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THOMAS DAVID CANADA (United States of America)
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Maybe, the cause of the schism is our accumulated bad karma?
I do not know.
I do know that this schism is just not a head trip being discussed at the local coffee shop.
Real mental and physical acts of harm have been being flung at us for going on 15 years.
This is not just about differing schools of thought.
It is about a man and his group attempting to seize or claim powers that are not theirs alone.
Some cannot bring themselves to see the situation as it really is, it might make their world illogical and confused.
Easier not to change or deal with the situation due to some sort of endoctrination that you get what you deserve.
Even so, we cannot take this lying down. It is he that needs to bend his knee to us and not we to him. He is the one who broke his vows and attacked the Monastery of Lord Shugden, hurting unsuspecting people, caught off their guard,
as to how lost in samsara this lama is.
I can forgive his transgressions towards me at least.
However, I cannot tolerate the violations of Our Collective Bill Of Rights and Constitutions from being violated by his persecution of Dorje Shugden People.
This Schism is a Political Issue in his mind.
This why we are Suing him in Court.
Right or wrong.?
We will not allow this lama to tread on our laws,
That Protect all of us and our collective merit,
To practice the dharma anyway we wish,
Without his approval or dissent.
He has no power over us.
If he wants to be a lama?
Then he had better start acting like one.
I am fed up with his pretenses and slander.
It is interferring with the free flow of life.
I'm tired of being hassled by this Old Man!
He bent my groove.
"In order for a transgression to take place, four conditions must be present:
1. The motivation is a negative attitude
2. There is an object of the action
3. One does the action
4. The action is completed."
Midaka
"The 5th Dalai Lama famously repressed the Jonang tradition and forcibly converted a number of Jonang, Kagyu, and Nyingma monasteries. Nevertheless many Dalai Lamas and other prominent Gelug hierarchs have engaged in non-Gelug teachings and practices. This has led to a backlash from more conservative members of the tradition, most visibly in the controversy over the deity Dorje Shugden (rdo rje shugs ldan). This Gelug protector deity is embraced by many Gelug followers, said to be charged with keeping the tradition pure (that is, purging the Gelug of those who embrace other, primarily Nyingma, teachings). Seen by many as an attack on the Dalai Lamas from within the tradition, worship of this deity is discouraged by the current Dalai Lama, who, since going into exile and taking on the role of leader of the Tibetan people, has embraced an ecumenical position unacceptable to more conservative-minded Gelug hierarchs"tk
20-03-2010 10:26:58   °2409
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| THOMAS DAVID CANADA (United States of America)
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From the heart of the Protector of the hundreds of deities of the land of joy,
Comes a cloud that resembles a mass of fresh white curd.
Omniscient Lozang Drakpa
King of the Dharma, together with your sons,
I request you to come on its tip.
1.Beseeching
0 venerable Gurus with white smiles of delight,
Seated on lion-thrones, lotus and moon in the space before me,
I request you to remain for hundreds of eons
In order to spread the teachings,
And be the supreme field of merit for my mind of faith.
2.Prostration
Your minds have the intellect that comprehends the full extent of what can be known,
Your speech, with its excellent explanations, becomes
the ear-ornament for those of good fortune,
Your bodies are radiantly handsome with glory renowned,
I prostrate to you whom to behold, hear, or recall is worthwhile.
20-03-2010 08:09:43 °2408
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| THOMAS DAVID CANADA (United States of America)
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The Muses (Ancient Greek αἱ μοῦσαι, hai moũsai [1]: perhaps from the o-grade of the Proto-Indo-European root *men- "think"[2]) in Greek mythology, poetry, and literature are the goddesses or spirits who inspire the creation of literature and the arts. They were considered the source of the knowledge, related orally for centuries in the ancient culture, that was contained in poetic lyrics and myths.
Just how many muses there were was a matter of some dispute. In Boeotia, the homeland of Hesiod, a tradition persisted[3] that the Muses had once been three in number. Diodorus Siculus, quotes Hesiod to the contrary, observing:
Writers similarly disagree also concerning the number of the Muses; for some say that they are three, and others that they are nine, but the number nine has prevailed since it rests upon the authority of the most distinguished men, such as Homer and Hesiod and others like them.[4]
Three ancient Muses were also reported in Plutarch's Quaestiones Conviviviales (9.I4.2-4).[5] The Roman scholar Varro relates that there are only three Muses: one who is born from the movement of water, another who makes sound by striking the air, and a third, who is embodied only in the human voice. However the Classical understanding of the muses tripled their triad, set at nine goddesses, who embody the arts and inspire creation with their graces through remembered and improvised song and stage, writing, traditional music, and dance.
In one myth, King Pierus, king of Macedon, had nine daughters he named after the nine Muses, believing that their skills were a great match to the Muses. He thus challenged the Muses to a match, resulting in his daughters, the Pierides, being turned into chattering magpies[6] for their presumption.
Sometimes they are referred to as water nymphs, associated with the springs of Helicon and with Pieris. It was said that the winged horse Pegasus touched his hooves to the ground on Helicon, causing four sacred springs to burst forth, from which the muses were born.[1] Athena later tamed the horse and presented him to the muses.
The Olympian myths set Apollo as their leader, Apollon Mousagetēs. Not only are the Muses explicitly used in modern English to refer to an artistic inspiration, as when one cites one's own artistic muse, but they also are implicit in words and phrases such as "amuse", "museum" (Latinised from mouseion—a place where the muses were worshipped), "music", and "musing upon".
20-03-2010 05:18:01 °2405
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| THOMAS DAVID CANADA (United States of America)
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About Dakinis* and Dakas**
*female **male
A Dakini, the kind in human form, is roughly equivalent to the Muse of Western stories. She inspires the male, taking him to the full expression of himself in the world. The Daka, a male muse serves this same purpose for women.
The male in question has obstacles to the expression of his Highest Self, and releasing these pretty much always involves revisiting the trauma that originally set the resistance in place. This is catharsis, the intense and complete experiencing of emotion that has long been contained, resisted, bottled up. In most stories of Muses, they seem willful, capricious, in a word, - trouble. They use the full range of manipulative tools and shock tactics that wives do. Wicked. The difference is this: A girlfriend, or wife, in the normal pattern (archetype) of things is motivated by her ego-view, which sometimes includes the awareness that "her man" living his excellence can benefit her. More often though, his flowering will be taken by her as a threat. A Dakini has one purpose - man's spiritual advancement, from wherever he is to wherever he can go with her support. She is operating consciously with Love, and all the leverage that affords, to pry apart your defences, smash your ego and put Truth as close in front of you as possible, that you might wake up to your purpose, your flowering.
The nearest modern profession to this is a "Life Coach". That's really what a Dakini is. She's an emissary of the divine, to tempt you to your divinity, to experiencing the real fruits of existence.
A Dakini can be loved, adored, worshipped, in fact, that's essential - but she can never be owned. No artist, no poet would dare expect his Muse to be permanently available, or in any way exclusive, to him. They do what they do, live as they live so that they may serve existence in this way. Any restriction on their freedom, their flowering is a restriction on their usefulness to existence. Another way to express this is to say that they are already married - to The Divine.
The work of a Daka, a male Tantra Practitioner is usually with a Dakini who is awakening to her path. He provides a base of unconditional love and devotion (to her truth, not her mind) which encourages the woman to her flowering. He shows her, through her direct experience, that intimacy, love and bliss are not rare, scarce, unattainable or dependant on someone else. They are there within her, waiting to be claimed - her birthright.
Dakinis and Dakas are those who know, at their deepest level, that this is their calling, their vocation. The commitment required is not "great" or "huge", it's total. Every aspect of being is involved. To work effectively with Tantra, an impeccable mind, a healthy body, an open heart and a significant degree of spiritual awareness are required.
So, for Dakinis, diet, exercise, meditation and some form of energy work are important. Dakinis work on themselves, their bodies and minds using Yoga, Tai-Chi, and practicing various arts along with lots of silent sitting meditation.
The Buddha's injunction to practice "right livelihood" is also important. Being involved in a business that profits from, or causes, damage to the earth is not compatible with tantric practice. Niether is being involved with any enterprise that derrogtes the Goddess, or any aspect of the Divine Feminine. These are not "rules", they are simply facts. Keeping the heart open and loving is essential to working with sacred sexuality. The heart can't be open when you're doing that which offends it.
The judgements of the surrounding culture also have to be faced. Many people focus on the sexual aspects of the work and reckon that "Dakini" is synonymous with "whore". Mainstream religions have done an effective job of convincing people that sex is inherintly sinful, and this judgement has infected even non-semitic religions. There is, for example, a Yoga teacher in Johannesburg who objects to this school charging money for tantric work. She would never think of charging money for the tantra work she attempts - just she also wouldn't think of doing it with anyone but a long-term attendee of her remarakbly expensive yoga classes.
So a Tantrika, Dakini or Daka, has to face the same cultural judgements as a sex worker, possibly, and oh so wrongly, the same legal sanctions too. She has to make a living from her healing work, or supplement it with something compatible with her ethics/aesthetics. Maintaining her body, mind and spirit is a full time job, whether she has one client a month, or a dozen. Her lovers (outside of her healing work) are limited to those who have transcended jealousy, or are at least willing to take a stand against it in themselves. It really is a miracle that there are people in the world that are willing and able to do this work. It's not surprising that they are rare. Appreciate them.
20-03-2010 04:48:52 °2404
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| THOMAS DAVID CANADA (United States of America)
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THE MAHASIDDHA TRADITION IN TIBET
by Vajranatha
Most people in the West assume that all Lamas are necessarily monks. This is not actually the case since the Tibetan word Lama (bla-ma), used to translate the Sanskrit term "guru", means a spiritual teacher, and that may be either a monk or a layman. Nevertheless, monasticism and the life-style of the monk has always been the principal form of Buddhism institution and social organization wherever Buddhism has spread in Asia.
This Buddhist monastic culture was introduced into Tibet from India in the seventh and eighth centuries of our era, and revived again in the eleventh century after a temporary eclipse. The Indian Buddhist scholars brought with them to Tibet and exceptionally rich and profound thousand year old spiritual culture, and whereas this culture largely disappeared from India itself in the thirteenth century due to the total destruction of the great Buddhist monastic universities of Northern India by rampaging invading hordes from Afghanistan and Central Asia bent on pillage, loot, rape, and the forcible conversion of conquered native populations to the ascendant religion of Islam, much of the intellectual heritage of these universities, lost in India,
was preserved in Tibet. During these early centuries the Tibetan government sponsored one of the greatest translations projects ever undertaken in history-- translating the bulk of texts of Mahayana Buddhism from the Sanskrit language into Tibetan. But although this monastic culture of monks and monasteries has been throughout the past 2500 years the principal social institution for the preservation and the transmission of the Buddhist heritage, that there have existed other forms of Buddhist teaching and practice.
Even in the time of Shakyamuni Buddha himself, not all of his principle followers were monks. One example is the layman and merchant Vimalakirti who could defeat in debate on the subject of Shunyata or emptiness the great monk scholar Shariputra himself. Scholars such as E. Lamotte and E. Conze have speculated that the tension between the saffron robbed Elders of the monastic community and the white garbed leaders of the Buddhist lay community, was one factor in the historical development of the Mahayana. Only a century after the passing away of the Lord Buddha, at or around the council at Vaishali there was a schism between the Sthaviras or Elders and the Mahasanghikas or adherents of the Greater Assembly, which included many leaders who were not monks. Whereas the traditions preserved among the Sthaviras or elder monks evolved into the eighteen schools of Hinayana Buddhism, which asserted that in order to attain liberation from the cycle of rebirth one must first be reborn as a male and second become a monk, the Mahasanghikas held the enlightenment was open to everyone, male or female, monk or lay-person, because each individual possessed an inner disposition to enlightenment. This community of the Mahasanghikas was the matrix out of which the later Mahayana grew-- but both Sthaviras and Mahasanghikas possessed authentic traditions that went back to the historical Buddha himself, although their emphases differed. In the Mahasanghika-Mahayana tradition it was possible for the layman or the laywoman to be a full-fledged practitioner of the Buddha Dharma, and not just a second rate citizen of the Sangha in relation to the ordained clergy of the monks.
But most important historically for the development of Buddhism in Tibet was the Mahasiddha Tradition that evolved in North India in the early Medieval Period (3-13 cen. CE). Philosophically this movement was based on the insights revealed in the Mahayana Sutras and as systematized in the Madhyamaka and Chittamatrin schools of philosophy, but the methods of meditation and practice were radically different than anything seen in the monasteries. The Sanskrit term Mahasiddha means a great adept. A Siddha or adept is an individual who, through the practice of sadhana, a spiritual and psychic discipline or process of realization, attains the realization of siddhis, psychic and spiritual powers. These methods were revealed in Buddhist scriptures known as Tantras. Sometimes their source is said to be the historical Buddha, but more often it is a transhistorical aspect of the Buddha called Vajradhara who reveals the Tantra in question directly in a vision to a specific Mahasiddha. This vague and ill defined community of Mahasiddhas was the historical matrix for the revelation of the Higher Tantras, the Anuttara Tantras. They broke with the conventions of Buddhist monastic life of the time, and abandoning the monastery they practiced in the caves, the forests, and the country villages of Northern India. In complete contrast to the settled monastic establishment of their day, which concentrated the Buddhist intelligenzia in a limited number of large monastic universities, they adopted the life-style of itinerant mendicants, much the wandering Sadhus of modern India.
The form of ascesis expounded in the Tantras, unlike the Sutras and the Vinaya which taught the methods of the path of renunciation, taught the methods of transformation, where the poisons of the passions, far from being renounced were actually cultivated to their extreme, in order that their energy might be transmuted within the alchemical vessel of the physical human body into the luminous nectar of enlightened awareness. There was a deliberate and clear parallel here with alchemy-- the kleshas or passions through the alchemical process of sadhana were transmuted into Jnana (gnosis) or knowledge. Thus the things of the world that are usually renounced by the ascetic-- wine, meat, and sex-- which are seen as the fetters binding the spirit to matter and nature, especially the latter (women and sex) are not renounced in the higher Tantras but actually employed as the very means to enlightenment. But this was not an excuse or rationale to party with wine, women, and song-- it represented a highly disciplined ascetic path. And since the methods of the Tantra principally works with energy, and one of the most important and powerful energies in human experience is sex desire, a sophisticated sexual yoga developed, known as Upayamarga and as Karmamudra. Yoga practitioners took consorts or sexual partners from among the village girls, including even outcaste girls, such as Dombhis, Chandalis, etc. and lived with them in retreat or in the villages while plying humbles trades. For example, the young Brahman scholar Saraha defiled his caste status by living openly with a low caste who was an arrow-maker, yet he is considered one of the greatest poets and scholars of the Buddhist Tantric tradition. Or Naropa, once a professor and chancellor at Nalanda monastic university, abandoned his academic career to pursue the teachings of Tilopa, a wild-eyed and apparently half-mad ascetic who lived in a series of remote cremation grounds in the company of women of questionable virtue. In India generally the Anuttara Tantras were not practiced in the monasteries because their practice was incompatible with the Vinaya, the rules and vows incumbent upon a monk. At first this was also the case in Tibet.
This tradition which existed outside of but parallel to the monastic discipline, was brought to Tibet in the eighth century by such accomplished Mahasiddhas as Padmasambhava and Vimalamitra and readily adopted as the principal practice in non-monastic Tantric circles led by such individual as Nubchen Sangye Yeshe (gNubs-chen sangs-rgyas ye-shes, 9 cen. CE), who in contrast to the monks at Samye monastery went about in the guise of a Bonpo black hat sorcerer. Nubchen was a married Lama, and he was not only a Tantric sorcerer and magician, but a learned scholar and translator. However, his work and the studies and translations of the Mahayoga Tantras (the technical designation for the Higher Tantras in the early period) of others like him went on out side of government control and sponsorship. Basically the translation and practice of the Sutras and the Vinaya, and to a very limited extent certain Lower Tantras, was all that was sanctioned and financed by the Tibetan government. This represented an official Buddhism. But the Higher Tantras, the Mahayoga Tantras (early period) or Anuttara Tantras (later period) represented something of an outlaw or underground movement at first. The antinomian and libertine Gnostic sentiments of the Tantras and especially the abundant sexual symbolism (deities copulating, exhortations to practice incest, etc.) were calculated to offend the sentiments of polite society. It was not that the Tibetan were puritanical as such; in Tibetan culture sex is not something evil. It is a natural appetite like hunger and thirst, and to be freely indulged without any guilt. But sexual expression in public is discouraged, so at first images of copulating deities were not to be publicly displayed. Even in India, were erotic symbolism was not so restricted, the Tantras were pre-eminently an esoteric tradition. But even there much of what was expressed in the Tantra was there for its shock value-- it is part of the method of the Tantras to take the individual beyond his limitations. to break through all social and monastic conventions. Therefore the abundance of antinomian statements that would shock the conventional morality of the Brahman priest and the Buddhist monk-- all this put into the mouth of the Buddha. No wonder that in the Guhyasamaja Tantra when the assembly of monks hear the real teaching of the Buddha announced, they faint dead away in horror.
One might almost think of these Tantras as teaching a kind of Buddhist Satanism: the invocation of and worship of a horned and hairy deity called a Heruka, copulating with his goddess consort, who eats raw flesh and drinks blood while making thunderous sounds, surrounded by nocturnal rites and orgies by male and female naked celebrants singing and dancing, a veritable Witches' Sabbat. In the West in past centuries this was the perverse fantasy of celibate clerics and paranoid authorities-- a dark conspiracy against God and civil authority. Burning of heretics and culminated in the witch persecutions in which up to nine million people are said to have perished, burned at the stake or hanged. But the context in Buddhism and the use to which this chthonic and lunar symbolism is put is quite different. Here the aim is not to overthrow the established church or the government of the king, but the ignorant tyranny of the ego, the false God and the false king. This lunar and chthonic symbolism of the Heruka, the Horned God, and the Witches' Sabbat is integrated into the spiritual path to enlightenment. What the whole world condemns becomes the very means to enlightenment. The forbidden fruit is tasted. And the method here is alchemical transformation.
The Higher Tantras were underground in the early days, but translations were made, despite the lack of government sanction and sponsorship. And transmissions were received from Tantric masters who came to Tibet, such as Guru Padmasambhava in the eighth century who taught the Tantric system of the Eight Herukas (bka'-brgyad), as well as Dzogchen. Three of these Herukas were worldly and concerned with magic: the Worldly Gods, the Mamo mother goddesses, and the Fierce Mantras. In their mandalas Padmasambhava even incorporated native Tibetan deities in a subordinate role. But he gave these initiations in a cave at Chimphu and not in the nearby recently erected monastery of Samye. The cult of the Higher Tantras was not practiced publicly. Wall paintings from these early centuries depict the peaceful deities of the Yoga Tantras but not the wrathful blood-drinking and copulating deities of the Anuttara Tantras.
When Buddhism was persecuted in Tibet in the ninth century after the assassination of the Buddhist king Ralpachan, it was only the monasteries and the monks that were suppressed. The faction in the government responsible for the coups was not anti-Buddhist as such (a later anachronistic interpretation) but felt that the monks were social parasites and that the monasteries represented too great a drain on the royal treasury at a time when foreign wars needed to be prosecuted to preserve the Tibetan empire in tact. Individual Tantrikas or Tantric practitioners like Nubchen Sangye Yeshe continued their work and teachings privately without government interference. Although historical records a few and scanty, this period, the ninth and tenth centuries. is the seminal age for what subsequently became known as the schools of Nyingmapa and Yungdrung Bon.
Then in the eleventh century there was a revival of monastic Buddhism in Central and Western Tibet, initially under official government sponsorship in the Western Tibetan kingdom of Guge. Inscription there of the royal monks Lhalama Yeshe-od and his kinsman Dawa-od attack and condemn Dzogchen and the Mahayoga Tantras, especially what is called sbyor-grol. sByor-ba refers to the practice of sexual yoga and sgrol-ba to the killing of a living being in a ritual manner without incurring any negative karma. But in general, the Buddhist Tantras, unlike the Hindu Tantras associated with the cult of the goddess Kali, do not involve actual blood sacrifice, although that symbolism may be employed. Both Buddhism and Yungdrung Bon, unlike tribal shamanism, categorically reject and condemn the practice of the red offering (dmar mchod) or blood sacrifice. But sex is a different matter altogether. The Mahasiddhas in India and initially their followers in Tibet practiced sexual yoga, not just symbolically but actually. This however, scandalized many Tibetans who accused these Lamas of fornicating in the temples. When the great Indian Tantric master and scholar Atisha was invited to Guge in Western Tibet in the eleventh century his own chief disciple Dromton forbade his master to teach the Higher Tantras, claiming that the Tibetans would inevitably misunderstand their antinomianism and their sexual symbolism. Dromton founded the first distinct school of Tibetan Buddhism, the Kadampa, which was noted for its stress on the Vinaya or monastic discipline.
The Tibetan disciples of Atisha as well as other Tibetans, some of whom went to India for studies, began building monasteries. In general Tibetans think that Buddhism only exists when there are monks and monasteries, that is, a social institution or church which serves as the base for the transmission of the Buddhist teachings. But outside the monasteries and soon inside them the Mahasiddha Tradition continued to flourish and grow. The principal reason for this was that the Indian Buddhism of the time had become more and more dominated by Tantric practice. It was impossible for any of the Tibetan reformers, despite the new puritanism of the eleventh century to deny that the Higher Tantras were the word of the Buddha. The Higher Tantras were all the fashion in India and were taught to their Tibetan disciples by Indian masters such as Naropa, Maitripa, Atisha, and so on. And so a reapproachment had to be made.
The Higher Tantras could not be a congregational practice of monks because Tantric sadhana, as well as celebrations of the High Tantric feast or Ganachakrapuja, required partaking of meat, wine, and sexual intercourse. At the very least the latter two would force a monk to break his vows. And so what came about in the eleventh century was a change in the external style of practice; the Anuttara Tantras, many of them freshly brought from India and newly translated into Tibetan, came to be practiced in the style of the lower Yoga Tantras. Although there is a great deal of ritual in the Yoga Tantras, there is nothing there that would require a monk to violate his monastic vows. The presence of a woman or Dakini is require at High Tantric initiation and also at the Tantric feast of the Ganachakrapuja, but in the eleventh century reform the actual Dakini physically present was replaced by a mind-consort (yid kyi rig-ma), a visualization of the Dakini. One did the sexual practice only in visualization, not in actuality. In this way the practices of the Higher Tantras could be taken into the monasteries and incorporated into the congregations practice and liturgy of the monks known as puja. Unlike the Zen Buddhists of Japan, Tibetan monks customarily do not practice group meditation. That is something done in the privacy of one's room or in a retreat situation. The typical congregational practice of Tibetan monks is puja which may involve the chanting of liturgies and the making of offerings for many hours. Partaking of a little wine or meat during Ganapuja is allright because in the course of the ritual they have been mystically transmuted into nectars, and the holy red and white substances in the skull cup have been replaced by symbolic substitutes. But if one were to read the text of the liturgy, they are filled with the activities of wrathful deities which are both sexual and sanguine. But otherwise, everything is perfect monastic decorum. This was so successful a solution to the dilemma that all four schools of Tibetan Buddhism almost exclusively practice the Anuttara Tantras, to the neglect of the Yoga Tantras. Nonetheless, the Yoga Tantra transmissions have been preserved, especially in the Sakyapa school which is quite fastidious about preserving all of the authentic Indian Tantric transmissions. Among the Nyingmapas, who preserve the traditions coming from the early period of the spread of Buddhism in Tibet (7-9 cen. CE), practitioners of the Higher Tantras who do not take monastic ordination and become monks are known as Tantrikas or Ngagpas (sngags-pa), meaning "those who use mantras (sngags)". They are typically married Lamas. A Lama, though functioning as a priest and teacher, is not necessarily a monk.
But the old pre-Buddhist pagan and shamanic culture of Tibet continued side by side with the growth of this monastic system of Indian origin. Gradually, in all of the schools of Tibetan Buddhism these indigenous magical and ritual practices began integrated with the Buddhist practices of Indian origin, thus giving to Tibetan Buddhism its unique flavor and character which is so different from other forms of Mahayana Buddhism. The Ngakpas like Nubchen Sangye Yeshe, living outside the monasteries and still close to the common people of Tibet, the peasants and the nomads, were especially open to incorporating the native magical tradition into their Buddhism. The same had been done previously in India, incorporating the traditions of popular Indian magic into the Buddhist Tantras, as for example, the Mahakala Tantra. This was done by both Indian and Tibetan Buddhists for the simple reason that, on the practical level, magic works. Magic is a way of evoking and channeling energy in order to realize certain effects. It does not work with the same efficiency as a mechanical device because its efficacy depends on the state of mind of the practitioner and may other secondary factors, but it works enough of the time to inspire the confidence of most of humanity for most of human history. However, in the West, since the eighteenth century with its mechanistic model of reality and the general fruitfulness of the scientific method and explanations, magic has received a bad press from Western scholars. Western scholars of Buddhism tend to underplay the role of magic in Buddhism, including Theravada Buddhism, and they become upset with the idea that Buddhist Tantra represents an incredibly complex and sophisticated system of theurgy and ceremonial magic.
20-03-2010 04:44:25 °2403
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| THOMAS DAVID CANADA (United States of America)
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WISDOM DAKINIS,
PASSIONATE AND WRATHFUL
Dakinis – Energy and Wisdom In general, the Buddhist term “Dakini” can be taken to mean goddess. In the Tibetan language this Sanskrit term is translated as Khandroma (mkha’-‘gro-ma) meaning “she who traverses the sky” or “she who moves in space.” Dakinis are active manifestations of energy. Therefore, they are usually depicted as dancing, this also indicating that they actively participate in the world, or in the spiritual perspective, in both Samsara and Nirvana. In the Tantric Buddhist tradition of Tibet, Dakinis basically represent manifestations of energy in female form, the movement of energy in space. In this context, the sky or space indicates Shunyata, the insubstantiality of all phenomena, which is, at the same time, the pure potentiality for all possible manifestations. And the movements of their dance signify the movements of thoughts and the energy spontaneously emerging from the nature of mind. Being linked to energy in all its functions, the Dakinis are much associated with the revelation of the Anuttara Tantras or Higher Tantras, which represent the path of transformation. What is transformed here is energy. This method is quite reminiscent of alchemy, the transmutation of base metal into pure precious gold. In this case, the energy of the negative emotions or kleshas, called poisons, are transformed into the luminous energy of enlightened awareness or gnosis (jnana).
These energies may be of a transcendent and spiritual in nature, in which case they are called Jnana Dakinis (ye-shes kyi mkha’-‘gro-ma) or wisdom goddesses. Here “wisdom” or gnosis (jnana, ye-shes) means spiritual knowledge. Wisdom Dakinis are feminine manifestations of Buddha enlightenment and as such they transcend the conditioned existence of Samsara. Or they may be of a worldly nature, in which case one speaks of Karma Dakinis (las kyi mkha’-‘gro-ma) or action goddesses. As such they still belong to Samsara and are not enlightened beings. These Dakinis live and move in the dimension of energy of the earth. Some of these worldly Dakinis, who were once local pagan goddesses and nature spirits, were subdued and converted in the past and now serve as Guardians of the Buddhist teachings. Thus, there are basically two kinds of Dakinis. The corresponding manifestation of energy in a male form is called a Daka (mkha’-‘gro). The term Khandro, or more properly Khandroma, is also applied, especially in Eastern Tibet, to a woman Lama or spiritual teacher, and even to the wife or daughter of a Lama, as an honorific title much like “Lady.” The designation Dakini is also found in Hindu tradition, but here it is applied only to very minor goddesses, resembling more what we would call witches in our Western tradition. They appear as wild female spirits in the retinue accompanying the great goddess Durga.
In the early middle ages, Hindu theologians and philosophers came to speak of the goddesses as shaktis, that is, as the personified energy of their male divine consorts. However, in the Buddhist tradition, the term has a much wider and more important usage. The Dakini, as a manifestation of enlightened awareness, represents wisdom (prajna) and not just energy (shakti). Wisdom (prajna) is that higher intellectual faculty of mind that penetrates into the nature of reality, distinguishing what is true from what is false, and so on. We find here a phenomenon similar to the personification of wisdom as a female figure in the western tradition, as Hochmah or Sophia. Moreover, this wisdom is not a young maiden who is sweet, sentimental, and passive. Rather, a Dakini is an active manifestation of enlightenment. She is a manifestation of energy, although Buddhist texts do not use the term shakti.
Moreover, the Dakini is a manifestation of the energy of enlightened awareness in the stream of consciousness of the individual male practitioner, which awakens that consciousness to the spiritual path, thus playing the role of the archetypal figure the Swiss psychologist C.G. Jung designated as the Anima. The Anima represents the unconscious female side of the male personality. In a female stream of consciousness, the Animus or Daka is the figure that plays the corresponding role. These male counterparts are called Dakas and are usually depicted as Tantric yogis with long matted hair, naked or attired in animal skins, wearing ornaments of human bone, and dwelling in cemeteries and cremation grounds. At certain places of pilgrimage and in cremation grounds, the Dakas and Dakinis will gather at certain phases of the moon in order to celebrate the Tantric feast called the Ganachakra Puja. These nocturnal rites under the moon are reminiscent of the Bacchanalia or the Witches’ Sabbat in the West. The Dakas and Dakinis come to the feast, flying through the sky, and gather around the huge cauldron made from a gigantic skull, where they sing and dance and drink. But because it has been mostly men who have written books and accounts of their meditation experiences throughout Tibetan history, the emphasis has been on Dakinis, rather than Dakas.
According to the system of the Buddhist Tantras, the practitioner goes to refuge not only in the Three Jewels (dkon-mchog gsum) of the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha, but to refuge in the Three Roots (rtsa-ba gsum) of the Guru, the Deity, and the Dakini. In terms of meditation practices relating to these Three Roots, it is said the Guru or spiritual master grants to the practitioner the blessings or spiritual energy of inspiration and enlightenment. The Devatas or Meditation Deities grant siddhis or psychic and spiritual powers and the Dakinis grant karma-siddhis or magical powers that are of a more worldly purpose.
Wrathful Deities
In general, the Buddhist Tantras are divided into four classes of texts and their corresponding practices. In the three Lower Tantras known as the Kriya Tantra, the Charya Tantra, and the Yoga Tantra, the Buddha images and divine forms generally belong to the sunny daylight side of consciousness. These Buddha figures are all peaceful, smiling, fashionably well-dressed, and sitting in the sky radiating light, like the sun itself on a clear sunny day. Indeed, the compassion of the Buddha is often compared to the rays of the sun, which falls upon everyone equally, the sinner and the righteous alike. These celestial hierarchies of radiant Buddha figures and choirs of great Bodhisattvas filling the heavens may be compared to similar celestial beatific visions in the monotheistic religions. For an example of such a poetic celestial vision, one only has to read Dante’s Paradiso. But human existence and consciousness is not always sunny and spiritual, attired in white robes and filled to overflowing with sweetness and light. There is also the dark side.
This twilight side or dark side of human consciousness is addressed in the fourth class or Higher Tantra, known as Anuttara Tantra. Although the archetypal figures, the Goddess and the Devil, have been expelled and banned from heaven by the monotheistic religions, a heaven we conventionally consider to be an entirely spiritual dimension, they reappear as darkly luminous figures in the Higher Tantras. At certain times, the Dakinis, riding through the sky on the backs of wild animals and led by their queen, gather in the cemetery or cremation ground on the mountain and dance naked around their bubbling cauldron. The predominant symbolism here is lunar rather than solar; it is nighttime rather than daytime. The symbolism is chthonic, belonging to the earth and the underworld, rather than celestial and belonging to heaven. In general, the iconography of the Anuttara Tantras is characterized by the presence of these witches or Dakinis and by these demonic wrathful deities. In the Lower Tantras, wrathful deities occasionally appear, but they play a secondary and subservient role as body-guards and doorkeepers. However, in the Anuttara Tantras these banned figures come to step forward and stand in the center of the Mandala. These two suppressed archetypal figures, the Goddess and the Devil, re-emerge from the shadows of consciousness and are re-admitted into the light of heaven, which is our daytime consciousness.
Historical Evolution of the Buddhist Tantras
But the ascension to heaven of the Goddess and these Wrathful Deities was part of a historical process that reflected the social and political conditions that appeared in Northern India the thousand years after the time of the appearance of the historical Buddha. According to Edward Conze, the evolution of Mahayana Buddhism was in part stimulated by the movement of Buddhism before the time of Christ into the south of India inhabited by Dravidian peoples. Dravidian-speaking South India was precisely the area where the Prajnaparamita Sutra tradition of Mahayana Buddhism developed and where wisdom first became personified as the Great Goddess. Indeed, even today, each village in the south of India has its own Amma or local Mother Goddess.
And according to Etienne Lamotte, the other core region for the development of Mahayana Buddhism was the northwest, in what is today Pakistan and Afghanistan, were the original Indian Buddhism came into an interface with Iranian culture, and even with the Greeks in Gandhara and Bactria. It was Greek Buddhists in Afghanistan who, before the time of Christ, produced the first images of the Buddha, based on the icon of the Greek god Apollo. Figures of Iranian inspiration also appeared in Mahayana scriptures and art, such as the future Buddha Maitreya, who is based on the Iranian savior god Mithra, and the Buddha Amitabha in his western paradise of Sukhavati, who appears to be similar to the Iranian high god Ahura Mazda. According to the Chinese pilgrims who visited India in 5th-7th centuries, the Buddhist monasteries in north-central India were still largely Hinayana in outlook. Mahayana was strongest on the periphery, in the south and in the northwest.
This was equally true for the development of the Tantras a thousand years after the historical Buddha. According to Tibetan historians, such as Taranatha (b. 1575) and Pema Karpo (b. 1527), the Anuttara Tantras originated not in north-central India, the original field of activity of the historical Buddha, but to the northwest in the mysterious land of Uddiyana. G. Tucci, basing himself on two medieval Tibetan accounts written long after the historical Uddiyana had vanished in the Muslim invasions of India and Afghanistan, believed that Uddiyana was the small Swat valley in modern day Pakistan. But there is ample evidence to show that Uddiyana was a much larger region including a goodly portion of Eastern Afghanistan. According to Tibetan historians, the Buddha visited Uddiyana at the invitation of its king Indrabhuti and in response to the king’s request for a spiritual path that did not require him to renounce the world and his kingship in order to become a monk, the Buddha taught the Guhyasamaja Tantra, the Tantra of the Secret Assembly. This is one of the central Tantras in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition according to both the Old and the New Schools and some Western scholars generally regard the Guhyasamaja as the earliest of the Anuttara Tantras. Alex Wayman would even place it as early as the 4th century of our era. It is said that king Indrabhuti and his court practiced the methods of this Tantra and that the people of the country attained enlightenment in such numbers that the country nearly became depopulated.
Even today among the Tibetans, Uddiyana remains the legendary Land of the Dakinis, that is, a land of exceptionally beautiful and independent women. In the early medieval times, many of the Mahasiddhas or great adepts, who were largely responsible for the revelation of the Buddhist Tantras, were said to have personally visited Uddiyana in order to receive initiation into the practice of the Tantras from the Dakinis. This included famous names such as Nagarjuna the alchemist (the reincarnation of the earlier philosopher Nagarjuna), Saraha, Tilopa, and others. It was said that Nagarjuna recovered from a stupa beside the Danakosha lake the original text of the Tantras written down by Indrabhuti himself. The texts of the Tantras had been guarded and preserved there by the Nagas, the serpentine spirits of water who dwelled in the lake. He returned with these texts to India and transmitted the Higher Tantric teachings to the Brahman Saraha and other Mahasiddhas. Moreover, it appears that these Dakinis in Uddiyana were not just goddesses or symbols, but actual flesh and blood women practitioners of the Tantras. [5] The names of some of them survive, such as the princess Lakshimkara, the sister of king Indrabhuti, because they wrote texts that have survived. Otherwise, most of these women Tantrikas remain veiled in myth and legend.
The Transformation of Wrath
Beside the Dakini, the other striking figure in these Higher Tantras is the Krodha or wrathful deity. In the earlier Mahayana Sutras and the texts of the Lower Tantras we find only the peaceful beatific visions of the Buddhas in the celestial mandala palace. How was it that the religion of a peaceful non-violent order of monks and mendicants gave rise to these visions of terrifying wrathful deities, which would be considered demons and devils by most Westerners? The monastic Sangha always depended on outside patronage because the monks themselves had renounced the world and did not engage in commerce or productive labor. Historically speaking, the earliest source of large-scale patronage for the Buddhist Sangha was the Indian merchant class. This began in the time of the historical Buddha himself when certain donations of land were made for places of residence for the monks during the rainy season retreat. Within a few hundred years these hermitages grew into large monastic universities with thousands of monks. With the Emperor Ashoka, the Buddhist monastic community came to experience royal patronage. This royal patronage by kings and princes continued off and on until the collapse of the Pala dynasty and the destruction of the Buddhist monasteries in Northern India in the 13th century by the invading Muslim armies. But much earlier, the kings in the northwest who patronized Buddhism experienced invasions by Scythians, Huns, Turks, and Iranian speaking peoples, as well as by the Arabs in Sindh province. The invading Muslins from the West had no respect for indigenous Indian religious culture, considering it mere idolatry, and, moreover, the Muslims possessed a proselytizing religion of their own that they sought to impose upon those peoples they conquered. Both Hindus and Buddhists suffered grievously in these invasions. At first the foreign invaders adopted the native religions, both Buddhism and Shaivism. Around the time of Christ, Buddhism and Shaivism were keen rivals in Afghanistan and the Buddhists frankly modeled their principal wrathful meditation deity called Heruka on Bhairava, the wrathful form of Shiva.
Therefore, in the Buddhist meditation practices offered to these princes, or even more likely, actually developed by them, the body-guards and the doorkeepers figures such as the Bodhisattvas Vajrapani, Hayagriva, and Yamantaka, came in from the periphery and occupied the center of the mandala as the wrathful manifestations of Buddha enlightenment. To a besieged aristocracy on the frontiers of Indian civilization, there wrathful deities, who have the power to overcome, subdue, and destroy enemies, whether evil spirits or foreign invaders, had a certain appeal. In the Greek art of Gandhara before the time of Christ, Vajrapani, the personal body-guard of the Buddha, appeared in the guise of a very human Heracles with his club. But five hundred years after Christ, Vajrapani and the other Krodharajas appear in almost demonic form—dark blue in color like storm clouds, baring their fangs, with flame-like reddish or blond hair, garlanded with serpents and necklaces of human skulls. At the same time the northwest of Greater India fell into chaos as army after army invaded from the West.
But whether the central deity in the mandala palace is wrathful or feminine or both wrathful and feminine, as is the case with the Dakini Simhamukha, this terrifying figure is a manifestation of the enlightened awareness and compassion of the Buddha. Even a terrifying wrathful deity, such as a Krodharaja, is the expression of the compassion of the Buddha in terms of his skillful means. At certain times, it is necessary for the Buddha, although all-loving and all-compassionate in himself, to show an angry and wrathful face, just as a parent might have to show an angry face when disciplining a naughty child. Otherwise, the willful child will ignore his mother’s or father’s request. In the same way, the evil spirits and the invading barbarian armies from the northwest were not impressed in early medieval times by the eloquence and the peaceful non-violent manner of Buddhist monks. In the 12th and 13th centuries, Muslim armies from the west invaded Northern India and totally destroyed the flourishing monastic universities of Nalanda, Vikrmashila, and Odantapuri. In the process, they massacred tens of thousands of monks who did not resist the invaders. This slaughter was justified because the saffron-robed monks were regarded as infidels and idolaters. The temples were destroyed, the books burned, and the Buddha images melted down for their gold. All that remained in the wake of these armies was death and desolation from Uddiyana to Bengal. And Buddhism ceased to be a functioning religious culture in the lands of the West. The Jains and the Brahmans, however, were able to survive this onslaught because they did not concentrate their clergy and intelligenzia in a few large monastic-universities. They remained decentralized in the villages throughout Northern India and did not usually become the targets for these marauding armies.
But that was history and conditions were different in Tibet when Buddhism became established there in the 8th and 9th centuries. Wrathful deities were just part of the Buddha Dharma imported from India and therefore accepted. And moreover, the Tibetans, in their pre-Buddhist shamanistic culture, had plenty of experience with evil spirits. The subduing and exorcising and casting out of evil spirits were traditionally always a part of the healing work of the shaman. The commentaries to the Tantras composed by the Lamas, however, explain that it is because there is so much anger and hatred and violence abroad in the world during this Kali Yuga, the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas have created such a profusion of wrathful deities for meditation practice. But in every case, the purpose is the same-- the transformation of the energy of the negative emotion of anger and hatred, which breeds violence, chaos, and destruction into something positive, into enlightened awareness, itself. This transformation is par excellence the method of the Anuttara Tantras: the transformation or alchemical transmutation of the energy of negative emotions (klesha) into positive enlightened awareness (jnana). It was not that Buddhists ever worshipped demons, but rather that the negative energy symbolized by these demons was transformed. This is possible because energy and phenomena have no inherent existence, and that is true also of the energy of our emotions. Phenomena and manifestations of energy are empty (shunyata), so therefore the transforming of the negative into the positive in always possible. This contrasts with the method enshrined in the Sutras, that is to say, the renunciation of life in the world and avoidance of the negative emotions or passions at all costs, like a man would seek to avoid touching a poisonous plant.
20-03-2010 04:42:41 °2402
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| THOMAS DAVID CANADA (United States of America)
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Why Bob Thurman does not matter!
He is lost in LaLaLand with unrealistic projections as to the actual situation.
Tibet as an international environmental park suggested
(TibetanReview.net,
Mar19, 2010)
“Tibet should be handed back to its people because they will know how to conserve their land and the environment,” said American scholar on Tibetan studies Prof Robert Thurman Mar 16 evening, speaking in New Delhi. He further said, “'Tibet should be made into something like an international environmental park. Many rivers in Asia originate in the Tibetan plateau and support hundreds of millions of people downstream, but its environment is now becoming very fragile thanks to major deforestation.”
Thurman, a former Tibetan Buddhist monk who has authored, edited and translated several books on Tibetan Buddhism, is the professor of Indo-Tibetan studies at Columbia University, New York. He spoke on the topic “'Why Tibet Matters” at the India Habitat Centre.
He further said: “There is a lot of mismanagement in Tibet – mass scale deforestation and desertification of grasslands – by China. It should be conserved and eco-tourism should be given a boost. The world will then see Tibet as the Switzerland of Asia and give a boost to the economy as well.”
He said Tibet was uniquely suited historically, culturally and environmentally to fulfil his suggestion. The Tibetan people's traditional respect for all forms of life, which prohibits the harming of all sentient beings, would enable them to serve the conservation of natural environment, he added.
He also said Tibet needed to be protected as a unique civilization. Tibet contains the “elixir of Indo-Buddhist philosophical traditions” that dates back thousands of years to Nalanda, the world's oldest university, and its culture needs preservation if the repository of that priceless wisdom is not to be lost forever, he added."
20-03-2010 04:19:25 °2401
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