Rebirth is a hot button issue. Even here sometimes.

This thread will take it as a given and no arguments about past life will be attended to (by me at least) here. (Ok? Please?)

Connections within this life or connections between this or other lives will be accepted without question here.

Attempting to work towards a steady 0 of inflows and outflows will be the main subject here.

Anyone who has tried to work towards zero kamma making will know what I'm talking about so this will be the thread to swap those stories and tips in a relaxed atmosphere. Trust me, you will see what we're talking about before too long and you will want to know what to do when "the big whammy hits you."

Kamma is like a big energy boomerang (one way or the other). There should be plenty of 'notes' available around 'here'.

All aboard, me lovelies,


so long and, thanks for all the fish,
-triplethink

On board!

What have you put into practice exactly, nathan, to get outflows and inflows to 0?

I've employed the khemaka sutta approach at times to seemingly good effect but still working on it.

Nick

hi Nikolai,

I'd say a good thing for all of us to do is simply hook all of our rafts together and set up the 'mother of all catamarans' on this one.
++++++++++++++++++++

I've been juggling 'the five hot potatoes' a lot for a long time, and there is a fairly steady 'hand on the wheel' here for a while now.

I dunno' thats why I'm asking for 'tales from the sea' from any other "Salty Dog"(s) ( - Procol Harum ) around here.

I have a lot of crazy stories to tell at life near zero, galldarnit thing gets mighty sensitive at that point. Can turn on a dime.

Notes? Observations?

This ship is a blast when the all of the outflows are up on the + side.

rockets, radios and roller derbies
-nathan

above 12/03/13
below 12/04/13

I was expecting I could just drop in to the DO and do some tweaks on posts and then I found some more posts to... and well, that's karma for ya, and don't I just look like the ass end of it now, hey people?

Ok, so so 'so sorry'. Thats "Canagin" (Canadian) for I'm an "Iddhi -0t". What I mean is, in yet another way than you may be usef to by now.

Anyhow Nikolai is a great guy who deserves better from me so I'm going to work on that and then attempt some discipline again and not even peak. Just that I don't know when I will be getting to any tweaking of old posts that way. Sigh.
---------------
Ok, did some triple-ka-thunkin'

I think/feel, with some 50 years of kamma making and kamma right back in my facing, I should begin with summarizing and generalizing in the widest possible terms.

I think it all boils down to how penetrating the mysteries of kamma is like polishing a silver wheel with a two way mirror on the inside. One sees through it. One sees how both the inside and the outside of the bowl can be polished. A Masterful, Wise, Peaceful & Compassionate Man, who I might add did not do so well with this 'Big Problem/So(u)lution' despite his great talents once said - "First clean the inside of the bowl, then clean the outside".

I'll let you guess who that was.

So, when I was but a lad of 17 or so, when I was kicking up gold dust from the road and not even seeing it on my shoes, I had the good fortune of encountering the third in line Yang Clan GrandMaster of Tai Chi Chuan, Sifu (Ajahn) Kent, Mark; also smack dab in the middle of this our vast, empty and snowy land.

He taught me much in a short time and many mysteries sitting in my mind were simply plucked out like ripe blackberries and were laid bare as freshly fallen snow before me. I spent about two years with him altogether in study and practice but the ocean of samsara's siren call still beckoned this young fool away...... .... .. . . .

His kind teaching has served me well all every day of my life since. He taught me deep breathing ways, healing ways and gentle ways and forms of defense employing only the attacker's force against those who would do me harm. He taught me how to sit, stand, and move like a cat, he taught me how to breath right, like a baby does. I have the utmost respect for him. He is another Great and Noble Being as far as I am concerned.

With the kamma making and the kamma resultants; it is like when you polish the inside of the silver bowl your inward concentration and insight sees that kamma within moving and changing more brightly and clearly.

When you polish the outside of the silver bowl one within sees out & through clearly at all beyond. Others outside of the reflection of the exterior mirror surface see the nature of that Kamma reflected back upon them more clearly as well. Some weep and are healed, others grow fierce and attempt to violently destroy their reflections.

Something to be (very) wary of.

Ok, I'll leave it there for now.

best wishes Nikolai
-nathan
-------------------------------

"A Salty Dog"

'All hands on deck, we've run afloat!' I heard the captain cry
'explore the ship, replace the cook: let no one leave alive!'
Across the straits, around the horn: how far can sailors fly?
A twisted path, our tortured course, and no one left alive

We sailed for parts unknown to man, where ships come home to die
No lofty peak, nor fortress bold, could match our captain's eye
Upon the seventh seasick day we made our port of call
A sand so white, and sea so blue, no mortal place at all

We fired the gun, and burnt the mast, and rowed from ship to shore
The captain cried, we sailors wept: our tears were tears of joy
Now many moons and many junes have passed since we made land
A salty dog, this seaman's log: your witness my own hand

-Procol Harum

Songwriters: KEITH REID, GARY BROOKER

} the virtual prospector strikes again! {

I can see the potential for a long post continuing from above here

btw Nikolai I added to a response for you above.

I coax them to the surface with some bait and then shoot them with my disintegrator gun.

The connections between lives is a biggie. For example, two people I deeply care about (connections right there) are locked into a fight (connection) neither of them can explain too well. So there's this tri-pole thing, this damned-if-I-do, damned-if-I-don't (and kamma ist "what's done" so it translates quite literally.

I've been in similar situations, which didn't draw me into doing or don't-ing. There were connections there, too, so it was not a case of non-involvement by dis-connectedness.

Can't see the difference, at the moment.

So much for my notes.

I like the one-way mirror bowl thing image, and the precaution seems warranted, but there is the hypothetical possibility of polishing the bowl completely away, so it becomes two-way transparent. Seems less reactive.

Cheers,
Florian

* * * Dec 5, 2013, edited to add * * *

Ok, let's try this way of keeping thread length down.

Since the daily flow of kamma strongly features the conflict I mentioned, some more notes on it.

Inputs:

The connections go way back, over half and over three quarters of my life, respectively.

Some of the conditions originate with people who have long died, yet commitments and promises to keep remain.

For all that family ties are involuntary (yeah, but like you said, let's not get into this), they are very tenacious.

Outputs:

With the promises and commitments comes a sense of betrayal.

Egos, masks, facades, whatever you want to call them - for all their hollowness they sure channel kamma-vipaka, they are in fact made of it.

Cutting down on the input somehow increases the output from old seeds germinating. This is seriously icky stuff, too, which is why it was buried so well in the first place.

Shadow stuff: I have no clue, really. I just do some stuff, powers/adhitthana type stuff sometimes, whatever seems right or even whatever I'm drawn to. Last year, when the sense of things hitting hard and fast was really strong, I made this resolve/request to get my shadow stuff revealed, so here I am. Now I'm just taking a step at a time, even if the sense that I need seven-league boots can be a bit overwhelming.

You know, I've always assumed this was all squarely in the realm of Sila. What do you think?

Cheers,
Florian

I'm going to sleep on this one Chuck, feel free to expand on this in the virtual space above already.

Maybe if we can keep the post totals from metastasizing someone can re-birth this thread. Did you get the blaster locally or did you have too send away for it? I've had to build my own gearz, looking more like a nautical compass lately. Not that I am opposed (obviously) to setting phasers on stun and letting fly around here lately at times.

Actually I've found it to be more like the 'internal schools of martial arts' more often than the point and click sort of thing. Thoughts?

: ) ____
-triplezap ))))))}}}}} >>>>>>>>---- --- --- -- - -- - - - - - -

hi Florian
Man it is great to have you around these days. I think both the wheel and the bowl are allusions to something more and the mirror aspects I described are simply day to day reality for me, overall a largely unwelcome but unavoidable given.

Yeah, I've noticed a lot of this 'traveling in packs kind of phenomena as well'. like I mentioned to Chuck I think I should sleep on any new posts. Awake time over 48 hours lately has been wearing a lot. Maybe we can re-cycle posts and trade thoughts between to nearby posts - just add to these two for instance. Could be insightful.

This got me thinking of a couple books with similar themes. One I have re-read several times because it is so brilliant and resonant is - Shikasta - Doris Lessing - a multi-lifetime epic of primordial earth - penned by one of our brightest lights, recently departed, I hope for a better treated world.

Another book I read recently is The Years of Rice and Salt - Kim Stanley Robinson - which also follows several characters over an alternate history of the East when the plague takes out most all of Europe instead of most of it.

Have you found any approaches to working with this 'shadowy' stuff? I have found it can be very bizarre stuff when it is going on.

It is really more the day to day flow of Kamma that interests me. I think the bigger picture stuff is nested cycles within cycles within.

Be back to expand on stuff tomorrow, check this same post later in the day.

. . . . .. .. .. .. .... .... ....... ........ ............ .......................
-triplethink

Hi Nathan,

Yes, a bit cryptic. So to decrypticise - I understood your in flow/out flow terminology in the following way:

in-flow: my reaction to changing circumstances as may be observed in the body and mind. For example a sense of tension in the body arising, fear, lust, etc. and also accompanying thoughts about what is going on.

out-flow: My action or response outward toward the world in response to in-flows - mitigated by or shaped by the above experience occurring in the body and mind.

I'll let you respond to this first - prior to details on gun manufacturing process (well that should trigger some NSA computer function)

How about this:

source

hi Florian,
you are like a cool ocean breeze passing through the shadow of a palm, in the noonday heat.

&Right back @tcha bro;

1. I would say, solid insight, massively-multiply confirmed on this end. I have adequate 3+ ways ( triangulated with consistency ) independently arisen & unbidden evidence extending back well over 3000 years. Reasonably I can only premise that it continues on back throughout the imponderable expanses of UNIVERSAL space/time. So, if you are somewhat unnerved by this effect/affect now...

2. Perhaps it is a bowl, perhaps it flattens to a wheel, the Tibetans have another name, dhyana, the Chinese call it China, Jhana by a another name, jhana, mana... recycle the can-na...
The mirror, true, wet, dry, scratched, broken, only the eye can tell, entirely transparent is another kind as Well... for the REST FULL.

3. It is an ongoing experiment. Cherry from an admin POV. May be even more so in any DhO -> 2.0 -> 2.5 or 3.0 transition / upgrade... thx for giving it a shot, as able... no guarantees, natch...

4. "The connections go way back, over half and over three quarters of my life, respectively."

As to distance, I think/feel I have made my allusions in this regard, near crystal clear... so...

"Some of the conditions originate with people who have long died, yet commitments and promises to keep remain."

As to conditions, as the Buddha no less summarized, 'every child your mother', 'every son your wife', every life no less your own, a tangled web, a big old net, reach, for the beach...

Or; "If All Men Were Brothers, Would You Let One Marry Your Sister?" - is a science fiction short story by Theodore Sturgeon. It first appeared in Harlan Ellison's ...

"For all that family ties are involuntary (yeah, but like you said, let's not get into this), they are very tenacious."

I think/feel time / durations / proximities / quantities / qualities / space / one & all known vectors are factors:

Look to your own mirrors...

5. Well we have been whistling through the graveyard yet again or so it would seem, this time, so far, no?

6&7. All good children go... to heaven?

Like I have been saying, re: One, self, Us & All. Baby steps for newbies, practice, precision, crafts-(wo)man-ship, mastery as we go... forth.

Walk on Dude.

- triplethink/nathan

In Flows and Out Flows.

I define in-flows as karmic or habitual patterns buried in the body and mind and out flows as the result of essentially buying into these in-flows as representing some kind of truth that we need to react to.

Mind lost in delusion is like a balloon caught in a storm. From the balloons perspective - there is a sense of stationaryness - carried with the wind - in what ever direction that takes - it has a sense of centeredness - it doesn't feel the wind. And the world seen from its perspective is jumping around all over the place. Very unpredictable and threatening to the balloon.

So I think the first task for anyone is to find an anchor point which allows me to see - to experience the wind - to see that it is the mind that is moving. An example - restraint of the senses (precepts for example) allow us to feel the energy within - the craving/clinging energy that is driving our actions. If someone says something that makes me upset and I am practicing skillful speech - when I have to intentionally hold back my reaction then I become aware of the power of these reactive energies that I carry inside that try to control me. When I can see that I am constantly being pulled this way and that by thoughts that come out of no where then I start getting disgusted at being duped into doing all these stupid things in some blind submission to these ever changing and totally unpredictable forces. In other words I start to see that it is not the world that is bouncing around but rather me.

In my case - when I came to this realization - having grown up here in the west where everybody knows we are this little brain and body spewing out consciousness - well I just decided that the only way to deal with all these crazy thoughts was to find the self - the solid ground - and then I would not be so influenced by these things. Seemed a completely logical and rational approach. But it proved to be a slippery task. It became kind of a koan for me and led to an intense inner struggle to find self - trying to look between thoughts, behind them, through them - surely it was there somewhere!

What I found was absolutely nothing - therefore no firm foundation to stand on. It was hopeless - as I could find no center (and I had spent a few hours of desperate intense effort to do so) I had to accept that I was forever a victim of whatever blew my way. I was doomed and I knew it and I cried for a long time.

But then into my life in a totally unexpected way comes a Chi Gong teacher that sort of says 'check this out - there are all these energies in the body and you can learn and explore and cultivate these things and do cool stuff'.

Now days I am a firm believer of that saying that when the student is ready the teacher will come. Sounds magical but it isn't. The teachers - whether a person, a book, a tree, a rock, a bag of garbage (had them all) - are all around you waiting for you to notice them. So it's kind of like being surprised that when you expand your lungs air comes in.

Having a pleasant place to hang out - with the flows of energy in the body - gave me some stability that I was not able to find by looking inward at the mind. And this allowed me to start seeing how much of what was driving me crazy was also tied up with tensions in the body that I had never seen before - I was being blind-sided by these things all the time.

Coaxing them to the surface. I met a guy from Michigan once who told me about how his great grand father would take his wagon down to a nearby creek and use his pitch fork to spear giant sturgeon and toss them in his wagon so he could take them home to feed his pigs. Finding inflows in the body at this stage is kind of like that. It's not hard to find them - the task is deciding which one to take. I think the Goenka body scanning technique is really good here - kind of a drag net approach that just sweeps across the surface gathering whatever is large enough to get caught in the fineness of your net.

The process of working with inflows is similar to the history of fishing. The more you do it, the fewer there are - requiring some innovation. I have heard that the yogis of Tibet used to take up residence not too far from a village such that they could periodically go down and raise a ruckus so as to have something to work with. That's kind of like cut-bait fishing where you throw a stick of dynamite in the water and scoop up whatever comes to the surface.

Another method - not available to those yogis of old - is to post something controversial on a forum such as to trigger lots of intense response. This forces you to look at all kinds of things that come up like holding to fixed views, jealousy, conceit, etc. I would of course be shocked and appalled to hear that this ever happens.

So the method employed to coax to the surface depends on where I am at in the process.

Dis-integrator gun. So once this thing is brought to my attention - how do I dispatch it in a way I know it won't bite me. Disintegration is the best way. I dissolve it into a much larger medium. So working with the hindrances when cultivating jhana is one way - the fish comes up, you recognize the tightening in the mind and body and relax right there both in the mind and body. You give it lots of space to dissolve. Getting caught up in a thought is sort of like jumping in and becoming a fish. You can mate with other fish and give birth to entire new schools of fish if you like. Can be entertaining but you have to remember that there are from time to time old yogis around with sticks of dynamite and matches.

In my case, working with the body energies, I would encounter some solidity or pain or tension and could allow that to
dissolve into the more open smooth flowing energies around it and it was quite literally like feeling something solid dissolve. After a while the process becomes automatic and can be done while walking, standing in lines, wherever.

It seems to me that when the mind gets really calm and tranquil that its kind of like those dead-zones in the ocean that don't have enough oxygen to support much of anything. In this case the fish just sort of enter into these and dissolve on their own.

Sorry for the long post. These are the methods I have experience with. I know there are lots of others but no point in me
theorizing about them. Beyond Thunderdome was a good movie. Still have that song going through my head. It's amazing how
accurately my mind can pull that one up - sounds just like Tina - and I can switch to Bob Marley faster than an Ipod.

I think I need to expand on that statement just a bit. I don't mean by this that we don't need to respond to those around us or events in the world. Though experientially they may seem empty - still they are. I think this is an aspect of what is meant by the middle way. In-flows come up as a reaction to changing conditions. So not responding to in-flows is more like not reading into those changing conditions more than what is actually there present in a given situation.