Addressing the Mean and Clueless Cynics : A Ten Point Mahayana Response with major dharma resource links
From:
http://buddhistsjustwannahavefun.tribe.net/thread/65ec51bc-a990-4f74-b830-cfbcedac08a1
First, Mary Elizabeth of Kansas began this thread, asking for something on Buddhism. Three years ago, in March 2011.
She got some "responses", but no real answers in the time since.
Until I got to the thread, sent her a good and helpful mail and provided the thread with real, high quality book references and world-class online teachings by Great Abbot Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche, a foremost Buddhist scholar. As a Buddhist teacher I rely heavily on his teachings and I have taken empowerment from him.
The latter teachings by Very Venerable Khenchen Thrangu are at
www.rinpoche.com/teachings.html
That link alone makes this post worthwhile for all English speaking Buddhists across the globe. It is an extraordinary set of teachings by a leading scholar-practitioner-abbot.
So, that piece of work is completed.
What disturbs me however is the confused and worthless and basically aimless and negative response she got. On one of the largest Buddhist-labeled tribes. I will fully address that "response" here. It is my job. I’m a Buddhist teacher. Dealing with widely broadcast negative anti-Buddhist nonsense comes under my specific responsibilities as a field officer. Especially on a large Buddhist-oriented tribe.
So here we go. Lots to cover.
And good useful resources will be provided in the links!
Re nonsense from Unsubscribed such as the following
"My actual spirituality, compared to that of the ancient and mega-serious monks, would be seen as utterly laughable, but it's all I can pull off in my degraded and impossibly selfish state"
and more nonsense from same as in this
"Buddha just started the dialogue. What he taught is mostly not followed. Essentially, he got the ball rolling, but, finally, almost no one could really pull off what he said to do. So the majority of Buddhism became liberalized Buddhism, a form called Mahayana, which non-monks who basically were totally immersed in the world could practice. Later, even most of Mahayana was seen as impossible for ordinary people. So then basically you had a world religion with the problem most of the people of the world couldn't do it, a major drawback for any work faith. By the time Buddhism got here, to North America, it would have been unrecognizable to Buddha himself."
KT, the Buddhist spiritual doctor on watch, replies as follows:
Yeah, well guess what? You're wrong about everything and PROVABLY wrong about everything. In fact, the only thing you've accomplished here is to shoot blanks.
You have no concrete support for the completely global claim, no traction, no argument, no fulcrum, no criterion or threshold for a dialectical resolution, no nothing.
You clearly put forward the extreme and truly bizarre global claim that all the Mahayana Buddhists - all the Mahayana Buddhists in the world today ! - "are somehow doing it all wrong". Really? Who are you talking about? And why are you so casually mean to these millions of people throughout the world? We have many real high level Buddhist scholars in many parts of the world today. And this gives us a very coherent global picture of Buddhadharma.
How is all of their stuff wrong? You'll have to identify specific weaknesses in the work of actual people and scholarly analyses and sutra translations. Which you simply haven't done.
The burden of argument - and it is an enormous one - rests on you alone. And you've got no game! None whatsoever.
I will put forward real and broadly useful Mahayana teaching here from my own formal teaching work as Mahayana guru. It will help many and dispel the small time gloom and negativity, and it will inspire many. My Mahayana teaching work, mostly but not all Buddhist, including key feminist and key human rights and key environmentalist reference articles.
And these articles have been reference online over 78,500 times, as the cumulative counts show. Here we will put forward the specifically Buddhist articles that demonstrate classical Buddhadharma in modern western English and western teaching venues.
1) I have seen the Dalai Lama twice. He is a monk, he is Mahayana, and he is a tantric wizard and Buddhist scholar. His stuff is entirely real and entirely classical and it goes back to Nalanda University in northern India, before the Islamists burned down the libraries and tore almost all the brickwork down to nothing.
So your foolish claim can't be against the Dalai Lama per se, but against the greatest university of the ancient Buddhist world in India. Like they were doing everything wrong. Like you even know anything about this, which you don't!
Suggest rather that they were doing everything RIGHT and YOU'RE doing everything WRONG, "Mr. Clueless I'm Not OK You're Not OK There's No Real Buddhism Left" Fool.
You are a very very delusional person. Delusional and ignorant. Everyone knows there is a Dalai Lama. And you're rather distinctive in saying that his stuff is not real and classical. It is demonstrably both, as I have just proven. Well, that is only due to your lazy ignorant unthinking and completely laughable generalizations.
I have put forward the Dalai Lama on ninety ( 90 ) tribes. All over the world. I have defended him on many, and over some years. I have been fought a lot on this alone. Some people on Tribe think the Dalai Lama does not have the right to be heard. My first Dalai Lama article was knocked off Tribe Buddhism by the "moderator", along with two other very valuable and classical articles I wrote.
So clearly there is or has been a lot of hostility to authentic Buddhadharma by poseurs and pseudo-Buddhists, many of whom are anti-Buddhist. And I, as a western Mahayana Buddhist spiritual doctor, have defeated them all. All across the board, and all across the planet. Except in mainland China, where we Buddhist practitioners remain largely illegal and unfree under totalitarian communist rule.
But your ridiculous argument resolves down to one of two positions:
Possibility 1a) The Dalai Lama is bogus.
Possibility 1b) Nalanda University was bogus.
And we all know what that means.
You're clueless, and you lost completely.
And you lost globally, in nothing flat, to this western Buddhist spiritual doctor, who upholds absolutely classical Buddhist refuge and Mahayana commitments.
2) My main teaching manual is from India. It is from one of the greatest of all spiritual doctors, a Buddhist wizard named Padmasambhava. I have put that forward here. There is nothing missing, polluted, or compromised there. The material goes back to the original source teachings. And it is not to be considered specifically "Tibetan".
The book Dakini Teachings" by Padmasambhava is from an INDIAN teacher and highest level INDIAN lineage. Everyone has to agree that Padmasambhava is an Indian guru who VISITED Tibet. Therefore he brought AUTHENTIC Buddhist teaching from India to Tibet.
And that is what I practice and teach. Go ahead and try to break that. No one can. You have no chance.
So in another couple moments you've lost TWICE. Twice, fella. How completely humiliating. The first debate failure was of course completely humiliating for you, but now you're completely blown up.
3) There are a lot of Indian Buddhist scriptures and Buddhist Sanskrit mantras for which we still have the original key texts. One major example is the Vajrakilaya text, which was discovered in the Dunhuang cache in western Tibet.
Here's my article on Vajrakilaya, which has been read one thousand times:
http://seattle.tribe.net/listing/Gimme-Shelter-The-Guardian-Angel-Diamond-Dagger-Vajrakilaya-Empowerments-Teachings-and-Practice-Resources/seattle-wa/1d2c6650-1c58-4ee1-bbde-d88fad722275
4) And here is my article on Avalokitesvara, really the most broadly practiced of all Buddhist mantras and teachings, e.g. the Heart Sutra.
http://seattle.tribe.net/listing/North-American-European-Buddha-of-Compassion-Avalokitesvara-Initiations-How-to-Expand-Lovingkindness-and-Compassion/seattle-wa/ffba87db-cfaa-4150-8942-8850cbf80667
And see my article on Amitabha Buddha practice:
http://taiwan.tribe.net/listing/Buddha-Amitabha-Pure-Land-Practice/taiwan/6bd834e6-70a9-40c5-96ed-e2ba7df464
In both these cases of Avalokitesvara and Amitabha, no one on Tribe even began to put forward the teaching. I began and completed major rounds of teaching work for these keye Mahayana practices, as you all can see. There is nothing lacking.
These practices of Avalokitesvara and Amitabha are from the Sanskrit, and they propagated through independent paths to different parts of Asia, and now to the West.
These are what most Buddhists practice, in one form or another, in one tradition or another, including by the way the Zen Buddhists, East and West. And if you are foolish enough to say that Amitabha scriptures were not taught by Guru Sakyamuni Buddha, then you have zero faith ( or negative one hundred percent faith ) in both Sakyamuni and in Amitabha.
Good luck with that.
So why are you even here, as a non-Buddhist on a major Buddhist tribe, trying to condemn the entire Mahayana teaching as worthless fraud?
5) Why make the ridiculous and bizarre implicit claim that Mahayanists never hold renunciate / bhikshu or bhikshuni commitments? Everyone knows they do. I can give many examples, starting with the world-renowned Dalai Lama. So you lose again in your miserable, irrational smear attacks.
I know why. It's simple. You, as a pseudo-Buddhist almost Buddhist anti-Buddhist want to think you have some connection to Buddhist refuge and Mahayana, when you're just proving to everyone here that you absolutely lack these key Buddhist connections.
You have no faith and no connection to the Buddhadharma.
And I am a Mahayana guru, whose mostly Buddhist teaching posts have been viewed 78,500 times. I have provide references to many teachers, practice centers, books, and events. All the way around the globe.
6) Here are some more classical, Mahayana level teachings:
http://seattle.tribe.net/listing/Medicine-Buddha-Teachings-and-Empowerment-a-teaching-article/seattle-wa/642707ff-3ba7-4237-a1cf-70279c00b7d3
and the related
http://australia.tribe.net/listing/Vajrapani-Buddhist-Angel-of-Power-Protection-Empowerment-and-Teaching/australia/ea52fb79-47d9-4673-956d-379f1ec534d5
and also
http://seattle.tribe.net/listing/Love-Magic-and-the-Goddess-Kurukulle-Buddhist-Red-Tara-Teaching-and-Empowerment-Reference-texts-on-Tara-and-Kurukulle-practice/seattle-wa/75252c23-52e7-453f-8d95-8fe7caf4ae17
These teachings on Medicine Buddha and Vajrapani and Tara were NOT invented outside India. These go back to early Mahayana. The Guru Sakyamuni taught for almost fifty years, and he taught a lot of Mahayana. Nobody forged this material as some kind of false dharma. It’s old old stuff from India and we practice it here and now in the West. What do you not get about that?
7) Furthermore, we have sixteen hundred pages of oral teachings by Guru Sakyamuni Buddha. They are preserved in the Pali language and they have been translated into English. You can't fight or ignore the written Pali record.
8) Have you never heard of the Dhammapada? Apparently not! OR if you had, you are in the most uncomfortable and completely ridiculous position of claiming the Dhammapada of Guru Sakyamuni is a fabrication or not practiced today. Good luck with that, Mr. Clueless.
Of course I'm laughing at your ignorant antisocial nonsense. You can't think straight. You can't construct an argument. And I wiped the floor with you several times in nothing flat, using classical sources. It’s not even hard when a mean and clueless person doesn’t even know how to fight. Perhaps they shouldn’t fight millions of people. Just saying.
So clearly, it's not hard at all to defeat these negative pseudo-Buddhist types. In fact it is as fun as it is necessary.
Just so we’re all clear on this: The Buddhist teaching is becoming very strong here in the West. It is quickly becoming more responsible, more authentic, and more useful and more approachable. It is well founded and the English translations are very good. We are making great strides in very short time intervals. It just doesn’t happen overnight, or from one source or traditions. It is a large scale pan-Buddhist effort.
9) And we have a lot of good teachers who are putting out their best stuff. Another major example is the Seventeenth Karmapa.
He IS a monk. He IS a bodhisattva. And he is very very real. Like the Dalai Lama.
See
http://tribes.tribe.net/buddhadharma/thread/ca12c03e-b8cf-48cc-bb34-ad5bd04c6c22
So why would anyone claim that this Seventeenth Karmapa is somehow not a real monk? Why claim that he is somehow not practicing according to the ancient Mahamudra traditions of Tilopa and Naropa in North India? When obviously he is.
This is one of the most well known Mahayana teachers in the world today, well before 2011.
10) I am really glad to say that millions of people around the world accept both the Dalai Lama and Karmapa Urgyen Trinley Dorje as manifestations of Avalokitesvara. That means they carry the power of high level transcendent Buddhist teaching and practice. I have seen them teach in person and have received empowerments from them both. My objective evaluation is that they are real, high level bodhisattvas.
And since they do the work of Avalokitesvara, as real monks, real scholars, and real practitioners, we can all rejoice, whatever our dharma traditions or lineage. These teachers give empowerments of Medicine Buddha and other general Mahayana teachings cycles. It is not just for tantrikas or “Tibetan Buddhists”. Such teaching work is for all the Mahayana community everywhere. And that is a really good thing for everybody.
It makes no sense to trash the entire Mahayana, and there is no sense in trashing the Buddhist gurus and Buddhist lineages. Everybody can see here and now what happens when some ignorant and contemptuous fool tries to pull that stunt. It is the ignorant and contemptuous fool who loses, and the Buddhist teaching that wins.
At least, when there is someone about who has the knowledge and care and communication skills to address this kind of irrational global negativity. And who does so by putting forth real and useful teachings that help many kinds of dharma practitioners.
This is the approach that will win.
I have the right to respond to this kind of globally demeaning antisocial idiocy. It is on my turf. I also have the responsibility to do so. It is my job. And this nonsense, though rudderless and lacking any standard of decent public communication or education, is just not right, and just not fair.
Someone could have done better earlier. Someone could have provided real resources, and someone could have eviscerated this irrational nonsense. Sometime in the past three plus years anyway.
And yeah, this teaching work is clearly the opposite of “spam”. This is REAL dialogue.
But hey, the job gets done, and all is well.
"Et Lux In Tenebris Lucit." The light in the darkness shall shine.
And people really are helped. And that is a really good outcome.
As Dr. Tim Berners-Lee said in London at the recent Olympics there, “This is for everyone.” And that is how we practice in the Mahayana.
Long Live The Mahayana!
Sarva mangalam!
Siddhi rastu!
KT
From:
http://buddhistsjustwannahavefun.tribe.net/thread/65ec51bc-a990-4f74-b830-cfbcedac08a1
First, Mary Elizabeth of Kansas began this thread, asking for something on Buddhism. Three years ago, in March 2011.
She got some "responses", but no real answers in the time since.
Until I got to the thread, sent her a good and helpful mail and provided the thread with real, high quality book references and world-class online teachings by Great Abbot Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche, a foremost Buddhist scholar. As a Buddhist teacher I rely heavily on his teachings and I have taken empowerment from him.
The latter teachings by Very Venerable Khenchen Thrangu are at
www.rinpoche.com/teachings.html
That link alone makes this post worthwhile for all English speaking Buddhists across the globe. It is an extraordinary set of teachings by a leading scholar-practitioner-abbot.
So, that piece of work is completed.
What disturbs me however is the confused and worthless and basically aimless and negative response she got. On one of the largest Buddhist-labeled tribes. I will fully address that "response" here. It is my job. I’m a Buddhist teacher. Dealing with widely broadcast negative anti-Buddhist nonsense comes under my specific responsibilities as a field officer. Especially on a large Buddhist-oriented tribe.
So here we go. Lots to cover.
And good useful resources will be provided in the links!
Re nonsense from Unsubscribed such as the following
"My actual spirituality, compared to that of the ancient and mega-serious monks, would be seen as utterly laughable, but it's all I can pull off in my degraded and impossibly selfish state"
and more nonsense from same as in this
"Buddha just started the dialogue. What he taught is mostly not followed. Essentially, he got the ball rolling, but, finally, almost no one could really pull off what he said to do. So the majority of Buddhism became liberalized Buddhism, a form called Mahayana, which non-monks who basically were totally immersed in the world could practice. Later, even most of Mahayana was seen as impossible for ordinary people. So then basically you had a world religion with the problem most of the people of the world couldn't do it, a major drawback for any work faith. By the time Buddhism got here, to North America, it would have been unrecognizable to Buddha himself."
KT, the Buddhist spiritual doctor on watch, replies as follows:
Yeah, well guess what? You're wrong about everything and PROVABLY wrong about everything. In fact, the only thing you've accomplished here is to shoot blanks.
You have no concrete support for the completely global claim, no traction, no argument, no fulcrum, no criterion or threshold for a dialectical resolution, no nothing.
You clearly put forward the extreme and truly bizarre global claim that all the Mahayana Buddhists - all the Mahayana Buddhists in the world today ! - "are somehow doing it all wrong". Really? Who are you talking about? And why are you so casually mean to these millions of people throughout the world? We have many real high level Buddhist scholars in many parts of the world today. And this gives us a very coherent global picture of Buddhadharma.
How is all of their stuff wrong? You'll have to identify specific weaknesses in the work of actual people and scholarly analyses and sutra translations. Which you simply haven't done.
The burden of argument - and it is an enormous one - rests on you alone. And you've got no game! None whatsoever.
I will put forward real and broadly useful Mahayana teaching here from my own formal teaching work as Mahayana guru. It will help many and dispel the small time gloom and negativity, and it will inspire many. My Mahayana teaching work, mostly but not all Buddhist, including key feminist and key human rights and key environmentalist reference articles.
And these articles have been reference online over 78,500 times, as the cumulative counts show. Here we will put forward the specifically Buddhist articles that demonstrate classical Buddhadharma in modern western English and western teaching venues.
1) I have seen the Dalai Lama twice. He is a monk, he is Mahayana, and he is a tantric wizard and Buddhist scholar. His stuff is entirely real and entirely classical and it goes back to Nalanda University in northern India, before the Islamists burned down the libraries and tore almost all the brickwork down to nothing.
So your foolish claim can't be against the Dalai Lama per se, but against the greatest university of the ancient Buddhist world in India. Like they were doing everything wrong. Like you even know anything about this, which you don't!
Suggest rather that they were doing everything RIGHT and YOU'RE doing everything WRONG, "Mr. Clueless I'm Not OK You're Not OK There's No Real Buddhism Left" Fool.
You are a very very delusional person. Delusional and ignorant. Everyone knows there is a Dalai Lama. And you're rather distinctive in saying that his stuff is not real and classical. It is demonstrably both, as I have just proven. Well, that is only due to your lazy ignorant unthinking and completely laughable generalizations.
I have put forward the Dalai Lama on ninety ( 90 ) tribes. All over the world. I have defended him on many, and over some years. I have been fought a lot on this alone. Some people on Tribe think the Dalai Lama does not have the right to be heard. My first Dalai Lama article was knocked off Tribe Buddhism by the "moderator", along with two other very valuable and classical articles I wrote.
So clearly there is or has been a lot of hostility to authentic Buddhadharma by poseurs and pseudo-Buddhists, many of whom are anti-Buddhist. And I, as a western Mahayana Buddhist spiritual doctor, have defeated them all. All across the board, and all across the planet. Except in mainland China, where we Buddhist practitioners remain largely illegal and unfree under totalitarian communist rule.
But your ridiculous argument resolves down to one of two positions:
Possibility 1a) The Dalai Lama is bogus.
Possibility 1b) Nalanda University was bogus.
And we all know what that means.
You're clueless, and you lost completely.
And you lost globally, in nothing flat, to this western Buddhist spiritual doctor, who upholds absolutely classical Buddhist refuge and Mahayana commitments.
2) My main teaching manual is from India. It is from one of the greatest of all spiritual doctors, a Buddhist wizard named Padmasambhava. I have put that forward here. There is nothing missing, polluted, or compromised there. The material goes back to the original source teachings. And it is not to be considered specifically "Tibetan".
The book Dakini Teachings" by Padmasambhava is from an INDIAN teacher and highest level INDIAN lineage. Everyone has to agree that Padmasambhava is an Indian guru who VISITED Tibet. Therefore he brought AUTHENTIC Buddhist teaching from India to Tibet.
And that is what I practice and teach. Go ahead and try to break that. No one can. You have no chance.
So in another couple moments you've lost TWICE. Twice, fella. How completely humiliating. The first debate failure was of course completely humiliating for you, but now you're completely blown up.
3) There are a lot of Indian Buddhist scriptures and Buddhist Sanskrit mantras for which we still have the original key texts. One major example is the Vajrakilaya text, which was discovered in the Dunhuang cache in western Tibet.
Here's my article on Vajrakilaya, which has been read one thousand times:
http://seattle.tribe.net/listing/Gimme-Shelter-The-Guardian-Angel-Diamond-Dagger-Vajrakilaya-Empowerments-Teachings-and-Practice-Resources/seattle-wa/1d2c6650-1c58-4ee1-bbde-d88fad722275
4) And here is my article on Avalokitesvara, really the most broadly practiced of all Buddhist mantras and teachings, e.g. the Heart Sutra.
http://seattle.tribe.net/listing/North-American-European-Buddha-of-Compassion-Avalokitesvara-Initiations-How-to-Expand-Lovingkindness-and-Compassion/seattle-wa/ffba87db-cfaa-4150-8942-8850cbf80667
And see my article on Amitabha Buddha practice:
http://taiwan.tribe.net/listing/Buddha-Amitabha-Pure-Land-Practice/taiwan/6bd834e6-70a9-40c5-96ed-e2ba7df464
In both these cases of Avalokitesvara and Amitabha, no one on Tribe even began to put forward the teaching. I began and completed major rounds of teaching work for these keye Mahayana practices, as you all can see. There is nothing lacking.
These practices of Avalokitesvara and Amitabha are from the Sanskrit, and they propagated through independent paths to different parts of Asia, and now to the West.
These are what most Buddhists practice, in one form or another, in one tradition or another, including by the way the Zen Buddhists, East and West. And if you are foolish enough to say that Amitabha scriptures were not taught by Guru Sakyamuni Buddha, then you have zero faith ( or negative one hundred percent faith ) in both Sakyamuni and in Amitabha.
Good luck with that.
So why are you even here, as a non-Buddhist on a major Buddhist tribe, trying to condemn the entire Mahayana teaching as worthless fraud?
5) Why make the ridiculous and bizarre implicit claim that Mahayanists never hold renunciate / bhikshu or bhikshuni commitments? Everyone knows they do. I can give many examples, starting with the world-renowned Dalai Lama. So you lose again in your miserable, irrational smear attacks.
I know why. It's simple. You, as a pseudo-Buddhist almost Buddhist anti-Buddhist want to think you have some connection to Buddhist refuge and Mahayana, when you're just proving to everyone here that you absolutely lack these key Buddhist connections.
You have no faith and no connection to the Buddhadharma.
And I am a Mahayana guru, whose mostly Buddhist teaching posts have been viewed 78,500 times. I have provide references to many teachers, practice centers, books, and events. All the way around the globe.
6) Here are some more classical, Mahayana level teachings:
http://seattle.tribe.net/listing/Medicine-Buddha-Teachings-and-Empowerment-a-teaching-article/seattle-wa/642707ff-3ba7-4237-a1cf-70279c00b7d3
and the related
http://australia.tribe.net/listing/Vajrapani-Buddhist-Angel-of-Power-Protection-Empowerment-and-Teaching/australia/ea52fb79-47d9-4673-956d-379f1ec534d5
and also
http://seattle.tribe.net/listing/Love-Magic-and-the-Goddess-Kurukulle-Buddhist-Red-Tara-Teaching-and-Empowerment-Reference-texts-on-Tara-and-Kurukulle-practice/seattle-wa/75252c23-52e7-453f-8d95-8fe7caf4ae17
These teachings on Medicine Buddha and Vajrapani and Tara were NOT invented outside India. These go back to early Mahayana. The Guru Sakyamuni taught for almost fifty years, and he taught a lot of Mahayana. Nobody forged this material as some kind of false dharma. It’s old old stuff from India and we practice it here and now in the West. What do you not get about that?
7) Furthermore, we have sixteen hundred pages of oral teachings by Guru Sakyamuni Buddha. They are preserved in the Pali language and they have been translated into English. You can't fight or ignore the written Pali record.
8) Have you never heard of the Dhammapada? Apparently not! OR if you had, you are in the most uncomfortable and completely ridiculous position of claiming the Dhammapada of Guru Sakyamuni is a fabrication or not practiced today. Good luck with that, Mr. Clueless.
Of course I'm laughing at your ignorant antisocial nonsense. You can't think straight. You can't construct an argument. And I wiped the floor with you several times in nothing flat, using classical sources. It’s not even hard when a mean and clueless person doesn’t even know how to fight. Perhaps they shouldn’t fight millions of people. Just saying.
So clearly, it's not hard at all to defeat these negative pseudo-Buddhist types. In fact it is as fun as it is necessary.
Just so we’re all clear on this: The Buddhist teaching is becoming very strong here in the West. It is quickly becoming more responsible, more authentic, and more useful and more approachable. It is well founded and the English translations are very good. We are making great strides in very short time intervals. It just doesn’t happen overnight, or from one source or traditions. It is a large scale pan-Buddhist effort.
9) And we have a lot of good teachers who are putting out their best stuff. Another major example is the Seventeenth Karmapa.
He IS a monk. He IS a bodhisattva. And he is very very real. Like the Dalai Lama.
See
http://tribes.tribe.net/buddhadharma/thread/ca12c03e-b8cf-48cc-bb34-ad5bd04c6c22
So why would anyone claim that this Seventeenth Karmapa is somehow not a real monk? Why claim that he is somehow not practicing according to the ancient Mahamudra traditions of Tilopa and Naropa in North India? When obviously he is.
This is one of the most well known Mahayana teachers in the world today, well before 2011.
10) I am really glad to say that millions of people around the world accept both the Dalai Lama and Karmapa Urgyen Trinley Dorje as manifestations of Avalokitesvara. That means they carry the power of high level transcendent Buddhist teaching and practice. I have seen them teach in person and have received empowerments from them both. My objective evaluation is that they are real, high level bodhisattvas.
And since they do the work of Avalokitesvara, as real monks, real scholars, and real practitioners, we can all rejoice, whatever our dharma traditions or lineage. These teachers give empowerments of Medicine Buddha and other general Mahayana teachings cycles. It is not just for tantrikas or “Tibetan Buddhists”. Such teaching work is for all the Mahayana community everywhere. And that is a really good thing for everybody.
It makes no sense to trash the entire Mahayana, and there is no sense in trashing the Buddhist gurus and Buddhist lineages. Everybody can see here and now what happens when some ignorant and contemptuous fool tries to pull that stunt. It is the ignorant and contemptuous fool who loses, and the Buddhist teaching that wins.
At least, when there is someone about who has the knowledge and care and communication skills to address this kind of irrational global negativity. And who does so by putting forth real and useful teachings that help many kinds of dharma practitioners.
This is the approach that will win.
I have the right to respond to this kind of globally demeaning antisocial idiocy. It is on my turf. I also have the responsibility to do so. It is my job. And this nonsense, though rudderless and lacking any standard of decent public communication or education, is just not right, and just not fair.
Someone could have done better earlier. Someone could have provided real resources, and someone could have eviscerated this irrational nonsense. Sometime in the past three plus years anyway.
And yeah, this teaching work is clearly the opposite of “spam”. This is REAL dialogue.
But hey, the job gets done, and all is well.
"Et Lux In Tenebris Lucit." The light in the darkness shall shine.
And people really are helped. And that is a really good outcome.
As Dr. Tim Berners-Lee said in London at the recent Olympics there, “This is for everyone.” And that is how we practice in the Mahayana.
Long Live The Mahayana!
Sarva mangalam!
Siddhi rastu!
KT
posted inTibetan Buddhism
- 1 reply