Tag: buddhism

Past Life CVs or Resumés

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

As a part of application for jobs it is not uncommon to be asked to provide a curriculum vitae (CV) or resumé. Often one is asked for references of referees. The offer of job is therefore based on something one writes oneself and what some other geezers say about you. If I understand it correctly it is not uncommon {these days} to do a social media trawl on an applicant and get them to sign some corporate social media usage contract if the application is successful. If people want to work, they must not express any controversial opinion or behaviour in public, there is a kind of thought police. PR concerns may be more important than ability to do the tasks required, adequately or well. The world is an edgy place with PR driven cancel culture.

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In this context I can say that my current incarnation is as a retired person specialising in gardening and DIY. The only person on earth who could write me a reference which is less than five years old is the wife. I have not been employed by a company or institution for nearly twenty years, so there is nobody who could write me, with any honesty, a reference less than ~ two decades old. The logic of this is that I am not qualified for any job which requires a current written or oral reference.

I could say that in a prior incarnation I was a university lecturer. The phlebotomist yesterday asked me why I needed a Ph.D. in chemistry and I said that a long time ago in a land far away I once taught at a university in London.

It is very much like a prior incarnation, an entirely different and pressured existence in a place with a high human density per cubic metre, a prior life. A different world entirely. I said to her, “Londres, c’est fou!”

Why do CVs not extend to prior incarnations?

Few actually check in detail what is claimed in CVs for even the current life. Though no doubt there will be CV fraud and certainly exaggeration. People are encouraged to big up the CV and add a hype polish. It may be interesting to do a statistical analysis of distortion in CVs submitted.

As far as I know only one culture is interested in past-life CVs, prior incarnations and that is the Tibeto-Bhutanese-Nepalese one, which extends by exile into India. Reincarnated Rinpoche Lamas, Tulkus, have travelled to and taught in the west. In that context a great deal of respect is offered to these beings and they get the throne of a lamasery or even to lead a country based upon their rebirth CV which may extend back more than ten incarnations.

How would you behave if you met a Rinpoche tulku lama? Would that differ to the criticism in your head about hocus pocus? Would you go through the motions or refuse to go along with charade?

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People who may not believe in reincarnation might offer respect to a high tulku lama if they meet in a certain cultural context. How they might behave in a pub or coffee shop could be a different matter. Kudos is of course culture specific, yet there is some transferability. An anointed Nobel prizewinning scientist has kudos in Academica and more widely, they have the stardust of deity attached. There are even questions about them on University Challenge!! This ranks them with Tintoretto and Da Vinci.

A CV is meant to be a witness of experience and kudos harvested. If you have been to a famous institution {not asylum} you get CV brownie points. A mere whisper of Harvard sprinkles some magic dust of assumed elite braininess and knowledge. You could have been shit, but the name-kudos camouflages this.

It is very difficult to check the truth of many CV claims. Employers tend not to keep aged records. I could make factual claims {according to my recollections} about where I was employed. But to get supportive records from human resources there may not be facile. I could, knowing this, make some shit up. Proof may not exist, not even in the pudding. There is an unwritten assumption that CVs are not complete packs of lies.

I have circumstantial evidence which suggests that I have had two {three} lifetimes as a Buddhist practitioner {monk / priest}. Does that mean I can put it on my CV to apply for jobs as a Buddhist teacher? Nobody alive could offer me a current reference because they all carked it centuries ago and I have not found them again in this lifetime. If things for prior lives are as difficult to prove as those from current lives why not put them on the CV.

There is a part of me, which might like to submit a CV dating back 3000 B.C.E for a job position just to see if they responded, binned it or kept in “on file” because there were other applicants more suited to the job description dogma grid. My bet would be zero response. I could then telephone to inquire…

Perhaps I could then write a movie script…

“A long time ago in a land far away…”

“A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away….”

3000 B.C.E. Son of a Brahman Indus Valley, Northern India

The Bronze Age in the Indian subcontinent begins around 3000 BCE, and in the end gives rise to the Indus Valley Civilisation, which had its (mature) period between 2600 BCE and 1900 BCE. It continues into the Rigvedic period, the early part of the Vedic period. It is succeeded by the Iron Age in India, beginning in around 1000 BCE.

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Standard cubic weights from the Indus Valley 2600-1900 BCE

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Cubic “dice” made by me {unknowing} for Tibetan Mo divination, Brittany 2024 CE.

The measurments are made with a high precision capacitance micrometer and are accurate to plus or minus 0.01 mm..

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Eight Tibetan Houses (seats) Dream 19-02-2025

~ quantumdreamer ~ 1 Comment

This came after we watched a documentary on how China is changing Tibet, making it more Han Chinese.

The dream starts in South or Southeastern Tibet. There is a sense of Shigatze. I can see on a map eight Tibetan houses or seats. They have terracotta roofs and although they appear as houses, I know that they are seats, monasteries, in the sense of high lama thrones. They are linked to lineages and are the bricks and mortar, the physicality. I collect them in a sense. I coral them in my non-physical arms. I am wearing magenta and saffron Buddhist robes.

The scene changes and I can see the same eight locations but now I am seeing the spirit, the ethos, the essence of these “houses”. It is the near indelible mark of the spirit of these places, how they have energized the world.

I wake briefly.

I am back looking at the map of Tibet. Again, I can see these eight centres, only now I can see history, lineage stretching back over centuries. This is the past, the lineage which has been cultivated in time and through time.

I wake briefly.

I am back again looking at the map with these eight houses highlighted. Now I can see mind, mind-stream and even the awareness or consciousness associated with these centres. I sense in the dream that this represents future in that the centres live not necessarily physically but in the mind-stream, the Buddha field.

As I awake, I joke to myself that is must be weird Wednesday as opposed to freaky Friday.

More Tibetan Phrase Dream Follow Up

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“I start out on my route and part the way along in or near Mongolia I am given two white plaques of an irregular shape. Phonetically these plates speak in the dream. They say, “Mon yet {yat} Dzong” and “Sprul yet Tsaay” I can see the associated Tibetan script but cannot associate it directly with the phonetics.”

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The name “Khyentse,” often equated with the Rimé movement, is the union of two Tibetan words, khyen (མཁྱེན་པ་,“ken,” or sometimes “chen”) and tsé (བརྩེ་བ་, “tsay”), meaning “wisdom” and “compassion.”

From web site of Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche

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“Sprul yet Tsaay”

ཡེ – primordial – ye or je

བརྩེ་བ – compassion – tsay

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ཡེ

waldo1) first, primordial, beginning, original, eternal[ly] fundamental; 2) always, constant
valbyfrom the beginning, from eternity, utterly, perfectly, highly, quite, from the very beginning, principle of light & being, basic
barrontimeless; atemporal

བརྩེ་བ

rangjungbenevolent, affection, compassion, love, merciful, care for. love; to love (v); loving kindness; to love/ feel affection; to love, love, kindness, to count up, mercy, affection, playing with; {brtse ba, brtse ba, brtse ba} intr. v.; ft. of {rtse ba}
waldo1) will play [f rtse ba]; 2) (Tha mi dad pa,, 1 be unbearable; 2) affection, compassionate, pity, [p brtses],, love, have concern/ compassion, merci[ful], kind[ness], benevolent affection, compassion, love, care for, count up, play w
valbyresponsive, kindness, tenderness, benevolent, affection, compassion, love, merciful, mercy, fervent love

སྤྲུལ་

Sprul

Hopkins 2015send forth an emanation; emanate; emanation
Rangjung Yeshecreated, ཡིད་ mentally. emanated, “incarnated”, apparitional, magical, emanating, emanation, nirmanakaya, miraculous, transformed [into], manifested. vi. to change / transform [miraculously]; imp. of སྤྲུལ་བ་
Hackett Defi­nitions 2015(PH) snake
James Valbyjuggle, make phantoms appear, transform creation, emanating, recasting oneself, snake, 1 of ‘jigs pa rnam par brgyad, abbr for sprul sku
Ives Waldo1) mentally created/ emanated [as]; 2) incarnated; 3) apparitional, magical, miraculous, transformed [~into] emanated[ing][tion]; 4) nirmanakaya; 5) manifest, change/ transform [miraculously]

སྤྲུལ་ ཡེ བརྩེ་བ

Sprul ye tsay

Emanation of primordial compassion

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Avalokiteshvara or  Avalokiteśvara

In Buddhism, Avalokiteśvara (meaning “the lord who looks down”, also known as Lokeśvara (“Lord of the World”) and Chenrezig (in Tibetan), is a tenth-level bodhisattva associated with great compassion (mahakaruṇā). He is often associated with Amitabha Buddha.

Wikipedia

Avalokiteshvara (Skt. Avalokiteśvara; Tib. སྤྱན་རས་གཟིགས་ or སྤྱན་རས་གཟིགས་དབང་ཕྱུག, Chenrezik or chenrezig wangchuk, Wyl. spyan ras gzigs or spyan ras gzigs dbang phyug) is said to be the essence of the speech of all the buddhas and the incarnation of their compassion.

As one of the Eight Great Close Sons, he is usually depicted as white in colour and holding a lotus.

He is of special importance to Tibetans, so much so that he is sometimes described as the patron deity of Tibet. Among his emanations are King Songtsen Gampo—who is credited with authoring the Mani Kabum, a cycle of teachings and practices dedicated to the deity—as well as the lineages of Dalai Lamas and Karmapas.

Rigpa Wiki

Hokkaido – Golden Pins – Tibetan Phrases – Road Trip – Dream 07-02-2025

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

Here is this morning’s dream had between 4 and 8 AM.

The dream opens in Japan specifically Hokkaido. I am indoors in a hectic setting, a kind of big event hall. I am competing in a game which is part physical plane sprint racing and part abstract computer intelligence game. Each round is set off by a buzzer and the contestants have to make their way to the finish line within the context of the duality. In the booth next to me is a tall slim Japanese man. The buzzer sounds and the race begins. In both scenarios he just beats me. I come second in the race.

We both go over the left of the finish line in the computer world and in the thing which holds up the finish flag are the positional pins. We each select a tiny golden micro-pin which has the positional letter. My pin ends in a golden 2, his a golden 1. I place the pin in my shirt pocket on the left hand side of my chest. The race repeats several times and each time the result is the same. I soon have quite a collection of golden two pins in my shirt pocket. The “competition” finishes.

I am then walking through a busy brightly lit mall. I am in a food court in which various Japanese food outlets are selling street food. The atmosphere is pungent and very lively. The food on offer is highly coloured and from around the globe. I cannot decide. I walk over to a burger joint and a Japanese woman asks me what I would like. It is her job to serve me and be of assistance. She is very friendly, lively and with excellent English {UK}. I say that I would like a small burger and fries and for her to surprise me. She brings my food over together with a large bottle of top-end Japanese spring water. She sits next to me and helps me to eat.

I go back to my rooms; they are executive and above parr. I am unsure as to what to do next. I have no return flight. So, I start to look up flights from Sapporo to Queensland Australia. The Idea being that I land in Townsville or Brisbane and buy a second hand car to drive to the Isa {Mt Isa}.

I pause and take a stroll. Outside in the car park is my ex-wife. She is in a beat up camper van and I can hear her snoring. The van is a mess. I go back inside. She knocks on the door. I open it. She asks how I am coping with the water. Just fine. She says that she had problems getting served at the food court and did not like the tap water. I say that she probably had problems communicating. With the Japanese it is very important to listen. If you don’t listen carefully to what they say they consider you rude and vulgar. I say that listening was never one of her skills. I point to the bottle of top-end spring water on the side and say that she can take it back to her camper van, her brumby. This she does…

I hear the song from Men at Work, I come from the land down under, “travelling in a beat up brumby”.

I decide against going to Queensland.

Instead, I must take a road trip. I see in my minds eye a map showing Hokkaido and Sapporo with mainland Asia and Vladivostok. I know that I can easily get a boat to Vladivostok and that I could drive from there to Wiltshire. I resolve in the dream to look up a route on AA route planner when I get up. I know that I must go via Mongolia and that it will be a long trip.

Here is AA Router planner route Vladivostok to Calais. Distance ~ 8000 miles.

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I start out on my route and part the way along in or near Mongolia I am given two white plaques of an irregular shape. Phonetically these plates speak in the dream. They say, “Mon yet {yat} Dzong” and “Sprul yet Tsaay” I can see the associated Tibetan script but cannot associate it directly with the phonetics.

The dream ends

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Sprul

The concept of tulpas has origins in the Buddhist nirmāṇakāya, translated in Tibetan as sprul-pa (སྤྲུལ་པ་): the earthly bodies that a buddha manifests in order to teach those who have not attained nirvana. The western understanding of tulpas was developed by twentieth-century European mystical explorers, who interpreted the idea independently of Buddhahood

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1) Trulku (in Tibetan: sprul sku) — Literally the “emanation body” of a buddha. In a Tibetan context, a trulku (often given the epithet rinpoché, “precious one”) denotes the chosen reincarnation of a lama of high spiritual stature. A trulku usually inherits his (or her) predecessor’s prestige, wealth, and institutional seat. Important trulku lineages include the Dalai and Panchen Lamas and the Karmapas, who originated the tradition in the thirteenth century

2) sprul sku (སྤྲུལ་སྐུ) (Tibetan; in Sanskrit: nirmāṇakāya) — (lit. “Emanation body”) — Within the compass of the formbody, the aspect of a buddha that appears for the sake of ordinary sentient beings. A single buddha may manifest multiple emanation bodies, which may be in human, animal, or inanimate form. The “historical Buddha” Śākyamuni is generally regarded as an emanation body. The Tibetan term for emanation body, trulku, is used to designate a deliberately reincarnated lama

Sprul

སྤྲུལ་ send forth an emanation; emanate; emanation

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Mon

མོན་

Bhutan; Mon, a district in Tibet

Mön

Mon. Name for lands to the south and southwest of Tibet

Dzong

Dzong (Tib. རྫོང་, Wyl. rdzong) — literally a ‘fortress’, the equivalent of a monastery in Bhutan.

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Le dzong du Bhoutan est un monastère-forteresse bouddhiste caractéristique du Bhoutan.

Les premiers dzongs furent construits dans le pays dès le XIIe siècle, mais leur âge d’or fut la première moitié du XVIIe siècle qui vit le renforcement défensif du pays par le shabdrung ou grand lama Ngawang Namgyal (1594-1651), l’unificateur du Bhoutan moderne.

Buddhist Monastery – Dual Airport – Flight Lieutenant – Dream 27-01-2025

~ quantumdreamer ~ 1 Comment

This dream from between 2 and 4 AM.

The dream starts in the refectory area of a Buddhist monastery. I am wearing one of my white collarless shirts which is slightly open in the front. My hair is fresh from a recent buzz cut and I am clean shaven. Everyone is sat on the floor on a cushion with a Tali style platter of Indian food in front of them. We all have roti and a small bowl of rice.

The land around the monastery is very mountainous. There is little vegetation and a glacial melt stream / river. There are rocks strewn widely. It is dry.

The monks are wearing largely maroon colour robes and I know them to be of a Tibetan inspired Vajrayana lineage. I am sat in front of the room facing in. The monks are all asking me questions. The atmosphere is cheerful and light.

Sat next to me is a young woman dressed in a lay robe. She has very short black hair and is of an Indian colouring. Her English is impeccable and I know that she is also a Flight Lieutenant in the Indian Air Force. There is a sense of latent royalty or nobility to her. She is very respectful.

The monks keep asking me questions, they do not want me to go.

Eventually I plead my goodbyes and together with the officer head off in an open top jeep to the airport. The airport has a civilian and a military entrance. We go in via the military one, she gets a salute. The airport has a dual purpose.

We pull up next to a Cessna two seater propeller driven plane. I am to fly us out with her as a co-pilot. The night has started to fall and there is an incoming mist. I say to the woman that I am not confident that I could fly out of there. She agrees that I do not have the experience and that it would be dangerous.

She offers to drive me back to the monastery and I accept. I am welcomed and know that because the weather is closing in, I might be here for a few more days. The monks are happy with this.

The dream ends.

As I come to, I am reminded of Leh airport in Ladakh which on a quick Google search is due a second runway to enhance its military capabilities. The civilian airport is called Leh Kushok Bakula Rinpoche Airport. The online images of which are mostly consistent with the dream

Believing Without Concluding

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Luckily, I can believe something without coming to a conclusion about its veracity or accuracy or degree of right. I don’t have to win an argument or be right. I can even hold multiple views about the same situation without needing to pick a favourite and I don’t need to soap box, to be dogmatic or adamant. The dream this morning highlighted a fundamental difference in mentality between me and where I once worked. I was not ambitious nor obsessed with winning and league table position. My life did not hang on success or kudos. In many ways I did not belong there amongst. So, it worked out as it did. Dandy.

I think a safe “conclusion” is that the dreams in this blog are not normal or average. This makes me something of an outlier, an anomaly even.  This “conclusion” is uncoloured and non-emotive. It is not significant.

I can see how some of the “data” in these dreams can be interpreted using various narratives, for example Toltec. In which case I belong to a certain predilection as a dreamer and not a stalker.  I am a slightly different class of being. I think it fair to see a mild philosophical bent in my approach to life.

I can try on a working hypothesis, see if there is a partial fit. If there is I note it but have no need to conclude. Such and such is consistent with so and so. No Biggy. Next.

My own experience is, that at least in my case, the law of cause & effect or karma is applicable. I have a mind set of trying to address karma rather than going “phew got away with it, at least for now”. I’ll speculate that this again is not normal or average. To take responsibility for the actions AND consequences in life is not something most share. They fail to see the link of causality because that can be mightily inconvenient. People suffer from entitlement issues and believe, for example, that they are entitled to bomb the living daylights out of a people. They deserve to enact bloody revenge. It is justice no matter how disproportionate. They may be unable to calmly and cooly think it through. They make concentrated poverty adjacent to their opulent wealth and do not foresee consequences. Blinded by rage they do not solve, lashing out is not the most evolved thing to do.

In terms of liberation. One cannot achieve liberation whilst one has unresolved karma, it remains like a weight holding you back. The karma of stubbornness is rich and like most karma can have an ironic flavour. If you don’t believe in karma, it is currently your karma so to be. Karma is patient and one day it will make you understand. You may get knelt.

I know, I believe, that I understand the implications of much of the material in the blog. But I will never conclude that I am right about this and exclusively so. There could be many other explanations or none at all. I am just constructing a temporary view for my own amusement. Like a sand castle I can knock it down. I won’t be explicit and detailed. People like to argue the toss especially with others on the internet.

Not concluding is the antithesis of modern education methods. We are trained to give the {only} “right” answer, to justify it and make a conclusion or two. That way we can gain marks and pass exams; we can earn qualifications.

Students want to know, “tell me what the answer is”. Sometimes there are no answers within the common mundane context. We can ask Siri or Alexa. I suspect that humanity is getting ever lazier and may one day lose the ability to think for itself.

People might only believe if the norm decrees something right and correct. If consensus deems. But there can be different groups of consensuses who will fight for the dominance of being right.

I don’t think that conclusions and answers are evolutionary. They fixate, anchor and coral.

Renunciation or Self-Sabotage?

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The human ability to kid oneself is well known though for those kidding, difficult to accept. At the moment there are many who deem the slaughter in Gaza justifiable and apt. They do not imagine any karmic consequences because that notion would be very inconvenient. Irrespective of how things are temporarily brought to a close, there will be consequences ongoing.

The normal idea of success in the “West” might be to have a good career, make progress, climb the housing ladder and perhaps have a relationship or marriage and thence to propagate the species. One might like a nice car and pleasant foreign holidays. Perhaps gaining some measure of societal kudos along the way. One would not sulkily throw one’s toys out of the cot; one would comply more or less to the norm. Psychology might point you in this direction.

If for example you are a bodhisattva called Siddartha Gautama, it would be OK to run out on a young wife and child, leave the palace of your father the King and renounce the kingdom to which you are heir. But for normal people this would be wrong.

Viewed from one angle this is an ungrateful act of wanton self-sabotage. Siddhartha shot himself in the foot and abandoned a pleasant life, one which many might aspire to. To the starving, the poor and the unshod this makes no sense. Yet according to legend this subsequently facilitated his teaching and his completion of the career goal of any bodhisattva, namely enlightenment and Buddhahood.

In the post previous I pointed at something that many would not understand. I shelved a high value job at a prestigious space agency. The successful completion of which could have opened the way for senior positions and a way back from the “wilderness”. We would have had plenty of cash.

There were a number of warning omens when we were viewing properties in and near Leiden. Retrospect suggests that the job was a temptation of sorts.

Earlier I walked out of a marriage with a very young child which caused the sale of a house in London now worth £ 1 million. I left a new age group which I gave heart and soul to establish. I “gave” my shares back to a start-up company the vision for which was to a fair extent mine. I quit a then tenured academic job at a top university, something to which many aspired. I had no other job lined up just a few training courses. One of these went pear shaped so I gave them up too. To move from a highly timetabled job into near nothing was a bit of a shock to the system. I resigned from another short lived university teaching post. I cut contact with my aged mother. I forwent relations with family.

None of these were easy. I am not a prince.

One could say that I am simply a loser who could not hack it.

One could say that these were acts of stepwise renunciation. The integral over micro-renunciations has a similar effect to sudden departure.

 Or one could call deem them all the INFJ door slam, a fault in my character.

What is it that seeks success? It is the self and not the Soul. In this logic renunciation is indeed an act of self-sabotage. The ambitions of the self are stymied in stepwise succession. I know that I can live without any of these accoutrements. If you like I have physical plane proof by experience. I am not bound by the fear of missing out on a normal successful life.

I could be kidding myself. Trying to find an excuse for my squandering of opportunity. Or maybe I have simply thrown my toys out of my cot because things did not go my way.

Nobody else has experienced these things like I did. Nobody else has felt the tearing, the ripping. I am alone in my moccasins which I may not loan to another.

People might have opinions.

I cannot return to the trajectory my life was once on. Any attempt has gone badly awry. The dramatic might say that I am not meant to. Or one could argue that it is the karma of wanton squandering. I made the bed and now I must sleep in it.

There remains one question concerning what if anything I do with the remainder of earthly sojourn.

Hmnn…

ESA – ESTEC – Lizards – Iridium Dragon Dream 27-01-2011

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I am in a large factory like building which has tubes and air ducts. It is in a state of disrepair, there are things scattered all over the floor and many rooms there.

I am trying to calm K down. She is dishevelled and both angry and pleased with me at the same time. She is having one of her “turns” she is thrashing about. I restrain her and she bites my arm, taking out a large chunk. When she sees what she has done, the size of the hole, she is mortified.

The telephone rings and it is someone from ESTEC. They are talking about closing our relationship but first they want the pyrolysis data which I don’t have. I am having trouble hearing them and say so. The ‘phone call is going nowhere and it fades.

As I move through the building it is somehow linked to Imperial College. There is an announcement warning the employees not to let me leave. I make my way through the passages to the back door. I meet various people who know me.

One of them tries to restrain me using a fighting technique. I tell him to show me how strong he is. We spar a little and although he is, in the dream, huge compared to me I manage to fend off his attacks and eventually end by throwing him bodily against a wall.

I continue through the corridors making my way to the exit. Just as I get there two people see me and recognise me. I think they are going to try to stop me. They do not, they come with me through the exit.

Outside is like an oil refinery or chemical plant. I sense a wave coming and it has on it ice boulders. I shout a warning. The wave passes without damaging anything. There are big chunks of ice flying everywhere.

We head off into the snow covered countryside. Out of the snow appears enormous lizards whose tails we have to navigate. The other two head off and I make a note to follow them. I am obstructed by the lizards.

I climb over the lizards and then follow them under some railway into a valley / glade with water. There is a massive metallic Iridium dragon. I note that there are other people perched on the stone stream bed.

The dragon tells me not to worry, that we {the dragons} keep this place for human leisure pursuits and that I am always welcome.  There is a knowing that the lizards are also a posh kind of dragon.

I know that I am especially welcome there.

Dream ends

The next journal entry starts 30-1-2011.

“I have just trashed the job at ESA – ESTEC worth a lot of money. {>8000 euros a month tax free}. We don’t have very much money.”

The actual extraction out of contract was not straight forward and the finality took time and effort. K was not pleased.