Tag: buddhism

Geocentrism and Perception

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For many centuries the powers that be and the so-called wise held a view that the heavens rotated around the centre of the universe, aka Earth. Looking out from Earth it was assumed that we were the very epicentre of all God’s creation. This understanding has been proven wrong by the use of modern electromagnetic astronomy. Yet people were adamant that the world revolved around them and any disagreement in public could be fatal, a taboo punishable by excommunication, shunning and execution.

This innate human tendency towards self-diagnosed omniscience persists to this day in various forms.

One could postulate that a self-centred world view is very common. This holds for institutions and individuals. Moreover a kind of gravitational attraction is assumed. Say for example you were a Harvard or an Oxford university you might assume that would be scholars of merit would be irrevocably attracted to you, both to share in your divine reputation and the chance to participate in highbrow scholarly intercourse. People see things from their own point of view. To some a “Hogwarts” school dinners form of collegiate catering may be attractive to others it is not.

Those with power and reputation might assume that this is attractive to others and these exert a quasi-gravitational pull. Moths are drawn to the candle flame. Seen from the inside one sees an attractiveness which externally may not hold. A self-centred perception may lack accuracy.

I have seen some of the mythos associated with a university I worked at briefly. It was held in high regard by some less so by me. My perception was based upon experience and not PR or mythos.

Some people are very corporate in their thinking. Imagining that some corporate or institutional identity is attractive. I once went to an Accenture “do” while I was a start-up founder with a lot of dosh in the bank. All the young guns were full of themselves and very Accenture on-board. All they could see were the internecine pecking order, rankings and power struggles. They knew best. They did not leave a good impression on me. I thought that they were a bunch of wankers. These ambassadors for Accenture left me thinking that the organisation was full of bellends. I wanted no more to do with it ever.

When you are caught up in an institution, church or cult it is very easy to become enamoured and imagine oneself the best thing since sliced bread. The group perception internally may differ significantly from that held externally.  For example other Buddhist groups may think that the Dzogchen and Bon influenced Tibetan Buddhism is bad for Buddhism as a whole. Although the Dalai Lama is arguably the most famous Buddhist one might question as to the type of being this attracts towards Buddhism. The difference between high Tibetan ritual and Thai Forest simplicity is marked. There is a cultural agenda in Tibetan Buddhism which extends past sutra and towards a national historical identity. I don’t know to what extent reflection is made. Evangelism of any kind suggests an imagined innate superiority of world view which must be shared with others. A similar story might hold for STEM advocacy in schools. Everyone must be blessed by the all-encompassing wisdom of the STEM doctrine and creed. All hail the standard model. Blessed be its name.

When you are within the encircled wagons out on the wild prairie armed with your trusty Winchester rifles, it is easier to kill the Apache. After all he is the ignorant savage and you are the God fearing pioneer enacting justified ethnic cleansing in the name of the Lord. It is your divine right to drive the indigenous off their lands. They need your conversion to go to heaven.

Humans can believe whatever it is convenient for them to believe and their ability to seemingly justify slaughter and murder to themselves continues unabated to this day.

When you look in a geocentric, self-centred  manner anything out there is an enemy to be conquered and slain. They must revolve around you or die.

Mathematically whether that be with spherical or cartesian coordinates perception starts at the origin, the self, which is placed at the centre of the world, the centre of the known universe. Many imagine that the entirety of creation revolves around them, their wants, their needs and their petty grudges and complaints.

Although historically Geocentrism has been determined to be inaccurate, a poor model of reality, many fail to see that their whole view is self-centred. Me-centrism. They fail to see that they too are old fashioned and archaic in their notions of world. This observation applies to even the most intelligent amongst us. Intelligence can confer a sense of entitled arrogance. Those on Olympus after all, know what is best for us plebs.

Many people whose perception is very self-centred imagine that it is right and dandy that this should be the case.

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Does the entire universe revolve around you, are you the very centre of all creation?

Are you the flame to which all moths are irresistibly drawn by your magnificence?

My Death – pārasaṃgate – Phowa – Dream 04-01-2026

~ quantumdreamer ~ 1 Comment

Here is this morning’s dream / vision which started around 5 AM and which persisted and replayed many times after that. It is now an “event” which I can hold and “visit”.

The dream starts with an elevated view looking down on a man in a magenta monastic sleeveless tunic with his hands held in his lap. They are in partial mudra. He is sat on a carpeted floor loosely cross legged with back leaning against a bench or sofa for support. He has a light faded plumb coloured blanket over his shoulders which has an inlaid fine embroidered pattern. I know him to be dead and my erstwhile body.

The scene changes to before. I am sat up in a hospital bead with a painted white metal frame. I am in a nursing home or hospital like facility. I call a nurse to me. I say that I think it is time and could she bring be my blanket and the cat. I am helped out of bed and down the corridor to a “sitting room”. I sit on the floor with my back against a bench. On each side are cloth privacy medical screens on metal frames with wheels. They are light blue-light green in colour. I am shielded from view. People in the corridor cannot see me. A mid-sized oxygen cylinder is brought and laid horizontally on the floor. A small clear plastic tube runs from the cylinder and is looped once around my head. There are two small outlet tubes which are fitted to my nostrils. The gas is flowing. I can see that the pressure regulator on the cylinder is tending towards empty. It is not yet in the red. The orderlies are not concerned because I will probably die before it runs out. I make myself comfortable on the floor and my grey cat is brought to me. She is very much like Bowie the stray cat we “rescued” here. I am given the cat and she sits briefly on my lap. I stroke her and she nuzzles. She then wanders off. Two attendants come with my blanket which they put around my shoulders.

I adopt the infinity mudra in which the thumb and middle finger of each hand are touching each other and the two rings so formed are intertwined to form an infinity or 8 sign. As I do this in the dream I can feel the “chakras” in the palms of my hands and feet instantly energised while I am sleeping in “real” life. It is “electrifying”.

I start to chant quietly to myself in the dream.

“gate gate pāragate pārasaṃgate bodhi svāhā”

Slowly this changes to deep voice. I then focus on my crown or sahasrāra chakra which I “unscrew” to open it in readiness. I am making the way clear for me to go beyond form.

The scene changes to several weeks ago in the dream. I know we are last century. I am in the hospital bed and discussing with two white young male doctors. I am explaining to them that I need to make preparations for my death, my passing over. They are unconvinced that such thigs are necessary. Medical science does not believe in them. I suggest that there may be some things that medical science does not yet know and ask that they please humour a dying man. What I am asking is harmless and will not upset the running of the facility. One of the doctors says that he still does not believe me. I say that we shall see because I know that the time is approaching soon. We will find out. Not today but soon. They agree to help out.

I am now sat back down on the floor. I can feel that my face has been recently shaved and that I have bathed. I feel clean. My hair is still in a buzz cut growing out, a few millimetres long. I focus again on the sahasrāra and continue to chant lightly slowing fading this out. I can feel a first wisp beyond my body. The view shifts so that I am sat observing the body as if in a mirror. We are close a few feet apart. Slowly out of my crown a golden-yellow cloud of mist rises up and swells out. Like a murmuration of sorts. In amongst it I can see flecks of shining gold which catch the light and there are deep flecks of indigo-blue near glass-like threads and like tiny shiny fish scales. The cloud is filled with tiny sparkly mirrors glistening in the unusual supernatural light. The cloud moves slowly and expands.  I look down to the hands. I can see them and feel them. At the moment the cloud is still anchored in the body. The right hand opens the finger-thumb mudra to break the infinity seal and the cloud detaches from the body. The head previously upright lolls slightly forward in what I know to be my physical death.

I look at the cloud for a while and then my consciousness merges with it, into it. I am liberated of body. I wait in the room for a while and then it is gone from view.

I wake knowing that I have seen a death of mine. Over the next few hours the scene replays. I know that I died consciously in this dream and vision. I know that I had prepared and that it had mostly gone according to plan..

Buddhism – Rinpoche – Dream 22-12-2025

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Here is this morning’s dream had after 6 AM this morning. It is out of the blue considering what I have been exploring in terms of old French manuscripts.

The dream opens in the front room – sitting room in a large home in the English home counties. The wife and I are visiting a young woman and her family. She is a younger version of Dupinder from Aussie MasterChef. In the dream context she is an ex-student of mine and early twenties. She has a nice posh English accent with only the faintest hint of Indian accent. We are there with her sister and mother and father. They are middle-upper class and moderately wealthy. They are highly educated. I say that people like her family have added a great deal to UK culture and life. Their springer spaniel dog comes in and they are worried that the dog will bite or snap at me. This is its usual behaviour with strangers. It comes over to me and I offer it my right hand in a loose fist to sniff. It is very suspicious and growls slightly. I re-offer my hand and emanate warmth along it. The dog sniffs it and then sits to lick my hand. It lets me stroke it and then lies down in front of me, close, calm and happy.

I notice some Buddhist texts on the table and small statuette of Buddha. I comment to “Dupinder” that I did not know she was Buddhist.  She says that yes they have been going to the local temple/centre on a regular basis. Her parents have been life long and as of late she and her sister have taken to it too. I ask what denomination. She says that they are Theravada and no fuss Buddhism. I explain to her that I have more than a passing interest. She boots up her lap top and shows me pictures of her centre. It is housed in a wider building run by Tibetan Buddhists as a cross denominational dharma centre. On the outside of the building I can see Tibetan writing and roman scripts. The building has been purchased using the wealth of the Tibetan Buddhist “church” in exile. I ask who oversees the project and she says that Rinpoche does. I inquire further and she says that Rinpoche, a supposed Tulku, is titular head of the dharma centre but others run it day to day. The centre is in a town just outside the north of the M25.

At this point her father interjects. He asks me if I am a Rinpoche too. He has had a sudden intuition that I am. Caught slightly off-guard I say that yes it is more than possible that I am a Rinpoche, a reincarnated lama too. He says that he suspected this from the moment he first set eyes on me and from the way his daughter has spoken of me. He says that he thinks that I should go to the dharma centre to see if I am recognised. I say that I don’t think that it works like that. Me tipping up in such a manner would not go down well. For some reason he is very happy and he invites us all down into the big conservatory to have a light vegetarian snack / dinner. There are metallic thali plates with curries in little bowls, rice and breads.

The dream ends.

“Spiritual” Journeys

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I have used inverted commas quotation mark here because I struggle a little with how words have in a sense become tainted by multiple usage and being bandied about as PR. Spiritual as a word has had its impact and meaning downgraded to the point of near meaninglessness.

I am going to attempt to put into words something which I have hesitated to do. It is close to impossible. This cannot be undertaken without emphasising just how important a few years of my childhood were in my development, in this life. One constellation in particular left its mark deep in my psyche.

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It was by its light during an English language common entrance exam that I foresaw events near two and a half decades later. It was the harbinger and the key of a volte face in life. I left the harbour alone in my coracle adrift upon the Southern ocean lit by its solace. I left Cape Town after being burned on table mountain.

Later I had another foreboding which was also to find consummation over a similar time delay. Each of these were pivotal. That foreboding prevented me making a UCAS university choice against the advice of my school teachers.

When I was young and in an English boarding school as an expat child I got to read the lessons and the prayers in church. While the others sat with parents. It was like a duck to water that I took to the lectern and the prayer “chair” deep in the nave. There I found St Francis of Assisi.

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« Seigneur, faites de moi un instrument de votre paix.
Là où il y a de la haine, que je mette l’amour. »

« C’est en pardonnant qu’on est pardonné,
c’est en mourant qu’on ressuscite à l’éternelle vie. »

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This man was in tune with the Mahayana bodhisattva ideal. His words touched.

Unfortunately those with the skill of a chameleon can adopt any mask, any direction, any character they choose. Believe me I learned how to blend. And in blending one loses authentic essence.

At the end of my schooling I took general studies courses in Buddhism, cooking and Rastafarianism. Ever Jah, ever loving, ever faithful. Rastafari. I read all that I could on witchcraft and alchemy. I made “friends” with the librarian in our town.

The Buddhism was presented in an intellectual descriptive manner in which the various fetters were enumerated for debate. Although I understood, the manner was for me boring and definitional. I sensed beyond that which was being professed. It was during intense meditation sat in seiza at karate that I learned that I had in fact been meditating all of my childhood. I used to sit and observe. I used to wait. I was touched directly by the dreamtime out in the shimmering bush of western Queensland. The aboriginal pointing stick had cleaved something open.

And then when I went to university I mostly forgot. By the time I was doing my Ph.D. research I figured that I had found something I was good at. So maybe this was the future. I enjoyed “pissing about with lasers”. I was to an extent, life and soul of the party. It was only in the early nineties that I started to withdraw, as if driven by a deeper current, out into the hills, the mountains and the countryside. It set up a kind of imbalance. On the one hand was a “normal” life and career. On the other there was silence and quiet. My reading was more intellectual philosophy, science and philosophy of science. I noted that despite mundane academic achievement many of “the greats” struggled with non-salary paying bigger questions.

I was offered a choice. Fort Collins Colorado or Bern Switzerland. One of those would have brought me quicker into contact with things “spiritual” than the other. The Swiss francs were certain, so I saw the Berner Oberland and learned painfully of “qualität”. Something which I tried thenceforth to express.

In the mid nineties at the place of my prior foreboding I was brought to my knees. Despite writing excellent research proposals I was stymied and unfunded. A grudge held by a “competing” senior academic could kill a proposal with a mere word. I had a breakdown. The answer to life the universe and everything could no longer be found in the laws of quantum mechanics and thermodynamics. It seemed there was more. It was around then that my ambition faded and the picture of a life academic dimmed. I began to search in earnest. I opened myself up wide. Again I largely forgot and tried to rebuild a life after breakdown. For some unknown reason money for research and start-up came more easily. I was “successful” for a while.

In the very early part of this century I was tested by power. I had a taste of it and did not abuse. Like Galadriel I refused the ring and was no longer sorely tempted thereby. It was around this time that a series of what might be called micro-renunciations began. In which step-wise I renounced or was forced to renounce the accoutrements of normal life. Each one was more difficult and profound than the last. Slowly life was stripped of all that made it busy and hectic. Until in the middle of 2006 I renounced all and walked off into the metaphorical “wilderness”. Dramatic as that sounds, at face value it looked simple, at core it cleaved and parted, severed and up-ended.

I did not become a wandering mendicant with charnel grounds for abode nor skull cup for beverage. Though adrift I most certainly was. I had already learned as a child, the nature of impermanence. Strangely without accoutrement life did not cease, the world did not implode, nor did it stop.

When you are thrust  from an Outlook calendar ruled life, with hours dissected into segments, with meetings set for you, with each action seemingly accountable, into nothing. The meaning of time changes in an unalterable and irrevocable way. It is no longer a spreadsheet thing. The boxes, the rice paper walls of the day, dissolve.

At end of 2008 I left the map so to speak. I began a series of meditations which went beyond. There was nothing, despite my research skill, which I could find written. These “meditations” continued in the UK in houses close to civilisation yet separate in the English countryside. I can say that the rigor of these was high and they continued for many years. In around 2010-11 I began having Buddhist dreams.

In the early part of the century whilst still teaching physical chemistry I had a series of waking visions in which I had “om mane padme hum” tattooed on my forearms in Sanskrit and with me in monastic robes. These visions were sufficiently powerful to be present whilst I was lecturing Chemical Reaction Kinetics to undergraduates in South Kensington. It was around then that I got to express my compassion for others, to care for them.

Overlaid on a “Toltec” background was a distinctly Buddhist vibe.

All the while I had a seemingly normal life as a married man doing for quite a while “A” level science private tutoring. The outer world and the inner world differed and markedly so.

To me as a member of the elephant dreaming class there is no problem with the scholastic wisdom teachings of Siddartha and the more dramatic Toltec corpus. The latter is a guide, when viewed with clarity, to the navigation of glamour and illusion. There is probably only one truth expressed via many different approaches. The Tower of Babel has a lot to answer for…

This is probably enough for today…

The Lotus Eaters and a Logical If

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As the nights draw in and the temperature drops the occurrence of wildlife in the garden goes up, becomes more frequent. Already the badger is looking for roots, soon we may get deer grazing. For sure the “lotus eaters” aka Coypu or Nutria will return. There was evidence of an attempted perimeter breach overnight. The charge on the battery driving the electric fence has dropped. I had a shock off it yesterday, a tickle. Today I have replaced the battery. This means if any of the Coypu family come to snack on our tasty lotuses Thor may release a lightning bolt to discourage. Since we have installed the electric fence by the river our display of lotuses has flourished. This year was magnificent.

Om mane padme hum

If we take dream content as evidence and consider visions as non hallucinatory then we might conclude that I have had at least four and probably five lives in a priestly or monk like Buddhist incarnation. It is therefore not too much of a stretch to suggest that the term bodhisattva might apply to me, I can be considered as someone seeking liberation. In one of these “visions” I was told that this is my very last incarnation, a suggestion which is internally consistent with the aforementioned logical if.  

This may not sit entirely easily in juxtaposition with a brief career as a pukka scientist. It might seem odd to the class professorial. To me there is no jarring.

We then come upon the Garry Glitter question, “to whose gang do I belong?”

Am I Toltec?

Am I Buddhist?

Am I boffinacious?

One could perhaps draw a Venn diagram, if one could be arsed.

I am unlikely to fall into worship of anti-scientific superstitious conspiracy theories. I am not science-phobic. Nor do I believe in the whole saviour fallacy. Nobody died to save you; it is up to you. Confessing your sins will not remove karmic debt even if you pay the pope a cool million quid. You cannot bribe karma.

To follow on from the logical if. There is an addendum.

If you have treated a bodhisattva badly then that is karmically “bad” for you.

We then get quickly into splitting karmic hairs about degree of bodhisattva and extent of transgression.

The basic rule of thumb is try not to be an arrogant bell end to anyone. It does not need to be any more complicated than this. It is not a bad mantram.

“Remember to try not to be an arrogant bell end…”

Bodhisattva

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This from Britannica on line.

Click here

bodhisattva, in Buddhism, one who seeks awakening (bodhi)—hence, an individual on the path to becoming a buddha.

Pali: bodhisatta (“one whose goal is awakening”)

In early Indian Buddhism and in some later traditions—including Theravada, at present the major form of Buddhism in Sri Lanka and other parts of Southeast Asia—the term bodhisattva was used primarily to refer to the Buddha Shakyamuni (as Gautama Siddhartha is known) in his former lives. The stories of his lives, the Jatakas, portray the efforts of the bodhisattva to cultivate the qualities, including morality, self-sacrifice, and wisdom, which will define him as a buddha. Later, and especially in the Mahayana tradition—the major form of Buddhism in Tibet, China, Korea, and Japan—it was thought that anyone who made the aspiration to awakening (bodhicittotpada)—vowing, often in a communal ritual context, to become a buddha—is therefore a bodhisattva. According to Mahayana teachings, throughout the history of the universe, which had no beginning, many have committed themselves to becoming buddhas. As a result, the universe is filled with a broad range of potential buddhas, from those just setting out on the path of buddhahood to those who have spent lifetimes in training and have thereby acquired supernatural powers. These “celestial” bodhisattvas are functionally equivalent to buddhas in their wisdom, compassion, and powers: their compassion motivates them to assist ordinary beings, their wisdom informs them how best to do so, and their accumulated powers enable them to act in miraculous ways.

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Avalokiteshvara

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Bodhisattvas are common figures in Buddhist literature and art. A striking theme in popular literature is that of the concealed greatness of the bodhisattvas. In numerous stories ordinary or even distinctly humble individuals are revealed to be great bodhisattvas who have assumed common forms to save others. The lesson of these tales is that, because one can never distinguish between paupers and divinities, one must treat all others as the latter. In popular folklore bodhisattvas appear as something like saviour deities, a role they acquired both through the evolution of earlier ideas and through fusion with already existing local gods.

Buddhism: Celestial buddhas and bodhisattvas

A particularly important mythology in East Asia is that of Dharmakara. According to the Pure Land Sutra, Dharmakara was a bodhisattva whose vows were realized when he became the Buddha Amitabha. Pan-Buddhist bodhisattvas include Maitreya, who will succeed Shakyamuni as the next buddha in this world, and Avalokiteshvara, known in Tibet as Spyan ras gzigs (Chenrezi), in China as Guanyin (Kuan-yin), and in Japan as Kannon. Although all bodhisattvas act compassionately, Avalokiteshvara is considered the embodiment of the abstract principle of compassion. Bodhisattvas of more localized importance include Tārā in Tibet and Jizō in Japan.