Dharma Wheel

It has always been a matter of minor annoyance to me that some Westerners spend their lives doing the usual worldly things and then ordain as older people, and expect special privileges just because they are now wearing robes.

It's funny. Most Asian teachers I've had insist they're nowhere near the caliber of their own teachers, because they're exceedingly humble. I wonder if students can tell the difference between those who make this insistence because they're being humble, and those who make this insistence because th...

One cannot hack buddhahood in one life, especially not with all the pirated Vajrayana methods being peddled online with no lineage approval. One will only experience what a Buddha experiences from someone who's experiencing it. Otherwise it's just rumor. Siddhi won't go to broken lineages, and we c...

Ayu wrote: ↑Sun Apr 14, 2024 10:59 am IMHO the stances of all political parties have their limits if viewed from Buddhust POV:

Exactly so. this is why Buddhists cannot just coast but have to use their own consciences and logical faculties rather than waving somebody else's flag.

f who and what you vote for is not consonant with the religious moral viewpoints you aspire to hold, then you are at least suffering from cognitive dissonance. It seems to me that you are saying that one political party's stance on all the issues always just happens to be in agreement with your per...

Pardon me, but IMO blithely labeling people based on ephemeral political beliefs is at bottom antithetical to a Buddhist viewpoint, and only contributes to an "us vs. them" mentality, and, usually, subtle feelings of personal superiority that are definitely at odds with Mahayana..

These methods of introduction predate Dzogchen upadesha texts. These postures and gazes were around, āsana, bhānda. These don't come out of books. We are generally discussing things in terms of historical evidence here. It is easy to claim that everything in Hinduism was always there, from the begi...

Seems your quote was pointless, or rather, that point had already been made.

My point was that the individual's consciousness and reasoning has to come before any political label, and that these things do not always lead in a certain direction.

Not necessarily but right-wing thinking on the whole tends to emphasize individualism over (for example rightwing philosophies like libertarianism and objectivism) - rather than altruism. IMO, objectivism (Ayn Rand, right?) is just a rationalization, a justification for being selfish. There is noth...

Are un-dharmic and "right wing" necessarily the same?

natusake wrote: ↑Tue Apr 09, 2024 5:41 pm When it asks for credentials, type guest in the username field and leave the password blank.

Thank you.

Yes, thanks.

natusake wrote: ↑Sat Nov 25, 2023 7:59 pm this Sino-Japanese to English Buddhist dictionary and find an exact match (with the entry in traditional Chinese characters): http://www.buddhism-dict.net/cgi-bin/xp ... D%E5%A4%B4

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Johnny Dangerous wrote: ↑Mon Apr 08, 2024 2:27 am Seeing empowerment as simply some kind of “permission” is completely wrong anyway, the experience and transformation of the mind stream conferred by empowerment is precisely what “empowers” a person to progress in practice.

In fact Paul Repps had also conjectured a Saivite connection to Buddhist meditation in one of his books ("Zen Flesh, Zen Bones", if memory serves) although he may not have directly referenced Dzogchen (as the book was published relatively early on in the diffusion of Dzogchen in the West)...

Mutsuk, if you know Jean-Luc and he has any updated thoughts since his seminal 1999 work on the Śaiva-Dzogchen connections, I'd very much love to hear them! I corresponded with JLA on this last year, and he said that he has not been able to date the Saivite sources he used to suggest a connection w...

Can't forget about Vimalamitra too, also an Indian who brought Dzogchen to Tibet Vimalamitra, according to traditional accounts, learned his Dzogchen from Sri Simha in China, where the latter was born. And Vimalamitra was most likely himself a Kashmiri, which locale might be included in India out o...

It's highly unlikely any of the later texts attributed to Śrī Siṃha were actually written by him. Why do you say this? This is actually the only part I was looking for clarification of. Which later texts are you talking about? And, while authorship of much or most Dzogchen material is questionable,...

Yes, Dalton is what I was trying to remember. thank you.

Zhen Li wrote: ↑Fri Apr 05, 2024 4:12 am The scheme was developed in India gradually (e.g. by Buddhaguhya, Vilāsavajra, Śraddhākaravarman, Ratnākaraśānti, etc.).

do you have sources for this?