Buddhist monk in orange robes sitting in Angkor Wat, Cambodia – David Bowie
So you are attracted to Tibetan Buddhism and David Bowie, have read some really good books and learned a few meditation techniques, now you want to delve deeper and spend real time with Buddhist Masters? How do you guard against being fooled by a charismatic charlatan? What criteria do you apply to your search for an authentic teacher? Lama Jampa Thaye’s advice reflects a commonsense approach:
“Although one may come across examples of authentic Buddhist masters who dress or speak unconventionally, there is no licence in Buddhism for unethical behaviour. Thus oriental or occidental masters who claim their selfish and abusive behaviour is a display of ‘skillful means’ or ‘crazy wisdom’ are to be given a wide berth – unless we want to jump over a cliff hand-in-hand with them.”
Sound advice, I have nothing to add to this except these few words.
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I have been and still am a seeker. Older now and perhaps a bit battered by the experience but still a seeker. I have ceased to question stars, books and alchemy. I have begun to listen to the teaching my heart whispers to me in the dead of night, when all is still. Eve
David Bowie:
Mary Finnegan has a new book released about David Bowie called the Psychedelic Suburbia: David Bowie and the Beckenham Arts Lab.
You can read it in about two hours. It’s all about who was there, who was who and leaves one with the feeling of who cares. Well, aficionados of David Bowie days will care and read it, particularly now that he is dead, and young people into bi-sexuality. So will those curious about the “sex, rock and roll” and early drug scene in the sixties. A pretty large and marketable crowd.
What is interesting is that in Mary’s blog post in 2013, in the archives at her website Flower Raj, she writes about her motivation for writing, which was to expose the”horror stories” and the “dark side, the very dark side” of Tibetan Buddhism that she sees has gone down a wrong path. This is because of corrupt Tibetan lamas, she says, and the naiveté of old flower children, like Mary.
In this post she also notes she became a “one-woman activist” to expose her Lama Sogyal and his corruptions, as well as the shadow side of Tibetan Buddhism which she knew quite well. She was a one woman activist and she did expose Sogyal the predator Tibetan lama , relentlessly. For she knew a great deal about the dark side of Tibetan Buddhism, having been in his inner circle. She was one of his older female students who ‘pimped” for him to find young , naive women to join his Lama hareem. Unknown to the public, pimping for their lamas is a common task of devoted Western Tibetan Buddhists inside their communities or sanghas. Mary also writes explicitly about her experience, in her short memoir about Sogyal.
This would have been the better book and more helpful to the younger generation who sadly now will be fooled by this book about David Bowie. This of course is the one people will want to buy. It is a shame, all the same, because Mary was a feminist voice for the many women that had been abuse by this Tibetan lama and so many others like him. She was a feminist voice with experience of the sexual abuse inside these Tibetan Buddhists sanghas that appears to have been silenced. I post this link for those who wish to read the entire details.
Karma means we have had many former lives and many more will follow. Each lifetime could well see us born into an entirely different culture, and if the culture is evolved, then it can serve us by helping us to develop our own evolution to become a free being, rather than dominating us to produce or die for the culture itself. Unfortunately, this dark age goes against the grain, and has mostg of the planet striving for all the wrong ideals. We see ourselves as hopelessly lost in a world that is constantly urging us to worship only money and power.
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Human life itself is a precious treasure. The metaphor of the Buddhist sutras is that the human embodiment, especially with all wits intact, and especially in a country where there’s a teaching and the idea that evolutionary liberation is possible, then such a life is the precious jewel of the human embodiment. And the Buddha said, if you lose through suicide your precious human life, endowed with liberty and opportunity, that precious jewel that you have now, it’s like throwing a jewel in the trash.
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And, to get it back, to work your way back through generosity, morality, patience, wisdom, meditation, to achieve these virtues and come back to be a human, will be as likely as if the old turtle, (who lives in the great ocean and surfaces once every hundred years,) were to surface and put his neck through the hole in a golden yoke that just happens to be floating in the ocean. So, what a treasure it is to have a human life.
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There is the idea that there are treasures everywhere if we had the wisdom to see. There’s the story about the great adept Padma Sambhava in one of his biographies. Someone gave him a bag of gold dust. He took the bag and scattered it to the wind, and the person was really shocked because he had spent a long time collecting this – it was his offering. Then Padma Sambhava snapped his fingers and shared his vision for a moment with that person: they perceived all of the mountains and sky and everything as solid gold, they saw that there was no difference between the earth itself and the gold.
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Enlightened vision sees everything as a treasure anyway, and the only thing that makes us not see everything that way is our ignorant self-obsession which makes us feel that the universe is an alien thing, separated from us, that we’re against it and we must conquer it. By this way of thinking, we are fighting a losing battle with the universe. That’s the notion of ignorance in Buddhism. And the ignorance is what makes us unable to find the hidden treasure right in our own cells, right in our own atoms, right in our own brains…
The mantra of Tantrik buddhism is ‘Om Mani Padme Hum’. Om is the sound of central enlightenment; ‘mani padme’ means ‘jewel in the lotus’ or ‘male with the female organ’, the state of completeness, energy infusing wisdom. ‘Hum’ is the sound of power, forcing the mantra into realization. This energy is often symbolised by an implement called the vajra, double-ended with ornate curbed prongs enclosing a central straight prong. All Tantrik Buddhists own one, which serves each person as a reservoir of personal power.
Vajrapani means ‘he who holds the vajra’. And to help forward his meditation, the Tantrik monk may also use a bell, whose rim he gently and continuously rubs with a stick so as to produce a sustained, gentle and entrancing hum. The sound is the symbol for the remotest expression of the subtlest Indian mantra ‘Om’ itself. For Tantra, like all good science, recognises that the fabric of even the densest-seeming objects is of an order related to vibration, which is symbolised for the human intelligence by sound.
*•.♥ Love ♥.•**·.
There is Only One Religion -The Religion of Love. -Sai Baba
Dharma doesn’t necessarily mean following a mundane and boring life.
It means a life of high adventure, not a life of endless, boring repetition.
Souls have different journeys.
The best thing to know is, not what everybody else does,
but what you do. Self-discovery essentially is finding your own dharma, your own rhythm.
We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spritual beings having
I am hoping to add another page to my blog about the Buddhist teaching of Metta. (Loving Kindness) It is a teaching most of us can benefit from. According to the cosmology of Buddhism there are numberless world- systems inhabited by infinitely varied categories of beings in different stages of evolution. Our earth is only a speck in our world-system, which again is a minute dot in the universe with its innumerable world-systems. Towards all beings everywhere one should radiate thoughts of boundless love. This is developed in the next method of practice, the universalization of metta.
The universalization of metta is effected in these three specific modes:
According to the Patisambhidamagga, the generalized radiation of metta is practiced in five ways, the specified radiation in seven ways, and the directional radiation in ten ways. These ten directional ways may be combined with the five categories of general radiation and with the seven categories of specified radiation, as we will show. In each of these modes of practice, any of the four phrases of the standard metta formula — “May they be free from hostility, free from affliction, free from distress; may they live happily” — may be used as the thought of radiation. Thus four types of thought applied to five, seven, and 120 objects of metta amount to 528 modes of radiation. Any of these can be used as a vehicle for attaining absorption (jhana) through the technique of metta-bhavana.
Generalized Radiation
The five ways of generalized radiation are as follows:
l. “May all beings (sabbe satta) be free from hostility, free from affliction, free from distress; may they live happily.” 2. “May all those that breathe (sabbe pana) be free from hostility, free from affliction, free from distress; may they live happily.”
3. “May all creatures (sabbe bhuta) be free from hostility, free from affliction. free from distress; may they live happily.”
4. “May all those with individual existence (sabbe puggala) be free from hostility, free from affliction, free from distress; may they live happily.”
5. “May all those who are embodied (sabbe attabhavapariyapanna) be free from hostility, free from affliction, free from distress; may they live happily.”
Specified Radiation
The seven ways of specified radiation are as follows:
1. “May all females (sabba itthiyo) be free from hostility, free from affliction, free from distress; may they live happily.” 2. “May all males (sabbe purisa) be free from hostility, free from affliction, free from distress; may they live happily.”
3. “May all the Noble Ones (sabbe ariya) be free from hostility, free from affliction, free from distress; may they live happily.”
4. “May all worldlings (sabbe anariya) be free from hostility, free from affliction, free from distress; may they live happily.”
5. “May all gods (sabbe deva) be free from hostility, free from affliction, free from distress; may they live happily.”
6. “May all human beings (sabbe manussa) be free from hostility, free from affliction, free from distress; may they live happily.”
7. “May all those in states of woe (sabbe vinipatika) be free from hostility, free from affliction, free from distress; may they live happily.”
Directional Radiation
The ten ways of directional radiation involve sending thoughts of metta to all beings in the ten directions. This method, in its basic form, is applied to the class of beings(satta), the first of the five generalized objects of metta. But it can be developed further by extending metta through each of the five ways of generalized radiation and the seven ways of specified radiation, as we will see.
I.
1. “May all beings in the eastern direction be free from hostility, free from affliction, free from distress; may they live happily.”
2. “May all beings in the western direction be free from hostility, free from affliction, free from distress; may they live happily.”
3. “May all beings in the northern direction be free from hostility, free from affliction, free from distress; may they live happily.”
4. “May all beings in the southern direction be free from hostility, free from affliction, free from distress; may they live happily.”
5. “May all beings in the northeastern direction be free from hostility, free from affliction, free from distress; may they live happily.”
6. “May all beings in the southwestern direction be free from hostility, free from affliction, free from distress; may they live happily.”
7. “May all beings in the northwestern direction be free from hostility, free from affliction, free from distress; may they live happily.”
8. “May all beings in the southeastern direction be free from hostility, free from affliction, free from distress; may they live happily.”
9. “May all beings below (in the downward direction) be free from hostility, free from affliction, free from distress; may they live happily.”
10. “May all beings above (in the upward direction) be free from hostility, free from affliction, free from distress; may they live happily.”
II.
“May all those that breathe life in the eastern direction… above be free from hostility, free from affliction, free from distress; may they live happily.”
III.
“May all creatures in the eastern direction… above be free from hostility, free from affliction, free from distress; may they live happily.”
IV.
1-10. “May all those with individual existence in the eastern direction… above be free from hostility, free from affliction, free from distress; may they live happily.”
V.
“May all those who are embodied in the eastern direction… above be free from hostility, free from affliction, free from distress; may they live happily.”
VI.
“May all females in the eastern direction… above be free from hostility, free from affliction, free from distress; may they live happily.”
VII.
“May all males in the eastern direction… above be free from hostility, free from affliction, free from distress; may they live happily.”
VIII.
“May all Noble Ones in the eastern direction… above be free from hostility, free from affliction, free from distress; may they live happily.”
IX.
“May all worldlings in the eastern direction… above be free from hostility, free from affliction, free from distress; may they live happily.”
X.
“May all gods in the eastern direction… above be free from hostility, free from affliction, free from distress; may they live happily.”
XI.
“May all human beings in the eastern direction… above be free from hostility, free from affliction, free from distress; may they live happily.”
XII.
“May all those in states of woe in the eastern direction… above be free from hostility, free from affliction, free from distress; may they live happily.”
Explanation
In this technique of universalizing metta, each of the five categories of generalized radiation refers to the total dimension of animate, sentient, or organic existence, belonging to the three mundane spheres, namely, the kamaloka, the sphere of sensory existence where desire is the primal motivation; the rupaloka, the realm of the radiant Brahma gods with subtle form; and the arupaloka, the realm of the formless beings with pure mental life. Whether it is a “being,” or that which “breathes,” or a “creature,” or that which has “individual existence,” or that which “is embodied” — all refer to the totality of animate existence, the distinction being that each term expresses comprehensively a certain aspect of life in its entirety.
While visualizing each category one should keep in mind the specific aspect expressed by its designation. If one trains the mind in the manner of a “mental drill” after having exercised it with the first two methods, the meaning of the five unspecified or generalized terms will become clear. By the time one has completed the two methods, the consciousness will be sufficiently developed and all-embracing. And with such a consciousness, when each of these universal concepts is grasped, the universalization becomes effortless. It may be pointed out that visualization of each of these is no longer of individual objects, but of a concept which is total and all-embracing. The radiation in this case becomes a “flowing out” of love in abundant measure towards the conceptualized mental object — all beings, all creatures, etc.
Each of the seven categories of specified radiation comprehends a part of the total range of life, and in combination with the others expresses the whole. Itthi refers to the female principle in general, incorporating all females among the devas, human beings, animals, demons, spirits and denizens of hell. Purisa means the male principle evident in all the spheres of existence, and both itthi and purisa together comprehend the entirety. Again, from another angle, the ariyas or the spiritually transformed seers, and the anariyas or worldlings bound to the wheel of becoming, comprehend the totality. Ariyas are those who have entered the transcendental path; they are to be found in the human world and the celestial worlds and therefore they constitute the tip of the pyramid of sentient existence. Worldlings are in all the spheres of existence and constitute the body of the pyramid from the base to the tip, so to say. Likewise, the three categories of deva,manussa and vinipatika — gods, human beings, and those fallen into states of woe — comprehend the totality in terms of cosmological status. Devas, the radiant celestial beings, comprise the upper layer, human beings the middle layer, and vinipatikas the lower layer of the cosmological mound.
The “mental drill” in terms of directional radiation, the radiation of metta to the above twelve categories of beings in the ten directions, makes the universalization of metta a most exhilarating experience. As one mentally places oneself in a particular direction and then lets love flow out and envelop the entire region, one literally transports the mind to the sublimest heights leading to samadhi, concentrated absorption of the mind.
When one projects this total wish for others to dwell happily, free from hostility, affliction and distress, not only does one elevate oneself to a level where true happiness prevails, but one sets in motion powerful vibrations conducing to happiness, cooling off enmity, relieving affliction and distress. It will be seen, therefore, that universal love simultaneously infuses well-being and happiness and removes the mental and physical suffering caused by the mental pollutants of hostility, enmity and anger.
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Children Of Light 