goldisheavy

There are many truly excellent books in this world. For example, Kunjed Gyalpo and Nang-jang are truly superb, superlative books. And there are many many more. If I wrote a book, it would just be another great book in the sea of great books. This is why I am not in any hurry to write books. If I wrote a book it would be more about my own self-expression than about filling a void. Those who are determined will find more than enough books to do whatever they want to do. The real value I bring is that I am a living presence. Unlike with a book, you can ask me questions and I can answer them. You're not all that ignorant. I never said that. You're pretty wise yourself. Lineages bring harm in a political and social sense Vajra. Some people who participate in the lineages really do have wisdom worth learning. In other words, even a thief who does harm by stealing can sometimes be wise enough to teach you a thing or two. But just because you learned something worthwhile from a thief does not mean you should embrace the thieving lifestyle wholesale. It's OK to reject some things and accept others. I accept wisdom and reject certain attitudes and social practices inherent in various lineages.

I do understand this. I am telling you that if you want this process to be smooth, or even to proceed at all, you have to let go of physicality altogether. Various masters of antiquity are my emanations. If you say the same thing, you will be correct. So I am not saying this from an exclusive point of view, as in, they're mine and no one else's emanations. I don't make ignorant conclusions about any master, past, present or future. That's not true Vajra. Your confidence is self-arisen in the same sense you claim mine is. The lineage impresses you only insofar you want to be impressed and create conditions for that to happen. You are involved in the process even if you are not conscious of it yet. Nope. I am just me. That's not exactly true. But even if it were, we each have a right to experience this kind of pure vision. I believe my words are both true and useful to more than just me alone, but to say that I see them as golden gods is an exaggeration. But when people listen to my message for the wrong reasons they can't hear the message. My, my. Someone is not happy.

Phenomena are definitely not physical in the way physicalists understand the meaning of the word "physical." Yes. That's good. So you can see at least one way how such an experience could potentially unfold. If you weren't scared, and if you were resolved on it completely, you could have remained in that state indefinitely. A good contemplation would be to sit down and bring up that fear you felt during the vision you describe. Once you allow yourself to feel that fear again, look into its causes. You'll see right away what is holding you back. I do this kind of fear examination process myself all the time and I highly recommend it. Eventually you'll rise above all fear, there is no doubt. All that is wonderful. However you do see how attached you are to the idea of an objective world, right? You get very personally inflamed when I talk in ways that contradict the validity of the conventional reality. You should ponder on that. Again, that's a wonderful experience. Just make sure you don't grasp that experience as absolutely real. It's somewhat real and the experience of this Earth is also somewhat real, just like that Dakini vision. The difference is that you have a huge habit and belief system supporting this Earth vision while only a modest habit and belief system supporting the Dakini vision. Moreover, you are not yet consciously in charge of your own realm. You are like a drunk captain whose hands are tied to the steering wheel, yet who is afraid to steer his ship and due to fear imagines oneself to be doing something or other in some cabin on the ship. So your hands are on the wheel, but your mind is elsewhere. It's not really Norbu's. Yes, I've read it. Wrong. I don't really lack humility. You just wish I was a bit more afraid. I am not going to play your game Vajra, but you are going to play my game as long as you mentally fight me using naive and ignorant methods.

You won't get the kind of "clear" explanation you want. You expect an objective explanation of awareness. In other words, you want people to explain to you the location and functioning of awareness as an object among objects. When that's done, you'll accept it as a clear explanation, and then you'll proceed to use the logic that stresses ultimate nonexistence of objects to stress that awareness is also ultimately nonexistent. This is what you want, but you won't have that kind of satisfaction.

Your state of mind influences the types of realms you can readily experience. Because I don't exist as an inherently real object, each being who interacts with me perceives an ever-so-slightly different version of me. None of those versions are the real me and none of them are not me. Instead all those versions of me are valid for those who interact with them. This is a consequence of multiple mindstreams and beings not being objective. Beings are real in the sense that they are experienced. Beings are unreal in the sense that the ignorant conclusions about them are wrong. Everything you say about my confidence is also true about your confidence. A person tells you, "I am not hungry." You say, "No brother, you are hungry, I know you better than you know yourself." Do you know what this is? It's both ignorance and arrogance. It means you've picked up a burden that isn't yours. Let's flip this around. Various masters around the world are not qualified to teach things I haven't transmitted to them. It's more valid to say it this way. Contemplate this. I don't tell people to listen to me over someone else. I tell people to question everyone equally. I've corrected you on this many times, but you persist in this folly. There is no need to keep lying to people Vajra. That's correct. I am not conventionally recognized as a master. I could join a lineage, rise through the ranks, and attain conventional recognition, but I see no point in it. It wouldn't be for my benefit. It would only be to fool others into following me slavishly. So it wouldn't be for the benefit of others. Since me joining a lineage benefits no one at all, not me and not others, I don't join.

This is a brilliant explanation. Many bows to you Lucky.

Your entire post is false according to you.

OK, fine. Your manure smells better than my manure and you have more of it as well. But it is still manure. Because thinking that phenomena are physical is an error in judgement. Nope. That's not what I mean. There is nothing physical. For example, this computer I am typing on is a vision, a dream. It's not physical. It's not made of actual atoms. It's made of dream atoms. Etc. What have you seen exactly? Rigpa includes the physical in the same sense that rigpa includes marigpa. It also includes the physical in the same sense that rabbits include antlers, clouds include mushrooms and blind people include visions of rainbows. When people need help, they ask for it. If you go around offering help to those who don't want it, then it is you who needs help. Except I do have an idea about their attainments. I know what they have attained. This is why lineages are bad. Your behavior is proof positive that lineages offer no benefit.

If you believe this, you've been mislead. Mostly it's a trick (skillful means) to make letting go of humanity easier. If you think you're letting go of humanity for the sake of humanity, it's easier to do it when you come from the position of having previously loved humanity a great deal. Once your experience conforms to the rainbow body, you'll not likely appear among real humans again (unless of course you give up your rainbow body attainment). Wrong. Your confidence is completely inborn, but you are externalizing it in a projection right now. In other words, you fail to take responsibility for your confidence. You think your confidence is inspired by something externally real, something to which it is OK to cling, something that's OK to be sentimental about, and so on. You believe this gives you all the necessary justifications to be confident. You don't need guidance. You already know what's up. You're just a chicken. I do have direct insight and you know it. Masters offer bondage and not help. I don't know if it's accurate to say that I stand completely alone, but I *can* stand alone when necessary, including right now. Mahasiddhas are just so much baggage and spiritual flash. Don't you know the difference between refutation and insult? You're shooting blanks, Bob. Cool. You agree talking with me is nice. Very good.

We can do this the other way around. Have all your so-called "masters" come to me and see what I have to say about all their posturing, anti-intellectualism and secret-keeping. Nonsense. You're trying to situate me within the framework of Buddhism. You're failing. The reason for your repeated failure is that my wisdom is my own and I like Buddhism not because I learn from it, but only because it most closely resembles my own innate wisdom. Do you understand? Boring.

There are people. You are a person. As a person you experience intentionality in a way that's different from me as a person. Whether or not you are able to see an "intender" within your person is a function of your intent. If you like you don't even have to be a person, but since I am talking to you, you most likely consider yourself to be a person. Finding an intender within your person or failure to find an intender are both imaginary intentional experiences. There is a reason for this. You're trying to get at something which is not obvious and which resists crass categorization efforts. You lean toward simplistic caricatures and simplifications of truth, and that's unfortunate. The one who is supposing such things is you and not me. You're the one who always tries to insert words into my mouth. In large part that's the reason for my so-called "obscurantism."

When you think I am fake, there is no danger at all. Danger only arises when you think other masters are real. Rigpa is not physical. Nothing is physical. You are taking these things on faith, are you not? Have you been in the presence of someone who has attained rainbow body? No, you have not. Why can I be so certain? Because you don't have the necessary intentionality and mindset to meet such a master. For example you believe rigpa is physical. Secondly you don't understand the mirage-like nature of lineages and you cling to them as if they were your body. In this sentimental state of mind there is very little chance for you to encounter a magical phenomenon like a rainbow body. But I'll tell you some good news. You are obsessed with the rainbow body, so you are likely to attain it at some future point. You seem to genuinely want to experience having a rainbow body. As you probably know, you can't attain a rainbow body if you don't think it's impressive or interesting or otherwise worth experiencing. I don't have a lineage. I just discuss what I know and if someone learns something, good. If not, that's good too. Don't you think it would be hypocritical of me to criticize lineages and then to have one of my own?

I am a master then. I can point out rigpa. In fact I am pointing it out all this time in this thread. As for maintaining rigpa, once you see it, it maintains itself. It's like once you know that the sky is above and the ground is below, you don't need to do a practice to make sure the sky remains above the ground. It would be completely contrary to the realization of rigpa to try to maintain it. In rigpa all things are maintained naturally. In other words, rigpa maintains everything, including you as an object of perception and your world. It would be preposterous to try to maintain it. So rigpa as primordial awareness is like this. But rigpa as knowledge or insight is maintained by simply remembering the knowledge. If you remember the knowledge from time to time, you won't forget it. If you understand the importance of knowledge and the consequence of forgetting it, there is very little chance you'll forget it, because you will most likely think that if you remember one thing in your whole life, rigpa will be that one thing to remember. That's false. All lineages are false. None are genuine. You have been deceived. Wrong. I consider myself to be the master of my own wisdom, which I also believe is beneficial to many other people. When I teach people I tell them: you too be a master of your own wisdom! I don't think my wisdom belongs to any lineage. In fact, the situation is the reverse. Various lineages have usurped wisdom which is mine in the first place. I have reclaimed my wisdom and crushed all the lineages who have presumed to make my wisdom secret contrary to my wishes. The secret-keeping and/or exclusivist lineages are thieves who have no place in my field of awareness. The main requirements for attaining the rainbow body are as follows: 1. One must understand the nature of mind, including the non-physical nature of all appearances, habits, beliefs, intentionality, and so on. 2. One must be willing to let go of being an ordinary human. In some sense a person manifesting a rainbow body is a nonhuman person. 3. To the extent the relinquishment of the human identity is necessary, one must also relinquish humanity as a whole. Being sentimental about humanity on the whole while thinking one has let go of one's identity as a human in personal terms is a great folly. Being human means nothing without humanity as the context. If you have these 3 prerequisites, you have to practice various ways to loosen up mental habits of rigidity. I can give such practices, but I usually do not, because if you understand all there is to know about mind, you'll know what these practices are without having to hear of them from me. Still, we can discuss these if there is interest, but these kinds of practices are crazy from the ordinary point of view. Having students makes no difference. Being near death makes no difference except it helps one to be more sincere in letting loose. Someone who is not near death still has doubts unless the person is exceptional. Exceptional people don't have to wait to die to realize rainbow body. On the contrary. Critical thinking is what eventually melts all the rigid and fallacious conceptual structures. Without critical thinking you lack the tools to do the heavy lifting required to realize the rainbow body. The reasons for your arrogance are not beyond yourself. You are responsible for your arrogance, but like a child you refuse to take responsibility. This is 99.9% bullshit. I'll grant you 0.1% truth for that claim. Anything can lead to harm. Even inaction can lead to harm. Good intentions can lead to harm sometimes. Vaj, you know it's personal with you. You know that when I criticize the lineage I am threatening an important part of your personal identity. This is why you react so traumatically. If you really had faith in your lineages, you wouldn't defend them as if lineages were soap bubbles. Of course you know soap bubbles is what they are. They teach you that themselves, if you are willing to pay attention.

Intent doesn't come first. Intent is the directional property of phenomena. If intent somehow came first, it would need to exist in a state that's separate and disconnected from its result. That's not logically sensible and it contradicts my personal experience of intentionality. States are intentional but they don't come from intent. I don't like the "come from" formulation. Control by itself is already too extreme a term. Complete control is extreme beyond any doubt. The word I would use is influence. Yes. However intent doesn't result in perfect control. In other words, if I hold my arm out, it will shake a bit. I can't perfectly control my arm. Still, my arm goes out as intended for the most part when I decide to hold it out. Intent in our day to day usage is strongly conditioned by beliefs and habits. So there are limits to what we can sincerely intend. You can't intend something you don't believe is possible. While all things are possible in theory, in practice beliefs obscure and hinder this. But even if one knows all things are possible, there is still habit to deal with. Within your field of awareness all things are manifestations of your intent. Those things are not perfectly controlled, but they generally reflect your intent. It's like a flock of sheep that generally follows the herder's prompting even if you don't control each individual sheep. That's the general principle. This example shows the difference between control and influence. But this example should not be taken literally because in this example the herder is an animal on par with the sheep. Intent is not an object on par with other objects. This is the limitation of using examples. While I demonstrate one property by example, I obscure another. It's not how people ordinarily feel because human intent is conditioned by beliefs about being human. In other words, you can only do things you believe humans can do, because you believe yourself to be a human actor. Since you think you are a human actor, your intent acquires some limitations inherent in that belief. I don't understand your question here. That's true. My point was that speakers don't always emit sound. Sometimes they emit sound and sometimes they do not. Mind is not like that. Mind cannot sometimes fail to cognize something.

You are wrong. I always ask people to question what I say and never to take my word for anything. Instead you tell me to listen to you unquestionably. You exhibit an attitude of a devil when you do this. That's not strictly true. I mostly teach people mindfulness and inquiry, but once in a while I recommend a meditation technique (especially if I think the person is overly agitated or anxious). There are tons of people around who recommend meditation. I don't lift the entire burden by myself. Instead I look around and find what's lacking. Meditation instructions are not lacking. Inquiry is lacking. Severely. I don't teach mantras, that's true. Actually my practice is extremely sincere, and because of that, it's as true as it can ever be for anyone anywhere. So there is no doubt whatsoever that my practice is true. My practice is not the same as your practice because if I did the things you did, it would be pretentious for me. Err... I teach that rigpa is non-physical and that all the physical appearances are just merely appearances without any kind of physicality behind them, underpinned instead by habit. Because of this, there is no way I can teach what you describe, because I'd be teaching people to be ignorant if I did that. I don't teach ignorance. I do teach visualization from time to time, but not for the purpose of emanating a rainbow body. If you understand the meaning of what I teach, you'll be able to eventually transform the mental habits responsible for keeping the body appearance solid, thus emanating a rainbow body. But this will only happen if it's your true sincere intent. In other words, I give people all the tools they need to manifest anything they can ever want. I tell people about the wish fulfilling gem, as well as why and how it fulfills all wishes at all times. There is no need to confuse people with techniques. Once people understand the principle of manifestation, they can come up with their own techniques, like a boss. Not true.

That's not what I am saying. If intention preceded a state, then there would be a moment of intent, followed by a moment of the result of intent. I don't propose this at all. Instead in each state intent is immanent. Think of intent as a direction. The car drives in a certain direction at all times. It's not true that first there is a moment of pure direction, followed by a moment of pure driving. Instead every driving moment is characterized by direction. What do you mean by the bolded "completely?" I can switch off my speakers when I don't want to wake up my wife.

No, that doesn't work either. Wisdom is a result of recognizing unskillful beliefs by being mindful and observing the effects beliefs have in day to day life. So wisdom appears in consciousness, but wisdom has specific conditions leading to its arising. If you just say wisdom is a product of consciousness, you're failing to mention these specific conditions that are necessary for wisdom. Consciousness is much too general a term. Consciousness is accommodating and flexible. It's fine with ignorance and it's fine with wisdom. Consciousness doesn't lean toward wisdom. Wisdom is a personal choice. If you choose to be ignorant, consciousness will support you just as happily. What are you talking about?

Control is a rather extreme word. I prefer influence if you want to be precise, but generally I agree with you here. When we speak of the mind as a source, it is a little confusing though. For example, we may say the speaker which is attached to a computer is the source of the sound. So when we talk about sources, we are often talking about objects like speakers. Also, sources can exist without things that proceed from them. For example, a speaker can exist without sound. If we melt the ice to get drinkable water, we say that the ice is our water source. But the ice doesn't have to be melted into water... it can be left alone as ice. Etc. The mind cannot be without some kind of activity. In other words, unlike conventional sources which can be found in a non-emitting state, the mind cannot be found in a state that lacks cognitions. The mind is not an object. Instead the mind is a word that refers to the ability to recognize, know, perceive objects in the first place. So in these ways it's confusing to call the mind a "source." But it's not entirely wrong to call the mind a source. There is some merit in calling the mind a source of all phenomena, even if it's not a 100% accurate expression.

The mind is intentional through and through, although the effect of intention does not enter the extreme of complete control. All things are always in a state that reflects the state of intent. In practical terms you have to consider habit, conditioning beliefs and forgetfulness as obstacles to taking full advantage of intent.

Yes, I am better than any lineage in the specific ways I described. Lineages might be better than me in some other ways. For example in a lineage you can find a bigger community than in me. If the size of the community matters, then it's an advantage of the lineage over me. I have no problem admitting such things.

When you say "something" do you mean an object of some sort to which these qualities (of control, will, ability to choose) are attributed?

No. Consciousness and awareness are largely synonymous terms. Neither is the product of the other. Please stop your nonsense.

It depends. What kind of qualifications should a real master have? Depending on your answer I will either confirm or deny my mastery. That is highly unlikely, but I welcome your vigilance in this regard. Who I am has nothing to do with your appraisal. I may well be a master. It doesn't matter much because I always ask people not to disengage critical thinking. If I claimed to be a master so that people would start taking my word for everything I say, that would be bad. But is that what I am doing? If I claimed to be a master so that I could gather a group of dittoheads around me to be used as my personal army and income generating serfs, that would be bad. But is that what I am doing? You should humble yourself. You believe because you're part of a lineage (just barely) you are above in status over those who are not part of a lineage. That's arrogance. My position is that lineages hold some wisdom, but lineages also hold a lot of cultural baggage, and lineages abuse the dittohead phenomenon for personal gain from time to time. Cultish behavior is common in many lineages. Lineages also practice unjustified secrecy for the sake of status, control, and personal gain. These are the real dangers of lineages, which I warn people about. I too hold some wisdom, but unlike lineages, I don't come packaged with all these negative side-effects I mentioned and my claims are much more modest as well. My only claim is that what I have to say is worth paying attention to. That's it. Lineages claim they hold the exclusive keys to enlightenment and other grandiose claims. Even if I ever decided to claim I hold the keys to enlightenment, I would never claim exclusivity. These are just some ways in which I am better than any lineage.

Just like an ant is aware, but is not conscious of the nature of his awareness. Hmm... Sounds just as good. Stop with the Buddha Dharma! Some of us are interested in wisdom.

What do you mean by "agent?"