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Yeah, I think they used to be more like socially conservative but really anti-war and (ostensibly) humanitarian, but now they're just boiler-plate neocons. So, basically the same trajectory as the European Christian Democratic parties. I think they even joined with the LDP to try and amend the constitution to allow Japan to declare war.
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Apr 4, 2019 23:14
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no party but the japanese communist party party even if it’s more demsoc than communist
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Apr 5, 2019 00:55
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Senju Kannon posted:komeito? aren't they, like, super conservative? Hmm I get the sense they may not happily receive your earlier (fantastic, btw) treatise on Buddhist socialism. This is why I like Tibetan Buddhism, because we don't have neoliberal politics. ... Instead it's all just theocratic feudalism. 
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Apr 5, 2019 05:18
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Paramemetic posted:Hmm I get the sense they may not happily receive your earlier (fantastic, btw) treatise on Buddhist socialism. Both are still better than dark buddhism.
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Apr 5, 2019 19:08
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are they? tho obvs the worst is myanmar's literal genocide advocating monks. the fact that so many books about engaged buddhism mention aung san suu kyi as an example is a gigantic embarrassment now. like whoops, now she's either at best silent on genocide or at worst complicit
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Apr 5, 2019 21:43
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Senju Kannon posted:are they? I mean comparatively in the modern day, I don't see any of those two actively advocating mixing buddhism with Randian objectivism.
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Apr 5, 2019 21:49
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Senior Scarybagels posted:I mean comparatively in the modern day, I don't see any of those two actively advocating mixing buddhism with Randian objectivism. I'd say so though I'd also shy from calling it a Buddhism. Yiggy talks about through a glass darkly takes on Buddhism and objectivists trying to make it work is up there with Westerners trying to assert that Tibetan Buddhist magical rituals are meant to be understood as strictly symbolic mind theatre. I mean, take it however you want but at a certain point it gets silly. Pivoting though, it really is fascinating how the religions and cultures that Buddhism mingled with along the way changed the picture. You go from Buddha's direct repudiation of the caste system to Tibet where they go "castes aren't real but clearly meritorious beings get more wealth and power and obviously bodhisattvas manifest into rich, powerful feudal warlord families because they can do more good there!!" And then China mixes it in there with Confucian and Taoist concepts explicitly meant to maintain rigid social orders and suddenly we're left with very different looking sanghas. But props to the Mahayana for bringing Dharma to the people and making it possible for laypeople to meaningfully engage with Dharma in a non-transactional way. And yet I still have to court wealthy patrons to support our center. Maybe something to be said for those Pure Land sects.
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Apr 5, 2019 22:09
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there’s a reason so many burakumin became jodo shinshu
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Apr 5, 2019 22:15
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Senju Kannon posted:there’s a reason so many burakumin became jodo shinshu Yeah, it tracks. One of the things that's always fascinated me in general is what appears to be a very practical and pragmatic approach to Dharma that is functionally inclusive of laypeople, far more so than Tibetan Buddhism. Tibetan Buddhism became extremely about the monastic institution to a point that it struggles wherever there isn't a culture of lay support of monasteries. Practices are elaborate and effective but the common understanding remains that unless you're a high Lama or at the very least an accomplished monk who has done many years of retreat, your best hope is to aspire to become one of those things in a future life. The dissemination to the West has been extremely awkward essentially because the people who understand the system are trying to teach people who want to practice, which they usually only encounter within the monastic colleges. Every teaching for laypeople in India I've been at has basically focused on "do skillful deeds and practice the 5 precepts if you can because otherwise you go to a hell realm. And those hell realms are......." Westerners don't want that, instead wanting to actually practice with an expectation of benefit. No zealot like a convert, right? I think that's a lot of why Japanese Buddhism (and Zen in particular) has succeeded more in the West. It isn't exclusive of laypeople. But it seems to me it also generally tends to be less intellectualized, yeah? An emphasis on practice rather than memorizing philosophical texts from thousand year old warlord philosophers, yeah? I think part of the distortion of our view looking at Dharma from outside our culture (and all Westerners are doing this) comes from cultural distance, yeah? We're not getting Buddhism straight from Buddha, and we can't, and we can't even do it by going back to the sutras because those weren't given in a culture that we can relate easily to, yeah? But I think in many cases Japanese Buddhisms seem, at least superficially, more accessible than, say, Tibetan Buddhism, because the primacy of the monastic institution isn't there. I guess there isn't too much of a question there except, is that perception accurate in your opinion? I don't know much even about Tibetan Buddhism and my knowledge of other Buddhisms is even worse. What could I read or watch to see Japanese expressions of Buddhism as it's actually practiced? I've been fortunate to be about to learn Tibetan and speaking the language, at least for Tibetans, seems to usually be enough to let them be real with you rather than giving the watered down stuff, but I'm not sure how I could get that with Japanese Buddhisms outside for example SGI.
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Apr 5, 2019 22:58
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Paramemetic posted:I'd say so though I'd also shy from calling it a Buddhism. I just use any point I can to take the mickey out of Dark/Black/Objectivist Buddhism honestly.
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Apr 5, 2019 23:34
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Senior Scarybagels posted:I just use any point I can to take the mickey out of Dark/Black/Objectivist Buddhism honestly.
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Apr 5, 2019 23:43
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Nessus posted:It seems like Dark Buddhism is the natural end state of the western encounter with how Buddhist practice does, in most cases, work pretty darn well and even has measurable effects (the god drat neuroscience article I've been reading fifty times for every actual discussion of the dharma) while also being ideologically and aesthetically opposed to most of what led Buddhism to reach this conclusion. That or Diamond Mountain yeah. Anything Ken Wilber writes is also full of occidentocentric bullshit and "Buddhism is just neurology" but also literally telling his critics too gently caress themselves lmao
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Apr 5, 2019 23:54
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The question for me in that situation kind of becomes, well... is it better than nothing? Is it better to get asses on cushions that are at least passively exposing themselves to the Dharma, however diluted? Or is that, as I've seen touched on in this or the last thread, actually spiritually dangerous in some way?
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Apr 6, 2019 00:15
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Reene posted:The question for me in that situation kind of becomes, well... is it better than nothing? Is it better to get asses on cushions that are at least passively exposing themselves to the Dharma, however diluted? Or is that, as I've seen touched on in this or the last thread, actually spiritually dangerous in some way? I think there are elements of Dharma that it is good to expose people to, however passively, like the four noble truths, the four thoughts that turn the mind to the Dharma, the five precepts, or the noble eightfold path. I don't think anyone can be harmed by being exposed to those things in whole or in part. I would not have come to the Dharma at all if I had not started by first observing only a few of the five precepts, for example. On the other hand, while I think people can benefit from, for example, mindfulness or meditation, without a grounding in Dharma these can be somewhat harmful. Meditation on afflictive emotion is not good, for example, and at least in the Tibetan tradition people with intrusive thoughts, anxiety, and so on should not meditate. So this being a thing that the West teaches as a cure all is not a good thing and harmful. I think also that the half-measures approach often comes with the harm of thinking one is doing oneself good where one is not. For example, if someone has been taught that enlightenment just means being able to sit for an hour, or that it's just a happy state of mind, or so on, as often happens with the Western "philosophy only" approaches, can harm one's pursuit of the path. For example, when people meditate often times they'll start seeing vivid colors or having euphoric experiences, and if they do not have good instruction, they think that enlightenment means attaining that euphoric state. Or, there used to be a guy at our center who spent some time explaining that the experience on LSD is enlightenment, and he's learning Buddhism to achieve that state. He can't possibly attain enlightenment while he strives for this non-enlightened state. But in terms of the behavioral stuff, virtuous activity is virtuous and beneficial to everyone whether the person doing them also has a drink now and then or whatever. I think that Diamond Mountain stuff or Dark Buddhism are probably not good. The demon worshippers are probably better at least because they still at their core are trying to practice Buddhism, though they do tend to put their demon first sadly. The philosophers who try to argue that it's not transpersonal in nature? Not doing great, but if the activities are there, that's still meritorious. And I imagine that people reciting the name of the Heart Sutra over and over are coupling that devotional practice with other things, like observing the precepts and living mindfully, and that's beneficial. Certainly better than doing an elaborate guru offering then selling guns or liquor or whatever.
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Apr 6, 2019 00:44
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Paramemetic posted:Yeah, it tracks. One of the things that's always fascinated me in general is what appears to be a very practical and pragmatic approach to Dharma that is functionally inclusive of laypeople, far more so than Tibetan Buddhism. Tibetan Buddhism became extremely about the monastic institution to a point that it struggles wherever there isn't a culture of lay support of monasteries. Practices are elaborate and effective but the common understanding remains that unless you're a high Lama or at the very least an accomplished monk who has done many years of retreat, your best hope is to aspire to become one of those things in a future life. The dissemination to the West has been extremely awkward essentially because the people who understand the system are trying to teach people who want to practice, which they usually only encounter within the monastic colleges. i don't know, it's kinda difficult to discuss japanese buddhism without also talking about the ways the imperial family and succeeding shogunates used religion as justification for their rule. before the more popular innovations in buddhism, like jodo shu, jodo shinshu, zen, and nichiren, the monastic traditions in japan were very sectarian and strictly controlled by the imperial family. shingon and tendai are probably the most analogous to tibetan buddhism, both in their focus on monastic study as well as their esoteric practices, but there's not much english language translations of their teachings because they're not popular at all and translations are pretty much entirely focused on profit so no profit, no translation. i'm not sure how much zen is focused on lay study, i haven't studied it much outside of, like, the one anarchist monk who was executed in the high treason incident, but it is incredibly focused on meditation and reading koan, which the beatniks and beatnik fans love. jodo shu and jodo shinshu are focused on the nembutsu, with shinshu going so far as to say all other forms of buddhist practice are incapable of achieving buddhahood in our fallen age save for reliance on amida's primal vow of rebirth in the pure land by calling on his name, which in general is WAY too similar to christianity for most converts. this isn't helped by the fact that, in an attempt to assimilate and escape racist discrimination, the honpa hongwanji mission in america renamed itself the buddhist churches of america and protestantized worship (and when that failed, became a source of japanese culture in diaspora, though recently it's become more focused on spreading the dharma and being part of america's unique buddhist identity) a lot of the time these more popular forms of buddhism were persecuted by imperially recognized temples, like tendai, who saw them as competition. i know in the muramachi period the third head of jodo shinshu, rennyo shonin, and his family were nearly killed by tendai sohei over a dispute concerning tithing. lot of sectarian violence in those days anyway the buddhist sects in japan that are popular for japanese people (such as it is) are definitely jodo shinshu, zen, and nichiren and not the more esoteric, scholastic forms of buddhism like tendai and shingon. probably because you do definitely have to be a monk to do the cool stuff for the later, and monastic vocations are down globally and across all religions. so i think it's fair to say that popular japanese buddhism is not as scholastic as tibetan buddhism (tho obvs there's buddhologists in all of them who do good scholastic work, but it's not a focus at all), but there are schools of buddhism that are more similar to tibetan buddhism than they are to, say, jodo shinshu, even if tendai has within it satori and koan and nembutsu and the heart sutra, etc.
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Apr 6, 2019 02:51
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Aren't Tendai and Shingon the main surviving Vajrayana practices outside of Tibet?
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Apr 6, 2019 03:00
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i know they disappeared in china around when kukai and dengyo daishi established shingon and tendai, respectively, like after kukai brought esoteric texts with him and before degnyo daishi returned to china to get more esoteric texts since they were more popular than the tien'tai texts he wanted to focus on i don't know if it doesn't exist elsewhere, tho
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Apr 6, 2019 03:33
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That all tracks. As I was talking to someone else about it earlier, I think the main thing that has always caused me to struggle with Tibetan Buddhism is made most clear in the "Four Thoughts that Turn the Mind to the Dharma," which are the first preliminary practice. The first thought is about the precious human life and how dumb it would be to waste such a rare opportunity; but the subtext here is absolutely "so why aren't you a monk?" I am completely ignorant regarding Tendai and have only a passing familiarity with Shingon as "that other Vajrayana tradition" which, in many ways, reads as "those other Buddhist wizards." That is, I know they do esoteric practices to accelerate the Mahayana attainments, but I don't know the details of them. It makes sense that it would be tied up in the Imperial family and kept consistent. In Tibet the monasteries were fiefdoms, the serfs offered their production to the monastery in return for the spiritual protection of the monastery and the military protection of the monastic patrons. But specific institutions, like the Dalai Lama, for example, were established by conquering Mongolians. Basically the entire history is intrinsically tied to the union of religion and secular power. When the Mongolians conquered and established the Dalai Lama as the "spiritual and secular leader of the Tibetan people," with the understanding here being "at the pleasure of the Khan," this too turned into extreme sectarian violence, to the point that even today there is a kind of obscured-but-present resentment towards the Gelugpa power structures. A lot of Tibetans in exile like to credit the Chinese with the destruction or loss of a huge number of texts, but most Red Hats will generally acknowledge that the Gelugpa did far more damage to the other sects early on than the Chinese did later. I suppose what has always somewhat chaffed me (despite being myself deeply involved with it) has been the very strong delineations between monastics and laypersons. Tibetan lay traditions exist, but even those are preserved in monastic institutions, and the "authentic" lay-yogi traditions tend to be family lines in the Nyingmapa tradition that Westerners have no access to and monastics have no interest in. I stayed in a monastery for a few months a few years ago to study ritual practices and was constantly asked why I'm not a monk. It's come more to a head now, because last year in pursuing my master's degree I had to make sacrifices in my daily practice, and then I had a kid which has done it no favors either. Now I'm trying to maintain my mind training in the absence of the rigorous ritual systems, and Tibetan Buddhism is pretty poorly equipped for this. As a result, I'm interested in what other traditions do that are more inclusive of laity. I might take a look at what if any Japanese traditions are around here. They aren't involved with the inter-traditional organization in the area, I know that much. Vietnamese Zen and Chan and a whole lot of Theravadans in that scene, but I've seen no Japanese practitioners or leaders in those communities. And beyond that, I can check the bona fides of Tibetan centers - not so much Japanese ones. I'm interested in what other centers are doing to bring Dharma to the West, but not really equipped to sort authentic teachings from Western reinterpretations outside the Tibetan tradition.
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Apr 6, 2019 04:14
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Paramemetic, how familiar are you with the more traditionally Indian views on practice as a householder? It comes up in a ton of aspects of Indian religions where the lay/monastic thing wasn't a duality so much as a spectrum and the practicing or devout householder was the middle ground of the two and was generally entirely respected, and probably in many cases considered nearly optimal because it allows one to engage wholeheartedly in spiritual pursuits, but also isn't turning away from doing one's duty with respect to society. I know that style of practice made it into Tibet because a bunch of the extremely early and most-highly revered tibetan yogis basically operated in that style of keeping a house and family and livelihood, but also were allowing students or orphans or whatever to stay there at times. Definitely check out Zen, the lack of japanese in American zen was largely a deliberate feature intended by both Rinzai and Soto establishments back in Japan who felt that Japanese Zen had almost completely degenerated and that westerners earnestness for practice might be an improvement. Training up a few generations of Americans to essentially translate the practice into something that works for westerners was seen as the primary effort. Ultimately they ended up with a lot of the same problems that they were trying to leave behind in Japan, but Zen is definitely actively being translated into locally relevant flavors and it's interesting to experience the parts that each group resonated the most with and kept and what they stripped away. Also there's a ton of people with some connection to vajrayana who turn up at zen practice places. I was at a birthday meal for a pretty high up lineage holder and I think more people there knew him through vajrayana stuff than zen
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Apr 6, 2019 18:37
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Not super familiar at all. I'm in a very orthodox lay-practice position within a fairly orthodox lineage of Tibetan Buddhism, though many accommodations are made for Westerners because of the realities of Western life. Certainly lay practice was more common in early Tibet, it wasn't until Gampopa and Marpa that monasticism really became a thing at all. Original practice was exactly about yogis and their disciples - however by about 1000 years ago it had organized itself into strictly regimented monasticism. An example of this is in the institution of the "three year retreat" in the Red Hat sects - at some point, it was determined that retreat was important, that completing cycles of teachings (such as the Six Yogas of Naropa) was important, and that this was best accomplished through a three year retreat, which became a standard part of the curriculum of monastic colleges in many cases, or at least was done in a systematic manner, which can then be endorsed by the Lama as having been completed regardless of, for example, whether one actually attains during it. Another good example is the preliminary practice, which originally was instructed by the Lama to the student based on that student's actual karmic needs, but eventually became standardized into "do 100,000 of each of these." I was given a book some years ago that I started reading last night called Tibetan Zen, about Chinese Zen Buddhist practices that were extremely briefly practiced in Tibet in the 900s. These were preserved in the Dunhuang Cave Texts. Essentially Chan Mahayana Buddhists showed up in Tibet at some point, but because they so thoroughly challenged the prevailing monastic institutions the emperor demanded they debate the Indian monastics and in the end they lost and were expelled. These texts are basically what you'd expect, arguing that monasticism and tradition and such are not really ideal, and that we should just focus on meditation and getting those wisdom gains instead of the whole "gradual path" thing which became regimented through the monastic orthodoxy. I'm probably at a point in my practice where I need to turn more towards that as my ritual practice is made far more difficult by the inclusion of a baby and the addition of "stay-at-home dad" to my otherwise previously free career as "monastic attendant and translation assistant." I'll look more into the Zen stuff. I'm actually fascinated by the idea that Zen in Japan had deteriorated and earnest Western students are seen as a feature, it's so different from the Tibetan notion that "well these Westerners don't speak Tibetan and can't memorize the texts and teachings so they can't really do it, but let's humor them a bit."
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Apr 6, 2019 20:58
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you gotta give it to the dalai lama, he saw an opportunity to fund tibetan refugees and he fuckin took it. i don't know if he got his own beak wet, but he certainly knew how to sell his religion that, by all objective standards, should not be as successful in america as it is.
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Apr 6, 2019 21:12
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Paramemetic posted:I think that Diamond Mountain stuff or Dark Buddhism are probably not good.
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Apr 6, 2019 21:14
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Senju Kannon posted:you gotta give it to the dalai lama, he saw an opportunity to fund tibetan refugees and he fuckin took it. i don't know if he got his own beak wet, but he certainly knew how to sell his religion that, by all objective standards, should not be as successful in america as it is. Siivola posted:I feel like these are things I'd rather not bother googling, but they sound interesting in the same way Roko's Basilisk is interesting (which is to say, bafflingly stupid). Could someone give the short version?
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Apr 6, 2019 22:36
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poor taitetsu unno, he tried to be the dt suzuki of jodo shinshu but not even dt suzuki could be the dt suzuki of jodo shinshu
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Apr 6, 2019 23:24
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Senju Kannon posted:you gotta give it to the dalai lama, he saw an opportunity to fund tibetan refugees and he fuckin took it. i don't know if he got his own beak wet, but he certainly knew how to sell his religion that, by all objective standards, should not be as successful in america as it is. Yeah respect where respect is due. I don't know that HHDL would even think to get his beak wet, he is pretty authentic. His staff, however, are monastic bureaucrats and almost certainly got their piece. HHDL was actually fully supportive of communism and met with Mao, but Mao told him he would have to renounce his religion and denounce Tibetan Buddhism to his followers and Holiness couldn't really abide by those conditions. He wanted to have an autonomous Tibetan Communist state, but Mao wanted all the cookies and knew he had the power to get them. A real shame, Holiness was super young when all that went down and the perfect age to recognize being a feudal emperor was old hat and communism is what's up, sad it went down that way. It is really impressive that Tibetan Buddhism is as popular in America as it is, given that the whole thing is about rigid hierarchy and personal submission to the Lama and so on, yeah. A lot of that is also in the presentation though - to some degree Tibetan Lamas don't really expect Westerners to "get it." In any case HHDL was a little less mercenary about it and perhaps less cynical than, say, Patrul R., who started handing out recognitions left and right in order to essentially impose obligations on those people to support monasteries. They got Steven Seagal real good.
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Apr 7, 2019 02:05
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Siivola posted:I feel like these are things I'd rather not bother googling, but they sound interesting in the same way Roko's Basilisk is interesting (which is to say, bafflingly stupid). Could someone give the short version? Nessus answered about Dark Buddhism, so I'll tell you quickly about Diamond Mountain: basically the first White guy to earn the Geshe degree (equivalent to a master's or doctorate in Gelug philosophy) decided that it would be extremely profitable to write a lot of books about how you can use merit generation techniques to get extremely rich as a venture capitalist and also be doing Buddhism at the same time. Then he got rich as a venture capitalist, took a couple consorts, got told he had to disrobe by the Gelugpa, so he started his own retreat center. Relatively recently his original consort murdered a guy during a retreat after both of them were told they had to leave, it was a whole thing that made Tibetan Buddhism at large look pretty bad despite the whole center is more or less not seen as in accord with the lineage it spawned from.
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Apr 7, 2019 02:08
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Paramemetic, I have to say, as someone who's going to Nepal to learn Tibetan, but has little experience with actual Tibetan Buddhism outside of an academic context, I love your insider perspective. I've thought about taking refuge in a Tibetan tradition, but I always worry that all the people will be the weird astrology/tarot/new age Buddhists I keep seeing on Facebook groups, so it's refreshing to get a legitimate perspective that isn't spouting dumb nonsense.
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Apr 7, 2019 06:48
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Hiro Protagonist posted:Paramemetic, I have to say, as someone who's going to Nepal to learn Tibetan, but has little experience with actual Tibetan Buddhism outside of an academic context, I love your insider perspective. I've thought about taking refuge in a Tibetan tradition, but I always worry that all the people will be the weird astrology/tarot/new age Buddhists I keep seeing on Facebook groups, so it's refreshing to get a legitimate perspective that isn't spouting dumb nonsense. Owns that you're doing that, are you doing the Rangjung Yeshe Institute program? I don't have the opportunity to do an extended program like that, so my spoken Tibetan is weak, with a partial Ladakhi influence, and I need a dictionary for more philosophical terms, but those intensives in Nepal are excellent. My teacher from UVA went to Kathmandu recently, I think he has retired but if you meet a Gen Tsetan Chonjore in your travels, let him know you know a student of his from UVA who thinks about him often. "The one with the center in Maryland" will make it fit. Sometimes my takes are a little overly cynical I think, I truly believe that the Tibetan tradition works and continues to work. I've had the opportunity to serve the Dharma both in the personal capacity of serving my Lama and in an institutional capacity, as I was blessed with an opportunity to be a part of the planning and execution of the 800th Anniversary of the Mahaparinirvana of the Great Drikungpa Jigten Sumgon. I do call's 'em as I see's 'em, though, and i'm happy that is of benefit to you. As a Tibetan speaker you'll have a lot more access to Tibetan culture generally. Tibetans in the diaspora are very aware of the danger of their culture eroding, but they are also aware that there are a lot of new age sorts in the Western Dharma communities. Generally speaking, just as with the monastics, Tibetans will open up a lot to someone who has taken the effort to learn their language as they'll (probably rightly) assume such a person doesn't have a passing, trivial interest so they can learn to fly or whatever. For what it's worth, I did study Tibetan Astrology in the Jonang tradition, so I don't know if that puts me in your Facebook groups group, but there's that. I've been blessed to study with many learned and accomplished teachers, if only briefly, and I've worked closely with my Lama and with others in our lineage. On the other hand, while my Lama is an incredibly scholar of the Dharma and particularly on the teachings of Jigten Sumgon's Gong Chig, Seven Supplications of Tara, and on the Vinaya, I am a terrible student whose academic focus is worse still than my already deficient practice. But again, I'm glad you're finding my perspective useful. I'm really enjoying the Tibetan Zen book I mentioned earlier. It's got a definitively Tibetan style and flavor to it while being almost categorically opposed to the typical teachings on the gradual path within the monastic institutions. Translations like this require translators, and I hope someday I can be involved in these kinds of projects, and you can too. I'd love to hear about your intended studies and so on, either by PM or here in the thread!
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Apr 7, 2019 07:05
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Nessus posted:"Dark Buddhism" claims to intermingle Zen Buddhism with the "teachings" of Ayn Rand's Objectivism, which is a bit like mingling peanut butter and poo poo, to my understanding.  Paramemetic posted:Nessus answered about Dark Buddhism, so I'll tell you quickly about Diamond Mountain: basically the first White guy to earn the Geshe degree (equivalent to a master's or doctorate in Gelug philosophy) decided that it would be extremely profitable to write a lot of books about how you can use merit generation techniques to get extremely rich as a venture capitalist and also be doing Buddhism at the same time. Then he got rich as a venture capitalist, took a couple consorts, got told he had to disrobe by the Gelugpa, so he started his own retreat center. 
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Apr 7, 2019 13:27
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Siivola posted:Do people actually call it that? "Oh yeah, I'm real into Dark Buddhism these days, all about that kindness and compassion to job creators"? I mean, of course they do because this cyberpunk future is stupid but It's pretty common among secular Buddhists, and even western Zen Buddhists, to believe that Buddhism is all about mindfulness / emptiness meditation and nothing else. So any mental dissonance about Buddhist ethics is sure not to arise, because these people never think about Buddhist ethics in the first place. So I can imagine that the same people who call themselves dark enlightenment would also think dark Buddhism is cool.
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Apr 7, 2019 14:31
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Siivola posted:Do people actually call it that? "Oh yeah, I'm real into Dark Buddhism these days, all about that kindness and compassion to job creators"? I mean, of course they do because this cyberpunk future is stupid but They do, the creator of Dark Buddhism named it that.
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Apr 7, 2019 14:33
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Thanks, man! I'll PM you later today. Also, sorry to anyone about the dig at astrology. I was just thinking of someone in particular in a group I'm in that keeps trying to advertise her business.
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Apr 7, 2019 16:28
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I'm reading over the various Japanese Buddhisms to gain some familiarity with them. It looks to me that Shingon is inaccessible to Westerners or non-Japanese speakers almost certainly, as it has maintained incredible secrecy, which is fascinating. Though, my reading did reinforce my contention that the essence of Vajrayana or esoteric Buddhism is that it is Buddhism with magical ritual and sorcery. Looking at the Zen schools, if someone with some understanding could clarify: Soto Zen is extremely focused on just-sitting, with the contention that seeking after Satori is unnecessary and instead one should focus on achieving the present mindful-awareness state at all times; Rinzai uses more formal systems of progression and aims to make gradual progress demonstrated through koan, is this right? And so Soto Zen is a response to Rinzai's formalization? At the moment I am not looking too deeply into the Pure Land schools, so I'm not looking very deeply into either Jodo Shinshu or Nichiren. My own tradition recognizes the existence of Pure Lands but we use them as a golden parachute, essentially. We practice consciousness projection so that at the moment of death, if one has not attained, we can try to project to the Lama's Pure Land, and if not there at least Buddha Amitabha's Pure Land, and if not even that is possible, at least to this world with a precious human life. I'm not yet despondent enough to look at Pure Lands as a primary goal! Then Tendai in particular makes a goal of trying to harmonize all the different schools and approaches of Buddhism, but like Shingon is not really accessible in the West presently. Is that about accurate?
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Apr 7, 2019 16:35
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Hiro Protagonist posted:Thanks, man! I'll PM you later today. All good, an amusing reality of Tibetan Astrology vs. Western Astrology is that Tibetan astrology is entirely pragmatic. It's learned to plan annual rituals to mitigate potential bad effects and to plan the rituals that need done on certain days (such as naga rituals, as they're fickle as hell). The Western approach to astrology, especially the modern "esoteric psychology," is extremely not of any interest to Tibetans. For example, Western astrologers might say something like "wow you are born with Taurus on the ascendant, so you are probably stubborn." But a Tibetan looks at this and sees it as obvious and kind of dumb. It's obvious if someone is stubborn! We don't need to do astrology for that purpose. But what direction should we travel if we want to make a lot of money? And should we do propitiatory rituals to avoid sickness this year? These are very important questions! Essentially, I am interested in some of the new age "stuff," but in a way that is not quite how new agers tend to approach it. Rather than being pop bunk esoteric psychology and new age for new age sake, I have some interest in those things only because, as I said in the reply before this, Vajrayana is basically "Buddhism but we're gonna do sorcery to min/max." It is because there's a common interest in those elements that the new age crew flocks to Tibetan Buddhism, but I at least try to keep it grounded in tradition. Theosophists did a real fuckin' number on our Western approaches to these things, frankly. And, amusingly, they hosed up a lot of modern Indian religion as well. Everyone is familiar with the "seven chakras," but not everyone is familiar with the fact that they come out of a particular commentary on a particular translation of a single tantra, and aren't universal. Tibetan Buddhist yogas often utilize 2, 3, 4, 8, or 64 chakras, for example. Still, even many Indian yogis will talk about the 7 chakra system as if these are actual anatomical structures within the subtle body, and not symbolic references to aspects of phenomenal awareness and consciousness. Indian yogis do this because Blavatsky advocated for Indian religion at a time when most Westerners were pushing for Christianization of India. Much of authentic Indian religion wasn't accessible to common Indians, however, because it's all in Sanskrit, so they relied on the English teachings about Indian religion, and those were mostly written with a lot of theosophical conceits. The new age is wild, basically, and it's a tragedy that most new agers don't know the origins of their beliefs, else they might actually have something of substance rather than bad astrology businesses.
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Apr 7, 2019 16:46
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Paramemetic posted:Looking at the Zen schools, if someone with some understanding could clarify: Soto Zen is extremely focused on just-sitting, with the contention that seeking after Satori is unnecessary and instead one should focus on achieving the present mindful-awareness state at all times; Rinzai uses more formal systems of progression and aims to make gradual progress demonstrated through koan, is this right? And so Soto Zen is a response to Rinzai's formalization? soto and rinzai have a complicated and intertwined background going back to the 800s AD (caodong and linji schools). there is, and historically has been, a difference in emphasis, but both schools include the use of koan practice, and it would be somewhat inaccurate to call one a reaction to the other. i'm personally more familiar with soto, but my impression is that, in addition to the different and more pronounced use of koan practice, you would find a greater emphasis on kenzho / satori in rinzai. soto is probably best understood as a purely nondual practice, and it is this context, manifesting and encompassing both the relative and the absolute in the concrete circumstances of life, that informs the perspective on what awakening really means: it is not, in the soto tradition, about a unique, or unusual or cathartic moment, though obviously any medititation practice is likely to include those. the practice is about seeing what is, ultimately, omnipresent. i would offer that the practice of soto zen as it exists in contemporary america is, or at least can be, very rewarding, especially if your work or family circumstnaces limit oter options. apart from taking precepts for those who desire to do so, there aren't structures of progression, and while there is a rich literature, it's essentially optional: the practice is just sitting; "just this is it". for an introduction, apart from visiting a local zen center, i might suggest: Opening the Hand of Thought (Uchiyama, Okumura) How to Cook Your Life (Uchiyama) (this book is amazing) Fukanzazengi (Dogen) (note this dates to the 1200s) Anything by Shohaku Okumura Genjokoan (Dogen, various translations, here is one; Realizing Genjokoan by Okumura is an excellent source / commentary) Two podcasts: Ancient Dragon Zen Gate (Leighton) and Sanshin Zen Center (Okumura). San francisco Zen Center also has an excellent podcast (I personally like the dharma talks by Ed Sattizhan and Paul Haller, but there are many excellent teachers there). dogen, the founder of the soto tradition in japan, produced a huge corpus of amazing, and somewhat inscrutable, works. starting with shobogenzo, they're well worth exploring if you wing up finding the tradition of interest. they are difficult for a number of reasons, most prominently including the attempt to put into words a nondual perspective, but also including his extensive knowledge of mahayana scriptures (and koan stories), which is a background assumption. so if you wind up digging deeper, then taking in some of the key sources can be helpful some snippets from genjokoan: As all things are buddha-dharma, there is delusion and realization, practice, birth and death, and there are buddhas and sentient beings. As the myriad things are without an abiding self, there is no delusion, no realization, no buddha, no sentient being, no birth and death. The buddha way is, basically, leaping clear of the many of the one; thus there are birth and death, delusion and realization, sentient beings and buddhas. Yet in attachment blossoms fall, and in aversion weeds spread. * * * To study the buddha way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things. When actualized by myriad things, your body and mind as well as the bodies and minds of others drop away. No trace of realization remains, and this no-trace continues endlessly. * * * Enlightenment is like the moon reflected on the water. The moon does not get wet, nor is the water broken. Although its light is wide and great, the moon is reflected even in a puddle an inch wide. The whole moon and the entire sky are reflected in dewdrops on the grass, or even in one drop of water. Enlightenment does not divide you, just as the moon does not break the water. You cannot hinder enlightenment, just as a drop of water does not hinder the moon in the sky. The depth of the drop is the height of the moon. Each reflection, however long of short its duration, manifests the vastness of the dewdrop, and realizes the limitlessness of the moonlight in the sky.
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Apr 7, 2019 19:05
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Nude Hoxha Cameo posted:a goodpost Fantastic, thank you. I'm meeting with my Lama tomorrow to discuss relaxing the obligations of some of the more time consuming practices that I've admittedly already lapsed on over the last year as I did my master's degree and had a kid. During the master's program my practice waned and then now with a kid I don't have time to do sometimes 2 or 3 hours of rituals. Whereas before I could more or less pretend myself a monk, I can't do so now. In turn I plan to ask if he can instruct me specifically in mind training and meditation, or else if I can have permission to seek that from a lineage like Zen that specializes specifically in that. Of course, we have meditation as a path in Tibetan Buddhism, but it's usually something done in the context of ritual or reserved for after someone has completed tantric cycles and so on. I've been instructed in meditation, but I think for some of that to be more successful I think it's important to have a teacher who you can discuss things with in order to improve that meditation. Meditation is a skill like any other skill, and I think it's important to have a teacher that can make sure that's advancing in an appropriate way; especially with something like meditation where there are altered states of consciousness involved and where it's easy to mistake an ASC for some kind of liberation experience or so on and fall off the path. So all of this is very helpful stuff, and I appreciate your taking the time to type all that up. It's particularly pertinent to my situation and it's consistent with how I was practicing meditation before I came into a very formalized Tibetan milieu. I hold the five precepts and have held eight and ten precepts at time, and I've taken bodhisattva vows, so I think that I could do well with Zen, if my Lama thinks it might be appropriate. In any case it's not surprising but always pleasant to see similar expressions in other schools of Buddhism as in one's own, so thanks again for your post.
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Apr 7, 2019 22:33
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So how do you structure a query in Tibetan astrology, or is it more like if you know you're on year X day Y month Z that there are a list of signifiers, and if there is no signifier either way, who cares, do whatever you like. Didn't you do a thread on that a while back, Para? pidan posted:It's pretty common among secular Buddhists, and even western Zen Buddhists, to believe that Buddhism is all about mindfulness / emptiness meditation and nothing else. So any mental dissonance about Buddhist ethics is sure not to arise, because these people never think about Buddhist ethics in the first place. I'm actually pretty bad at meditation beyond a sort of basic 'okay, chill... now' thing I learned in my seeker phase, which does not last for a long time or come with any focus beyond just 'Okay, I can make my brain shut up for a minute with an effort of will, and sometimes this makes things much clearer because it killed a particular runaway thought process.'
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Apr 7, 2019 23:45
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Nessus posted:So how do you structure a query in Tibetan astrology, or is it more like if you know you're on year X day Y month Z that there are a list of signifiers, and if there is no signifier either way, who cares, do whatever you like. Didn't you do a thread on that a while back, Para? Yeah I had a thread a few years ago. You either ask about specific dates and what they are good or not good for, like "I am building a house next week what day is best to start," or you do general queries like "I was born in the fire tiger year, what will this year look like?" And then there are a bunch of different calculations usually done up as a table. The real benefit comes from consulting with (or knowing) the recommendations for different outcomes, though. For example, it's one thing to know "your health will be lovely this year because your health element is opposed by the year's health element" but another to know "so you should clean temples and shrines, build bridges, or change your name or take vows for the year" as the way to mitigate that.
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Apr 8, 2019 00:35
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Paramemetic, Dharma Ocean is a legit Tibetan householder lineage with a major focus on meditation practice, starting with basic somatic awareness and going all the way to retreat practice of the Six Yogas. Their path starts with meditation to begin opening up the bodymind and they subsequently introduce ritual practice at the Vajrayana level. From what I can see, "insight" practices are introduced much more gradually and organically after the practitioner has stabilized shamatha and worked through a lot of their conditioning. They have downloadable audio practice sets and online "retreat programs" in addition to in-person retreats. You might be able to start with some of their more advanced practices because of the meditation & ngondro time you've already put in. In my opinion, their curriculum is extremely de-stultifying and refreshing, and is basically designed to jumpstart the process of moving towards Buddhahood and preparing for advanced Vajrayana practices at a healthy pace for householders with serious obligations & limited time in which to practice. This document describes their path and orientation. I've found their foundational practices transformative but haven't gone beyond those. I've worked with a couple of their teachers and found them great, and the advice Reggie Ray has given me in my couple of interactions with him has been on point.
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Apr 8, 2019 01:20
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Part of the reason that Tibetan Buddhisms did well in the US is that they came on the heel of the American (and British) spiritualist movements which, while substantially different, certainly set the stage for people to have some spiritual and paranormal-adjacent beliefs that christian traditions didn't really properly account for. The spiritualist stuff was really huge, to the extent that popular mediums and poo poo were even testifying in court cases. It was a major, decades long fascination that really shaped the way that Americans in particular (though it was popular in Europe, too, afaik it was most pronounced as an American movement) viewed and approached the esoteric.pidan posted:It's pretty common among secular Buddhists, and even western Zen Buddhists, to believe that Buddhism is all about mindfulness / emptiness meditation and nothing else. So any mental dissonance about Buddhist ethics is sure not to arise, because these people never think about Buddhist ethics in the first place. WRT zen that's really only true of people who have had no particular exposure to any zen practice community. A lot of people get into zen, or probably more accurately, fascinated by zen after reading about it and finding some of the more iconoclastic and anti-social eccentrics very relatable. I mean I'm sure there are plenty of people turning up at practice places with some really weird self-serving ideas about what kinds of behavior are appropriate, that's legitimately one of the bigger dilemmas that Zen traditions face and part of the reason why Zen in particular is set up shockingly well for newcomers to assume that someone misbehaving is just ~zen eccentricty~ Nessus posted:So how do you structure a query in Tibetan astrology, or is it more like if you know you're on year X day Y month Z that there are a list of signifiers, and if there is no signifier either way, who cares, do whatever you like. Didn't you do a thread on that a while back, Para? People have invested a shocking amount of time into divesting buddhist practice of all compassionate or altruistic aspects and it's really weird because it becomes just deeply self-absorbed. Like even a basic practice of sitting quietly can just be a navel-gazing self-indulgent way of disconnecting from the world when done for the wrong reasons Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 07:49 on Apr 8, 2019 |
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Apr 8, 2019 07:36
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