Cahoot wrote:You have mentioned an interest in Buddhism.
Do you know of Khandro Rinpoche?
Here is a video of her spontaneously speaking ... a trained mind manifesting.
Meeting her would be an enriching experience, don’t you think?
Yes...i've been studying Buddhism since 2003...met many great teachers...i have never met Khandro Rinpoche in
person...i'm sure she is a wonderful teacher...i already have had my life enriched by my own teacher...as well as other teachers....and my life has been enriched by the people on this form :)
I addressed the posting and link towards your attention because of the reasons you expressed preceding your recent hiatus, and intimated hints of another hiatus from the forum ... and also your observations and apparent interest in what may seem to a “supernatural,” or extra-ordinary, associations with yogic mind training.
In her introduction, Khandro Rinpoche (precious teacher) emphasizes more the daily, ordinary life aspect of mind training and how it can apply to life circumstances, such as a relationship with a mate whom one depends upon for basic needs, or such as relationships within this forum.
“... dharma, Buddhism particularly, isn’t about being just a profound philosophy, but it is as much, much to do about ordinary life.
“The remarkable example of Milarepa is about encountering human weaknesses, of human desire, of human aggression, of all the different deceptions that our human mind can encounter, and yet how it can actually be the greatest blessing of a human being. That without suffering, without adversities, without challenges, we would probably not wake up to our own inherent basic wisdom.
“However, the difference between wisdom and ignorance being how you can make adverse circumstances your best of friends. And that example of how an ordinary person accepts the challenges, accepts one’s own weaknesses, accepts one’s own ignorances, and despite the fact can overcome in one lifetime to become one of the most remarkable figures of Tibetan history, of Tibetan Buddhism.
“I hope that with this media ... will provide a very easy, inspiring example through which people may have a direct experience of what Buddhism is, of what human life is, of all the adversities which we all encounter, which in comparison to Milarepa’s life is actually very little, very small.
“And yet, how, if we do wake up to the courage that is intrinsic of one’s own self, that we may all be inspired from the film, from the life story of Milarepa, and be able to really become a good human being of this world.”
Dunno Cahoot, her presentation seems not much different than those of countless of quality academic speakers I've witnessed on all kinds of topics. The speaker is pleasant and engaging, comfortable, knowledgeable, grown into the subject matter, glowing with purpose and serenity, flowing effortlessly. The only difference with any other good speaker might lie in the ears of the beholder. Who might believe or not that she's really a reincarnated teacher or believe in the many supernatural aspects of the life story of Milarepa? It would help breaking the spell of ignorance in people if she'd speak out against it, bringing it all down to earth more, although she does tend to downplay the significance of the lineage somewhat. But traditional Buddhists, and most females, don't like those ripples and splashes, and it would in her case upset the boat of tradition that has elevated her to what she is now.
Diebert writes:
“The speaker is pleasant and engaging, comfortable, knowledgeable, grown into the subject matter, glowing with purpose and serenity, flowing effortlessly.”
That’s a succinct description of a trained mind manifesting.
And, the perspective of making “adverse circumstances your best of friends,” is quite down-to-earth.
As Diebert observed, the Tibetan lama evidences a trained mind.
Jupiviv, if you are asserting that mind-training practices of Buddhism have nothing to do with a Tibetan Buddhist lama evidencing a trained mind, then your assertion itself lacks the evidence of fact or rationality. Perhaps you have facts or a rational to present that supports your thinking?
If you are asserting that mind-training practices of Buddhism are not the cause of a trained mind that is evidenced by this Tibetan Buddhist lama, then that is a matter of speculation, as of yet unsupported.
If you are asserting that mind-training practices do not a correlate with the manifested evidence of a trained mind, then you are disagreeing with the extemporaneous introduction of Khandro Rinpoche as being evidence of a trained mind, which means that you and Diebert are in disagreement.
As Diebert implies, trained minds are not exclusive to Buddhism.
However, since Kunga has an interest in Buddhism, a trained Buddhist mind, manifesting wisdom, is relevant to her perspective.
Jupiviv writes: "I don't think a "trained mind" would have anything to do Tibetan Buddhism."
Which makes me think of a trained dog in a circus. It can do marvellous things but it is still...a terrier, or whatever. At least in some aspects, some part of the traditions and practices of Tibetan Buddhism, derive directly from immense mental training. For example (and I don't know if this is true) but it has been suggested that Carlos Castaneda got much of his science of dreaming from the Tibetan School. And there are people who went to the very limits of dreaming and imagined themselves accomplished as a result ('lucid dreaming' magnified many times). I would imagine that monks in isolation could go to the limits of many mental disciplines and practices (of this inner sort), but what really does that signify? It sometimes appears that much of what arises from Vedic sources manifests itself as a love for the fantastic. I have noticed that it leads to a false sense of attainment. But, on the other hand, Trungpa Rinpoche wrote against 'spiritual materialism'.
Cahoot wrote: "However, since Kunga has an interest in Buddhism, a trained Buddhist mind, manifesting wisdom, is relevant to her perspective."
I wish to make a connection (to do so I have to push it a little) between this statement and recent 'debates' that have to do with defining this forum's purpose and the philosophical position it takes and asserts (wishes to convey, teach, value, disseminate). In the above there seems to be the rock-hard assumption that mental training Buddhist-style necessarily leads to 'wisdom', or to 'manifesting wisdom'. This is one of the core beliefs of the TBs of the GF realm. This general idea about the supreme value of Buddhist (or neo-Buddhist?) interpretation of reality tends to transform into a set of Absolute views which are unassailable.
i have a long ways to go before my mind is trained...it likes it's freedom too much !
but i have a lot of respect for people that CAN train their mind :
Alex T. Jacob wrote:Have you calculated how many lifetimes it'll take?
I like this one (from the list): "Don't expect any applause."
lol...i imagine many (at my pace) it only takes one fit of anger to erase all the virtue you've accumulated....even if it was a bunch of BS...it still is a good way to train your mind....
yes...not expecting anything in return ...applause...whatever..is a very good one...as we know how the ego loves to be stroked....
Kunga’s wiki link mentions Geshe Kelsang Gyatso’s book, Universal Compassion. This is a wonderful book.
Another excellent book by Geshe Kelsang Gyatso is Understanding the Mind, The Nature and Power of the Mind. This is a detailed, analytical and precise cataloguing of thought processes.
Hi Cahoot...and i love Milarepa. It was the first biography of a Tibetan buddhist i read...and i think the 2nd book i read in Tibetan Buddhism. I also watched the Movie "Milarepa" on YouTube. (it's not there anymore ) When i read these books i don't question it's authenticity.......they deeply affect me for the better...so what difference does it make if it's true or not. i do not harbor any skeptisism when i read these Buddhist books. i just soak all the good stuff in.
Cahoot wrote:Jupiviv, if you are asserting that mind-training practices of Buddhism have nothing to do with a Tibetan Buddhist lama evidencing a trained mind, then your assertion itself lacks the evidence of fact or rationality. Perhaps you have facts or a rational to present that supports your thinking?
It depends on how you define a "trained mind". To me, a trained mind is a mind free of delusions. But although Tibetan Buddhism may aim at removing a few delusions, it simply replaces them with other delusions. It never targets the core delusion, which all the genuine Buddhist writings and teachers do, and which is the whole point of Buddhism.
@Cahoot, for one thing, she believes in literal reincarnation. I think a Buddhist believing in literal reincarnation is like a Christian believing that Satan died for his sins. At the time of Gautam Siddharth, almost all his fellow Hindus believed in literal reincarnation, and that is probably why he talked about reincarnation at length - because he wanted to correct the deluded definition. But Buddhists today believe in the exact same thing the Buddha spoke against. In fact, probably all people who follow religions believe in the same things that the founders of their religions spoke against.
jupiviv wrote:@Cahoot, for one thing, she believes in literal reincarnation. I think a Buddhist believing in literal reincarnation is like a Christian believing that Satan died for his sins. At the time of Gautam Siddharth, almost all his fellow Hindus believed in literal reincarnation, and that is probably why he talked about reincarnation at length - because he wanted to correct the deluded definition. But Buddhists today believe in the exact same thing the Buddha spoke against. In fact, probably all people who follow religions believe in the same things that the founders of their religions spoke against.
Jupiviv.....Buddha & also Ananda recalled their past lives. It is told in the Suttas. I will gladly provide you with literal proof....(i can't this minute)
Many people, including Buddhists find it hard to comprehend this subject. As i do myself. It can be confusing. But i recall reading in a Sutta of his ability to recall his past lives. As a matter of fact...it's one of the abilities attained as you progress on the path.
Do we have many lives, or perhaps no lives? Do we somehow just think we are existing in time and space and locale when in fact we don't? If we can be said to 'occur', in what do we occur? Where are we? Lives, no lives. Time? Linear time? One thing after another? Or no thing ever? It is an actual fact that reincarnation is an impossibility! I can present the evidence! It is a literal fact that there is constant mutation, in a world of dreams, between who I am and where I am located and when, and everyone else. You? Me? Different? The same? Time? Space? What!!! Make all your thought processes linear and to the point. See all things as a pattern generated by your mind. Impose that view on the miracle passing before your eyes, in you and through you! That way, your view of reality is fixed, absolute, as it should be. And don't expect any applause...
Kunga wrote:Jupiviv.....Buddha & also Ananda recalled their past lives.
You, and millions of other Buddhists, do not understand what is meant by "past lives." Your definition is based on the spurious reasoning that the body is somehow separate from the consciousness. In fact, anything that causes consciousness is one and the same as consciousness. By "past lives" the Buddha meant the same consciousness, only perhaps less developed(i.e, with some unconsciousness existing.) There is no past and future separate from the present, and therefore there are no past and future lives separate from the present life, since the causes and effects of something must be the same as that thing itself(the basic principle of identity - A=A).
Only delusion, i.e, a lack of consciousness, would lead a person to think that he is a subject of time, instead of time itself, and therefore timeless. When a person becomes a Buddha(bodh-ahya, or "is conscious/awake") he becomes fully conscious and therefore understands the truth about himself as a timeless logical entity, like everything else around him(hence it's said that nirvana and samsara are the same - delusions are also a definition just like the "I".) And thus it is said that the Buddha transcends cause and effect - he does not magically disappear, but he understands what it really is, and rather transcends the deluded perception of cause and effect.
EDIT: Also, there can't be isolated and separate streams of consciousness, for the reason that there can be only one definition of consciousness.
I don't at all see the conflict. You could just as easily say 'past lives' as you could same consciousness in another (material) existence, the 'division' occuring, or seeming to occur, at the death of one organism.
"There is no past and future separate from the present, and therefore there are no past and future lives separate from the present life, since the causes and effects of something must be the same as that thing itself."
No problem. Our present life is connected to all future and past life, not only of 'ourself' but of all manifestations of life, consciousness, awareness. To suppose or perhaps to intuit a previous existence in flesh, or material condition, does not negate, if you will, a sort of seamlessness between a present existence (manifestation) and any other, whether past or future. Still, it may very well have happened (or be happening?) that there is connection to, or memory of, or coincidental living of life...in other bodies, in other times.
"Your definition is based on the spurious reasoning that the body is somehow separate from the consciousness."
If one conceives, or intuits, a life in another body, another time, it is language, perhaps, that demands a kind of discretion, an ending and a beginning. And we see this happening with the conception of a new life, gestation, and birth, leading to death and falling away of the assemblage that is/was the body. To maintain the idea (logically) one needs a separate 'vehicle' that lives in each discreet body. It is not so much 'spurious reasoning' as a 'fact' of human awareness that, no matter how it is slapped down, returns. (Much like a reincarnating entity perhaps!)
"You, and millions of other Buddhists, do not understand what is meant by "past lives."
Since no one really 'knows' what is existence---any part of existence, any single fact about existence---it tends to confuse the assemblage of 'absolute facts', and could render as ridiculous any person who assumes he knows, or makes absolute statements and definitions. There is simply no way to assemble an argument to prove or disprove either point of view. Except perhaps from a strict materialistic POV (ie scientific) which sees consciousness as bound to the body in an absolute and complete sense. But at that point, there would be no need any longer for 'Buddhism' and any of the matrix that produced it. You would simply become a scientific materialist. To move in other realms of thought and possibility, is to engage in practical metaphysics, it seems to me.
When you think about it, any existing life is just as 'absurd' and even 'impossible' as any theory or sense of continuing or connected 'lives'.
What stands out here is the need for a concrete definition and for an 'absolute fact', and this has to do (in this sort of conversation, about this sort of issue) with the personality type who is making the statement.
The moment one argues, as the core tenets of Buddhism do consistently, that there's no irreducible self, one cannot turn around and invent some irreducible continuum or some form of "stream" which basically would do the same thing as the "irreducible self", that is: continuing despite cause and effect. Buddha kicked the self out of the front door but Buddhism quickly invited it back in through the back door masked as some perpetuating identifiable "streaming consciousness".
Buddha's teaching should have lead to the understanding many personality traits, events or peculiarities only seem to repeat themselves because similar circumstances happen to give rise to them. In other words: because we ourselves and our actions are not that unique in the first place. And not because anything inherent to anyone in particular "moves on" at all. But by giving the similarities and coincidences names of persons, and to label the process as reincarnation, a serious ignorance is perpetuated and forced to become reborn in millions of minds.
And indeed, the original teaching might even give rise to the idea of us changing our own names every day, or every second. But we don't because the brain uses labels to name certain degrees of similarities as "same". At some point though, at death or conversion moments, it's time to drop the name and stop the illusion.
This latest link is contradicting the tradition Khandro Rinpoche is firmly embedded in. It's really better to make up your own mind about it, and stop randomly quoting others on it for a while. Also Tsuji's idea that Buddha was spreading a dumbed down more illusionary version of the path for "simple village folks" seems very far fetched and self-serving. And contradicting most of the same material describing the supposed audience.
"The moment one argues, as the core tenets of Buddhism do consistently, that there's no irreducible self, one cannot turn around and invent some irreducible continuum or some form of "stream" which basically would do the same thing as the "irreducible self", that is: continuing despite cause and effect. Buddha kicked the self out of the front door but Buddhism quickly invited it back in through the back door masked as some perpetuating identifiable "streaming consciousness".
At least it doesn't knock up our daughters.
The problem seems to stem from the notion of certainty and absolute fact. It seems to me possible that these ideas (Buddhist ideas, Vedic ideas), as desires, as needs, functioned differently in other times than now. Now, we have a particularly potent means of knowing (absolute facts), and so why do we want to go back through archaic systems of thought, with their strange metaphysics, and squeeze out of them 'absolute truths'? Doesn't this seem absurd? Truly, we need some absolute bedrock: it seems that our non-irreducible 'selves' (these obvious fictions!) have a fear of the ground slipping away from underneath and an abyss opening underneath. (What an irony!)
Despite the assertion in the first sentence above (Diebert's quote), the fact is rather that you can absolutely do just exactly that! You can unravel time and make it go backward. You can penetrate each particle of certainty and make it explode, just for the heck of it.
I would like to state most emphatically that I do not exist! I have no irreducible self!
It seems to me that we may on some levels waste our time when, outside of the material sciences, we seek similar 'absolutes' (or perhaps in the same spirit with which we also function in the known, material world) in organizations of ideas that, more than anything, are envisioned and conceived to influence ethical behavior. I don't see how one could get around the fact that this, precisely, is what Buddhism offers: ethical stimulation.
