It's not that I want to call you a hypocrite, it's that I want to see you honour the precept vows which I assume you've taken.ObamaCaresHugSquad posted:I am saying Trungpa had some positive qualities, and for people who aren't fools, something can be learned from him. The most positive lesson that can be taken from him is what not to do. The quality of the teachings is directly correlated to the quality of the teacher, "crazy wisdom" isn't just "I'm going to do whatever the hell I want while teaching Buddhism" it's "I'm going to live Dharma, but not how might be expected. Understanding of how it is Dharma will help you learn." Crazy wisdom is a life made into a koan. What you just said is possibly the worst thing I've ever seen anyone post in this thread, it's no different than if someone in a thread on catholicism came in and defended pedophile priests because they were particularly godly men in rhetoric in spite of their worldly actions. We shouldn't be defending monsters in our faith because of perceived usefulness of their teachings, because their teachings are essentially empty if they don't have the wisdom themselves to take anything from it. You cannot be an effective teacher of Dharma if you yourself are pretty much Mara. Just because some of his students turned out well isn't a statement of his great teachings in spite of his character, it's a statement of his students' great wisdom in spite of his teachings. I think it's deplorable to defend him from a dharma perspective while on this very page you basically said you'd have no problems calling one of or all people people (Tenzin Gyatso, Ngawang Kunga Tegchen Palbar Trinley Samphel Wangyi Gyalpo & Jigdal Dagchen Sakya [and to an extent the Sakya family], Ogyen Trinley Dorje & Trinley Thaye Dorje (debatably)) who have a serious claim to have a far deeper understanding of Dharma than either you or Trungpa is a charlatain without foundation. You didn't straight up say you believed they were, but the fact that you said you would be willing to while at the same time you say: ObamaCaresHugSquad posted:I don't feel qualified to judge the extent of the damage he caused, and I am not sure why you do. What did you see? And not just hear...there's always rumors. Is enormously hypocritical. You feel comfortable expressing a willingness to label great and respected teachers who might disagree with you as charlatans, but you don't feel comfortable passing any meaningful judgement on a known violator of the oaths of his order who basically didn't have a bone of actual Dharma in his practice because hey, look at the good things that came out of his teachings. Back to my original point, you don't seem to have an actual interest in learning about Dharma, you seem to really want to have your worldview reinforced at all costs and you're willing to vilify those who disagree with you and lionize those who, regardless of their failings, might be eloquent in a way you respect. You never even engaged the very real point that your view of emotions among Arahats is unsupported by Dharma, you just said you weren't going to come back and then promptly pretended the fourth precept wasn't a thing, because frankly I'd be okay with either you keeping your word or engaging in a real discussion with someone who actually knows their stuff, which you've so far been unwilling to do in exchange for meaningless debate style that, pardon my butchering of Latin here, basically seems to be argumentum ab caput ex asine. It's not that you're a hypocrite, it's that you have no interest in learning about Dharma yet seem to be willing to present yourself as a fitting judge as to the Buddhist status of others. WAFFLEHOUND fucked around with this message at 23:37 on Dec 7, 2013 |
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Dec 7, 2013 23:24
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ObamaCaresHugSquad posted:Many of you have already expressed humility in this regard. ObamaCaresHugSquad posted:You just don't get it. I don't need to learn about Dharma anymore (but I will). I reached the end (well, near it). And I am trying to show the way. I only need to learn about Dharma to the extent it helps me explain to others. Holy loving poo poo are you claiming to be a loving Arahat?
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Dec 7, 2013 23:47
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I'm literally Maitreya. ObamaCaresHugSquad posted:You're being foolish And you should unironically should seek professional mental health advice if you think you're an Arahat, and professional theological advice if you think your really terrible understanding of Dharma is canon.
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Dec 8, 2013 00:23
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ObamaCaresHugSquad posted:Close this thread. If you're an Arahat then you're incapable of lying. You said you were going to leave the thread, but you didn't. Therefore you have committed an act an Arahat is incapable of and are therefore not an Arahat. Plus I mean your posting is pure suffering for all who see it. Edit: "Dance puppets, dance!"
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Dec 8, 2013 00:28
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ObamaCaresHugSquad posted:Arahants are not incapable of lying. They just have no reason to. quote:Five impossibilities, to wit, for an arahant intentionally to take life, or to take what is not given, so as to amount to theft, or to commit sexual offense, or to lie deliberately, or to spend stored-up treasure in worldly enjoyments, as in the days before he left the world. MN - I.523 Whoops, your understanding of dharma is flawed, oh grating one.
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Dec 8, 2013 00:42
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ObamaCaresHugSquad posted:Getting people mad has its own rewards Oh good here's that puppet master claim I predicted.
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Dec 8, 2013 00:55
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Ruddha posted:It is said that the Buddha, upon the moment of his awakening, spontaneously said, "Wonder of wonders! All people are inherently enlightened, but because they don't post enough they do not see." Please don't stop posting.
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Dec 8, 2013 01:00
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ObamaCaresHugSquad posted:Sounds like a sense of self to me! You don't have a great grasp of atman vs anatman. ObamaCaresHugSquad posted:And maybe emotions aren't tainted... but I am going to act as if they are until I can't push through any longer. I am going the distance, I don't give a gently caress. I want to be free of all the bullshit. If I overshoot the mark at first, so be it. This is my path. You all don't have to agree. But it's almost like I hit a nerve. Your precious feelings Remember that time when Buddha showed the world the Middle Way and those who would be his deciples went "Nah he had it right when he was an ascetic before that whole Middle Way thing #fuckit #yolo
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Dec 8, 2013 02:05
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ObamaCaresHugSquad posted:Because wishing to experience states without being attached to them is the wish for power. There's a difference between the desire cling to these emotions without suffering (which isn't going to happen) and actually experiencing the emotions without suffering (which does happen). Just because you no longer suffer from experiencing them doesn't mean they still don't arise. Also, on a less theological note, you should really consider talking to Naropa's counselling services, since I think that's where you are. You really don't come across as very well and you've got some serious delusions of grandeur and infallibility going on that are as worrying as things can get by reading your posts over the internet, not to mention that combined with some of the stuff you've posted here makes me think you're aware of this fact yourself. Seriously though, you are basically lashing out at the existence of emotions while at the same time being highly emotional and claiming to be extra special and so far along in your practice that only you have it figured out. I think it should be fairly obvious to you if you step back and think about it rationally that maybe you need some outside help not with Dharma but with how you're coping things, because Buddhism in an attempt to reject all feeling isn't just unskillful, it's super unhealthy and it really seems like you're trying to use your practice to address some other underlying issues.
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Dec 8, 2013 02:21
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Razage posted:Way back ObamaCaresHugSquad said that having a passport or Social Security Number would qualify one to say they are American. This is incorrect, what if this same passport holder was a member of a Communist Party, oh boy would there be an uproar then. To dance around this debate, labels do have use, to some of us they matter because as has been pointed out in the past people misrepresenting Buddhist teachings are both impacting access of (real) Western Buddhists to sanghas in some cases and, more importantly, are spreading false Dharma if they say that X belief is consistent with Buddhism. Not too many people here go off on theological nuances like ObamaCaresHugSquad, but I've pointed out to people that the core "requirement" for being a Buddhist is honestly taking refuge, and that it's inconsistent with the idea that there isn't rebirth or some handwavey notion of our particles being reborn which is pretty resoundingly rejected throughout all of Buddhist history. It's one thing to say "You believe in a Mahayana teaching and I am Theravada therefore you are not Buddhist" and it's another to basically take the root of the entire religion out, as some people try to do. I tell people that if they aren't concerned with labels then they probably shouldn't use them, because some of us are and it has real impacts on our lives and faiths when Buddhism is misrepresented, and if you earnestly believe yourself to be a Buddhist and are spreading False Dharma then you really should take a look into that (not directed at you or anyone in particular, just things I've seen come up in here).
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Dec 8, 2013 09:02
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Razage posted:You have pointed out how the mis-use of a label is detrimental. What is the positive aspect of the label? The most practical example I can think of right off the top of my head is: "I don't drink." "Why?" "I'm Buddhist." If the label is meaningful: "Oh, okay" If the label is how it actually is "The hell? My buddy Dave is Buddhist Christian and he smokes weed 24/7 as part of his spiritual practice and is a borderline alcoholic". Basically it's useful in some contexts to be able to accurately summarize your beliefs to others, particularly as it relates to religious services.
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Dec 8, 2013 11:39
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ObamaCaresHugSquad posted:An emotion would be creative if it can fit no prior category. As in, you couldn't feel it and say "this is joy". It would be something entirely new in itself. An entirely new thing in the world that would require articulation and expression. I think this is an entirely over-complicated way of trying to understand it. I mean, it's really clear from both the canon and from later Buddhist scholarship that liberation isn't cessation of emotions, it's cessation of suffering which includes suffering that can come from those emotions. The Dalai Lama, for example, certainly feels joy and sadness. What he probably feels much less of suffering due to these emotions than any of us here. It is possible to feel happy without having negative grasping emotions that bind us to a desire for that happiness, for example. ObamaCaresHugSquad posted:First off, I wonder how you know someone "who is lost in the forest but sees the treeline" is supposed to act. I think I act exactly like that kind of person, lol. They probably wouldn't be rude, self-centred, have a poor grasp of the Dharma, insist that they are no longer in a position where they need to learn and thus everyone trying to help them is ignorant, edit: get so frustrated that they lash out with maliciousness, and reject great teachers who might disagree with them, or say things like this: ObamaCaresHugSquad posted:It takes someone with actual curiousity and intellectual precision to move a discussion forward. When for a couple of pages many of us have actually tried presenting you with real, solid information on the very questions you asked about. We just also take issue with your attitude and your ridiculous claims to be near Arahatship when despite the fact that you are probably one of the least knowledgeable and most ego-centric posters in this thread who claims to be a Buddhist. Beyond not being able to admit that you may have been wrong at any point, even now there cannot be a concession that makes others correct in their understanding of the Dharma no matter how great a teacher they may be. You seem to only operate on the assumption that you are capable of greater understanding than anyone else here and therefore that some novel new theory that you come up with but is different from the known understanding is correct, because the alternative is you were wrong and we were in a position where we were teaching you something. I'm not saying that as some giant personal shot, if you can't handle criticism of yourself from a Dharma perspective then you need to really consider why you feel that way, because Buddha himself wasn't above admonishing disciples who had decided to embrace wrong view.
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Dec 8, 2013 21:34
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ObamaCaresHugSquad posted:Listen buddy I dunno why you go through all this trouble. None of this is helpful to me in any way. I can't begin to imagine why, most people would find posts from people helping them with dharma or pointing out that their behaviour is inappropriate to be helpful. You really should consider why it's not helpful to you, because it's not me. And many of us here talk outside of this thread or even know each other in person, there isn't a royal "we" here as much as the fact that a lot of us are bothered by your behaviour and claims. Please retread my last post and assume I wasn't speaking from anger but from stern compassion, since that's accurate. You're assigning undue maliciousness to what I say, when I'm trying, like many other posters here, to help you. As to your Dalai Lama question: http://www.dalailama.com/messages/transcripts/10-questions-time-magazine First response.
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Dec 8, 2013 22:02
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ObamaCaresHugSquad posted:Alright what do you want me to do at this point. I'm getting tired of this whole thing. I am getting the sense that you also have an uncompromising position and aren't actually willing to agree to disagree. The reason I'm not compromising is your thesis is demonstrably incorrect. You keep arriving at some novel conclusion that butts up against religious scholarship for the last 2500 years. Not to mention that the idea of emotions being bad is actually a fairly common beginner conversation, one that people new to Dharma are often concerned about. The onus isn't on me to come to some kind of middle ground with an idea that isn't even accurate, and the scorn you're getting is in large part directed at your disdain for those trying to help you understand the truth while at the same time you make outrageous claims and call those disagreeing with your (incorrect) ideas either not Buddhist, not enlightened enough, or charlatans. You've been so willing to personally attack others on their understanding and so totally unwilling to examine yours in the slightest.
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Dec 8, 2013 22:20
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ObamaCaresHugSquad posted:I'm not sure you want to hear my responses to these kinds of things anymore. But this doesn't say what you think it does. I see anger as the creative type of feeling, a precursor to articulation of something, and not necessarily self-reflexive. I doubt he feels self-reflexive sadness for example,but probably sadness over things in the world. You still don't understand my point of view. Of course it doesn't say what I think it does. I'm sorry for thinking I had a point, I obviously am incapable of the kind of understanding you have and only you know Dharma. How foolish of me.
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Dec 8, 2013 22:23
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ObamaCaresHugSquad posted:OK you're being an idiot. You are the poster farthest away from Dharma I have ever seen in this thread, and that includes the occasional FYAD insurgency.
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Dec 8, 2013 22:26
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ObamaCaresHugSquad posted:That's the goal, to be free of the Dharma. What did you think, it was a color by numbers adventure? If you just do everything you're supposed to, you get the goodies? That is what Buddhism is, yes. It's a path to follow, not a dirt road to go ATVing around and occasionally just happen to overlap. There is a goal and Dharma is the path to that goal.
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Dec 8, 2013 22:32
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ObamaCaresHugSquad posted:I'm much more flexible than the rabble in this thread. I am at least willing to agree to disagree. Would someone who has actually cultivated any Buddha nature call people trying to help teach them Dharma "rabble"?
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Dec 8, 2013 22:35
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Please please please don't think I'm trolling when I say you really should consider reaching out to counselling services. I'm not trying to be a dick, you come across as unstable and not in a good place.
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Dec 8, 2013 22:44
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ObamaCaresHugSquad posted:OK let me go do that then and see what they say. Don't forget to mention that you think you're pretty much an arahat. Again, not being a dick, it's just that that's kind of an important detail.
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Dec 8, 2013 22:46
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ObamaCaresHugSquad posted:I can give you my cell and we can hash this out on the phone, I'm sick of this..not looking to argue though XXX-XXX-XXXX, I'll edit this out once you call.
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Dec 8, 2013 22:47
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ObamaCaresHugSquad posted:I actually called that number by the way. Good.
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Dec 8, 2013 22:50
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I'm not giving my phone number to an unstable person who takes everything as an attack. I gave you the number you need, even if it's not the one you want.
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Dec 8, 2013 22:54
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PrinceRandom posted:I'm gettin' creepy vibes now, do Buddhists do Auras? Some weird auric poo poo goin' down... I'm super unironically creeped out by his instance on my phone number and how he's acting totally manic about it.
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Dec 8, 2013 22:58
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To be fair, Yiggy, we've butt heads before but I respect you as knowledgable and not a creepy unstable person.
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Dec 8, 2013 23:17
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My interactions with you aren't driven by malice and you'd benefit hugely to learn to distinguish strong criticism and concern from malice. You'd also benefit from not assuming to worst about the motivations of others. Edit: your insistence on the phone thing is creepy as hell and I'm not the only person who has solid that you come across as unstable. WAFFLEHOUND fucked around with this message at 23:29 on Dec 8, 2013 |
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Dec 8, 2013 23:26
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ObamaCaresHugSquad posted:Then let's talk dude. You're still fronting (..reverse fronting) This is still super super super creepy to me.
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Dec 8, 2013 23:28
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Paramemetic posted:Jesus you two get a room. It's the Internet, asking for a phone call is weird. Just PM or some poo poo. Christ. One time some guy from the internet offered me moonshine while telling stories about smurfs.
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Dec 8, 2013 23:31
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ObamaCaresHugSquad posted:OK then, again.. You are not trying to help me. You just want to be words on a computer screen. Don't pretend otherwise. I don't actually want to talk to you that bad. You've said nothing interesting that I would like to hear over again. I both want to help you and don't even remotely want you to have any kind of identifying information about me. I don't know how you can't see that this claim that I can't actually want to help you without giving you my information is really really weird and disconcerting.
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Dec 8, 2013 23:33
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Yiggy posted:Respectfully said: For the most part we're all strangers here. Honestly, probably less that you expect. Paramemetic came to my wedding (which kiiind of lead to him posting in this thread) and my wife and I crashed on his sofa, and Quantumfate and I recently met up. Other posters and I have traded e-mail in the past (shadowstar in particular stands out). This thread tends to be pretty chummy for the most part, probably one of the most on the forums outside of the synthesizer thread and the regional threads.
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Dec 8, 2013 23:41
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I want to address the Tibetan debate thing a little bit, because I think it's being overly mystified. There's been a lot of discussion since the early 20th century about Tibetan debate, both from within the Tibetan religious community and from those who are not ethnically Tibetan who joined it. Tibetan debate isn't what you are probably used to thinking of as "debate", it's not designed to critically examine held beliefs in any meaningful way. It's designed pretty much to reinforce pre-existing teachings and, more importantly, to test the actual knowledge of the participant. For example, Gendun Chöpel pretty much got run out of Tibet in part for his attempting to debate in a way we'd consider debating. He eschewed normal structures and actually countered his debate partners with things like contrary teachings that made what him and his partner were discussing look flawed; which was dangerous. The point was to challenge the knowledge of the participants, not to actually challenge the material being 'debated'. I've read similar things from some modern sources, particularly from early Westerners to become Buddhist monks, that people who were considered "masters" at debate had simply got their memorization of the sutras down really well. It was still expected that if you 'debated' them that you obeyed the strict structure of Tibetan debate and didn't truly challenge the understanding of the teachings or, more importantly, your guru. This exact relationship has turned a lot of people who come to learn Tibetan away from Tibetan Buddhism, where in many cases what seems at first glance as true wisdom is nothing more than rote memorization once the language barrier is fully broken down. I've actually read accounts that at least until the early 70s the Dalai Lama had a similar problem, where his knowledge of the Dharma was incredible but his ability to think about it abstractly in a way we associate with wisdom wasn't that great. Clearly he's since developed that particular skill to an insane degree, but I think that's an important thing to realize. Tibetan debate is probably one of the weakest points of Vajrayana to most outsiders who learn about it, simply because we have this mental image of debate bing used to further understanding and the Tibetan style of formalized debate served the purpose of aiding memorization. For anyone interested, one of the books I've read recently that's really interesting if not very Dharma affirming is "The Novice", which is a pretty fair telling of a British hippie who ended up ordaining and later leaving Buddhism, though not until after he became fluent in Tibetan. I don't agree with some of his conclusions, but I think it's actually kind of an important work in terms of de-mystifying teachers and in helping people understand that a lot of what we perceive as "wisdom" is simply Orientalism through the lens of a strange accent. I also highly recommend Angry Monk, which is an older perspective on this from a Tibetan monk who ideologically was very similar to HHDL and yet was essentially run out of Tibet and later imprisoned for being a heretical radical. WAFFLEHOUND fucked around with this message at 21:16 on Dec 10, 2013 |
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Dec 10, 2013 20:57
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Prickly Pete posted:Thanks for the clarification. So they are quizzing each other rather than actually trying to sway the opponent to their position. I'll take a look at that book you mentioned. It's less quizzing and more... a play? A play with a winner. I don't know, it's hard to describe.
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Dec 10, 2013 21:15
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Paramemetic posted:Then one starts to find ways to pick at it I disagree with this, there's nothing I've seen or heard from Tibetan debate that implies anything meaningful from "picking at it", it's not designed to challenge a thinker as much as challenge their memory. Again, look at the Chöpel example, where he actually did pick at something and in turn pretty much died in prison. WAFFLEHOUND fucked around with this message at 22:34 on Dec 10, 2013 |
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Dec 10, 2013 22:00
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This was meant to be a new post, not an edit:The-Mole posted:Asking questions is an absolutely fundamental part of the teacher-student relationship in Buddhism. A lot of Buddhist traditions distinguish asking questions of your teacher and challenging your teacher's knowledge. I've never met a Buddhist teacher in the West who didn't fundamentally grasp that the way Westerners view a student-teacher relationship is that it's question-heavy and not just knowledge-bombing you, and this obviously doesn't apply to all traditions. Still, it's a really hard line to draw for those of us who not only grew up thinking but still believe that all questions are good. The idea that there's a distinction between asking a question of your teacher and challenging your teacher's authority in a bad way is really hard to grasp, and is one of the bigger problems I have with Buddhism. It's one of the very few places I'm glad to have seen something akin to syncretism since I think all Buddhists benefit from it, and in the specific case of Vajrayana HHDL has been shoving it down the throat of Tibetans in a way that makes (or made) many people uncomfortable since he started hanging out with Heinrich Harrer. That said, from the book I mentioned: quote:Every significant term in every branch of study is defined in each monastery’s textbooks, and debate is largely about these terms and their relationships. I was therefore disconcerted to learn, for example, that a valid cognition is defined as “any cognition that apprehends a valid object,” and avalid object as “anything apprehended by a valid cognition.”
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Dec 10, 2013 22:34
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Razage posted:Yes, but it's a bit different when the guy your debating against is on your, "Side," So to speak. The reason I take issue with the debate tradition is it's not only someone on your side, but finding interesting loopholes in the material itself is verboten. You're only meant to look for flaws in the actual arguments made. This basically lead to a few hundred years of really really dumb beliefs (nothing can go taller than Mt. Meru, therefore either the space program was faked or the results were faked and the winds actually destroyed the shuttles/probes/Sputnik/whatever) and an inability to critically examine their own tradition that extends to the point that it's actually not as strong as it could be.
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Dec 11, 2013 21:00
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PrinceRandom posted:Argh. I'm still fixated on how rebith is possible. Doesn't it depend on some kind of consciousness that trancends the brain? I was reading Susan Blackmore , a Zen practitioners who says that idea flies in the face of all we know in neuroscience. Welcome to religion, if we could prove scientifically every claim we make it'd be science.  Mr. Mambold posted:Please enjoy this opportunity to meditate on the following koan: Art.
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Dec 12, 2013 02:27
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quote:Could you be accused of cherrypicking from Zen? This is someone who doesn't have the slightest understanding of Buddhist teachings. The first part of that is wrong (the entire notion of a self is rejected, reincarnation is not rebirth) and the second point (of the 'self' she was now being different than the 'self' she was 20 years ago) was rebuked by Buddha himself as wrong view when he went into great detail that he literally meant dying and being reborn in the decaying-in-the-ground sense.
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Dec 12, 2013 06:56
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Yiggy posted:How is this anything but eternalism? A view explicitly rejected by the Buddha. From the Yogacara argument of basal consciousness this is dead on though.
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Dec 13, 2013 00:49
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This is why Buddhist teachers who can explain things simply and using few words are a precious treasure.
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Dec 13, 2013 07:32
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But there's been three phd dissertations between the original question and that post. It's not just you, I really think this thread is prone to wanting to solve and explain every broad theological topic whenever a a question is asked, and sometimes I think a partially inaccurate yet useful answer is better than a totally complete answer which is going to go over the heads of people without a really strong academic background in Buddhism.
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Dec 13, 2013 07:41
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