Milarepa, penises, Dalai Lama: Tibetan Bon

Look, Everybody, I'm Milarepa. Die, die!

Before the arrival of Buddhism to the rooftop of the world, the empire (the massive extent of lands that now cover 25% of China) practiced Bon or witchcraft and indigenous shamanism, as so many countries did before the arrival of a missionary religion. Like every other country in history, the missionary religion did not really replace the traditional "pagan" beliefs and practices but merely augmented, blended, or covered for them with a new name. Every place has its own ghosts, demons, gods, and fantastical (shapeshifting) creatures, and they need to be dealt with. This is how early practices form and take root.

Waiting, making out with boys not OK?

They are not easily brushed aside even by the introduction of a more powerful or systematic set of practices. The hodgepodge of shamanism, magic, black magic, exorcisms, curses, clearings, and more are too appealing to be easily let go of. So we find with Tibetan religion. It is not pure Vajrayana (itself a mishmash of Hinduism, yoga, Brahmanism, and Mahayana Buddhism) but rather a blend of old discarded practices and new practices that serve to reinterpret the old ways. How Tibetans got through the bitter cold winters, the wilderness hauntings, the appearance of ETs or unseen beings and monsters (pretas, rakshasas, asuras, kumbhandas, suparnas, nagas, spirits, etc.) only the shamans know. Therefore, when one hears of odd or aberrant beliefs in modern Tibet, one should not dismiss the ongoing influence of Bon (just as modern Japan, thought to be all Buddhist, is in fact very much influenced by Shinto and the kami they specialize in dealing with).

The Bizarre Life of an [un-]Enlightened Person [who thinks himself enlightened]

You taste so good, Boy. Suck me, my tongue.

(Asangoham) #dalailama #enlightenment. If there were anyone who knew how to cultivate compassion, it was Milarepa. Milarepa was an "enlightened" Tibetan spiritual master full of "crazy wisdom." He was born in 1452 and is considered one of the greatest Tibetan [Bon and] Buddhist masters who ever lived.

During his lifetime, Milarepa was a murderer who established the lineage of the Kagyu sect; however, he is very highly venerated to this day by all schools of Tibetan Buddhism, a unique form of Himalayan Vajrayana emulated by Nepalese, Bhutanese, Northern Indian, Mongolian, and Russian Esoteric Buddhist schools.

Sorry, but Pope do the same, yes?

Today as we go through this school of life, we shall try to understand how an "enlightened" person lives. In our pursuit of wonder, we shall borrow knowledge from the following traditions: Buddhism (Tibetan and Zen), Advaita Vedanta (non-dualism derived from the ancient Vedas), Taoism (yin-yang rooted in the teachings of Lao Tzu), Confucianism (Chinese etiquette), and other schools of philosophy.

In the West, the intuition of "emptiness" (the impersonal nature of all phenomena, often misunderstood and poorly expressed in Western philosophy as nihilism) is conceived as lack.

This inherent sense of lack, according to the scholar David R. Loy, is seen as needing to be overcome or obsessively filled. This explains the West's hyper-consumerism, narcissism, and obsession with things and status.

We obsessively spend our days in the desperate attempt to fill the "void" with consumer goods to appease the emptiness intuited at the center of our existence.

The East (even though it is becoming more and more Westernized) has traditionally seen "emptiness" (shunyata) not as lack, but as pure potential.

That is to say, emptiness is seen as pure allowing. Out of nothing can spring anything, as everything comes from nothing. Think of a blank or empty canvas.

It is that which allows anything at all to exist. Emptiness is seen as the generative ground from which anything at all can arise. Consider the vast emptiness that was the universe prior to the imaginary Big Bang of yet another maha-kalpa-long cycle of world expansion and contraction.

#enlightenment #buddhism #confucius #dalailama #zen Thumbnail: Mark Bryan Script: Matt Mackane Voiceover: Surjit Singh Music: Motion array

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• Asangoham,  July 26, 2022; Editors, Wisdom Quarterly COMMENTARY