Vajrahridaya

I know... just joking. I know, I read the story. Pretty cool. Cool!

No, I just don't care about the scandals on E-Sangha. I know Namdrol personally and from the links you gave me, there is no discussion on him though I didn't read every nook and cranny. He didn't go onto E-Sangha very much anymore towards it's end. Your statements to me are more of a reflection of your view of my view than having anything to do with Namdrol as a Lappon in the Sakya tradition. What does any of these scandals have to do with Namdrol as a person who I know? Nothing. Your just reaching...

Could be!

This does not have much to do with Namdrol. They had hundreds of moderators. Yes, sure... tons of scandal. People like scandal, in robes or in plane clothes, or even without any clothes on. I really don't care. I know Namdrol personally.

You know, I've had posts completely erased by one moderator or another here in Tao Bums, as well as reply's to them. I have never complained. It is what it is! I'm not saying that all the Moderators on E-Sangha acted upon non-emotional objectivity all the time, but plenty of it was necessary. E-Sangha was a vast and beautiful resource of information for me. Those that take the short time suspensions too personally need to do some more inner contemplation, IMO.

The first texts were attributed to about the first 100 years after his death. Also, it would be hard to believe considering the vast amount of distractions we have these days due to popular media. But, they just didn't have such things back then and the Monks just spent their entire days repeating and practicing the Buddhas words. The past life stories are not so out of this world, if you start having direct experience of your own past lives. They become quite logical in fact.

I think all Eastern spiritual traditions believe in the cycles and reversions. The entire spectrum of Eastern contemplative tradition is more cyclical than linear in the way of seeing things.

Like the wild and ravenous dogs they are, biting people who try to pet them! Or the non-potty trained pups that they are... dropping liquid poop everywhere they go, maybe on peoples toes? No, I'm just kidding!! You know I love you bro! :lol:

There were many boards there, not only Tibetan Buddhist. They also welcomed all the traditional sects of Tibetan Buddhism including Bon within the Tibetan Buddhist forum. So, there were many erudite discussions on the different arguments surrounding view. But, if you are too distracting with your pronunciation based upon ignorance, sure you will get warned, then kicked out for a little while. If you ask questions and wish to get better acquainted with the traditions, that was fine. There indeed were a few in there that were Ban happy and Namdrol was not one of them. I got kicked out many times myself during the 4 years I was in E-Sangha. So, if you got kicked out, you must have been over stepping some rules and guidelines. I've never heard these stories or saw these arguments leading to banning from him. I read most everything he wrote. So, these must be unfounded rumors.

What you consider BS may merely be a revelation of the space of learning and experiencing you are still capable of opening up towards. What you don't understand now, could be revealed to you with clarity in the future as you progress in spirituality. Don't limit me by your own self adhered to limitations.

Actually the insight of cycles and reversion exists prier to the Buddha and is spoken about in the Vedas, the oldest known religious texts, as far as I know. From the early Vedic period before 2,000 B.C.E.

In the various recollection of his past lives from different scriptures. In Buddhist scriptures from various sources, it's said that as one progresses one can remember past lives from previous world systems and universes, the deeper you go, the more you remember within the endlessness of your mind stream, but this is not a pre-requisite for enlightenment. Though remembering past lives is a side effect of deeper forms of meditation. Sorry, I don't have any exact places to quote from right now. I'd have to put in some re-researching. I'm just pulling from memory of what I've read.

The Buddha talked about what was prier to the Big Bang and spoke of past life memories from previous universes. You can evidence this for yourself through meditation. I personally have, so my information for me at least does not come from some blind indoctrination. I don't believe that we have limits to what we can know beyond the 5 senses through direct intuitive knowing. I am not a Buddha, but I've definitely had my level of direct visions of the truths sermon-ed by the Buddha. Most of the experiences happened even before I really started studying Buddhism and Buddhism just gave more of a clear context for my meditative experiences.

I've spent plenty of time with him in person. The thing about E-Sangha as they wanted to keep the teachings in line with what the Buddha taught from people who actually studied all the texts for many years, including Namdrol and not get overwhelmed with divergent views that would confuse new-comers to Buddhism. You are welcome to your negative perspective of course. But, I have spent plenty of personal time with Namdrol... as in live and in living color and have done practice with him. He is not merely a scholar. He is deeply experienced and his knowledge is worthy of veneration. Buddhist masters would not have given him the title of Lappon very lightly. He did complete his 3 years, 3 month, 3 day solitary retreat within the Sakya tradition under strict masterful guidance. Anyway... yes, that's him.

I don't think there is evidence to support that it came from Hinduism. The Buddhist 5 element insight comes directly from the Buddha in the Suttas I think and more so in the Mahayana. The system of 5 Elements within Buddhism which is also what is used to realize the Jalus or rainbow body in Dzogchen where a practitioner leaves no physical traces behind comes from about 200 B.C.E. So they must be doing something right if the realization can be evidenced through a physical medium such as the human body completely disappearing. Vajrayana is not borrowed from Hinduism and in fact Buddhist Tantra appears historically before Hindu tantra in India. There have been new findings in anthropology revealing this. Just as there really was no Hinduism per say before Buddhas 40 years of teaching, just scattered forest paths and then the pre-domenent Brahmanistic Vedic caste system. Most of the Upanishads and Puranas were written long after the Buddhas appearance. Including all of the more erudite ones. As the Buddhas explanations of detail were quite inspiring to all, even those that wanted to say he was wrong had to do so by following some sense of his inspiring detail oriented explanations. In fact, the major form of Hinduism dominating India at this point called Advaita Vedanta did not appear until the 8 or 900's A.D., though mainly using the Upanishads and the Puranas as basis (also previously influenced by the Buddhas teachings), is heavily influenced by Mahayana Buddhism which appeared in dominance at least a 1,000 years earlier. Mahayana is the form of Buddhism that moved to China during the very early part of this era, back when Buddhism was still dominant in India long before the Muslim invasions. While the majority of the Tantric form of Buddhism is what moved North into the Himalayas at the around the same time, some forms of Buddhist Tantra did go East to China and Japan during the same time in the early part of this era (2000 years).

The Buddhist perspective is just that the big bang happened due to causes and conditions left over from the previous big crunch at the end of the last universe add infinitum and not due to a supremely conscious will. The Buddhist view is that we are all co-creating our realities, as in all sentient beings through more dimensions than merely the 5 sense physical. Thus dependent origination does not have a first cause. So, dependent origination does not have a rooftop concept or transcendent be all that one can allocate everything to as the supreme mystery behind all things. As in, according to Buddhism, all aspects of reality can be known directly through right investigation. There are no intellectual, emotional or experiential excuses for ignorance. According to Buddhism, a Buddha knows exactly how the cosmos works, directly through intuitive insight.

It's kind of like some conspiracy theories. They give reason for helplessness. Theism does this in a sense as well... "It's all God's will that I'm like this and these things happen to me." More reason for helplessness instead of self examination and transformation. Some people would rather concoct ideas that all my experiences and insights that I have shared here are coming from a fraudulent source and that I make things up rather than question what they can do from within to test the validity of the information I have honestly shared here. I don't know if you read it, but a couple of weeks ago Dwai said that I made up everything. I have not and did not, but this seems to me like a cop out. But, to each their own. I'll continue to debate if I'm inspired to do so. For me, it's more of a revelation of insecurity to go to such extreme ideas about someone you don't know and think that it's based upon "divine insight"... AAAAHHHHHHHH! "My Lord came to me and said, 'VH is a fraud'!" I will say for the record, that I'm just a regular human being who before I spent many years meditating, chanting and reading spiritual texts from all the major traditions, I acted like a fool and ran around on the streets. But, starting in 94' I had an awakening experience that reminded me of many spiritual experiences had as a youth as well. After this I followed very intensely and closely Vedic branches of practice and contemplation under the guidance of a living Hindu adept before meeting an experienced Buddhist scholar online named Malcolm Smith (Lappon Namdrol in the Sakya tradition [The Sakya's are the scholars]) who revealed that all my assumptions about Buddhism based upon Advaita Vedantin conditioning were not complete. We debated, much like we are with Dwai for about 3 years before I really just let go. My responses to Namdrol were much like Dwai's responses to us, with the exact same platform for conditioning, that the primal "I" is absolute and static and all dynamic things emanate from that transcendent experience on a cosmic level. I decided that I wanted to know the truth, not use my experiences, no matter how deep I may think them to be, as an escape from further investigation. So, I really started to contemplate the new teachings and perspectives that were coming at me and I at first started to have dream revelations as I would think about them as I was going to sleep. So, the truth of Buddhas revelations would reveal themselves to me in lucid dream states. This is all a process of course. Then I met a Buddhist Master in person and got blown out of the water. I saw the subtle differences between non-substantial non-duality and substance based non-dualism such as Advaita Vedanta and how incomplete the wisdom of substantial non-dualism is through direct experiences and visions of the 6 realms and intuitive comprehension of the meaning of the 31 realm model in link with the 8 form and formless jhanas. I saw how much subtler a view dependent origination is directly and how it leads to a completely un-obscured view! Because infinite and faceless consciousness is considered an obscuration if identified with as absolute. This really scared me and pulled me apart and I fought tooth and nail within to keep both traditions afloat as one. But, I came to the conclusion through intense experiences of spiritual pain with energy and spirit guides, etc. that both traditions were developing the energy body differently for different purposes as the goals are different on more levels than just philosophically and the two could not be reconciled. At least not yet. A fully developed being can go anywhere and not be influenced externally. But, "they say" when you are still developing that the spirit guides in the astral realm change when you change lineage and tradition and some people who have strong development in the previous tradition actually don't even survive the change. Anyway... I'm saying too much maybe. So, for Dwai to come to a revelation of what we are saying, might be asking for too much. As it certainly was hard for me, for many years. Re-arranging pathways in the brain and mind of spiritual interpretation is probably one of the hardest things to do as these pathways are deep and subtle, transcending the mundane. In Dwai's case his entire family lineage is trapped in Vedic conditioning for this lifetime. So he'd rather call me a fraud and allocate me to the not worth listening to box. I will say that I am still a screw up in many ways in my personal life. But, the experiences and insights that I have shared here do come straight from my heart and my life and no one elses. But to label someone a fraud because their interpretation of spiritual experiences is in disagreement with ones own tradition? Ok... We'll let that speak for itself.

There is no self sustained absolute truth according to Buddhist cosmology. There is only relativity, absolutely.

I and all real Buddhist scholars including Tibetan Masters agree. The Mahaparinirvana Sutra and the Angulimaliya Sutra are revealing that the intuitive realization of emptiness is a positive and life affirming realization, and not a nihilistic negation, that is all. Neither of these Sutras are talking about a transcendent inherent existence of all.

This is actually a bad translation. He's really just talking about emptiness, not a true inherent essence. In English translations, emptiness is often translated as essence giving a kind of mis-understanding for most Westerners. If you realize the nature of your self, you realize inter-dependence, malleability, emptiness, thus the fullness of total freedom. You should study Nagarjuna as most Zen patriarchs are well versed in his explanations. You will stop making the mistake of assigning inherent existence in these English translations. You seem to be quoting a lot of Theist sounding Zen translations. Milarepas' translations suffered from this mistake long ago as well, but this has since been corrected.

Yes, it's clear that you have as well.

Sure, i would say this reveals that you did lots of spiritual work on yourself in past lives.

Sorry about the onslaught of reply's. I am just catching up on the conversation after a day of very active work. All the best! Please don't take any of my reply's personally, as my opinion is all very relative.

Right, and Samsaric realms are a manifestation of a vast majority of sentient beings ignorance. Not that every aspect is a manifestation of the driving force of ignorance and craving, but this is exactly why this realm or dimension of Earth is filled with pain, friction and anguish within the majority of it's inhabitance. Earth realm is not the manifestation of a Buddhas will. Only purelands are, according to Buddhism, which is why they are deeply pure, filled with a lack of anxiety, friction and density, because they are a manifestation of a Buddhas compassionate intention. This level of universe experienced by the vast majority of Earthlings is a manifestation of craving, for the most part. Though, because this realm is also empty of inherent existence, a deeply realized being, either Buddhist or non-Buddhist, can experience Heaven here, due to the fact that all phenomena are empty of any intrinsic nature to bind. Though a non-Buddhist would experience bliss here, due to their identification of everything with a divine source of all, while a Buddhist would experience bliss here, due to the insight of emptiness thus leading to a different outcome in the afterlife for both a Buddhist and non-Buddhist. Even though, both would seem to share the same transcendent happiness here, their interpretations of the cause of this happiness would be very different leading to a subtle, but deeply different awareness of this beyond the duality of pain and pleasure... bliss.