Caves, foxes, advice to plato

Greetings,

I was present at Bei Tou Ping, in China in 2002 and in a nearby cave when the so-called incident of losing jing to fox spirits happened.

1) I did NOT encounter any fox spirits, I was not violated, and I took full responsibility for my own spiritual inexperience (at the time) for trying to absorb higher level energy from meditation caves that had been used for over 1000 years. After losing the jing, it did not really bother me and I was able to go on with my meditations.

2) Even if there were fox spirits, don’t you suppose that if they need to feed off human jing to survive, they might be lower astral beasts, and not advanced beings?

3) from my current experience, early heaven is FORMLESS, and I have never seen any beings there other than pure consciousness.

4) Have you ever tried going into a christian church and tried to convert or convince them that they should all be buddhists? Good luck! When someone who claims to be spiritual feels the need to impose or argue that their view is better than another, maybe they are not satisfied with their own practice, otherwise they would leave others alone. Either that or it is just an intellectual powertrip to see who can make a better semantic argument. This remonds me of Israel/palestine conflict, or bettter yet, the protestants and catholics in Ireland, or maybe even america vs. the middle east. Any spirituality there?

5) I do not remember you talking about buddhism when you were at Huashan which was three years ago. so maybe you have had three years experience in your buddhist practice? And how many years experience do you have in daoist alchemy to be able to criticize it?

6) The diamond sutra (Vajracchedika Prajnaparamita), of which I have a copy (translated by Thich Nhat Hanh from the Pali) was originally written in PALI, does master Nan read sanskrit or pali? or only classical Chinese from which the original was translated into? you might want to remember that Guatama Buddha came from India.

7) the practice of the diamond sutra is concerned with mental observation, and there are some very useful things in there. It is actually similar to the “bright Heart practice” that Chen Yu Ming described as a prerequisite for daoist monks to learn before being admitted to the monastery.

“all composed things are like a dream,
a phantom, a drop of dew, a flash of lightning.
that is how to meditate on them,
that is how to observe them.”

but what about the non-composed things? like the formless states? and how do we integrate the physical and non-physical?

I don’t know enough about buddhism to argue about it, but may read a few texts here and there if i ever feel the need to. right now i don’t.

Have a great day.
7)