Crazywisdom wrote: ↑Sun Aug 01, 2021 10:55 am
Malcolm wrote: ↑Sat Jul 31, 2021 7:43 pm
The nirmāṇakāya of Mahāvajradhara by the name of Śṛī Heruka. So, not visionary, meant to be taken literally as you indicate below, which is why people spend time going to the 24 places, and renaming place in Tibet after them, etc.
That's a truth claim, see?
Not in any hard legal sense.
For example, another "truth" claim concerns the existence of a kingdom named Shambhala and a huge war that is supposed to happen with Muslims in 400 years or so. Some people take this literally. Other people see it as an allegory of a personal, spiritual battle, as it is presented in the gnosis chapter.
Kālacakra is recognized as a valid system today by everyone; but during the 14th century there was still considerable doubt about it's validity in Tibet.
All of these claims are truth claims for those who accept them, and are not truth claims for those who do not. For example, the treasure system is still widely rejected/ignored by many Tibetan Buddhists, especially in Geluk, Jonang, and more conservative bastions of Sakya.
So, in general, in Buddhadharma, one tends to ignore the scriptures for which one does not feel affinity, no one fears rejecting or ignoring the truth claims made by proponents of this or that school, and it has been this way since the rise of Mahāyāna, and even among śrāvaka schools we see this dynamic, i.e., "We don't read that sūtra, so it does not apply to us."
This is one of the bases to the claim that in this degenerate age, the Laghusamvara cycle is the most effective.
So if that's true it will be most effective. Is it? How can we know?
Well, practice five-fold Mahāmudra or Vajrayoginī in the Drigung system and find out.
I suspect these claims of effectiveness are a kind of puffery. Their validity rests on accepting certain assumptions.
The Laghusamvara system was certainly the most widely practiced tantric cycle in India. It has the most explanatory tantras, commentaries, and sādhanas. More of the Eighty-Four Mahāsiddhas practiced it than any other system. Today, it remains the most widely practice system in Tibetan Buddhism, extensively practiced in Sakya, Kagyu, and Gelug, with the central lineages in all three schools descending directly from Naropa, either through Mal Lotsawa Rinchen Drak (Sakya, Geluk) or Marpa Lotsawa (Dwagpo Kagyu, Geluk), and is practiced more widely than Hevajra, Guhyasamāja, Kālacakra, not to mention more obscure systems like Caturpitha, Mahāmaya, Candamahārośana, Buddhakāpala, and so on.
But more importantly, for Indians, the origin story of Heruka of the Laghusamvara has everything to do with the conquest of Shiva and Umadevi, sited in and around places in India that people actually travelled to and at one point, could identify with certainty. Later, when these pithas, upithas, and so on became less identifiable, the pilgrimage became an inner one, with the Ghantapāda body mandala system, etc.
None of these claims can be verified in any sort of objective way for anyone but oneself.