There are just five days left to pick up a copy of our two new books before the introductory price increase evaporates.

There is The Little Book of Meditation, which I think is now the best how to guide on mediation in print, and Internal Martial Arts Nei-gong.

= = = = = THE LITTLE BOOK OF MEDITATION = = = = =

I have reduced hundreds of possible meditations you might try in life to the BIG FOUR you might want to master – (1) mantra practice or prayer recitation, (2) mental watching (mindfulness, introspection, cessation-witnessing or vipassana), (3) visualization practice [including the white skeleton technique], and (4) breathing practices of pranayama together with anapana, which hardly anyone ever discusses. There are also discussions on the seeing the light method, sexual cultivation, diet and detoxification and how to make up a meditation schedule. Since it’s 388 pages I finally had space to write it all down. It can even be used as a teacher’s text. Check it out.

The Little Book of Meditation

= = = = = = INTERNAL MARTIAL ARTS NEI-GONG = = = = =

Inside this book you will learn how to cultivate inner gong-fu, how this ties in with the martial arts tradition, and practice details for how not to go astray. This is a very practical book that discusses many martial arts topics that are rarely found in this genre, it spends a great deal of time talking about how to cultivate the Taoist notion of shen, or awareness, which becomes possible after all your channels have been opened and your mind becomes clear and calm. There is also a new detailed discussion on how to cultivate the Six Yogas of Naropa, together with Samantabhadra’s mantra method for opening up the body’s central channel.

I wrote this to help martial artists, but frankly, if will help anyone who is a regular meditator who wants to concentrate on cultivating internal energies for special abilities and/or powers, and if you liked the Little Book of Hercules, this is right up your alley. It’s has helped all my students who are not martial artists because they’ve learned so much they have applied to their ordinary cultivation practice.

You can find the book at Internal Martial Arts Nei-gong

I have finally finished two (2) paperback book projects for the holidays – the first on how to meditate, and the second on cultivating internal gong-fu (especially slanted for martial artists).

= = = = = THE LITTLE BOOK OF MEDITATION = = =

The first new book, which I am really excited about because I think it will become the definitive how to meditate properly book that will help a lot of people, is entitled THE LITTLE BOOK OF MEDITATION. This new book on how to meditate, and its effects on your body and mind, is like my Hercules book in that it is just as large (388 pages), and contains topics rarely discussed. I’m sure it will help even long time meditation practitioners because of some of the contents.

Over the years people have seemed to keep asking me the same questions on meditation time and time again, and I’ve answered the most common “how to” and “why does this work” and “why does that happen” questions about meditation in this book. Plus, I’ve thrown in a lot of extras …

I have reduced hundreds of possible meditations you might try in life to the BIG FOUR you might want to master – mantra practice, mental watching (mindfulness, introspection, cessation-witnessing or vipassana), visualization practice, and breathing practices of pranayama together with anapana, which hardly anyone ever discusses.

This book contains all the detailed instructions and tips on how to practice these meditation techniques effectively for genuine deep results. In fact, you know our books contain real contents rather than fluff. These 2 books will not disappoint anyone along these lines. There is more new but extremely useful information here on effective meditation practice than you will find in print anywhere else such as how to cultivate these techniques correctly, signs of progress, and what they are all about.

It also covers detailed practice instructions for the famous 9-bottled wind pranayama technique I always mention, and incredible details on the white skeleton visualization practice from India that I have not put anyplace else. Since it’s 388 pages I finally had space to write it all down.

This new book is very practical and contains a lot from the western traditions. It doesn’t just concentrate on these big four meditation methods, but reveals practice instructions and details on several others as well such as seeing the light, sexual cultivation and so on. There are even discussions on diet and detoxification supplements for cleaning out your body. The important thing is that it shows how to work two or more of the most effective meditation techniques into a busy schedule, and how to change your behavior. If you wanted just one book on how to meditate for yourself, or as a gift for friends to teach them how to meditate or introduce them to the topic, that’s this book! Check it out.

https://www.createspace.com/3754311

This book was written with the objective of creating a definitive source for how to meditate, answering all the common questions about meditation that I am sure have popped up in your mind over time but you had no one to ask about. It can even be used as a teacher’s text. I wanted to make it good enough that you could give it to friends who want to learn meditation for better health, energy, mental clarity, longevity or for spiritual purposes, and it covers all those bases and more. Therefore I have included lots of stories about my teacher, Master Nan Huai Chin, and how he defeated a holy fox spirit on Omei mountain, or would handle qi-gong visitors, or deal with people coming to him who had done great evil deeds and wanted to change their karma and behavior.

It’s at: https://www.createspace.com/3754311

Grab it during the holidays at the discount price and pick up a copies for friend before the new price increase at the new year. This is GIHUGIC at 388 pages, (I only wanted to keep it at 50 pages when I started) and the stories will entertain you. Plus, if you like Vedanta and Zen, per requests I have included such high level wisdom discussions within to describe the nature of the human being and your mind. These discussions are also rare to be found in print.

= = = = = = INTERNAL MARTIAL ARTS NEI-GONG = = = = =

On to book number two for martial artists which is also available for the holidays at a discounted price soon to go up: INTERNAL MARTIAL ARTS NEI-GONG. This book was already released as an ebook earlier this year, and those download files have been updated to contain most of the new materials found in this print edition, which make it about 25% larger. So if you already bought the ebook, just download your file again and you’ll have most of these new materials. We put the book into print because of all the requests for a paperback, so we had to add a little extra, and we certainly did.

https://www.createspace.com/3739551

Inside this book you will learn how to cultivate inner gong-fu, how this ties in with the martial arts tradition, and practice details for how not to go astray. This is a very practical book that discusses many martial arts topics that are rarely found in this genre, and this new edition is quite different from the ebook in that it spends a great deal of time talking about how to cultivate the Taoist notion of shen, or awareness, which becomes possible after all your channels have been opened and your mind becomes clear and calm.

There is also a new detailed discussion on how to cultivate the Six Yogas of Naropa, together with Samantabhadra’s mantra method for opening up the body’s central channel. There are also discussions on anapana and the white skeleton visualization, although far more details are found in the Little Book of Meditation. The results of some interviews with a few top martial artist in China were worked into the new volume, and there is also a large emphasis on the idea of 10,000 hours of practice for mastering any skill.

I wrote this to help martial artists, but frankly, if will help anyone who is a regular meditator who wants to concentrate on cultivating internal energies for special abilities and/or powers, and if you liked the Little Book of Hercules, this is right up your alley. It’s has helped all my students who are not martial artists because they’ve learned so much they have applied to their ordinary cultivation practice.

You can find the book at https://www.createspace.com/3739551

This is quite different than most martial arts books because it’s full of meaty content, and now has been updated to give more details discussions on actual inner cultivation energy techniques, and how to dissolve inner blockages.

So finally these two paperbacks are done, and I hope you pick them up for yourself or order them for friends. The price goes up at the New Year, so act now and help support our humble publishing efforts at the same time.

For years I’ve had quite a few martial artists ask me to write a book specifically for martial arts, but I could not do this until I had the materials in “The Little Book of Hercules” out in print. Now their request has finally been made possible with our new ebook:

Internal martial arts neigong

One of the various ways in which people can enter the path of spiritual cultivation is through the road of martial arts training and practice because in high level martial arts, you begin to cultivate your chi. From that point on, the path of spiritual cultivation is then a path of reality rather than theology and blind belief. You prove its nondenominational truths to yourself because you can start to feel your chi, and start understanding what the ancients taught about chi in martial arts texts. The Chinese martial arts movies you see on TV, and even modern western classics like Star Wars that emphasize “the force,” are all referencing chi cultivation in various ways. The same goes for cartoon shows like Naruto and Dragon Ball Z.

On the martial arts road to the Tao, called “Tao-gong” in the MA traditions, you start with learning the external forms or exercises. Then you progress by practicing mild forms of qi-gong, which is integrating the wind chi of the body with your movements. With enough expertise, finally you enter in the deep route of nei-gong, as explained in Hercules, where you are truly cultivating your yang chi and kundalini energies. This happens after all your channels and chakras start opening, and is equivalent to the Completion Stage of Tibetan Buddhism, as The Little Book of Hercules explains.

(If you still have not picked up The Little book of Hercules it is available at http://amzn.to/owVIRu ).

To explain this advanced route of martial arts cultivation, which is far beyond what’s found in most texts, we have put together this 70+ page ebook for martial artists. If you’re not a martial artist, you may still find this road of practice interesting because it explains many things that people often wonder about regarding the inner energy cultivation techniques of martial arts, and how to attain these special abilities which are now starting to be documented on TV. This level of teaching, however, goes far beyond those special abilities.

If you want to find out how and why martial artists are supposed to be able to fly through air, strike with incredible force that can shatter rocks, walk on water, and all sorts of things like that – which are basically samadhi attainments combined with martial arts – then you might want to pick up this book, once again with one-of-a-kind information found nowhere else. You can find the ordering details and Table of Contents at:

http://www.meditationexpert.com/internal-martial-arts-neigong.htm
As just a small help for those who are practicing anapana for their spiritual cultivation, I’d like to offer this small excerpt on anapana from the book:

If you let go of your body, you’re not holding on to it. Hence all your chi can start arising in your body and opening channels because you’re not holding onto any muscles or sensations that would interrupt or block that natural flow which you just allowed to happen.

This is the actual secret behind the “dissolving blockages” methods of martial arts, but very few realize this secret or its usefulness for the highest levels of martial arts attainment. By witnessing without attachment you can know where energy blockages are within your body. By shining awareness on them without grabbing, they will simply open.

Anapana is the highest secret of Zen school dhyana-samadhi practice, that transforms the physical body, but few know this fact either. Whether for martial arts attainments or high spiritual practice, anapana helps open up the chi channels in the body, and thus helps transform the physical nature quicker than most other cultivation techniques. But not if you are pushing or holding on to your chi …

Here’s the main secret. You cannot open up all the tiniest of chi channels in your physical body unless you let go of your chi by cultivating any empty mind through meditation. That detachment, which means you are not interfering with your chi, allows it to flow freely without mental entanglements that would bias its circulations through habitually used, incorrect channel routes. If you cultivate a mind of detachment that is not enforced blankness or thought suppression, then your channels will open. If you try to force them into opening, you’ll always miss them as you cannot force chi into the tiniest channels.

Force will simply shunt energies into the largest already opened pathways, which is why force, and visualization of chi orbits, is not the correct way to truly open the chi channels of the physical body. You train and practice, letting go all the while, and finally your real yang chi will arise and do what it naturally wants to do without interference. That’s when it will open up all the proper channels as explained in “The Little Book of Hercules.”

At some point of true nei-gong practice, after opening up all your major channels because you attained the true stage of macrocosmic circulation, your chi will start running through all your large channels simultaneously, and you will feel this full body circulation everywhere. It will continue to do this for years, and only slowly will you make further progress from just the time involved in the prolonged rotation. If you lose your chi through sexual dissipation, naturally the force of this rotation will be reduced.

To progress quickest at this level of attainment, you need to meditate to reach a higher stage of letting go, at which point a new degree of yang chi seems to arise, and it can purify even further. Even more channel routes will open from this achievement that cannot be opened in any other way. This is a time when practicing such Zen and Vedanta techniques that cause you to detach from all the skandhas really bear fruit. They seem like incredible hurdles of practice, but only if you reason through “What was I before I was born,” “I am Awareness-only,” “Everything I see is just my mind,” and use such insight realizations to let go of everything, only then can you jump several stages of detachment so that even more channels and chi routes in the body can open. This necessitates a whole book in itself because of the complexities, so I can only give the barest of explanations as this is the stage of Tao-gong cultivation.

Progress in chi cultivation will proceed very slowly unless you strive to attain a new stage of emptiness realization, and for each breakthrough in learning how to let go of our thoughts and the body, the response will be like a new sudden kundalini arising within. That new arising will open up yet more channels at a higher stage of refinement, although the initially new rotation feels like a slow movement in molasses since more channels are opening at a new level, and the new rotation of chi will constitute a higher level of purification.

As you proceed on doing this at higher and higher levels of refinement, you can eventually transform your entire body into chi, at which point you will become able to make it appear and disappear at will, as many great Buddhist monks and Taoist practitioners were said to do. This is one of the highest levels of martial arts achievements. Since chi and consciousness are linked, one will then start to be able to cultivate the really miraculous martial arts capabilities mentioned in ancient stories.

Therefore if you want to attain a higher stage of practice, wherein a yet higher, more refined, more etheric, purer level of chi is reached, and many more channels open, the rule is that you can only do so by cultivating a higher stage of emptiness attainment by a new level of mentally letting go of chi and consciousness. The body is not you, so let go of it and its energies. You are simply pure awareness without a body, pure consciousness, and you have been holding on to the body and mind and identifying them as your self. Consciousness is not you, but just thoughts that arise and pass by, so you learn how to let go of consciousness through meditation practice, and since chi and consciousness are linked, with each stage of letting go a new level of chi rotation can commence in your inner etheric subtle body. A new level of bright mind or empty mind, or shen, can be reached as well because consciousness purifies as your chi purifies. The cultivation of the body and mind proce
ed together, step-by-step, through this route of practice.

Anapana is a practice of watching or witnessing while letting go and refusing to attach to the chi energies that are witnessed. People think anapana only refers to the physical breath, but after the internal embryo breathing commences, this refers to chi flows and chi circulations within your body as well, which can only be felt at the higher, non-introductory levels of practice. It is very similar to the Taoist practice of “inner viewing.” If you can witness your entire body as one unity of chi, through anapana practice, you will connect the entire chi of the body in one unity or whole. You will feel, witness, see or realize the body as one single body of chi extending from the trunk to the arms and legs and including the head – all one single body unity whole. So just witnessing will enable an opening up of all the tiny chi channels that will link the body’s unconnected or slightly obstructed channel orbits and produce one unified inner chi body. This will, of course, link the energies of the upper and lower regions of the body, and so you will be able to feel them as one unity in terms of an inner chi body, which is one of the necessities in martial arts practice. It is an infallible technique for integrating the upper and lower torsos into one whole, stressed time and again in martial arts traditions.

After all this time, The Little Book of Hercules, which shows you exactly what to expect will happen to your body as you make progress in meditation practice, is finally here. “Little Hercules” is not so little, but is actually BIG.

It’s a whopping 400 pages chocked full of new information on chakras, channels and kundalini, as well as special cultivation techniques, that has never been in print ANYWHERE. It should be called the “BIG” Little Book of Hercules because of all the rare content. I decided to just keep adding information since I wanted one book to answer the countless questions that continually arise concerning gong-fu and the physical stages of the spiritual path from all the different cultivation schools. If you have a question about what happens to the physical body on the spiritual path, and the problems you’re encontering if your practice has advanced, it’s probably in here. 400 pages is double the size of our last book, so grab this early bird special before the price on Amazon.com rises in one week.

The five editors who worked on the book each said that this book will blow open the field of spiritual cultivation because it reveals what has previously been considered the “secrets” of the path – including the mechanisms behind the visions people experience in various traditions as they start to cultivate their body.

Click here to get your copy right now from our Amazon.com eStore:

https://www.createspace.com/3600124

What’s inside?

If you want to know ALL the stages of a kundalini awakening, this book is for you. What people normally consider a kundalini awakening is just a tiny fractional part of the process, as it starts in some stages you are probably experiencing right now but don’t know it. This book takes you through the practices you can use to open up your body’s central chi channel (the sushumna) on through to the actual sequence of chi channel openings that occur (such as the microcosmic and macrocosmic circulations) in a kundalini awakening, or the Completion stage of Tibetan Buddhism, and even shows where this information appears in countless traditions, including the Bible. Yeah, the Bible!

The Little Book of Hercules also links incomplete descriptions of spiritual gong-fu from Chinese Taoism with Hindu tantric yoga and Tibetan Vajrayana practice, so if you follow any of these schools this is must-have, never seen in print information that will definitely help your understanding of the spiritual path. No more wondering what all those meditation phenomena are, and why some people get them and you don’t, and how to get them most quickly, how long they last, what’s the next step in the sequence, and what it all means.

Not only that, but “Hercules” reveals all the tiny details of these stages. And tells you how to cultivate them.

You’ll even see descriptions of these stages proving they were known to the ancient Egyptian, Jewish, Celtic, and even Meso-American cultures!

Finally the gong-fu explanations of so many different schools – Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, Kashmir Shaivism, Shintoism, Vajrayana, Confucianism, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, western alchemy, paganism, etc. – are explained and linked. Yes, the path is non-denominational because everyone goes through the same thing, and you finally have a guide book to all these phenomena.

But wait, there’s more … You didn’t think that was it, did you?

This book explains how opening up your chakras and channels and cultivating your chi and physical body to a state of purity and excellence totally transforms it and enables all sorts of super power abilities to come out, and so you finally have explanations behind some of these abilities.

You’ll also discover how internal energy cultivation is related to the attempt to realize our True Self, absolute nature or dharmakaya, because that’s the actual focus of the spiritual path. That’s what it’s all about, so this is a rare book to link the cultivation fo the sambhogakaya, or reward body of the spiritual path, with the cultivation of realizing our original nature, or discovering the dharmakaya. Rarely are the two efforts linked together so you can see how one supports the other. It therefore explains the connection between cultivating the sambhogakaya and dharmakaya, something rarely seen in Tibetan texts and the books of other traditions.

Then, for another “first in print”, it explains the mechanism behind visions that spiritual practitioners experience along the path or thoughts they often have out of the blue related to spiritual and physical matters, called nirmanakaya, and why visions differ according to tradition for the same stages of accomplishment. This is actually how “Heaven” intervenes to help spiritual practitioners, though of course it has to do with one’s merits.

And of course, because this deals with tantric body cultivation, there are deep discussions of pranayama, the skeleton visualization, sexual cultivation (probably the most detailed discussion in print), chi purification, chakra openings, and countless other techniques.

Basically, most of this content has never been in print before. We are having a one week special introductory price at our Amazon.com eStore, and then the price increases one week later. For the discount pre-release, get your gigantic copy now at:

https://www.createspace.com/3600124

If you want to reap the spiritual & health benefits of eliminating sickness and extending longevity that go along with spiritual practice, then The Little Book of Hercules gives you the secrets you want to know.

You’ll be very pleased because as I said, buying one book from us is like buying dozens from other publishers, and you cannot find this content elsewhere. It will help your practice for years! Hurry before the one-week discount ends! You can get it at:

https://www.createspace.com/3600124

So, …

If you’ve studied Tibetan Buddhism and want to know all the stages prior to and after the opening of the sushumna channel, and methods used to accomplish this, and COMPLETE explanations of what happens during the process, this book is for you … if you’ve been collecting empowerments this material will help your practice …

If you are a yoga practitioner and want to know about tantric yoga, and ALL the complete stages of the kundalini awakening (which have never appeared in print until this book), and why this is painful for some practitioners and easy to pass for others, this book is for you …

If you practice pranayama, you need to know this material …

If you practice visualization exercises, you need to know this material …

If you practice meditation, such as vipassana, and start to feel the energies within your body, and feel you are encountering problems (such as headaches, uneasy feelings, etc.) but cannot explain them, this book is for you …

If you are a Taoist practitioner and want to know all the stages of the opening of the body’s chi channels, and sequences of nei-gong (internal alchemy) which are not clear in Taoist books, this is for you …

If you are a Christian, Jewish or Moslem practitioner and you want to see how the Bible describes these exact same stages of gong-fu, this is the only book in existence that will teach you this material and you’ll find explanations of some Biblical passages that have remained indecipherable for centuries because they dealt with the chi, chakra and energy gong-fu transformations of the spiritual path …

If you are a martial artist and want to understand how to cultivate qi-gong and nei-gong, this book is for you …

If you are a Shintoist and want to understand what your practice is all about, and want detailed explanations of your practice, this book will pull away the mysteries for you …

If you are a western alchemist, pagan, student of the western mystery schools, or scholar of ancient western religions, this book shows you how various ancient western cultures represented the exact same stages of spiritual gong-fu in their art and literature because they are non-denominational … everyone who was an adept knew about the physical results of the spiritual path because everyone goes through them …

If you are a screenwriter, or novelist who wants to see the real Hero’s Journey that can become the basis of the next generation of movies and action best sellers, this book is for you …

Frankly, this material is too rich in content blessings for most practitioners but I had to write it because if I don’t, then who will? My teacher would probably say most people lack the merit for it. In Tibet you would have to wait nearly twenty years to get just some rudimentary bits of this type of teaching, and those materials would not include these advanced explanations that help you progress further and keep your sanity as you go through all these physical transformations of the chakras and channels.

So if you want to understand the physical side of the Esoteric School and the rudimentary beginning stages of physical transformation of the spiritual path that members of ALL RELIGIONS pass through when their cultivation practice is good enough, the door has been opened and curtain pulled back for this rare and previously “secret” information reserved to initiates. Now you’ll understand many mysteries in the field of religion and spiritual cultivation as they will finally be explained to show the unity of the spiritual path. How to find these answers?

https://www.createspace.com/3600124

The Little Book of Hercules: The Physical Aspects of the Spiritual Path

Using the Greek story of the Twelve Labors of Hercules, which outlines the progressive stages of spiritual development all advanced spiritual practitioners go through, this book presents full details on the step-by-step progression of the physical transformations that occur to practitioners in all spiritual traditions.

Whenever someone starts to consistently meditate or cultivate spiritual practice in a devoted way, there are physical changes that will occur to the human body. These physical transformations, called “gong-fu” in the eastern spiritual schools, are non-denominational signposts of spiritual progress. If you cultivate spiritual practice sufficiently then these phenomena will arise. If you don’t practice sufficiently or practice incorrectly, they simply won’t appear. Their appearance is a matter of proper devoted effort.

These phenomena include such things as the awakening of kundalini (yang chi) within the body, the opening of the chakras and purification of the body’s energy channels, hormonal transformations, the calming of consciousness and experience of refined mental states described as “emptiness,” and various other mental and physical phenomena.

Normally people think these phenomena, which occur because the mind starts to purify due to spiritual practice, only occur to individuals following eastern cultivations traditions such as yoga, Buddhism, Hinduism, Shintoism, Taoism, Vajrayana and Confucianism. However, these purification phenomena that arise are totally non-sectarian and non-denominational. They equally occur to devoted spiritual followers within Judaism, Islam, Christianity and pagan cultivation traditions as well. If you cultivate spiritual practices sufficiently, these purification transformations will occur and if you don’t cultivate meditation or other spiritual exercises, you will not experience them but can only read about them. Your religion has nothing to do with it.

All genuine spiritual schools and religious traditions employ a variety of cultivation practices, or meditation methods, which are designed to help you achieve a quiet mind. Because thoughts die down from practicing these spiritual techniques, this resulting mental quiet is described as peacefulness, silence, cessation, calming, stopping, purity, emptiness, empty mind and so forth. Your mind empties of loud, busy thoughts and so you begin to experience mental peace.

When your mind quiets, proper spiritual practice requires that you remain aware during this experience rather than try to suppress thoughts from further arising. That practice of maintaining awareness during a quiet state is called witnessing, observing, contemplating, knowing, or introspection. As the mind quiets, you continue to watch the mental scenarios of the mind but without attaching to them.

Because the gradual calming of your mind means you are successfully letting go of thoughts, and because your body’s life force (chi) and consciousness (thoughts) are linked, as you let go of thought attachments you are also dropping the habit of attaching to the chi energies you normally feel within your body. Normally you are pushing your body’s life force energies around all the time, but with proper spiritual practice you learn to let go of these energies. You learn how to let them function without interference, which is what happens in a perfectly healthy body. Once you learn how to truly let go of thoughts that arise in your mind, with nothing pulling your chi this way or that way anymore then your kundalini energies will awaken and their natural circulation will start to purify your body.

When those energies finally arise, they will open up your chi channels and chakras naturally. There is nothing you need to do to prompt this other than cultivate an empty, non-clinging mind. Your outer physical body, due to the energies resultantly arising, will experience the transformational phenomena called spiritual “gong-fu.” Your chi will also purify, and thus so will your emotions and habit energies because of the body-mind connection. As you progressively let go of clinging to your chi, it will revert to its natural circulation which the way it is supposed to flow in a perfectly healthy individual before errant thought patterns warp its pathways.

These arising energies produce all sorts of physical phenomena described in religions and your mind will begin to experience all sorts of purified states as well. Cultivating a quiet mind leads to your chi arising, your chi arising leads to the purification of your chi, channels and chakras, that purification leads to a greater degree of mental purity or emptiness, and the two components of body and mind reach ever increasing levels of refinement. Eventually, from spiritual cultivation a practitioner can lay a strong foundation for achieving samadhi and then self-realization, or enlightenment, from their efforts at letting go.

Using the events within the Greek story of the Twelve Labors of Hercules, which outlines the stages of spiritual gong-fu all spiritual practitioners go through, this book presents full details on the step-by-step progression of these physical transformations as they occur to practitioners from all spiritual traditions. It covers the meditation practices that successful spiritual adepts have traditionally followed throughout history, and non-denominationally links the gong-fu experiences of these practitioners with the stages of the spiritual path.

The final edits are being done on the Little Book of Hercules. Though primarily a book on spiritual gong-fu (information on chakras and the channels and other physical changes that happen to the outer and subtle bodies when you meditate) that links Taoism with Tibetan Buddhism, tantric yoga, Old Testament descriptions of spiritual gong-fu and so on, I’ve tried to put in Conscisouness-Only teachings as well from Buddhism, Vedanta, and so forth. I just finished up this section and thought it might be helpful to your practice, so I’m sending it as an email and posting it on the blog:

Aside from the prerequisites of practicing virtuous ways, desiring spiritual progress and practicing spiritual cultivation to a sufficient degree, you really need the “right view” if you want to succeed in great awakening. It is safe to really throw yourself into cultivating the body only after attaining the right view of realizing that your true mind is ultimately empty, that you are not the physical body, and there is no such thing as an inherently existing person.

Your natural mind is empty and yet things appear in it. Despite these appearances, the fundamental, absolute, foundational essence of this ordinary mind is empty or pure in a way that transcends just an ordinary absence of thought. We say that the essence of consciousness is in some way empty, but that emptiness isn’t the same as the emptiness of space which has limits or borders. One might assume that it is a sort of non-existence of ordinary phenomena, but can we call it a non-existence when it somehow gives birth to appearances? Appearances arise within it.

The fact that something seems to arise (within the mind) and be there is what we call existence. On one hand you have this emptiness (non-existence), and on the other hand you have appearance (or existence). You also have the logical fact that what appears in the mind must be of the same nature as the mind.

As to the awareness or knowing that arises from the mind, this must be the function of the mind’s underlying essence, whatever that essence is. If you think about it, what appears in the mind (thoughts, sensations, images, etc.) must also be one with its nature or essence. The manifestations of the mind are part of the mind, so they cannot be anything other than one with its nature. So the appearances of interdependent origination in the mind’s empty true nature must be a unity. There must be an interdependence of inherent emptiness and dependent origination. In other words, the contents of the mind must be of the same nature as the underlying essence of the mind. This is why we say that emptiness and interdependent origination (all of existence, which is what we call “appearance” or the universe or “mind and matter” or the realm of cause and effect) must therefore be the same.

Unfortunately, you have to cultivate, cultivate, cultivate to get to the absolute base of the mind and verify this for yourself with direct experiential insight. It is not something you make up, not some dogma you adopt because of the creed of religion or teachings from various sages, but Truth you must awaken to through direct realization. You actually find the substrate of your True Self that is the essence of all mind and matter, all sentient beings and the universe.

Through spiritual cultivation you can discover that mind is ultimately experienced as a great original wakefulness without borders, without center, timeless and spaceless, that is intrinsically pure … like a mass of pure awareness that is free of names and forms. It is primordially empty and free, self-existing and complete in itself, and has always been present within yourself from the beginning. This is the basis of your mind and the five senses. It is self-luminous unbroken awareness that transcends the phenomena of birth and death that appear within it. It is an entirely one and unbroken state that encompasses all consciousness.

What supports it is the Supreme state of silence, stillness and purity, or True Self, that is unreachable by mind. It is not perceptible because it makes perception possible. Mind is one of its functions. What you are is beyond the mind and its contents, beyond being and non-being.

You are always that pure, eternal, equanimous, non-dual empty universal awareness (in terms of functioning) experiencing various transforming appearances, but you have to finally attain one of the degrees of self-realization, or bhumis, to realize this and the Source of the mind. To do so you must transcend the knot between the pure consciousness of undifferentiated being and the physical body, which is the ego or “I-thought,” by diving into the source from whence the I-thought arises to find the True Self. For complete enlightenment, that realization must be perfect and complete without stain.

Shakyamuni Buddha explained that ignorance stands in the way of this realization – we are ignorantly clinging to the contents of the mind, to consciousness, and hence cannot find its origins. Because of deep seated habits from infinite past lives (of the transformations of consciousness) you’re clinging to the body and mind all the time. If you cultivate you can start to achieve an independence of mental functioning which does not attach to the body because that attachment is just a habit. Eventually you can detach from consciousness itself to recognize its ultimate source.

Through proper meditation practice you will eventually achieve a degree of mental clarity and purity that enables this because your chi and consciousness will become pure, and you will reach a degree of mental stability because your channels clear and the chi flow through them becomes smooth. With this as a foundational basis, you might finally be able to “see the Tao” and understand the dharma like finally being able to see to the bottom of a lake because the ripples on its surface have all calmed. Or, you might cultivate peaceful samadhi states instead (that are manifestations of the mind) and still miss realizing the Tao, which means discovering its source. To see the Tao and realize these things is called prajna wisdom.

So even without any dharma teachings whatsoever, if your mind becomes clear, pure and calm you might see the Tao and self-awaken. This has happened to countless self-enlightened ones in the past, which is why great spiritual teachers have arisen from time to time and founded new traditions for people to help them attain the path. Self-realization is possible because the Tao is always there and salvation, or liberation, does not come from a creed or dogma. It comes from discovering your true self, what you really, foundationally are. It is not an artificial dogma or man-made creation you adopt because of belief but something you realize through direct experience. The Tao is not a creation, dogma, religious construction or artificial teaching. It is the underlying Absolute Nature. This is what you awaken to because this is what you are, this is your true nature or fundamental face.

Many people have independently awakened throughout history, although the Stage of Study and Virtue Accumulation certainly helps people awaken who desire to cultivate, and having a teacher who knows the path is extremely helpful. But such men and women who have awakened are exceedingly rare. Awakening is not an artificial dogma but a self-realization as to what you ultimately are, what is truly your Real Self or original nature. Religion is not necessary for this awakening, although religion is supposed to preserve and disseminate the methods for people to cultivate and awaken to their True Self, or “God,” and to help them along this road. Is your religion doing this for you?

After you awaken all sorts of miraculous abilities can arise because you have realized the source of all existence and are one with the base of all minds, all existence, all matter, all functioning. Sages assure us that you free yourself from pain and suffering, and all sorts of troubles come to rest because the true nature of the Self is peace. Buddhism speaks of this in detail though countless other sages from other religions mention this as well. They just substitute the word “God” or “Brahman” or “Allah” etc. for dharmakaya, Buddhanature, dharmadhatu, absolute nature, fundamental nature, True Self, Reality and so on. As to how the body came about and how ignorance first arose in this endless universe, or as to information on all sorts of miraculous abilities of the body and mind, you’ll have to go to these sources for those discussions.

If you don’t first “see the Tao” so that you can understand these matters and what the spiritual path is all about, you will almost always go astray in the form schools of Vajrayana, Taoism, tantric yoga, western alchemy and so forth, as they stress the physical body in cultivation. You’ll continue to take the body as something real or you. Even to say you are “bodyless mind” is partially incorrect because in using the term “mind” this refers to function rather than substance or essence. Awareness is just its function. We say we have a mind because we have awareness, which is the function, for without it there would just be inert matter or emptiness. Yet there is awareness or knowing and miraculous existence, so one must come to understand the base of that functioning by discovering the Source. You cannot perceive that base because it is what makes perception possible. You can only be it. It is beyond being and non-being, existence and the absence of existence.

My words here are only to help get you started in the right direction. People don’t make progress in cultivation because they never attain the right view, and are always holding on to other notions that actually inhibit their cultivation progress. They pursue superpowers and all sorts of other things other than to look for the base, the absolute nature, the foundational state, the Truth, the Self, the Buddhanature from which we have mind, consciousness and awareness. How to find it? The practice words for the path are, “Let go, let go” while continuing to let consciousness shine without restriction. You are always experiencing It.

To attain perfect enlightenment you must achieve three things: complete realization of the dharmakaya, sambhogakaya and nirmanakaya, rather than just the dharmakaya alone. This trio corresponds to the mind, body and behavior. The nirmanakaya, for instance, entails the ability to skillfully project images or thoughts to any realm of consciousness, meaning even to what we call individual consciousnesses because they are all part of the one body of consciousness. It is proper to start cultivating the other two “bodies” of the sambhogakaya and nirmanakaya, after you realize what the Tao is, by mentally experiencing the truth of emptiness for yourself. That’s the approach of Zen which stresses that you must work hard and first realize the Tao.

I often tell people to practice the 9-bottled wind pranayama practice for health reasons, and to help prepare for better meditative states. You can find the instructions in many of my books, such as 25 Doors to Meditation, as well as on the website.

Someone sent me this video of Master Nan performing the 9-bottled wind practice. It’s in Chinese and probably over 20+ years old by the looks of it. However, I know you’re smart enough to just ignore the language difference and pay attention to how he holds his hands, elbows, etc. during the video as he goes through the motions of the practice and shows you how to do it in terms of posture. That’s what people always want to know.

Enjoy …

Master Nan demonstrating 9 Bottled Wind:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqmTqJgkFEI&feature=related

Our new book is released – Spiritual Paths and their Meditation Technqiues. It is a rewrite, in paperback form, of the Insider’s Guide to  the Best and Worst Spiritual Practices. The price goes up in December, so get your copy now:

A practitioner from overseas wrote:

Since 2003 I started cultivating and practice your teachings. I ordered and read all your books, listen to the topics you speak about and read all your emails. I practise every day for a minimum of an hour before going to bed.

The past two years I am intensifying my practice. During day time a practice the Zhunti mantra, I have done about 252,000. At night before I go to bed, I practice the Vairocana-Zhunti mantra and visualize the flame on all the 8 petals and like you said I also try to be creative. Then I say 3 times the Usnisa Vijaya mantra for myself, the hungry ghosts and for my family. I also practise the 9 bottle wind anapana. After that I practise the Skeleton meditation. That goes quite well and then after that I try to sit and meditate on emptiness by trying to let go of myself as a person or just observe like a third person observer.

Lately I have these feelings in my head. When I am just sitting at my desk at work or doing something else I regularly feel these energies in my head. I have not yet realise emptiness, because I will know when it happen. You will probably say it is just Wind and I know for myself this is the case, but lately I feel quite overwhelmed. I have these intense emotional feelings at my heart and cannot fall into sleep. Because I am 44 years old, I wonder if these feelings are just because my hormones are bugging me. I didn’t have much problems until now, or is this because something is starting to happen, because of the practise? I have seen a Chinese docter and she tried to help me, but I still feel the same. Talking to my doctor doesn’t help because he will not understand.

I also have 2 little books to keep me on track with my cultivation and had read your book the White Fat Cow lately. I write down my Merits and Demerits for the day to try to get grips with my thoughts and behaviour.

If you have been reading our materials, you should be able to analyze this easily. Do not take this as a medical diagnosis or treatment, and if you are ever feeling ill please see a doctor. But if it is due to cultivation work, the following would be the normal analysis. Once again, you must first rule out medical things before proceeding to a cultivation analysis of the typical responses to spiritual practice. However, as my teacher told me many times, and as I found for myself, doctors do not understand this material even though the same patterns happen over and over again as the result for the same types of spiritual practice. Doctors never understand cultivation gong-fu,and frankly, for cultivation gong-fu there is nothing for anyone to do. In any case, the following is easy to write.

All these phenomena are normal signs of progress for someone who cultivates hard. It is EXACTLY what is supposed to happen. It has been written about many times in many schools. Many people pray all their lives to get this far, but no one does because they don’t cultivate hard enough or cultivate in the right way. Most people read books on spiritual topics and do nothing. Therefore they never get any progress. They just read more books. But if you do what’s said, which might seem a lot of effort but becomes natural or second nature after it becomes a habit, you make progress.

This person is experiencing Vajrayana / chi channel opening / body purification phenomena most people hope for but still do not get after 15-30 years of practice. Why they don’t attain it? No commitment to consistent discipline practice, they use the wrong methods and/or they practice incorrectly. Usually it is a combination of these factors and others that explains someone’s lack of cultivation progress.

That’s why I always teach people to do several different things simultaneously to cover all bases and not waste time. It’s more efficient and you make progress quicker. In short, this person’s chi is finally opening their channels from their spiritual work…But this is just the simple stuff. The central channel and front/back channels have not even opened yet. This is equivalent to energy rumblings, but in the right direction.

The skeleton practice + emptiness meditation + celibacy + mantra + visualization + time + patience = gong-fu. It’s a simple as that.

Spiritual progress means cultivation progress, and attaining that progress is a science. As the channels start clearing you will have more and more mental and emotional experiences. You will always finally feel the chi trying to open up the energy channels in the body after doing lots of cultivation work. You will usually feel the energy in the head, abdomen or running up the spine. However, because this person concentrated on the heart chakra, they are feeling the sensations there. As the chi rises to the head, you will feel sensations there. When chi rises to the head, you will also have trouble sleeping at first and will feel energy streams in the head. If they had concentrated on the du-mai they would have felt it in the back of the head. A different emphasis on a different set of channels will cause the energies to be felt there first.

This is actually what happens in Vajrayana, too, as well as in Taoism, Western Alchemy, Kabbalah Judaism, Esoteric Christianity, Hindusim, Jainism, Islam, Buddhism, yoga, Hinduism, Kashmir Shaivism, etc. If you work hard at spiritual practice then the channels start opening and you’ll feel it.

Christian monks who used to recite the Prayer of Jesus at the heart would have the exact same sensations at the heart, but they would get worried and interpret things incorrectly. Many would have palpitations because of the chi working to open up that region. The symptoms are less when you do full body cuiltivation work and open up other channels at the same time, which this practitioner did and what I always recommend. Sometimes the monks or nuns would even see a little flame in that region or have visions of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

Why? Because the chi (kundalini) is opening up that region due to your concentration on it. If you concentrate on a region with visualization, the chi goes to that region because chi and consciousness are linked. Since this is a chakra location, it’s trying to open up the heart chakra region along the sushumna which send chi into the brain.

This is why the “Six Yogas of Naropa” tell people to concentrate on the chakras along the sushumna central channel. But if you don’t also do mantra and deity yoga (visualize yourself in the form of a deity, which is equivalent to full body skeleton meditation) and other practices, then nothing happens. You have to do a lot of necessary PREPARATORY work for anything to happen, which this person is obviously doing. That’s why they are lucky enough to experience progress. That work is also called the “intensified practices” to prepare you for seeing the Tao.

However, once again it is similar to what many people have experienced when the chi finally opens up the channels. Please read Chapter 4 in Measuring Meditation (which is sent on the first day you sign up for our newsletter) to see various typical reactions just like this.

To get the chi channels to start opening is difficult, not easy. Everyone thinks it’s easy but it only happens after lots of committed work, for those are the ones who deserve it. They really want it. Everyone else is after sex, money, power, status, fame and so on so how can they make progress like this? That is their first and foremost prioirty, so the extent of their practice is to visit the Church or mosque or temple on the weekend for an hour or so and participate in a ceremony and listen to some lecture. It’s impossible to make real spiritual progress unless they create a disciplined cultivation practice schedule.

When the chi starts surging upwards into the brain one sometimes cannot sleep. This person is NOT yet at the stage of chi trasnforming into shen causing sleeplessness, but simply chi clearing the channels in the cranium. When yang chi (kundalini) goes through an organ system then emotional stuff comes up which the Chinese have catalogued in their medical system. If it starts clearing the liver channels you tend to get angry or irritated, as an example. Every organ system produces different emotional responses as a predominant response when the channels inside them start to open.

As those channels clear lots of emotional stuff clears, too. It HAS to happen this way for ardent practitioners. When it opens all sorts of areas in the brain, then just as an electrical current in the brain will stimulate memories, memories and other material might come out as chi hits the region and the channels clear. The opening of chi channels causes all sorts of reactions.

So there is nothing in this report that is not typical. It’s just that, despite how many times we write about this, explain it, give case studies, historical examples, tell the science, when it finally happens no one believes it. No one believes they can achieve it. No one believes in the science in the first place. Everyone thinks their case is different.

If you cultivate sufficiently you will experience these things. If you don’t cultivate then they will not happen. The reason they have not happened to you is because your cultivation is insufficient, not because these things don’t exist or don’t happen.

This is all part of the science of human beings. When my book of Hercules and the tantric stages of cultivation like this is released, it will show that even the ancient Greeks and Egyptians knew of these things, not just the Indians and Chinese. Why? Because the gong-fu of spiritual progress is non-denominational.

This person is experiencing the typical reactions of REAL progress. If you practice in this way, you will awaken the kundalini (yang chi) and experience similar things too. Not necessarily the same pattern, but it will follow the typical symptomology or patterns that happen based on your practice.

Hats off to this practitioner. Good work so far and hopefully more to come! Don’t stop now for this is where it gets really interesting.

After a long wait one of our books, “The Insider’s Guide to The World’s Best and Worst Spiritual Paths and Practices,” is being released as a paperback on Amazon.com.

Totally rewritten, this book will be released in paperback as “Spiritual Paths and Their Meditation Techniques,” will be available next month. Because it’s so useful, here is a list of the 10 great cultivation methods of the world from the new book which summarizes many spiritual and meditation approaches. Your spiritual practice should fall within these Ten Great roads. I’ll send the rest of the methods out bit by bit over the next few days so that the material, just a small sample from the book, is easier to digest. I hope from reading this material you can understand the construction and purpose of many spiritual techniques. Here it starts:

As to the other spiritual schools of the world, Shakyamuni said that they commonly employed ten great roads of spiritual practice. By following one or more of these paths, you can progress towards self-realization. These paths include the following:

(1) Mindfulness of the Buddha (enlightened being) practice involves concentrating on an enlightened being such as Jesus, Buddha, Shiva, Krishna or any other virtuous enlightened saint, and then so identifying with the contemplation on a moment-by-moment basis that one enters into samadhi. “Mindfulness of the Buddha” is not a method to be identified with Buddhism, but simply the name of a mindfulness technique that uses one-pointed concentration on any enlightened being, whom we call “Buddhas” in recognition of their enlightenment. It is a method of developing long one-pointed concentration through mindfulness, akin to leading an ox home from the field by pulling it back on to a path through a tug on its nose every time it goes astray. It is a method of mentally imitating an enlightened being, and seeking what he or she achieved from mind-moment to mind-moment, until one finally achieves that ultimate attainment himself.

The bhakti yoga cultivation technique of India, as is Christian contemplation on Christ, is a form of Buddha mindfulness practice where through intense longing the mind melts in devotion and thoughts and attachment to the concept of an ego are surrendered. One pointed concentration on visualizing a deity, known as the exercise of imaginary cognition, is a popular accompaniment of Buddha mindfulness and a way in which many religious greats across traditions have traditionally achieved samadhi. If you reach a sufficient point of one-pointed concentration then your chi will begin to move, and dropping the visualization you can reach a state of contentment and no-thought. When the mind becomes free of all other thoughts except the meditated form, incessant thoughts become silent and the mind becomes pure with the object of meditation, thereby entering into samadhi after the object is discarded. Similarly, when one surrenders a sense of doership and turns everything over to the imagined enlightened being (including the idea of one’s individual will), this is also a form of Buddha mindfulness for entering into samadhi.

(2) Mindfulness of the Dharma (Teaching) practice involves cultivating samadhi through the road of logic and mental investigation. Studying the Consciousness-only school of Buddhism, Advaita Vedanta teachings of Hinduism or practicing jnana yoga are all ways to help you investigate the mind and consciousness. In Confucianism the idea of “tracing things back to their roots” can also be applied to studying consciousness so as to eventually detach from it to search for its source. When you constantly apply the principles of investigation to a constant introspection of your mind (vipassana) in order to help you let go, you are applying this cultivation method that will directly lead you to samadhi.

Success in dharma mindfulness practice involves applying an understanding of spiritual teachings dealing with consciousness to help you constantly detach from mental states that flow across consciousness, and thereby enter into samadhi that way. When you can fathom the true meaning of some spiritual teaching, and combine that understanding with periods of contemplation or mental watching so that you can let go, this is dharma practice, or dharma mindfulness. The Advaita Vedanta or Zen practice of constantly searching for the source of thoughts or the “I am” is also dharma mindfulness. If you were always watching your mind to purify your behavior and let go of unwholesome thoughts, as Confucians do, or making sure you broke no religious rules of discipline, as the strict Orthodox Jewish try to do, that would be the practice of virtue and discipline mindfulness. In this case, to be aware of dharma principles at every moment in time – such as to always recognize the impermanen ce of phenomena, painfulness of the world, non-existence of the ego, impurity of the physical body and the illusive nature of reality – will result in mentally letting go of attachments and constitutes dharma mindfulness.

Such constant practice on a continual moment-by-moment basis will lead to detachment, and the mental detachment of letting go of consciousness leads to samadhi and realization. Putting oneself in line with the Tao, once you know the principles of the true character of reality, is dharma mindfulness practice, and eventually leads to awakening. This is one reason why people are encouraged to study cultivation teachings, especially those from other schools that deal with matters that strike home. Applying them to daily life in order to become happy, let go of attachments, and experience mental freedom also constitutes mindfulness of dharma because you put dharma teachings into effect.

(3) Mindfulness of the Sangha practice means relying upon a living individual who has attained the Tao for cultivation guidance to reach some stage of spiritual attainment. Tibetan guru yoga is one such technique as is studying with an enlightened Hindu master. You don’t consider the guru as a body or person but as the original nature, or true Self, that can lead you to an experience of your own true self-nature. If you were to surrender yourself and imagine that you became one with the goddess Kali, for instance, that would instead be Buddha mindfulness. In sangha mindfulness you rely on the help and instructions of living human masters, or community of cultivators, to succeed in the spiritual quest for the Tao.

One component of sangha mindfulness is to model yourself on an enlightened teacher’s behavior by visualizing yourself becoming that person, or visualizing that you become united with that person during meditation in order to try to match their stage of attainment. The ancient Indian story of the man who learned archery by imagining that he was one with his teacher illustrates this technique. The intense imitation of a powerful enlightened role model, and trying to merge one’s mental state with the enlightened nature symbolized by that model, is the basis of the technique. Mindfulness of the sangha not only entails asking someone for help in achieving the Tao, but involves trying to match their stage of realization in hopes of achieving what they have achieved. It is often followed in tantric traditions that stress the necessity for a guru to help you see the Tao and not get caught up in the physical transformations of the human body.

Many, schools such as Zen and Vedanta, also stress the benefits of studying under an enlightened master because some teachers are able, at special opportunities, to instantaneously cut off your thoughts to help you recognize the inherent emptiness of your mind. The story of Hui-neng, The Sixth Patriarch of Zen, and his pursuer Hui Ming is one such example.

(4) The Mindfulness of Discipline and Virtue is a road of practice emphasized by the Confucian school, Vinaya school of Buddhism, the Taoist path of Humanity and Heaven, Orthodox Judaism, Jainism, and the early Greeks among others. This technique involves a constant introspection (watching, policing, or witnessing) of one’s mind and motivations so as to instantly cut off any mental faults when seen and thereby eventually attain a pure and clean empty mental state of samadhi. Outwardly the emphasis appears to be on following precepts of discipline, but inwardly the practice is on cultivating awareness of the mind. As soon as you see an error in thought or behavior from watching your mind, then like the sword of Manjushri that slices through mental obstructions, you cut it off instantly. You stop the behavior, drop the thought, empty the mind, or try to transform your negative thoughts into positive ones. The form of discipline is outward behavior but the nature of discipline i s that the mind is stopped, and thus there is no desire for evil doing.

This spiritual road can also be called the mindfulness of morality practice. The meditation practice of cessation and observation (normally known as “vipassana”) is also a form of morality mindfulness, and the Confucian practice of self-correction falls within this category as well. Christian monks who were always practicing introspection to watch their mind for breaches of discipline against religious codes of conduct can be said to also have been following this form of mindfulness practice. The stories of Liao Fan and Benjamin Franklin who changed their fortunes through this type of practice are perfect examples of this technique we should all study. As Benjamin Franklin exemplified, one must watch their mind and cultivate wisdom in their behavior to become effective in the world.

Someone asked me a funny question the other day, “What do Buddhas eat?”

Now this is a funny question because Buddhas are people just like you and me who have simply awakened, and as a result the question is basically, “What do enlightened people eat?”

The answer is: “Anything they want.”

Let’s go into this a little more deeply because I’m sure you were expecting the answer to involve veganism or vegetarianism. If you are a person devoted to spiritual cultivation, what you consume depends upon your needs and the circumstances and purposes. That’s the first thing to consider. Compassion is also a major factor in choosing what to eat, but if you’re adrift on the high seas and only fish are available to keep you alive, you must choose whether you willing to die in place of the fish. It all comes down to your wisdom and your circumstances.

In the first years of Buddhism, it’s surprising to know that the Buddhist monks weren’t perfectly vegetarian but ate whatever food was offered to them unless it was meat from an animal that was specifically killed for them. If that was the case, or if they were asked to select the animal to be slaughtered, they were forbidden to eat it. In Tibet today, many Tibetan monks are also not strictly vegetarian either but eat whatever is offered. In China, however, with a history of plentiful vegetarian food because of the monastic system, the rule of vegetarianism was enforced for all monks.

But consider this: the famous meditation adept Milarepa only attained his enlightenment after ending a near starvation diet by drinking some beer and eating some meat supplied by his friends. As he found out, if you don’t eat the right food to keep up your strength, it is hard to succeed at spiritual cultivation. Even Buddha was not able to succeed in attaining enlightenment until his health, damaged by severe asceticism, was restored to normal after eating some rice gruel or porridge. I also know of a great Zen master who ate only one small vegetarian meal a day at noon and also found that it did not supply him with enough energy for his cultivation efforts, and so he started eating meat again, although in limited portions, to restore his health and cultivation efforts. It comes down to what you need in conjunction with what you think is right and proper.

And this is one of the main factors to consider – that less meat is certainly better than more, but none may not be enough, especially if you are subsisting on the wrong type of carbohydrates in a vegetarian diet. Many monks in China eat too much tofu and soybeans and as a result, pancreatic cancer and diabetes is quite prevalent due to their diets. In America many vegetarians eat far too much sugar and wheat and destroy their health in the process, too. Meat protein may be warranted, but with today’s hormone laden food, even this decision is questionable.

Then again, it’s a rule in Buddhism that if you are sick and need to eat meat to recover, it is considered a breach of discipline to refuse that medicine though you may want to keep the purity of vegetarianism in play. Once again, it comes down to what’s necessary to help one stay healthy and thus able to succeed in their cultivation. In Orthodox Judaism, a similar rule holds that if you refuse non-kosher food that’s part of the medical prescription for getting well, it is also a breach of discipline to refuse it.

So what do you eat to stay healthy and succeed in spiritual cultivation? What is the best diet for you and for people in general? No one can say with authority, although many would like to– it’s dependent upon you and your genes, your efforts, your circumstances and how you feel with the diet you choose. Many people say they feel cleaner on a vegetarian diet, and that meat weighs them down and clouds their mind, and that they are healthier as vegetarians or vegans than as meat eaters. For such sensitive people, they’ve already determined what’s best for themselves.

Then again, one thing I can mention is that many naturopaths and nutritionists have told me that when strict vegetarians get sick, in many cases it’s almost impossible to cure them if they don’t start eating some animal protein again. The famous Edgar Cayce recommended fish, then poultry, then lamb and beef in this ascending order if one were to eat meat as a source of protein. Pork is universally recognized as one of the worst meats across all traditions. And as to what vegetables are good for people, you have to first rule out if you are allergic or have a sub-clinical sensitivity to it. Just because it’s a vegetable doesn’t mean it’s good for you!

Many people are sensitive to foods but don’t know it because their vitality is strong, but as they get older and their immune system declines those foods start producing symptoms that were previously masked by robustness. So what may seem like a vegetarian “safe food” may actually be doing harm to your body. If someone gets cancer, one of the first things to do is find those food offenders through a blood test and then strictly rule them out of the diet, vegetarian or not. With today’s GMO foods, this rule is more important than ever as many people are allergic to GMO crops.

The question as to whether you should eat meat or not is really up to you from considering your circumstances and the effect that it brings. It’s a matter of balance, necessity and compassion. So what do enlightened beings eat? Whatever they choose to eat because of their vows and circumstances.

I often tell people they can approach cultivation through Confucianism, which depends on the practice of vipassana, or watching the mind. This is similar to the Socratic idea of know thyself through awareness, too. Telling people to cultivate awareness is often better than telling them to cultivate meditation because in meditation they always get caught in body feelings an thoughts and never catch the real meaning of the Tao as taught by Vedanta or Buddhism.

Our awareness is always caught by the feelings of the body, and emotions. That means it’s caught by what isn’t really you, it’s caught by an illusion because an illusion is something that always changes that we think is solid and real, like a mirage.

Neither the sensations nor emotions are things you can hold on to. The body isn’t you either, and is always changing. When science investigates it, it finds smaller and smaller details such as DNA replication, cells dividing, etc. showing that it’s always changing and never staying still. This cause leads to that result — it’s all held together through massive interdependence. It’s an illusion to think it’s a fixed form, and an illusion to think it’s the real you. It’s just a function that comes along.

In one sense we can say you are spirit, or shen, or awareness, which is a function of the original nature. The original nature, which we call “void” or “empty” to denote it is not something phenomenal, is why in Taoist cultivation we say shen transforms or returns to emptiness, which is its substrate or essence or source. Christians call it God instead. Awareness is just a function of this essence, so we are ultimately this essence and cultivation is to find this essence, not be captured by what awareness notices.

Yet when awareness is captured, we think we are something we are not. If you know all is illusion and don’t hold on to it, then you can relax and not be so tight. You enjoy good feelings because you think they’re true but they are all illusions that don’t stay. The same for bad feelings — they’re illusions. Whatever comes to you in the world because of past karma, you just react to it and respond as you should, and a new illusion will arise that isn’t the original nature, just something captured/seen by awareness.

How do you change your fortune? Your karma comes because of past thoughts and behavior that result in what’s produced. If you watch your thoughts to keep your bad habits from coming out, you can change your fortune. It’s as simple as that. That’s vipassana. If you let go of attachments, in time your chi will change and awareness will return to the source, and recognizing the source you can become liberated.

This is the Confucian method of cultivation. You cultivate “awareness” to change your behavior for the better, which perfects you as a human being. It changes your fortune for the future. By letting awareness function without clinging, you also cultivate the Tao.

What could be simpler?

Two years ago I made a series of audio CDs on a variety of meditation topics, which I made available through Kunaki.com. It’s a cool service — you make a recording, upload your mp3, select a cover, and then they produce it for you, mail it out and so forth. If you’re an expert on some topic and you want to try it, go ahead, as it takes the burdens away of burning CDs, customer fulfillment and so forth.

I produced several courses on CD this way, but Kunaki deletes the recordings if no one buys any in 180 days, which is a half year’s time. Over time several courses were deleted this way (sexual cultivation, feng shui, etc.) and people write me now and then asking if I sell them, but they missed their chance. They’re gone forever because Kunaki deleted them since no one purchased any.

Anyway, four days ago Kunaki sent me a message that in 11 days they’ll delete my last two recordings:

How to Meditate 7 Different Ways

and

The 5 Stages of the Spiritual Path.

Once these recordings are gone they’re gone forever, so this might be your chance to get these babies before they disappear. How to Meditate 7 Different Ways is exactly that — instructions on how to meditate 7 (actually more) ways.

The 5 Stages of the Spiritual Path is all about the 5 big stages of the cultivation path. Without this knowledge, you’ll be lost regardless of whatever school you follow because you won’t know where you stand in the grand scheme of things.

So, rather than let them expire I figured I might as well give a curtain call. Just pop these CDs into your computer and play them! It’s on the most common questions I receive about these topics and what you need to know. If you want to learn how to meditate, these are killer.

J. Pierquet just wrote me that he created a free download site of sutra translations, and wanted to inform people about it. Nice site:

Lapis Lazuli Texts.com

It contains the following translations already:

1. Dharmacakra Pravartana Sutra
2. Anapana Sutra (Ekottara Agama)
3. Diamond Sutra
4. Shorter Heart Sutra
5. Longer Heart Sutra
6. Amitabha Sutra
7. Cundi Dharani Sutra (Zhunti Dharani Sutra)
8. Classic of Purity and Stillness

Buddhist Sutra Translations

Last time we talked about the meditation method of SEEING THE LIGHT. You can find the whole article, with corrections, on the blog. People always ask how they can help our site and I tell them to create links to pages of importance using the free services like HUBPAGES, SQUIDOO, WORDPRESS.com (not .org), BLOGGER, and bookmarking. The more links you create to our pages, the easier it is for the google search engine to place us on page one where people will read the article. Otherwise, no one will find it. You want some merit in the direction of cultivation? Find some articles (not necessarily from us, though of course we’d like them to be ours) create links with the relevant keywords, and that will enable others to find the same article you found useful. Costs you nothing except time: hubpages.com, squidoo.com, wordpress.com, blogger.com, and book marking. Trust me, this HELPS A LOT in spreading the lessons!

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And now for the promised lesson on Kuan Yin’s Method of Hearing Sound …

Along with life there is usually hearing, seeing, and knowing. Seeing is a type of knowing that relies on the eyes, something we dealt with last time. Once you see something you also know. “I see” means “I understand this,” so seeing is also a form of knowing.

For seeing you need several karmic conditions. One of them is light. Without light, you cannot see anything. Color is a form phenomenon, an appearance phenomenon. Night time is dark color, day time is bright color. We’re always surrounded by light/color no matter what, which we went over last time. Pitch blackness is a color and is therefore light, not the “absence of light.” It’s just a different colored light that awareness can know.

Some beings like dark light and some like bright light. Whether they like one or the other is a function of their karma, so in the universe don’t think bright is better than dark. If you said so, a bunch of animals would certainly disagree with you. In any case, light is one of the conditions for seeing. You must see something and what you see is light that has form. Forms and appearances are light.

The second item is hearing. Hearing does not need light as a precondition to take place. Also, when you hear something it is another kind of knowing. Its very existence is also empty just as we found with light, colors, energy and appearances last time. You cannot grab onto hearing or sounds. Sounds don’t stay, they are ungraspable, they are illusions like a dream — EMPTY rather than solid and real because they never stay unchanged.

In the Surangama Sutra, it’s said that when we use our eyes and see that the boundary of seeing or vision is limited — we only see about 30% of what’s around us. We have to turn our head left and right and backwards to see everything, so we’re only seeing about 30% unless we do that. For HEARING, however, unlike seeing the proportion of efficiency is more like 100%. Doesn’t matter where the sound comes from, you can hear it. There’s no natural blockage or limit. Sound therefore is a more efficient method for cultivation.

The Buddha Manjushri said in this world there is a clear and clean teaching of sound. Sound and chi are closely related. The reason we hear is because of chi — chi (air) can transmit sound. CHI means ENERGY. It exists in all directions, so in the Surangama Sutra, Manjushri said the best way to cultivate was to listen to sound. He examined 25 cultivation methods and said for this world, this Earth, this method was the best for human beings. It can help you attain enlightenment quickly.

For example in China people say your ear is connected to the “sea of chi.” That does not mean the dan tien even though names are similar. The “sea of chi” is everywhere. Sounds are everywhere, energy is everywhere all around us every moment, every place.

Our ear (hearing) is connected to the ocean of being (our original nature). People see light all around them but tend to forget about sound. Try to experience hearing and the sea of chi in the universe. Life is within this sea of chi and sound. Hearing is connected to the sea of the original nature.

So here’s the practice. It has three steps to it.

Step 1: The first step is to let go [of fixating on your thoughts] and you’ll start to hear all the EXTERNAL sounds in the room, in your environment, wherever you are. You don’t have to specifically listen. You don’t have to think about it. You do this all the time — you just hear and know. If you somehow close off the function of hearing, however, then you cannot hear external sounds. For example in rare cases you can become so focused or engaged in some task that you can become totally oblivious to a sound that happens around you. We say you “forget the sound” or “miss the sound” but it just means you’re like a scientist who becomes so absorbed in his work that he becomes oblivious to the sound. That’s turning away from the hearing function.

Now Kuan Yin’s name means “Knowing and Observing Worldly Sounds.” What this means is that you don’t have to search specifically for sounds — they are already there. You just observe them and you know them. Hearing just functions and you know what you hear. It’s not “observation” through the eyes or vision but listening, hearing. Hearing is the observation of sound.

So here’s the practice. You’re sitting in formal meditation or just sitting in a room quietly. You hear some external sounds but let go of the things (sounds) you hear. When you let go you still hear. It’s a natural function, there’s nothing to do, so be relaxed about it. There’s still knowing of sound without any need to strain to listen to a sound, so any straining or focusing is incorrect. That’s using too much force and you can never enter samadhi that way just like you can’t enter samadhi using anapana if you are always counting or focused on the tip of your nose. You just know the air is going in and out of the nostrils when it happens and that’s it — no strain, nothing to think about, you just know it. As to sound, the Zen master Bankei said you walk along and hear a bird sing and naturally know it’s a bird without thinking, right? You don’t have to purposely listen, grab the sound, let go of it or welcome it. Just be there naturally and you can hear and know. There’s nothing to do except relax and be natural.

This is called “entering the flow of sound.” It’s the first stage of this practice. Anyone can do it because you do it all the time. You just never turned it into a cultivation method. “Entering the flow” means letting go of the sound you hear. Let it arise, but don’t analyze it, just know it when it comes. When you notice a sound that’s knowing it — that’s all you need to do. If you practice this, then your mind will gradually become calm by listening to sound. This is entering Kuan Yin’s method.

In another Buddhist sutra it says “the sound of ocean waves, waterfalls, wind blowing, …. you are capable of hearing all these sounds.” Doesn’t matter what these sounds are. All the sounds are “empty” because they cannot be grasped. They cannot be held onto. They are empty because they cannot stay in the mind but are effervescent and must depart. Can you grab onto them and hold them forever? No, so we say they are empty. They are effervescent like light or a reflection in a mirror you cannot grasp. And yet you can hear them … just like you can see light. You don’t need any force, it’s natural, just don’t cling but let go. In fact, the more empty you are (not preoccupied with thoughts and not clinging) the more you can hear. Don’t specifically focus on the sounds but just notice them. This is called “entering the flow of sound.”

Gradually you will realize that all the sounds you hear have nothing to do with you. All the light, colors, images you saw in “seeing the light” practice have nothing to do with you either — they are just there, they transform. They represent energy so are empty because you cannot grab onto energy or make it unchanging. Anything that always changes is empty of reality. As to sound, it is just something that occurs to the mind, something that is experienced by the mind. You didn’t make the sound. You just observe it when it comes. It has nothing to do with you. So there’s no need to wait for it because that’s using force. Just relax, sounds come and you know them and they depart. You don’t even need to let go because they just pass by. “All the sound has nothing to do with me. It just occurs. It’s just there.” This is step one of practice.

Step 2: Gradually you don’t have to listen anymore. The mind quiets down and you connect with emptiness. You experience emptiness. Sound is gone. The sound of silence (as a “mark” in the mind) is gone. You need gong-fu to reach this stage because this is samadhi. Everything quiets down. This stage is called “all the sound that enters quiets down.” It is mental cessation. The monk Han Shan in his autobiography said after practicing Kuan Yin’s method by a waterfall that he reached this state of cessation and stayed in this state for 24 days.

Step 3: There are two states to sound: (1) movement and (2) quietness/silence. When you hear something it’s the moving state of sound. Silence is the quiet state of sound. These two are like birth and death. In this third stage, both states have now disappeared and you meet the original nature. Congratulations, you’ve succeeded.

After this you can have all sorts of miraculous superpowers. That’s why Kuan Yin has 32 special appearances. He will follow the sound (thoughts) and try to help people. He can do that because he’s out of the stream of sound so he’s never confused and can follow it back to the origin. The method is so powerful that Kuan Yin used it to reach enlightenment before Shakyamuni, but came back to be an assistant. Manjushri praised this method, Samantabhadra attained enlightenment by using a hearing technique as well.

Basically, you let go of thoughts to reach a state of inner silence or cessation called samadhi. That’s step 2. Then you let go of samadhi to meet the original nature. That’s step 3. That’s when birth and death, or beingness (existence) and non-existence both cease to be.

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