The answer lies in the India/Nepal/Tibet Himalaya Regions afterall.. and definitely NOT in china/taiwan..

[Vajrahridaya]

Well, it's a good song anyway.

[Aaron]

Sure, I have experienced it in that way as well. I Think one of the things i find so fascinating about this topic is the Idea, that If you approach 'Reality' 'as if' it is Conscious and Intelligent, then that is how you experience it.

This brings up so many questions for me:

 

1. Does it speak to [or Intersect with] us through the filters of belief we subscribe in? I think this could answer the slight variations found tradition to tradition in description, and also could answer questions like how a paedophile fake like Sai Baba is seen by so many devotees around the world in visions with miraculous consequences.

 

2. Is it just neutral, and we apply our own filters to it? Is the Intelligence that one mystic communes with, just some deep projection of his own mind? Does a different mystic who believes the Divine is more like an unmovable bedrock, then experience the solid ground of being? Or the Void? If so we are very amazing

 

3. We also are capable of switching fairly easily between ways of experiencing Divinity. What does that suggest?

 

To me i have to say that, that still Oneness where I am 'Being' & Everything, is almost Boring compared the experience of Living Interaction with the Mind of the Universe.

 

To someone else, they might feel very uncomfortable having the universe [if that is what it really is] talk to them, and are much Happier ascribing to a different view/experience...

 

Praise the Great Inter-subjectivity! lol

 

 

Hello Seth,

 

I'm not sure I would agree entirely, but I know what you're saying. Are there actual experiences that transcend religion and ideology, the programming and preconditioning of the mind? I think there are. Are there just as many that are induced by these things, most certainly. I think this is the whole reason for transmission, to ensure what is experienced by the student, is the exact same thing as the master, over and over, through the ages. I think in a way it's kind of egotistical, this idea that these experiences are so important that they can't be lost or altered in any way. One would think if they really were that important, that altering them wouldn't matter.

 

I've been saying this a lot lately, because I think it's the one aspect of Buddhism many Buddhists fail to understand, if you hold nothing sacred then nothing can be profane. It is essential if one wishes to be free of attachments, in the sense that so long as you hold something sacred, then you are attached to it.

 

Anyways, that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with teaching someone else, but I think that it's important to remember that the teacher can learn as much from the student as the student can from the teacher. If a teacher goes into this relationship believing they are the only ones that have anything to give, then they probably should not be teachers in the first place.

 

Aaron

[Vajrahridaya]

 

I've been saying this a lot lately, because I think it's the one aspect of Buddhism many Buddhists fail to understand, if you hold nothing sacred then nothing can be profane. It is essential if one wishes to be free of attachments, in the sense that so long as you hold something sacred, then you are attached to it.

 

 

Dependent Origination/emptiness means there is no end all be all experience, just insight based on "right view" into the nature of experience, that's what liberates.

 

Second, the whole passing on a particular experience conditioned by a particular set of ideals, is a Theistic role, not a Buddhist one, because "right view" in Buddhism is the viewless view. Even oneness is a view, or thinking there is a supreme ineffable source that some personal experience reifies for an individual, is a dogma.

 

Buddhism is non-dual, but not qualified by a single transcendent substance, thus there is no sacred or profane except when it comes to conventional reality, and there is no ultimate reality as non-duality according to Buddhism has no background, just equal emptiness of all relative arisings, other than relativity there is no reality... so there you have it.

 

What you think Buddhists have been saying, is not what Buddhists have been saying but how it's been mis-interpreted by readers who are not getting the gist of the symbols being presented, in my opinion.

[ralis]

 

Second, the whole passing on a particular experience conditioned by a particular set of ideals, is a Theistic role, not a Buddhist one, because "right view" in Buddhism is the viewless view. Even oneness is a view, or thinking there is a supreme ineffable source that some personal experience reifies for an individual, is a dogma.

 

 

 

Come on Vajraji! A viewless view is still a view no matter how you spin it! Further, by making some absolute difference between ideals of theism and so called right view of Buddhism and claiming Buddhism has no ideals is preposterous. I wish you would do some research and use a dictionary before making condescending remarks.

Edited June 6, 2011 by ralis

[Vajrahridaya]

Come on Vajraji! A viewless view is still a view no matter how you spin it! Further, by making some absolute difference between ideals of theism and so called right view of Buddhism and claiming Buddhism has no ideals is preposterous. I wish you would do some research and use a dictionary before making condescending remarks.

 

BTW, if you have mastered DO&E, have you mastered your personal life?

Yes, it is still a view, the view that liberates as it doesn't take up a stance of subjective idealism nor does it take up the stance of monistic idealism... look it up. I never claimed Buddhism has no ideals, they're just understood as relative and inter-subjective for the benefit of all. Just as the Buddha taught both the Dharma that liberates as well as paths that help evolve people knowing they couldn't understand that Dharma until some more evolution happened for them, thus he taught different things for different people because he understood relativity.

 

I speak general Buddhism according Nagarjuna and Sutra discussion on Emptiness. Rigpa cannot be understood without that, as ChNNR has said both in talks and in his writing plenty of times.

 

Take care.