konchog uma

i was into mark griffin for a while but stepped away from all that.. i don't think of my root lama as a guru but i guess you could. Anyway, no nothing wrong with all that, but i think people do it because they tend to experience transmission more often from a guru than from an ordinary joe on the street. i dont think there are any rules tho, and while i tend to look at it from the point of view of karma, instead of god/dao, if a person is meant to awaken, or have a particular experience, i agree there is little to do to stop that from happening

no problem.

right

sorry ralis, i meant that bit about rainbow body and non-mutual exclusivity towards teknix and i meant the bit about the conjecture towards you i was posting in a hurry sorry for the confusion to address what you just said, i don't think that thoughts or logic or science is mutually exclusive to the natural state. As i have learned (and occaisionally experienced), one can rest in rigpa and think too. Its just that the thoughts self-liberate in the same instant they arise.. and yes i know that in an ultimate sense they neither arise or liberate, but i am speaking from the conventional level. So there is experience, even thought, but there is no grasping, no clinging.

science and dzogchen aren't mutually exclusive. speculation about what might happen to a scientist is pure conjecture though. you should research the phenomenon of rainbow body.. a lot of people have died and left nothing but hair and finger/toenails... its been documented. that might even qualify as supernatural lol

"'od gsal, or luminosity, is experienced by everyone as they go to sleep. It has nothing to do with visions of light." http://www.vajracakra.com/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=278&p=1692&hilit=clear+light+visions+of+light#p1692 i dont know why that style of guru yoga uses red white and blue lights. that is what i am trying to convey here: i dont know enough to get into a conversation about clear light, and if i did, i probably wouldn't anyway. just sayin

now youre being patronizing

hi TI, remember that its okay to have a different impression of a book than someone else. I am glad to hear that you like it so much. i have read about clear light in a bunch of places.. the union of luminosity and emptiness, the subtle manifestation underlying all reality, and so on and so forth what i don't have is direct experience of clear light, unimpeded by other aspects of reality. Maybe in the bardo, but i didn't recognize it as such at that time. i have read (lopon malcolm) that clear light has nothing to do with seeing visions of light, At any rate, i didn't say it was a bad book. I said i liked the introduction better than the translation and commentary. Thats just me expressing how it struck me.. as in, good thing we aren't all the same! lol i never said that the book wasn't good. anyway, i don't have a lot to add, although i have been practicing the beginning stages of sleep and dream yoga, with small but good results, but dont want to talk about that much.. inner yogas and dzogchen are traditionally private, so even when i do achieve results, i think that they are just for me. I prefer to keep my practice sealed in the traditional way. Even when i talk privately with people about my experiences i feel really weird about it afterwards. I think its best for me just to talk to my lama and other meditation teachers about things like that. But i digress If i achieve insight into clear light in a general way, i will be happy to share for the benefit of others. Til then, the words are just words to me (alas! lol)...

yeah but its not the words themselves that illuminate the truth. its the vibration of the consciousness, and it requires readiness, or sensitivity, as noted. Tilopa hit Naropa in the face with his shoe and Naropa experienced the natural state as a result. Tilopa did this because all the words in the world were obscuring the truth from Naropa, who was a scholar. See what i mean? So in other words, the teachings of an enlightened master are just a medium for the transmission.. they are not the important thing itself, from a certain point of view. An enlightened teacher could babble nonsense at me and if i was prepared, i could bask in that wakefulness and possibly experience an opening of consciousness. A teacher could spit in my eye or hit me in the face and it might be more useful than all the words they could blather about enlightenment. Which is why i said "finger, moon..." so you are only half disagreeing with me, because what you supply to support your point of view is the same thing i could supply to support my own. I don't want to speak too much from personal experience, because thats very private and i dont have very much of it, but i think its relevant and useful to say that I have had greater experience of the natural state with my root lama that were born of silence than i ever experienced trying to understand the words he was saying at me.

thanks for sharing! funny stuff

TI and i are both grown ups. Thank you for your concern, but its okay to disagree. Nobody was calling names or throwing a tantrum, and I don't think we need your moderation.

what about the CRITICAL ISSUE of VICIOUS PONIES we really need to get into a huge fight about that everyone lets go

merriment a-plenty! didn't he get banned like twice? here we go again

thank you not like its effective to reason with the OP but its good you point this out for everyone

my logic might be flawed, but its still taught that the buddha prophesied that. Whether he did or not doesn't depend on my logic being ironclad. and as far as the truth goes, no i don't think it can be taught. finger, moon... you can encourage people to practice meditation, nondual awareness, etc, but you can't illuminate the truth in words, writing, etc. imho

Thanks TI, in the interest of not derailing the thread, i suggest we start another one to talk more about it. unless we're done talking, in which case, i can only reiterate that i don't personally have a lot of familiarity with clear light. I am not even sure i understand it. I am encouraged to study deeper into the matter by this exchange tho, so thanks.

have you ever played the game where you pass a secret around a circle by whispering it, and by the time it gets back to the person who started it, its something completely different? the 300 years between Shakyamuni and the Pali texts are like that. I am with alwayson: Nagarjuna was, according to prophesy by Shakyamuni himself, the first person in 400 years to understand what was being illuminated. The reality of reality is non-conceptual, so nobodies words could possibly have it right. It is free of the four extremes. It is only apprehendable by direct experience, free of conceptual designation and mental imputation of any kind. If the theravadans or any of the 24 schools had apprehended that, then Nagarjuna wouldn't be the first to understand the Buddha. So it seems that they didn't. Since they misunderstood the Buddha, and were lost in attempts to conceptualize the teachings that they couldn't understand, I don't really take them as completely authoritative. I think we can have the general gist of what Shakyamuni taught, but to me personally, there is no authoritative text or teaching that is the Buddha's words. It is all subject to the interpretation of unawakened beings. just my 2c

can't pick the future past and present are out too i'm left with my nose

Hi TI, i liked Dowman's introduction better than his translation of Longchenpa, but thats just me. The commentary was okay but overall i was really into the commentary and underwhelmed by the rest of the book. You're welcome for pointing it out. I hope you benefit. As far as rigpa and light goes, it might depend on who you ask. I was at my friends apartment the other night listening to Lama Glenn Mullin give a talk on Rime (non-sectarian movement within Tibetan Buddhism).. he talked about mother and child clear light, and someone asked if that was like rigpa, and he said that rigpa was just a window to the clear light of consciousness, but they were different. He said that rigpa is just a step on the path, and that ultimately resting in clear light is of a higher order. ??? confusing, but he's got 35 teachers and "lama" in front of his name so i consider what he says to be more or less authoritative. All this assuming that you are referring to clear light and not some other light in Buddhism or Dzogchen which i am unaware of. If so, apologies, i am just an ignorant student lol I don't understand well enough to comment on that, but rigpa is just a state of awareness, in contrast to marigpa (avidya), ignorance. It is vidya, nondual wisdom. I am not sure but i don't think that there is anything inherently luminous about rigpa per se. Furthermore, light so bright that it is blinding sounds more like kundalini than either the rigpa or clear light. Perhaps others who have more experience with clear light states of mind can comment. I have watched myself fall asleep lucidly a couple times but can't say that i am familiar with clear light. Not to be contentious, i am only communicating in an attempt to further all of our knowledge about these things. i am not interested in arguing about these concepts. I am pretty sure we understand each other tho

i wish i could like that twice

i AM the batman the one the only the best just check my belfry

i liked god delusion even if i didnt agree with some of it. i forget the details but i remember my impression of it. i've been reading Gen Lamrimpa's "Realizing Emptiness: Madhyamaka Insight Meditation" translated by B. Alan Wallace Its good, lamprimpa is wide awake and wallace is really readable. I am halfway through and its been all philosophy and foundation so far, and none of the meditation instruction yet. I got it to study Tibetan vipashyana (lhanton) and ended up getting a heavy dose of madhyamaka emptiness. But i love that stuff so its great. Gen Lamrimpa spent two decades in solitary retreat and only came back out to teach because the HH Dalai Lama requested that he do so... so he insists that he doesn't have extraordinary insight, but the book is written in a very lucid way about a very slippery topic. and this just arrived today: Approaching the Great Perfection by Sam Van Schaik i look forward to it

clutching a toothbrush i'm deranged and disheveled sleepwalking again?

what are your sources for what Shakyamuni actually taught?

i have read that semen and cerebro-spinal fluid are chemically very similar.