Recent comments

Humourous, lighthearted wisdom, so often sadly lacking among the more orthodox, thank you for this.

I find your description of Dzogchen as “simply wakeful awareness” interesting, if not frustratingly simple. In the context of the four naljors, could it be said that shi-ne is discovering the wakefulness of awareness just by itself, and that lhatong is integrating that wakefulness with phenomena?

As an aside, I love McLeod’s books. He’s probably my biggest influence in terms of practice, particularly the book Wake Up To Your Life. He has described that book as being about the the sutric path, but the final two chapters always seemed Dzogchen-ish to me.

Thanks, that is interesting. Coincidentally, just after posting that comment, I remembered that I have a Mahamudra book called ‘Mind at Ease’ on my kindle and started re-reading it. I do recall from before that the chapter on insight practices mostly deals with observing the nature of thoughts.

David, could you elaborate at all on thought being the essence of enlightenment in Tantra? Are they the essence of enlightenment insofar as all phenomena are the essence, or is there something special about thoughts?

When I read this page before I got the intended meaning of “politically correct” so didn’t have a problem with it. (Helps that I’m old enough to remember the 90s and half-British enough to know not everything is about America.)

But more recently I was reading the Aro site and saw Ngak’chang Rinpoche describe himself that way. That’s confusing - honestly didn’t know British people said that. Did he pick it up from you?

Aro isn’t, like, problematic so presumably it’s still in the sense of “willing to be offensive” not “actively politically incorrect/racist/transphobic”. But a Gen Z reader might not understand that.

Actually, Aro seems perfectly acceptable as something I could do, though I have to say the writing about vajra romance and teaching couples feels like 1st-gen boomer feminism. Zoomers don’t like it when you assign attributes to gender, and it doesn’t apply very well to gay couples. I’d survive but am hesitant to be the youngest member of any communities…

I started going through your writing from Meaningness, but kept on here because of dissatisfaction with secular mindfulness my Silicon Valley ADHD psych recommended (with an EEG mind reading headband and everything).

At first I was surprised because the meditation technique definitely does something, but their own reading material isn’t very impressive - it’s sensibly rational but a bit shallow, and when they try to expand the worldview a bit they get some random untrustworthy types like Deepak Chopra when I vaguely knew it came from Buddhism.

More importantly, the concept is sold with terms like “stress reduction” “relax” “calmness”, but what it produces is closer to “awareness” or “flow” along with other lessons (like that thoughts appear on their own without you deciding to think them). And that seems a lot more appealing personally. After everyone’s been stuck at home for a year or two, do we even want more relaxation? I’d rather learn to be more active.

Probably their “stress” is secularized samsara, and if so, that’d be a way to market the secular Tantra you’re writing about. Hopefully the audience wouldn’t see it as those “for men” brands that’s just the same thing with edgier labels.

It’s as you say. What I should’ve said is that the above comment did deserve to be here, but didn’t deserve to be the final word - it feels too authoritative that way, and while I’ve been reading the site the comments have been equally valuable (which is rare!).

I’m here because of dissatisfaction with secular mindfulness, which certainly is consumerist but that’s not my critique of it - so let me continue on a more relevant page :)

Enjoyed the page, but I feel like it detracts from the arguments if you let random megalomaniacs leave death wishes against you as the last comment for a whole decade. Don’t think much of his argument either; even if you don’t believe in a bear chasing you, it still believes in you.

“Serious spiritual practice does require committing to a single tradition.” Mu! Learn what you need from traditions, go your own way, free yourself. The answers are then right there.

If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.

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

Hey,

in a previous comment there is a link to the page /terma-overview. However, it is inaccessible; for me it displays only

Sorry, you are not authorized to view this page. It’s probably just a draft.

Since it seems that it has already been there: Can you re-enable it, so that the links that lead to a deeper understanding of some writings and comments actually work?

Regards!

You talk about the base, path, and fruit of the yanas.

But only for the Sutra(yana) you give the fruit. I miss a sentence or parapgraph on the fruit of Tantra(yana), and I miss a sentence or parapgraph on the fruit of Dzogchen.

I think this is important as you state that a practice should only be taken if the fruit is what one wants, so at least one has to know what the fruit is.

In your page, you link to nyingma.com/The Nine Yanas.htm.

This site seems broken, for me it just displays

Error. Page cannot be displayed. Please contact your service provider for more details. (19)

Same with the root site nyingma.com.

But there is actually a copy on The Wayback Machine, you could link to: → Here.

Could it be that there is more to say to the dangers of Vipassanā-based practices than about dangers of the four naljors because there are just much more datapoints for the first?

So your claim “I don’t know of anyone having serious negative consequences.” might just be because of low overall number of practicioners who are in a society encouraging data collection and data analysis?, meaning in the end we have to collect more data to make qualitative and quantitative assesments about the risks of Dzogchen practice?

You have some links to cheetahhouse.org. That server does (currently) not work (anymore), DNS resolution fails.

Since you seem to link to valuable comment: Can you somehow “repair” the links, pointing to other place(s) where that content is, maybe also to archived page(s) on The Wayback Machine?

I find it quite interesting that you use so much the term “Consesus Buddhism”. I have never heard about it, and I also cannot find a definition of it, but you use it in a way that seems that readers should be familiar with it.

Btw., my first encounter with Buddhism was the Theravāda as brought to the “West” by Ajahn Chah (I was looking for some meditation retreat, of course I first came upon the Goenka retreats, but then I found aspects in it which seemed like aspects of a sect (an internal meditation progress system, and if you even once practice another technique, you restart at the beginning level) and made in my the feeling of thightness. So I was trying to look for something different and came to something that seemed more buddhist than just using a single buddhist practice out of context). It was more than “just Vipassanā”. It was also embracing and welcoming other traditions (there was active information about Tibetan and about Zen monks visiting or retreats the time I was in such an Ajahn-Chah-lineage monastery). Learning a lot about buddhists concepts I did then also by listening to theravadin dhamma talks, for a big stretch also such for monks, mainly from the monasteries of Ajahn Brahm in western Australia (who did again split off from the tradition by not giving a deal for the facts that women can not become fully ordained, and fully ordaining nuns).

This was easily available to me in the “West”, and I have not the feeling that it has all the problems you mention with Buddhism that is easily available in the “West”.

Anyway, a “breatkthrough” for me was in reading at your site that Vajrayāna just as well could need a modernisation in the form of clearly seperating it’s Buddhism from which “only-tradition” parts being intervoven in it. Thai forest Theravāda was appealing to me because it appeared to me very clear in that respect. Vajrayāna also already had my interest, but I could not find a point yet to grab it. Reading your site gives hope to me in that aspect :-), and I am courious if e.g. Aro gTér does meet what wouls suit me.

Having read about danger(s) in wrathful practice, I want to add that the practice of renunciation and revulsion for samsara also has dangers:
Depending on ones own pre-dispositions, and (lack of) groundedness, guidance, …, this can lead into a trap of nihilism

[…] The reality is that loss of meaning results in rage, futile intellectual argument, depression, and anxiety. The endpoint of nihilism is catatonia. […]

Your post links to /dzogchen-controversy, but when I want to read it I just get

Sorry, you are not authorized to view this page. It's probably just a draft.

Can you check on that and maybe make it accessible?

Regards!

Ahoj David,

in your post from 2014-10-03 you link to this site. But currently I only get a

Sorry, you are not authorized to view this page. It's probably just a draft.

when I try to read it (as also with other links on vividness.live).

Can you check this site and others?

Regards!

I believe I have seen you write that the path of sutrayana works to overcome the self/other duality (and also that it leads to realization of emptiness). If this is the case, is that result similar at all to what the neo-Advaita “gurus” are talking about? Or is it more of a realization that constantly grasping at things cannot lead to permanent happiness, with no mystical experience required? Or something else entirely…

Trouble comes from concretizing “good” and “bad” as inherent and absolute. Avoiding that allows for greater freedom and creativity, and possibly less suffering as well.

In terms of the Buddhist path (Aro/Nyminga), would this particular notion be an aspect of emptiness? Or non-duality?

(However, some people think what I say about Dzogchen is all wrong and should be ignored. This could be a conundrum for readers. Sorry!)

Personally, I don’t consider myself a Buddhist, so it doesn’t perturb me too much if an idea or presentation is “not Buddhist”. That’s also why all the anti-Aro rhetoric I’ve seen online doesn’t really bother me.

I wonder if I’m properly understanding the usage of the term ‘non-duality’ here. It’s confusing for me because in so many contexts, ND refers to some kind of heightened state where the feeling of self completely vanishes. The whole contemporary non-duality movement is really just Neo-Advaita, I guess. But even Sam Harris, who at least pays lip service to Buddhism and Dzogchen, seems obsessed with proving that the self does not really exist in conscious experience, and refers to that realization as ND.

The way I understand the term here is that you are referring more to clinging to certain aspects of experience while pushing away others. If you are in the pure land, there is no reason to push anything away, since everything is enjoyable. If you are in the charnel ground, there is no reason to push anything away, since everything is horrific anyway. So, duality refers more to how we split experience up into aspects we like and aspects we don’t. And ND would be the realization that the categories with which I habitually divide my experience of life are totally bunk.

I’m starting to think that ND in the sense of mystical-no-self-experience is actually a very dualistic pursuit. If I think it is a problem that I feel like I have a self, and want to get rid of that feeling, then that definitely seems dualistic, since I am pushing away that feeling. So the more non-dual option would be allowing the feeling of a self to there, or not be there, or be heavier or lighter, and not have that be a problem either way.

I am not convinced that baby boomers were more prone to become buddhists than young people nowadays, because they had a mainstream culture and they rejected consumerism.

The spread of Western Buddhism, has been too intense in too short a time frame for that explanation. If it was the real cause, it would have happened before, and would still continue.

For me, the real underlying cause was the availability of psychedelics, and the liberality with which people could experiment with them. As soon as they became illegal, fear of transcendence took over again. I’d be really interested in the proportion of western buddhists that actually started with psychedelics. I know I did, and a significant portion of my friends too.

This is a great line!

Note 7: This is because Buddhism is commited to inclusivity and accepts everyone. So long as they have the correct opinions about all topics.

Interesting question. I’m not sure of the answer. When I wrote those comments I was feeling like I really needed a definite understanding of emptiness, but your comment deflated that somewhat (in a good way).

As for eG, I was on the Slack, but never actually commented. I need to get on the Discord. If the Drew there is leaving comments then it isn’t me.

I look forward to reading that. And that is good to hear about SoE.

I wanted to ask one more thing about emptiness and form. I don’t want to ask you to explain every little thing, because as you said above you’re not a teacher. But, I like your style of explanation, and I find it helpful to read as many different explanations of the fundamentals as possible in order to hopefully consolidate some kind of understanding.

I recently discovered the Aro Glossary and have found its definitions of certain key terms very helpful. Form is defined as follows:

The tendency of things to manifest characteristics and distinct existence. The tendency to appear solid, permanent, separate, continuous, and defined.

Up above, you said that form could be defined as all phenomenal appearance. Both of these definitions make sense to me, but they are not quite the same. The glossary definition, I suppose, is included in the definition of form as phenomenal appearance, which is obviously all encompassing. But I would say that the glossary definition of emptiness, which is the tendency of things to lack characteristics, would also be included in the definition of form as all phenomenal appearance.

Could you say anything about the relationship between these two different definitions of form, if they are, in fact, different?

That sounds really interesting. If that gets written, would it be posted here or somewhere else?

It’s a bit of a downer to hear you describe SoE as distorted, or that Ngak’chang Rinpoche is embarrassed by it. Even though I find it a bewildering book, I do feel I’ve taken a lot from it.

Thank you, that is helpful, especially the distinction between ‘emptiness as it manifests in a particular practice’ and ‘emptiness itself’.

There was a particular passage from SoE that made me think that emptiness might refer to non-conceptual experience:

…the form of our emotions (how we react to our feelings) is the pawo aspect - the form aspect of emptiness. The emptiness of our emotions is how they feel - this is the khandro aspect, the emptiness aspect of form.

I guess the way I would interpret it now is that, in the particular practice of trekchöd, emptiness manifests as the raw bodily sensation of emotion, shorn of any conceptual me-stories. Especially given that if you experience something like anger purely as a bodily sensation, it loses a lot of solidity and definedness as anger, to the point where it’s not really anger anymore, per se.

It’s confusing, though, because if form refers to all phenomena, and the feeling of an emotion is form, then it is like saying that in trekchöd, emptiness manifests as form. I guess that makes sense given what the Heart Sutra says, and it being “the emptiness aspect of form”, but still…

In general, could this post be validly read by replacing any notion of pure/impure with good/bad, i.e. good/bad according to my own personal preferences?