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