Dear Dharma Wheel,
I am reposting this here because we do not have a tabs function for posting or searching, multi-tab posts.
Best, ob
zangskar wrote:
Blue Garuda wrote:Yet another reason to have a DC thread for beginners as a 'sticky' with all this basic info on it. Maybe Bon Dzogchen schools could do the same. In that way a beginner could quickly read the information, access suitable links to info , membership and webcasts and subsequently examine deeper issues.
Only Mods can make a thread a 'sticky' so it stays at the top of the Dzogchen section. Recently we've had this 'beginners' thread which is starting to get into the old debate about preliminaries, and another where the discussion ended up about the financial management of DC.
If people don't mind asnwering the same questions and going round in circles that's fine, but there is a simple solution IMHO.
Yes, imagine if this was a yoga discussion forum, and every time someone asks "what is yoga? how do I start?" you get students from n different yoga schools arguing against each other.
As a casual reader of this forum, I would humbly suggest a F.A.Q. be made, which could provide brief descriptions of the views of different schools / gurus / lineages, and perhaps an acknowledgement that the term "Dzogchen" is - and will be - used by different schools to describe practices that of course have some common denominators but are not identical..
The F.A.Q. could make explicit what are common elements, and what are differences. And since this forum is full of enthusiastic people with lots of knowledge it should be easy to assemble one (maybe just by copy-paste of parts of old posts).
Best wishes
Lars
Dear Lars all and All,
This is the key point!
But the devil is in the details.
If the Dzogchen FAQ (or the DC FAQ) is written by someone who has a political ax to grind, then it will chop the heads of other viewpoints. For example if a Norbuista is on the "board" of DW then they might wield their editorial ax to remove a post, or redirect / Lock a thread that they do not agree with. While I am quite sure this has never happened on DW, I would suggest that acknowledged Norbuista's, or any "ista," recuse themselves from any editorial decisions that could give the appearance of partiality. Perhaps there needs to be a trusted advisory panel that editorial decisions could be appealed to. Perhaps an over-site editorial panel of neutral
Buddhist academics (emeritus and active) could serve this function. Perhaps they would have a broad view and readily correct themselves if anyone got too far off the reservation.
Perhaps we can start a thread called candidates for a Dzogchen FAQ board of advisors.
Perhaps we can start a thread called candidates for a DC FAQ board of advisors.
I would propose ChNNR (please to remember that he is a retired professor, and is not partial), Jeffery Hopkins, Alexander (Robert) Thurman, Anne Klein, Donatella Rossi and Janet Gyatso for both boards.
Perhaps after collecting all nominations, then an academic from the DW board could approach these individuals to inquire if they would be willing to participate.
Any thoughts?
May the Dzogchen Masters live long, in good health and with success in all things.
Best, ob