/lit/ - Literature

Why ask here? Do you really think those on the path to enlightenment waste their time on weeb image posting sites pretending to have read books for clout ..... despite it being an anonymous site?
I mean, lurking and shitposting on 4chan must violate at least half of the precepts of the noble eightfold path.

>>20461345
I don't think it violates any of them except for the right speech one assuming you shitpost a lot.

>>20461345
Buddhist /lit/ users are bodhisattvas

>>20461314
Buddhism is not one thing, it's a whole lot of different doctrines developed over the course of thousands of years. You could concentrate on Theravada, Zen etc. If you like the Heart sutra you could try reading Linji or Dogen

This is where I started. Read suttas alongsideJAV28P it and after it, but read this for the background and solid explanations of common concepts and themes.

>>20461314
study hegel, his system is pretty similar, anatta makes a lot more sense once you understand how substantiality creates false ontological notions of reality, and hegel is a master articulating that
or just listen to dhamma talks on youtube, monks tned to create more pragmatic and easy to digest ways to undertsand the dhamma

>>20461314
Take the Mahayana pill and read Nagarjuna and Vasabandhu.

>>20461314
>Where should I go from there?
To closest Buddhist temple. If you're just intellectually curious you might actually get better grasp of Buddhism by reading some introductory text, instead of sutras.

>>20461345
>Why ask here?
Why not? Worth a shot. Or should he limit his scope to the one who can answer him. That's a shot in the dark.

Tbqh I think the Mahayana sutras are mostly garbage. DMT trip ranting. It's like Rogan going "dude this is amazing I saw all these flowers in the sky and flaming tigers riding chariots and shit".

I think shorter, more practical Buddhist texts that focuse on actual practice are better. Read some meditation manuals, some Zen stufff, the dhammapada, lojong texts...don't think you have to read every Buddhist text out there. It's impossible and frankly a lot of Buddhist writing just isn't that good.

>>20461490
I read this one Mahayana sutra where Maitreya (I think) shot lasers out of his eyes and I couldn’t take it seriously. Mahayana philosophy is however often very good, probably because they ignore the schizo visions.

>>20461345
>lurking and shitposting on 4chan must violate at least half of the precepts of the noble eightfold path
>must
Why give advice when you're not sure? Anyway, most of 4chan could be called unskillful, but it really doesn't break any precepts. Excepts if you're a shill, being shill is not a honorable profession.

>>20461314
It’s almost as if Buddhism were an all-too-human tradition with monks adding their own takes and writing their own sutras “totally dictated by the Buddha bro, and I just happened to find it” for centuries

>>20461518
Still the best tradition there is by far

>>20461509
>>20461368
If you're just going to just cherrypick which aspects of you think are important or relevant based on what you happen to like the idea of ......
>try /r/Buddhism

Protip: the entire Mahayana tradition, the entire thing without exception, is man-made and counterfeit.

>>20461524
Do tell how this website breaks Buddhist precepts.

>>20461527
Vajrayana is based

>>20461527
This is of course the Theravadin line that their school is older, but this isn’t really the case, since Mahayana sutras have been found that date to 1st century BC.
Besides Theravadin believe that Buddha was a man, albeit a far better one than any other, so isn’t Theravada explicitly manmade?

>>20461535
The whole argument over what lineage is the true one is westerners bringing Abrahamic mentality to Buddhism, arguing over who has the true covenant with one true god.

>>20461535
The Buddha is neither a man, nor a deva, etc.
The Tripitaka contains the authentic teachings of the Buddha.
Mahayana is fan fic by fallible humans and a source of confusion.
Enough said.

>>20461546
Mahayana is the pinnacle of metaphysics

>"I am a real Buddhist, you fucking NIGGER libtard tranny"

>>20461566
Who are you quoting?

>>20461314
What are you looking for an answer to specifically? The Heart Sutra comes from the prajñaparamita literature, which presupposes you already know something enough about Buddhism to take a position on it. It is a good starting point if only because it is a terse credal statement, but you can't fully appreciate it without doing the needful.

>>20461369
I am in fact a certified bodhisattva, fully and completely awakened, but the fucking redditors who shit up all the Buddhism threads really make me question the value of compassion.

>>20461921
At what point on this chart will I be knowledgeable enough to start getting into Tibetan Buddhism

>>20461925
The bodhisattva vow seems like a trap to me
>haha yeah bro sign this contract that prevents exit from Samsara for what essentially amounts to an eternity, it's for the sake of coooompassion after all

>>20462011
Yes, and a lot of tantric practices are straight up egregore shit.
>Yeah just eject your consciousness straight into my heart and let it dissolve into my body lol trust me bro in enlightened

>>20461518
If one believes the Buddha is a monistic cosmic reality principle then it isn't too difficult to attribute one's expositions of the Dharma to him or one of his pseudo-feudal mandalaic attendants as author. A doctrine of radical immanence and interdependence ultimately necessitates it. What makes Mahayana so innovative is that it allowed Buddhism to live and adapt more readily to the needs of its audience by decoupling the teachings from historical contingency and making them an object of primordial or mystical-yogic attainment. It is after all this attainment that the historical Buddha is believed to have himself experienced by the non-Mahayanists, and all Buddhists believe what he taught was a path to realize this. Mahayana also teaches paths to reach that, in keeping with the imperative that one must strive for his salvation. What has efficacy in Ceylon may not have the same in Gandhara. And so forth. Especially in the foreign context of Western study of Buddhism, one should not limit oneself to a hyperprotestantized viewpoint that "only the oldest texts are authentic," as this inevitably leads to the same total rejection of religion it produced in one's own culture—no oldest text can be philologically or archaeologically traced to its authorship with complete certainty. Because the obvious answer is that ignorant people, or people afraid of ignorance, write books, not prophets. The prophet doesn't need to remember what he said to do, he has already done it. If the later texts are 'wrong,' it is mere hypothesis that the earlier ones are more correct. They were written by what are in final analysis, dubious sources. To place faith solely in the preservation of texts is to wage war upon human nature and the problems of perception, interpretation, and linguistics, and we've no guarantee of any greater efficacy because we can recite something without understanding it. Even if it were true that old is good and new is bad, you still have to interpret the old, which is what the new have been doing for thousands of years. You are yourself new, and your scholastic position is not that of the original audience, but an effort to imitate theirs, a problem they did not have since they received instruction and not instruction manuals. But again, the source of this instruction is a kind of mystically produced insight. If you don't believe this experience is possible, then it is reasonable to fetishize the texts as the sole repository of it, if only because delusions are reasonable from bad premises. But if you do believe the experience is possible, it cannot be limited to historical contingency and a closed body of scriptures. It belongs to entire dharma body...

>>20462022
At the same time tantra has practices that are supposed to help you in a very direct way to maintain awareness and not get fucked by samsaric projections, like in the book of the dead or the six yogas of naropa. I'm not sure what to think about it.

>>20461928
"Tibetan Buddhism" is not a unified thing. You have centuries of transmissions of Indian texts, teachers, and of course, tantric rituals, many of which are historically tied to the period 600-1200 AD, quite some time after Buddhism becomes a formal and institutionalized religion. You must start with the 'Jeets, for that is what the Tibetans do. After that, if one is interested in tantra and vajrayana I would say he is entitled to pursue it—but to start there is to skip everything before, an extremely clumsy approach to a wholly foreign religion system thrice translated. A foundation is critical, a knowledge-base mandala if one will

>>20462035
Tantra is very internally diverse. I was actually referring to phowa, one of the six yogas of naropa, where you eject your consciousness into the heart of amitabha Buddha at death. Always seemed really shady to me. But tummo or dream yoga or illusory body, the other yogas of naropa, help one establish a solid anatomy and epistemic position of ultimate suspicion of the phenomenal reason, so they are certainly good imo. But yes, things like phowa, chod, or the bodhisattva vow strike me as insufficiently spiritually paranoid

>>20462054
Unfortunately, I don't think it is possible to practice tantra without practicing these doubtful things as well at some point. Initiation will have you take the vow anyway, and empowerments or the experience of Rigpa require that a mama be here with you, so independent practice is impossible.

>>20462065
>mama
lama*

>>20462065
I disagree. Longchenpa learned directly from the khandros. Take the schizopill and do the same.

>>20462088
Initiation from deities, wouldn't you run into the same problem there - how to be sure you can trust the entity that is contacting you?
Furthermore, while most parts of Tibetan Buddhism have been written about, a lot of practices remain esoteric. At best, your praxis would be inherently incomplete and unbalanced.

>>20462088
>Take the schizopill
How

>>20462110
I would suggest Shingon (Japanese Vajrayana) is more palatable than the Tibetan for westerners. We have no analogue to the Saivism and charnel asceticism that influenced the Esoteric Buddhism exported to Tibet. But the Japanese version is based on a more concise set of earlier Vajrayana texts and rituals. Not that the Tibetans are "wrong," but the theology-demonology they have is from a very pluralistic religious culture, whereas we have been more monotheistic. Kūkai is something like Spinoza; there's breach with convention but not an alien one. It's less you have to learn, basically, in order to "get it." But if you are set on Tibetan stuff don't let that stop you, although the Vajrayana developments and texts in India that influenced Japan are a bit earlier than the ones that influence Tibet, so it doesn't hurt to study it anyway. Study as many schools as you can, see what branches to what, what questions you still have, what clicks, what seems unwieldly

>>20461535
>>This is of course the Theravadin line that their school is older, but this isn’t really the case, since Mahayana sutras have been found that date to 1st century BC.
>>20461555
yeah and the buddha shits on metaphysics..
Also the whole Mahayanist narrative is base don saying the arahants are not fully enlightened because they follow the 8 fold path, instead of the mahayana. So according to Mahayanists, the 8 fold path precedes whatever Mahayanists made up afterwards.
And historically, the oldest sutras from the tripikata are as old as the protomahyanist sutras. And protomahayana is just the bodhisattva stuff, and lots of retarded views like ''if you copy the mahayana sutras over and over you accumulate lots of merit''. ie proselytism..., not even the emptiness-interdependence retardation which came later on.

Start with George Grimm's The Doctrine of the Buddha. It offers a comprehensive introduction.

>>20462029
>What makes Mahayana so innovative
There is zero innovation in mahayana. It's just the deep desire of cramming back a true nature into buddhism and some primordial heaven, because NPC cant handle the no self teaching.

Of course the same NPCs start seething when they are ask to solve the problem of evil which they manufactured as soon as they put the primordial mind in buddhism and then somehow karma appeared and there is the fall into suffering.
Then they lose their mind when the buddha says explicitly that it's impossible to have state devoid of illusion, preceding a state of illusions. The path is only illusion->no-illusion.

>>20462180
>he hasn't read Nagarjuna

>>20462150
So what you’re trying to say is that Theravada arose as a result of people being filtered by Nagarjuna?

all buddhist texts are redundant after the dhammapada, which itself is made retroactively redundant by the gospels

>>20462150
You have no idea what you're talking about and protestant sola scriptura logic doesn't apply here.

>>20462110
read this book and do all the practices
>how to make a zombie
>how to drink mercury through your dick
>how to sit in complete darkness for 49 days and have a great time
>how to connect with the orbs that float around in the sky

>>20461369
I am an arahant black belt PUA 10 inch cock bodybuilder football playing king in space

>>20462237
Dude dont bother with abidamma (Season pass DLC)

>>20461314
Start with the Chinks (Mahayana DBZ edition)

>>20462286
>muh gospels
refuted by Ceylonese monks in the 19th century, see Gombrich and McMahan's books on the history of Buddhism

>>20462345
>how to sit in complete darkness for 49 days and have a great time
Pretty sure I did this from March 2020 onward

>>20462286
>muh gospels
Refuted by the Old Testament

>>20462371
>worshiping a volcano demon because you hate Egyptians
ISHYGDDT

>>20462369
dank then you are enlightened

>>20462345
I get that Theravada is more authentic but it doesn’t have schizokino like this

>>20462378
I don't advertise but I have done the needful

>>20462384
Mahayana Schizokino is the fourth jewel
OH QUEEN VISUALIZE YOUR PURE LAND
think it
Dream it
Do it ;]

>>20462369
>>20462389
I am become server rack destroyer of defilements

>>20462384
the only reason theravada seems more "authentic" is because it has been more deeply influenced by protestantism. All the palifags on this board really need to read up on the social construction of the theravada tradition in 19th century sri lanka (steve prothero's White Buddhist) and burma (kate crosby's Esoteric Theravada). I have a buddhology phd and all the 19 year old pali goobers here trigger the shit out of me it's like they haven't read a single piece of scholarship written in the past 100 years

>>20461314
I saw this type of shit on acid and I read later that Tibetan Buddhists used psychedelics and it influenced their art. Just thought I would share that even though I don't have a source and I can't remember if it's true or not

>>20462286
pffft

>>20462345
There are many books on Buddhist tantra. What makes this one the best

>>20462447
PhD sama I am but a 20 something year old zoomer using basic based cringe jewdar to get past Bhiku Bodi's iron wall but the Dravidians aren't helping me and are scared of my power level no matter how pathetic and prostrate normie I present myself. The Chinese Mahayanas gave me a full library but it's basically laser mouth Calvinism and I see so much crypto Christianity it's unreal. After months of cringey encounters of the culture shock kind I have realized I can politlely mention that an Abrahamic premise is a sign of primary source perverting bias. But my America based (not based) contacts don't seem concerned with such disagreeable questions.
Mfw the East is going down like the West as I try to uncover the spilled beans

>>20462467
I mean the zombie practice alone makes it the best. Plenty of texts reference a zombie technique but they say it's been lost or they won't write it down because it's fucked up, but shardza gives step by step instructions and it's super metal. Aside from that it is just a very barebones collection of cave yogi tantric techniques. There's very little in the way of view teachings, theological or metaphysical framework. It's just a collection of techniques, the most advanced stuff out of tantra (extremely detailed rundown of tummo, sleep and dream yogas, phowa) and dzogchen (a whole chapter on togel and another super detailed chapter on darkness retreat). It's on libgen. I honestly can't believe they translated this one, but the Bonpos are crazy that way.

>>20462447
>buddhology phd
Has it brought you closer to enlightenment?

>>20462488
oh yeah and the last chapters are on how to stop eating anything and how to become a sexual vampire. The book is simply unmatched.

>>20462488
This sounds great
Would you say it encompasses a sizable portion of the highest esoteric teachings in Vajrayana?
Does it also have instructions on prelim practices like ngondro or is it only advanced stuff?

>>20462496
the first chapter is ngondro stuff, covers basic meditation techniques, but it is pretty cursory. Chapter two jumps right into togel, so it almost entirely a collection of advanced techniques.

>>20462447
Fun fact, Theravada ordination died out in medieval Ceylon and had to be rebooted by imported Thai monks in the 18th century. When the British get there they try to convert the Buddhists to Christianity but the monks outwit them by arguing that the Bible is retarded and that Buddha invented Science, a position that remains largely impregnable and in the 19th century was completely ahead of its time for people living in feudal villages. The British also introduced the printing press to the Buddhists, who being bibliomaniacs themselves, were delighted with being able to mass reproduce their literature and as a somewhat unforeseen consequence built a large lay/bourgeois movement that has sustained to this day

>>20462522
White women btfo
Golem btfo

>>20462522
based. join me in my war against the palichuds

When I was a young man pillaging a Burmese village,

>>20462447
>I have a buddhology phd
Fuck you anon, you made me spill my coffee

>>20462447
>I have a buddhology phd

>>20462544
Nothing wrong with the tripitaka. The hyperprots who think it's the Bible and not "stuff to think about in order to help you be less dukkha'd" missed the point entirely. Almost everything they castigate Mahayana for can be found in the nikayas. By their own logic they have to become secular and then nihilists, which is what all the protestant cultures did at the societal level

>>20462522
The fact that Theravada repeatedly dies and has to be regenerated is proof that it's effective. All the Sri Lankans capable of nirvana achieved nirvana and all that was left was putthujanas. Meanwhile in Tibet and China you have spiritually advanced people intentionally sabotaging their development so they don't achieve nirvana, leading to a surplus of monks all crab-bucketing each other back into samsara.
This is also why Buddhism died out in India, leaving a subcontinent of icchantikas.
The most true Buddhism was probably Gandharan Buddhism, because Pakistan and Afghanistan are the most icchantika regions on the planet.

>>20462582
The earliest Buddhist missionaries to China were Gandharans and/or Persians. So if that's the proper lineage then the Chinese best the Sinhalese

>>20462582
This Guenons my Jihads if you McWorld what I mean

>>20462519
>Chapter two jumps right into togel, so it almost entirely a collection of advanced techniques.
You think it's still manageable without supplemental material?

>>20462582
>monk surplus once returners
Tibetan grindset

>>20462582
lol i love this view. The mahayana virtue signalling crab bucket

>>20462595
Missionaries are often charlatans who spread adulterated versions of their faith to gain a foothold. Gandhara sent their DT Suzukis and Chogyam Trungpas to China to sleep with Chinese women and then tell their husbands "Marriage is just a social construct, its true essence is emptiness"

>>20462661
You sound jealous and incontinent when you could be zealous and prolific

>>20462683
Zeal is suffering. Proliferation is suffering. The Buddha teaches the way leading the the cessation of zeal and proliferation.
Also I apologize to Suzuki-sama, I was thinking of Alan Watts.

>>20462728
This attitude is why Theravadins were stuck in the SEAsian jungle for 2000 years while the Mahayana made it all the way from Sweden to Japan, helping countless sentient beings free themselves from suffering.

>>20462661
Goddamn this religion is impossible.
Christianity holds the family together (in submission to Jewish families) but it holds them together nonetheless.

>>20462792
No Buddhist sect (outside of perhaps schizo Vajrayana sects) promotes adultery.

>>20462828
the central asian dharmaguptakas, the gandharans who brought Buddhism to China, were polygamous and monastic taboos on sex were very loose in their vinaya

>>20462864
>monastic taboos on sex were very loose in their vinaya
That's not the same thing as adultery. Monks aren't married and married women don't live in monasteries

>>20462882
central asian monks were married during the medieval period and women did live in monasteries. They also drank a lot.

>>20462906
Sounds like an outlier situation. But I'm neither a monk nor invested in monastic discipline

>>20462921
brainlet

>>20462927
Should I use the cathars or the deification of eternal virginity as arguments for Christianity not "holding the family together"?

>>20462936
the impact of central asian buddhism with its loose sexual mores absolutely dwarfs the impact of the cathars. That being said, sure why not. Valerie Hansen's silk road book introduced me to this line of inquiry if you are actually interested, which I can already tell you're not

>>20461314
Keep your precepts and do the practice. Read the nikayas only If you want the original teachings of the Buddha
https://library.dhammasukha.org/uploads/1/2/8/6/12865490/the_path_to_nibbana__d_johnson_f18.pdf

>>20462951
I just question assigning whatever decline in Buddhist morals you're framing to Central Asians/Indo-Iranians etc., and then claiming that explains the behavior of someone like Trungpa, since the charismatic tantric sex cult leader thing is well attested to "medieval" India (8th to perhaps 13th centuries AD) rather than being a process of say, Buddhism moving from the foothills of Nepal to Gandhara to Tocharia to China to Tibet etc. and becoming increasingly tainted. It was brought over directly from medieval India without circling the Silk Road at all. And whatever the transgressive sexual practices of the Gandharan monastics were, I would doubt they were encouraging of householders to behave the same way. If anything a deteriorating in the morēs of the sangha probably reflects on the lay population which was producing its members and donating to it.

>>20463052
I haven't said anything about decline. I'm simply pointing out the diversity of attitudes toward sexuality that pertained even in the earliest strata of the Buddhist tradition. Whatever the case was in that regard, Buddhism was certainly received in China as an anti-family religion, not necessarily because the monks were drunk womanizers (though enough were that that became a mainstream trope in Chinese theatrical and literary traditions), but because of its metaphysics of karma and reincarnation which corroded the pre-confucian ancestor worship that was the bedrock of han society. See Jungnok Park's book on this. And certainly the sangha's adaptation to the looser morals of central asian civilization is related to the expansion of the institution of the Vihara, which bridged secular and monastic domains, something that seems to have really started in the Kushan empire.

Buddhism leads to transgenderism

>>20463373
Retard

>>20461544
Is not, Buddhists too argue about such things. Read a book on Buddhist history.

>>20462488
It’s not? https://es.es1lib.org/s/shardza?

what buddhism do I go to if I want to not want to be enlightened and just do whatever I want instead

>>20462345
Any good practice book for dream yoga?

>>20463557
Bruh
https://es.b-ok.lat/s/?q=Self-Arising+Three-fold+Embodiment+of+Enlightenment%3A+%5Bof+Bon+Great+Completion+Meditation

>>20463570
Vajrayana, Dzogchen in particular. Might want to read Dzogchen: The Self-Perfected State

>>20463603
>No ePub
Dropped!

Any Pure Land Buddhists on?

>>20462345
>tfw this guy is a high a level Tibetan guru

>>20463588
tenzin wangyal rinpoche's book tibetan yogas of dream and sleep is good. It is based on the shardza text I mentioned above and follows the text closely but makes it a bit more approachable.

>>20463570
Any Mahayana brand.

>>20462740
Too bad this alleged help is actually poison lol.

Which Buddhist sect should I join if I want to consider television-watching a form of meditation?

>>20463792
Chan

>>20463792
advaita (cryptobuddhism)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQqiQeKFg-k

>>20463570
Any Mahayanoid “Buddhism”

>>20463792
See >>20463832 but specially >>20463810

>>20463832
Chants Buddha
Chants Amitabha
One more time for Pure Heaven

I’ve been told by a person whose opinion I highly value that Charles Luk’s three-volume “Chan and Zen Teachings” is the single best and most valuable English-language document on Zen.

Other good sources include (if you want to essentially “round out” your study of the honestly quite massive field of Buddhism) Garma C. C. Chang’s “The Buddhist Teaching of Totality: the Philosophy of Hua Yen Buddhism” (1971), one of the most fascinating schools of Buddhism, not often as discussed in the West or approached by curious seekers as much, compared to the relatively more popular formulations of Zen Buddhism, Tantric/Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism, and Mahayana Buddhism.

A similarly highly recommended and lauded scholarly work has been “Nagarjuna’s Philosophy” by K. Venkata Ramanan.

If you want to continue this sense that you’re reading the genuinely authentic source texts of major Buddhist philosophical schools, you can also add Professor Yoshito Hakeda combined translation/commentary “The Awakening of Faith,” one of the basic texts of Mahayana Buddhism.

If you want to branch out into more modern but no-less insightful and scholarly impeccable works, you can add Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche’s collected works — his own personality failings and the aura of “scandalous superstar guru” around him aside, he actually IS still one of the greatest modern sources of bringing the teachings of Vajrayana Tibetan Buddhism to the modern West in modern, understandable English format. It was what he devoted his whole life to, character flaws and scandals about him aside.

I’ve also heard from a respected source that the modern English philosopher Terence Grey, who published many books on Zen and Taoist philosophy under the pseudonym Wei Wu Wei, is well-worth reading. The ideal of puritanism (“I want the most historically authentic and traditional exposition of Buddhism”) when it comes to studying Buddhism is somewhat incoherent, as has been pointed out in this thread, not only for the reasons pointed out but also, furthermore, that it’s analogous to thinking, “The most puritan and practicable way to understand Christianity is to read the Old and New Testaments straight through from the first to the last page without any condensation, skipping over, guidebooks, commentaries, or reading theologians and scholars and philosophers who devoted their whole life to explicating and elaborating upon the insights to be found in the Christian scriptures.” The analogy becomes even more outlandish in Buddhism as it would be something like reading the full ~16,000 pages of the Pali Canon, and the circumstances of its compilation are such that it’s obvious that it isn’t genuinely all words written down that can be conclusively proven they were spoken by the Buddha. So you do need, in essence, other scholars and some type of abridgements to help learn about it.

>>20463693
Pure Simulacrum

>>20463873
>“I want the most historically authentic and traditional exposition of Buddhism”) when it comes to studying Buddhism is somewhat incoherent, as has been pointed out in this thread, not only for the reasons pointed out but also, furthermore, that it’s analogous to thinking, “The most puritan and practicable way to understand Christianity is to read the Old and New Testaments straight through from the first to the last page without any condensation, skipping over, guidebooks, commentaries, or reading theologians and scholars and philosophers who devoted their whole life to explicating and elaborating upon the insights to be found in the Christian scriptures.” The analogy becomes even more outlandish in Buddhism
Buddhism is the Linux distro explosion of religions.
Linux FOSS is the Buddhism of software/operating systems

>>20463792
people ITT may think this is funny but if the Buddha were around today he'd definitely suggest you could use a television to meditate... think about all the physical components that make up a television, how the sights and sounds emitted are registered with your senses and synthetically reassembled in the mind... bhikkus, a coach potato is mindful of content he is mindful of commercials he is mindful of lust provoking images he is mindful of caked on makeup and cgi graphics he is mindful of the weather he is mindful of sports he is mindful of wars and crimes he is mindful of the new iphone [...] and mindful of these comings and goings he is mindful of television

>>20463915
what is the systemd of buddhism?

>>20463917
Start with the Geeks

>>20463920
Bhikku Bodi
He introduced the phrase "extremist view" into the Pali Canon

>>20463931
yes surely the idea of a "middle way" between "extremes" was the work of translators and is unsubstantiated in the Pali used in the sutta pitaka

>>20463951
He could have meant it like Aristotle means it in eudemonia instead of a media attack whistle. It is a clear sign of lock step corporate direction. Editorial choice could signify some classicist preserving kind of meaning but not this weaponized phrase. We're talking about this guy making a Poettering-esque of easy intro system bundle at the expense of the spirit of the text and mission. Sneaking the camel into the tent by the nose. Was Buddha an extremist? He did extreme things. Should we even rope him into our profane modern frame of speech? The climate accords mean no more nomadic beggarly life in the single serving world.

>>20463973
oh nevermind you've got post-election brain disorder

>>20463980
What Im saying is the internet itself is politically mortal and conditioned just as you accuse myself I accuse your device and priest and larger wheel of the world turning Monarch. (Poetic license)
Buddhism is inherently political. I have yet to decipher that but I bet the overthrown monarchs know better than I. Sanghas do not publicly show off their Arahants, why is that seethe poster?

>>20464000
>x is inherently political
yes everyone has an agenda, congrats on finishing school and starting to notice grown-ups don't hold your hand anymore unless they want something from you

>>20464062
Nice buddha nature, ya seethe postin cunt. I clearly struck a neurotic nerve.

>>20461314
I could read and preach and teach every sutta but the second I'm expected to do what I don't want to do I'm ghosting the Buddhalands and all that pacifist sexless stuff.

Will to power is far more honest but how would honest presentation let people's guards down when we're all demons surrounded by demons?

>>20461445
Mahayana is globohomo hiding under the veil of Buddhism

>>20463755
Thanks brother. Many blessings upon you

>>20464000
Arahants have no more craving nor pride. They will never tell you they're arahants, but if you ask them about dhamma they will answer very precisely

Mahayana Crypto Christianity > Actual Christianity

Think about it you could just bootleg your makeshift religion with extra IQ leadership and extra tile workers with productivity boost

Pic related Great Prophet

>>20462071
I WANT MY MAMA!

>>20464942
They were the pride of the Sangha in Early Buddhism and not nearly as hidden as today's bioleninist antihierarchy clown world

>>20464970
They're around, but you'd have to live with them for a while to know if they're the real deal or not (checking if they have the three poisons yet). A lot of anagamis though

>>20462345
Alright I’m skipping through the pages of this right not and I it looks very dangerous. I wouldn’t attempt to practice this unless I were already on the path. Definitely don’t use this as some sort of grimoire, specially if you’re not a practicing Buddhist, are a degenerate. This can open you up for demonic influence.

>>20464686
What If I combined Theravada ethics with Mahayana metaphysics?

>>20465043
What if I combined Theravada teaching with Mahayana socializing and shitposting and aesthetic kino?

What if I know tantric techniques, but I've never read any Buddhist texts in-depth?

Is that essentially escape from samsara? If I figured out how to do it on my own? Or is that some kind of unconscious rebalancing conscious thing

Is Buddhism the reason Japs are so neurotic touchy feely panicky in the animes and IRL? When they feel something they are afraid of feeling the feeling. There was 1000 ways to die episode where a Jap pipo couple died from the heart racing during SEXO
Maybe this post belongs on /int/ but I expect to find some Asian pipo in this thread in the know

>>20462495
fuck does that mean

>>20465080
no, japs are like that becasue they belong to a really strict feudal system that demanded a huge level of submission to the "tribe", beinf exilied from your village was the closest thing to death, since no other shogun would probably accept you, so following the rules was fundamental, thus a society of people really fixed on not stiking out was created, anime and manga is centered around a protagonist that gets to live a life out of the prdinary where all those social imperatives are putting into test, the protagonist don't want to stand out, but the hottest girl in school, the sexy slutty princess, the ninfomaniac android or wathever is constatly pushing is buttons, in most anime the underlaing problematic is how to live in a world that demands homogeny while your personal circumstances are pushing you into individuality, it's the struggle between those two forces

tldr:no, is not buddhism, is feudalism

>>20465043
Gnosticism (based)

>>20465035
It’s ok, my SSRIs protect me.

while we are here, does anyone know any prayers or offerings to Kakamukha, the Raven Faced Mahakala? it seems like a rather obscure form of him despite being mentioned several times in the tantras and supplications

>>20462447
Theravada is more authentic because its doctrine is based on the oldest texts. All of your scholarship means nothing next to that. It's the tendency of Protestants and bourgeoisie to argue, as you do, that there is no "authentic Buddha" and that "Buddhism is just a historical process." This is Hegelian, Western and Protestant to its core.

>>20461345
>Why ask here?

everything is mudra, mantra, dharma

>>20462088
But vajrayana has a very detailed and precise list of practices and "levels" of achievement. I highly doubt one could self-initiate into Dzogchen or Mahamudra, let alone get to the highest attainments such as the rainbow body, all by themselves. Am I wrong?

>>20462139
Shingon is probably much less accessible than Tibetan vajrayana for a westerner

>>20465035
Why?

>>20463755
Is dream yoga alone (without the other practices) even useful?

Bump

>>20465846
>hegelian and protestant to its core
Its the huwhite man's footprint whoa

>>20464303
Is there such thing as an Asian Nietzche?

bump

>>20465846
pali canon was most likely cobbled together in the gupta period. Most of our oldest buddhist texts are chinese translations. If you want to take it on faith that the pali canon is the oldest because pali canon says its the oldest, that is your prerogative, but don't mistake your position for a historically informed one

>>20467710
I trust the Pali canon because of some biocentric Aryan Dravidian continuity I sense in my gut

>>20467743
I bow

Is dzogchenlineage.org legitimate?

>buddhist
>chantard
lel

>>20468035
See replies to >>20461345

>>20468035
>>20468042
I’m a mahayanist, therefore I can do anything I want. *cites le ebin koan*.
>le master was taking a dump when le disciple asked him what is the buddha dharma. Le master then released another turd
Wow, so non-linear, so deep! I’m enlightened.

>>20468220
Feel free to deny the world and insist that shit isn't real

>>20468293
Yes

>>20466132
>without other practices
It builds on other practices, very hard to do without meditating when falling asleep.

Personally I found it quite hard to integrate into householder life. Realizing anatta right after waking up can be quite rough if you need to function in a social role. Also pulls up unconscious things to awareness which can actually lead to more identification, not less („Oh I’m ALL THAT too!“)

I did meditate in a nice place with a bald monk who told me I should relax and not follow systems so neurotically though, which was nice. Also flying of course.

>>20468430
>It builds on other practices
Tenzin Wangyal's book only gives a quick intro to meditation by breathing through the three prana channels. What else is there?
>hard to integrate into householder life
Are you married or something?

>>20468035
From what I hear on the Chans the Chans are retarded
>>20463810

>>20468220
Trite Buddhism does indeed exist — it happens to everything. But the strange fact is that works like Heidegger’s Being & Time can be respected and appreciatively studied and talked about, whereas a work like 13th-century Zen patriarch Dogen’s “The Time-Being” (which scholars have actually noted has profound similarities with Heidegger’s thought — Heidegger in general often being compared to the schools of Zen and Taoism, which he didn’t often explicitly refer to but which there’s certainly evidence he was influenced by), you can be accused of “exoticism for the sake of exoticism.”

This is a common trait — shallow people assume everything is shallow. They make everything shallow. They preemptively cut themselves off from deep reading and experiencing by assuming beforehand it’s all shallow because they’ve met people or read of shallow things in and around it.

>>20468690
There’s neither trite nor non trite.
There’s neither shallow nor deep.
You sound attached to concepts.

If I take a dump you can’t say: that is not Nirvana
If I lay a turd you can’t look at my turd and say: that is not the Buddha
(This is all strict — strict — Mahayana btw)

>>20467843
No guruism is legitimate

>>20468829
you sound gay af nigga

>>20468934
why?

>>20468690
Perhaps this is the self defeating problem of teaching awakening and disillusionment. A social force that obscures this inherently dissatisfying aspect of congregation would gain the crown of the world.
I believe in Harvey Dent amen

>>20469301
He's talking out of his ass

>>20468829
>>20468835
People take Buddhism, some concept of enlightenment, or some presumed vast mystical learning or mystical experience they’ve projected in their minds, as the ENDING. It is the hypothetical ENDING, always never to be actually achieved or attained or experienced, which they will find somehow, somewhere along the road, and this will be really “it” and all their struggles will be over at last.

I will come to some “great fantastic state” which is always “out there,” “away from here and now,” “the ineffable nameless OTHER experience, the transcendental mystical experience, become enlightened like the Buddha famously became under the lotus tree.”

In fact, Buddhist philosophy is more like a great, endless, and endlessly self-renewing beginning. True Buddhism does not END with enlightenment but BEGINS with enlightenment.

In fact, it is about stabilizing, bringing fully into conscious life, throughout your day-to-day waking life (and even possibly throughout your sleeping life/dreaming life, as in prescribed in Vajrayana Tibetan practices of dream yoga, if you wanted to extend it there, too) what you could call this “inseeing” (as opposed to outseeing, seeing or being caught up in something exteriorized, some object or person or state of being one is seeking for, caught up in desire for, or some condition of the body, some emotion or thought or ideology one is caught up with and identifies with strongly).

“Buddhism” is not referring to something exotic “outside of yourself” and never to be attained, only to be read and thought about and never actually experienced in your own life. In fact, it starts when you actually start consciously and fully experiencing your own life, looking into the nature of your experience and investigating the nature of “you” as the “perceiver” somehow “apart” from this experience. Because of its radically phenomenological nature, written Buddhist philosophy has appeared at times to be “shallow” to you, as if they were just “saying shallow deep poetic mystical things about the Buddha-nature”.

In fact, because it is so hard to express in words, writing and speaking about it necessarily may seem “shallow,” “repetitive”, “trite.” And yet if people did not try to write about it and help others towards the experience of it, that, too, would be a potential loss for humanity, conceptualized as the Pratyekabuddha, who has attained enlightenment but does not try to guide or help others to it.

>>20469634
Timeless non-traditional Buddhism is the only real Buddhism worthy of the name. In fact, it is more “New Age” than the New Age, as well as more timeless, primordial, and traditional than any “Tradition.” Those acquainted to their normal expectations of what a religion should be or conditioned to neo-Guenonian perennialist conceptions of what religion should be, will cover up their own Buddha-nature in trying to seek for it, or will view people of East Asian cultural conditioning encapsulated by the schools of Zen, Vajrayana, Mahayana, or Hua Yen Buddhism as “heterodox,” “anti-Traditional”, “fake deep” — or, conversely and paradoxically, they will view them as people to worship, to make a cult out of, and assume enlightenment can only be gained by studying under a Japanese Zen master and shaving one’s head bald and sitting in the zendo, or joining Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche’s or one of his successor’s “Shambhala Training courses” and artificially giving oneself a Tibetan cultural conditioning.

The “Buddha-nature” is not something that never existed until Siddhartha Gautama came to point it out. Every human being has primordially had the “Buddha-nature” (which is not a “strictly traditional religious Buddhist”) within them timelessly, since the beginning of human history, and will have it forever so long as conscious humanity continues to exist. Your “Buddha-nature” is not a Buddhist and your “Atman” is not a Hindu that thinks and speaks and writes in Sanskrit.

People, looking to wise people of the East who realized and tried to expound upon and teach others about this, make the mistake of thinking that taking on an Eastern name, an Eastern cultural conditioning, learning Sanskrit terminology and so forth, will awaken the Buddha-nature. Even if Zen, Mahayana, and Hwa Yen sutras and scriptures explicitly point out the limitations of cultural conditioning as simple obscurations of the true Self-Nature, the Buddha-nature, as facets of the ahamkara (“I-maker”, “ego-maker”), also pointed out by Hindu yogis — nevertheless, you get the crap from people today of, “You’re just a stupid Westerner interested in these exotic Eastern traditions and trying to set yourself up as an enlightened guru. Westerners cannot ever be enlightened, only THEY, people in other times and places, can be enlightened,” or, “It’s not authentically Traditional,” etc.

In fact, because of how hard it is to write and speak and think about it — because of the necessary misunderstandings from other people, condemnations, the apparent futility of it — the Buddha, upon receiving enlightenment, is traditionally said to have spent some time refusing to want to teach others of it, as he thought it would be too difficult and subtle for others to comprehend. And in the Tao te Ching, written by the Chinese sage Lao Tzu, we hear, “The Tao that can be spoken of is not the true Tao.”

>>20469671
And so, the Chinese Buddhists, seeing that the Taoist Chinese sages of their own culture were not at all in conflict with the Buddha’s teachings, developed and encapsulated this in the school of Zen, which combined Mahayana Buddhist teachings about the Buddha-nature with Taoist teachings about the Tao. They must have went: “Old Lao Tzu and Siddhartha Gautama weren’t talking about something foreign and exotic — they were talking about THIS HERE RIGHT NOW WHICH I AM EXPERIENCING!” and laughed.

And yet even today, Westerners, looking into Zen, get into all these head games about it — “You and I and he and she can’t ever possibly be enlightened — we’re just stupid Westerners — it only happens to officially certified people who spent years training a certified Zen master.” Or, conversely, they scoff and laugh, claiming it all to be shallow mystification and Orientalism, thus blocking off their own inseeing.

And yet, if I even try to say or write any of these things about it, to “guide” or “teach” or “advise” others, I fall into the great presumption that I am enlightened! And yet, if I deny that I am enlightened, perhaps that’s a just-as-great error and denial of the truth. And, furtherfurthermore, if I simply try to write what I think about Buddhism, Zen, Taoism, and the like, in the words and patterns-of-thought that feel authentic and natural to me in the moment, skeptical scoffers will go, “It’s just some New Age Westerner Orientalizing his patterns of thought and language. He doesn’t have any true understanding, he’s just copying the style of writing of Chinese and Japanese sages he found deep.”

If you talk about Zen, you can get further away from it, but if you refuse to talk about it, then, again, you might be failing to do your duty to help others. So talking and non-talking both have to take their proper role. Perhaps, to really drive in the point of the timelessness and perenniality of all this, we might bring up sayings from our own traditional culture and religion:

>There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing, a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

A time to be silent and a time to speak! And yet, can we say that the Prophet Ecclesiastes was a “Zen master” or a “Taoist sage”? In a sense, yes, in a sense, no. Really, he wasn’t any of these — rather, he simply was who he really was.

>>20469702
And, corny as it sounds, and however obvious it is that we will get the response, “This is just fake deep,” you might say that just being what you really are is the essence of Zen. This is not a lack of discipline, but the greatest discipline, because it must be continually renewed in your practice and understanding. Timelessly, you begin and begin and begin again to be continually in awe of, in wonder at, in profound appreciation of the fact that life and your own being and all the other beings you are inextricably interconnected and caught up with — that any of this is here at all to even begin with.

>>20469671
so im not crazy for visualizing the mantra syllables as bindrunes instead of tibetan script?
i just dont know tibetan and while its a lovely language, it means nothing to me since i know nothing of it, so on the fly i visualized nordic runes during the 4 empowerments. why should someone of germanic heritage adopt tibetan cultural motifs, it belittles and insults the heritage of the tibetan since i know its context less, and it rejects my own heritage and ways in favor of a foreign one. it makes more sense to me to find the Buddha-nature within Germanic religion, than to reject it in favor of Eastern traditions, as some of my neopagan colleagues have done, for all of these are simply veils of one primordial truth

>>20469715
This necessary interdependent interconnection of everything that exists — you reflecting everything and everyone you experience, as well as being reflected by everyone and everything you experience — everyone and everything else being the necessary ground and condition of, contributing to your existence, as well as you, by your very existence and action and thinking and speaking, having an effect on this existence you find yourself — the observed only existing because there is an observer to observe it, and the observer only existing because there was an observed universe as a necessary precondition of its existence — is beautifully symbolized in texts like the Avamtaksa Sutra, or the Flower Garland Sutra, the foundational text of the Hua Yen School of Buddhism, as “Indra’s net,” a jeweled net or net of pearls of the Vedic deity Indra, in which every jewel is reflected in every other jewel in the net as well as reflecting within itself every other jewel in the net.

And yet, can it be said that this primordial insight is just something that was first “come up with” or “only created and realized” by the writer of the Avatamsaka Sutra?

In fact, you could say that if Buddhism did not exist as the cultural entity we have it now, was not apparently and historically originated by Siddhartha Gautama, it would have to have been created by someone else somewhere else.

If other planets with intelligent extraterrestrial life on them exist, you can imagine that at some point in their history, some philosophical/religious school like Buddhism would have to arise, complete with ideas like those of sunyata (emptiness of self-nature, void, the fact, as Heidegger put it, that “Being” is not a being, is not some “thing” you can point to), the metaphor of Indra’s net, the conception of a Buddha-nature underlying everything, and so forth.

>>20469740
>if Buddhism did not exist as the cultural entity we have it now, was not apparently and historically originated by Siddhartha Gautama, it would have to have been created by someone else somewhere else.
Buddhists already believe this. Both the Pali Canon and the Mahayana sutras speak of previous Buddhas to the one we have

>>20469727
Yes, precisely. In my own opinion, there is no reason to be necessarily exclusively caught up in OR to particularly condemn and reject any sincere and authentic cultural or religious conditioning. From my own proudly heretical and heterodox point of view, I think you can “find the same thing” if you go truly deep with true spiritual fervor and insight into any authentic tradition, even perhaps some paganic and shamanic ones (which often develop these insights through a reverent approach to nature — interestingly enough, the school of Vajrayana Tibetan Buddhism came about by Padmasambhava legendarily bringing the teachings of Buddhism from India to Tibet, where the Bon sorcerers and shamans predominated, and essentially grafting and combining the two traditions and teachings and cosmologies — of Indian Buddhism, with Tibetan Bon sorcery and shamanism — by his miraculous founding of Vajrayana Buddhism and great work of enlightening the Tibetan Bon people there, he revealed to them that the insights of Buddhism, being trans-cultural and timeless, could be found in and developed on in their own culture).

Christ speaks of the Kingdom of Heaven being within, as well as having precepts such as of the famous golden rule, “Love one another as I have loved you,” and “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Authentic Christianity is in fact one of the most beautiful, wonderful traditions, in my opinion — people may get the idea, that traditions like Christianity “don’t have these esoteric or mystical insights and practices offered, we have to go the East to find them,” but in a way this actually IS itself something like exotic Orientalism and New Age religion-mongering. The concept of anatta (no-self), I think, is easy to get tripped up and confused over — but in traditions like Christianity, for instance, where they have the ideal of selflessness, and seeing Christ or God within yourself and in every living human being — and not in some proud sense, that “I am God and can do whatever I want,” but rather, “I should find the light of Christ within my own heart and see it in the heart of everyone else, and endeavor to always live and act and speak and think under the inspiration of this light of Christ, which is essentially loving, selfless, compassionate and self-sacrificing” — this, in fact, might even be an even better and more understandable way to say what I think the Buddhists were trying to conceptualize as “anatta,” which is not some impossible paradox like “You don’t exist” (you ARE reading and experiencing this right now, are you not?) but rather, that your existence or self is centerless — it is inextricably one with, part of a continuum with everyone and everything — and this realization leads to compassion and selflessness.

>>20461314
I always recommend a series of three lectures by Thanissaro Bhikkhu as an excellent introduction to the Dhamma (each lecture covers one aspect of the path: virtue, concentration and discernment).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpU6zG8kIBQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eq4EcjkBNb8&ab_channel=watanandayouth
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ht1gI0u9Ccs&ab_channel=watanandayouth

However, for meditation I would recommend the works and lectures of Bhante Vimalaramsi (or one of his students, Delson Armstrong, who I find is a little clearer).

>>20469809
This is not something “inferior to” or radically different from what you might find in Eastern traditions like Buddhism. In fact, if one wants to learn from Buddhism and Hinduism and other traditions like these, this is what I myself recommend, just a random poster on /lit/ — don’t turn it into a cult to be converted to, some Eastern cultural conditioning to artificially put on if it’s not part of your natural heritage and cultural conditioning, or some competitive ego-game of “Finding what the superior tradition and cultural conditioning is so I can proudly refute the outsider.”

In fact, isn’t this PRECISELY AGAINST the very nature of these teachings, which are meant to awaken loving-kindness, as well as timeless spiritual wisdom and experiencing in oneself?

If a Westerner starts speaking and thinking and writing with Sanskrit terminology, and thinks the teachings are about taking on Japanese or Chinese or Tibetan conditioning, such as perhaps by finding some “accredited official Zen Buddhist/Tibetan Buddhist/Mahayana Buddhist monastery specifically set up in the West and brought over from people from East Asia for precisely this reason,” this, I think, easily turns into the shallow “New Age” game of thinking taking on an Eastern cultural conditioning, “really makes you authentic”.

And yet, paradoxically, if you never really read or care about interesting texts and traditions from other lands, cultures, times and places — a sort of assumption, that since shallow New Ageism exists, then reading the profoundest texts and philosophical works of other cultures is simply something a “shallow New Ager” does — I also think you’re missing something. People claim, “If you try to read Hindu or Buddhist scriptures without actually converting to the religion, you’re just a dilettante who’s superficializing it” — I think they’re missing something deep about what you can gain from unbiased study of various world cultures, religions, and philosophies.

>>20469750
Yes, I had this in mind, too.

>>20469809
>Padmasambhava legendarily bringing the teachings of Buddhism from India to Tibet, where the Bon sorcerers and shamans predominated, and essentially grafting and combining the two traditions and teachings and cosmologies
i think this is why tibetan buddhism in particular resonates with me as someone more familiar with germanic paganism; the wrathful gods, the animal headed dakinis and herukas, the wars between warlocks and wizards described in some of the histories of the gods....even very minute and philosophical things, like the dispersion of sacrifices or dead remains to the animals of the wild out of compassion for all beings, like the way sacrifices to Odin were made described by Ibn Fadlan (he says the Kievan Rus would leave meat in bowls out for wolves, he mocked them for having their sacrifices eaten by dogs, and they responded that Odin had indeed gotten his sacrifice through the dogs themselves) the Rus might not have made their sacrifices out of compassion, but its odd how similar the mindset and method are
the expansive nature of the skullcup, the kapala, like how Ymirs skull was fashioned by the Gods into the upper heavens, and his brains dispersed into the clouds and skies. i know alot of these similarities are probably due to the transmission of culture from the proto-indo-europeans, but why does vajrayana buddhism in particular feel so reminiscent to the Germanic spirit and mind? its like they are the same religion, reflected in different lights. perhaps thats just because all religions are like this, and these two are simply the ones i have studied the most, but even Vedic Hinduism did not remind me of Odin as much

I have also noticed a number of parallels between the sayings of Christ in the Gospels, the sayings of Sakyamuni in the Pali canon, and the sayings of Odin in the Havamal. One truth emanated across time and space to different men with different names, who came to One realization
I am glad you understand what Christ meant, for when I have spoken of this to others, they either reject it as luciferian lies, or get so caught up in the idea of "I am God" that they lose themselves to arrogance

>>20461314
>There are so many sutras, commentaries and whatnot that it's overwhelming.
There's not very much you absolutely need to know. The texts and commentaries are a lifetime of study for your down time, to help you maintain concentration on the task. The Digha Nikaya is a good text to start with, it's about Bible length if not a bit shorter, and it repeats itself quite a bit, as well as containing some of the important moments in Gautama's life. Dhammapada is much shorter and contains essential views and practices without being directly related to Gautama's personal life.

>>20469671
>nonTrad buddhism
This is what Im looking for: something that can afford to be the maverick.
Those Brahmins and Pharisees can suck my autistic cock.
I'm gonna LARP no matter what. I might as well Truman show my way as I can and make deliberate derivatives that credit the original but as the standalone one stop shop spinoff. That's all anything ever is. Authenticity is made not bought.

>>20469863
IMO one should immerse themselves in their native culture to understand themselves before studying foreign religions
studying my own peoples beliefs has helped me understand the beliefs of other cultures deeper, because i can see what they all have in common at inherent levels

>>20469702
Your post reminds me of all the Buddhist themed 80's pop songs I suddenly became associating with this path. Before I made that association there was no Buddhist 80's pop songs bundle (that I knew of or anyone I knew knew). I accept acesis is not for everyone but acesis has its season. It isn't an absolute good pressure to place on everyone.

>>20469924
"I am God" too has its truth. You are a being and you are aware. God is then inextricable from you but are you inextricable from God? That is why finite experience is anata, not self. NON NOBIS DOMINE DOMINE! SED NOMINE SED NOMINE TUO DA GLORIA! Even the cringy Satanist hipsters pretending Halloween insurgency cannot escape the Hegelian dialectic they entered. In their frenzied feral foolishness they bring truths that domesticated European Christians in the most pampered and presentable light will always be dull to: dark suffering and maturing through suffering. Seeing this is what it is, this is the bundle of dependencies and causes, this is the cessation, this is the path to the cessation. Having won those arguments with antilogical antiscientific moralizers they gain followers who join in vague discontent. Discerning beings in Being as if Being is this war that will be won in a eschatological end coming soon is a (((protoMarxist))) "inevitability". These thought forms and spiritual non human beings themselves are mortal conditioned things. If you show metta to a Satanist they have no judo tricks to work with. They only exist as rebellion to Jewish thoughtforms and there is no Lokiism. Satanist is much like Feminist. In fact Feminist is far worse.

I need to fill in the blanks with all the empty Sutras.
Any Buddhist country Anons here can help me with some cultural reality sources to plug into?

>>20470034
>Satanism is much like Feminist
the two overlap quite a bit , and yes, they are both stifling and bitter systems

>>20469750
>>20469809
>>20469924
was Jesus a Buddha?

>>20470209
Jesus, Mithra, Odin, they were all Buddhas and Boddhistvas. think about the harrowing of hell, described in the apocryphal gospel of bartholomew. christ invades and raids the regions of hell, saving the souls of the damned, like a boddhistva saving sinners from narakas and samsara

>>20469924
>parallels between the sayings of Christ in the Gospels, the sayings of Sakyamuni in the Pali canon
They really don't go together. There's overlap on ethical questions, which was noted perhaps earliest by the Jesuit missionary Ippolito Desideri who unsuccessfully attempted to convert the Tibetans, who were nice enough to teach him their language and allow him to study their doctrines, but at the end of the day Christianity is under orders by its jealous godhead to destroy all rival systems. One may find sectarian rhetoric in Buddhism but hardly to such an extent. Mainly, the Buddhist is called upon to reject non-Buddhist views as inferior and/or repurpose them "skillfully" to propagate Buddhism, hence the enormous pseudo-Saivist/Tantrika component of Tibetan Buddhism which straddles the core orthodoxies of nairatmya, sunyata, etc. As for the pagan religions these are more readily syncretized for the sake of promoting Buddhism, as you might expect. Vajrapana descends from Herakles, and Amida from an Iranian deity. If Vikings and their thunder gods had made contact with Buddhists, the identification of something like mjolnir with a vajra would be obvious, and there would be no requirment made of the Norse that their religion be obliterated down to an archaeological dig site.

>>20470251
>Vajrapana descends from Herakles, and Amida from an Iranian deity. If Vikings and their thunder gods had made contact with Buddhists, the identification of something like mjolnir with a vajra would be obvious
tactitus said the germans worshiped a certain jupiter or heracles, whose shrine was amidst oak groves and who carried a club or mace. clearly this is some early prototype of thor or donnar, and yes, I have thought of mjolnir as something like a vajra before.

>>20470294
https://dharmicalliance.wordpress.com/2017/08/28/a-primer-on-vajra-symbolism/

>>20470322
very interesting article. thanks anon

>>20469961
What would be the point of immersing myself in Mesopotamian polytheism? It's dead

any social anxiety anons also putting off establishing contact with a sangha?

>>20471068
well its not like youre actually related to any of those cultures anyways

>>20471202
Any book on buddhist art?

>>20471232
https://www.himalayanart.org/items/99699
this website is pretty good

>>20471231
I am if I go back far enough. I've never felt any kind of tie to christianity and wasn't raised in it so it's as "foreign" to me as any kind of paganism

>>20471245
paganism means "rural religion" roughly, if you study the traditions of people from thousands of years ago im sure youll find similarities to what people do today, paganism is both native and foreign by definition. i dont know bruh, if you dont care about your peoples history and how their religious beliefs changed over time thats on you

>>20471260
>if you dont care about your peoples history
I just told you what their beliefs were
What the fuck is your point

>>20471272
wtf is your point? just be muslim bro lmao

>>20471376
There are no muslims in my ancestry
Also abrahamism is retarded

>ITT: conceptual graspers

As a Guenonfag what is the best way to start with Buddhism? I literally know nothing of it. I have good knowledge of Christianity and less knowledge of Hinduism, yet I just completely ignored Buddhism for some reason. It seems far more linear than Hinduism which is a good thing
I was going to start with pic but maybe it's overkill

>>20471527
Read In the Buddha's Words, then the Dhammapada, for an overview of Theravada
Then read the Heart sutra and branch out

>>20470216
>Odin
Its hard to imagine a wandering shaman god that causes wars and conflicts to gather warriors to his warband in heaven to be a Bodhisattva.
>>20470294
Mjölnir and vajra are pretty much the same, even here in Finland hammer of the thunder god is called Ukko's vasara, which is related to sanskrit vajra. Even one of the old words for lightning is vasama, which is close to vasara and vajra.

>>20471527
Don't learn just get an empowerment or initiation first, ask questions later, and interpret everything with the lens of Guénons and Shankaras advaita. Really maybe it would be best to look into mahamudra and dzogchen, you have to join various groups and get transmissions online usually they are not public, but instead they keep them in private online streams, I would recommend maybe just diving straight into the Anuttarayoga practices by receiving an empowerment into a practice like vajrayogini, yamantaka, heruka, you will gain experiences which will then be able to be reconciled from the dzogchen, mahamudra or advaita point of view, adverse effects or schizo development is the fault of initiate.
>>20471376
I don't know but compared the path of a tantric bodhisattva, there is no comparison to Islam, maybe in sufi tariqas where they teach a person to meditate on the lataifs (chakras) and the nafs, and include various visualisations and such,
But those people who just "become" a Muslim, read the quran, do not receive oral transmissions or have the equivalent of "guru yoga" which im sure there are all parralels to,
E.g https://sayyidamiruddin.com/2011/04/15/technique-for-visualizing-the-shaykh/
New things are all still being translated for Buddhists in the west, the field in general is still suffering from the typical "western Buddhist" mentality too, it would be the same for Western Hindus, or whatever else.

But atiyoga, mahamudra, the Anuttarayogas if a person absolutely earnestly practices they will reach Buddha level in this lifetime and this is no joke.

Meditation on the three kayas - and then above that which is all kayas, what is the parralel to that in Islam? Do the sheikhs actively teach a person things like the 8 stages of dissolution, and familiarise a person with their clear light body, dharmakaya true nature and so on, an active preparation for the bardo of death and so on?

I'll admit I am unfamiliar with Islamic esoterism in its entirety probably because it's so scarce online, but both the systematisation of the tantras, yogas and all else which is all inclusive, has a degree of practicality to it which to me so far is unmatched.

In fact the high tantras are so incredibly complex, with visualisation, and so on, and they're so diverse that a person can see so much in them depending on their own intellectual capacity, that I its hard to find a parralel,
Most of the texts are also untranslated, so i can only imagine how much a person who has learnt Tibetan and sanskrit, who has probably assimilated the concepts and so on - how much they would have access to, you have pretty much all the ritual instructions (which are all effectively possible via visualisation and faith alone), philosophies, that you'd be able to access all the esoteric elements directly.

If I learnt arabic, would I be able to read "Initiation rituals" specific to this or that sect, and all their "highest yoga" rituals whatever that may mean online?

>>20471615
>just get an empowerment or initiation
which one and where

>>20471615
The Tibetan traditions are incredibly complex, in fact the only parralel i could think of to the the level of development which I am talking about with respects to tantra and so on, is the Kashmiri traditions of India - or trika shaivism, which a person who becomes learned in the tantra of Tibet could essentialy read and have context, and understand better from their experience of Tibetan tantra,

>>20471636
>which one
So essentialy when it comes to
>muh sectarian
/lit/izens exaggerate, guénonfag has something against the "gelugpas" but from the point of view of the "tantric bodhisattva" he is not defined by whatever sect he gets initiated into, all the sects use mostly the same root texts, and then have slight empowerment (wang) or initiate ritual modifications, a person can go on and get "empowerments" as they call them from the gelugpas, nyingamas, kagyu, bön lineages or whatever else, especially if you are familiar with advaita, you would probably be disposed to the the yogacara philosophies, chaan, and so on but...

>‘It is a womanly thing to establish superiority through convincing arguments; it is a manly thing to conquer the world through one’s power.

>Reasoning, argument, and inference may be the work of other schools [shastras]; but the work of the Tantra is to accomplish superhuman and divine events through the force of their own words of power [mantras].’

– Tantrattva 1:27

Guénonfag BTFO by actual tantric mahasiddhas, discursive intellectual activity is secondary to the cultivation of power, realisation of bliss, contemplation of the void, understanding of the nondual pure-Being.

All these things have experiential analogies,
>>20471636
Any of them, just check out the lineages and so on, and I would say probably just try to avoid the people who are connected with the the "Dorje Shugden controversy"

It's up to you, but just know that the empowerments they do carry with them commitments - for you own benefit, and also remember that even if the Lama is in actuality not a realised being, that's not the point - it's for your benefit to believe he is - if you don't then the initiation or the whole practice of "guru yoga" won't work, the hole point is to become devoid of that individual discursion and criticism - regardless,

When you are conferred these empowerments, you need faith - the less sentimental the better, and the more you actually understand the tantras, the less sentimental it actually seems. Many Westerners, will take initiations on "faith alone" the seed will be planted and it will take years for that to mature maybe into like yogi level, you need to be willing, the language barrier is also a problem, but many of the initiations and empowerments which are conferred have live translation for example, it's not all instanteous you could get it at some Buddhist center, or you could just opt for the initiations online,
Here some are updated:
https://t.me/Buddhism_Events

>>20471690
How do empowerments and initiations work
Like do you just go to a guru, receive it, and that's it? Is there stuff to do beforehand and afterwards? Does the specific empowerment you choose matter at all?

>>20471690
There is no "belonging" to a sect, since you are not becoming a "lama" you can practice, X tantra of the Gelugpa, the same X tantra of the Kagyu, etc. And personally can reconcile the differences between the schools:

Really it's not something which is just "intellectual and theological" or whatever, I am talking about the actual practices and rituals, which a person engages in, whether it be Madhyamaka, Yogacara, or whatever is irrelevant,
Just like you can become a guénonian advaitin sufi, you could become the same thing but Buddhist, or you could be a Buddhist, sufi, shaivite, taoist, hesychast, benedectine monk, all simultaneously, but not syncretically, what matters is that you don't think yourself "in the center of all traditions" like a crowleyan occultist who can mix whatever he pleases, but thst you maintain a sort of metaphysical unanimity while respecting each of the traditional forms in their interdependent existence (that they are adapted to a particular humanity and so on), very much like the geometric arabesque - every point is the center of the pattern.

But what matters in all this is what you want to get out of all these things, "spiritual realisation," essentialy, what is perhaps characteristic about the Tibetans is also their emphasis on maintaining "bodhicitta" or pairing that with their realisations, siddhas, attainments etc.
So they always discriminate between virtue and non virtue, you could become a "siddha" gain powers and then just devote yourself to hedonistic pursuits, but this is not encouraged and is viewed as something contrary to the "bodhisattva"
Maybe you could read
>A Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life, Shantideva
For an understanding sort of what I mean,

>>20471717
Well not really, just "Tibetans" this a Buddhist thing, and also some people to advocate a "enlightenment by whatever means possible" methodology, but I guess you may get the point.

>>20471698
Beforehand you should become acquainted maybe with the basics, afterwards you practice deity Yoga, a sadhana (generation and completion stages etc.), and this something you learn as you continue to meditate and sort things out, what matters though which they emphasise most is "guru yoga" and if you understand guénons take on "guru" then you will be fine, many people get stuck on that, they become too sentimental and too close and devotional to the guru, and it becomes contrary to the realisation, but essentialy yes, essentialy the guru is viewed as the Deity, the Deity is viewed as your mind, so essentialy you establish contact with the "inner guru" the whole empowerment process is just their to sow some seed, which transforms as you cultivate, a good thing to remember is that you shouldn't rush and rush, and you shouldn't be too anxious about commitments, but you should try to keep vows and promises (this is of course just as a means, in the same way with the guru),

>>20471698
>does the specific empowerment matter,
So long as you have faith in the Lama, and you fully understand that the Lama is one with the Deity, who confers initiation, and that the Lama himself is a practitioner - and is qualified, and that you yourself are qualified (the nature of the online initiation is that you can be unqualified still participate, but get filtered, what matters is your intent and capacities),
The type of empowerment does matter so much as they differ by whatever tantra they may be

>The Sarma (New Transmission Period) traditions of Tibetan Buddhism – Kagyu, Sakya and Gelug – divide the tantras into four classes:

Kriya tantra (bya-rgyud) – ritual deity practice
Charya tantra (spyod-rgyud) – behavioral deity practice
Yoga tantra (rnal-'byor rgyud)– integrated deity practice
Anuttarayoga (bla-med rnal-'byor rgyud) – peerlessly integrated (highest yoga) deity practice.

>The Nyingma (Old Transmission Period) divides tantra into six classes – the same first three as the Sarma traditions, but in place of anuttarayoga, has mahayoga, anuyoga and atiyoga (dzogchen)

Do some research into it, then there are father and mother tantras, mother-father tantras, nondual tantras,
Kalachakra, Yamantaka, Vajrayogini, Heruka tantras,
Dharmapala empowerments which are usually lineage specific, like kalarupa, or something like this

How they are classified depends on their "root text,"

Lamas give oral transmission on most significant texts, alongside oral commentary, it all ties in together, six yogas of naropa for example is pretty much integrated into various tantras,

And so on. Maybe frater can elaborate further.

So long as you have a pure intention and you're divested of vanity, samsaric delusion, or whatever else, then you should be fine.

>>20471239
Thanks, will check it out.

>>20471717
Honestly it's not even necessary to hold to labels like "Buddhist" and so in,
>>20471698
How initiation works:
-you're introduced to a mandala
-you're in the mandala
-introduced to the Deity at the center of the mandala
-various empowerments e.g
Transformation of the five aggregates etc.
-introduced to the kayas,
Includes experiential introduction to bodies, astral, subtle, etc. Etc. (By the Lama reciting text, you following the Deity who is non-seperate from the Deity)
You repeat after the Lama engage in the elaborate symbolic, mandala, Deity visualisations, it's all extremely visualisation intensive, symbolical (buddha families, etc. Bajra, bell, wheel, vase etc.), but it's best to not think and shut your mind off during the process, don't read into what the Lama says, just act as if you aren't controlling the initiation so as to divest yourself of the individuality - otherwise the introductions to the different,
-clear light body
-enjoyment body
-emanation body
And so on will no be effective, the first step is as i said an will repeat the body, mind, and speech of the guru/Lama, is non-different from the Deity.

-you swear secrecy, you will never tell anyone about your particular experiences, you take or renew vows, you receive a name, and so on, receive commitments, receive mantra

So what is it which you really get from it all?
Direct introduction into the kayas, mandala, Deity with tons of esoteric meanings,
It's best you don't know anything beforehand, but I told you in a round about way, and you will not really understand until you actually get initiated.

The initiation can take anywhere from multiple days, with many periods, depending on the tantra, 3 days all constantly spent in visualisation and so on, 2 days, or whatever however compact, or extensive, the initiation is the full thing though, just the speed varies,
Heruka is the longest, you will be introduced into many things, in the empowerment depending on your intellectual capacity this will enable you to then understand the tantra the texts, the sadhana, and to then continue cultivating,
The commitments will only maintain a stable connection.

I answered whatever I could, based on your interest.

>>20471814
So if you're going to get an "empowerment" best to take days off and you'll need free time, and total investment in it,

>>20471760
huh?

>Guts don’t look!

>>20471826
What's wrong, did I say something incorrect, or imprecise if so feel free to add correction.
>>20471834
Yes you shouldn't show iconography like that off!
Lol.

>>20471814
>>20471821
So all these steps you describe (from the introduction to a mandala to the emanation body and vows) take place in only a couple days?
I'm guessing then that you need to book a meeting with a lama and tell him you want to receive initiation and when?
What are you expected to do afterwards, once initiated can you go on mostly on your own and receive occasional tips from the guru or do you need to regularly see him?

>>20471834
Very meaningful all the implements, colours, skullcap, damaru etc. Etc. Crown, under the feet, vajra, bell, bliss void, method wisdom,
Deep, that is Vajrayogini and heruka

>>20471846
>So all these steps you describe (from the introduction to a mandala to the emanation body and vows) take place in only a couple days?
I'm guessing then that you need to book a meeting with a lama and tell him you want to receive initiation and when? What are you expected to do afterwards, once initiated can you go on mostly on your own and receive occasional tips from the guru or do you need to regularly see him?
Yes you'd have to sort that out with the guru, the steps I described are only highly highly general, and there will be more specific points depending upon lineage and tantra, afterall the guru will have received all the transmissions, interpretations, and so on, and will have a direct experiential familiarity with the practice, so yes really the guru will give you advice, the guru
>"...see all appearances to be like an illusion -- this is the inherent nature of the guru."

>>20471875
But it should be noted that there is a general conformity between all the lineages, especially in the Anuttarayoga, Anuyoga class,
The gelugpas essentialy just combined many other old lineages, anyway the point to understand is that most of it leads to direct experiential revelation and what matters is the practical nature first
Thousands and thousands of verses can be summarised in a much more profound way with a single practice, this is the view which is emphasised.

>>20471875
>there will be more specific points depending upon lineage and tantra
I'm looking at >>20467843 if that matters
I understand the nature of the guru I think

>>20471846
Yes the initial invitation, and then usually it is followed by commentaries on the tantra text which may take a week, or a month or whatever, a big part of the tradition is what they call "retreat" accumulating, millions of mantras, and so on, usually there is a lifetime guru yoga commitment or something like this, all until enlightenment, the commitment will vary.

Sorry I didn't mention it but that is implicit - I mean the oral teaching which will follow, they do all this in "retreats" transmitting various teachings and so on.

All I talked about above was the "Initiation" or empowerment ceremony, which is important of course

>>20471908
*initiation

>>20471908
>a week, or a month or whatever,
What about householders who don't live that close to the guru and can't just drop everything for month-long retreats

>>20471913
Then you could just do something like an online retreat and there are some empowerments which only require the "initiation" which then qualifies a person for study of the tantras in their own time, with also a connection to a guru who can say explain parts of it giving his own insight or even elaborate on how you should go about studying them. as he would be someone who has practiced it himself for years, also I should elaborate on something.

Really there is the initiation which is like 2/3 days, and afterwards a week long traditional commentary or something like this, and then contact with the guru.

So it doesn't have to take that long, and it can easily be practiced and studied, and engaged with alongside working, or something of this nature.

I recommended just "getting initiated" first and questioning later, because that is just the traditional order, the tantras require a sort of familiarity and affiliation with the Deity or deities that they talk about, you can search online vajrayogini tantra, or something and you'll find the whole books, but on the first page it says "this text requires empowerment to read"
it would probably be wise to ground yourself in "sutrayana" first, and as another anon here said, shingon Buddhism would probably be the most palatable, but I just meant that the guénon advaita perspective can pretty much be read into it all, what it means for all things to be empty of existence - what they mean is empty of [relative]existence that sort of thing.

Also I don't know anything about that website, i would say even that it's arguably even best to not seek and seek the right guru, or the right initiation, just be "found by it" usually after your intentions and say your studies increase in the subject, the opportunity just happens to present itself - or otherwise you just notice it or become aware. Don't feel that you're missing out on anything, or try to rush and get initiated.

>>20472036
Also:
I say that is the traditional order, but really it is only characteristic of this age, that these opportunities have come up and are available to people who don't have the context, of being Tibetan or Indian, or Chinese, Japanese or so on, already being grounded in sutrayana, mahayana,etc. so that's also something to consider well it's definitely possible to become a pretty high level yogi initiate who is bad at studying and all this, but maybe it would be better to familiarise yourself at least contextually.

That's all the advice I'll give.

>>20471615
>Meditation on the three kayas - and then above that which is all kayas, what is the parralel to that in Islam? Do the sheikhs actively teach a person things like the 8 stages of dissolution, and familiarise a person with their clear light body, dharmakaya true nature and so on, an active preparation for the bardo of death and so on?
>I'll admit I am unfamiliar with Islamic esoterism in its entirety probably because it's so scarce online, but both the systematisation of the tantras, yogas and all else which is all inclusive, has a degree of practicality to it which to me so far is unmatched.

This is actually a fascinating historical bit — a sort of facet of “occult” or “esoteric” history which most people refuse to accept or consider seriously. And it’s that various authentic Sufis, Sufi orders, Sufi theologians and poets and mystics historically and through today, have essentially been people steeped in the milieu of Islamic culture and conditioning but with a secretively universalist outlook. In other words, that some of them were and still are knowing esotericists who often have to essentially publicly downplay their universal approach towards religions and things like their free inspiration from Buddhist and Hindu sources.

Obviously, it would make the more traditional Muslims upset about all this, hence why this is not publicly blared knowledge, and most people who think “Sufism” instantly think “fervent Islamic mysticism bound up with Arabic Islamic cultural conditioning” — which, note, IS sometimes or even many times true.

This is a field which becomes somewhat more complex than typical academics perhaps interested in the history or sociology of religion, can recognize, because it would need a lot of arcane knowledge, as well as reading up on strange, obscure sources. The lataif, you as point out, are, in Sufi esotericism, psycho-spiritual organs tied to certain capacities and forms of experiencing, which are said to underlie all we say, think, and do, but typically not be fully “developed” or “activated” unless one undergoes Sufi training. Some Sufis have therefore been advised to “awaken these lataif,” with corresponding visualization exercises.

This is in fact almost completely identical to the system and idea of the chakras in Indian kundalini yoga — with the simple fact that some of the terminology or numeration of the lataif/chakras differs and can’t be one-to-one matched up, due to the having to transplant it into the Arabic language and Islamic theological conditioning.

>>20472036
>I recommended just "getting initiated" first and questioning later
I will
Regarding sutrayana, I think I've done quite a bit of reading already, from the pali suttas to the main mahayana sutras and mulamadhyamakakarika, the only thing I haven't really explored is tantric literature but that often requires empowerments as you said.
>not seek
>just be "found by it"
It's not like there are loads of opportunities here, I pretty much just looked up dzogchen lineages close to me and got that result. But I will keep what you said in mind.
Thank you

>>20472077
>but typically not be fully “developed” or “activated” unless one undergoes Sufi training.
>This is in fact almost completely identical to the system and idea of the chakras in Indian kundalini yoga
Yes pretty much this is indeed the case, and when I read up on them, it was instantly recognisable,

You have a sheikh (guru) which activates a lataif, gives you a divine name, or mantra, and you work on activating it, the positions there's 4 in the chests, and then the sternum is the center one, and then there are various other sorts,
All while contemplating the nafs, qulb, to essentialy separate "ego" from "self," related the qulb and aql, for each lataif, dhikr and so on corresponds to a stage of the nafs, the Ruh is pretty much the parralel of shakti or a goddess, in the other eastern traditions,

Anyway just from reading the tiniest bit on it, I can already figure out the implications, and all my point is that compared with the Indian, Tibetan, Buddhist etc. Tantric traditions, the actual material is scarce,
And even scarcer for the Christian traditions which is surprising since they are even more nearer to the West, and in western languages there's more information on indic traditions lol, all we have is the various orthodox, prayer of the heart etc. Etc.

With the heart being the unanimous spiritual organ of the self, in all of them universally.

My point is I've seen what Sufism and Christianity have, I've detected traces of this developed esoteric system, but for all that's worth the information on it is so scarce that it's not worth looking into it, or that it's just far less developed, Sufism and Hesychasm together are arguably more "mystical" traditions, that yogic systematisation is just missing, and even then the East still has an even greater diversity in these things.

There's no comparison, better to just get awakening in the more complete tradition and your eyes are opened to the rest regardless.

>>20472136
I mean there is comparison, and I'm not denigrating Sufism or Hesychasm, it's just that it's too roundabout and too hidden, but of course it'll work the same, and there's no one which is greater than the other, it's just less accesible

>>20471615
>>20472077
Furthermore, the lataif are held to make up, to be part of the jism-i-latif, Arabic for “the subtle body.” Again, this is an obvious parallel to the koshas (sheaths, from the bodily sheath to the subtle sheath to the causal/mental sheath) of Hindu teachings, which was transposed into the Buddhist trikaya (three-bodies doctrine), a transformation-body or physical body, nirmanakaya, an enjoyment-body or subtle body, sambhogakaya, and a truth-body or mental/causal body, dharmakaya.

This is an obvious parallel to these Eastern traditions and this stuff about the lataif, visualization exercises, and the jism-e-latif a known historical teaching of some major Sufi orders for some centuries now — and yet, the probable influence by and/or derivation from Hindu or Buddhist sources, cannot be publicly admitted or stressed much, as it will make the Muslims (as well as the petty Orientalists and academics in and around Islamic Sufism) upset!

And of course this then gets into the Kalachakra teaching of Tibetan Buddhism, a fantastically complex psycho-cosmology in which the chakras, their enlivening or further development through yogic practices, mantras, deity yoga, visualization exercises, the subtle body or bodies of the human being, a cosmology of the history of the universe and prophecies of the future, are all gone into in depth.

In Sufism, interestingly enough, you have the technique used of the “dhikr”, remembrance, as in, remembrance-of-Allah — essentially, the same as a MANTRA (itself a Sanskrit word) used in Hindu and Buddhist yogic systems, repeated silently with the breath and used as a focus for one’s awareness, meditation, and contemplation, except this time an Arabic religious phrase instead of something like “om mani padme hum.”

But nevertheless, you’re right that the majority of Sufis cannot, will not, would not even want to get into all this, let alone into things like conscious preparation for the bardos (after-death state) and some type of understanding of karma and reincarnation.

Some teachings in the VEIN of, quasi-similar to teachings like of the dharmakaya true nature, or the Buddha-nature, are found in Sufic terminology and use of the phrases ruh (spirit) and qalb (heart), deeper aspects of the human self held to be often latent, obscured, something we are out-of-touch-with, which is essentially parallel to the concept of the bodhichitta, the mind of awakening or enlightenment, which has wisdom and compassion for the sake of all sentient beings as attributes.

>>20472136
Well in the west the esoteric tradition is essentialy the "Hermetico-alchemical" and maybe even the "Cabalist," "Christian esoterism" in terms of having like an official traditional lineage doesnt exist publically, I haven't studied Masonry but I imagine it's just a combination of the them, there's no connected Esoterism and Exoterism the way it's there in other places, and you can't just "make" one without becoming like a theosophist, and also it won't work to transport some eastern esoteric tradition to the West, which is not entirely Eastern.

This doesn't really mean anything for the West, instead I think it's just supposed to be this "anarchic self-searching" traditionless civilisation, to become the vessel for whatever comes next, but maybe that's just too optimistic.

>>20472177
>>20472077
>7777
Thanks for the info good writeups

>>20472077
>>20472136
>>20472177
Great posts

>>20472177
To the credit of Christians, Muslims and Jews, it's that they always have alot of faith, in the sense that - even though it's entirely possible for a Tantric Buddhist for example to have a lot of faith, it's that the technicality of the Tantric Buddhists is almost harder to believe in because of the sheer scale, complexity and specificity, but the Christian, Muslim, and Jewish traditions in general are a lot easier to dispense alot of faith into because of the complete simplicity, and generality.

>>20472136
Yep. Interesting to see how we independently arrived at more or less the same conclusions.

If you look at a very uncertain, fantastically extraordinary possibility of something you might call “occult primo-history,” it seems entirely possible that there’s some source, some primordial ur-religious-tradition emanating somewhere from perhaps Central Asia, the Middle East, Tibet, the Himalayas — somewhere in this area. And that some primordial culture and very high esoteric knowledge was dispersed throughout various cultures and religions, which today the interested “Traditionalist,” “occultist,” “Theosophist,” or person with perennialist leanings might look and see as finding these strange similarities between religious schools and traditions which seem to be totally different from an outside perspective and totally dispersed throughout various times and places. Gurdjieff might call it the Sarmoung Brotherhood of Central Asia, being thousands of years old and originating in Babylon, the Theosophists might have recourse to Plato’s myth of Atlantis and bring up the legendary “Mahatmas” to fall back on, something like Buddhas/Avatars/Jain Tirthankars who apparently decided to telepathically commune with the Theosophists and give them these teachings to bring to the West.

But, funnily enough, you can also see it from a totally opposite perspective and have just as valid-seeming an interpretation — a quasi-Jungian, perennialist one that, “These apparently wildly differing people in wildly differing cultures sometimes seem to be talking about some astoundingly similar things, concepts, imagery and symbolism, not necessarily because they were ‘borrowing,’ derived from, or influenced by each other, but because they were tapping into the collective unconscious, which is the source of all archetypes, which are like ideal symbols and story-lines and concepts projected by the collective unconscious as spurs to our healthy individualization and psychological integration.”

And, fascinatingly enough, this is essentially analogous to the practice and concept Tibetan Vajrayana deity yoga from hundreds and hundreds of years ago as described in the Kalacakratantra, in which the deities are seen as aspects of or some higher personification of oneself!

They were “doing” Jung a thousand years ago!

In the Kalacakratantra, you also have the idea of microcosmic and macrocosmic recursion endlessly repeating throughout it — microcosmic processes of and in the body are held to correlate to external macrocosmic processes, historical cycles, yugas, “wheels of time” (what “Kalacakra” actually means — wheel of time).

And in the legendary Emerald Tablet of Hermès Trismegistus, you have the simple phrase, “As it is above, so it is below,” which has been interpreted by Western occultists in a very similar way.

A primordial Atlantean teaching? A Jungian collective unconscious? Both?

>>20471615
>>But atiyoga, mahamudra, the Anuttarayogas if a person absolutely earnestly practices they will reach Buddha level in this lifetime and this is no joke.
Impossible, the buddha said it does not conduct to full enlightenment.

>>20472257
Where?

>>20471814
>you take or renew vows
what if I don't want to take the bodhisattva vow because I want to get the fuck out of this plane of existence asap

>>20472267
Just deny it afterwards, but that's defeating the purpose, the vow is designed to be transcended, cause a bit of inner adversity initially - instill a bit of discipline, to realise that the true vow is one and your "connection" to God, in a nondual way, you need to defeat duality by duality, death by death, and the whole point of tantra is to purify all experiences, no matter how gross, it is a practice perfect for the modern degenerate.

But now that I've told you, you could say, if the vow is there to be "broken" then there's no point! But even that is the incorrect view.

But I agree it should be forbidden to tell people all that, the more it stresses the person out, makes them anxious the more effective.

>>20472302
Essentialy actually there is nothing to escape from. That desire to escape is an illusory one, the only way to escape is to realise that there really is no escape.
Kek

>>20472238
>>20472238
And these strange analogies become even more fascinating, when you bring up alchemy — Chinese Taoist spiritual alchemy and its immortalization of the body, sometimes also held as creating a soul or immortal body, with the alchemical teachings of Arabic Islamic history as well as of Western occultism, where the “alchemy” appeared to be an obfuscation of and metaphor for spiritual teachings and practices that would be deemed heretical.

Is it possible that certain concepts and practices which are simply more exoteric and culturally, traditionally acceptable in the East, have simply found their mirror in the West throughout the history of secret societies and esotericism, having to teach and practice privately and secretly, what in the East can be said and taught relatively more openly — “You have the capacity for enlightenment, a higher potential for consciousness, within yourself, which doesn’t necessarily come to full fruition without authentic knowledge and training from a school, guides, or gurus who can guide you in it”?

For Western religious conditioning, ideas like these seem like the ultimate Promethean/Luciferian heresy, as well as like personality-worship (of the guru) and cultism — and hence, it appears what sages have been able to teach and say more openly in the East, has had to be done esoterically and privately in the West.

The funny part, furthermore, is that even if one has some intellectual curiosity about, interest in, or vague understanding of all these complex issues and ideas — it doesn’t mean one has actually gotten anywhere! Maybe some random Tibetan lama is experiencing and knowing far more than you ever will simply from the books you have access to in the libraries and bookstores.

Hence why ultimately, I think the crucial turn-around is that “this” — whatever you feel attracted to when reading about various religious traditions — is more like SOME ENERGY SOURCE THAT CAN BE CONSTRUCTIVELY TAPPED INTO (kooky and New Age as that sounds), as opposed to a matter of belief and disbelief. The Hindu yogis might say the kundalini shakti needs to awaken within you, and Taoist Chinese sages that you need to cultivate your body and spirit with allegorically alchemical processes like qigong (coordinated bodily movements/postures, breathing, and meditation exercises), which literally means something like “life-energy (qi) cultivation (dong)” in Chinese.

And furthermore, this mostly still only ties into what perhaps occultists would call the “etheric” or “psychic” aspects of these teachings, having to do with psychic energy, subtle bodies, and the like — which, perhaps, ARE actually some hidden heritage of and potential development of humankind we don’t fully scientifically understand or admit exists, but, ultimately, don’t even have a single thing to do with the primordial Buddha-nature.

>>20472257
Even then there is no contradiction, because in the absolute sense as there is nothing high or low, full or empty, and there is no buddha to "become," and conduct (action) cannot vanquish ignorance alone.

Even say someone is still thinking with respects to "High" and "Low" and they spend their whole lives "Aiming" for the highest, even when they fail who is going to blame them? If a person aims to be at their best, and they never attain their best then they never attain their best, and what is best doesn't then "harm" them or whatever that may mean.

>>20472302
>>20472328
Hmm well I'm aware of the nondual view regarding the bodhisattva vow but it still doesn't sit well with me in principle, I don't want to vow to remain in samsara, even if the end realization is that samsara = nirvana. I just have a very strong acosmic disposition

>>20469924
>but why does vajrayana buddhism in particular feel so reminiscent to the Germanic spirit and mind? its like they are the same religion, reflected in different lights.
Bon is Mithraism. The Primordial Egg. Taranatha. Bogdo Lama.

>>20472340
Where do I read more on Chinese alchemy?

>>20471378
>abrahamism is retarded
This is not the view of the man of realisation but of a pleb caught up in intellectual discursions, and outside thinking
There is no abrahamism, or buddhism, nor is there any dharma, no jesus or buddha, no sun or moon, neither are there any plebs or realisations, or relative existence for that matter its purely illusory Like the reflection of a moon on the surface of a body of water,
If you truly believed the words of the Buddha you would not believe in the words of the Buddha, and you certainly wouldn't believe in the words "Christian" "Abrahamism" "Jesus" "Buddha" "Buddhism" "Pagan" or whatever other void name,
YWNAE
(You will never attain enlightenment)
And you will never go beyond name and form.

Hey effortposters, complete newbie here. I was thinking about starting meditating, and in my first search I came across The mind illuminated. But some anon in a thread yesterday convinced me(who was only lurking) to use this book instead.
What are your opinions on it?

>>20472690
>brooo nothing exists
What a bunch of bullshit. Get a grip, pseud

>>20472238
>who apparently decided to telepathically commune with the Theosophists and give them these teachings to bring to the West.
Whether or not Blavatsky and others claims of revelation are true, the same framing formula is used in any number of Mahayana sutras (Buddha revealed this sutra to me on the astral plane), and it should not be lost on us that theosophists (1) did a great deal to revivify interest in and prestige of Buddhism in colonized Asian countries where it was losing ground, and (2) similarly expanded interest in Buddhism in the West, an interest which has outlived interest in theosophy! So if one is a "believer" in the dharma then it would seem they served some purpose after all

>>20472710
shit book, read the other one instead.

>>20472760
Which other one?

>>20472772
ya'know! the not that one

>>20472783
no I don't know

>>20472785
lol fucking loser

>>20472715
Absolute being does, but yes nothing exists in that relative sense. There's nothing pseud about it, it is exactly what the Buddha taught, why do you think these abstract categories like "Christianity" or "Buddhism" which are just relative determinations of interdependent phenomena, like the writing of a book, or the compilation of scriptures.

The exist but their existence is illusory and relative, void, pure being though has an existence insofar as it it is undetermined, I deleted what I wrote there because I knew it would trigger the egoistic neopagan pseuds who are clinging to archaeology and interdependent memories of an ancestral past or heritage of paganism. Or even to their very individuality, name or form, or body, the Absolute being is divested of such unreal contingencies.

COPE.

>>20472871
You're describing advaita, not buddhism

>>20472871
As I said your "Christianity," your "Buddhism" and so forth are just like images reflected on a pond, the waves on an ocean, all transient and fleeting, there is absolutely nothing real about them, yet you denigrate something which has no existence.

There is no reason to denigrate a single thing, knowing it is void is enough, especially those tedious intellectual constructions which are the product of the discursive mind observing the transient phenomena around it like "archaeology" and so on, these things at best are all just one universal substance, but they have to viewed as indifferentiable, without distinction, especially not between subject and object,

So you are only criticising and denigrating yourself by saying
>abrahamism is shit or whatever
Really you are abrahamism, and you are shit.

COPE.

>>20472898
What a bunch of retarded mental masturbation
Sit down and shut the fuck up faggot

>>20472884
No infact Buddhism only sometimes differs in the places it goes even further and says even that Absolute Being does not have any real existence, and that there is no Purusha, or Paramatma, or Paramottoma, which is really only a position exclusive to some Madhyamakas and their mental gymnastics, but the Shentong, Yogacarins agree with Advaita, anyway there is no advaita, or any of these things regardless, no debate, just experience and there is that undeniable experiencer which refutes by necessity the Rangtong Madhyamaka position.

All those things are according to Buddhism shunyata.

>>20472927
oh you're the guenonigger. should've said so from the start so I should've known not to waste my time on your room temp IQ takes

>>20472908
COPE.
There is no sitting down or standing up, I am immoveable and and I am infinite and indeterminable, my body is not even my own, so I can't sit down or stand up.
>>20472927
I forgot ot add COPE.

>>20472927
>Yogacarins agree with Advaita
More like Shankara ripped off Yogacara and stapled the Upanishads to it.

>>20472945
>guenonigger
There is no guenon and there is no nigger and I am neither of those things, there is no there is no guenon and there is no nigger and I am neither of those those things.

COPE.

>>20472954
sneed

>>20472951
>nooooo you can't have consciousness cease in the absolute because thinking about myself is proof that I am God

>>20472964
ཨ
>>20473003
t. Thou art that
In all seriousness that is just a pointer, the jivanmukta experiences that primordial state in life, but we can aspire for it in death

>Your nature is perfectly and utterly pure, unconfined and unrestricted;
Unborn, unobstructed, and free of all elaboration, the innate, primordial mind of enlightenment.
>It is timeless, an unconditioned and unchanging dimension with all supreme qualities.
>Beyond samsara, nirvana, and identity, Primordial Protector, with your six special characteristics, to you I bow,

>Sogyal Rinpoche writes:
>"Imagine a sky, empty, spacious, and pure from the beginning; its essence is like this. Imagine a sun, luminous, clear, unobstructed, and spontaneously present; its nature is like this. Imagine that sun shining out impartially on us and all things, penetrating all directions; its energy, which is the manifestation of compassion, is like this: Nothing can obstruct it and it pervades everywhere."

>thinking about myself
No that's not even conciousness.
COPE.

Nice to see that sneed and cope are now Buddhists mantras.

>>20473037
Sogyal Rinpoche doesn't seem legit, what with all the accusations.

>>20472750
Yep. This is why I love the image of Indra’s net, as well as the school of Hwa Yen Buddhism encapsulated by the Avamtaksa Sutra, Flower Garland Sutra. In Western mysticism, there’s also the apocryphal saying from somewhere or other that God is an infinite sphere (or circle) whose center is everywhere and circumference is nowhere. Even the people who should know the best, should know better, get into this great pettiness — becoming the ultimate brain-scholar and comparative religionist who can authoritatively weigh and pontificate on their Ultimate-Model-of-Reality.

Speaking in terms of Western esoteric and philosophical schools, I think you can say metaphysics, for the truly interested and devoted student, eventually has to come to something like a postmodern open-ended Hermetic Neoplatonic theosophy (not in the sense of “Theosophy (tm)”, the cult, but the timeless tradition of theosophy).

A Hindu guru might disparage the Islamic Sufis, deny whatever spiritual development and insight they may have attained and may give you — “If you want THEIR results, go to them and see what they can give you, but only we have the real way to moksha.” Similar for every major religion and schools of mysticism and esotericism — they will all essentially be dickslapping each other in petty ways and essentially so much as saying, “We have the ultimate cultural conditioning,” — but the very image of Indra’s net and the cosmology of Hwa Yen Buddhism, I think encapsulates the issue very well, by portraying enlightenment as a timeless potential timelessly happening in humanity and timelessly repeating itself — endless past Buddhas and future Buddhas in endless worlds. Various respected major Buddhist figures as well as Tibetan Buddhists or scholars of Vajrayana, have actually said it seems probable Blavatsky actually was somehow somewhere initiated into Mahayana and/or higher lamaistic teachings, despite the relative imperfections of Theosophy itself as a sect and the mystification and bullshit around it.

>>20467823
>dzogchenlineage.org
Looks fishy, I think there is no real Dzogchen master in the West since Namkhai Norbu died.

>>20471553
>Its hard to imagine a wandering shaman god that causes wars and conflicts to gather warriors to his warband in heaven to be a Bodhisattva.
stranger things have happened, and several of the dharmapalas were originally demons or pagan gods converted to the dharma.
and yeah, its weird how close slavic is to sanskrit, ive noticed alot of parallels and i barely even know slavic tongues

>>20473837
>Namkhai Norbu
Yeah his books are decent I recommend anons read them
>>20473737
Kek yeah most of them get corrupted by power, usually they get involved in sexual scandals which is really fitting especially once you understand the most esoteric parts of tantra.

>>20471615
>just get empowered bro lmao
i did an online empowerment to mahakala, i imitated the rituals, poured water on my head and drank some from a seashell (closest i have to a sacred vase or kapala) i wouldnt think an online ritual would do shit but it did genuinely do something. have felt clarity since then

>>20472629
I think the classic about this is “The Secret of the Golden Flower,” about Chinese neidan (inner alchemy) meditation, translated in the early 20th century by the German Sinologist Richard Wilhelm who was initiated into Chinese yogic and philosophical teachings, as well as the psychological system of the I Ching, by Lai Ni Hsuan.

>>20461314
>I've read In the Buddha's Words and the Heart Sutra but I still feel like I don't know shit about Buddhism.
This is a good assessment of your knowledge. I've been reading about Buddhism since I don't remember what grade in school, and I keep doing it (not that it was my only occupation). In fact, if you devote your whole life to studying Buddhism, every day, and live 100 years, you can say that you have learned a little bit.
>There are so many sutras, commentaries and whatnot that it's overwhelming.
Ah? Why? I think this is promising.
>Where should I go from there?
Find a Buddhist country that you like (Burma or Laos, China, Tibet, Japan, Mongolia, etc.) and study the Buddhism of that country in specific cultural forms. Through aesthetics.

>>20473977
Once you accept that you're really on the path to enlightenment and realisation in such a formal setting where a person says he will bestow this or that, it draws out latent possibilities otherwise inaccessible, especially if you have faith but it's not even then necessarily contingent all upon faith, you have faith in the reality of enlightenment insofar as you can be directed in this direction, but I've found it's best to just give up faith and expectation all together and just be present in the practices and so on, that seems to be the most effective attitude,

Yeah the initiations which are conferred especially the higher tantra ones work or transmit a spiritual influence from the Lama and lineage, the receptivity of the initiate is another thing all together, if a person for example goes into an initiation refuses ro visualise a single thing, and doesn't participate actively I wonder if nothing would happen? If you're not engaged in it at all it won't, work I'm sure especially the effects which are induced during the process, so if a person is willing then it'll work,

In fact a unwilling person shouldn't get involved at all, so I doubt it never fails to work, you'd have to be willgully ignorant and negating it while you do it, or being distracted and filled with all sorts of expectations, which would just lead to cases of schizophrenia and serious delusions.

>>20461314
Halfway through Dharma Bums. Picked it up after having it recommended to me multiple times. I've no exposure to Buddhism outside this book.

I picked up the book for the mountain climbing, and have mostly been rolling my eyes at Kerouac's And Japhy's pretentious Buddhist blabberings. Curious what /lit/ thinks of the book though, should I be paying more attention to the buddhist bits?

>>20471690
>>‘It is a womanly thing to establish superiority through convincing arguments; it is a manly thing to conquer the world through one’s power.
>>Reasoning, argument, and inference may be the work of other schools [shastras]; but the work of the Tantra is to accomplish superhuman and divine events through the force of their own words of power [mantras].’
>– Tantrattva 1:27
>Guénonfag BTFO by actual tantric mahasiddhas, discursive intellectual activity is secondary to the cultivation of power, realisation of bliss, contemplation of the void, understanding of the nondual pure-Being.

Yep lol. This is why I love/hate figures like Guenon — he and figures like him are just as much veils to the truth as they are conveyors to it. Instead of becoming something like tantric mahasiddhas oneself, people simply develop a “Traditionalist” ego.

An interesting fact is that “tantra” itself means literally means something like “loom, weave, warp,” but can also be used in the sense of “technique,” “practice,” “system”. It’s not necessarily that you find the ultimate body of teaching which you’re now religiously devoted to and use to put down all the non-adherents — rather, it’s that you let the technique or system change you, work on you. Tantra is ultimately doing, not just forming the ultimate theology, body of knowledge, hence why it freely extends and interfaces between Hinduism and Buddhism. It’s essentially people who honed and refined certain techniques for hundreds or thousands of years that are conducive to a higher state of consciousness

>>20471717
>So they always discriminate between virtue and non virtue, you could become a "siddha" gain powers and then just devote yourself to hedonistic pursuits, but this is not encouraged and is viewed as something contrary to the "bodhisattva"
Yep, as you point out, there really is the risk of something amoral about some of these teachings — I have almost no doubt whatsoever, that some very occultly greedy person, could legitimately use Tantric practices, techniques, and teachings without necessarily having a very morally refined character and get into higher states of consciousness, seeming miraculous or occult experiences and attainments, contact with discarnate entities, etc. In my opinion, this is probably almost certainly what happened to figures like Crowley — in Vajrayana Tibetan Buddhism it is an accepted fact that certain of these techniques, practices, and knowledge are essentially amoral. You could use Tantric rituals, meditation and visualization practices, deity yoga, as a sort of supreme building-up of ego, the idea of becoming a “powerful occultist” or “magician,” like the Bon sorcerers and shamans.

Hence why I think the Bodhisattva ideal and teachings about karma are rather important. Ultimately, the goal being to attain enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings, practices for inculcating loving-kindness, and so forth.

>>20472710
It's an easy to understand introduction to the 6 yogas written by someone who practices them. A decent commentary on tsongkhapa's the Book of Three Inspirations that's notable because of how practical it is. For full translations of exactly what tsongkhapa said check out Glenn Mullins stuff but it's a very good place to start.

>>20472710
I wouldn't use this to start meditating as a newbie, this is some more advanced vajrayana stuff (and lama yeshe is a bit dubious).

>>20474095
>I wouldn't use this to start meditating as a newbie
That is the traditional answer but after doing it myself anyway I have to question why not? Types of meditation that create a sensation inside your body which you focus on have a number of benefits. It's was way easier for me when starting out to hold my focus on the short a stroke flame thing than on my breath. Literally measurable heat is a hell of an indication that you're doing it right as well. Clear signs and measurable effects are amazing.

>>20473739
Yeah the Avatamsaka Sutra is kino. In terms of "post-modern open-ended Hermetic Neoplatonic theosophy" the closest you can get might be Deleuze's Difference and Repetition. It would after all be necessary to "overturn Platonism" as Deleuze attempts, to realize—for lack of a better term—spiritual development, in the same way that the Lankavatara Sutra treats the finger pointed at the moon, or the Madhyamikas do reductio ad absurdum to discursive views. Deleuze also brings in Nietzsche, particularly the eternal return, and considers both Nietzsche and the Greeks to have had a properly esoteric dimension. And there are of course obvious affinities between Deleuze's Spinozism and the dharmakaya doctrine of the Mahayana.
>>20473943
>how close slavic is to sanskrit
Really they are only separated by the Iranian plateau. iirc linguists consider the urheimat of Sanskrit to be somewhere around the present Russian/Ukrainian border.
>>20473970
Well some of the tantra scriptures are literally about having sex scandals and consuming intoxicants to achieve gnosis. There's no reason to go into it and expect something else. It's only scandalous to the naive or uninformed. It's also not essential to Buddhism.

>>20473943
Yeah, buddhism has strange fusions with different cultures, Padmasambhava is great example of that. Also, finnish is finno-ugric language, not slavic.

>>20462054
The 6 yogas are a group of practices that milarepa thought was cool, stolen from other tantra and bundled together. Looking through them and finding some of them useful to you and some of them not, seems perfectly valid. That's literally the mindset that created them. It's not like you have to have blind faith in the tantra. In the end they're a practice to achieve a result. There's also a version of photo that projects into a recently dead body BTW if you're up for some necromancy.

>>20474162
Phowa

>>20474149
sorry im not an expert on eastern european languages, it all gets fuzzy past east gothic

>>20466086
>Am I wrong?
I have experienced the clear ight and had some small success with the illusory body on my own with no empowerments. Maybe I'll hit some kind of spiritual roadblock at some point but I haven't found it yet. People choosing not to try because they think it's impossible to do it on their own seems like the worst outcome.

>>20474142
>Yeah the Avatamsaka Sutra is kino.
Yeah. I actually want to type out a great piece from the introduction to Garma C. C. Chang’s “The Buddhist Teaching of Totality: the Philosophy of Hwa Yen Buddhism” (1971).

>During my thirty-five years of association with Buddhism, I have always asked this question: “Of all Buddhist schools — Hinayana, Mahayana, and Tantra alike — which one truly holds the highest teaching of Buddhism?” The answer is now a clear-cut one: it is the Hwa Yen school of China. The Hwa Yen school, or Hwa Yen Tsung, was established in the T’ang period, roughly in the 7th and 8th centuries A.D., by outstanding thinkers such as Tu Shun (557-640), and Fa Tsang (643-712). The Chinese word Hwa Yen means the “flower-decoration” or “garland,” which is originally the name of a voluminous Mahayana text: The Garland Sutra (The Gandavyuha or Avatamsaka Sutra). Therefore, the teaching of this school is based mainly upon this text and draws inspiration from it.

>What does this scripture say and to whom are its messages addressed? The Hwa Yen Sutra has one central concern: to reveal the Buddha-realm of Infinity. Its messages are therefore directed to those who appreciate the awe-inspiring Infinity of Buddhahood revealed in Buddha’s Enlightenment experience, which is described briefly in the first chapter. There is no other Buddhist scripture, to the best of my knowledge, that is superior to Hwa Yen in revealing the highest spiritual inspiration and the most profound mystery of Buddhahood. This is opinion is shared, I believe, by the majority of Chinese and Japanese Buddhist scholars. It is small wonder that Hwa Yen has been regarded as the “crown” of all Buddhist teachings, and as representing the consummation of Buddhist insight and thought.

>>20474241
>The reader will notice that Hwa Yen is a synthesis of all major Mahayana thoughts, a philosophy of totalistic organism. The three major concepts of Mahayana — namely the Philosophies of Totality, of Emptiness, and of Mind-Only — are all merged into a unity. Far from being a concoction, Hwa Yen Doctrine represents an “organic whole” of all essential elements of Mahayana Buddhism. When one comes to Hwa Yen, he sees Buddhism in a completely new light. Even the tedious Mind-Only doctrine now becomes vivid and alive. The Alaya Consciousness [storehouse consciousness] of Yogacara is no more a dull and torpid “store-house”, the tyrannical Jungian Collective Unconscious is no more an ever-evasive archetypal image projector. In Hwa Yen the “Universal Mind” is likened to a vast Ocean-Mirror in which the infinite dramas of the universe are spontaneously and simultaneously reflected. No more is the Mind-Only doctrine a one-way projection, but it becomes a kaleidoscope of multi-dimensional, mutual projections and interpenetrations. Even the Philosophy of Sumatra (Voidness) now appears to be different from what it was before. The Totalistic Voidness prevented in Hwa Yen literature reveals many hidden facets of Sunyata which are not immediately clear in the Madhyamika theses. Only in Hwa Yen do the far-reaching implications of the Sunyata doctrine laid down in the Prajnaparamita literature become transparently clear. The majority of intellectually inclined Zen monks all come to Hwa Yen because they could oftentimes find therein spiritual guidance in their bewildering Zen Path and discover sensible solutions to those abstruse Zen problems. Many “senseless” Zen koans become meaningful if one can appropriately apply the Hwa Yen Round-Thinking to these cases.

>>20462345
Just found a copy, so far this book rules

>>20474292
>the Philosophy of Sumatra (Voidness) now appears to be different from what it was before.
Sunyata**

>>20461921
Does that version of the Dhammapada come with all of the accompanying stories?

>>20462384
the insane schizobabble of vajrayana is honestly what wins me over

vayjayrana and blue elephants and shiiiet

>>20474142
Yep, you can also liken the thread in Western philosophy of what has been called “process philosophy,” a thread running from thinkers like Heraclitus to Nietzsche to Heidegger to Bergson to Whitehead to Deleuze — to Buddhist philosophical concepts which have been in circulation for thousands of years. The Humean bundle theory of the self essentially seems like Hume’s own independent arriving at something like the anatta (no-self) teaching, of sunyata (Voidness) and denial that things have swabhava (own-being, own-becoming, independent existence and nature apart from reality). Heidegger, with his pointing out that subject-object distinction is itself a derivative one and not necessarily the most primordial phenomenological way of viewing reality, his pointing out that “Being” is not a being, does not have the qualities or traits of a being and hence paradoxically seems to be founded on Nothing, as well as that the study of ontology is inextricably bound up with the study of phenomenology, as you cannot imagine “Being-in-itself” without Dasein, “Being-there” or “there-being”, being inextricably interwoven with it and there to perceive it — all this, as scholars have pointed out, is organically quite similar to Buddhist thought.

>>20462345
>>20474304
So far the biggest danger of this book is that makes me want to spend 100 dollars on a hardcover version

>>20474444
quad 4's. It was meant to be. Dewit.

>>20474444
checked and kekked

>>20474455
fuck

>>20474444
>>20474455

>>20474444
amusing

is it possible to worship God while being a Buddhist? does Buddhism always look down on the gods?

>>20474534
sakyamuni references and praises Indra a couple times in the dhammapada, so i dont know where the meme that Buddhism doesnt have any gods comes from, im guessing college professors teaching "mindfulness" classes
its clear that Buddha understood a higher power, something greater than himself

>>20474534
Worshiping gods is expressly and repeatedly described as an inferior path. In both the nikayas and the later Mahayana sutras the Buddha even lectures gods on dharma, demonstrating his superiority.

>>20474444
>>20474455
Guess there's nothing to do but to buy all 3 volumes I guess. The first and third book aren't available online that I can see so why not?

>>20468430
>Anatta
It's one HELL of a drug when one sees it.

>>20462345
freedom of press was a mistake

>>20474534
The gods are deluded, so are devas and so is Brahman. You should practice and see for yourself what's true reality

>>20474292
>>>The reader will notice that Hwa Yen is a synthesis of all major Mahayana thoughts, a philosophy of totalistic organism.
>>20474241
>>>During my thirty-five years of association with Buddhism, I have always asked this question: “Of all Buddhist schools — Hinayana, Mahayana, and Tantra alike — which one truly holds the highest teaching of Buddhism?” The answer is now a clear-cut one: it is the Hwa Yen school of China.


the utter state of coping bugmen

>>20474142
>Avatamsaka Sutra
It's retarded and Indra is a hindu god who dont know shit about nirvana

>>20474089
>>Hence why I think the Bodhisattva ideal and teachings about karma are rather important. Ultimately, the goal being to attain enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings, practices for inculcating loving-kindness, and so forth.
Too bad that it's impossible even on a theoretical level since arahants are not reborn, per Mahayana.

>>20474089
Is this guénonfag responding here?

>>20474534
>>20474549
>>20474566
>>20474590
Bizarre as it sounds, yes, gods, godlike beings, angelic entities, some type of creator god — conceptualized as devas and Brahman from Hindu theology — were indeed appropriated by Buddhism with the bizarre slant — you might call it “trans-theistic” — essentially saying that, even IF God exists, the teachings about non-duality, suffering being caused desire, the cessation of suffering through enlightenment/nirvana coming about through the cessation of desire, the liberation from dukkha and samsara, the anatta (no-self) teachings, and the like, still hold true and are ultimately valid for your development.

In Taoist thought you might have a similar paradoxical and heretical-seeming but also valid insight — which is, “Even if a Creator God exists, He is still subservient to and simply a part of the Tao, the unending beginningless background of and precondition for all existence.”

>>20474590
Delusion is an illusion you're saying nothing here; you're deluded insofar as they are an illusion of delusion by which you may overcome the illusion sure, but especially Brahman nirguna, to call something without conditions a condition is peak folly, and empty words.

>>20462345
That book is extremely based reading it now, good stuff.

>>20474626
KEK no I’m my own person, Guenon would not have and did not respect Buddhism as much as a tradition, viewing it as essentially a perverted and corrupted form of Hinduism — in a strange enough way, he’s right — and tending more towards the insights of Sufism and Advaita Vedanta theology which combines insights about non-duality with reverent theism — but in yet another strange way, I think he also thereby blocked off potential great insights by casting aside Buddhist philosophy as inferior. This is why I like the idea of non-dogmatic tantrism, something which to Guenon would seem “non-Traditional,” “the counter-initiation,” or whatever he and his like would call it.

Guenon, I feel, was so close yet so far with his idea of Tradition.

>>20474640
>>20474534
Trungpa has an interesting about this as it applies to the Maha Ati (Great Completion, Great Perfection) teachings:

>Ati yoga teaching or discipline is sometimes defined as that which transcends coming, that which transcends going, and that which transcends dwelling. This definition is something more than the traditional tantric slogan of advaita, or “not two.” In this case, we are looking at things from the level of true reality, not from the point of view of slogan or belief. Things are as they are, very simply, extremely simply so. Therefore things are unchanging,, and therefore things are open as well. The relationship between us and our world is no relationship, because such a relationship is either there or not. We cannot manufacture a concept or idea of relationship to make us feel better.

>From the perspective of ati, the rest of the yanas are trying to comfort us: “If you feel separate, don’t worry. There is nonduality as your saving grace. Try to rest your mind in it. Everything is going to be okay. Don’t cry.” In contrast, the approach of ati is a blunt and vast attitude of total flop, as if the sky had turned into a gigantic pancake and suddenly descended onto our head, which ironically creates enormous space. That is the ati approach, that larger way of thinking, that larger view.

Again, stuff like this may sound like half-baked, shallow, like incoherent Orientalism if you have no intuitive experience or insight about what he’s talking about. Essentially, he’s pointing that in something like Advaita (not-two) teachings, something like a divine panacea is offered — there is “That” and there is “you”, the limited individual ego self, and you are a manifestation of and part of that self and you simply have forgotten it and need to practice to become one with it — the but the stark and harsh simplicity of something like Maha Ati teachings, is it goes beyond even this conceptualizing discursive idea of “not-two,” or non-duality as a religious concept, and, paradoxically enough, might instead say, “Not only is the nature of reality ‘not-two,’ or non-dual — it is not even ‘one.’ It is ‘not-one.’ It is no-thing, not a thing. Even the concept of non-duality as something to strive for only exists when contrasted with duality. Hence this teaching is beyond either dualism, in the sense of a creator God Who is infinitely beyond you and Whom you can never hope to attain or comprehend or understand, as well as beyond even non-dualism, the use of some idea of non-dualism as a panacea for reaching some state or condition of being you don’t already have.”

Someone in a previous thread said Daniel Ingram only had a temporary enlightenment. Is there a source for that?

>>20474711
This is all well and good, but it doesn't go beyond nonduality, by just saying there is neither nonduality nor duality, anyhow to the jivanmukta he is relieved of all identifications, religous or whatever else implied there, or even attachment to some ideology in the way that it is meant here, as the realisation is something completely experiential,
"The nature of reality is neither non-dual nor dual" is semantics and shows at least on trungpas behalf a misrepresentation, and maybe even misunderstanding,
The "concept" of "nonduality" as something to strive for is opposed to duality,
just lol, what concept of "nonduality" is he referring to?
Nondual implies neither nondual nor dual "dual"
Wordgames.

>>20474640
>Even if a Creator God exists, He is still subservient to and simply a part of the Tao, the unending beginningless background of and precondition for all existence.”
Yep

>>20474711
Summary
>“That” and there is “you”
No there is You
>There is neither nondual nor dual
That is a duality...
>"If you feel separate don't worry"
There is nothing to feel separate from and there is also nothing to feel connected to, that is again a duality,

Sorry but trungpa is off the mark.

>>20474997
I should elaborate that "subject" and "object" is not some irreducible duality as trungpa implies from the nondual point of view,

The sect trungpa started:
https://thewalrus.ca/survivors-of-an-international-buddhist-cult-share-their-stories/

>>20474961
>>20474997
>>20474961
Well yes, this is the classic seeming incoherency and penchant for paradox you might in Buddhist literature and from Buddhist teachers. I think it almost becomes more psychological here than philosophical — in other words, referring to the headgames and traps that people can get into about all this, as opposed to a philosophical pronunciation about the absolute nature of reality. In yet other words, someone interested in the idea of non-duality might go, “There is ‘That’ and there is ‘I’, and, in some way which I am not actually yet fully understanding and experiencing, ‘I’ am ‘That,’ and need to perform practices and have great devotion and insight to somehow become one with ‘That’ (which ‘I’ somehow already am). I need to somehow hypnotize or convince myself that ‘I’ am ‘That.’”

So a Buddhist insight is that the first premise is already going away from the truth of non-duality — the premise, “There is ‘I’ and there is ‘That,’” which has as a necessary conclusion, “‘I’ need to somehow become or understand that I am ‘That.’” The Buddhist-style insight is to try to even point out how the first premise is wrong and stop the discursive mind in its tracks which strays from the truth of non-duality, of its own Buddha-nature, while claiming it seeking for Ultimate Truth or enlightenment — the Buddhist insight hence being, “No, the first premise that there is ‘I’ and there is ‘That’, is already misguided. There is simply ‘this here right now,’ which is not a like a Thing or a concept. There is no ‘I’ or ‘That’ in the first place, no two poles or things to be divided and set apart or somehow reconciled and united.”

Some have pointed out that the teachings of Mahayana, Zen, and some concepts in Vajrayana, are Vedantic-like in nature, quasi-Vedantic. The concept of the Buddha-nature, the tathagatagarba (which can also be translated as something like Buddha-embryo or Buddha-essence), an eternal and unchanging indwelling Buddha within all of us, seems something like the idea of the Paramatman (the-self-beyond-the-self), or Atman (the Self) being one with Brahman.

>>20475055
>>20475004
>>20474997
>>20474961
I think, in fact, that it’s corruption, misinterpretation, and literalism which has led to all the proliferation of religious and philosophical sects and debates. In other words, the truth is neither strictly ‘Buddhist’ nor ‘Hindu,’ where these words apply to time-bound sects, societal conditioning, imagery and rites of Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Tibetan, etc., culture.

This is where something like postmodernism and an understanding of the sociology of religion, as well as the concept of the social construction of reality posited by the 20th-century sociologists Berger and Luckman, comes in handy. The truth, the universe itself, is not itself intrinsically ‘Hindu,’ ‘Buddhist,’ or anything else. Even great sages of these cultures tried to point this out.

Sages, philosophers, and advanced yogis of “Hindu” and “Buddhist” cultures were talking about things like the social construction of reality posited by the 20th-century sociologists Berger and Luckmann, and something like the phenomenological reduction of Husserl, thousands of years ago! Such as in the concept of the ahamkara, the I-maker or ego-maker, which creates a socially, culturally, and time-and-space-bound conditioned artificial self based off of the perceptions and conditionings it is receiving.

This is why I like the idea of non-traditional tantrism (which extends throughout Hinduism and Buddhism, there being both Hindu Tantra sects and Tantric Buddhism). The real way to truth seems to be something like “I am,” and coming to a permanent enlightenment about and hence constant reminding of oneself of the truth, the bliss (sat-chit-ananda, being-consciousness-bliss) hidden behind the full understanding of ‘I am.’

The entire world is mind-made, so to speak, as per the Yogacara Buddhists. It is a play or dance occurring in your own mind, as per the lila-shakti (Game or Play of Shakti or Power) of an apparently society-and-time-bound sect like Kashmiri Shaivism. All this conversation, theological sects and disputes, are simply taking place in, ‘I am,’ which is boundless, unconditioned, void-like, and not like some object, being all that is and all that ever could be.

I am reality, I am That, ham-sah (Sanskrit for I am That.)

>>20475055
>>20475084
>>20475004
In fact, reading this you might think I am a Buddhist, I am not, I am simply someone who respects and learned a lot from Buddhism and find it fascinating to talk about its psychologico-philosophical insights. In fact, surprising as it may sound, I personally tend more towards something like the Advaita Vedanta insight. The way I view it, maybe paradoxically enough, is that figures like ‘the Buddha’, ‘Shankaracharya’, ‘Chogyam Trungpa,’ are simply projections of your own mind, limitations of and crystallized concepts and teachings occurring in your own consciousness, which is all that is.

This fundamental understanding is paradoxical, ecstatic, and all-pervading. Buddhism, I think, was simply the Siddartha Gautama trying to ‘correct’ certain deficiencies, limitations of thought, arrogance and the like which he found in some Indian yogis and aspects of Hindu cultural conditioning. Someone like Chögyam Trungpa, I don’t blindly worship — it is INDUBITABLE that by what he did, he made bad karma for himself. But ultimately, as per something like a Kashmiri-Shavistic perspective, or the Nath yogis, all is Nataraja, the divine cosmic dance of Shiva (who is not an outer ‘thing’ or ‘person’ you can encapsulate and grasp and turn into a cult), a wind blowing over the water of primordial undifferentiated consciousness and appearing to make it take on unique forms and personages and different sects and teachings — the interplay of Shiva (Consciousness, Spirit) and Shakti (Power, Energy).

>>20475004
And the interesting thing about religious figures is some of the modern ones can be very imperfect, even if they have what seems like some rather profound theological and philosophical and psychological insights, and even perhaps the potential to legitimately instruct and train people in higher states of consciousness and be able to transmit or impart some miraculous-seeming energy from them. This is referred to as something like the understanding in Hindu and Buddhist traditions, especially tantric ones, that certain forms and insights from this knowledge, these techniques and practices, are legitimately amoral and can be employed and understood to an extent without necessarily being a fully-good character and making good karma for oneself.

For instance, Trungpa certainly had these massive failings, but so did someone like Swami Muktananda who was trying to bring the teachings of Kashmir Shaivism and Vedanta to the West in a modern format. And yet, people genuinely report receiving kundalini shaktipat (a transmission of energy, tremendously high spiritual states from being in a contact with) from Swami Muktananda, who also fucked his female and teenage disciples while publicly prescribing celibacy for people.

Does this reflect on the worthlessness or invalidity of certain insights to be found in traditions like Vajrayana Tibetan Buddhism, Kashmir Shaivism, Vedanta?

Perhaps not anymore than it reflects on Roman Catholicism, or the life and teachings of Jesus, that certain people calling themselves ‘Roman Catholic priests’ pedophiles who abused kids. People take reality to be black-or-white, this-or-that, I view it more as gloriously complex. This is the actual admitted danger of a tradition like Vajrayana Tibetan Buddhism — even Trungpa himself noted, that in traditional Vajrayana Tibetan Buddhist literature, it is pointed out that the path of tantra, or the Vajrayana, Diamond Vehicle, is both stupendously dangerous and stupendously awesome in its potential, as it simultaneously holds out the way to instant enlightenment in one lifetime, as well as the extreme danger of falling into demonhood. This is because of the Tantric tradition (also found in Tantric Hindu paths, “left-hand traditions) that what are ‘poisons’ according to traditional religious (Hindu or Buddhist) precepts or cultural conditioning, can be transmuted into the substance of enlightenment by the sage.

>>20475220
In other words, the awesome stupendous truth of non-duality seems to offer a massive temptation — “Is there anything inherently ‘good’ or ‘bad’ in things like eating meat and tasty food, use of drugs or alcohol, or sex, since all is part of the non-dual substance of all that is, the Tathagabagartha-or-Buddha-Nature/all-pervading Brahman/the-play-of-Shiva-and-Shakti?” The dangerous (but also compelling) insight is, “An enlightened sage can theoretically transmute the poisons of these apparent ‘sins’ or breaking tradition through their enlightenment — essentially, doing it in such a way that they do not incur bad karma. But the danger, however, is this path can easily turn into a demonic path of self-delusion and giving into temptation, making bad karma for oneself while thinking one is enlightened and transcended all social construction of reality.”

This is what I think the bodhisattva vow of Buddhism tries to point out and remedy — that the profound spiritual insight and understanding can be appropriated without adding the necessity of love for all living beings, ceasing to make bad karma for oneself and aiming to make good karma. The INTELLECTUAL understanding of this all is essentially amoral — one can simply view it as a ‘blissful high state to seek for,’ and even in this way perhaps build up a certain insight and understanding which apparently manifests in ‘miraculous ways,’ such as Muktananda being able to transmit kundalini shaktipat to people — hence why the moral teachings are also significantly added, that one must use this insight to do good for others and the world, and at minimum try to cease to do evil, through realizing that all things to done ‘others’ are also done to oneself, coming back to oneself eventually through the very karmic structure of the created Universe (which is not apart from You), which is the understanding of the law of karma.

>>20462345
There's way more overlap between bon and the 6 yogas than I expected

>>20475235
And so, precepts and teachings like about abstaining from alcohol and improper sexual intercourse, seem like like Plato’s idea of the “Noble Lie” — the ascetic path and moral guidelines were essentially prescribed by people who were to some degree bound by their cultural conditioning and trying to give safer guidelines about how to lead one’s life such that it is easier, safer, and gentler on the path to enlightenment. But as the Zen masters would put it, “The Buddha is a dried shit-stick,” and, “If you meet the Buddha on the road to enlightenment, kill him.” The sutras, scriptures and meditation practices are there for YOU, you are not there so you can adhere and conform to THEM.

>>20461314
Hillside Hermitage youtube is good.
This is my favorite Sutta: https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn22/sn22.059.than.html

>>20462345
>reading intro to this book after (You) posted it
>this meditation can be dangerous
Wtf
I did Wim Hof Method in Glacier National Park and Yellowstone after months of practicing it to where only two or three breaths activated ice man mode. What am I getting into here? I feel like I am in the right place. Adventure should always have some danger.

which books are good to study the madhyamaka?

>>20474640
>which is, “Even if a Creator God exists, He is still subservient to and simply a part of the Tao,
this is also true for Heraclitus, he said that the sun and even zeus have to obey the laws of the goddess ananke(necessity)
that is, zeus is the almighty god becaus ethere's a need for an almighty god in the universe nad that need is even stronger and more primordial than such a god
in buddhism that is called dhamma, which also means law/necessity

>>20472927
>Yogacarins agree with Advaita
lol no, the notion of a thing on itself in advaita goes against the yogacara, you're confusing the idea of an undelrying mechanism in reality to an underlying thing
also advaita violates the law of non contradiciton with their notion of maya

>>20473837
Does that mean you can't learn dzogchen in the west anymore?

New thread when.

>>20474095
What would you use instead

>>20474579
Are the three volumes necessary?

>>20476115
Why don't you make it? Just make it about a specific book like >>20462345 so it doesnt get deleted

>>20476115
I made one, just look for the 6 yogas

>>20473037
>>Your nature is perfectly and utterly pure, unconfined and unrestricted;
>Unborn, unobstructed, and free of all elaboration, the innate, primordial mind of enlightenment.
>>It is timeless, an unconditioned and unchanging dimension with all supreme qualities.
>>Beyond samsara, nirvana, and identity, Primordial Protector, with your six special characteristics, to you I bow,
>>20473037
>>Sogyal Rinpoche writes:
>>"Imagine a sky, empty, spacious, and pure from the beginning; its essence is like this. Imagine a sun, luminous, clear, unobstructed, and spontaneously present; its nature is like this. Imagine that sun shining out impartially on us and all things, penetrating all directions; its energy, which is the manifestation of compassion, is like this: Nothing can obstruct it and it pervades everywhere."
those texts are talking about the dharmmakaya, not a creator god or a state of reality that negates phenomena