goldisheavy

I've never seen this done. I've heard stories and seen pictures. All this can be faked very easily. But let's suppose we take these accounts at face value as true. Is this evidence of objective reality? When 10 people agree that ice cream is pleasant, does that mean ice cream is objectively tasty? Maybe 10 is not enough. How about 100? Or 1 billion? If one billion subjective opinions coincide, does that imply something objective? When I am dreaming, in my dream world there are people there. Suppose I see a dream table in a dream room with 10 dream people in it. Those dream people point their fingers to the dream table. We all see it together. Does that mean the dream table is objectively real? So explaining hand prints, assuming we accept them as valid phenomena, is easy. One reason I am able to experience such things is because I myself have elevated my own spiritual state to a point where I can now begin to encounter such phenomena in my life. So some credit for witnessing such things goes to me. And some credit, by convention, goes to the beings that appear to perform these things. I could then say the beings who leave handprints in the rock have more fearlessness, fewer attachments, softer habituations, and more familiarity with the extraordinary types of experiencing than I have. I have a lot of experience myself too. Compared to normal people I am like God, basically. But if you compare me to a yogi who's spent 10 lifetimes meditating 30 years in a cave during each one of those 10 lives, as a hermit practitioner, then I will be like a tiny baby by comparison. But this is not a guarantee. I've met some tremendous morons of no skill and no understanding who've meditated their entire long lives (think over 6 decades), and died ignorant and useless idiots while leaving many students who were just as ignorant and confused as their teacher who meditated an assload and understood nothing whatsoever. So what I am saying is, experience matters, but experience is not just automatic with time. You can spend 30 years doing something and gain no experience at all. So clocking time is not what grants experience. In my hypothetical example in the previous paragraph I am assuming 10 lifetimes of 30 years of productive, skillful, helpful, useful practice, and not just time clocking. There is a vast scale of relativity when it comes to spiritual state of beings.

So if you look outside creation you sacrifice creativity to reach that viewpoint. This is still a subjective choice with other options available.

This is nonsense. There is nothing to see that would correspond to reality. Instead, there are skillful modalities of experiencing and clumsy ones, but the judgement will always be subjective. What one thinks is skillful another thinks is clumsy. Every manner of experiencing has its pros and cons. There is no attainment that doesn't in turn sacrifice something.

I don't agree. You speak of relaxation here, but relaxation itself is an accomplishment. Relaxation is voluntary and there are alternatives to relaxation. One can go along or not go along. Again, a choice. Again, accomplishment. Nothing that is phenomenal is inevitable. All phenomena have alternatives. Instead of tea, coffee. Instead of coffee, soda. Instead of short, tall. Instead of here, there. Etc. It's all alternative upon alternative upon alternative, up to infinity. There is nothing inevitable about any of it. It's all a result of a choice. I agree 100%. People blindly mimic the words of great beings without understanding the implications in the intimacy and immediacy of their own experience. Sadly this condition is common in this realm, because over here to rest firmly within one's own being is considered disrespectful to others. Whereas constantly doubting oneself in order to open up some space for the opinions of others is considered respectful and kind. In this way convention destroys what is sacred inside the heart. I agree about Reality, but reality is not something inert off to the side. Reality has a dynamic aspect to it -- volition. This volition is all-accomplishing. There are great phenomena and pathetic phenomena. There are petty deeds and great deeds. While there is no objective way to establish greatness, each sage knows intuitively what heroic deeds must be undertaken to break through to another level of experiencing. Such efforts are not in vain.

Interesting characterization "wild." By contrast, what would you call your ideas about the same? "Tame"? "Domesticated?"

The pink elephant in my room has been the most silent one of all. She is the greatest and the goldenest.

I don't think you want to face my question head on. This has happened once before, at least. I'm not going to press you. Your turning your back on my question is answer enough in and of itself. Those with the eyes to see will understand what just happened.

I know.

Those statements are fabrications which are not related to Dzogchen. If they are your own opinion that is fine, but parading them as accurate interpretations or representations of Atiyoga is to promote fabrication. You didn't answer my question.

The problem is, objectivity is unreal. It's an illusion.

This is why I keep talking about subjectivity.

If I am fabricating, then do you mean to say you are not fabricating by contrast?

If you really think so, you should mention these issues by name. Not explicitly, but it has subjectivity written all over it if you are intelligent. I gave the reasons why too, in the previous post. This "direct knowledge of the nature of mind" is a worldview. In fact, any type of knowledge pertaining to ultimate concerns is a "worldview." Ah, but the conventional condition of self-limited beings is not ignorant in any objective sense. It's a choice they make based on how they perceive the pros and cons within the context of their chosen worldview. Psychic powers are relevant to experiential understanding of one's own condition. Without experiencing one's own psychic functioning first hand from a 1st person POV, one has no confidence in the nature of mind just as it is, and continues to experience solidity and other forms of self-limiting experiencing. It does. In the future, if you say "it does not" please understand me to be in opposition to such a view even while I remain silent. My silence doesn't mean acceptance. Attention and concentration are not different. Concentration has many synonyms. Here's a cool one that comes to you fresh from my heart: fascination. Concentration is fascination.

All specific qualities that can be either experienced or not are relative and are mutually defining, just as Laozi said.

One must promote subjectivity. Why so? We need to examine what it means to say that an experience is subjective. An experience is subjective when its relevant only from a certain point of view. Upon analysis we realize that this is true of all experiences without any exception whatsoever. All experiences and all modes of experiencing require a point of view. Dzogchen teachings constantly harp about "the view," "the view," "the view" for a reason! A Dzogchen-style experiencing requires a Dzogchen view. This entire endeavor is completely subjective because it's based on voluntarily committing to a specific worldview. What separates competent Dzogchenpas from many other types of beings is that Dzogchenpas realize they could be holding any one of the infinite variety of worldviews. In other words, for them the choice is a conscious and deliberate one. Because one's point of view influences one's own experience so dramatically and so completely, it is essential to stress subjectivity as the key point of all spiritual practice that aims beyond convention. You're simply lying to people when you say this. Psychic powers are very helpful in understanding what the capacity of mind to know, to experience and to will is really like in experiential as opposed to theoretical terms. I know that you don't agree and I know why you don't agree. You're not upfront about the real reasons why you don't like to talk about psychic powers. You have real reasons for why you want to avoid such discussion, but you keep those close to your chest. Here's a direct contradiction: dream yoga. Dzogchen does too. Read the Tantras. I don't know if speed is a major factor here. I think the real variable is the depth of non-conceptual relaxation. When one relaxes habituations very thoroughly it is simply impossible to experience solidity anymore. The speed with which you accomplished this has little effect. The mind is always in a state of concentration. What changes are the objects of concentration. Since concentration is an ineliminable aspect of mind's activity, it is short-sighted to insist that concentration is merely provisional.

Take away light, and there is darkness. A shadow is a form of darkness. Darkness itself is non-finding of light (and vice versa, light is non-finding of darkness). So you can only experience darkness if you know what light is like. The brain is not where the mind is located.

Your first sentence here is not helpful, even if it's correct in some sense. It's important to stress intimacy of experience for anyone interested in anything that's beyond convention. This means subjectivity must be promoted, otherwise if you do not, the fuzzy line of "neither this nor that" is not enough to uproot outflowing habits of mind (where the mind tries to reach outside itself toward some objective reality). Siddhis are a direct result of softening habituations. They are not generated by "certain practices." They are generated by just about any practice in the context of softening habituations. Of course specifically focusing on one specific psychic power through one specific practice will yield a faster result than the overall softening of habituation, but this approach risks entrenching the psychic power as an ignorant habituation in its own right. Habituations are not a problem if the person understands what they're doing. But if one entrenches one's mind in a habituation without appreciation what habituations are and what their pros and cons are, then that becomes ignorance. This isn't true. There is no such thing as "winds." Instead there are mental fabrications all around us. The computer you're looking at is a mental fabrication. Tibetans like to divide the mental fabrications into gross and subtle. And the subtle mental fabrications are more private-like, closer to the human body (or inside its space) and so on. So they call these subtle mental fabrications "winds." You can learn to control those at will and then you can use this as the basis for some psychic powers, but it's extremely wrong to think that psychic power in general is a result of controlling these "winds." That's an exceptionally deluded view. I think a person with siddhis is not necessary released, but a released person has siddhis. And, concentration-release is just one kind of release. There is also wisdom release. It's surprising to hear someone who argued about the merit of being a scholar to forget all about the power of wisdom release. Wisdom release can and does generate psychic powers.

This is not 100% true. All beings influence their own perceptions. This is true for both ordinary and non-ordinary beings. Non-ordinary beings are more apt to manipulate their own subjective reality consciously, whereas ordinary beings do so unconsciously through cravings and habituations. But what each being ends up experiencing depends on that being as much as it depends on someone else. There may be a few people interested in this kind of behavior, but this is probably more of an exception than the rule. I can't manipulate that which doesn't exist. I am practicing to manipulate my own reality, however.

What's wrong?

37 minutes in. When Namkhai Norbu says "energy" I think it's better to talk of volition or intent. Because when he says "energy" people think "electricity" and other such expressions suggestive of something objective "out there" that abides by fixed eternal rules, etc. I don't think it's a good idea to talk to Westerners about something mental and call it "energy" because that word immediately invokes physicalistic ideation and expectations. 52 minutes. At 53 minutes I don't agree with his definition of mind as something dependent on a horse. For me the mind is a primordial capacity to know, to experience and to will, and so doesn't depend on anything. The capacity is always available and it's always engaged in some specific way. What Namkai calls "energy" at 53-54 minutes is what I'd call "habituation." The difference here is that energy is like some dumb thing that's just "there" (Namkhai's words: a blind horse), whereas habituation is a fixated state of mind, but it's intentional because once the habit becomes unwanted, it can be undone, and habits are not entirely dumb and blind, they interact with the circumstances in ways that can be intelligent and creative. For people in the know this might not seem like a huge distinction, but when you address an audience that's guaranteed to be 90% physicalistic (even at the most optimistic level), you have to be careful not to invoke mechanistic and objectivity-like physicalism when you explain mental subtleties. Habituation is not entirely mechanical the way we typically think of energy. When people talk of "energy" something very mechanistic and dumb tends to become suggested to our minds, exactly like Namkhai's blind horse. But habituations are not exactly like that. At 55 minutes Namkhai says that "energy" depends on the physical body and therefore sometimes certain positions or movements become necessary to control the energy. I disagree with this a lot more than I agree. To take Namkhai's earlier examples of using white light as a tantric essence of water for slaking visualization (you can choose blue or any other color, as long as you keep it consistent if you want to use colors in this way) and perhaps red as a tantric essence of fire for heat visualization (tummo), these do not really require any kind of specific postures. You don't have to be in lotus or full or half lotus or in any specific position to do these types of tantric transformations. In fact, if you can do a certain transformation better while seated and worse while standing, it means you have a problem. Instead of further habituating yourself by doing the visualization seated just because you succeed better in that way, it may make sense to undo this bad conditioning and purposefully do the visualization while standing, walking and lying down in order to overcome the limitation of sitting down. On the other hand, if you can do something quicker while sitting down, you can get your first taste quicker that way. So if just a taste is all you want, then using the most convenient posture is OK, but if you want a long-term usefulness, you'll probably not want to handicap yourself by habituating visualizations to only work in specific postures. That kind of voluntary self-limitation is not helpful in the long run. There may come a time when you can't sit down and you're cold. You better know how to do tummo standing up in that condition, or you're screwed. So you wouldn't want to get yourself cornered by a limited habituation. So this whole idea of body postures affecting visualization is not something to be proud of and it's not something to cultivate. It's more of a temporary flaw. I'm not sure if Namkhai said this about Dzogchen or not, but he does say tantrism requires a higher capacity than sutrayana and other rule-based simple-minded teachings. Similarly, Dzogchen would require an even higher capacity than tantrism. So just think about this for a second. If you cannot change the taste of clean water into honey, which is a simple tantric manipulation, then you don't have the ready capacity for Dzogchen, because Dzogchen requires an even higher mental ready capacity than that. I'm making a distinction between ultimate capacity and ready capacity. Ultimate capacity is what you can do in general, and eventually, or in principle. Ready capacity is what you can do by tomorrow morning or in 5 minutes of time.

That's not completely true because if confidence made any viewpoint into something solid, there'd be no way to switch away from that viewpoint to some other viewpoint. Because we can always eventually switch viewpoints, even if we are extremely committed for a time, that means no viewpoint ever becomes 100% true.

2nd video, 26 min, 55 seconds. That's what I've been harping about recently. 2nd video, 31 mins, objectivity is slammed. Again, the same thing I've been harping about.

Asunthatneversets, looks like you're out of steam completely. I guess you really never had your own point of view to begin with. You were here pretending to defend some external-to-yourself POV which of course you can never do. I guess you were trying to represent the Dzogchen lineage when all you can do is represent yourself, right? Would you say this was false representation? Did you pretend to impartiality and/or objectivity?

Looks like your desperate attempt to offer a line by line rebuttal backfired. Haha. Try to speak to the spirit of what I am saying instead of to the lines, and you won't exceed the quotation limit of this forum. Do you have anything to say? When you quote Namdrol, it means you think Namdrol has something to say. When you quote some Tantra, likewise, it means you think some Tantra has something to say. But the question I want to pose is, do you have anything to say? If I wanted to talk to Namdrol, I know where to find him. Similarly, if I wanted to talk to the beings who have passed away, such as the various historic adepts, I would summon their spirits. I don't need you to quote them for me. As for assumptions, how do you know I am assuming something without you first assuming something yourself? If you made no assumptions at all, what could you say about anything I wrote here?

How shocking and surprising to find that a pandita asseses oneself favorably as a pandita.