Lucky7Strikes

And sometimes they don't. So why not use techniques that you don't? Especially when you are aware that your actions could lead to greater controversy?

I disagree. That's not just his loss. That's a loss to everyone in his organization who take him as a refuge and a teacher and Buddhism in the West in general.

There is not just a claim by one person, but many who are willing enough to share their views on camera. The case was also settled outside of court. If Sogyal felt that he was betrayed or taken advantage of, why not go through the justice system for the sake of his organization and religion? It's not a matter of them being perfectly accurate or not, the fact that you raise suspicions of promiscuity as a head of an organization such as his is a red flag. Also this is unrelated, but I always found is incredibly confusing that Chogyam Trungpa chose Osel Tenzin as his successor who willingly had sex with students (among certain claims of rape) knowing he had contracted HIV. What kind of compassion is that? So they'll be born in higher realms?

Technically maybe not. But why is that even important? He heads a religious community that advocates compassion and right conduct that includes monks. He writes books and teaches millions of people under the banner of "Buddhism." If he is going to demonstrate the right use of tantric abilities and sexual techniques, just jumping on 21 year old western students surely cannot be the way? If he wants to do that maybe he should stop being a high lama, so that people don't put him on a throne and automatically assume he is some realized being and hang their practice on every word he utters? I'm sorry if I sound too self righteous or harsh. I like reading Sogyal rinpoche's or kalu rinpoche's works. But when I read stuff like this, I can't help but think all the high sounding vocabulary spread across hundreds of pages don't mean much.

True tantric abilities do not even require a person to touch one another.

Pretending to be a spiritual guide and using his position to exploit young women is not "having fun." That's not celebration. He has a responsibility as a leading member of an organization that advocates right sexual conduct and compassion. Baiting others into your room and jumping on them in the name of some tantric path the other person is not ready or unaware of is... If he knows about the West's sensitivity to sexual misconduct in religious organizations, the more cautious he should have been. Ok, so let's say he is not a monk. Who cares? Same power exploitation. Sogyal isn't the only one reported to have been exploiting Western women. Kalu rinpoche also has some shady background.

I don't agree with the comparison among the Mahasiddhas, the Zen patriarch, and Sogyal. The Mahasiddhas were mostly ascetics who took in willing consorts or went to the brothels to practice sexual tantra. In fact, only a very handful of the 84 Mahasiddhas practiced that form of tantra in the first place. As for the Zen patriarch, he had already left his responsibilities and place in society and became a wandering ascetic. Sogyal on the other hand is very aware that he should be the head of the efforts to assimilate Buddhism into the West. He knows that he had power over these women and abused them when they were most vulnerable and looking for a guide. They weren't hookers or willing consorts. He is a leading scholar and a goddamn monk who heads other monks. If indeed he benefited these women truly through his powers they would not call him an abusive little twat. Stuff like this disgusting and shows no matter how much Buddhist lingo you can juggle, it doesn't matter if you don't put it into practice.

Yes, it was a combination of a deep peaceful rest combined with incredible sense of being awake. I've never felt more awake in my life, and my heart center was beating powerfully for the two weeks when the bliss was intense. It was as if my body shifted from brain-functioning mode to hear centered body and I could literally begin to sense my brain melting. Then I lost sense of my body and each step I took I felt I was not moving as a body, but a totality.

I agree, but also that the experience is simply a manifestation of views. Hence the attached samsaric mindset experiences suffering, the hells, lower realms and the nirvanic mindset the bliss of higher realms. Experience is simply the views themselves and not apart from perception. Ultimately neither samsara or nirvana has inherent reality to them, just a manifestation of one's perceptions.

They are unestablished if you view them too be unestablished. If you view them to be established, they are established. It is all only a matter of perception and nothing more. Hence your view is truly unestablished.

You are missing the point. All views can be ingrained and habitualized. People don't always walk around with concepts of self, or non-self, or that they are the body, etc. People don't always reiterate their beliefs because they become their way of living.

Actually, if you really believe in Santa Claus he'll probably appear in front of you or in your dreams. People make imaginary people all the time. It is understanding that perception acts in fabricated ways. You are discovering perception itself, and not "things" for there are no such "things" to be investigated. You do not observe reality, but observe that observation of reality and come to realize one's own nature of experience. Hence you may realize everything is like foam and illusion, but not how and why it is so.

You observe thought first to determine that it is empty. And that observation conditions the way you experience and perceive things.

Why ralis, my reply is similar to yours.

From an energetic standpoint, when the yin yang channels of the body collapse, it opens the sushumna channels of the body and your heart center will open as the breath disappears. One will experience everything dissolving into it depending on how much you are willing to surrender to its pull. I experienced this through Kunlun. . I don't know if it's heart mind though.

Hahahah! What a twist! :D Path of non-knowing merge with the all-knowing! Everything returns to the ordinary mind. When it's been an illusion all along, who's to abide anywhere?

What is in this post that is different? It's basically "Thusness told me X"...and it "just clicked" because "just seen, just heard." That is not a good reflection on your own path to understanding. This is just experiencing everything directly as they arise. It is nothing special until you convince yourself that it is. Or in your instance, you were already convinced due to faith in Thusness. The so called anatta realization: "Just this." And while contemplating "this" ness, you realize that that itself is also "just this." Like the koan, "what is this?" It realizes there is only that which is the question, or just whatever that is. It's nothing special until you convince yourself it is somehow the nature of all experience. IMO that is a shallow understanding of how you came to that conclusion.

Describe how YOU came to the realization of anatta. HOW the realization dawned upon you instead of regurgitating impersonal and dogmatic language we see here a thousand times. I find it curious how unoriginal some of your posts can be, even the examples never change. They are straight off of someone else's quotes...

@ Seth, I wrote this in another thread to share my observations of anatta inquiry. I would like to know if what I wrote pertains to your experience somewhat. Thanks! Does thinking see thinking? Does sound hear sound? That would mean sound is aware. (You would blast music and awareness would drift as the soundwaves) Or mental processes are aware in themselves. Where does a thought begin and end? You would be all these chopped up awarenesses and have no connection between tasting and hearing. No memory would be established or a sense of being. You may conclude that from such reasoning that objectifies that moment of thought to itself, and go, "look, there is just these disparate moments of thought, me moving, jus things arising spontaneously." And the critical juncture during this inquiry is the realization that that very thought ("look, there is just these disparate...") itself is also another rising. And one falsely thinks this is the nature of reality when really you are just impersonally experiencing things as they rise because they are objectified. This is what you call "no-self realization." This is just another way of experiencing reality and I have no problem with that. It's spontaneous and liberating, a great way to practice and let go of grasping for me/mine mental habits. But the Buddhadharma says the objects are empty also. So you inquire into thoughts, movement, phenomena, and conclude there are no inherent separation or identity to them. However, here you are missing a critical flaw in the process, because in order to investigate various arisings, they must be contained, connected, or somehow perceived in their totality. You are stepping out of the "just this arising" understanding in order to see the relationship between multiple arisings. And to justify this process, you say afterwards, "oh, that was just another arising." There is no such thing as "just arising" inquiry. Inquiry demands connection, division, multiplicity, memory, reflection. It is a fluid process. So it's like you have a loop of justification. So you come to a nonsensical conclusion that, well, it's just like magic. As a crude example this is like a man looking for his eyes and seeing objects and not his eyes concludes that objects "see" themselves. And to see whether objects really exist or not, he closes his eye and sees darkness. So he concludes objects are not really there either. He doesn't understand that this whole thing just happens in his seeing-nature and denies his seeing entirely. You can deny everything in the world, but not awareness. Because that final denial happens in awareness. Nor does it make sense to say awareness belongs to arising of disparate moments. Not does it make sense to say one can directly know that awareness comes from something else (that can only be speculated as scientists attribute it to the brain). You can say awareness dependently originates, but only in the sense that a ball bounces. The fact that the ball bounces does not deny the ball. That would be stupid. Dependent origination is just how this dimension of awareness works.

The atman view is different because it assumes an eternal entity that passes from body to body until it reaches enlightenment as if there is a soul residing in the body that is aware. Or an independent mind, true self, etc. It's really the other way around that the appearance of body and the appearance of life and death is experienced by the mind. When you fall asleep and dream of a new body and a new environment, it is incorrect to believe that an entity has traveled from the awaking state to the dream state. Rather it is just projections of the mind's contents dependently originating on the conditions it supposes. It's just been your mind experiencing itself all along. But aside from Buddhism I like to just investigate what exactly it means for one to be aware. As in, what is the nature of our aliveness, the sense of being. We usually take granted the idea of the duality of there being a subject and an external object that it experiences. Or that somehow one is the causes or conditions for the other, just as popular science says the brain is where our consciousness rises. Or that our awareness is dependently originated. What can we directly verify and what is mere speculation? Just strip it down to the bare minimum of what we can know directly from experience without suggestions from science or religion. Note to Xabir/TCO/Vaj, let's please not start an argument among us. Just post our views and move along.

When I feel like I need one, I'll be open to it. I got a little heated there too.

This is awesome. Yin yang liniocentric! For some reason the energetic patterns, not just the image of it as a doughnut as in the article, of a torus came to mind. Probably thinking of winpro....

Ok. Then time will tell. .

Practice your way, and I'll go mine. I generally do not like saying this but we're at a point where we have the right to agree to disagree. I've given Thusness and your blog enough contemplation of more than a year to come to my own conclusions of it. I think it's great, but I do not agree with it fully. The disagreement is subtle yet substantial in their consequences. I believe in the quick discussion with Thuscomeone above summed up our differences well. I have no intention of proving you wrong or correcting your thoughts. I do not think this is even possible because Thusness's teachings and the blog encompasses your efforts for the past several years and I know no matter what I say or do, this will be your path. My intention has always been to understand. And I can understand you coming to the conclusions you have through your way of inquiry. Whether you believe this or not, or understand me I cannot control. That's up to you. Enough's been said on this thread.