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Someone I knew who’d gone to see Mr. Lama rather than attend my talk (grrrr) was gushing later on about how he could feel the tremendous spiritual power emanating from the Dalai Lama as he passed, ringed by his retinue of Secret Service men and fawning worshippers, and surrounded by a thick throng of people elated to be near such a holy being.

How much of what my friend was feeling really came from the spiritual power of the smiling little man at the center of that mess?

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Hungry Ghost said, “I played in DIY political punk bands my whole life and always seemed to have some grasp on what kind of person I was. Then I played in a band with a record deal, fan base, worldwide touring and, it didn’t happen immediately, but after a few years of fans and promoters and club owners fawning over us and signing autographs I changed a lot – became entitled, reckless, confrontational.” He wondered if this kind of thing didn’t affect spiritual teachers who become super famous too. It does.

We don’t like to think of ourselves as being so mixed in with the people around us. I know I certainly do not. I want to think of myself as self-sufficient, self-determining, sovereign.

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tr April 17, 2014 at 10:34 am | Permalink | Reply

Hi Stephen,
Glad to know and hear yr views on TB. All valid points in my opinion.
TB can be described as; Buddhism in philosophy, Hinduism in practice.

OM was in use in Hindu/Brahminism long before the Buddha
The Buddha viewed Tantra and Mantra practices with disdain then.
The use of honorifics, his holiness, etc is cultural, pertaining more to dynastic practices in imperial China. So too praying for long life and venerating the Guru (happens in Hinduism as well).
Prostrations, again is very feudal.

Maha tantrayoga has its roots in Hindu and Taoism, and this was before the advent of Buddhism in China. The Taoist description is 100% identical, so go figure!
Mandala is again Hindu. I could go on and on and also list out rituals, superstitions that were forbidden by the Buddha.

On another note, for a year I was active in an online Buddhist forum, populated mainly by Westerners. There was a marked difference between TB practitioners, whom I found to be lacking in essential Buddhist knowledge (The Vinayas or Kangyur of sorts), focusing mainly on TB texts and more importantly, found them usually with closed minds.
This is compared with Theravada practitioners, who were mainly the opposite, open minded and well informed.

Posts such as, Nyingmas can get married, Karma can be extinguished, deviant behaviour written off as crazy wisdom or because the guru was enlightened… frightening. And they cannot differentiate between Bhikkus and Yogis.

Well, too bad, but its refreshing to see your views on the issue.
Kari
Kari August 17, 2014 at 10:47 pm | Permalink | Reply

It’s important to get the message out to students of Buddhism and prospective students that guru yoga is NOT required, nor a standard element, in Mahayana Buddhism EXCEPT at the highest level. Therefore, any teacher who requires blind devotion from beginning and intermediate students is on the make. I’ve attended teachings in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition for years, and no teacher has said anything about guru devotion, about being a representative of the Buddha, or any such thing. This doesn’t mean their behavior was impeccable–far from it. Women, and sometimes men if the teacher if female, always should be on their guard. Even in the Buddha’s time, male monks were not trusted in the presence of female practitioners and students, so we shouldn’t expect anything to have changed now.

And for those who would label such warnings and critiques as “samsaric”, “pointless” or “negative” : this is compassion in action. It is essential to forewarn students of the potential pitfalls inherent in situations involving faith and religious authorities who, being often all too human, may fall for the temptation to abuse their authority and the vulnerability of some followers. Educating people about this is how suffering can be prevented. Ending suffering for sentient beings is our mission as Buddhists.
Brec
Brec August 22, 2014 at 7:48 am | Permalink | Reply

My fiancée is under the influence of an extremist Buddhist group whose leaders demand that its followers adhere to a code of conduct that simply isn’t supported by the Buddha’s teachings. The six vegetarian days per month are added to by a further three vegetarian months (!!!), during which many normal, day-to-day activities are forbidden. When they found out my fiancée was engaged, they started to indoctrinate her with a list of things which, whilst part of normal married life, she was prohibited from doing and must avoid if she is to achieve Buddhahood. Of course, there is no substance to or justification for any of their diktats in the Sutra, but the way they seek to justify their outlandish demands is to say they are an ‘interpretation’ of the Buddha’s broad teachings. I dread my fiancée returning home from another gathering, because one never knows what the extremist cranks who lead the sect will have added to the list of what the followers must do. I am trying to break her away from these evil people, but it is difficult because her faith is so strong it blinds her to the fact they are preying on her and other decent, genuine Buddhists like her.
Mamculuna
Mamculuna September 16, 2014 at 12:01 pm | Permalink | Reply

I haven’t read through all the comments, but I found this very enlightening. My own Tibetan teacher is interesting in that he doesn’t seem to lead us toward Tantra, though I know he practices it himself. AFter ten years, he still keeps us focused in sutra practice, and the books he writes are on that level. I’m glad of this, because when I first realized that the only teacher available to me was Tibetan, I was concerned about the very things you discuss. I’ve benefitted hugely from his teachings about some of the deities, but he’s never really led us into deity practice on the tantric level.

I am much more interested in pursuing mindfulness and dealing with the human issues in that way. I also read a good bit by Thubten Chodron, and find her approach (in most books) to be the way I want to practice.

So I wonder if this reluctance to move on to tantra is my own shallowness and laziness, or a wise way to practice? Your article makes me feel more comfortable with the path I’m trying to follow.
Maria
Maria October 23, 2014 at 10:28 am | Permalink | Reply

I have been to two tibeten buddhist centers now Drikung Kayge in Dehradun and Gomde. And I am shocked. It seems like things is turned upsite down. All the human problems that are the reasons for buddhist practice, in those tibeten buddhist centers just seem to flourish and grow even more than other places on earth. It seems like for most monks and practioners in theese tibeten buddhist centers the Ego had just grown into dimentions. The shadow ( jungian term) ia just totally overpowering.
I have experienced that instead of getting the guidence and help that I looked for, I got a huge dose of insanity/psychopathy at is worst. By that I mean emotional abuse.

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"The most damaging aspect of the Avignon papacy, however, was its
utter lack of moral seriousness. Clement V and his successors
transformed the Church into a spiritual Pez dispenser. The fertile'
minds at the curia had managed to create an indulgence for every
imaginable situation and every imaginable sin. For a price, an
illegitimate child could be made legitimate, as could the right
to trade with the infidel, or marry a first cousin, or buy
stolen goods...the opulent lifestyle of the Avignon popes
added further to the air of moral squalor that hung over
the town. "The simple fishermen of Galilee" are now "clad
in purple and gold", complained Petrarch.

(The Great Mortality, John Kelly, pp. 142 -143

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[www.thlib.org]

Review of Indian Esoteric Buddhism, by Ronald M. Davidson

David Gordon White, University of California, Santa Barbara

JIATS, no. 1 (October 2005), THL #T1223, 11 pp.

© 2005 by David Gordon White, IATS, and THL

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"...the monk or yogin in the esoteric system reconfigured his own practice through the metaphor of becoming the overlord of a ma??ala of vassals, with issues of scripture, language, and community reflecting the political and social models employed in the surrounding feudal society (2).

This argument is developed particularly in chapters three and four, with chapters two and three outlining the principal historical and sociopolitical causes for the breakdown of the prevailing Mah?y?na system of Buddhist polity, and chapter four the forms that the new institutional esotericism took.

It is in these chapters that Davidson is at his best, as he simultaneously develops a number of historical arguments to delineate the specificity of Buddhist Tantra in its South Asian contexts, contexts that were at once social, economic, political, and religious.

His core argument maintains that following the breakup of the Gupta imperial formation, datable to the death of Har?avardhana in 647 CE, the traditional sources of patronage for Buddhist institutions – the merchant guilds and imperial houses – also began to collapse.

In the six rough and tumble centuries that followed, in which military and political adventurism, s?manta-feudalism, Hindu Tantric orders and sects, and Islamic incursions from the west were on the rise, the esoteric turn within Buddhism was a strategy – that ultimately failed, given the fact that Buddhism effectively disappeared from the subcontinent by the end of the twelfth century – to adapt to the new Realpolitik.

The historical irony of this situation, as Davidson repeatedly notes, is that while the esoteric turn did not save the sinking ship of Buddhism in India, it made it highly attractive as an export commodity, which succeeded in penetrating into China, Tibet, Nepal, and Inner Asia, where Buddhism continues to flourish, often in an esoteric mode.

Davidson’s ancillary arguments, grounded in the assumption that religion is a human creation that projects a divine world rather than the opposite, are multifaceted and extremely insightful.

These include:

*a radical change in the tone of medieval panegyrics, toward an idealization of warfare and the apotheosis of kingship, leading to a combination of the heroic and erotic tropes that became the hallmark of much of Tantric expression (69, 87-89);

*the feudalization of the divine pantheon, with the imperial divinity favored by an overlord becoming the divine overlord for the family and village deities worshiped by the monarch’s vassals (71);

*an [page 4] explosion in temple construction (paralleling an explosion in the production of “unauthorized” scripture), with the efflorescence of regional styles in architecture and sculpture reflecting a fragmentation of imperial power and authority (73);

*the replacement of Buddhist st?pa consecration and Brahmanic ?rauta rituals with Puranic coronation ceremonies, which privileged high Hindu gods over the Buddha or the efficacy of the old Vedic rites (84-85);

*“elective affinities” between ?aiva values and rhetoric and the goals and needs of militaristic princes (“?iva…was, after all, a killer divinity with a permanent erection”: 90),

*leading to a shift in patronage patterns away from Buddhist institutions toward Hindu sectarian groups, resulting in turn in a defensive strategy on the part of Buddhist monks to conform to the dominant Hindu paradigm of var???rama dharma,

* the affirmation of caste and the stages of life, as well as in a sharp decline in women’s participation in the medieval Buddhist public sphere (91-98);(Corboy boldface)

* the translation of a loss of institutional support into the abandonment of Buddhism-specific philosophical categories, doctrines, and nomenclature, as well as the rise of skepticism and epistemology as philosophical tropes (99-105);

*
and the ruralization of the medieval power base, resulting in the vassalization of the so-called Buddhist monastery-universities into institutions that supported the feudal monarchs of the period both materially and through “magical performance” (105-111).


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Chapter four, which contains the most original and compelling insights of the entire book, is devoted to the institutionalized Buddhist esotericism of the Mantray?na, which most fully incorporated the imperial metaphor, the expressions of which are found in the emerging canon of the Yogin? Tantras in particular.

Here, the argument is skillfully developed that from the early eighth century onward, Buddhist institutions adapted to the new political realities of medieval India by contracting into regions of strength and into edifices mimicking feudally grounded fortresses, and in behaviors that mirrored the activities of the kings they cultivated (167).

Mantray?na Buddhism, which was simultaneously the most politically involved of Buddhist forms and the variety of Buddhism most acculturated to the medieval Indian landscape, embodied the “imperial metaphor” of the practitioner becoming an overlord (r?j?dhir?ja) of the universe (114).

This it did in a number of ways that reflected the prevailing political ideologies of the period, as it internalized, appropriated, reaffirmed, and rearranged the structures most closely associated with the systems of power relations, ritual authentication, aesthetics, gift-giving, clan associations, and the sense of dominion that defined post-Gupta Indian polities.

While this reorientation and embrace of the new paradigms of power was not monolithic or orchestrated from some centralized Buddhist authority – because none existed – it was nonetheless pervasive: it was an ideology consciously and unconsciously adopted by a multiplicity of regional institutional cultures (115-116).

Most striking, as Davidson demonstrates, is the bivalency or paronomasia of several sets of terms bearing religious as well as military and political significations, the most remarkable example of such being the terminology of royal and monastic consecration, in which the terms abhi?eka, ma??ala, kula, mantrin, etc. are applied, [page 5] in congruent and mutually informing ways, to both realms (122). So too, the configurations of esoteric Buddhist ma??alas, such as the Trailokyavijaya ma??ala (138) or Kukura’s enactment of the Vajradh?tu ma??ala (243), appear to derive explicitly from medieval models of polity, in which divine kings ruled from the centers of circles of interrelated families, vassals, allies, and enemies whose boundaries were in constant flux. Once again, religious ma??alas are seen to be so many Buddhist attempts to sanctify existing public life and recreate the meditator as the controlling personage in the topsy-turvy world of Indic feudal practice (131), which, following Chattopadhyaya, Davidson identifies as “s?manta-feudalism” (137). This is mirrored in esoteric Buddhist practice, in which the placing of one’s chosen (through the casting of a flower) adamantine buddha at the center of a ma??ala sets up an immediate ripple effect of overlord-vassal relations with all of the buddhas of surrounding ma??alas (139). Furthermore, the very terminology of the geometric components of the ma??alas themselves – with their central palaces (k???g?ras) opening into arched gateways (tora?as), protected


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