Blog#9: Buddha Minds
Part One: Gautama Buddha
I've never been completely sold on the 'historical Buddha', as he's sometimes called; this, despite spending many years engaged in Buddhist practice. For me,he has always been a source of instruction rather than inspiration. Learned, wise, a teacher and something of a guide, yes. But rich food for dreams, a fire blazing through my imagination; not really.
Maybe it's the flavour of the popularly-accepted life story of the historical Buddha. There are many truths embedded there, but the overall tone is somewhat severe, lacking in fun and humour. In brief, it's short on the emotional element. As an example, there is the episode when the Buddha-to-be disappears in the depth of night to do his enlightenment quest, leaving behind his wife and family without a word. Even when he dies, most of his enlightened followers, the Arhants, just quip "Everything is impermanent" before heading off to look for breakfast. It is left to Buddha's personal attendant, Ananda, to shed a tear.
The Buddha's adopted way of life has never posed much attraction. Wandering around monk-like, dressed in special attire, eating whatever's put in his begging bowl, as it's sometimes called (it's not a begging bowl - Buddha didn't beg. It's a thank-you gift bowl).
Speculatively, such imbalances were recognised in Mahayana Buddhism, which we are informed is a later development in Buddhist history. The feeling and emotional element comes more to the fore with the focus on the Bodhisattva, who manifests total compassion, and whose life is overtly devoted to the assistance of other beings. Devotion-emotion based types of Buddhist practice also emerge.
The historical Buddha as popularly portrayed has particular affinity with the sun. The story comes replete with solar symbolism (there are scholars such as Acharya S who view Buddha as a sun god from the perspective of astrotheology). It is Apollonian in flavour, we could say. Later Indo-Tibetan tantra counters this tendency. Energy, direct experience, action, become the flavour of the day. Theoretically at least, the tantra does away with the cerebral head-banging and over scholasticism which so easily characterise Buddhism, and Apollonian approaches in general. Buddhism is the thinking man or woman's religion, civilised and based upon reason; at least that's how it's frequently interpreted in the modern west. In the tantra, Dionysus finally gets a look in, and Buddhism gets fleshed out into greater balance as Apollo meets his antagonist.
So it's the fantastic characters of the Tantra - the Mahasiddhas and related Tantrikas - who most turn me on. Crazy, wild, unorthodox, provocative, living on the edge of, or beyond the perimeters of, conventional, acceptable Indian society a thousand years ago. It's worth checking out the Mahasiddhas, I suggest. They issue a challenge to Planet Normal in everything they say or do. They touch me.
Part Two: Shenrab Miwoche
The story is that Buddhism arrived in Tibet a full 1000 years or more after the time of the historical Buddha. The inhabitants of Tibet were Bon-pos. The religion of Bon was shamanic, animistic, multidimensional in perspective, and well cognisant of the magical, the mystical, the supernatural.
The king of Tibet, one Trison Detsen (check spelling) invited Buddhism into Tibet as a civilising influence. The Bon-pos, we are told, were wild, unruly, and given to activities such as ritual animal sacrifice. In addition, practice of the dark arts was prolific, with hailstorms being routinely invoked to fall on your naughty neighbour's land; and the rest.
So Buddhism came, and Tibet was a better place; so the story goes, anyway. I retain my disclaimer since, as we are reminded ad nauseam, history is (re)written by the victorious ones.
One fascinating detail about the Bon-pos is that they had their own Buddha. His name was Shenrab Miwoche. Accounts vary, but it is often said that he lived 18000 years ago. Modern matrix scholars will naturally scoff at the idea, but I find it extremely interesting. It puts the life of Shenrab Miwoche back in the time of Atlantis and Lemuria, which fits well with the notion that much knowledge from these places ended up being preserved in Tibet, away from the hurly-burly of the rest of the world.
It is claimed that Tibetan esoteric and tantric practice is the legacy of such civilisations, maintained by those who survived the cataclysms. I fear that, sadly, much has been lost or destroyed, as a result of the Chinese invasion and the general watering down of Tibetan Bon and Buddhism in recent times; but that's another story.
A remarkable feature of Shenrab Miwoche is his life story. Should you search online for his biography, you will quickly get a feeling of familiarity. You have read this before; strange indeed, since until earlier today you had never even heard of Shenrab. Then it will dawn: the story of Shenrab that you are reading is identical to the story of Gautama Buddha, the well-known historical Buddha. It is clear that Buddhist 'authorities' have made a move that would earn approval even in the Vatican. They have simply hijacked the life story of Shenrab, turned him into a Buddha clone, thereby relaying the message that this is the way to enlightenment, the whole way, the only way. And in this manner incidentally leaving Bon as a unique spiritual tradition dead and buried in the sand.
Part Three: Tulshuk Lingpa
Looking at Tibetan Buddhism is like peeling off the layers of an onion. The outer bits are what most people see, the exoteric face. The robes, the ceremony, the exoteric meditations and rituals, the Dalai Lama. Then there is the inside stuff, the interesting stuff. Where consciousness gets a serious work-out.
How much of the real inside to the traditions remains is unknown to me. A lot, I suspect, went up in smoke in an operation similar to that on the library at Alexandria. Maybe some Chinese have kept copies of some esoteric knowledge, I don't know. Many of these knowledge-holders are now dead, and who knows what, if anything, they passed on to other disciples who were ready.
Alexandra David-Neel was a pioneer/ adventurer into Tibet from the west in the 1930s, and she made for good reading for me a few decades back. I always laughed at the title of her great little book 'Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhist Sects'. The teachings weren't secret, as she had put them into a book that anyone could read. And they weren't oral either, since she had written them down. But some of the deeper practices were alive and well during her time, as she relates Tibetans doing g-tummo (inner heat, melting the snows with their bodies), r-lun (rapid walking) and the creation of tulpas, entities created purely through the power of the mind.
It is into this world of the arcane high on the Tibetan plateau that Tulshuk Lingpa was born. 'Tulshuk' means 'crazy', and the quote best associated with his wisdom is as follows: "Don't listen to anybody. Decide by yourself and practice madness. Develop courage for the benefit of all sentient beings." This successfully communicates the essence of the life of Tulshuk Lingpa.
I was first introduced to Tulshuk in early 2020 by a blog buddy, who enquired whether I knew of him and his 'adventures'. The answer was 'no', but I quickly set to correcting this deficiency in my annals of remarkable beings.
There are many magnificent tales from Tulshuk's life, but one remains particularly pertinent. It concerns the beleaguered village of Simoling on the southern rim of the Himalaya. Its inhabitants were waking in the morning to the distressing sight of their limbs and extremities being eaten away and disappearing. Other villagers shunned them, running for their life should any inhabitant of Simoling ('the Place of the Female Cannibal') approach. This all bore an uncanny resemblance to what was going on in early 2020 all around me, as terrified people jumped into the nearest bush, or into the path of an oncoming bus, at my approach during my daily walk.
Into this atmosphere of fear strode Tulshuk Lingpa. The story is told by one of the surviving villagers. 'And then this lama did what no one else had dared: he actually came to our village. We knew we were grotesque. We knew..... fingers, hands, forearms, elbows, feet, knees and legs, noses, ears and lips in various stages of decay and disappearance, slowly eaten by festering wounds -.... the horror of the sight. Like a doctor arriving at an accident scene, he showed not the slightest horror at our disfigurement, handling our wounds and trying to heal them with Tibetan medicine. He climbed the mountain behind the village to the monastery and moved in.'
The story of Tulshuk Lingpa would always bring a tear to my eye; it still does. His spirit is sorely needed during these strange days. It may appear in short supply, though shining through brightly in a small yet increasing number of courageous and insightful individuals.
I can't see Tulshuk Lingpa masking up every time he wants a tin of beans, or queuing up for a shot of toxic shit to be plunged into his arm. I believe that the Dalai Lama has expressed enthusiasm about the novel injections. I have always had reservations about him, and hereby declare that his Buddhism of Tibet bears no resemblance to that of Tulshuk Lingpa or the Mahasiddhas, the other crazy ones. As an official embodiment of compassion, he should be ashamed.
And in case you were wondering: Tulshuk rids the village of the disease. Story with happy ending.
The books: Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhist Sects - Alexandra David-Neel
A Step Away From Paradise - Thomas Shor
Get them on Book Depository: https://www.bookdepository.com
And now for something completely different....
Current Affairs
It is not a prime purpose of this blog to present 'news' updates. This is done very well by an increasing number of sources. And there is now a plentiful collection of reports outlining in clear, statistical detail, how the entire bug story is a criminal fraud. Step-by-step exposes. A very good one is on the Daily Expose, below: 'It's all a lie...', May 19th 2021. Off-Guardian I also find to be often excellent for properly reported information:
And, from the Benjamin Fulford report, 17/05/2021, this:
"Last week slave Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga of Japan.... was asked the following question by 'opposition MP' Renho:
'People are arriving in ambulances at hospitals around Japan and are not being admitted... The situation is getting worse..... So Prime Minister if the Olympics are held and both Japanese citizens and Olympic athletes arrive at the hospital at the same time, who will be given priority?'
Instead of answering the question, the slave Prime Minister read a script about how Pfizer was going to supply vaccines to Olympic athletes so it would not affect vaccine supplies in Japan. Renho then angrily asked for the Prime Minister to be shown the proper page on the script to read from."
Now, I am not suggesting that you believe everything Fulford says. But there, in a nutshell, we can see how the entire dark pantomime unfolds..... Script-reading in almost every nation on Earth.
So it's all there, to share with those who wish to have a look. Most people appear to prefer to do anything - get ill, die, literally, anything - rather than have their basic view of existence disturbed...
