Comments on “Endangered species”

Thanks, these are all good points.

I can't imagine Aro being something helping in that survival.

I can’t imagine Aro ever having mainstream appeal. However, I think Dzogchen, and the non-monastic yogic tradition, have features that might be critical to Buddhism’s survival; and Aro is one of the few traditions that are bringing those to the West in a partially-modernized form. So I do think Aro might potentially have an important role “behind the scenes” as it were. Like one of those artists who has little popular following but is highly influential on other artists, perhaps some decades later.

Aro seems largely based on a charismatic main leader (no?)

An interesting question that we sometimes debate internally. I am unsure myself. As I have written, Rinpoche is not charismatic. Some things would be easier if he were. On the other hand, if he were charismatic, we’d have lots of people who were in the sangha because we had a charismatic leader, and that wouldn’t be a good thing for anyone.

The other Aro Lamas do operate fairly independently, and have many students who have never met Rinpoche and have no particular interest in meeting him.

On the other hand, Rinpoche is the source of continuing terma disclosure, i.e. new teachings and practices. That’s important, and it is not clear anyone else can or will take up that role when he dies.

Chances are that he will live for several more decades, so it’s somewhat theoretical, but he does often talk about “when Khandro Déchen and I die, you will need to carry on without us, and you might as well start now.” In other words, the Lineage Lamas encourage the ordained sangha to operate as much as possible as if their death were imminent. That will maximize their independence and effectiveness.

a good place to begin trying to preserve the insights of your traditions is to work on internal reformation and marketing.

Half of me agrees strongly with this. But, the Aro gTér is just what it is. It’s not feasible to talk about reformation. That would be a new, other thing. A new, other thing might be great—might be just what is needed—but it wouldn’t be the Aro gTér.

Térmas have a time and a lifetime. The Aro gTér should survive only if it is relevant to the time to which it survives. Based on history, we can expect it to be supplanted by other térma at an appropriate time.

In the mean time, it may be critical to preserving certain ideas and practices that are in real danger of being permanently lost.

But, as your other pages and Meaningness speak of, even given attractive modern forms of Buddhism, changes in the under-girding secular cultures may make all adaptations impotent.

Right. My interest currently is in the implications of postmodernity for Buddhism (and vice versa). McMahan’s The Making of Buddhist Modernism<img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=aro-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0195183274" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" />, which you are reading now, explains how Buddhism got to where it is now. But that modernist version of Buddhism is already irrelevant to current conditions, in my opinion. Modernity is over, and modernist Buddhism is a bad fit for present problems. Can Buddhism be useful in the condition of postmodernity? That’s where my energy is going now.

I have never practiced Zen or studied with a Zen master; I only know it from books, so whatever I say about it might be nonsense. However: I think that you could probably find in Zen all the elements you bulleted. But, they may be more prominent in Dzogchen. Zen is based in Sutra and renunciation. It explicitly goes beyond those, but they are still its major theoretical and practice framework. It doesn’t have much explicitly to say about the territory beyond emptiness. Vajrayana has extensive theoretical explanations and practical advice about that territory. And, when Vajrayana is taught in its own terms, renunciation is never part of it. That gives it a quite different flavor. [Often, Vajrayana and Sutra are mixed when they are taught, which can be confusing. The Aro teachers are particularly careful about keeping the two separate, while honoring both.]

The feature of terma that is relevant here is that you don’t experience it as something you invent. Ngak’chang Rinpoche might like it better if the Aro gTér did X, or didn’t do Y, but he has no more choice about that than we do. Trungpa Rinpoche talked several times about how puzzling he found some of the termas he discovered. He wrote line-by-line commentaries on them, and in places said “I don’t know what’s going on here” or “this sounds crazy” or “I didn’t teach this bit for ten years because I couldn’t make sense of it, but now I think what it’s saying is…”

The terminology is not used consistently, but I use “post-modernity” to mean “a time in which the clueful have abandoned the search for overarching explanatory systems in hope of finding total certainty.” We have been in that condition roughly since 1980. “Post-modernism” is a class of responses to post-modernity that suggest that, because certainty and total systematicity are impossible, we should also abandon the attempt to make sense of the world in its own terms. This, in my view, is a nihilistic error. Post-modernism is, in fact, broadly considered to have failed. That’s good, because it leaves an opening for a new, better response to post-modernity.

The Aro gTér is a “mind terma”, meaning that it is found in one’s (unconscious) mind. Most modern termas are mind termas. “Earth termas” are those that are found under rocks or whatever. (I did write about this here.) Earth termas do indeed seem strikingly similar to the Joseph Smith story. I don’t know of any terton using the automatic writing technique, but it’s possible that psychologists would describe mind terma discovery as involving a similar “dissociated” mental state.

Tibetan Buddhism encompasses all yanas. So the Sutra vs Tantra issue is not one of sect—all Tibetan Buddhist sects teach both.

A yana is a conceptual framework and set of practices that go together. Sutra is coherent with itself, and Tantra is coherent with itself, and both are valuable, and a single person can practice both. But they are not coherent with each other. If you mix them up—in theory or practice—you get a mess. (Which is common, unfortunately.)

I’m afraid I don’t know the answer to your question about the Pali Canon in Tibetan Buddhism. (I’ve had the same question recently, and it’s bugging me enough that I’m planning to read up on it someday.)

My impression—not to be relied on—is that Tibetan scholars regard all the Pali Canon as Buddhavacana and therefore valid by definition, but almost no one in Tibet actually read any of it except a few key texts that were used in stereotyped ways.

As with other large canons, almost no one reads the whole thing. Instead, part of the job of “interpreting” a canon to make it say what you want is selecting a few pieces to emphasize and quietly ignoring the rest.

How do you know?

Where does your knowledge (or opinion) about this come from?

Reading? Practice? Divine revelation?

• A few religious books (the "Perennialists") agree with you. Nearly all would say the opposite.
• A few religious leaders agree with you. Almost all disagree.
• It would be very hard to find a Muslim cleric who would say that Islam leads to the same destiny as Buddhism. Muslim clerics have spent decades studying and practicing Islam. Do you think you know more about Islam than they do?
• You are making a claim about all religions. There are thousands. Do you know enough about all of them to be confident they are all essentially the same?
• If your belief comes directly from God (or some transcendent Absolute), in a revelatory experience—why should anyone else take what you say seriously?
• People claim all sorts of contradictory things on the basis of revelation.
• I've had a direct experience of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, who told me that all religions other than Pastafarianism are false.
• Which proves that your belief is wrong.

Hi, Sky Serpent,

I’m sorry – that was mostly a joke!

My point was that anyone can say they’ve had a visionary revelation, but there’s no reason to take that seriously unless there is some other sort of evidence.

I did say I had a visionary revelation, and apparently I was too convincing – at least one person believed I actually did. But I was lying (or, rather, making a jokey point).

I actually have had visionary experiences (not kidding this time!) – not about the FSM. But I don’t write about my visions because I don’t think anyone should take them seriously.