Mahāmudrā & Dzogchen

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Virgo
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Re: Mahāmudrā & Dzogchen

Post by Virgo »

Jnana wrote:
There are no sacred cows in Buddhism. Dzogchen's own supersessionist rhetoric is absurd on the face of it. Even moreso since it has no Indian precedent. The Dzogchen Tantras fall into the same category of scriptural apocrypha as the Vajrasamadhi Sutra and other non-Indian sources. It's rather hilarious that something which was never a significant part of Indian Buddhism is now proclaimed as the apex of all things Buddhist!
Jnana is there something about India itself which is special?

Kevin
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Re: Mahāmudrā & Dzogchen

Post by Josef »

Virgo wrote: Jnana is there something about India itself which is special?

Kevin
Bollywood?
"All phenomena of samsara depend on the mind, so when the essence of mind is purified, samsara is purified. Since the phenomena of nirvana depend on the pristine consciousness of vidyā, because one remains in the immediacy of vidyā, buddhahood arises on its own. All critical points are summarized with those two." - Longchenpa
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Re: Mahāmudrā & Dzogchen

Post by Virgo »

Nangwa wrote:
Virgo wrote: Jnana is there something about India itself which is special?

Kevin
Bollywood?
:rolling:

No doubt India is a great culture, produced so many realized masters. But transported to other areas like Bhutan and Tibet, Mongolia, and so forth, Buddhism has set the way for many realized masters that have come from these other natures, and of coz, realized masters are the source of every Buddhist teaching ever taught.

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Re: Mahāmudrā & Dzogchen

Post by Malcolm »

Jnana wrote:
Namdrol wrote:What Tibetan and Sanskrit term are you using for natural state?
Buddhist soteriology doesn't require a specialized language. But take your pick: gnas lugs, gshis kyi gnas lugs, gshis kyi babs, etc., etc..
Well, yes it does. Dharmatā for example, does not have the same meaning in every system, correct?

Mahāmudra has its terminology based on its path; Dzogchen, its terminology based on its path; they are different paths and their terminology is not commensurate because of that.
The Dzogchen Tantras fall into the same category of scriptural apocrypha as the Vajrasamadhi Sutra and other non-Indian sources.
When did you become an Indiophile, or have you always been and I just never noticed?

N
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Re: Mahāmudrā & Dzogchen

Post by Malcolm »

Jnana wrote: It's rather hilarious that something which was never a significant part of Indian Buddhism is now proclaimed as the apex of all things Buddhist!
And how is this different than Mahāyāna in general? Just what exactly is it about Indians that make their insight intrinsically more valuable than those from Oddiyāna, or Khotan, or Gilgit or even Tibet -- not to mention China or Japan?

At least when I dismiss something, I don't do so on the basis of its national origin. I try to do so based on what is actually being said.
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Re: Mahāmudrā & Dzogchen

Post by gad rgyangs »

the Tibetans themselves were always jumping through hoops trying to invent Indian pedigrees for perfectly profound teachings that of course originated in Tibet. To them, to call a teaching "Tibetan" rather than "Indian" was the ultimate put down. Kindalike how in the west now, if you can't produce your Tibetan papers for your teaching, its automatically considered bogus. seems that the metaphysical grass is always greener on the other side of the cultural divide...
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This is (possibly) the teaching of Buddha.

"I must finally conclude that this proposition, I am, I exist, is necessarily true whenever it is put forward by me or conceived in my mind."
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Re: Mahāmudrā & Dzogchen

Post by Malcolm »

gad rgyangs wrote:To them, to call a teaching "Tibetan" rather than "Indian" was the ultimate put down.
Well, except that modern authors, like Dudjom R., ridiculed the Tibetan tendency to dismiss "Tibetan" tantras just because they were "Tibetan", pointing out there was no good reason to assume that Indians were more realized by nature than Tibetans.

Now then, there is certainly good reason to dismiss a "Tibetan" teaching if you find that it does not meet your criteria for a useful teaching.

ince I have no vested interest in harmonizing this or that teaching with some other teaching, I am free to examine each teaching based on its merits and from its terminological perspective.

The fact is that I think that Dzogchen is more interesting than other teachings and more relevant and more profound for a ton of reasons space will not allow me to expand upon.

Jñāna seems to think that just because people use similar terms they must mean the same thing or have the same path. But we know this is a very faulty and problematical perspective. This kind of thinking has lead to reams of improper refutation -- for example, Gelugpas refuting Lamdre and Dzogchen on an equal footing as mind-only school proponents, (not to mention Kagyu Mahāmudra) because both Dzogchen and Lamdre use the term "ālaya" (albeit in different ways)

My sole point which set this off is that the basis discussed in dzogchen and the basis discussed in mahāmudra are not the same since the path is not the same. Is it the case that tregchö and mahāmudra are very similar? Yes -- but tregchö is not summum bonum of Dzoghen.

But according to Jñāna, we should ignore tögal because, according to him, it and man ngag sde has no "Indian" antecedent (as if that is even important).

N
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Re: Mahāmudrā & Dzogchen

Post by wisdom »

gregkavarnos wrote:You reckon if we keep thrashing it we will finally break it down to its essential particles?
Image
I for one want this horse to look like its been through CERN!

Seriously though, because I'm not well read enough to know about these subtle distinctions, and since I have both Dzogchen and Mahamudra books, its nice to see how people think they are the same and different :reading:
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Re: Mahāmudrā & Dzogchen

Post by gad rgyangs »

Namdrol wrote:
But according to Jñāna, we should ignore tögal because, according to him, it and man ngag sde has no "Indian" antecedent (as if that is even important).

N
hes just being Tibetan-er than the Tibetans like I was being more Buddhist than the Buddha in the vegetarian thread. :tongue:
Thoroughly tame your own mind.
This is (possibly) the teaching of Buddha.

"I must finally conclude that this proposition, I am, I exist, is necessarily true whenever it is put forward by me or conceived in my mind."
- Descartes, 2nd Meditation 25
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Re: Mahāmudrā & Dzogchen

Post by Malcolm »

wisdom wrote:
gregkavarnos wrote:You reckon if we keep thrashing it we will finally break it down to its essential particles?
Image
I for one want this horse to look like its been through CERN!

Seriously though, because I'm not well read enough to know about these subtle distinctions, and since I have both Dzogchen and Mahamudra books, its nice to see how people think they are the same and different :reading:

Generally speaking it works like this -- if you read books by Kagyus, Mahāmudra and Dzogchen are the same. If you read books by Nyingmapas, they are different, and Kagyu Mahāmudra is just Dzogchen sems sde in drag. Sakyapas happily admit Dzogchen and Mahāmudra are different (where they are not shunning it as a Hashang deviation) and charitable Gelugpas like HHDL try to convince everyone that the fundamental mind of clear light and Dzogchen are the same.

Me, I stick with what ChNN says about the issue (i.e. Dzogchen and Mahāmudra are completely different, with different paths and so on).

N
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Re: Mahāmudrā & Dzogchen

Post by Virgo »

Namdrol wrote:=and Kagyu Mahāmudra is just Dzogchen sems sde in drag.
N
Yeah I have a book on it. It is Semde.

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Re: Mahāmudrā & Dzogchen

Post by Jnana »

Namdrol wrote:And how is this different than Mahāyāna in general?
It isn't. As I've already said, it's the same boring recurring theme in the long history of Buddhist polemics: Move the goal posts, invent new rules, create a lineage history going back to some authoritative source (preferably Indian), then claim that yours is a superior game. It's like arguing over the quickest way to arrive at the Garden of the Hesperides.
Namdrol wrote:Generally speaking it works like this -- if you read books by Kagyus, Mahāmudra and Dzogchen are the same.
And this is the crux of the issue, given that this thread is in the Mahāmudrā sub-forum. I've offered explicit statements by a number of teachers who have trained in both systems, as has Astus. I think that their analysis is cogent, and that yours is not.
Namdrol wrote:But according to Jñāna, we should ignore tögal because, according to him, it and man ngag sde has no "Indian" antecedent (as if that is even important).
I've never said to ignore tögal or any other teaching.
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Re: Mahāmudrā & Dzogchen

Post by Grigoris »

Namdrol wrote:Well, except that modern authors, like Dudjom R., ridiculed the Tibetan tendency to dismiss "Tibetan" tantras just because they were "Tibetan", pointing out there was no good reason to assume that Indians were more realized by nature than Tibetans.
But then doesn't the concept of lineage just fall apart at the seams? I mean, so much time and energy is spent by all trying to trace the lineage of their teaching back to its (normally) Indian source and suddenly...

Doesn't a statement like this leave the whole deal open to tantras that do not have an Indian origin (or at least a lineage to back them up), like the English language tantra of the Aro mob?
:namaste:
Last edited by Grigoris on Wed Jan 04, 2012 9:48 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Mahāmudrā & Dzogchen

Post by Adamantine »

Namdrol wrote: Ok, I will repeat one more time for the benefit our readers, since you are clearly not interested in having any kind of reasonable discussion -- these differences in presentation depend on respective differences in paths.


N
Namdrol, your effort at clarifying these things is duly appreciated.
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Detachment is the final happiness. ~Sri Saraha
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Re: Mahāmudrā & Dzogchen

Post by Astus »

gregkavarnos wrote:Doesn't a statement like this leave the whole deal open to tantras that do not have an Indian origin (or at least a lineage to back them up), like the English language tantra of the Aro mob?
Very good question. History clashes with myth. Were the Mahayana sutras spoken by Shakyamuni? And the tantras? Are these sutras and tantras from India, Central Asia, China or Tibet? Could there be treasure texts in an e-mail attachment?
1 Myriad dharmas are only mind.
Mind is unobtainable.
What is there to seek?

2 If the Buddha-Nature is seen,
there will be no seeing of a nature in any thing.

3 Neither cultivation nor seated meditation —
this is the pure Chan of Tathagata.

4 With sudden enlightenment to Tathagata Chan,
the six paramitas and myriad means
are complete within that essence.


1 Huangbo, T2012Ap381c1 2 Nirvana Sutra, T374p521b3; tr. Yamamoto 3 Mazu, X1321p3b23; tr. J. Jia 4 Yongjia, T2014p395c14; tr. from "The Sword of Wisdom"
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Re: Mahāmudrā & Dzogchen

Post by heart »

Jnana wrote: There are no sacred cows in Buddhism. Dzogchen's own supersessionist rhetoric is absurd on the face of it. Even moreso since it has no Indian precedent. The Dzogchen Tantras fall into the same category of scriptural apocrypha as the Vajrasamadhi Sutra and other non-Indian sources. It's rather hilarious that something which was never a significant part of Indian Buddhism is now proclaimed as the apex of all things Buddhist!
I am not sure that kind of argument is actually helping here. Soon you will be trowing away the whole Nyingma tradition. Thanks to Milarepa we know that there was Dzogchen in Tibet when Marpa brought Mahamudra to Tibet. That is of course if you accept his biography and the 100.000 songs as based on reality.

/magnus
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Re: Mahāmudrā & Dzogchen

Post by heart »

Namdrol wrote:
Jnana wrote: Tsele Natsok Rangdröl indicates otherwise. The Circle of the Sun:...

Honestly, I think this analysis by this master is a bit misleading
Yes, of course you do Namdrol. For you everything have to be separated as high or low. It is an intellectual discipline you probably nurtured for many lifetimes. Tsele Natsok Rangdrol is a good example of an other kind of intellectual discipline, he sees every true expression of Buddhism as naturally pointing at the natural state. Anyone can read his reasoning in "The heart of the matter" where he clearly says that Mahdyamika, Mahamudra and Dzogchen all point directly to the natural state. My master told us a few times that he studied with two Khenpos when he was young, one was teaching like Namdrol and the other one like Tsele Natsok Rangdrol. He said he found both approaches valid and helpful. Why? Because it just an intellectual discipline. For this reason these discussion will continue to arise as a part of our heritage from our Tibetan masters. A certain amount of respect could be helpful here because in our heritage the attitude of Tsele Natsok Rangdrol is just as old as Namdrols. So please try to show respect for both styles of reasoning.

/magnus
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Re: Mahāmudrā & Dzogchen

Post by Jnana »

heart wrote:I am not sure that kind of argument is actually helping here. Soon you will be trowing away the whole Nyingma tradition.
There's no need to throw away anything. I'm not saying that there is nothing valuable in the Dzogchen Tantras (or the Vajrasamādhi Sūtra for that matter). Indeed, all of these texts have been sources of understanding and inspiration for many people for centuries. However, IMO the teachings of the Indian mahāsiddhas (Tilo, Naro, etc.) represent the high point of Mahāyāna Buddhism, and nothing else has surpassed them in any way (contrary to the claims of certain Tibetan doxographies, and so on).
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Re: Mahāmudrā & Dzogchen

Post by Adamantine »

heart wrote:
Jnana wrote: There are no sacred cows in Buddhism. Dzogchen's own supersessionist rhetoric is absurd on the face of it. Even moreso since it has no Indian precedent. The Dzogchen Tantras fall into the same category of scriptural apocrypha as the Vajrasamadhi Sutra and other non-Indian sources. It's rather hilarious that something which was never a significant part of Indian Buddhism is now proclaimed as the apex of all things Buddhist!
I am not sure that kind of argument is actually helping here. Soon you will be trowing away the whole Nyingma tradition. Thanks to Milarepa we know that there was Dzogchen in Tibet when Marpa brought Mahamudra to Tibet. That is of course if you accept his biography and the 100.000 songs as based on reality.

/magnus
Well there's also the fact the Guhyagarbha Tantra is clearly dated to pre 8th-cent India since there is evidence of a sanskrit original stored in Samye, verified by Śākyaśrībhadra.
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Detachment is the final happiness. ~Sri Saraha
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Re: Mahāmudrā & Dzogchen

Post by kalden yungdrung »

Namdrol wrote:
Tsele Natsok Rangdröl indicates otherwise. The Circle of the Sun:...

On the other hand, you have Dzogchen texts that systematically differentiate between gzhi and kun gzhi. The reason for this is not arbitrary and have everything to do with the path of Dzogchen. These topics are not mentioned at all in any system of Mahāmudra since they form no part of Mahāmudra practice. The system of differentiating mind and wisdom (sems and ye shes) in Mahāmudra is not the same as differentiating between mind and vidyā in Dzogchen and does not have the same intention.

N


Tashi delek,

gZhi and gZhi is indeed different understood in Mahamudra and Dzogchen, also maybe due to its / ones understanding of emptiness?

Yes emptiness is sometimes used as:

stong-cha - on the side of emptiness
stong-nyid kyi gshis - the innate disposition which is emptiness
stong-nyid snying-rje zung-'jug - the unification of emptiness and compassion
stong-pa - empty, shunya
stong-pa nyid - emptiness, shunyata

Maybe there are here some relevant forms of emptiness missing like the 16 forms of emptiness also Madyamika philosophy etc. ....

Further some elucidations about gZhi:

gzhi - Base, Foundation, ground, basis
gzhi ji bzbin-pa - the Base just as it is
gzhi hyid la grol-ba - liberated into the state of the Base
gzhi dang ngo 'phrad-pa - introduced to the Base
gzhi gnas ma'i 'od gsal - the Mother Clear Light that abides as the Base
gzhi-ma - the Base
gzhi med rtsa bral - Without any base and without any source
gzhi’i 'od gsal - the Clear Light of the Base
gzhi yi ngo bo - the essence which is the Base
gzhi lam gyi 'od gsal gnyis bdyer-med - the inseparability of the Clear Lights of the Base and of the Path
gzhi lam 'bras-bu - the Base, the Path, and the Fruit
gzhir gnas - remain as the Base, abide as the Base
gzhir gnas kyi rig-pa - Awareness which abides as the Base
gzhir gnas kyi 'od gsal - the Clear Light which abides as the Base


Therefore because of the many undestandings about Emptiness and Gzhi, maybe a difference in Path and Fruition possible ?




Mutsog Marro
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