Said a bit differently

I am really enjoying Michael Barnett’s teaching.  It’s what he calls “resonance based.”

Here he addresses the impotence of words and the importance of the meditative space.
It ties in nicely, from a different angle and different expression, with what I getting at in Dumb Saints.
Barnett’s moving meditations appear very similar to what my Taoist practice looks like.
That’s probably why I find such resonance.

I’m coming to appreciate three kinds of approaches:

awareness based teaching  (Advaita)
emptiness teachings (Buddhism)
resonance teachings  (Taoism, energy movement)

Fishing with Mystery

Coi smokin'
Originally uploaded by Seeking Tao

at some point in my life, fishing was a way of achieving a timelessness, especially fishing in rivers because rivers have a very timeless quality.
They're always flowing, flowing, flowing.
They're flowing down to the sea.
The clouds form, they float over the countryside, the rain falls, they fill up the ground, the springs…
The stream is kind of this immortal entity, at least in my mind…
and you kind of get swept up in this immortal cycle and kind of lose yourself.

Naming gives us the illusion that nature is fixed, but it is as fluid as the language used to describe it.
It is a challenge of the artist (if no one else) to un-name and re-name the world to remind us that fresh perspectives exist.
James Prosek

On Speaking of Faith last Sunday Krista Tippett interviewed artist, trout fisherman, and something of a mystic, James Prosek. I loved the show.
I’ve written before about the limitations of naming.
Prosek probably shares this critcism, but he arrives there from such a different path it’s well worth walking with him for awhile:

When I was four or five years old, I would draw birds at the kitchen table.
As I finished each piece I asked my mother to write the names of the birds beneath the pictures…Somehow a picture wasn’t finished if the animal’s name wasn’t there.

When I learned to write, I scrawled the common and scientific names of each creature beneath my drawings myself— by example of Audubon, or any others who made paintings in the natural-history tradition.
At nine I developed a passion for trout and began to compile a list of all the diverse types…

As I painted trout through my late teens, major shifts in trout taxonomy were taking place… I began to understand that species were less static than the fathers of modern taxonomy… once believed.

That nature was static and classifiable was an idea perpetuated by the natural history museum (repository for dead nature), the zoo (repository for living nature), and the book (repository for thoughts and images related to nature).
These mediums were all distillations of nature, what individuals of authority deemed an appropriate cross section to present to the public.
None had adequately represented Nature—at once chaotic, multifarious, and interconnected…

I was conflicted—I loved the names that had first led me to recognize the existence of diversity… but as I learned more I wanted to throw away the names, step beyond those constraints, in order to preserve a sense of wonder that I had felt from an early age.

Such thoughts were the origin of the curvilinear lines in my present work….
The first paintings I did with lines emanating from creatures were meant to be imaginings of what God’s or Nature’s blueprint of a particular creature might look like. … The lines activated the space around the animal in a satisfactory way, erasing the need for the name to be written beneath….
James Prosek, The Failure of Names

Such lines also bring to mind the Australian aboriginal Songlines.
During the Dreamtime, archetypal ancestral spirits are said to have wandered across the Earth creating and naming trees, rocks, waterholes, animals and other natural phenomena.
Their dreaming and journeying trails became the songlines, an intricate series of song cycles that identify landmarks and serve as subtle tracks for navigation.

To me, Songlines seem an earthly version of the energy channels and flowing Qi that one becomes aware of through meditation and an illustration of the Taoist emphasis of the connection between macrocosm and microcosm.
That Prosek seems to have discovered similar lines and meanings really delights me.

Click Here, if you’d like to see a “The Myth of Order,” a video of Prosek’s art accompanied by his own narration.
It’s well worth the three minutes –just be patience for Krista Tippett’s face to disappear.

Or, Click Here to see a tattooed Buddha – another artist’s vision of the energy channels?

More on Dissolving Knots

Marigold in Water
Originally uploaded by Seeking Tao

The water method of Taoism is initially strong on the dissolving, or the breaking up of energy in the same way that water wears away a rock.
If you throw sugar inside of water, after a while it breaks the sugar down.
The water completely emulsifies it.
B.K. Frantzis

Well, just like that “Bruce Lee” did bring a visitor who left a comment on my last post.
Actually, he is a fan of B.K. Frantzis and he mentioned a nice link to a more detailed explanation of “dissolving.”
I want to share that here in a more up-front manner, as I think my Taoists friends will find it interesting.

These words by B.K. Frantzis touch on several things that interest me.
I've mentioned that my Taoist practice aims at creating “good human beings.”
Seems to me a lot of this transformation involves “dissolving” those “hot button issues” we all carrying inside our psychologies.
Adya also mentioned that he finds most students could benefit from psychotherapy either before or after awakening.
However, Frantzis seems to be saying meditation doesn’t work on the level that psychotherapy does. ... Or maybe "level" leads to mispintrepretation, and it'd be better to say the "methods" aren't equivalent. Here is exactly what he says:

Frequently I am asked if this method of Taoist meditation can replace the need for psychotherapy. Generally speaking, no. In modern life, you have to make a living and interact with other people. You can't withdraw to a monastery or ashram where all your needs are taken care of while you work through your problems…

Psychotherapy is more appropriate for dealing with the dysfunctionalities of a level of emotional development where taking full responsibility for one's emotions is not yet within an individual's capacity.

In Taoist meditation a worthy student was one whose emotional suppressions were such that the individual could feel that what was emotionally arising within themselves was essentially their own responsibility and not being caused by something outside themselves. …

Ahh! Actually, this is exactly the ability I developed through my Taoist practice.
I’ve learned to sit alone or with a group letting loose powerful emotions deep inside and when told to take a bow and stop meditating, I can quietly do that too.

Clearly there are different methods within Taoism.

Perhaps, we could say I have now become a “worthy student” having recovered from the great dissolving initiated by that awakening I had in 1975. Within a year that awakening had blossomed into a full spiritual emergency rather than emergence. The knots were not dissolving but were unwinding like supercoiled rubberbands generating so much heat that I was essentially fried.

Frantzis clearly describes working with the dissolving I spoke about last time, and he takes the consequences in an interesting direction:

All of these basic lower emotions are dealt with by first ferreting them out of where their energy is embedded in the actual tissue of the body; secondly by actually going into the energy channels of the body where they are located; and finally dissolving them all the way inside the system.

Then you start to literally transform these emotions as they extend outside of your physical body. Your own personal field has the ability literally extend to the end of the Universe.

If you do not clear out your own energy fields beyond the body, then all energies coming in from an external environment activate the unresolved energies in your own personal Qi. This causes you to be somewhat manipulated like a puppet by the energy emanating from the huge Qi fields of the stars. This creates a pattern that comes back in. That is what astrology is based on.…

Whoa! Astrology. Or why we can feel the feng shui of life.
And then Frantzis takes us back into the physical realm and very practical concerns as to “What does this mean for Me?” He shows me why meditators can sometimes become plagued with physical challenges, and why we should remain open to and respectful of paths that others tread.

When you start reaching into the emotions it is important you start tapping directly into the glandular system, as well as into your internal organs.

There are so many techniques it depends upon which ones are appropriate for a particular type of person or a certain situation. I am not going to get down and just talk about this technique or that technique. That is like a cookbook approach and the fact is that human beings don't quite work that way.
B.K. Frantzis

Not exactly my path, but Frantzis is well worth reading. In fact, here’s one final link that explains even better the process of dissolving those inner knots via the Water method of Taoism.

Namaste and Enjoy.

Is this how Buddha is suppose to look?

White Faced Buddha
Originally uploaded by Seeking Tao

The idea of enlightenment is tied up with our images of wise men and wise women. We have all sorts of preconceptions about how such wise beings are supposed to look, supposed to talk, and supposed to act… Based on our particular preconceived notions, we may try to sort out who among us is enlightened to greater or lesser degrees. We would like to match what we see with whatever standard we have created. But in doing so, not only may we apply inadequate standards but we may also be fooled…
Judith Lief

And too, we hold ourselves up to these imagined standards, which can sometimes cause confusion.
We might even talk ourselves out of awakening.

You may or may not have noticed, that I feel a bit disappointed in my Taoist practice for the lack of emphasis it puts upon enlightenment.

This de-emphasis has even confused me, for Taoism does have a strong tradition of seeking enlightenment and becoming one with the Tao.
In fact, I loved the Taoist term for such a person. They are called “real human beings.”

So, on the path that I have walked, there have been these “tenors” to the different teachings.
In TM, we were all dead set, busting a gut on becoming enlightened.
Maharishi assured us it was possible, though he was also handing out no guarantees as to a timeframe.
Next, came Taoism and the de-emphasis. I know my initial interest with Adyashanti lay in his invitation to “all seekers of peace and freedom to take the possibility of liberation seriously.” So, you might call that something of a backlash.
Well, now, I have been listening to Adya for almost two years and I’m beginning to believe that we have little if any control upon our own awakening.
To paraphrase both Adya and Eckhart Tolle, our practice and meditation only point us in the correct direction, so if per chance Grace should strike and our ego lets go for a moment, perhaps we’ll stay awake.

So, on I plod each day now. (Will She strike today?)
And in my plodding, not so long ago, I came across Numinous Nonsense.

That’s a great name, Numinous Nonsense.
It’s also a website written by Vince Horn.
Here, I found the most cogent discussion of the spiritual seeker’s relationship to enlightenment I have ever seen.

The discussion is introduced with this quote from Buddhist teacher, Judith Lief.
So, I invite you to go there (here) to enjoy the whole discussion.
I think the topic is important.
It impinges upon “spiritual materialism” – that No-No I have often been accused of. (I can also end on prepositions.)
It also addresses best attempts to avoid this trap while still staying true to the quest.

And as long as I am on the subject, I will takes this opportunity to mention that Vince also runs a site called Buddhist Geeks which offers podcasts on interesting subjects.
I found the recent discussions on dream practice with Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche very interesting.

I ordered Rinpoche’s book. Perhaps, in there I will find an explanation of my uncomfortable waking from sleep experiences. Or, an explanation of that dream I mentioned about flying.

So, that’s it for now. Don’t just sit there.
Click somewhere and learn something.
Maybe we can all have a bit of fun as we plod forward, waiting for Grace, free from spiritual materialism to whatever extent we can be. (Can you believe the term has made it into Wikipedia! How very funny and a bit strange.)

Guided Movements

Ripples, I
Originally uploaded by Seeking Tao.

Guided Movements, also called Spontaneous Qigong are part of my Taoist meditation practice. In the Sum Faht tradition, this practice is begun by standing, closing the eyes, and bowing to the four corners of the universe. Then, mentally, one requests guided movements. Next one waits for one’s internal energy to shift. You have to feel the energy or qi build until it is strong enough to move your limbs and body on its own accord. You must allow yourself to follow the energy, never rushing or anticipating. The mind must be kept out of the process.

Most Qigong practices or forms follow a specific pattern and sequence of movements. For example, in the Five Animal Play system movements of the deer, tiger, monkey, crane and bear are mimicked. Bone Marrow Cleansing or Eight Pieces of Silk Brocade will have other patterns of movement.

In spontaneous qigong the body may shake, gently sway, dance or reel, perform martial art moves, mimic any number of animals, or adopt a mudra-like pose. Movement can occur on one side of the body only, or be performed bilaterally. Whatever movement appears is deemed appropriate for that person at that moment given his or her own, unique physiological and psychological needs.

Often the effects of guided movements can feel very cathartic, allowing one to release deeply held emotions. Afterwards one may also feel relaxed and harmonious. The practice is one way to strengthen the body so that it can handle the flow of energy accessed in the deeper levels of sitting meditation.

The poet Rumi has written,

The spiritual path wrecks the body
And afterwards restores it to health.
It destroys the house to unearth the treasure,
And with that treasure builds it better than before.


Some schools of Taoism have emphasized the necessity of strengthening the body prior to instruction in meditation so that the fire and destruction, so beautifully described by Rumi, may be ameliorated if not avoided. A stronger body will also support a clearer psychology.