But EBT doesn’t talk about PIE and charging Jhāna Batteries
Not explicitly, but that’s what’s going on when you follow the Buddha’s path with complete commitment. 8 precepts, celibacy, etc. The famous jhāna similes of AN 5.28, when you progress through 4 jhānas, PIE accumulates, becomes more refined and powerful.
All I’m doing is assigning some variables, and quantifying the mathematical relationships in the jhāna force equation.
As you charge the jhāna battery, you accumulate more PIE.
PIE can be expressed as jhāna force driving currents of energy.
Issuing force, or heat, or other kinds of subtle energy depletes the PIE in your jhāna battery.
Talking, thinking, all require jhānic force, and deplete your store of PIE.
In a happy coincidence for my PIE acronym, the cook in SN 47.8 is describing the process of “baking” PIE, that is, learning what activities will bake delicious PIE and what activities will harm the PIE.
Immortal PIE verse to help remember
sati memory aids: SN 47.8 and a classic song from the 1950’s, “Shoo Fly Pie and Apple Pan Dowdy “
In taoism, they talk about jing, qi, shen. PIE is my way of describing that internal alchemy.
If you meditate correctly, full 5🌊 pacification/relaxation of body and mind, mind free of extraneous 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 channels are not imaginary
🌟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 feel like flashes of heat, electricity, a feeling like you're sitting in a hot tub and the powerful jets of water are going up your spine, around your head, down your chest and back to the tailbone. At times, your belly feels and sounds like a bee hive throbbing with magnetic gooey energy. It can feel like you're a water balloon that's expanding. At a higher stage, it feels like just an air balloon expanding. At a higher stage, then the PIE manisfests as an abundance of visible light, that grows in size and intensity/brightness the longer and more nurturing you bake the PIE with. The body starts to feel empty.
exercise and vitamins
When you're working with circulating massive amounts of 🌟PIE in the body/mind, it requires a definite commitment and lifestyle change. Besides all the common sense good advice, such as eat healthy, take vitamins regularly as a hedge and insurance, get enough sleep, exercise at least 60-120min a day with at least 30min of decent cardio with elevated heart and full/deep breathing, there is one thing of special importance that most people don't believe, don't want to believe, but is of crucial importance.
There are 2 keys to baking nutritious PIE.
Brahmacariya and 👑😶 Noble Silence
(1) Brahmacariya = 🚫💑
(1) Brahmacariya = 🚫💑 Zero tolerance for any thought of lust
Brahmacariya. Celibacy. Abstinence from sexual intercourse and masturbation is just the starting point. Genuine Brahmacariya means the mind all the time, 24/7 must be vigilant guarding and wiping out any thoughts of lust immediately. Once you become skilled in meditation, you'll understand why. Even just a split second of strong lust in the mind, you can feel a massive amount of PIE energy churning and humming in the body. This PIE can not be recycled, contrary to what Taoist and Tantric charlatans claim regarding bringing up the energy up the spine and recycling it. This is wishful thinking, and has led many people to a premature death and massive health problems.
For people who aren't celibate, what practitioners who do taiji (Tai Chi) quan seriously, the grandmasters have given advice such as this these:
* If you plan to have sex, for 3 days before, and 2 days after, don't do any qigong or meditation.
* If you plan to have sex, no meditation/qigong 24 hours before or after
* If you plan to have sex, no meditation/qigong for an hour before, or an hour after
the wise realize if you leak, you’ll be weak
The more advanced your meditation is, the more you realize brahmacariya/celibacy is the only way to go. The type of advice given above, you'll find out very quickly why that's there. And even if you do follow it, someone who is an advanced meditator will feel like they're having a terrible hangover or worse, for 12-24 hours or longer. Eventually the wise realize if you're going to go down this path that leads to the deathless, the immortal PIE, brahmacariya/celibacy is not optional, it's the only way.
(2) 👑😶 Noble Silence
The 2 keys to PIE are Brahmacariya and 👑😶 Noble Silence
( S&S🐘💭) (he is a) Rememberer, (a) lucid-discerner.
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 minimum, correctly, and feels great improvement in health, mental clarity, etc. For a while. But later, they start getting various health problems as described in the linked article. Migraines, anxiety attacks, depression, panic attacks, etc. There are other potential causes, but odds are their increased meditative power is destroying much more PIE than they were able to sustain formerly, on a twice a week sex schedule.
weak link in the chain principle
The weak link in the chain takes down the whole chain
your body is a network of interconnected loops of energy. Not just the physical stuff like blood, lymph, etc, but non physical energy circulating that's invisible to the naked eye. If you can meditate correctly, noble silence of second jhana, or even first jhana, you'll feel these currents and loops of energy, kinaesthetically, as heat, electricity, force, visible light. At various stages when your batter(y) is not fully charged, you'll feel bliss or comfort, that can range anywhere from something like getting a high quality massage when your body is sore, to feeling like your whole body, every cell in your body is experiencing an orgasm. This can last hours, if you keep 8 precepts and brahmacariya well.But blissful side effects only happen when your batter is not fully charged, just like food only tastes good when you're really hungry. Pleasure chemicals in your brain are doled out to induce you to follow biological imperatives. Once your battery is charged, it ceases to dish out the pleasure chemical inducements, or can even issue signals of pain, for example if you overeat.