So many people liked the new skeleton meditation ebook with embedded video that I’ve produced a free 30 minute video on the Mahavairocana-Zhunti Tantra.

I’ve written about this simple, quick, elegant tantra in the past. Now you can get a free video lesson. Unfortunately it’s only thirty mintues long – I can talk forever on many topics – but it’s packed with so much information that I’m sure you’ll learn a lot.

Remember, cultivation starts at the Stage of Study and Merit Accumulation. Then it moves to the Stage of Intensifed Practices. This Tantra will take you from that Stage to the Third and Fourth Stages of the path, but it’s all starts with study, merit making, and then meditation to clean your chi channels and empty your mind. Then all these transformations can come about.

Mahavairocana-Zhunti Tantra.

Here’s a business for you …

Buy up old used car chassis, convert them to electric cars, and install photocells on the roof of the owner’s home so that the "fill up" is virtually FREE.

Sadly, funny man and social commentator George Carlin has passed away. Last September I did a blog post on him and featured his video skits on Religion and the Ten Commandments. Today, everyone is replaying his popular skit,  "Religion is bullshit."

Recently over the past few weeks I’ve been seeing more and moe intelligent people saying that religion is nonsense. But they are missing something. What they usually are referring to is the facts that many religious dogmas are fictitious creations. They also commonly object to the "meaning" behind various religious ceremonies and so forth which do have a positive function in society. But let’s put that aside.

What they cannot negate is the fact that if you take the religious coverings away from spiritual paths — whether from Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Islam, Christianity and so forth — there still is a cultivation path, there still are cultivation results, you still can cultivate gong-fu and attain samadhi and possibly the Tao. That is for sure. Whether you believe in religion or not, this is the true part you cannot negate. Whether there is a physical person called God, whether he wrote a contract with the Hebrews or whether Jesus was his son, whether this, whether that, … those are items of dogma that have little to do with the self-proof of spiritual cultivation.

The self-proof of spiritual cutlivation means this: just as Buddha said, if you do this then that will happen, if you achieve this sateg then expect this, if that stage then expect that, etc. and so on. In other words, you can prove the stages and results yourself just from personal practice and no dependence on any dogma whatsoever. The basis of practice is cessation-contemplation, and mindfulness of emptiness at each and every stage of attainment. That’s it.

When a teacher reveals the particulars of the spiritual path, it’s usually free of religious coverings but later generations wrap everything with religion and thereby play a positive role in keeping a tradition alive. Most people are not wise, so they cannot accept the highest cultivation truths no matter what religion reveals them; the masses like simple messages like sinple foods to digest. Over time the deep cultivation content and cultivation message of most religions is lost, and the wrapper becomes the real thing for converts and adherents when that isn’t the message at all. The lowest common denominator usually wins, just as bad money drives out good money in  the long run. Most intelligent people, after reviewing what’s become of the whole  mess over time, then object to the wrapper and  criticize religion in general and religious functionaries. That’s the general pattern.

But remember, even if there is truth in the criticism of modern religion, there is also much good in the ethical training and social cohesiveness religions provide for society. Furthermore, amd most importantly, no one can deny that:

* there is a cultivation path within religions, even if you don’t believe in them, that leads to supernormal mental-spiritual states
* cultivating that path successfully does lead to gong-fu, and physical changes in the body and sometimes special abilities; the cultivation does involve the chi and empty, calm, quiet mental states of "letting go"
* people can and do cultivate  samadhi and sometimes achieve enlightenment regardless of whether you do or don’t believe in religion
* saints, sages, gurus, prophets, masters, etc. when they are genuine, are pople who have succeeded in either cultivating some stage of samadhi or the Tao (enlightenment) from that path, but they are few and far between
* what they teach is often just a remedy for the times, expedient skillful means and not absolute rules of conduct to last forever

So you can criticize religion, but that doesn’t mean all the content is fictitious. The big thing to remember is that there is a cultivation trail, there are genuine cultivation methods, they do produce results, you can and should prove cultivation to yourself because that’s what religionis about, but if you do think that religion is about the dogmas and ceremonies then yes, you are lost.

And so we can laugh at George Carlin’s words when we are firm in our own knowledge of cultivation — what it is, and what it is all about.

 

I want to spend just a few minutes today on the banking crisis, and from this synopsis it will become immediately clear where the fault lies in our current financial problems.

Currently, legislation is putting a lot of blame on mortgage brokers for not telling new house owners they could not afford their mortgage loans. Frankly, the fault lies nearly 100% with the banks. If you come to me, a mortgage broker, because the bank won’t give you a loan, you already know you’re a credit risk. You already know that affording the house is a stretch, and you already know enough, when seeking a loan, that interest rates will reset in the future and you might not be able to afford that big house. You’re asking me as a mortgage broker to find you some way to buy that house no matter what. I should refuse you? If a bank is willing to give you a loan, that’s the bank’s fault, not mine. You’re just coming to me to help you find that bank. You already know the risks. It’s the bank’s fault for funding you if they do so.

And if on a transaction that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars you aren’t worried about being able to afford it now or in the future when rates will rise, or during a time when you might lose your job, … in other words if you say you weren’t aware of the risks, that’s just hogwash.    I don’t know if I’m talking to a human being when I hear that sort of nonsense "I didn’t realize" because I know that in most cases they knew it was risky but were gambling that prices would go up, interest rates would stay low, their job would be safe, etc. Those folks knew the score on that hundred thousand dollar plus transaction. Everyone has those thoughts of risk go through their mind when the dollar sum is so large. They just gambled hoping nothing would happen. And if a bank loaned them the money, it’s the banks fault; if they lost money, it’s their own bad fortune. Sorry, you just shouldn’t have gambled that much.

Frankly, the mortgage broker’s job is to find you a loan if you want one from a bank dumb enough to give you one if you are a bad credit risk. It’s the bank’s fault for not doing its due diligence and making dumb loans, not the broker’s fault. Most customers know what they’re doing — how can that be the broker’s fault? If a bank is stupid enough to give you a 100% loan with no deposit, no money down, who is really to fault?

Now let’s take a look at the banks. When I worked on Wall Street in New York years ago, my firm sent me to a presentation on Texas oil wells being sold in some type of deal. When I got back to the firm, my boss told me, "No matter how nice they make it sound, when a Texas oil well deal makes its way all the way to New York, it’s a bad deal. If it was a good deal, the locals would have already snapped it up. You would never even be given a chance."

Please remember this principle for the rest of your life because it has served me well — if some type of deal makes its way to your doorstep after having traveled thousands of miles, ask yourself (1) why are YOU in particular so lucky that you ae given this great opportunity/chance- (you’re not lucky) and more importantly, (2) if it’s so good, why didn’t the locals snap it up?

So now time to look at the banks.

Previously a bank would make a loan to a consumer, and was careful because they’d hold the loans til maturity. Then some bright people said, "Hey, let’s sell these loans instead of holding them, and we can make more money on the fees." So stop and think about this — now all of a sudden, you’re not going to be so careful in making loans anymore because you’re not going to hold them, you’re going to sell them. Why pay attention to the risks anymore? You’re just going to give the problem to someone else. Can you see what will happen? You don’t need to be Einstein to predict what will happen next.

Immediately the loan quality of your portfolio will start seeing deterioration as profit maximizers try to sell more and more risky loans, because they’re going to bundle those bad loans together with "good ones" and sell them to others. Convincing themselves that sold in a bundle the risks of the ever incresing bad loans will even out, good old capitalists cheat themselves into thinking they’re not doing anything unethical when in fact they ARE making bad loans, and on purpose — to make money by passing the problem on to someone else. Loan quality will deterioarate precisely because banks are no longer holding the loans they originated. PERIOD!

Did everyone get that? Does anyone believe that the quality guidelines on loan origination when you no longer hold the loans yourselves will NOT be relaxed over time in order to generate more and more loans that can be sold to others for a fee? If you’re going to hold the loans  you’re going to be particularly careful which ones you originate but if you aren’t planning to hold them, then create as many as possible and then sell them elsewhere. A kid in high school can figure this out, and it’s exactly what happened. When you realize that these bundled loans are the same as the Texas oil well deal that makes its way to New York, you just discovered the gist of the mortgage crisis. In order to maximize their profits because they were not longer holding the loans themselves, banks started making lots of bad loans, bundling them with other loans, convincing themselves this was ethical and safe since the bundle would offset the risks on individual mortgages, and loading up the whole system with bad debt. All because it was "more profitable."

I think you’re starting to get the picture. When corporations focus on profit maximization and forget about the underlying ethics, we all suffer. Now they are trying to pass the blame on to mortgage brokers. Sure there is some blame there, but the majority of the blame lies squarely with the banks. They wanted to make more money, so they made bad loans they would never hold themselves, bundled them with other loans whose quality would slowly deteriorate as well, and the whole mess escalated, escalated, escalated as others got into the game. No one stopped and said, hey this is risky and also a bit unethical. Let’s not invest in these. Everyone was making money, so no one mentioned the unmentionable – that the banks themselves would never hold these loans for themselves in the first place (the local Texans) and that being the case, they shouldn’t have sold them. 

And so that’s how the world works … a child could understand it. Everyone made money on a faulted system until the system collapsed. yes people should lose jobs because they should never have engaged in this practice in the first place. People will always do all sorts of things to make money, and it’s very hard to say NO sometimes to some practices that go on, but that’s what must happen if capitalism is to survive. MAximize, maximize, maximize profits causes people to engage in all sorts of illicit or unethical activites in capitalistic systems when the mantra is every increasing profits. As far as I’m concerned, if an organization makes steady profits that are greater than the risk free rate, in many cases that’s good enough.

At least that’s the way I now see it.

Kunaki.com sells audio data CDs of various 2-3 hour  meditation courses that I have given in the past. If no one buys the Cds, which play on your computer, then Kunaki deletes the materials after several months and the material is lost from the world forever because I don’t keep backup copies.

Already they’ve erased the lectures on "Sex and Spiritual Cultivation" and "Feng Shui Secrets"  and they’ll never be sold again because they’re now gone.  Only three Cd courses are left and they will be deleted very shortly, so if you have ever been thinking of getting one then you better act now before they are gone forever. You can find them at:

KUNAKI SETs

The one I’d highly recommend, which plays in your computer, is "How to Meditate 7 Different Ways."  People always ask me where should they start if they want to learn meditation, and that’s the CD I’d recommend. It costs $15, though the Learning Annex charges people $49 to hear the same lecture materials (and they give me a whopping $2 !).  If you want to learn how to recite the Zhunti Mantra, whcih I highly recommend, how can you miss the Zhunti CD for $10?

Hurry soon because they are going to be deleted and then lost forever. No kidding!

 

I’ve just expanded and updated the skeleton meditation ebook with extra explanations and a 12-minute video on How to perform the skeleton meditation.