notes on the Dhamma

Necessity is the mother of invention (excerpt from wikipedia) "Necessity is the mother of invention" is an English-language proverb. It means, roughly, that the primary driving force for most new inventions is a need.[1] The need to communicate led to the creation of different communication devices – this is a prime example of the expression: Necessity is the mother of invention. In the Oxford Dictionary, the proverb has been defined as;     "When the need for something becomes imperative, you are forced to find ways of getting or achieving it."[2] According to the Cambridge Dictionary, this is "an expression that means that if you really need to do something, you will think of a way of doing it."[3] Longman dictionary has defined the proverb as: "if someone really needs to do something, they will find a way of doing it."[4] The Other Mothers of invention We've all heard about necessity, but what about some of the other mothers? H...

excerpt from: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/elephants-never-forget/ Mind Fact or Fiction?: Elephants Never Forget Do elephants really have steel-trap memories?     By James Ritchie on January 12, 2009 Fact or Fiction?: Elephants Never Forget Credit: © Charles Foley Elephants do not have the greatest eyesight in the animal kingdom, but they never forget a face. Carol Buckley at The Elephant Sanctuary in Hohenwald, Tenn., for instance, reports that in 1999 resident elephant Jenny became anxious and could hardly be contained when introduced to newcomer Shirley, an Asian elephant. As the animals checked one another out with their trunks, Shirley, too, became animated and the two seemingly old friends had what appeared to be an emotional reunion. "There was this euphoria,"  sanctuary founder Buckley says. "Shirley started bellowing, and then Jenny did, too. Both trunks were checking out each other's scars. I've never experienced anything t...

A long time ago, in China. Ernest was a promising young student hoping to apprentice with a TCM Chinese doctor. Instead of looking for a local expert, he thought, "why not find the best doctor in all the land? The worst that can happen is they say no." So Ernest set out to find Dr. Chen, who was celebrated for his skills and knowledge of medicine and his ability to heal even the most fatal disease. He cured the emperor’s son who was believed dead, in a miraculous exhibition of his skills. Because his fame spread far and wide, his medical practice was nonstop, and he accumulated vast fame and  wealth. He lived in a palace with whatever luxury and pleasure you could imagine. After meeting and interviewing with Dr. Chen, the doctor said: "You are a fine and promising young student, and you'd make a fine apprentice. But before you decide, you really should talk to my older brother, who is is also a TCM doctor. Dr. Yang, is far more skilled and wise than I am. Ernest, hu...

Now we look at an interesting case of a yogi who can do jhana,  keeps brahmacariya well over a long period, more than a year, but develops some of the problems described in that article, such as anxiety, disturbing and distressing states in meditation, panic attacks, physical health problems, etc. the yogi keeping brahmacariya  I'm going to start off with more of a rough sketch / outline, and fill in with more details and editing over time. I just want to get the information and the solution out quickly, and refine the descriptions later as needed. So even though I eat super healthy, do at least 8 hours a day of some combination of sitting meditation, walking meditation, taiji, yoga, hiking, I developed what I could feel was an energy blockage somewhere near my lower and middle spine area. Even consulting some taiji masters, meditation masters, I got useful advice and tips on how to deal with the mental part of the equation, but nothing that really helped diagnose what ...

why is PIE so easy to lose? Here's an analogy. Say a regular person, who doesn't meditate much, has a credit card with a 500$ limit. So no matter how reckless they are, at most, in one session, they can only lose 500$ of PIE. The more you meditate, the more PIE you bake, the stronger the energy gets, the channels getting more open leads in exponential growth of PIE. So now that credit card, instead of a 500$ limit, now  has a much higher credit limit, and has the potential to lose 10,000$, 50k$, even 100k$ of PIE quickly in a few days or even in one session. So take a normal person, who doesn't meditate, works 40 hours a week, 30 years old, has sex twice a week. After he has sex, he needs more sleep and more food than usual, but since his norm is maybe sleeping 8 hours a day, he doesn't really notice the effect of sex. Now let's take one of the cases of the meditators living the normal lifestyle as above, but starts meditating seriously, 1-2 hours a day min...

https://tonic.vice.com/en_us/article/vbaedd/meditation-is-a-powerful-mental-tool-and-for-some-it-goes-terribly-wrong I've had personal experience with panic attacks, bad episodes in the past. It's a huge topic, and I'm not going to try to address everything, but here are some things that are extremely helpful, from personal experience. PIE = precious internal energy.  In taoism, they talk about jing, qi, shen. PIE is my way of describing that internal alchemy. If you meditate correctly, full pacification/relaxation of body and mind, mind free of thinking,  what you're doing is baking PIE. The more you meditate, the better the PIE tastes, the more massive and powerful the energy running through the network of interconnected loops in the body. PIE energy running through the energy channel loops in the body is not imaginary. It's a tangible force that throbs through every cell in your body. At different stages, depending on how coarse the energy is, it can f...