Tag: Mahayana

Arhats Pratyekabuddhas and Bodhisattvas – Hagiography

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

I have a pet theory that the hagiography of all religions exaggerates and glosses. From knowledge of human behaviour and Chinese whispers, things passed down get embellished so as to confer kudos on the teller, the raconteur. Rarely are things made greyer and more boring. This means that taking things with a pinch of salt might offer some balance.

To the faithful there is nothing quite like a miracle to prove truth and religious figures are given, in narrative, super-human abilities and qualities. These days they would be told with enhanced computer CGI and special effects on a big budget. Bigging up martyrs and buddhas is good PR for the various churches. Who in the past had control of the proles as a raison d’être. The Sacerdotes have always had ritual magic and theatre in their playbook. Simplifying the message to an all fire-consuming hell and blissful pearly-gated paradise could be writ large on the side of big red double decker “Brexit” bus. Nobody could come back to provide a TripAdvisor rating for either holiday destination.

What if all that exaggeration has gotten completely out of hand?

Christianity, depending on flavour has a host of saints. Jesus’ crew, his disciples, are sanctified and portrayed. That depiction has taken place over two millennia. They are represented as holy. When if you think about it, they were learners, disciples, in the act of being taught and trained. Similarly, Buddha’s sixteen {18} arhats are seen as holy, saintly. When they were hanging out listening to Buddha and learning his ideas. It is said they achieved enlightenment. Lessening of burden is enlightenment, full liberation may not be the same as the partial enlightenment.

People pray to the saints and the arhats.

The canon’s of both Buddhism and Christianity were/are written by human beings and therefore by logic are coloured with bias and wishful thinking. There may well be some idealising.

Mahayana promotes the bodhisattva ideal where enlightened or near enlightened beings come back to teach out of the kindness of their hearts for the benefit of all sentient beings. This is seen by some as more worthy. Whereas the haughty arhats are too arrogant to teach, the pratyekabuddhas who do it all by themselves are not sufficiently omniscient to teach. They leave no legacy. They shun the sangha; they are not one of the gang. They are too arrogant, snobby, aloof, to be with normal people. The arhats, perhaps at one with the awesome and austere nature of reality and universe, lack the cosy human compassion are biased against and not as “nice” and the smiling friendly bodhisattva. They cannot be arsed to come back time and time again, the bastards.

People who do not know what these states of consciousness are like, make judgments thereupon. This {scholarly?} interpretation gets incorporated into the ongoing cannon, the creed, the gospel. People like definitions and will roll out comparison between, all knowing, earning bragging rights about something which they do not know. One could look it up in “Buddhism for Dummies”.

Religious thinking likes its “signs”. A rainbow appearing when someone achieves Parinirvana.

What if all these processes are entirely natural, relatively low key and nothing to shout about?

The hagiography diverges from reality…what is natural becomes miraculous. Which may inhibit application. The idea of a miracle is out of reach; the idea of continuous improvement and stepwise attainment is less daunting. Toning it down might increase genuine uptake of practice.,

Status pissing contests are a common human practice and are to be found in religion and science. People like to bullshit each other and pretend to know shed loads.

I have a pet theory that the hagiography of all religions exaggerates and glosses.

My Five Buddhist Incarnations – Dreaming

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

In around 2003 whilst living in London and working as a lecturer in Physical Chemistry at Imperial College in London I started having waking visions of myself dressed as a Buddhist monk / priest. These visions overlaid normal day to day reality and I was able to lecture to a theatre full of ~one hundred students on chemical reaction kinetics or in smaller groups, chemical applications of group theory, whilst these visions were resident. They persisted on the crowded Victoria Line tube trains. I had repeat visions of om mane padme hum tattooed in Sanskrit on my inner forearms. Accompanying these images was/is the sensation of tattoo. These visions lasted on and on for over a year.

I did not mention this to anyone because I thought it would not go down well in the Chemistry department. I thought human resources might not appreciate this and occupational health might be consulted.

I however was pretty sure that this was past life recall.

Obviously, it is impossible to prove scientifically, that any past life recall is real. At best there can be what the courts call, circumstantial evidence. Dreaming comprises some of this kind of evidence.

In 2009 I had a series of visionary telepathic conversations, early in the morning, walking in the woods near Tring with the master Djwhal Kuhl. He told me of five of my previous lives, two of which were Buddhist. He said that I had been a very close disciple of Siddartha.

The dream yesterday has added Nāgārjuna to the list of possible life-candidates.

Irrespective of accuracy or otherwise the theme of scholasticism and scholar runs through all the/my putative incarnations as does the theme of entrepreneurship. I am “on” the second ray, of the Elephant dreaming class and conditioned by love-wisdom, the teaching ray.

One dream suggests that I was Bakula a close disciple of Siddartha who came late to the path after a scholarly life.

Yesterday’s dream suggests some six hundred years later Nāgārjuna. Who was a “founder” of Mahayana and may have taught at Nalanda university.

Another dream has pointed at a saffron trousered Muay Thai trained Burmese / Thai incarnation, a monk/priest/protector.

Then there is dreaming evidence of a Japanese Vajrayana monk incarnation, with poetry.

{The feeling for me is that I also had a Japanese Zen life but no dreams as yet}.

The next two lives were not substantially Buddhist.

Of late there has been increasing “evidence” for a 20th century incarnation as a Tibetan Buddhist. So far there is no evidence of a named individual. If it was a sequential birth then they need to have died before or in early 1964. If it is a shared emanation then there is no strict constraint of time frame.

It is not for me beyond the realms of possibility that I have had five {six} incarnations with a dominant Buddhist flavour and of a non lay orientation.

It is not going to detrimentally affect my career prospects to write about this here and now.

I can just be some crazy eccentric old git living like a quasi-hermit.

“Look at the twp boy over by there…”

.

Gelugpa Wrasse – Dreams and Snippets 21-02-2025

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

The first thing to say here is that what follows is inordinately difficult to verbalize.

Leading up to the last few days and despite numerous appearances of Tibetan based themes in dreaming I have been fairly certain that I have never had a Tibetan-Bhutanese-Nepalese incarnation. In whatever visions or dreams I have had with a Buddhist flavour I have never been wearing the maroon robes of that locality and certainly never any groovy hats.

Nevertheless, the tulku {or nirmāṇakāya} phenomenon has been resident at the periphery. I have never had the Mahayana urge or thought form pertaining to a bodhisattva training journey of coming back for the benefit of all sentient beings, to teach and to aid. This idealised wish form projected onto would be bodhisattvas seems a human thing and potentially prevents beings from leaving when they ought to be exiting the wheel of rebirth. “Please don’t leave us”, is not an empowering or enabling sentiment.

A few days ago, in the twilight between sleep and wakefulness I had a few images of me dressed in maroon monks robes with a yellow hat characteristic of the Gelug lineage of Tibetan Buddhism. I was surprised. It was a “turn up for the books” and does not fit with my hypothetical chronology. The only Tibetan stuff I have felt akin with are the tales of Chögyam Trungpa though I met at a distance Akong Rinpoche. Their relationship was complex if I understand it correctly. I have a hypothesis as to why Trungpa resonated.

What is safe to say is that the thought-forms associated with and to centuries old Buddhist traditions, studied and recited by thousands are firm, almost solid. The lineage has a “mind” all of its own, nurtured by devotees of and with a ruthless and tireless devotion. It exists in the mental and emotional space of humanity. People reciting and chanting for centuries make something almost tangible in a physical sense. The traditions and practice are kept vital and alive by regular enactment, quasi-archaic though they may be. They are alive.

Newtonian mechanics dominated the human psyche to be improved upon around a century ago for microscopic systems. Yet Newton is useful to this day in our everyday reality. These mechanics are a part of the mental space of humanity. They have merit. They work. There is a loose analogy.

This morning, I had a brief dreaming sequence in which I encountered a fish in a tank. The tank was large, beautiful and with coral. The fish was an ocean going wrasse. It introduced it self as a Gelugpa Wrasse. It told me that even if I had been previously associated with the Gelug, there was no place for me therein in this life. Such a thing would be way too disruptive. The wrasse was calm and relaxed. It was just conveying without colouration.

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It said that way back in the 1990s in Switzerland there had been a possibility but life circumstances had scuppered that. “Not to worry”, it said. It showed me some images of Bern.

I struggled to hold more of the dream but the wrasse part remained clear. Fish is the dreaming symbol for awareness or the need to be wide awake. The wrasse was pretty enough though contained in a tank. It was not free.

I am not sure what to make of it.

Last night we watched the Netflix programme “Adolescence” in which life for a family changes dramatically overnight. It was very good and left one with a breathless reminder of how normality can be completely flipped in a matter of hours.

We have had a few flips over the years.

Freaky Friday, an equinox talking with fish again…