Chaz wrote:Looking at his history, Ray's path seemed to be heading towards some serious empowerments and responsibilites. I'm not sure what the Sakyong was thinking when he wouldn't work with Ray's request for empowerment to give pointing-out instructions and so on. But, if Ray couldn't get the Sakyong's blessing, why didn't he just go to the Karmapa ...... either of them? What's really facinating is that Ray literally struck out on his own. Oddly enough he hasn't gotten the condemnation you might expect.
thread's too long for me to read it all - at work, especially - so if i repeat something someone already said, please excuse me.
i think there's either a chronicle project or Buddhist Geeks interview with Reggie Ray where the issue is made clearer. it's not merely that he wanted to give lineage empowerments, but that at least one of the empowerments he wanted to give (or in fact was giving?) related to a protector practice he had discovered himself. it's a long time ago that i heard it, but it centered on an experience he had in a retreat, a protector that he says revealed itself to him - a new protector, that is - and the practice that grew up around that. if anyone wants to dig around on the podcasts, you can hear it yourself. from his own mouth, so no hearsay.
without having any opinion on the goodness or badness of claim, or on the goodness or badness of Reggie Ray, it's obvious to me that claims like like that are much more likely to have precipitated a parting of ways than anything else and that would have been the case in any tradition.
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