Alan Wallace: Dzogchen, COVID-19 & the prophecy received by Dudjom Lingpa

Malcolm
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Re: Alan Wallace: Dzogchen, COVID-19 & the prophecy received by Dudjom Lingpa

Post by Malcolm »

I would say we have gone way way way off topic...
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Ayu
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Re: Alan Wallace: Dzogchen, COVID-19 & the prophecy received by Dudjom Lingpa

Post by Ayu »

Yes.
Please, :focus:
Natan
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Re: Alan Wallace: Dzogchen, COVID-19 & the prophecy received by Dudjom Lingpa

Post by Natan »

PeterC wrote: Sun May 10, 2020 5:12 pm
Malcolm wrote: Sun May 10, 2020 4:42 pm ...somewhuere like North Dakota...
If you’re explaining the Dharma in Fargo I think it would be wise to start with suffering and not go straight to recognition of the natural state. Just a hunch.
What makes you think you won't get the eyeroll? "The Earth is our dominion and we work hard and make our own happiness..." classic protestant work ethic. There is a reason yoga is everywhere in the West. It feels good.
Natan
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Re: Alan Wallace: Dzogchen, COVID-19 & the prophecy received by Dudjom Lingpa

Post by Natan »

...

Climb out from the box guys. Maybe this moment of quarentine folks are aware of frustrations. Let's say can be tied into second statement. Always glorious is one way to keep it real and interesting.
Last edited by Ayu on Mon May 11, 2020 3:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Off topic removed, about Christianity again, for the sake of approving this post.
PeterC
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Re: Alan Wallace: Dzogchen, COVID-19 & the prophecy received by Dudjom Lingpa

Post by PeterC »

Crazywisdom wrote: Mon May 11, 2020 1:28 pm
PeterC wrote: Sun May 10, 2020 5:12 pm
Malcolm wrote: Sun May 10, 2020 4:42 pm ...somewhuere like North Dakota...
If you’re explaining the Dharma in Fargo I think it would be wise to start with suffering and not go straight to recognition of the natural state. Just a hunch.
What makes you think you won't get the eyeroll? "The Earth is our dominion and we work hard and make our own happiness..." classic protestant work ethic. There is a reason yoga is everywhere in the West. It feels good.
That's...not quite what I meant.
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Nemo
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Re: Alan Wallace: Dzogchen, COVID-19 & the prophecy received by Dudjom Lingpa

Post by Nemo »

Malcolm wrote: Sun May 03, 2020 8:25 pm
Pero wrote: Sun May 03, 2020 8:08 pm
heart wrote: Sun May 03, 2020 8:07 pm

You pray to god for a long time, then get the direct introduction?
Why not? Plenty of people come to the teachings from other religious backgrounds.
So there is a causal link to praying to god and then getting direct introduction? How does that work? Basically Pero, if you go to receive Dzogchen teachings, you are an Ex-whatever. Oh, sure, you can maintain outward form of a Christian, etc., but if your view does not change, you will not realize the meaning.
Lately I wonder if creator Gods are demons. Look around you. Should you be worshiping anything that made this and then hid the true essence of reality so you would suffer for aeons? Maybe you can get some cool demons power cheats codes in exchange for worship, but the Master's tools don't get you out of the Master's house.

I think many "Hindu" gods get a pass though. Many are Buddhists like us and they have been a great help in spreading and protecting the Buddha's teachings. Even saving the lives of practitioners. They are beneficial friends, at least some are.
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Re: Alan Wallace: Dzogchen, COVID-19 & the prophecy received by Dudjom Lingpa

Post by Schrödinger’s Yidam »

So there is a causal link to praying to god and then getting direct introduction?
I’ve always thought of Christianity as a form of guru-yoga.
:stirthepot:

I’m posting that just to be provocative, but I actually do see it as similar to guru yogas of past masters. Your own guru is a somewhat different scenario.

Anyway don’t flip out. It’s not as if it’s a point I care to defend.
1.The problem isn’t ‘ignorance’. The problem is the mind you have right now. (H.H. Karmapa XVII @NYC 2/4/18)
2. I support Mingyur R and HHDL in their positions against lama abuse.
3. Student: Lama, I thought I might die but then I realized that the 3 Jewels would protect me.
Lama: Even If you had died the 3 Jewels would still have protected you. (DW post by Fortyeightvows)
Malcolm
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Re: Alan Wallace: Dzogchen, COVID-19 & the prophecy received by Dudjom Lingpa

Post by Malcolm »

Nemo wrote: Mon May 11, 2020 7:02 pm
Malcolm wrote: Sun May 03, 2020 8:25 pm
Pero wrote: Sun May 03, 2020 8:08 pm
Why not? Plenty of people come to the teachings from other religious backgrounds.
So there is a causal link to praying to god and then getting direct introduction? How does that work? Basically Pero, if you go to receive Dzogchen teachings, you are an Ex-whatever. Oh, sure, you can maintain outward form of a Christian, etc., but if your view does not change, you will not realize the meaning.
Lately I wonder if creator Gods are demons.
Gnostics certainly thought so.
PeterC
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Re: Alan Wallace: Dzogchen, COVID-19 & the prophecy received by Dudjom Lingpa

Post by PeterC »

smcj wrote: Mon May 11, 2020 7:18 pm
So there is a causal link to praying to god and then getting direct introduction?
I’ve always thought of Christianity as a form of guru-yoga.
:stirthepot:

I’m posting that just to be provocative, but I actually do see it as similar to guru yogas of past masters. Your own guru is a somewhat different scenario.

Anyway don’t flip out. It’s not as if it’s a point I care to defend.
I'm not sure a christian would see it like that. It would be theologically problematic to think that you were *equivalent* to god. They had enough trouble with the one innocuous word "filioque", and that's just defining the relationship between the holy trinity.

Catholics do pray to saints to intercede on their behalf, but they don't think of themselves as receiving some sort of lineage blessing from them. And other branches of christianity consider that to be idolatry of one kind or another. And even a catholic would probably not think that praying to a saint was the same as considering their minds to be not different from that of the saint.

This is a fun area to discuss but as soon as you get into comparative religion you realize that you're comparing activities, concepts and words that might seem superficially similar, but really aren't.
Schrödinger’s Yidam
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Re: Alan Wallace: Dzogchen, COVID-19 & the prophecy received by Dudjom Lingpa

Post by Schrödinger’s Yidam »

This is a fun area to discuss but as soon as you get into comparative religion you realize that you're comparing activities, concepts and words that might seem superficially similar, but really aren't.
On other threads I've mentioned a book I came across by accident titled "I Was a Monk" by John Tettemer. A hundred years ago he was an American priest teaching theology at the Vatican. To make a long story short, he got sick and was recuperating in Switzerland. Without any responsibilities or activities to attend to, he was outside looking at the stars one night. He allowed his mind to just go free and embrace the wonder of the universe. At that point he had an intense non-dual experience.

This freaked him out for two reasons. The first was that it did not happen during prayer, so he dismissed the possibility was some sort of grace. The second was that the non-dual nature of the experience was completely incompatible with his theological training. Catholicism is dualistic and his experience was of non-duality. He had to choose between what he had been taught and what he experienced. He chose the experience and ended up leaving the Church. Amusingly his life after leaving the priesthood entailed a stint as an extra on the movie "Lost Horizons". I see that as a likely case of karmic foreshadowing. He's probably taken rebirth as one of us. Kinda funny.

His account of his experience sounded very much like Mahamudra or Dzogchen to me. That's my impression, not his. Being a hundred years ago he'd have no knowledge of any of that. He's not making any such claims in the book. He' didn’t know what to make of it.
1.The problem isn’t ‘ignorance’. The problem is the mind you have right now. (H.H. Karmapa XVII @NYC 2/4/18)
2. I support Mingyur R and HHDL in their positions against lama abuse.
3. Student: Lama, I thought I might die but then I realized that the 3 Jewels would protect me.
Lama: Even If you had died the 3 Jewels would still have protected you. (DW post by Fortyeightvows)
PeterC
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Re: Alan Wallace: Dzogchen, COVID-19 & the prophecy received by Dudjom Lingpa

Post by PeterC »

smcj wrote: Tue May 12, 2020 5:28 am
This is a fun area to discuss but as soon as you get into comparative religion you realize that you're comparing activities, concepts and words that might seem superficially similar, but really aren't.
On other threads I've mentioned a book I came across by accident titled "I Was a Monk" by John Tettemer. A hundred years ago he was an American priest teaching theology at the Vatican. To make a long story short, he got sick and was recuperating in Switzerland. Without any responsibilities or activities to attend to, he was outside looking at the stars one night. He allowed his mind to just go free and embrace the wonder of the universe. At that point he had an intense non-dual experience.

This freaked him out for two reasons. The first was that it did not happen during prayer, so he dismissed the possibility was some sort of grace. The second was that the non-dual nature of the experience was completely incompatible with his theological training. Catholicism is dualistic and his experience was of non-duality. He had to choose between what he had been taught and what he experienced. He chose the experience and ended up leaving the Church. Amusingly his life after leaving the priesthood entailed a stint as an extra on the movie "Lost Horizons". I see that as a likely case of karmic foreshadowing. He's probably taken rebirth as one of us. Kinda funny.

His account of his experience sounded very much like Mahamudra or Dzogchen to me. That's my impression, not his. Being a hundred years ago he'd have no knowledge of any of that. He's not making any such claims in the book. He' didn’t know what to make of it.
This raises at least a couple of questions:
1/ What did he really experience? Was it some kind of samadhi or an actual non-dual experience? Without a teacher he had no way of recognizing, stabilizing, integrating it. This is one of the many reasons why,a s you say, you really can't progress on this sort of path without the right teacher. The way that the pointing-out instruction is given a lot of the time is that it's a pointing out of what you've already experienced but haven't realized what it really is.
2/ If he'd accepted different dogma about christianity, would he perhaps have identified it as a christian religious experience? Plenty of their saints experience divine revelation outside of prayer. Saul of Tarsus had his first experience on the road to Damascus before he'd even converted. Other sects would have had no problem with the experience of god outside of formal prayer. It's curious that he would dismiss that possibility on those grounds. Unless perhaps his conception of the christian god was utterly dualistic. and perhaps this was an actual non-dual experience. Who knows. A first experience of samadhi can be extremely powerful and how you interpret it would depend on the cultural lens through which you see it.

This is a bit like psychiatry - there's a reason why it's verboten to diagnose someone without direct examination of them. Though I guess you can infer from their writings to a degree - but the most you can conclude from writing is that someone hasn't shown evidence of a certain experience, not that they've never had that experience. There was an interview I read once with the Taiwanese monk Sheng Yan where an overly credulous interviewer brought up the Tang poet Wang Wei, often referred to as the 'Buddha of Poets' because his aesthetics seemed to have a lot in common with contemporary Chan. Sheng Yan shut down this idea pretty brutally. He did an analysis of one of his more famous poems, showing all the places where it was expressing subject and object, and concluded that at most Wang Wei might have experienced mental stability and peace, but if he had 'seen the nature', he certainly wasn't showing that in his poetry.
Natan
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Re: Alan Wallace: Dzogchen, COVID-19 & the prophecy received by Dudjom Lingpa

Post by Natan »

Will there be a golden age of the rainbow bodies where all people join hands in another Dimension?

Nope. It gets much worse from here. Best to take care one's own body and leave the rest to chance
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