Pero wrote:Namdrol wrote:padma norbu wrote:
1. In Dzogchen we visualize the guru as all our teachers. I have asked numerous times if this means people from other traditions as well and the answer I invariably get is: "ALLLL teachers."
it means all teachers and all knowledge, not just Buddhist knowledge.
You jokester you.
What makes you think he's joking?
PadmaVonSamba wrote:My teacher (mahamudra tradition) taught me to see everything as my teacher. This is because everything can be taken on as part of one's path if one has a foundation of clear understanding which makes this possible.
I have also been taught that from Lama Tsering Everest. It was also something I carried over in my thought process from previous new-agey stuff. When I read about Mahammudra, how everything is a symbol of itself and that Mahammudra is the great all-encompassing symbol, I was surprised because it reminded me of this epiphany I had once walking down the street as a Qabalist practitioner in which you are supposed to see "every interaction as a personal dealing with God" and there was just a lot of talk about symbols in general and how they represent and affect different aspects of your awareness, how everything is ultimately unreal, but real phenomena nevertheless. Overall, it was similar in many ways to Buddhist teaching (except the God part, but the "God" they were talking about was abstract indeed) and, in fact, they frequently mentioned Buddha, and the illusion of samsara. So, I was walking down the sidewalk considering all the multiplicity of forms and thinking that, "Well, there is literally nothing I can think of that isn't something I've already experienced... like, all the mythical beings are just a composite of other animals (eg. Abraxas has a rooster head and snake feet)... and I was considering the fact that I couldn't really imagine anything that didn't already exist and that I had experienced in some way, whether gas, plant, mineral, animal, emotion, whatever... and I was looking at a tree and it suddenly occurred to me that it was a symbol of itself. I don't know any other way to put it, but it's appearance was a manifestation of the idea of tree-ness.
"Use what seems like poison as medicine. We can use our personal suffering as the path to compassion for all beings." Pema Chodron