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The West is dying for spiritual paths, including ritual, devotion, sangha and so-on, that do not blatantly insult the intellect. Why would we god back to irrational fairy tales? Nonsense such as people dissolving in rainbows and supernatural powers and so on keep people away - most people in the West like to keep an open mind, but don’t want the brain to fall out. But I agree that it’s entirely feasible to reformulate tantra and make it accessible. See what Lama Tsultrim Allione has done with the Chöd ritual - keeping demons and all, but reformulating it as a kind of psychotechnology. Love it!
A non-believer working to exorcise demons? Too damn funny!
Indeed, Kristopher! It took me a long time to realize that a rational atheist could indeed eat the demons and have them too. Or rather feed, in the case of chöd. Tsultrim and her work on chöd could IMO serve as an example of how to modernize tantra beyond naive superstition, grinding ritual for ritual’s sake, and irrelevant cultural crud.
I just attended a weekend retreat with Anam Thubten and he basically gave a naturalized vajrayana (and some Dzogchen) instruction, with various practices ranging from empowerment, diety visualization, shamatha, resting in awareness/the natural state/rigpa, loving-kindness meditation, eye gazing (with the empowerment, a very interesting twist), and on and on. He did so elegantly without superstition, or even without much content at all. I thought it was a really good example of what you’ve been writing about.
Feeding the Demons is pretty good, although I prefer Core Transformation (which doesn’t originate from Vajrayana but from NLP)
@ Zac — Yes… demons exist at least fictionally, and don’t-exist at least as much as we don’t-exist. Beyond that, it gets murky. People who “believe in” demons would agree that their mode of existence is not quite the same as ours (they don’t have physical bodies, at least not most of the time), but I don’t think believers can say in quite what sense demons do exist. Will Buckingham has a fine post about this. On the other hand, fictional existence can have large effects—Gandalf has made a lot of money for various people, whereas Fladnag has not.
@ Apollo — Thanks for reminding me of Feeding The Demons—I am using it as an example in tomorrow’s post.
@ Kristopher — I occasionally do exorcism rituals. I don’t see it as particularly a problem that the demons I’m exorcizing don’t exist (and therefore are unaffected)…
@ Duff — That sounds really good! I don’t think I’d heard about Anam Thubten before; went and checked out his site.
existenz & not–
The exorcism is intended to affect the person who is “possessed,” or so I’ve been told. And I’ve never seen a better example of possession than the dying workmate out in the patio unhooking from his oxygen long enough to light up and take a few puffs. There don’t have to be objectively verifiable entities, for there to be people suffering from a compulsion to enact service to something alien to them.
– another point of view.
@Duff You mention eye gazing - interesting. Is that a traditional technique used in Vajrayana? I know it’s used widely in neo-tantra, but I haven’t been able so far to trace it back to Vajrayana or other tantra traditions.
If you think that Vajrayana needs to change to accommodate some western materialist mindset then you don’t understand Vajra and you don’t understand the nature of the mind. Vajra is a beautifully rich tradition. If you can’t appreciate what it has to offer then why do you even practice it? There are plenty of McBuddhist traditions out there that might be more amenable to your mindset.
As a westerner and former atheist, I’d make the case that the truth lies somewhere in the middle. There is definitely superstition in much of traditional thought, but there is also a lot of truth that gets dismissed by people who believe science has closed the doors on the possibility of immaterial spirituality. Science must and will go through a paradigm shift soon that will cause a re-enchantment of the postmodern worldview and which will open back up the rational basis for inquiry into a truly divine spirituality, not just a pseudo-spiritual materialist psychology. Then, our task becomes figuring out the scientific understanding of true spirituality while enhancing it through technology and integrating it into an intercultural system that embraces and includes the various cultural traditions which came before.
You are exceptionally wrong and you don’t even know what a complete fool you are making of yourself. You are a complete child and you have virtually no understanding at all of the subject of which you speak about. Even a very, very, lowly initiate would have an understanding of the reality of magic. You just happen to be too young for someone to even expend some effort into waking you up to the realities of magic because it’s not really even worth the effort or otherwise needed in your life. You don’t know that these things actually happen and how explicit magic gets. It’s funny but also arrogant how you as a Buddhist would think that you know better in a question like this than all the masters of history together combined. I guess they all lied about siddhis, did Jesus do that as well?
Really, you shouldn’t be talking out of your ass like this. And you certainly shouldn’t be pontificating to anyone about anything as far as Buddhism is concerned. Pfft! A Buddhist giving in to Western superstition and out of naivete wanting to reform Buddhism. You don’t even know how disrespectful you are being. I would beat your ass if I could but I don’t need to, reality will prove you wrong sooner or later either way.
And there is no need for ordinary people to concern themselves with magic or tantra. Just do basic things on the path, you’re not gonna be practising advanced sex magic anytime soon. This is the reality and you may see it as elitist but it is simply the way of things. Now, sit down, shut up and respect the wisdom of the masters.
“Personally, I like demons, and would prefer to retain them as charming and useful myths, while denying their literal existence.”
Oh, had you any idea you infinitely insolent child. Yes, laugh about it, laugh it up. I’m sure the demons will appreciate that. Oh, what a number I would have done on you. Do you know that even archangels fall? And that they sometimes spend eternities as fallen, damned beings? Do you want to laugh about that too?
Now, you have to ask yourself. What if this type of angel that knew he had a past like this came upon your post? How would he react? What would he like to do to you? How infinitely adorably naive would you be coming off as?
I just wish you would know about this, and specifically about the absolutely undeniable fact that all of this could happen even to you. Either way, on a long enough timeline it is certainly a certainty that you specifically will experience hell in some capacity. Then we have to consider the fact that creation is neverending, and that it is also an undeniable fact that you as a being are in fact eternal and that this definitely means that it’s only a question of time until you yourself have to do a few eternities as a demon or fallen angel. How about that? Think about that.
You’re welcome.
This is your brain on tantra. Not sure if want.
On spectres
I couldn’t tell if the above comment was from a Buddhist or a Satanist, but I recommend having this picture open while you read it.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chaos_magic_ritual_involving_videoconferencing.JPG
Point me out if I’m wrong here, but Buddhism denies absolute existence to everything, not just demons. So for anything to exist at all, it must be on some relative rather than absolute level, including people. Therefore I have no problem with the idea that gods and demons exist on some relative level because as psychic (as in mental - psyche) forces they clearly affect power over some people. So, why not? I am just as “real” as a demon is on an absolute metaphysical level.