Vajrahridaya

I hear you. Doubt is a natural part of the path, and these doubts can be utilized for deeper self evaluation. At least you haven't made any solid views concerning this and are open to new and exciting vantage points in relating to yourself. Keep meditating, feed the longing to go deeper into your own nature. Feeding this longing will manifest outer conditions in your world experience that reflect this longing to go deeper. As in the people you meet and the situations you find yourself in, will arise in reflection to what you most desire in life.

Thanks man. I'm sorry I failed. Well not really. I'm quite alright with it, you have your process and it might never have anything to do with Buddhism as it appears at this time. You're obviously here on this board for the sake of deeper self evaluation or curiosity, which is already a wonderful thing. I've enjoyed many of your posts over the years.

Potential to be experienced directly as well. Yes, formless, beyond 5 sense levels of reality are a part of the 5 sense level of reality. No, that there is actually a dimension of experience available to all sentient beings where there is no universe and never having ever been a universe, which is basically just a subtler dimension of the universe beyond it's appearance as the phenomenal universe as apparent through the 5 senses. I can see how my words can be interpreted in many different ways. To know what I mean, you would have to know where I'm coming from referentially. There was a sense of perfect peace, total bliss beyond the body sense of joy happening through brain chemicals and the fulfillment of sense desires. Really, I learned enough through the experience to fill many books. It also ignited in me a longing to know more deeply my own potential. Love and compassion for all beings was automatic and still is to a greater degree than I notice in other people without deeply formless states of meditation to access. It's as if I've been inside the deepest unconscious of all sentient beings, thus I feel more physiologically attached to them, while mentally on a deeper than body level, more detached from myself and them. Other realities which the story of the physical universe arises dependent upon. Kind of like string theory attempts to discuss. Learning of other dimensions of experience beyond the 5 senses helps one understand the 5 senses without getting as lost in them anymore. Like seeing them from beyond them, one becomes more objective about them and not so lost in their pulls and tugs. From here one can have more control over the impulses arising in the senses as well as a deeper understanding of what the impulses mean and also how they can truly be fulfilled through deeper insight into reality instead of excess over indulgence in happiness through sense friction. Those that have these levels of meditative experiences have a natural sense of deeper intuition regarding perception in general.

Like I said, it's impossible for a person to relate without the experience. If physicality were ultimate, it would never transform into non-body things, but it does, therefore the body is only a body due to 5 sense designation of it being so. Once your awareness ejects from living through the physical body, either through meditation or through death, you will know that consciousness is not dependent upon the physical make up. There are experiences available to an individual consciousness that are not limited to physical perishability. Ok, good. Yes, they are a limitation, assumed by most to be the end all be all of reality detection. Thus, most are bound by these 5 senses and not liberated in and through there higher self transcending potential available to meditators and spiritual contemplatives.

Experience as limited by the 5 senses maybe.

I'm sure it goes without saying that he got sucked, both literally and figuratively into a pool of sucky karma.

LOL! Cool. p.s. This is how I felt about the accusations laid out against my Hindu guru's. I thought, "What does this have to do with my personal ability to realize the teachings?" I just kept on with my practice knowing that perfection is a state of mind and intention, not so much a state of body and there is no real way for me to decipher another persons deep intentions in their actions, especially when it comes to spirituality which opens up a deeper dimension for criteria in reference to the inner activity of intention. It's just the whole, you can't always judge a book by it's cover cliche.

No body, never having been a body, earth, sun... etc. and no reference for there ever having been a body or a phenomenal universe, no time either. These are called formless jhanas or samadhis of which the Buddha labels 4 different types, the samadhi of infinite space, infinite consciousness, infinite nothingness and the meditative absorption of neither perception nor non-perception. You cannot imagine this experience, as there is no central point of reference in these experiences, so it's an entirely different experience of the potential that is sentience or consciousness. Sometimes considered an experience of the mahashunya or great void in Hinduism. I had this experience before reading a single spiritual scripture. The experience is so powerfully beyond the senses that the senses don't hold a cup, or are merely a cup in the vast ocean of human potential which is actually self transcendent. As in a human can transcend being locked into this idea of self limited human identity. Coming back to awareness as confined and defined by the 5 human senses and reality as excepted and as detected through the 5 senses, believed to be a literal fact based upon previous habitual mental patterns surrounding this assumption based on experience previously limited by the 5 senses. I realized that this is merely a relative truth but that there are subtler truths that are more stable than those detectable through the 5 senses only accessible through meditative absorption or meditative contemplation along with meditative absorption, or a conscious death. Because your perception of a body is relative to the 5 senses detecting a body and you assume that these 5 senses are the sole definer of ultimate reality based upon your experience, while I do not - based upon experience beyond the body. This is a problem I have with lingo arising from those with 5 sense bondage and those that limit their consciousness by this very popular assumption. Yes you are, there is always hope. Only according to your thus far remembered limited personal experience as reference. Actually, you are an example of evidence proving the validity of my statement.

Nice! Yes, through self inquiry and meditation as well as reading the words of great masters and I didn't just stick to Buddhist masters for the inspiration on heart-mind.

No, that's a different experience. So, I guess not. Not when you die, and your bodies elements feed the plants, animals, birds and bees in other ways without being a physical collective. Thus, ultimately, there is no body, it's a relative truth, not ultimate. It's going to take some imagination for you to make the leap, and then you're going to say it requires a body to have the imagination to make the leap. Some people are too attached to body consciousness and not open to another perspective due to this deep subconscious attachment to a particular view. Well, you're wrong, but there's obviously no convincing you of this. Maybe on your death bed you'll open up to another perspective? You seem pretty brick on this and I don't have the linguistic sledgehammer heavy enough to break this brick. I find what I said about the body/no-body paradox to be true due to direct experiences through meditation which transcend mere dreaming, even lucid dreaming. I had theories reflective of this pryer to having read a single scripture. These experiences cannot be explained to someone without them, as ones mind must have touched the non-physical in order for any logic from this paradigm to ever make any sense.

Because the contact can lead to a longer life for the Lama and there are many tantric texts on this subject. Also, to expect absolute selflessness from an individual is unwise. People, even highly experienced yogi's need the physical contact, intimacy and pleasure of the body, and this can also be very healthy if not done in excess or from the inner place of uncontrollable craving.

The judicial system in these cases does nothing for people accused of such things, even if it's done on an erroneous premise, not that it necessarily was. But, to settle out of court and not drag his name through the system when he probably couldn't procure any real truth anyway, would just be unwise. I don't know if you know much about our judicial system, but a good lawyer can turn a wrong accusation into a million dollars just through such threats and settle it out of court. It's far from a perfect system. There are many ways one can look at this and of course it's a red flag, I'm not saying that it isn't, but I was never under the impression that Sogyal Rinpoche was perfect either. Yes, that confused me as well. I have no idea. Thus I try not to formulate one. Chogyam Trungpa obviously did many great things for many, many people as well.

Sometimes they do.

I don't know either way as I don't know the persons personally. All too often accusations are deemed fact simply due to the fact that they were stated and rumored to be true and the complete story is never given any light.

You weren't there and so you don't have an objective view on what really happened, it's just hear say. Who knows, maybe all the accusations are absolutely accurate and without any subjective bias and are with complete objective validity? But, I doubt it.

So you've never experienced being free from the body in meditation? The perspective being taken here Scotty, is that of the ultimate, that there ultimately is no body, are no senses, ect. They only exist on a relative level, not an ultimate level. Even scientifically, through a high powered microscope, our body is taken apart to a point where it doesn't even exist anymore, it's just a inter-connected mass of quantum particles and dark matter, etc. You perceive having a body only through the 5 senses, but beyond that, where is there a real and truly existing physical body? Just because you don't understand it, doesn't mean it doesn't make sense from another perspective Scotty.

What, you can't have fun and have it be a part of your process as a Tantrica and a teacher? I'm sure he experienced the things that people take for granted in a far more enlightened and celebratory fashion than the vast majority who party out of a desire to escape reality rather than from a space of celebration of reality and the senses. I think the West has way too many pre-conceptions about spirituality, which is why this type of demonizing and persecuting happens. Because we come from a puritanical idea about spirituality in the West, we have a subconscious tendency to project these values onto spiritual systems that have absolutely nothing to do with this puritanicalism of Abrahamic religions. This doesn't only happen in the West either, but Tantrics have a long history of acting outside of the puritanical fold of spirituality. Vajrayana is a Tantric path. p.s. Then again, I also agree that just because you're able to suffuse an activity with a supernormal state of bliss, doesn't automatically make that activity wholesome or conducive to awakening others.

I think he played a monk in that movie Little Buddha, but I don't think he's actually a monk who took vows of celibacy. So, these criticisms don't apply to a ngakpa. I've also heard from many of his students that he has amazing abilities, super powers of love and compassion. I don't know how many of the accusations are embellished and what is true. He probably has more realization than all of us, but that doesn't mean he doesn't make mistakes. I don't think it's ever been claimed that he is a anuttarasamyaksambuddha, so to persecute him like this when he's not even a monk is not really right I think. Being a Lama is not the same as being a Monk, which is a very popular Western misunderstanding. Sure, he has many other Lamas under his tutelage, but that doesn't mean they are celibate monks either. At the time that these women had sex with Sogyal Rinpoche, they probably felt differently about it, but when he didn't meet their conceptual pre-requisites, they probably got all flipped out. At the same time, I have no idea, maybe he did enter into abusive relationships? None the less, he's not a monk so that type of criticism does not at all apply. Wiki: Lama description. Lama (Tibetan: བླ་མ་; Wylie: bla-ma; "chief" or "high priest") is a title for a Tibetan teacher of the Dharma. The name is similar to the Sanskrit term guru (see Tibetan Buddhism and Bön). Historically, the term was used for venerated spiritual masters or heads of monasteries. Today the title can be used as an honorific title conferred on a monk, nun or (in the Nyingma, Kagyu and Sakya schools) advanced tantric practitioner to designate a level of spiritual attainment and authority to teach, or may be part of a title such as Dalai Lama or Panchen Lama applied to a lineage of reincarnate lamas (Tulkus). Perhaps due to misunderstandings by early western scholars attempting to understand Tibetan Buddhism, the term Lama has historically been erroneously applied to Tibetan monks generally. Similarly, Tibetan Buddhism was referred to as Lamaism by early western scholars and travelers who perhaps did not understand that what they were witnessing was a form of Buddhism; they may also have been unaware of the distinction between Tibetan Buddhism and Bön. The term Lamaism is now considered by some to be derogatory. In the Vajrayana practice path of Tibetan Buddhism, the lama is often the tantric spiritual guide, the guru to the aspiring Buddhist yogi or yogini. As such, the lama will then appear as one of the Three Roots (a variant of the Three Jewels), alongside the yidam and protector (who may be a dakini, dharmapala or other Buddhist deity figure).

My teacher, ChNNR gives transmission for free. My commitment to Jhana was something of the past. My investment is not in dogmas, but in what works for direct realization of nature. I don't know what Dzogchen masters you hung with, but my teachers two main teachers both attained the Jalus, or Rainbow Body of light just last century. So, just from that there is proof that your statement doesn't hold support outside of your subjective experience and projection. The realization of that omnipresent light is good! But that's not the end all be all of Buddha realization. Also, process is what life is, and everyone has a different process, everyone. Though, I do agree that not all paths lead to realization, as the Buddha said as well. Many mystics from monotheistic traditions speak of entering the light beyond the duality of creation and creator where neither concepts exist and of course they generally reify it as well. But, that's still a part of their process.

It seems to me that you are caught up in a formless reification, thus your interpretation of all this is more akin to Advaita Vedanta, where everything is Brahman (undivided light). It's through the individual that one transcends individuality. V, you should go to... Dharma Wheel Vajrayana section and talk to some real practitioners and scholars of the Vajrayana tradition with far more education and experience in all the branches of Buddhism than any of us here. I'm not good at pulling quotes out of thin air to prove support for my points. You should go to the Dzogchen section maybe and see what you can learn from responses there.

They are not equally corrupt, no. Buddhism is based upon a huge cannon of clarifying concepts, so there is less of a chance for corruption in Buddhism, even though it still happens, of course. I think Monotheisms that are not based on a large cannon of clarifying concepts, that just say, "believe because this book say's so and it's the word of God" have a higher chance of corruption. Of course, every tradition has it's mystics, which is what I've always sought for. It's just that Eastern traditions have more mystics than the Western as the Eastern traditions are already mystical in the sense of how their core scriptures are exemplified from the very beginning with inner practices, rather than just outer shows of virtue for the sake of an omnipotent gods favor. Again, the mystics interpretations of these Monotheistic concepts are different from what they might appear to mean on the surface though.

He's stating a subjective opinion which can hardly be considered a universal fact. That's just silly. There are plenty of people still practicing all sorts of pure dharma and having realizations to this day. A few in this 21st century have realized the Rainbow Body, showing that Dzogchen is still a pure short path. Plenty are still realizing the Mahamudra realizations as well including Garchen Rinpoche. His claim is without any anchoring in factual information.

Yes, it's definitely an amazing experience, the expansion of the light of ones consciousness beyond all objects of consciousness, including the body. This is not the end all be all of Buddhas liberation teachings though. Also, I feel this necessity for a real physical war is wrong. Many Hindu's interpret the Bhagavad Gita like this, but it all must be understood as an inner metaphor. Also, it's clear by reading the mystics (those that dive into the mystery of self) of various other traditions other than Buddhism, that the concepts apparent in these mono-theisms can be re-worked or re-interpreted in a way that more clearly matches what the Buddha taught, even though they don't appear as clear from the start like what the Buddha taught. I think as a process, Buddhism can only help through gradual integration, kind of like eugenics, not racial eugenics (which I'm not a fan of), but rather spiritual eugenics and not through actualized violent war. Basically through communication I think people will start to realize, over time and integration that... well ok, this works better and I become a better Christian through applying yoga and meditation techniques, as well as insight meditation, etc. Eventually, people will come to have realizations, they will ascend the ladder of capacity, incarnation after incarnation and will come around to realize Buddhahood through various means, not just one type of means. We shouldn't force peoples capacities through violent upheaval, that just wouldn't be kosher.