Vajrahridaya

See, more assumptions. I have no desire to be a Guru. I don't even think that's in my cards... maybe a school teacher? Your reactions are getting more funny and more telling. More and more, I am glad that I'm not you. Your bitterness is your own worst enemy, as it clouds your perception and makes enemies of friends.

I must add, this is quite the childish statement. I'm pretty surprised at you, I think you are revealing your bitterness right here more than anything.

See more false viewing. You completely read into that. A person has the right to be an authority, due to having been a great student. ChNNR is a person of authority because he is that authority, not as an essence, but relative to having completed his training as a student. It's as well dependently originated, but empty of inherent essence. It has nothing to do with Eternalism. It's just that Guru's are Guru's who deserve to be Guru's, at least these are the only Guru's I am interested in, those humble enough to learn and evolve to the point of being able to help other people. Not take advantage of them. Again, there would be no need for a Guru or an Authority of a teaching if everyone automatically knew the essence of that teaching. But, these tantric methods have particular outcomes, and even enlightened beings still perform these methods due to how the methods work with the elements of the body. We are not in a heaven realm, we are dealing with polarities here, frictional forces. Until you attain the Rainbow Body, you also could use these methods GIH, and you'll need a teacher in order to apply them properly.

Now you are making over assumptions, you are reading into things, this is a habit of yours. It's your mental dogmas at work. Actually, if you meet me, you'll find that I do see the highest in people, even in the lowest minded people. Tell me, where do you live? Do you live in the country where there is nobody, where you don't get out much? I'm just wondering. I've spent most of my life in the city, in major urban cities, like NYC and San Francisco. Sure, one should see the positive potential in everyone, if they could only see it in themselves, what I see are people ignoring their potential. Walking the streets, robbing people, both in corporate white collar crime and crime from the lower classes, as the class system sadly still exists, and the middle class is going out the window. I see people walking around with cold and distant eyes, unless I look into them, then they are bright, because I give them permission to be their brightness. But, most walk away, without any methods for keeping the light on, thinking that maybe I'm an alien to be so happy! I don't think you are aware of what goes on in peoples minds these days... the types of thoughts they have and the types of delusions. I also see people helping each other, helping people pick up fallen groceries, help save a neighbors dog, good teachers caring about their students, working harder at being creatively good at sharing information. My mother is one such teacher, she's got her PHD in Womens Arts and Spirituality and she teaches in Eckard College and she used to teach at Ringling College of Art and Design in Sarasota. She's a wonderful example of the light and beauty that a good daily spiritual ritual of yoga, meditation and following a Guru of lineage does for a person. She's in her late 60's and has the looks and energy of a person in their youth. But, how many people doing good things are actually training to die with heightened awareness? This can only happen through doing various methods, tantric methods, or meditation methods that have nothing to do with audible conversation. Not just sitting around having a tea and talking a good one. People need these enlightened rituals, and I think you do too... I still think you need a Guru, but you won't hear that. You think you are beyond that, but maybe you are? There certainly are plenty of people that are not, and desperately need a Guru, even consciously want a Guru, a person who lives from that space of open spontaneity and pure expression! Someone who has used the methods to effect of highest self potential fruition. These people are out there, ChNNR is but one example. I really like Garchen Rinpoche as well and he's one that will blissfully swear by the ancient yogic methods, because they most certainly enlightened him in the most dreary of circumstances. He was trapped in a Chinese prison for over 20 years, and his yogic methods not only kept his mind at peace, but actually deepened his awareness of compassion in the face of people who treated him like a savage beast. Being blinded by rose colored glasses has nothing to do with correct cognition. It seems that you are blinded by blind optimism, or is it blinded by bitterness against us who see how a tradition followed with devotion, that comes from a lineage of enlightened beings, actually works? Why are you so threatened by that? You are looking down on me, you are sitting on your high horse. You are being very insulting and insinuating, reading into things and projecting from the filth of your own perception. Look in the mirror GIH.

This is your subjective experience and you've made a dogma out of it. This is where you are closed off, shut down, don't listen, won't hear, refuse to learn. Mental dogmas are indeed deep. How many has your view enlightened? Without any methods, just a bunch of words. The Vajrayana methods are not words, they are practices, methods that purify the elements, heighten awareness, deepen awareness... directly, beyond words. How many did Krishnamurti enlighten through his teachings without method? I haven't found one, just more regurgitation of rebellion against hierarchies, because their all bad? It's a good thing to have people like you around as everything should evolve and become more helpful by being contemporary. It's a good ideal to have everyone enlightened and self empowered, but this is why there are therapists, gurus, and teachers, because they do have something to teach, because people have things to learn, if the teacher doesn't get egotistically attached to the relative necessity of their position and think themselves absolute, there's room for more teachers than students, or just beings of pure light. I see a lot of Vajrayana Guru's aware of this and doing this, making teachings more contemporary and accessible, like ChNNR. But, sometimes that's a bad thing and ends up watering things down, even ChNNR has a process of higher and higher teachings and methods dependent on a persons level of progression. Like in his Santi Maha Sangha. The Dalai Lama just left his seat as political leader of Tibet, he want's to step down from the hierarchy. He is still a spiritual leader, a Guru and a highly realized being who deserves respect, not because he demands, it, but because he is it. But, it seems to me that you are declaring yourself the absolute barer of truth!? You say that you see through all the Maras, do you really? I'm doubtful, your view seems to be too extreme. Now your going to pin me as a Mara in the way of your great revolution here on this board? Is that what's going to happen? I'm one of those dense idiots who can't see the absolute truth of your words? These traditions of inner alchemy do not work poorly. I can attest to that, and others can as well. Your truth is subjective, and it's valid for you, right now, but it's not my truth.

It's really just the consciousness expanding due to the emptiness of things, and one is being aware of interconnectivity so it feels like everything is reflecting the single substance of a large mind, but it's really just your awareness and one can connect with other expanded awareness here as well, seeing all that is equally empty the awareness expands more, but not in a sense of space, because there is no space, no distance really, not inherently. Here one can have more power over the elements and work so called "miracles", which is really just a subtle science, but I think that most mystics are caught in one or the other formless realms as Buddha warned and are not taking d.o. & e. deep enough. But, I don't know... I'm not omniscient so I don't know what you really mean on your personal level by "base substance" which is exactly what the Buddha was saying is a delusional attachment or a mis-communication with deep experience. That sounds like a "Self" of all... a self existence that is the source of all things? I know the experience well and I used to think it was "Gods will and intelligence." There is that creative power, and it's emptiness, there is natural formation and primordial purity, which is the Dzogchen way of saying dependent origination/emptiness. I'd be like... consciousness is everywhere! Bliss is everywhere, everything is this bliss this consciousness!! But really I was just experiencing a level within my own unconscious connecting to everything beyond my seeming individuality and just becoming aware of it through a particular focus. Sure the creative matrix, the state of mind that is exemplified by Samantabhadra in Dzogchen. But it's not an inherent existence, it's just the vast state of the Dharmakaya, still not established but still the realization of infinite potential. I like this description better, I am more apt to go with that as well as being a clearer definition. I don't think it's behind anything though, it's just all being. It's not a secret will, it's just all will's manifesting, hiding, undulating, pulsing... then there is it's emptiness which is what makes the undulating possible. Like a sea of infinite candles all shining as one, that stillness heals. Yes, well that system sounds much like the system of Kashmir Shaivism, reifying the state of "beyond perception and non-perception." I don't know... I see it as a limited way of conditioning the spiritual experience. Ain is like Paramashiva the tattva beyond tattvas, the ground of being where any sense of self reference dissolves into the ultimate void, Bhairava. This is really just a layer in the Alayavijnana though, the deep unconscious of an individual, where the emptiness of all things and beings is directly experienced as a negative "void", pregnant with potential. The Kabbalah system is interesting though... I found it quite nice to read when I was a Shaivite, I thought it was basically saying the same thing that Shaivism says. I wish you well on that journey, I would say that you could only profit from it and evolve.

I agree, there can always be more people that get the teachings in essence and apply them to their life and re-express them in a new and contemporary way. I could always do more of that. But, I think you are going about it the wrong way. You want all these great teachings and great Guru's to just tear it all down and replace it with your way of thinking, how is that not imperialistic and dogmatic? These traditions work, they do enlighten and liberate beings, dependent on the capacity of the individual. I find that people who like Krishamurti just like to talk about it, like him, and are inspired by it, but it's just a bunch of prattle with no real practice, no real grounding in depth experience of the nature of everything beyond the 5 senses.

I agree, but ralis seems to think that DO&E is just a mental conceptual play thing, and it's not... it's an intuition when one gets it. Anyway... yes, there are most likely plenty of realizers from other traditions, it's just that the way Buddhism presents it conceptually seems to be the clearest. I don't really agree that there is an underlying oneness. I feel that there is an underlying potential that unifies everything which one gets in touch with, that creative matrix, like plugging into or dissolving into the all. But yes, I feel that it's nether transcendent of words, nor encapsulated by words. I don't believe in an inherent ineffableness that self exists. I feel Buddhahood is defined by a final insight, a clear cognizing which facilitates an inner experience of total freedom, but to identify that with a true self existence I think is reflective of a subtle clinging. I don't know... we all internalize concepts differently, which is why I feel one can say, "god" and not get caught up in an identity, even though I find most tend to, even subtly. I do feel that inter-faith dialogue is good and it's part of the blessings of this new internet world. I do find that those that believe in god use it as an excuse to not explore deeper, that it's, "gods will" that it's like this, and this is creating an excuse for ignorance. As well as sometimes it empowers a subtle ego, saying, "I am one with the all, thus everything that comes through me is gods holy will and should not be questioned." Which is why I left SY, not because I didn't feel that Gurumayi and Muktananda weren't high beings, just I think confused and conditioned by there chosen framework of spiritual reference without actually knowing it. Even though I still feel they are more highly realized in that tradition than I am in Buddhism. They are definitely deep into it, and have plenty of experience, but they reified it as the end all be all tell all. It seems sometimes that Gurumayi does it a little less than Baba, but still, there is this sense of pretense sometimes. I don't know... I got really deep and high through the tradition, but I find the philosophy of Kashmir Shaivism/Advaita Vedanta, Hinduism in general to be lacking and that goes for all theisms in my study and experiential opinion. Especially when it comes to formless level realizations, most paths just stop there it seems.

See this is subjective and you've created a personal dogma around it. In my experience, the more I do the ritual, the more juicy it gets, the more filled with rasa. In fact, it's in the beginning that it feels dry, but as I relax into it, and my focus gets better... it gets' juicier and juicier over the years and not dryer at all. So, due to my own experience as well as plenty of other peoples experience who actually practice a traditional path, there is not an agreement with you. I'm sorry but you are wrong. It has everything to do with your biased opinion based upon your lack of experience with opening up to a living tradition. You might have thought you did for a while there, but because you think this way, doesn't mean that's how it happens for the rest of us who have a living tradition and Guru. The Guru teaches one how to exercise the mind and find ones own power. You're going to say, blah, blah, blah. But for instance someone like SereneBlue needs a Sangham, needs a teacher who lives from the space of deep inspiration, so that she can feel that energy and get it like osmosis. We are not separate individuals, so to enter a pool of liberation, helps one find ones own liberation, as it's not really ones own either. I know that you are wrong. I will say so over and over again too. You are wrong buddy. I think you need a Guru. That's such B.S. Most peoples inner teacher does lead them to lie, cheat, waste money on superficial things, most people are lost in the world of material gain. My Guru's have taught me the opposite, how to really find my inner Guru. This is only because I have the mind of a true student, who is open to learn and not criticizing everything calling it "Critical Thinking." See, but you are projecting your subjective experience onto those that didn't experience this. Sure, what you say happens, but it did not happen to me. I was not exploited, or asked to turn away from my self empowerment. In fact, I learned how to be more self empowered through the old rituals and teachings, and when my teachers spoke these teachings and were present for these rituals, they were ecstatic, coming from that space of inspiration, they were not dry words. The rituals are not dry at all... it's the person experiencing the dryness that's dry, and when you experience your inner dryness during a wet ritual, it's because you're too hard, you're not letting it in, you're shutting yourself off, and it's generally always because one is criticizing waaaaay too much that this happens and not actually doing the ritual. Your just there, but not really, you're just judging. A person is only an authority because that person actually is an authority. If a person is not an authority but acting like one, that's a false guru. But, since there are false guru's it follows that there are also true guru's. An authority can also be a good friend. In fact I consider my Gurus as my best friends, deep friends. In my waking and sleeping life, through dream and video, books and talks. I am more inspired by them than any other person I've ever met. Which is why I call them my root Guru's. I think your view is extreme and I don't think it will help everyone, maybe a few people, but I think these real Guru's, and these old traditions need to just get better and more in tune with the now, and they are! But, to throw the baby out with the bath water like you are suggesting is just a revelation of your biased opinion, based upon your own experience or lack there of. I do respect your ideal though, if everyone was indeed enlightened, we could just all be each others guru's and thus no ones guru, we'd all really be sharing from that open space. But, that's not the way the world is... this is not a heaven realm.

I've been living with what the Hindus call Kundalini my whole life, as the adults around me had it awakened in them. I then had it awakened in me shortly after puberty through an unmistakable experience through a Kundalini Yoga Master from Indian lineage. There are some good books on it. I prefer the Buddhist take now, as it de-mystifies it more in my opinion. But, if you want just the straight Hindu view, which is where that word describing the phenomena comes from. A Good book is, "Play of Consciousness." Also, "Daughter of Fire" is good as well. I wish you well Leon!

Thanks Aaron, that was very sweet, open, humble and honest. I enjoyed that.

Sure, I've met them, I've also met highly evolved, and highly enlightened Norbu students. The same in my SY practice. I met people who were around the Guru for years and doing the practices, but didn't change much and others, that felt like I was being around the Guru by being around them, so enlightened, liberated and deeply happy. I guess I'm blessed to have met both types in the two lineages I've had a root Guru in. For me personally, all that stuff people call traps and externals have actually worked to transform me on a fundamental level and no matter how hard I've tried to go back, for social reasons mostly, I can't get my old self back, it's gone, dead... cried out, loved out, hugged out. I've been utterly transformed by the traditional practices of Guru Yoga and meditation, mantra and rituals with mudra and bell and dorje, swinging it around... I feel it. Doing the mantra, I feel it. Swinging the prayer wheel, I feel it! I like the decor, I like the monks, I experience joy and enlightenment around them... I feel their wisdom oozing out of their pores. I enjoy bowing to my Guru and releasing my sense of self attachment. I like releasing my ego and feeling the blessings of a great enlightened lineage raining down on me. It's enjoyable, enlightening, invigorating, inspiring. I feel whole! I'm into bowing, pranaming, chanting in group... the energy doesn't just end there, it goes with me. The more I've done it over the years, the more it enlightened me. I also fizzle out when I'm not around a Sangha, I need it... I like it, I enjoy it. These people at the sangha seem enlightened to me. I don't judge them like so many I see doing here. I think this comes from self importance and a lack of humility. This is my opinion, I feel that I am right... I think i'd be a great travesty if we gave up traditional practices for just conversation groups. Conversation groups are good, but they are nothing without the traditional practice rituals. Yes, that's my subjective opinion right now, but it works for me. I'm going for it!

If that's all you got from my post, you didn't read very well. Or maybe I didn't write very well. Alas... What I'm saying is that there are positive hierarchies that naturally form around enlightened beings. I'd rather see a positive sphere of shared understanding, which happens around enlightened beings as well, but spiritual practice rituals are amazing, and key, and they do enlighten. You're welcome to think that's B.S. But, I won't live in your understanding, meanwhile I keep raising my vibration through enlightened ritual passed down from Guru to Disciple throughout the centuries. I like these traditions, these clothes, these mantras, they work, they enlighten! They've worked for countless others. I suppose plenty here don't have the karma to see or experience that, they just see what they want, a hierarchy to tare down and rebel against. Peace. I'm also a big fan of devotion to the Guru and Guru Yoga, it works!! Maybe not for you, or ralis, but it works for us that it works for... the impact is incredible. It's an interesting trick, as the more I love my Guru the more I love others, and the more I love myself too. I haven't been very good at loving my Guru as of late though, so much going on in my life, a bad excuse, but nonetheless. I need to get back to more Guru devotion!! More Guru Yoga!! YAY!! It's fabulous.

That's on Airport Road? I lived right over the fence from there in a warehouse there where all those rows of warehouses are and the martial arts trainer who teaches Jeet Kune Do. I lived there in 94'.

I'm talking about when wisdom is power. Like lets say, because you are wise, you emanate this amazing sense of personal power, you love are compassionate, and others want that, but haven't realized that yet. You are doing it right now. Your wisdom and confidence in this wisdom emanates a personal power that people want. If you go out there and do more than just write on the internet, you'll see that you'll just become a guru automatically and a hierarchy will just arise around you because well... most people just aren't as smart as you yet. That's why I'm saying your ideal will only work in an environment when everyone is already the "guru." But, if that were the case, you wouldn't be on here preaching what your preaching. We'd already be living in heaven on Earth! This realm is full of friction, tension, polarities. You don't think I didn't already think like you did? It doesn't seem that you recognize how solid this realm of extremes is. If we were to all vibrate at the level of the ideal you are speaking... we'd vibrate into a different dimension, or make this Earth realm vibrate with a more free wave system of polarities. It would cease to be Earth as we know it. Then again, it might work if our corporations would wake up and invest in renewable resources, except for the fact that the people at the tap have it the way it is so that they can be at the top of the pyramid of power, one creates need by decreasing resource. Renewable resources frees everyone and the high ups in the corporate ladder would loose their power over everyone to the all that we are, and everyone would be self empowered. These people are so deluded by their power structures that they can't see outside of their box. It's a corrupt hierarchy. That's why the systems of non-corrupt spiritual hierarchies that respect the nature of relativity were needed. But in your ideal, which I agree with, there'd be no more need for hierarchies! That'd be awesome!! I agree, and a true Guru doesn't really want to be a Guru as a true Guru's goal is to make everyone Guru's of themselves!! Fuck yea dude! Love you even more!! I agree, which is where you are being a Guru. You don't want to be, you want me to "get it" and be my own Guru, and that's where the Guru is needed and if a hierarchal structure occurs around you, may it not be corrupt with a recognition of the sphere of understanding that is should build upon. Then again, may we all just get what you're talking about and not have to have a hierarchal structure and we can have more spherical social structures of shared responsibility and shared spiritual conduct and information without any type of religion at all, by recognizing directly, interdependence!! Let's be one big happy enlightened family!! For sure!! That's been my goal since I first discovered enlightenment. Even as a little pre-schooler after first experiencing the 2nd jhana. I became bullied in elementary school by sticking up for the bullied, but I was untrained to protect myself back then, so I got smacked around. Later I learned how to fight and protected the bullied from the bullies, then later befriended some of the bullies and talked with them. Try to implement your ideas in the wild world away from the net. See what happens? Shoot, I'm getting picked up by a hot girl, which my wife is... and I'm going out to party with them. I'll be back later!!! Love you GIH!! I love your ideals... I concur!!!

I like your sense of relativity, a direct insight and understanding of interdependence/emptiness really comes from you. This is exactly how ChNNR started, just having some students from the university he taught at in Italy come over and have dinner with him and have regular informal conversations. He as ralis say's, is not really a big fan of formalities, but at the same time, they are sometimes needed when all of a sudden there is a big group, like the chair has to be higher so that everyone can see, and if there's a whole bunch of people, it's hard to have a real conversation so there has to be a lecture. But, he does go question and answer sessions. Swami Muktananda and Gurumayi also do this. Gurumayi has spoken against the formalities institutionalized by SYDA many times. I've been in private courters with her and a few people, she is very down to Earth and human, as is ChNNR, but the difference is that it's all joy, grounded bliss, it's not just high up spaced out jargon, it's like something you feel from the tips of your toes to the tops of your head. I think Gurumayi stopped doing tours because of all this formality bull shit and she just wants people to get it for themselves. ChNNR also wants this... this enlightened communalism is exactly what is desired. To think they were out to just build some sort of empire around them is really just seeing the natural development around a person who really lives in and knows directly what's going on and has no fear in expressing it, and due to people being effected by this, that kind of overly externalized devotion just manifests, and eventually becomes a formal system. Both Muktananda, Gurumayi and ChNNR have spoken against this and Muktananda used to be like... "Get up, stop touching my feet, God is in you!" But, due to time honored tradition, people wouldn't stop, so... he's like, "fuck it! I'll just love them and those who are ready to get it will get it, but I'll try!" Muktananda broke tons of Shankara's rules for the sake of reaching more people and giving people more power. ChNNR does the same thing, which is why he is sometimes looked as controversial to Traditionalists. Now I know tons of students of Gurumayi and Muktananda, and they are amazingly self empowered, compassionate and well loved by the people that know them. Hierarchies naturally form though, if they are abused, sometimes it's just not the Guru's fault, at other times it is. It's very relative and nuanced. One cannot use generalizations. I also think it takes more than a dinner with a liberated being to attain liberation though, generally speaking, lifetimes of condensed garbage take some time to sift through. If you are open, you'll have a liberating experience, then you'll know that you want to sift through the garbage, which is what the lineage practices are for. The traditions, which naturally you will ritualize as you have to work, etc. so you'll do your focus on the elements, mantras and mudras in the morning at a certain time before work, do the yoga postures to clean out the energies. During the Buddhas time, and his disciples time, as he was a samyakasambuddha (wheel turning buddha), his students at that time were already pre-determined through meritous karmas (which is inter-dependent causation, action, connectivity... whatever) to be his students in order to keep his teachings spinning as the first wheel. I can just hear people saying, "oh he's using these words, he's religious, it's a dogma.) If you don't understand the words, please look them up and unpack them, see the details of what I'm getting at, not just the surface, because when you judge the surface, you're not getting to the intention. Seth, I like your sense of relativity. Yes, if more people were enlightened, there'd be less of a need for Guru's. At the same time, how do you know that the teachings that Zopa Rinpoches students aren't getting enlightened from the practices he is giving. I can speak from personal experience, that the practices from these enlightened Rinpoches are very, very powerful. But most people dismiss them because they haven't practiced them, see the surface ritual of them, don't experience their deep meaning, what they do to the energy channels, or gave up because they were too dense to feel anything from the start and didn't give themselves time to physically adapt to them. ChNNR's termas are super, duper powerful! I know because Muktanandas transmissions were powerful, and ChNNR's transmissions are even more powerful and his practice methods are way more grounding, liberating, and deeply nuanced in enlightened intention. Gurumayi I feel is a little flawed by theism, and this idea that she is one with god therefore every action of her's is infallible, and just by having a philosophy that supports that, makes her fallible, though maybe more perfect than the vast majority of people, as her love is amazing, it's not as infallible of a teaching as the tradition that see's relativity as ultimate instead of relativity as conventional and a transcendent god as ultimate. Which is why I'm somewhat non-theist (unless as a teaching tool), or somewhat anti-monist. Even though, some people need this positive anchor in order to evolve to the point where they can finally realize what d.o./emptiness means.

Don't worry, I'm also a silly boy.

Then silly boy, we are saying the same thing in different words. I also use the term "god" internally as a metaphor only, not as an abiding self existent being, but merely as a metaphor for everything... as a metaphor for the mass of inter-dependence that has no beginning nor end. How'd you get that I was saying anything other? I just say that Buddhism teaches this with the most clarity, if you listen to the Buddhas and not the lost versions of the followers. EDIT: But the followers that became leaders themselves, leaders of themselves, by self transcendence. Anyway... to not know where your personal mind stream will go is also an ignorance. If you are identifying with the all, as a self abiding all. You aren't getting what emptiness means as well, as there is no inherent void either, just like there is no real emptiness as void and emptiness do not denote the same thing and often I find a mistranslation of the term shunya or shunyata. Enlightenment engenders a knowledge of the general direction that your personal mind-stream is going, you've also transcended mere earthly perception while being completely eminent. You will have seen directly into space and the lineages of fully enlightened beings that will not be re-absorbed at the end of this cosmic cycle but will emerge in the next cycle as completely "awake"... which is what Buddha means... "awake" in order to help with positive influence, once again. You will never sleep again in bliss, even at the end of a cosmic cycle. You will be awake in bliss. As they say, "god is in the details." So, if you get that, then we're saying the same thing. Edited for punctuation and expansion of concepts for the sake of clarity.

Well, Hierarchies naturally develop around the person with the most personal power. What is wrong with this is when the person with the most personal power thinks in absolutist terms and stops seeing relativity is when darkness and stagnation sets in. When the person is selfish and corrupt by this power with the attachment to self, without seeing dependent origination and thinks that all things revolve around an independent source that he or she "is" or "is" the messenger of. So yes... I see and understand why. A group leader must understand that he/she is not greater than or less than those that he is leading, and he or she is leading only to help others see their own potential for leadership directly so that they may lead themselves.

Believe what you wish. I don't agree with that classification, as it only applies to the surface, the looks of it. Deep within the system that the Buddha taught, is a spirituality. So, sure it's a religion, a spiritual religion! Hey, you have your view, I find it limited and confused, just like you think of mine. Let's agree to disagree.

That's great, like a global communalism. But it only works if everyone is enlightened. Are you going to be the Guru that enlightens everybody on Earth GIH? You sound like Krishnamurti. Honestly, I hope it does happen, I also want everyone to be enlightened and to have more of a spherical system, instead of a pyramid system on Earth. It's a great ideal GIH!! I support it, but at the same time, one can see that a pyramid is made of little tiny spheres. So, it's not inherently bad, but it would be more relatively good if the structure could resemble it's building particles and be more spherical.

Only because you don't understand Buddhism. Sure, on the surface, but not in essence as it's empty of essence, nothing to attach to if you really, really get it. Of course there is a hierarchy of knowledge, of course there are those within conventional reality that are more in touch with the nature of things than others! Just like there is a hierarchy in the kitchen, from prep to sous chef to executive chef. There is always going to be a hierarchy. Just like in a school, from janitor to the teachers to the principle. Just like in government... etc. This is just how conventional reality works and it won't end, cycle, after cycle. That's the dance buddy. It's when the hierarchy is abused that there needs to be a revamping of the system, which the Dalai Lama has done many times through various births. Not every Dalai Lama was the Dalai Lama due to political tension and abuse of the hierarchy within the system. But, all in all... that's what he did, especially when he supported the Rime' movement in order to get all the lineages together and not to hate each other. Anyway... you only see the surface, that's my point. You choose to see the negative, and you are embittered by this. So when someone like me who sees the positive comes around, you're like, "Hey... he has no idea what he's talking about, because it's bad... not good." You focus on the dark side of the moon ralis... sadly.

I know it, directly. This is why Buddhism is not a religion. It's not from the words of a powerful god, who may have bliss and immense expansion. There is so much which comes out of the light illuminating the formless unconscious that can fool one, because it can feel so good and deep, so real. All religions, even Shamanistic traditions teach about an all powerful God. The experience for the highly trained shaman or theist comes in communing with the formless realms. It comes from the state I spoke of when I talked about the formless realms and the impressions that are in the alayavijnana (storehouse consciousness) or even collective unconscious. Without "right view", the first of the 8 fold noble path that you mentioned, these impressions, so blissful, so sweet, seemingly pure, one attaches to as ultimate Self. This is a subtle, deep dogma. Anyway... this is what I talk about, how non-dogmatic D.O. is. At the same time, since these impressions are inherently empty, even these bliss states, these "I Am's" and they arise dependent with everything else, they are true as well, as everything is true, because nothing is true. But, what is the truth that liberates one from truths? Not an all subsuming truth, but an all emptying truth. Anyway, you believe your experiences reify a supreme God, beyond all concepts, etc. You are very attached to this way of seeing and interpreting your experience, it grants you plenty of peace. But, it doesn't give you omniscience into the way things happen, as you're subsumed by the peace, you don't care to investigate deeper, you feel enlightened! So, when the cosmos dissolves, you will absorb into this state of bliss and light, loose consciousness, and be reborn again in the next cosmic cycle to do it over again. Which is fine, it's a dance! There's nothing wrong with it as the Shaivites like to say, the blissful dance of Shiva. But, I for one am not into unconscious recycling. I don't want to be subsumed by an all absorbing principle. To not be re-absorbed at the end of a cosmic eon is called attaining (sanskrit) samyaksambodhi known as having the attainment of (tibetan) kadag chenpo. This means one has seen through all states, has no anchor, is not attached to even the light, not attached to the experience of not being attached to the light, not being attached to a being who is having the experience of not being attached to the light, so one is not even attached to non-attachment. The realization of D.O. is absolutely complete, without residue. All beginningless causes for bondage are turned into conditions for manifesting consciously and endlessly for the sake of sentient beings as all selfish obscurations have been cured, including the monistic and ignorant ideal that all things are god and "gods will." I hope this helps someone along the way. Even though it will most likely be deflected by you Twinner by saying that I'm not steeped enough in the truth of the 8 fold noble path on a continuous basis. Which I will just agree with.

For 2 years here I've been saying there's no absolute truth. All religious dogma stems from the idea that there's an absolute truth. Buddhism does not teach absolute truth.

"A true disciple gets true teachings from a false guru." It's that whole, "life is a mirror" thing at work... LOL!