On Dec 31, 2007, at 11:34 AM, Heather Perella wrote: > Yes, so 'just sit'. As I said, it depends on > what your looking for. I can take a walk in the woods > or sit by a fire after gathering the wood, and > experience peace. I do need to continue walking in > the woods and sit by fires and these are practices. > Some people paint. I don't want to get into a debate > as to who practices best and why. I'm saying ordinary > life is in touch with reality just as any Chi exercise > is. Who's practice is better would be a silly debate > and I don't find value in that. If you could tell me > the value of such a debate and something worthwhile > would come out of it, then you could try to convince > me otherwise.
I know we might be referring to two separate phenomenon here and this is not about which/whose practice is better. The biggest hurdle to "knowing" the Universe is in the skepticism that is built into us from childhood via the social system. We don't acknowledge Chi/Prana and our world exist's in the phantasm of our intellect. We mistake this world of thought-up words and conjured imagery as reality. The Taoists, Vedantins all believe that this "reality" is not the ultimate reality and further propose this alternate structured framework to access the larger reality that exists. While I whole-heartedly agree with you about the fact that ordinary life is just as much in touch with this greater reality as is doing a Chi exercise, our sensory and intellectual apparatuses aren't usually prepared to access this reality. That's where these "exercises" come into picture. The Native Americans are equipped to access this portion of reality due to their social conditioning. A non-native mind is not, again due to social conditioning. Please refer to this article for more details on this matter -- http://medhajournal.com/content/view/70/80/ Also refer to the concept of Biocultures and how our knowing/learning is affected by what part of the brain is developed as a result of our bio-cultural environment (social conditioning) -- http:// biocultural.org/biocultures.html If you remember, this discussion was triggered by my initial query to the group about their personal practices vis-a-vis MoQ (or whatever else one might choose to refer to it as). And what I intended to find out from that query is whether this "Greater Reality" can be known by merely intellectual means or does it take a combination of energy-work, meditation and intellectual analysis. In response to the "just sit and know" statement, I had to bring forth to our attention that the Buddha didn't happen to stumble upon this "just sit and know" -- there was a lot of preparation that went into taking him there, which involved "Not sitting". I hope we can discuss much further when the purva paksha is clearly articulated. Wishing you all a very Happy and Prosperous 2008. Regards, Dwai Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
