Overlaps of Buddhist Practice and Energy Work

Instructor: Wayfarer
Date: October 5, 2019 (Saturday)

Seminar: Topic: “Overlaps” of Buddhist Practice and Energy Work (also some religious views of psionics) -by request of Azum’ram and TehOldeSourcerer — Saturday, 5 October, 2019 at 6:30pm/1830hr New York Time — text format in the PSC #lecture room (Discord) — Instructor: Wayfarer — Search LECTURE96

Rainsong: Good evening, ladies, gentlemen, and people generally.

Rainsong: Welcome to another psionics seminar here at the social club

Rainsong: Are there any requests for tonight?

Rainsong: Apparently not…

Azum’ran: Are there any strong overlaps between Buddhist practices and energy work?

Azum’ran: If a lecturer is knowledgeable in working causal grooves, as an example, I’d be particularly interested in that

Rainsong: @Wayfarer Do you feel like fielding that question?

Rainsong: I’m Catholic, and therefore do not feel likely to be competent to answer that one

TehOldeSourcerer: About Catholic ideologies how would you say they fit in with psionics and energy work in general? I ask from the point of view of someone who knows little of the Catholic faith other than some Catholics are know are iffy on it due to fear of hell and the like

TehOldeSourcerer: I know*

Rainsong: Officially, psionics is seen as a skillset. Can be used for good or ill, according to the intention of the person using it. Equivalent to math and physics, or driving a car

Rainsong: People who haven’t looked at the official view of it end up with the usual array of different opinions

Rainsong: For the record, the Anglican Catholics also officially have no official position on it, for the same reason

Rainsong: source: discussed it at length with an Anglican bishop when I was working for one of their parishes

TehOldeSourcerer: Ah

TehOldeSourcerer: With officials, such as a cardinal for example, you’d get a different response to the idea of psionics than to magick then?

Rainsong: yep

Wayfarer: Oh hey hi I’m here and can answer both questions

Wayfarer: I’ll do the easy one first standby

Wayfarer: One upon a time I was a young Catholic child and I was a psychic child and I thought to myself “hey maybe being psychic is some evil shit? I should ask a priest” so we asked the priest who was then in charge of my Catholic school but who was also a judicial vicar.

Wayfarer: And he wrote back a really nice answer and then they redacted some details and put it up on the website

Wayfarer: https://dwc.org/telepathy/

Wayfarer: The question was different originally!!! Obvs.

Wayfarer: Anyhow sometimes people can just do weird shit and the Official Catholic Hot Take is that those skills are not supernatural because they don’t come from gods or demons. They are praeternatural which means they are exceptional but there’s no problems with having and or developing them.

Wayfarer: Okay that’s the easy one.

Wayfarer: @TehOldeSourcerer

Wayfarer: Now the trickier one for @Azum’ran but first I need clarification on what you mean by the term “causal groove” because I am not familiar with it.

Wayfarer: But there is some overlap and even a lot of overlap depending on what you’re doing and what flavor Buddhism you’re practicing.

Wayfarer: For example I am a Tibetan Buddhist practitioner and I even work with energies in the context of Tibetan Buddhist practice because as an astrologer we calculate people’s elemental compositions and this is used in a number of rituals for various purposes, though usually not purposes that are primarily Buddhist in nature; that is, they tend to be more commonly used in rituals that are shamanistic in nature and only Buddhist inasmuch as Tibetan Buddhism is an adaptation of Buddhism into pre-Buddhist Bon.

Wayfarer: But, on even a less weird (but still Tibetan/Tantric) level, there is energy work within the associated yogas. For example, Naropa’s Six Yogas includes tummo, and tummo is a form of energy work. It’s exactly the same stuff that Jason Miller teaches in the first bits of Strategic Sorcery, because he just straight cribbed it out of Buddhism. He’s good like that.

Azum’ran: Working causal grooves, as had been described to me, seem to be an effort to directly modify or modulate causality, specifically to the end of generating negligible personal karma

Wayfarer: And on a more conventional level, even the historical Buddha gave prohibitions to monks about displaying their miracle powers which they develop through meditation, with the implication being that it’s entirely normal to develop “miracle powers” (siddhas, which include such as telepathy and clairvoyance) when one has a firm practice of good meditation.

Azum’ran: I dunno if that’s quite right, I just remember it as something tostono touched on more than just a couple times

Wayfarer: That sounds like someone’s own gimmick and not something Buddhist. Specifically, Buddhism focuses on recognizing cause and effect. You can’t do something and not get an effect, and there are no effects without causes. A Buddha can see perfectly what results their actions are generating because they have perfect understanding of cause and effect, but you can’t nullify karma, because karma is literally just “all actions have results.”

Azarea: as far as I’ve understood tostono’s system, I think manipulating it is more of a shamanism/tostono-special thing than buddhist at its core. Buddhism is just useful for it because it can help reach clarity required to see it. Just to throw in my take.

Wayfarer: I.e., you can’t transform a non-virtuous action into a virtuous action by rules lawyering causality.

Wayfarer: But yeah, tostono is doing his own thing, and yeah, Buddhism creates the theoretical framework that would allow someone to work with that kind of thing. I.e. if you’re trying to power-game butterfly-effect like “small impacts, big results” stuff, it helps to be able to see and understand cause and effect with clarity, and that is a Buddhist thing. Or, rather, it’s a result of good Buddhist practice.

Azum’ran: Gotcha

Azum’ran: Have any of you seen a siddhi manifest?

Chirotractor: seems like a silly question considering the location

Rainsong: And dude’s a telepath and clairvoyant, besides?

Azum’ran: Siddhis are particular powers, not just “have you seen any evidence of metaphysical interactions”

ally: I’d say Wayfarer honed siddhi a lot more with his Buddhist practice but it’s always been there

Wayfarer: I’ve seen some very high Lamas do some magical ass shit but I mean the phrasing of the question is pretty open. I mean I’m a telepath and “knowing the minds of others” is an advanced siddhi, but I don’t consider myself a siddha, just a psychic.

Wayfarer: But yeah, some of the lesser siddhas are things like “seeing things far away” or “hearing things far away” so I think people have seen that here, myself included. “Entering another’s body” is another, and that’s not uncommon here either.

Wayfarer: And “knowing past lives of self and other” is another siddhi that many people report. I don’t think you have to be a mahasiddha to have these experiences, but achieving them through practice and having them stable to the point where you can demonstrate them is a thing.

Azum’ran: Have you seen people trying to demonstrate the siddhi which gives immunity to various poisons/body pollutants?

Wayfarer: Trickily, doing yogas specifically to develop siddhis is directly discouraged by the Buddha, because it’s a distraction from the actual path.

ceahhettan: Ok inside reading back.

Wayfarer: I’ve seen evangelical Christians do that, but no. Like I said, the Buddha very directly and specifically prohibited the demonstration of siddhis, so it’s not something you see done in demonstrations, at least not within the orthodox Buddhist circles I traffic.

Wayfarer: Demonstrating siddhis builds the ego and cultivates arrogance and a feeling of superiority in the siddha, and it creates a sense of other-ness in others, thinking that the siddha is some kind of exceptional person. For that reason and others it’s not something you’ll normally see demonstrated publicly. However, I have seen Lamas use siddhis, not as demonstrations but because there was an occasion that warranted it. For example, I have seen a high Lama stop the weather temporarily so we could complete a ritual that required us to burn some stuff.

Wayfarer: That was at a semi-private occasion however, I was the only other person present, and because such Lamas are operating on a bunch of levels at a time, I think it was done in part specifically so that I would see it done.

Azarea: is there anything that contradicts the worldview of “buddhism is a mystical practice that helps clarity, siddhis are basically magic, which is helped by clarity but otherwise orthogonal to buddhism”?

Wayfarer: No, that sounds perfectly correct.

Wayfarer: Buddhism is a mystical practice and mystical development tends to make magical bits much more natural. From a Buddhist perspective this is because it is our ignorance that obscures those miracle powers in the first place. For example, it makes sense that someone would become telepathic if they fully realize the non-duality of self and other, right? But the accomplishment there is the realization of non-duality of self-and-other, not the telepathy.

ceahhettan: Not entirely tangentially I can think of several Rebbes who have known of to others so called miracle powers (now, without even getting into historical examples which may or may not have been exagerrated), which lends to it being a consequence of being xyz at meditation, honestly.

Wayfarer: Yeah. There’s no difference in the miracle powers developed by different mystic traditions. The critical thing is the abnegation of the ego, and if you get that all those miracle powers just kinda become trivial. But they aren’t the primary goal.

Wayfarer: All Buddhas have all the siddhis but attaining siddhis is not a goal of Buddhism and is pretty tangential. So much so that they are deliberately regarded as a distraction. When you start manifesting them during meditation you’re supposed to ignore that shit and keep meditating.

Wayfarer: Because otherwise you get distracted from the path and stop at “having some siddhis”

ceahhettan: Yeah. Lubavitch/Chabad tends towards the mystical but even so that’s not the point and people are discouraged from public display of miracles etc.

Wayfarer: i.e. I had ‘siddhis’ before I was at all doing Buddhism. I guess Ally thinks the Buddhism has helped my psi stuff. I now use the cittamantra concept of the alaya consciousness as a framework for how I understand RV and telepathy to some extent, and I think that having a better understanding of the nature of mind naturally helps telepathy, of course. But I actually keep my Buddhist stuff and my psi stuff in separate “boxes” so to speak.

Wayfarer: So much so it’s causing some internal conflict with my business because the Tibetan Astrology stuff is mostly unrelated to psychic stuff and they are weird together as a brand in my mind. Though strictly speaking the astrology stuff isn’t core to Buddhism either – it’s just stuff that was held over at the same time, being a combination of Chinese divination stuff and Indian cosmologies.

Azum’ran: Thank for responses

Wayfarer: Of course. 🙂

ceahhettan: That was interesting, thank you.

Wayfarer: The Tibetans called India the “land of religion” and China the “land of divination and astrology” so when they started borrowing from both they mashed them together. I’m probably going to start studying Chinese astrology soon to see what all the Tibetans ripped out, because they basically took Chinese astrology and weirded it up a bit.

Rainsong: Thanks for the interesting questions, @Azum’ran and @TehOldeSourcerer ; and thanks for the information, Wayfarer 🙂

Wayfarer: I’ve been studying feng shui now for a few weeks because the Tibetan Astrology has the same stuff, but I just got a book on elemental astrology from a MenTseeKhang institute teacher since it has a (very, very short) chapter on sa-chey, which is Tibetan takes on feng shui, and uh, it’s extraordinarily stripped down.

Wayfarer: I think the equivalent would be getting a new car you want to convert to be an off-road rig, so you immediately rip out all the cosmetics and like, quality of life shit, and like, doors and seatbelts and all that shit.

Wayfarer: Then they mashed their own shamanistic stuff in and went “hell yeah we doin’ this”

Azarea: is the lecture open to other questions, tangential to religion<->psi-interaction?

Wayfarer: But like, they took the Kalachakra tantra with all its actual real astronomical observations and went “yeah no we’re gonna do weird counting cycles” because math is hard. Much love and respect.

Wayfarer: I think so, yeah? It’s seeming pretty loose and informal tonight.

Azarea: ok

ceahhettan: I think between folks here we’ve got a wide range covered, too.

Azarea: I’ve been over the last year or so doing some kundalini practice, and through that and a couple other miscellanious practices have come to respect a lot how certain body positions, sometimes even simple things like position of the tongue, can affect energy flow, or energy qualities. Since then I’ve been kind of searching for such positions/effects. Does anyone know good ones, or know stuff in psionics that’s explored this?

Azarea: I’ve looked a bit into TCM paths with the intent of distilling such principles, but haven’t really gotten anywhere; so much material to comb through that’s focused on medicine

ceahhettan: Not my wheelhouse here although there’s some interesting stuff in Kabbalah about the so-called prophetic position (head between your knees).

Wayfarer: All your various hand mudras tend to be good for the thing they symbolize but it’s hard to say how much of that is innate to the body and how much is cultural symbolism. As for sources that have explored it within psionics per se, I don’t know of any immediately. Psionics stuff tends to be extremely mind-focused. But certainly the TCM stuff can factor somewhat. Let me grab something on the winds real quick.

Rainsong: EFT and Quantum Touch both touch lightly on position.

Wayfarer: I’m gonna grab a good resource on Tibetan Medicine’s approach to energy (Tib. རླུང་ Wyl. rlung, “wind”). I don’t think it will be better than Chinese stuff, but like with the astrology they stripped out a bunch to make it much more to the point, and almost all of Tibetan medicine has to do with the movements of energy within the body and the different winds.

Wayfarer: http://holistic-health.org/boulder/?p=494 this is like way more thorough than was I was looking for.

Rainsong: It’s often suggested to not cross arms or ankles or whatever when doing perceptive work, and to not wear leather while working, for example

Wayfarer: https://digitalcollections.sit.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=2765&context=isp_collection If you’re trying to be more academic.

Rainsong: Tense-vs-relaxed muscles can make a difference for some purposes, too… cf, rattling and scraping

Wayfarer: We see this in the reasoning for the kundalini practices and so on, too, re not crossing arms / ankles Rainsong.

Wayfarer: The reason for the normal sitting meditation position for example is about blocking the descending channels (downward voiding wind, in Tibetan) to ensure that the consciousness is directed upward. Then the back is straight because this slows the movement of energy – leaning accelerates it.

Wayfarer: Shoulders are back to open the relevant channels, hands are folded at the navel to close the circuit so that those winds are being redirected back into the central channel and are carried up, etc etc.

Azarea: yeah

Wayfarer: This is core to tummo and will be very familiar to kundalini practice.

Azarea: @ceahhettan @Rainsong I hadn’t heard of any of this before, thank you

Azarea: @Wayfarer I’ll parse through these texts when it’s not 2am, but just from skimming they seem not that trivial to turn into advice

Rainsong: :thumbsup:

Azarea: but I’ll look through them more precisely

Wayfarer: With the Tibetan stuff as with the tantric stuff it gets mixed up into the mysticism. On the one hand there’s energy stuff moving around, on the other hand it all kinda resolves into “all experience are the activations of consciousness channels so we bring the energy into the central channel to facilitate the experience of emptiness” or something like that which is not the goal if we’re doing energy work (that orthogonal nature again)

Wayfarer: I think you’ll have to kind of churn on it a bit. Knowing about the different winds for example will help in directing them and can help with energy work. For example “grounding” is an exercise in activating the downward voiding winds and getting a good read on that can help those things work better. But maybe it’s because I’m already in the framework, you know?

Azarea: yeah

Azarea: I’m familiar with the issue

Wayfarer: Another thing to think about is the different cycles in Chinese astrology and energy work from there, just the real basic levels of the generating cycle and overcoming cycle of elements, for example.

Wayfarer: I’m really super into the five Chinese elements since they’re so dynamic relative to the Western alchemical elements, and that dynamism gives them a lot to consider when doing energy work.

Wayfarer: But in any case those Tibetan resources won’t necessarily be easy to work with, but they should be easier than TCM since basically the Tibetan gimmick was taking liberally from China and India and then throwing out what they didn’t like.

Azarea: yeah it sounds worth looking into

Azarea: thanks

Wayfarer: Yeap!

Wayfarer: Hell, I’m learning stuff from that digitalcollections article.

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