Blessings

[TaTa]

Could someone elaborate on the concept of blessings from an intellectual and a personal experience point of view?

I'm struggling to understand how they work and i cant seem to find any good material about it.

Thanks

[PadmaVonSamba]

Could someone elaborate on the concept of blessings from an intellectual and a personal experience point of view?

I'm struggling to understand how they work and i cant seem to find any good material about it.

Thanks

I don't know if there is an intellectual or "rational" explanation, so I will offer an analogy.

Suppose you want to go to a location 100 miles away, and you see a railroad track
and you know that if you follow that track it will eventually take you to that location,
so you walk along that track.
That's okay, but it will take you a very long time to get there.

But if you hop on a train which travels along that track,
now you have the power of that train working for you.
You have the conductor and the engineer and everybody who is part of that railroad,
plus the train itself.
So you will reach your destination faster and in a much happier way.

So in Buddhism a blessing carries with it the "energy' of the whole lineage
to sort of help move you along swiftly,
just as a train helps move you to your destination along the rails.

I will try to recall some personal experience that relates to this.
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.
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[Konchog1]

Could someone elaborate on the concept of blessings from an intellectual and a personal experience point of view?

I'm struggling to understand how they work and i cant seem to find any good material about it.

Thanks

“Adhisthana” in Sanskrit means, literally and in its most general usage, a “position close to someone,” usually a ruler, and implies a position of power or authority. Thus, in a sense, it is a position of high rank that a ruler confers on someone. In receiving that rank, the person receiving it comes closer to having the qualities of the ruler conferring it.

The Chinese translation, sheshou, makes the term into a verbal noun – the “conferral of a position that one takes up or upholds.”

The Tibetan translation, byin-gyis brlabs, commonly abbreviated as byin-rlabs (pronounced “chinlab”), emphasizes the process that takes place with the conferral of such a position. The first syllable, byin, is sometimes explained as meaning a “brightening,” and sometimes as “ability”; while rlabs connotes “power” and brlabs, deriving from the verb rlob-pa, means “to transform,” specifically to transform to a better state. Thus, byin-gyis-rlabs is often defined in Tibetan as a “transformation, by means of a brightening, into a state of possessing power and ability,” or the conferral of such a transformation. Although “rlabs” is also the Tibetan word for “waves,” traditional explanations do not refer to this meaning of the word.

http://www.berzinarchives.com/web/en/archives/advanced/tantra/level1_getting_started/inspiration_relation_mantras.html

[muni]

Could someone elaborate on the concept of blessings from an intellectual and a personal experience point of view?

I'm struggling to understand how they work and i cant seem to find any good material about it.

Thanks

I don't know if there is an intellectual or "rational" explanation, so I will offer an analogy.

Suppose you want to go to a location 100 miles away, and you see a railroad track
and you know that if you follow that track it will eventually take you to that location,
so you walk along that track.
That's okay, but it will take you a very long time to get there.

But if you hop on a train which travels along that track,
now you have the power of that train working for you.
You have the conductor and the engineer and everybody who is part of that railroad,
plus the train itself.
So you will reach your destination faster and in a much happier way.

So in Buddhism a blessing carries with it the "energy' of the whole lineage
to sort of help move you along swiftly,
just as a train helps move you to your destination along the rails.

I will try to recall some personal experience that relates to this.
.
.
.

How wonderful! Few days ago I was walking in between the rails ( no danger there, but not to recommend elswere) to avoid the many cars on the road. And sometimes the rails were splitting in more directions. The train knows its destination and don't doubt by a split.

Also blessings are very effective when there is great devotion, perseverance. The qualities of understanding the so called ultimate truth explained in the Prajnaparamita, can be naturally present on the right moment (devotion) and the blessings of the Guru. This is not so directly happening in what we call ordinary discursive thoughts, elaboration.