or obstructions, and there’s no need for tantra or effort. That moment is it. It is always there, so just let go. THAT is cultivating clear awareness, clear perception. With one moment of no thought, you immediately are free of all five skandhas.

I’ll repeat: with one moment of letting go, you are immediately free and clear of all five skandhas.

That’s all you have to do.

Notice there is no emphasis on tantra, or this or that or empowerments or initiations or lengthy definitions or spinning or memorizations or worship or cremonies or anything like that. Yes you can cultivate samadhi so that you can change your body quickly to help you accomplish this better, deeper, for longer period of time, more frequently. I recommend a Hinayana foundation for practice in today’s world. But if you just make this heroic effort in cultivating mindfulness (of letting go) all the time, then you’ll get all the gong-fu as well. But what arises in your mind-perception-awareness-knowing, you let go of. You don’t cling to it at all. Just practice that in all times and places, and in time the whole mental realm will become one great realm of crystal clarity. The target is to be in a state of clear awareness of what arises at all times. Things will always arise - you cannot for instance destroy the rain, or prevent it or get rid of it. All those methods are wrong. But you can be clear about it without clinging, without pressure, without annoyance. It’s just a dream.

Even in cultivating physical and mental gong-fu, you must  let go. That’s the problem with tantra — no one lets go because tantra, by the very definition of the fact that it’s tantra, involves force or clinging, so who succeeds? "Letting go" means "emptiness" — it does not mean a blank mind, but a clear mind that sees all thoughts and things that arise, but does not cling. It doesn’t push them away, push them aside or grab onto them.

So after this big long blog post on tantra, now I wipe that away to show you how easy it is to just cultivate the Zen way and pass or even jump over countless gong-fu states and purify the five skandhas without effort, but as my Teacher says, no one ever believes in such simplicity, such non-artificiality. No one ever makes the heroic effort  in practicing mindfullness to accomplish this because they don’t believe it could be that simple. Actually, when you think about it deeply, it HAS to be that simple, that non-artifical, that immediate.

To be sure, the body and habit energies initially stand in the way of accomplishing this fully for more than a second, so those who try usually give up after a few seconds and fall into cultivation byroads instead. That’s why in the past the great monasteries told people to practice, and set up schedules and situations enabling people to practice for long periods of time sitting in meditation. You need some way to break the old habit of mental clinging  and establish mindfulness until that new habit evaporates into true absence of method. But that’s not the point.  The point is, don’t think cultivation involves anything fundamentally complicated. 

This is it, this is the way to the Tao. Empty, free, open, non-artificial. If you want to change the body quicker to help in this, you can cultivate anapana. If you think you need to spin chi channels or chakras or need to do something, then for those with that sort of mentality you can practice a yogic tantra as I revealed. Which one do you want?

There are dozens and dozens of methods. I have hundreds, even thousands of methods. Don’t say this one or that one is superior because the one that works quickly and effectively and virtuously for you is great, just don’t waste time. It’s hard to get the dharma, you may not have it next time. You may not have it for the next several times, and THEN think of all the time wasted … but we’re saying "wasted " assuming you even get in touch with it again, and who can say that with the way things are going? Don’t THINK the way you selected is the best either just because you like it or selected it, as that’s like being born born into a religion and absorbing all the ideas that it’s the right one without questioning it or investigating other cultiviation schools and techniques. Silly…or I should say "ignorant."

Don’t be confused about cultivation. The end target is the same. The highest way is the Zen way just revealed, but so few have the wisdom to really let go and apply it. So they usually end up cultivating samadhi as a stepping stone or foundation, but in the end they have to turn to the Zen way anyway. ALWAYS. After all the gong-fu is achieved via the route of tantra, yoga, Taoism, Sufism, Kaballah, Shintoism, Sikkhism, Saivism  or whatever, you have to let go and cultivate an empty mind of letting go. Maybe I should call it relaxed mind because thoughts still arise and you know them, but don’t attach, and that’s the meaning of empty mind - it doesn’t mean speck free of thoughts even though that often happens as a mental state. So it’s always THAT METHOD in the end. But now you know.

If you practice Confucian cessation-contemplation, in time you will achieve empty mind - but no one practices this today. If you just match your thought with your breath, your central channel will open automatically and you don’t need any secret, strange tantras or tantric methods. But no one believes it can be this simple. That’s how the people in the early Tao school succeeded. That’s why they left no crazy instructions on spinning this or that to succeed. Only as cultivation schools degarde do they drop into yogic methods and gong-fu, as do most of the form schools, but even though they do this to help the practitioners establish a foundation, the school becomes misdirected over time and deteriorates.

The high schools - true Zen, true Confucianism, etc - always die out. Bad money drives out good, standards drop to the lowest deniominator, the third generation hardly puts in as much effiort as the first, etc. etc. and then everything drops or degrades. You see this on TV, in magazines, in popular culture around you … why are you so surprised it also relates to religion and spiritual cultivation. It relates to government, economics, even marital relations - at first you put in the effort and then you don’t. Look around you to see that no one is cultivating anywhere, the sexes are getting all mixed up, and we are letting governments  expose our children to all sorts of strange, abnormal ideas we thought abherrent just a few years ago. So do you really think people are  so good nowadays that they have merited the true dharma to be prevalent everywhere? If that’s the case, why do so many people think the world is so ugly and are so weary of peoples’ behavior they want to leave it. I tell you again, the bad stuff drives out the good, and the established orthodoxy always opposes the reformation and cleansing of the bad habits that have creeped in. It’s a threat in so many ways. One big way - they’re not qualified to teach the real way to cultivate, and they know it, so oppose it.

If you just watch your thoughts, as in Cessation-Contemplation practice, you can also succeed in spiritual cultivation, because this is another shortcut for cultivating letting go. It’s not as good as just letting go and cultivating/abiding in clear awareness always, but  it’s still much better than tantra.

So there you have it - just let go. With that, constant mindfulness of this practice, you will reach the stages  of anapana mentioned, but naturally. You will reach the samadhi dhyana, but naturally, you will clean the chi channels, but naturally.