Bothersome things about Vajrayana and Dzogchen

[adinatha]

Ok let me put it in another way.

If you 100% NEED a transmission to understand your natural state, it would NOT be natural would it?

Okay you are using natural state in its literal form. According to Atiyoga, your deluded habit of grasping is your unnatural state, because the samsaric mode is distorted. The natural state is like the background that a samsaric consciousness by def can't notice. The teacher is a relic of the natural state, a nirmanakaya, and the manner of pointing is samboghakaya, then you seeing what is pointed at is dharmakaya Samantabhadra the natural state free of distortion. Do you agree with this?

[Enochian]

......

[Josef]

Ok let me put it in another way.

If you 100% NEED a transmission to understand your natural state, it would NOT be natural would it?

Not necessarily.
Plants need sunlight to grow. Pretty natural.

But Dzogchen explicitly says it is not a path of transformation.

You are describing transformation.

Nope.
If you had taken the time to investigate the Dzogchen teachings you would know that what the metaphor describes and points to is not what you are labeling as transformation.
Since you need a teacher in order to approach these things they will remain a bothersome distraction for you.
Its pointless for people to try to explain any of this to you.

[adinatha]

If you 100% NEED a transmission to understand Dzogchen, that means it is conditioned.

No, it just means that people are conditioned.

Dzogchen is a personal experience of one's actual state. For that you simply need someone who has that knowledge to show you the same. It is not something you will ever figure out on your own. That is your limitation, not the limitation of the teachings.

It is for example like a begger who uses a rock for a pillow, never dreaming that inside the rock is a precious diamond.

When you experience the "direct hits" when thoughts self-liberate, it is hard to mistake it for something else.

Is Dzogchen beyond even this?

Not just thoughts. Appearance, possibility and emptiness too.

[Malcolm]

Is Dzogchen beyond even this?

Yes.

[username]

Hi Enochian. You keep saying "to understand Dzogchen", it is beyond that as a personal experience after lineage's direct transmission. Even experience is nowhere near a good word to describe so it is used to point with.

And you keep saying this or that is conditioned. What is not conditioned in your current state and mind's ways? You are the most conditoned obssessed person I have heard. You are a self fullfilling prophecy of running into what you fear most.

Then you think you are clever, but you are not. You setup a position and when it is breached you abandon it and go somewhere else and so it continues until you go back to the same ones. The Mearns poem was apt. You think you are the Riddler and Joker in Batman rolled into one. You think this is clever and you are leading people, probably in your life too, in a wild goose chase and a merry go round but not so. you have become so dizzy from this twirling you don't see what people see.

The real reason is because your ancient ego is frightened as it is getting hot. So all these imaginary castles and labyrinths in your mind pop up that you lose yourself in and deludedly think it is happening to people in contact with you.

If you want to do research, do a Masters' with an easy small Tibetan translation as subject and appendix for the thesis and go on to a PhD with a bigger deeper subject and text. A forum is not academic research.

I try to explain to my Indian parents that Hinduism is a deviant heretical religion.

Leave them alone and cherish them more than your two eyes for their few remaining years. There are traces of previous Buddhas' teachings all over the crown of the world known as the noble land of India where the thousand and one buddhas are enlightened. They might be more realized than you in the long run or even now in their real dimension. This is the most foolish thing of all you are doing that you will sincerely regert for the rest of yuor life.

All the best.

[Fu Ri Shin]

...

I certainly understand your issues with conditioned phenomena, Enochian. I just hope you realize that working with the conditioned phenomenon called language will only get you conditioned conceptual answers. I think you'll find yourself much closer to the Unborn, Dzogchen, or what have you, by giving up this fervent investigation of conceptual subtleties.

[Enochian]

...

I certainly understand your issues with conditioned phenomena, Enochian. I just hope you realize that working with the conditioned phenomenon called language will only get you conditioned conceptual answers. I think you'll find yourself much closer to the Unborn, Dzogchen, or what have you, by giving up this fervent investigation of conceptual subtleties.

Which is my point all along.

The thread title is "Bothersome things about Vajrayana and Dzogchen."

[username]

...

I certainly understand your issues with conditioned phenomena, Enochian. I just hope you realize that working with the conditioned phenomenon called language will only get you conditioned conceptual answers. I think you'll find yourself much closer to the Unborn, Dzogchen, or what have you, by giving up this fervent investigation of conceptual subtleties.

Which is my point all along.

The thread title is "Bothersome things about Vajrayana and Dzogchen."

Excellent then as we are in agreement, from the very beginning you have been wrong.

[ngodrup]

Getting transmission, getting a guru, getting a lineage and getting samaya vows would only make me more conditioned.

It would take me AWAY from enlightenment.

Ah! Now that IS a fallacy and a delusion.
Such a view will keep you in Samsara, but hey, it's not so bad, right?
It's sorta like the Jews complaining in the desert that at least in
Egypt they had their meals. Forget about being slaves!

Or, if you are already Enlightened, then of course you don't need
a guru, a teaching, a lineage or agreements of any kind.
You are the Guru, the teaching, the lineage you make the rules.
But sadly, it doesn't work.

In 1989, H. H. the Dalai Lama gave Dzogchen teachings. This question
was raised: "What about attachment to the path?" He said quite
unequivocally, "One attachment leads to Liberation, the other does not.
Choose!"

If you knew, if any of us knew, we'd have been enlightened eons ago.
But you know, great sports figures always hire the best coaches!
The can always see what the practitioner cannot, those pointing
out instructions help them to master their sport. Of course, you
could be a duffer... playing the game, but never mastering.

[Jinzang]

Getting transmission, getting a guru, getting a lineage and getting samaya vows would only make me more conditioned.

Though I am like a pig wallowing in the mud of samsara
Tell me, what fault can lie in one with a stainless mind?
- Saraha

Someone who is truly enlightened embraces the conditioned, as they see no contradiction between it and the ultimate.

[Fu Ri Shin]

Which is my point all along.

The thread title is "Bothersome things about Vajrayana and Dzogchen."

I think the bother rather comes from trying to conceptualize Vajrayana and Dzogchen. So you're purposefully choosing to do something you consider detrimental to your practice?

[dingirfecho]

Enochian, what I don`t get is, if you`re an academician, why don`t you suscribe to one of the many academic forums for buddhism? Vajradhara knows the net is full of them, and this line of inquiry will be better supported by, say, Richard Hayes than Namdrol.

[Mr. G]

Thread cleaned.

[Malcolm]

Enochian, what I don`t get is, if you`re an academician, why don`t you suscribe to one of the many academic forums for buddhism? Vajradhara knows the net is full of them, and this line of inquiry will be better supported by, say, Richard Hayes than Namdrol.

Sure, if you want to listen to the screeds of a materialist raconteur who has decided to fall in line with Batchelorism.

[heart]

Enochian, what I don`t get is, if you`re an academician, why don`t you suscribe to one of the many academic forums for buddhism? Vajradhara knows the net is full of them, and this line of inquiry will be better supported by, say, Richard Hayes than Namdrol.

Sure, if you want to listen to the screeds of a materialist raconteur who has decided to fall in line with Batchelorism.

"Batchelorism"

/magnus

[seraphim]

My 2 cents take is that while maybe we can say that Dzogchen path is "conditioned" for lack of a better word, the base and fruition of Dzogchen certainly is not?

[Astus]

A short explanation for using conditioned phenomena to reach the unconditioned:

"It is like making a fire with two sticks. The fire blazes and the wood is consumed; the ashes fly away and the smoke vanishes. Using illusion to remedy illusion is exactly like this."
(Sutra of Perfect Enlightenment, ch. 2)

And commentary by Kihwa,

"That which is cured is like original wood, it represents the personality that is transformed. The ability to cure is like the ignition of the wood, it represents the remedy that is able to transform. The "remedy" is actually "compassion and wisdom." The fire is the enlightenment that is actualized, this is "actualized enlightenment." The emergence of actualized enlightenment depends on compassion and wisdom. The arousal of compassion and wisdom depends on being sensitive to the actual circumstances of individual people. That which the actual circumstances of individual people follow is the karma of all sentient beings. That which all sentient beings follow depends upon Great Enlightenment. Apart from Great Enlightenment there are no sentient beings; apart from sentient beings there is no application to the actual circumstances of individual people; apart from application to the actual circumstances of individual people there is neither compassion nor wisdom; and apart from compassion and wisdom there is no actualized enlightenment."

[Sönam]

Getting transmission, getting a guru, getting a lineage and getting samaya vows would only make me more conditioned.

It would take me AWAY from enlightenment.

wrong ... it does not "add" more conditionning, it "replaces" existing ones ...

Sönam

[Dechen Norbu]

Enochian, what I don`t get is, if you`re an academician, why don`t you suscribe to one of the many academic forums for buddhism? Vajradhara knows the net is full of them, and this line of inquiry will be better supported by, say, Richard Hayes than Namdrol.

Sure, if you want to listen to the screeds of a materialist raconteur who has decided to fall in line with Batchelorism.

"Batchelorism"

/magnus