Thread about Nothing

[ralis]

Does anyone own a copy of "Yeshe Lama" thogal teachings? The cost is 85.00. However, if these teachings are already available in other texts, I will not buy it. I already own "Heart Drops of Dharmakaya" and "Dalai Lama's Secret Temple". The price is ridiculously high!

 

ralis

[33865_1494798762]

"HEART DROPS OF DHARMAKAYA"???

 

http://www.esnips.com/doc/1f5c413e-2880-4c...e-Bon-Tradition

 

Do not miss the download link where you can download a permanent pdf copy to your hard drive! The thogal information starts in chapter 3.

 

When I go to the link it tells me:

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The link you clicked on is not complete.

If you clicked a link within an e-mail message, please verify that the link was not broken in the middle.

If it is broken, copy and paste the entire link into your browser.

You will be redirected to the eSnips home in a few seconds...

 

 

Anyway - What do you mean by: "It is based on the NOW"?

Edited March 19, 2009 by Guest

[markern]

I asked my meditation teacher about thogal the other day since he has actualy spent a some time as a monk within Tibetan budhism and has trained Dzogchen with the two most aclaimed Dzogchen masters. He said that for almost anyone from the west today to do thogal is a joke at best and quite often dangerous. He also said that this practice is out of the question even for most of those quite acomplished within the tibetan system. He said that in the unlike case that we would actualy get anywhere with this practice it would lead us to complete mental breakdown or madness and that it is a practice more aimed at the completion stages of the absolutely highest levels of enlightenement. He said that thogal represents such a mental and physical opening and total transformation of our whole system that with only a few exceptions people are not capable of doing thogal with any sort of success. He also laughed at caling Dzogchen and Thogal higher practices since you don`t need either to get all the way. They are just practices that can be effective for certain people mostly at later stages. That did not make it higher just less commonly recomended paths with a higher chance of thinking you are doing the practice without actualy doing the practice. This guy thinks that a lot of practices that are secret or thaught at later stages should be open or thaught earlier but that thogal and dzogchen just won`t work for many people all though some are naturaly suited for dzogchen and thus can practice it more or less from the begining with great success.

[ralis]

I asked my meditation teacher about thogal the other day since he has actualy spent a some time as a monk within Tibetan budhism and has trained Dzogchen with the two most aclaimed Dzogchen masters. He said that for almost anyone from the west today to do thogal is a joke at best and quite often dangerous. He also said that this practice is out of the question even for most of those quite acomplished within the tibetan system. He said that in the unlike case that we would actualy get anywhere with this practice it would lead us to complete mental breakdown or madness and that it is a practice more aimed at the completion stages of the absolutely highest levels of enlightenement. He said that thogal represents such a mental and physical opening and total transformation of our whole system that with only a few exceptions people are not capable of doing thogal with any sort of success. He also laughed at caling Dzogchen and Thogal higher practices since you don`t need either to get all the way. They are just practices that can be effective for certain people mostly at later stages. That did not make it higher just less commonly recomended paths with a higher chance of thinking you are doing the practice without actualy doing the practice. This guy thinks that a lot of practices that are secret or thaught at later stages should be open or thaught earlier but that thogal and dzogchen just won`t work for many people all though some are naturaly suited for dzogchen and thus can practice it more or less from the begining with great success.

 

 

So, what are the problems with someone in the west doing thogal? Why is it a joke? This just confirms what I have been saying all along about the authoritarian guru. I refer you to my thread on the Yeshe Lama teachings. I just posted in the last 10 minutes.

 

ralis

[markern]

So, what are the problems with someone in the west doing thogal? Why is it a joke? This just confirms what I have been saying all along about the authoritarian guru. I refer you to my thread on the Yeshe Lama teachings. I just posted in the last 10 minutes.

 

ralis

So, what are the problems with someone in the west doing thogal? Why is it a joke? This just confirms what I have been saying all along about the authoritarian guru. I refer you to my thread on the Yeshe Lama teachings. I just posted in the last 10 minutes.

 

ralis

 

This dos not at all confirm what you say about authoritarian gurus. My teacher is in general very much in favour of spreading a lot of previosuly secret practices. Some he also thinks could be started right away, some he thinks should only be done on a reasonable foundation of basic practices and some are for fairly advanced, some for advanced and some for very very advenced people or just people that are particulary suited for something that is not suitable for most people. So he would not keep secrets but just give recomendations about what are suitable preparation for each particular practice and beyond that hope people figure out it is good advice to follow and that peoples expeirences will help create a broader knowledge in the cultivation community of what is suitable to do with such and such foundation.

 

The reason FEW people from the west should do Thogal is that few (which does mean some can) people in the west have yet reached the level of acomplishment that would prepare them to get anywhere with or mentaly survive the practice . The reason it is a joke when most people without such preparation does Thogal is firstly it mostly won`t work at all and secondly that if it kind of starts to work they will only disintegrate in the psychotic sense. Thogal is mostly for people that are already quite highly enlightened and that are willing to spend 9 years or so alone in a cave in darkness. He`s not a guru anyway just a very sensible norwegian guy in jeans that teaches some meditation in addition to other stuff he works with and used to be a monk.

[goldisheavy]

So, what are the problems with someone in the west doing thogal? Why is it a joke? This just confirms what I have been saying all along about the authoritarian guru. I refer you to my thread on the Yeshe Lama teachings. I just posted in the last 10 minutes.

 

ralis

 

The problem is obvious if you read what Thogal is. And these days Thogal is available in an openly published form. Once you understand the gist of it, you can invent your own Thogal too. So let's go over this briefly.

 

Thogal involves opening yourself to manifesting spontaneous miraculous visions right within normal waking experience. Right then and there you would be qualified insane according to the DSM IV manual of western psychiatry. That's not to say the psychiatry is correct, but it should give you an idea of how unconventional this already is right at that point. So first is you notice various visions appear. For example, you look up at the sky and you see colors twirling and dancing in the sky. The colors then shift to become a face you know or don't know. This face floats in the sky. Then the face becomes a triangle and it spins around. Then the triangle bursts into a rainbow and moved into the ground. Now it's under your feet. Now this energy changes into mist and goes into your nose. And so on. When this begins to happen, there is still clear separation between what is obviously a visionary energy and what you call "real world". So you can still clearly tell them apart. For example you might think the face in the sky is fake, but the sky is real. And you might think the mist is fake, but your nose is real.

 

Then, as these visions manifest, you are instructed to BLEND THEM with reality. What does this mean? It means you can no longer tell if the world is real or a vision, and you cannot tell if the face in the sky is just a fake vision or a real appearance. That's what the blending is. Once you accomplish this, you are utterly GONE in every sense. You don't exist in an ordinary space time. Laws of physics DO NOT apply to you, and there is no such thing as "normal" for you. At that point you've destroyed the world as you know it. It's gone.

 

If you are not ready for this, you'll go so FUCKING MAD long before you finish this practice! Why? Because as long as you maintain a belief system about what the world is, what reality is, what is possible and what is not possible, and you don't understand what does it mean that appearances are empty, and you don't understand the nature of intent, as long as you maintain that structure in your mind, all the visions will seem maddening, crazy, scary, wrong, sick, repulsive, disturbing and you'll QUICKLY run either to the hospital or the Guru and beg the Guru to take all that crap away and make it all go away and make all your vision go back to normal, back to what you're used to seeing.

 

The only person who experiences joy and bliss and freedom in thogal is someone who is utterly, UTTERLY beyond the mundane world. Are you ready? You don't mind dying? You don't mind torture? You can eat slime from the toilet? You are not afraid to be eaten by animals? Good! That means you are almost ready. If on top of this you also have great kindness and a fun-loving mind, you are almost ready. Then you can begin thogal.

 

Truth is... by the time you are ready for thogal, you DO NOT NEED thogal, because you will intuitively know what is thogal, how it works, and you don't need lama to give it to you. You'll know it in your bones.

[markern]

Nicely put goldisheavy