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my previous entry had me thinking more about how tantric practices might be easy to misunderstand or seem indistinguishable from theistic practices. i barely understand how eating meat, drinking liquor, and having sex could be considered a spiritual practice, so it’s helpful for me to think out loud about it to come to a greater understanding. please excuse this uneducated speculation yet public thought process.
so if you put a tantric buddhist next to a tantric yet non-buddhist practitioner and observed them practicing deity visualization, feast offerings, or sexual practice i bet you would not be able to tell any difference by observation between their practices. the buddhist and non-buddhist’s techniques might be identical to the observer. yet the buddhist would say that their practices lead to less ego-clinging and a reduction in a self-centered attitude which might not be the case for the non-buddhist. those, the buddhist might say will be a path to the sustain realization of the true nature of mind which is the union of bliss and emptiness. emptiness could also be said to be fullness or suchness or just “that”.
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found this interesting site about tibetan buddhism and tantra. not sure how accurate their summaries are but their glossary of terms and practices is extensive. seems to have a bent on the sexual aspect of tantric practice instead of presenting the view of liberation through the realization of the true nature of suchness / fullness / emptiness.
some interesting examples:
visualizing one’s own dismemberment to foster liberation from ego clinging
dzogchen lineage compared to zen
three classes of dzogchen teachings
four yogas or stages of mahamudra
though one warning i’d add it seems the author of this site it trying make a point of the sexual practices of tibetan tantric teaching as valid path. i would worry that without the proper view - why do a practice and what is the desired fruition of the practice - then one could read this and think it is just indulgent or theistic. but it makes for titilating reading. here the site talks about the yabyum sexual position in visualization practice and some opinions on a secret sexual meaning of core inner tantric teaching. yet without an understanding of what is meant by realizing emptiness, i suspect reading this just becomes sensational or provocative without meaning.
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zak and i have been conversing about compassion in buddhism. in researching that to keep up with him, i found these two very interesting teachings by Khenpo Rinpoche: a most wonderful yogi.
a couple terms first:
“relative bodhichitta” - the experience of a soft and tender and open heart
“klesha” - afflictive emotions
Unbearable compassion and 9/11
What it means to be lucky
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sad to hear of raoul’s passing, he definitely spoke to both the commentator and the prankster in me.
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clever little bastards. now my blog is getting bogus trackback pings with spam in them. this is a constant battle, and perhaps a good reason to use a blogging service instead of setting up your own blog. with this cat and mouse game, only the geeks will keep up. well, i guess only a geek would install or write their own blogging software anyway. the blog services are really the way to go for low hassle.
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i’ve traditionally used my email inbox as a sort of to do list. i’ll even send myself emails as reminders to finish tasks. the problem with this tactic i’m finding is that once an item has scrolled off the top of the page, or if the incoming rate of emails i want to respond to is faster than my ability to complete them, then some items will get dropped or aged for months before i get to them.
this contributes to my getting out of touch with people, sadly. so at work recently i’ve tried a policy of never leaving any emails in my inbox. it’s always getting completely emptied as fast as i can.
so far so good. it makes me keep to do list items separately and review and clean up those lists or prioritize them as a separate activity. this is good because i need to review them periodically for priority anyway. so now i’m trying to go through my personal email inbox which is separate and similarly get down to zero emails. wish me luck.
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ok, this is a hilarious stop motion vlog entry. i was starting to wonder if armies of people posting point counterpoint commentary clips was going to catch on. Mr. J. Curtis. is showing us how these don’t have to be talking heads.
you could say the movie american beauty was about a young videophile showing us through his medium the splendor of life that we constantly miss. even if we end up with countless talking heads (and i become one of them) this publishing format could still be pretty amazing.
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there’s something about the few vlogs that i’ve looked at which doesn’t draw me in. i think it has to do with progressive disclosure.
in a regular blog, i can skim the text reading small bits to get a sense of the persons writing style, content, themes, and also roughly estimate how much effort it will be for me to engage with the entry or the page. Similarly with an rss feed i can read a few lines of an entry and if it’s not in my interest area i can quickly skip it. news feeds i especially skim this way, because if i had to read each entry in depth i would go nuts. hit and run makes the information load manageable.
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i did a cursory search for video blogs sometime last year and didn’t find many. the same search today came up with a few. so, you might ask, why would one want to watch tons of poor quality home movies or talking heads on the web where people drone on and on about random things? ironic, you think, that i would pose a question like that in a wordy, meandering forum such as this?
i spent a few minutes watching this years collection of video blogs and honestly there was something captivating about them. definitely a mystique feeling because these were real people, not actors. non-professionals. not very good. but just the realization that these were not hired guns - qwerks and all - was the captivating part.
so what do you think? 2005 the year of the vlog?
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this came up over dinner last night, how people say one thing which doesn’t match their actions and how prevalent a disconnect that can be.
for example, i say i don’t like to watch sports on tv, but then put me in a sports bar facing a tv and my eyes are drawn to the program. even if it is a cricket match. so conceptually i seem to have a belief about what i do and do not like, but then my actions don’t really match that view. maybe in this case, it would be more accurate to say that i don’t particularly enjoy the shows, nor would i seek them out, but when faced with them i will watch and i probably also don’t like that i have that habit or tendency. so the reality is more complicated, yet i’ve reduced it all to this simplified view of myself which is close to reality but not exactly true. there’s some slight disconnect from the simplified view and what really happens.
i bring this up just because i seem to do it all the time, and it seems like most everyone has lots of beliefs like this all the time too. in the worst extreme, the issues are more meaningful than tv preferences. like feeling conflicted about a career, family, friendship, hobby, etc. we could say that we like or dislike a person, place, or thing but then in reality we stay attached or detached in some way in spite of our view. or rather, our simplified view just doesn’t exactly match our actual view: what our actions demonstrate we really believe.
i hear the tibetan yogi named khenpo tsultrim gyamtso rinpoche said last year (though i’m paraphrasing second hand): “you can tell what your actual view is from your actions, not from what you think you believe.” that seems to match my experience of myself pretty well.
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