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Jigme Lingpa on Sickness

Sickness are the brooms sweeping your evil deeds.
Seeing the sickness as the teacher, pray to them…
Sickness are coming to you by the kindness of the masters and the Three Jewels.
Sickness are your accomplishments, so worship them as the deities.
Sickness are the signs that your bad karmas are being exhausted.
Do not look at the face of your sickness, but at the one (the mind) who is sick.
Do not place the sickness on your mind, but place your naked intrinsic awareness upon your sickness.
This is the instruction on sickness arising as the Dharmakāya.
The body is inanimate and mind is emptiness.
What can cause pain to an inanimate thing or harm to the emptiness?
Search for where the sickness are coming from, where they go, and where they dwell.
Sickness are mere sudden projections of your thoughts.
When those thoughts disappear, the sickness dissolve too…
There is not better fuel than sickness to burn off the bad karmas.
 But see them as the signs of the waning of your bad karmas, and rejoice over them.

Source: Masters of Meditation and Miracles by Tulku Thondrup

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Light on Pranayama

Pranayama (Chinese Qi Gong, Tibetan Cha Lung) is a series of practices focused on the breath. These practices have become increasingly popular over the past decade or two, but unfortunately most people are doing the practices completely wrong. When done right, Pranayama can heal serious illness without any other method complimenting it. Because these practices are so potent, when done wrongly, the same practices can also be the cause of serious illness, or even death.

Like any other yoga practice, practitioners should start with little in terms of time and intensity and then work from there according to the individual capability and progress.

Perhaps the most significant contribution to the field in terms of written text is the B. K. S. Iyengar’s Light on Pranayama which can be accessed for free in pdf format. Read it here.

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The Eight Important Points of Cancer – Short Background to Master Cheng

Cheng Man Ching is one of the greats of contemporary Tai Chi and is the single best-known contributor to the spread of Chinese internal arts to the US where today millions of people practice Tai Ji. Professor Cheng as he was referred to as, was also an accomplished doctor who helped hundreds of patients with terminal cancer to cure completely and live long after western doctors had given them the “death sentence”.  Below is the introduction to a seminal paper Master Cheng wrote covering the topic of cancer, one of his keenest interests. I share this text with the utmost respect to those that had taken up the challenge of translating the text from original Chinese, and publishing it.

While I understand that the text is copyrighted, I still think that it is of utmost importance to have this invaluable text available to as many people as possible. I have no doubt in my mind that Master Cheng’s intention was that his wisdom would benefit as many people as possible. After studying the topic of cancer nearly two decades I found Master Cheng’s analysis on the topic the single most useful analysis on the topic of cancer, even though just 8 short pages long. For further convenience for the modern reader, I’ve broken the text down to individual posts as the chapters are presented in the original text. I’ve emitted chapter 9 – which covers the topic of surgery – as unfortunately many have already gone through surgery at the time they become interested in such texts. At least that have been my experience so far. I will anyhow say that Master Cheng, as any traditional Chinese internist, does not support surgery, and sees it as one of the primary causes for cancer to spread throughout the body. I will at some point add a commentary on the topic of surgery, and will include Master Cheng’s seminal text as part of it.

My personal connection with Master Cheng is strong, even though I was not blessed to meet with him in person. The first internal martial arts that I learned was Cheng Man Ching style Tai Chi, which is a simplified form with focus on health benefits and general well being. Some years later I had the great fortune of meeting with my Shifu, a legendary martial arts master, and a skilled Chinese doctor,  who lacking a better expression, gave me life. He is the chief disciple of Chiao Chang Hung, a titan of the 20th century Internal Martial arts and the founder of Taipei Tai Chi Association. Grandmaster, together with another legend, Chen Pan Ling, started the association in order to support the spread of Chinese internal martial arts throughout the world. Cheng Man Ching became the most successful many masters who took on that task of vital importance. Today, his style of Tai Chi is the most widely practiced form of Chinese internal martial art in the west.

It is with great reverence that I share this one of a kind commentary on the topic that had created more havoc and despair than any other during past 50 years since Master Cheng had originally wrote the commentary.

Part 1 – Introduction

Part 2 – History

Part 3 – Symptoms

Part 4 – Nature and Composition

Part 5 – Causes

Part 6 – From First Sensation to Development and the Mistake of Procrastination

Part 7 – Treatment

Part 8 – [not available]

Part 9 – Prevention

Part 10 – Afterword

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Motivation

Once the right motivation is in place, everything is possible. When the motivation is not there, even simple things become hard. Motivation is not something that other people can give us, but something that we can find in ourselves through using our rational mind. In order for that to happen, four different types of insights are needed to arise for the practitioner:

1) there is something that needs to be changed

2) there is a way how that thing can be changed

3) those ways are available to the practitioner

4) the practitioner is able to use those ways

Once the right motivation is in place, it is possible to systematically learn something new and move towards the desired results.

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Learning Something New

Learning something new means to “change something” that is currently happening or not happening. For example now the practitioner’s breathing is not appropriate and is making the body weak and resulting in illness, so the practitioner wants to change this. Learning is a process of change, otherwise it is not really learning but simply temporary entertainment.

The process of systematic learning is always the same:

1) become aware of the thing that has to be changed (e.g. cancer)
2) identify carefully what is the nature of the thing to be changed
3) identify the causes that are leading to that thing
4) work on removing those causes and replacing them with other causes

It is not hard for the practitioner to arrive at the conclusion of the validity of this process and realize that there really is no other way to change undesired results (what is happening now) than change the causes (events and things) that lead to that particular result. Once the causes are removed, the result automatically dissolves.

While this is clear beyond doubt, the practitioner must prepare himself to patiently work on the causes to see the desired result. Depending on the particular problem that the practitioner is dealing with, seeing changes in the results may initially take a long time.

The ancients said “it takes a long journey to know the horse’s strength”.

In a future article I will cover in detail the latest developments in behavior change management, and will provide a framework that simplifies even seemingly impossible behavior changes into approachable gradual progression.

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On Spiritual Develpoment

Which is more important: to attain enlightenment, or to attain enlightenment before you attain enlightenment; to make a million dollars, or to enjoy your life in your effort, little by little, even though it is impossible to make that million; to be successful, or to find some meaning in your effort to be successful? If you do not know the answer, you will not even be able to practice zazen; if you do know, you will have found the true treasure of life.

– Shunryu Suzuki (from Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind)

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Introduction to Mind Training

In meditation practice, as you sit with a good posture, you pay attention to your breath. When you breathe, you are utterly there, properly there. You go out with the out-breath, your breath dissolves, and then the in-breath happens naturally. Then you go out again. So there is a constant going out with the out-breath. As you breathe out, you dissolve, you diffuse. Then your in-breath occurs naturally; you don’t have to follow it in. You simply come back to your posture, and you are ready for another out breath. Go out and dissolve: tshoo; then come back to your posture; then tshoo, and come back to your posture.

Then there will be an inevitable bing!— thought. At that point, you say, “thinking.” You don’t say it out loud; you say it mentally: “thinking.” Labelling your thoughts gives you tremendous leverage to come back to your breath. When one thought takes you away completely from what you are actually doing — you do not even realise that you are on the cushion, but in your mind you are in San Francisco or New York City — you say “thinking,” and you bring yourself back to the breath.

It doesn’t really matter what thoughts you have. In the sitting practice of meditation, whether you have monstrous thoughts or benevolent thoughts, all of them are regarded purely as thinking. They are neither virtuous nor sinful. You might have a thought of assassinating your father or you might want to
make lemonade and eat cookies. Please don’t be shocked by your thoughts: any thought is just thinking. No thought deserves a gold medal or a reprimand.

Just label your thoughts “thinking,” then go back to your breath. “Thinking,” back to breath; “thinking,” back to the breath.

– Chogyam Trungpa (from The Sacred Path of the Warrior)

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The Macrobiotic Way of Life

George Ohsawa in Paris 1920

George Ohsawa (born in Japan as Yukikazu Sakurazawa 1892-1966) introduced many Europeans and Americans to macrobiotic eating. Macro means ‘great’ or ‘long’ and bios means ‘life’, so macrobiotic can be translated directly in to long-life. Read his book Zen Macrobiotics: the art of rejuvenation and longevity.

Ohsawa’s diet is based on 10 increasingly restrictive stages leading to a point where the practitioner only consumes water and a brow rice, due to the ideal yin-yang balance the combination provides.

Later one of Ohsawa’s students, Michio Kushi, popularized a more moderate version of the diet in his book The Cancer Prevention Diet. Kushi-san based the diet on the assumption that our body is contantly being composed of, and sustained by Ki (Chi in Chinese, Prajna in India, and Lung in Tibet), our vital energy running through the meridians. Modern macrobiotics is focused on making a connection between our diet, and the energy principle found in eastern contemplative traditions.

Kushi-san’s book is not available as free pdf but can be found on Amazon.