konchog uma

its only offensive if you get offended lol.

so to me a non-offensive world looks the same as the world that so many take issue with.

i don't think that the world is the problem in other words. But if it is, you can always work towards attainments which will allow you to live in another world. It might be easier to cultivate acceptance of things as they are... but then again, it might not

yeah sounds out of balance

joy is great but don't attach, it'll pass

I would suggest everyone to read up Master Nan's "To Realized Enlightenment." He cited plenty of meditation cases from various sutras to explain that your sudden enlightenment is only possible AFTER you have been practicing the vow to follow the dharma path or/and studying the sutras. He even made fun of people thinking that they can become enlightened just by simply looking at a lotus flower blossoming (one of the meditation cases). You are kidding yourself if you think you can become enlightened just because you think you are already enlightened. What is considered enlightenment? To achieve the 4 jhanas and to experience the 8 states of samadhi. And to completely free from the 5 skandhas.

just thought i'd jump in and offer that the jhanas are conceptual while enlightenment is not. Also, the skandhas aren't poisoned or something we need to be free from. Shakyamuni and Guru Rinpoche had form, feelings, perceptions, intellect, and consciousness. They just didn't mistake them for an immortal self.

one way of looking at enlightenment is that all that obscures the innate omniscient awareness has been cleared away, which is a very rare accomplishment... but i think that talking about enlightenment is sort of pointless. Its a nice carrot in front of your nose, but its a non-conceptual state of being, so one can experience it, but can't talk about it. Shakyamuni realized that as soon as he attained it. He vowed to stay silent in the forest because he knew words would only obscure the truth, but the deities petitioned him to teach, so he found a way. You can't understand it though.. in spite of all the literature lol

artist Portugal. The Man

album Evil Friends

another con to Google Play Music All Access, i emailed them about how their subscription fees get diverted to actually support artists, and they said they "didn't have that information"

ahaha google not having information.. sure

so there is no transparency like with last.fm and spotify, which pay on a per play basis, and have information available online about their rate of pay etc

You're welcome C T

"You see, at the beginning, we have to develop a very sharp, precise mind to see what we are. There is no other way of sharpening our intelligence. Pure intellectual speculation would not sharpen it at all, because there you have to introduce so much stuff that blunts, that overclouds. The only way to do it is just to leave intelligence as it is with the help of some technique. Then the intelligence begins to learn how to relax and wait and allow what takes place to reflect in it. The learning process becomes a reflection rather than creating things. So waiting and letting what arises reflect on the intelligence is the meditation practice. It is like letting a pond settle down so the true reflection can be seen. There are already so many mental activities going on constantly. Adding further mental activities does not sharpen the intelligence. The only way is just to let it develop, let it grow."

from Glimpes of Abhidharma

by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

from Glimpses of Abhidharma by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

as found in The Collected Works of Chogyam Trungpa vol. 2 page 274

Student: Would you explain what is meant by "ego game"?

Rinpoche: I think that is what we have been discussing all along in this seminar. The basic notion of ego is the notion of survival, trying to maintain oneself as "I am", as an individual. Now, as we just said, there is a tendency for the coherency of that occasionally to break down. Therefore one needs to find all sorts of means of confirmation, of confirming a coherent, consistent me, a solid me. Sometimes, quite knowingly, ego has to play a game as though nothing had gone wrong with it. It pretends seeing through ego never happened, even though secretly it knows better. So ego trying to maintain itself leaves one in the strange position of trying to indoctrinate oneself oneself. This is a false pursuit, of course. But even knowing it is false does not particularly help, because ego says, "that's not the point. We have to go on trying to learn to survive, playing this survival game of grasping, using any situation available in the present moment as part of the survival technique." This involves a power game as well because at a certain stage the defense mechanisms you have set up become more powerful than you are. They become overwhelming. Then, when you become used to the overwhelming quality of the defense mechanisms, when for a moment, they are absent, you feel very insecure. That game of polarities goes on and on. On the whole, ego's game is played in terms of ignoring what is really happening in a situation. You constantly, quite subbornly want to see it from your point of view rather than seeing what really is happening there.

and the idea that the id is the primordial base of human experience contrasts the buddhist idea that wakefulness is the base.

Silence Yourself by Savages (album) on Google Play Music All Access, their new music subscription service (8$/mo if you start your trial month before june 30, 10$/mo afterward). the pros are numerous - listen to whole albums, a total of 20 million songs, unlimited skips, search other peoples public playlists (regularly updated lists of fresh new stuff by music heads), store up to 20,000 of your own songs in the google cloud.. the con is that its google, which is basically a huge data collection engine, so if you don't want the googlebot to know what you're listening to, well, don't do it lol

The Collected Works of Chogyam Trungpa (I'm on volume 2 of 8 at present) which is really totally amazing... he may have been the first Tibetan to understand and speak to the modern western mind... there is a freshness in his writing that cuts through neurosis and self-deceipt

Dakini's Warm Breath: The Feminine Principle in Tibetan Buddhism by Judith Simmer-Brown... kinda sholarly, but still full of heart.. just started so can't say much

The Shambhala Principle by Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche... conversations between the reincarnation of Mipham the Great and his father, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, interspersed with commentary on the modern world and what we can do to "create enlightened society"... very inspiring and very simply written. SMR is not pretentious.

just finished Dzogchen Teachings by Chogyal Namkhai Norbu, more excellent teachings by one of my favorite teachers

and almost done with The Union of Mahamudra and Dzogchen by Thrangu Rinpoche (translated by Lama Yeshe), which was helpful. The explanation of practice itself is extraordinarily brief and simple.. plain like water . The rest of it is full of other insight and helpful advice on how to integrate practice with life

 

suggest some examples of those few you speak of that have gone from a drug-taking base to these more "traditional" methods/evolution....

Baba Ram Dass and Ralph Metzner, for modern famous examples

i think its an interesting phrase "drug taking base" that you use.. because if drugs are the base of one's explorations, it seems that there is a real limitation and dangers there. If one is exploring the connection between mind/energy/body, aka the "spiritual path" then mind/energy/body itself would IMO make a better base than drugs for their progress. I have seen a lot of seekers from old sixties heads to young people in the evolver movement to the blather on reality sandwich and it all makes me think that very few people are using drugs effectively. It also makes me think that most of them think that it is Very effective because they are having insights and unlocking parts of themselves which they know no other way to explore. I will say that I have never heard of anyone who achieved either enlightenment or immortality by means of drugs, but a good many daoists did die of various poisoning in their attempts, and a good many more have died of internal complications brought on by intoxicants, i imagine.

On a good note, I will say that one modern seeker who, IMO, has used drugs very wisely and effectively, is John C. Lilly. But he seems to be the exception and not the rule. I am not sure what sort of natural insight possesses him but he clearly isn't advocating the recreational or careless use of sacred substances. His approach is methodical and respectful, and while I wouldn't suggest that the average person try to follow his example, I would suggest that they read his books and learn from his experiences!

Lastly, most of the shamans I know aren't that into drugs. A Cherokee shaman who I worked with extensively never once mentioned them, although he would smoke a cigar before sweat lodges. Now some shamans are peyote and ayahuasca etc and that is their medicine, but none of them are suggesting that people take it recreationally. They meet ceremonially in reverence, meditation, prayer, chanting and singing sacred ancient songs. Unless I have missed some posts, i think that very few people here on this thread have mentioned this. So I am assuming that most modern people just take these entheogens recreationally without any real connection to the sacred, except that their drug experiences are sacred to them lol. The base of shamanism is connection and oneness with the natural world, not drugs. That connection and oneness are there already as your inalienable state of being! lol i'm not sure anybody needs to hallucinate on intoxicants in order to experience this.

btw flolofil, i'm not anti-drug although i think most people should be! hahah.. im glad you seem more open now to all sides of the discussion, as a onesided discussion about how awesome it is to trip doesn't seem as genuine and beneficial to me. I got into my practice because of a deep desire to alter my state of being and experience happiness and bliss. But the root of those things isn't external to me, that is my point. Not that "drugs are bad".

 

As a side-note, in my experience, Psychedelics do more to inflate the ego than to liberate it. So many users develop a very impulsive-reactive psychology that becomes very reflexively hostile towards any ideology which doesn't promote the drugs that they are so very fond of. Psychedelic culture has it's own dogmatic belief system entrenched within it while proposing that it is beyond such things. Poppycock! Look at how similar these "non-conformists" are to one another and how much they are in agreement with one another just like any other cult or set.. Most of it's adherents are anything but enlightened and self-serving to the extreme. For evidence of this, simply observe the behaviour of every hippie/burner/raver you've ever encountered. Not much enlightenment going on. Glorified drug addiction is more like it.

 

Of course there are exceptions to what I just wrote. But it needs to be said that the promotion of Psychedelic drugs as some sort of "quick-fix" towards enlightenment has done more harm than good in our culture. Few people are responsible enough to administer them properly. In short: the Psychedelic paradigm has failed to produce the number of enlightened beings that it so enthusiastically predicted it would. Instead psychedelics have produced far more delusional flakes, serious burnouts, ego-maniacs, etc. Those relatively unharmed usually move on to more productive things or take refuge in a Tradition that has a better track record.

Well put

I think its more accurate to say that first nations tribes that used peyote recognized it as a living spirit or an entheogen than to say that they worshiped it as a god. Its purely semantic but in the spirit of not imposing Christian framework onto something totally different I just wanted to bring up that I have been taught differently. If you have a reference for the idea of god worship, by all means post it. I'm not an expert in ethnobotany or native peoples. I'm actually not an expert in anything (but have eaten mescaline cactus w shamans)

Really? How do you know that? If it's not your "ego" who wrote these above paragraph, who wrote it? Are you beyond "ego"?

 

Is "ego" that "bad"?

Find out for yourself. Don't believe what others say.

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you'll have to send email to see if its wild sourced or farmed.

drikung kagyu has a dzogchen lineage, ontul rinpoche is the current head. google yangzab

http://rywiki.tsadra.org/index.php/Drikung_Yangzab

No, it isnt creepy. Not inherently and not universally perceived as such. YOU respond to it that way.. YOU get creeped by something, you personally. How about owning your own feelings as your own, instead of generalising them as if they were an axiomatic truth. I hope you stop pointing the generalising critical finger at people who dont meet your very personal and individual standards of what you find personally comfortable.

thanks

i feel its implied that what i said was just my own personal opinion. If people need caveats like "this message is intended to express the personal opinion of the author and in no way expresses the opinions of anyone else" i can do that. I thought that was just understood.

When you say it isn't creepy you fall into the same trap. its not not creepy. you just feel that way.

in mature conversation people just understand that whats expressed isnt universal its just personal. i was never speaking from a universal point of view, just a relative personal one.

lets move on

In the sense that the american federal reserve is about as federal as FedEx, we already kind of have a "decentralized economy". It certainly isn't centered in america.

@drew: putting your energy into people by "flexing your pineal gland" (there are actually no muscles or connective tissue attached to the pineal gland) is creepy. I hope you either stop talking about that, stop doing it, or both. Lets not derail this thread with talk of affecting other people against their will. If you have anything interesting to say to me PM me.

@judo wolf: money is neutral, just a tool, that people can do a lot of good with too. The problem isn't fiat currency, its human nature. I know people who have done really good things with their money.

both train in recognizing the natural state of mind. if one has experience with the natural state, they can recognize it in the bardo and attain liberation from cyclic existence, or at least be able to influence or control the process of rebirth. one could say it depends on the karma of the individual what they are able to sustain.

its probably the addition of the translator or commentator, i dont remember padmasambhava's words to contain those instructions. its been a couple years since i read it tho.

Self concept basically. The word doesn't translate directly to what Shakyamuni was talking about, being conceived by Freud much later. Ahamkara in sanskrit is usually translated as "identity" and i think the Buddha was using the Pali word which correlates to that. Perhaps some more knowledgeable scholars can be of greater help than I, my knowledge is very limited.

My carrier return key on my new android tablet doesnt seem to register as a line break

Thats a serious haiku setback. If anyone knows how to use codes to create a line break, PM me! Thanks

now you will dissolve

god dammit that didn't work

NOW you will dissolve…

If someone into Buddhism was ego tripping with it.. are there some signs that they might recognise, to help them get clued into their self deception?

There is more to be seen from how they interact in an ordinary way than in how much wisdom they spout, or how vivid their visions are, or how their energies flow in their central channel. In fact if a person is talking about any of the latter, thats just their ego trip. Real wisdom is simple and transparent, the ability to lend an unjudging ear to someone in need, the willingness to help, basic kindness. The manifestation of dharma is often not recognisable as such because it is unadorned and not flowery or showy.

Most peoples practice is, or feeds, their ego trip. Then one day they "get it" and the real journey begins. Theres nothing wrong with an ego trip, we have no other choice but to start there and slowly deconstruct. But it can only take us so far, then we have to get sincere and honest wih ourselves and those we deal with. The ego will never do that. It will always exaggerate our accomplishments and tell everyone how awesome we are. It knows deep down that it is artifice and so because it does it always feels small, so it always postures and grandstands.

Usually awakened people are kind, but there are stories upon stories of those who are just rude. Especially to prospective students. Possibly to everyone. So maybe you cant tell easily.

no, this inherent stuff is from Tsongkhapa.

oh i see. If you take the word inherent out, is it correct according to Indian madhyamaka?

madhyamaka emptiness doesn't claim nonexistence

im sure people will correct me if im wrong, but my understanding is that it says phenomena are empty of inherent existence, of nonexistence, of both and of neither. The emptiness is of any kind of conceptual framework that one could build around phenomena. It is a philosophy designed to inspire a direct relationship with phenomena rather than a relationship with your concepts about them.