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in my little understanding and personal journey over a very short time, i have come to see Vajrayana tantra as the process by which we take whatever is here and now, usually arising as dualistic notions and habits that we cling to fervently, all the dichotomies that traps us in a vicious circle, chuck all of it into the adamantine furnace of the Dharmadatu. Once softened and malleable, the practitioner uses the necessary Dharma tools (the sadhanas and the rituals etc), much like an alchemist or a goldsmith with her tools, we bring these together and begin to hammer away at an impersonal yet inclusive beingness, bending it, shaping it, burn it again if needs be, all the while tempering it to make it the best we can into a precious, bright ornament worthy of cherishing and displaying without shame or ego. The essence of this is much the same as how in the ordinary world we tend to like showing off the ordinary things that we proudly label as 'ours', things that fascinate us and others on the mundane level. Only difference in Buddhist Tantra is that the angst usually associated with ordinariness, with the dreariness and drudgery of realising our frail nature, the limits and shortcomings of our day to day existence, the little time we have in this body - Tantra teaches that we have the ability to transform such views and turn them into sacred displays and transcended energies in the great mandala of perfected insight. The gradual and intricate assembly of the great mandala (each tantric practitioner has their own), resplendent with palaces for the buddhas and other enlightened deities, filled with precious ornaments and so on, is basically what tantra means to me.

hence WisteriaWinds?

Traditionally, i think the Buddhist Dzogchen lineage is said to have been first transmitted from Samantabhadra to the first human master, Garab Dorje, with Vajrasattva as the intermediary. Padmasambhava is revered by most Vajrayana practitioners, but if im not mistaken, he is only the patron saint of the Nyingma lineage. Anyway, its just a minute point. This lineage thing is quite complex, but definitely it all traces back to Samantabhadra.

I recall this matter was significantly addressed in the book Cutting through Spiritual Materialism by Trungpa Rinpoche. correct me if mistaken. btw, that book is really good. an excerpt below: Q. What is faith? Is it useful?A. Faith could be simple-minded, trusting, blind faith, or it could be definite confidence which cannot be destroyed. Blind faith has no inspiration. It is very naive. It is not creative, though not exactly destructive. It is not creative because your faith and yourself have never made any connection, any communication. You just blindly accepted the whole belief, very naively. In the case of faith as confidence, there is a living reason to be confident. You do not expect that there will be a prefabricated solution mysteriously presented to you. You work with existing situations without fear, without any doubt about involving yourself. This approach is extremely creative and positive. If you have definite confidence, you are so sure of yourself that you do not have to check yourself. *It is absolute confidence, real understanding of what is going on now, therefore you do not hesitate to follow other paths or deal in whatever way is necessary with each new situation. * So it seems that Rinpoche had pointed out that faith built on measured confidence is one way to end the onset of spiritual bypassing.

Is that a protein drink?

Buddhist texts do not exaggerate when they say that our greatest enemy is clinging to a self. Why? We are caught in a situation where mind is incapable of directly experiencing its own essential emptiness, and instead posits a self that must be sustained. We thus develop all the needs and wants that must be gratified in order to maintain such a self. Suffering comes from the endless search to satisfy what cannot be satisfied. "I" leads to "I am" which leads to "I want", and so on. ~ Kalu Rinpoche ~

This is why the masters encouraged me, the laziest of all students, to think less, to analyse even lesser, and practice more. The longer we stick to a particular set of right practices, they said, the deeper it sinks into our inner mindscape, gradually replacing the old fears, the worn out habitual emotions, the neurotic patterns... allowing us to slowly disperse these unnecessary 'apps' in order to free up the space which has always been there. Not to replace the old with some new 'apps', they said. There is no need to look for and try to possess some new enticing practice or whatever else i think i need to become more 'holy' and fulfilled, because its all just ego distractions, and to go down that route shows clearly i am still under the cloud of delusional clowning about (hah!). [The teacher who said this laughed for a second, then gave me a piercing glance the next] - Noted, i thought to myself. Just removing the junk is all it takes because that natural space clearing up is already resplendently imbued with wisdom, insight, peace, compassion, fearlessness, spiritual power, and all the other qualities of enlightenment. We simply allow our tired minds to touch that, to rest there - some people do it out of developing and keeping up a disciplined daily practice, while others will also eventually connect with it out of sheer exhaustion from being slapped over and over by old neurotic patterns. Both will take us to the same place, but the latter is a more painful route, and takes a long long time.

~ KHENPO KATHAR RINPOCHE ~ Since we basically experience our lives through the filter of our minds, the makeup of our minds will determine the quality of our lives. For instance, when we experience a very gentle, easy mind, we then allow ourselves to feel good about who we are, and the things that we do become enjoyable. We are able to enjoy the food we eat, and our interactions with others are very good. On the other hand, when we have a disturbed mind, a mind of aggression and jealousy, subject to the upheaval of conflicting emotions, we are not able to fully enjoy anything. Even if we are surrounded by the best of things–good companions, good food, and various other luxuries–we cannot enjoy them. In this case, it would not be too farfetched to say that our minds have flipped upside down, because all priorities are completely inverted. While we have the potential to be totally free from deception and to experience genuine love for ourselves and others, we still entertain ourselves with the illusion of limitations. We believe that our only resort is to change the phenomenal world outside of ourselves.

~ Buddhadasa ~ 'Heartwood of the Bodhi Tree: The Buddha's Teaching on Voidness' "As for the saying that 'nibbāna is the supreme happiness,' this is an expression in the language of relative truth, a sort of enticing propaganda in the language of ordinary people, used because people are generally infatuated with happiness and want nothing else. So it is necessary to say that nibbāna is happiness, and what’s more, that it’s the best happiness. Truly speaking, nibbāna is better than happiness, is beyond happiness, because it is void. We shouldn’t speak of it as either happiness or suffering because it lies beyond both the suffering and the happiness commonly known by us. Yet when we speak like this, people don’t understand. So we must say instead, in the conventional language of the worldly, that it is ultimate happiness. This being so, when using the word happiness, we must be careful to use it properly. It is not the happiness that people generally can see or aspire to. It is a different sort of happiness, a completely new meaning of happiness: the state void of every single thing that concocts, proliferates, flows, spins, and changes. Thus, it is truly lovely, truly refreshing, and truly desirable. For if there is still flux and change, constant swaying and rocking, how can there be happiness? The feelings of sensual pleasure that arise from contact with the various sense objects are illusory; they are not ultimate happiness. Common happiness is not the supreme happiness of nibbāna, which is voidness. So in hearing the phrase 'Nibbāna is the supreme happiness,' don’t jump to the conclusion that nibbāna is exactly what you’ve been looking for."

It was an example of one little internet search that was done. You were not asked to rely on that, but simply and to the point, to be more responsible with your statements. Anyway, this exchange which is off-topic has gone far enough. You're welcome to start a new topic on it though.

Hi Liminal Luke, Its clear countless acts of violence have been and still are ignorantly carried out in the name of religious defence, when ironically its actually offence that are being propagated. The issue i had with Ralis' statement is only a minor point, one which is not even directly related to this topic, but relevant enough so that anyone reading this who have the same mindset as his can do some research to understand that while religious wars have been rife in history, it is far less significant in terms of kill numbers compared to wars fought under other banners, for example, extreme greed, extreme imbalance of power, causeless hatred, and misplaced utopian ideals. While religion may have some complex bearing in the bigger picture, it is not accurate to say it accounts for the majority of causes of all the wars that was ever fought in history.

Its good to state clearly that you were generalizing then.

Moreover, i can detail much more facts and figures based on the little digging done, but its totally not related to this topic. The point has been made.

Well, sorry to disappoint you, but your approval means nothing. What is more important is to back up your statements with facts, something that you vehemently urge others to do, no?

Actually your reply indicates the typical mentality of most people who are ignorant of historical facts. If you care enough to read for example the Encyclopaedia of Wars, it clearly indicates that religion accounted for less than 7% (precisely 6.977%, or 123) of the documented list of 1763 wars in history. This however does not mean i read history. What it means is that I instinctually knew your claim was inaccurate, and that prompted me to do some light research, something you ought to have done prior to issuing your typical off-the-cuff responses instead of having wasted my time.

Some statistics to back up your statement would be good.

~ ANAM THUBTEN RINPOCHE ~ No matter how much we keep looking for liberation, for enlightenment, we will never find it as long as we are going somewhere to find it, because actually it is here. Life is enlightenment. Life is the sacredness. Life is emptiness and emptiness is life...Manifested is in the unmanifested and unmanifested is in the manifested. This is the great unity.

I think the principles and theories of Yin & Yang are not arbitrary in the sense they are bound by structure ie not random and not open to chaotic representations, but then its hard to imagine if one can hope to progressively apply these principles by adhering rigidly to them. One would imagine there has to be room for flexibility and allowance for sudden transformation (for eg, when latent seeds mature and bear fruit without any particular or related conscious action on our part), something which i have seen happen the odd time, in others as well as self. Whether this means they are arbitrary or not can't really say for sure.

"Enlightenment isn’t much more than remembering something long forgotten that’s been with you all along….And while it’s been said that after moments of ecstasy there will still be laundry to do, this is not true about enlightenment. This is because there is no ‘after enlightenment.’ Enlightenment lies beyond any idea of time. Any temporal notions we have about enlightenment come from our dualistic understanding. Like everything else that we can name or describe or conceptualize, [ecstatic moments and blissful states] these don’t last. Something else takes place with enlightenment, however, that’s got nothing to do with ecstasy, and from which you don’t emerge. This is because what is finally realized is that there was no ‘you’ to go into enlightenment in the first place. If there’s some particular thing you can name, pick up, single out, or point to, it’s not enlightenment…It’s not true liberation or freedom of mind…. Whatever it is, if it’s separated out from the Whole, it will wither and die. We think there is a particular enduring person here, and then we wonder, ‘Is this person enlightened?’ or ‘Will I ever become enlightened?’ But there is no particular person who becomes enlightened — or who remains deluded for that matter. All such questions are off the mark…in each moment, all is fresh and new." ~ Roshi Steve Hagen ~

"In the natural state of reality, all things are equal. The natural state is beyond any ideas we may have and even beyond our imagination. From the perspective of the natural state, all our plans and actions are merely imaginary, like the play of children that has nothing to do with reality. Once we understand the true nature of the relative level, then we can reach the absolute level, which is enlightenment. When we fully realize the wisdom of self-born awareness, we become buddhas who are liberated in the state of nirvana. In normal awareness we operate on the basis of habits. But continuing to follow habitual patterns will not lead to enlightenment; we will only stay the same and never achieve higher understanding. Our present mind is like a nest constructed of subtle and gross thoughts. We think in terms of subjects and objects, inside and outside. We are constantly judging people and situations, seeing them as beautiful or ugly, pleasant or unpleasant, right or wrong. Who is making all these decisions and judgments? We might say, “I did that, I felt that.” But really, what is this “I”? Where is it? Who is doing all the analyzing and discriminating? To find out, we must look at the mind. It is the mind that does the analyzing and discriminating. If we look carefully at the mind, we begin to understand its nature. When we look for the mind, we discover how difficult it is to find. We cannot put it in our hands. We cannot see it but we can train it. The mind is a vast emptiness called Shunyata, or great Emptiness. The emptiness nature does not mean that it is blank or a black hole. The mind has many beautiful qualities, like clarity and wisdom, yet these qualities are inseparable from emptiness." ~ Ven. Khenpo Rinpoches ~ The Buddhist Path

For anyone who may be interested to pursue this subject further, it might be helpful to reflect the above article against some of these: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=international+journal+of+transgenderism&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwifyayu78PMAhVMD8AKHePCAscQgQMIHDAA http://www.teni.ie/attachments/0c1d3879-d43c-4652-9c16-86f63c6b7ce7.PDF (Mods please delete the links should there be copyright issues.) Or subscribe to the International Journal of Transgenderism for the purpose of informed knowledge.

Mark Selby of Leicester took the world snooker crown on Monday (2/5), precisely 11 minutes after Leicester city clinched the championship. coincidence?