some stuff
Nov. 12th, 2018 10:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cattasallaSo much has changed recently! Perhaps the biggest is my decision to give up Facebook, at least for now. I've really become aware of how much selfing I do there, and how ultimately, at this point, it's not a healthy or liberating place to be. I find myself wanting Likes, or getting in arguments, or otherwise just obsessively scrolling through looking for the occasional gem amidst so much schlock. The good things I get out of it, news and connection with friends, I can get elsewhere, the latter much more satisfyingly by cultivating personal relationships in the old fashioned way! At any rate, that might end up meaning more posts here...
I've also completed reading both The Buddhist Religion: A Historical Introduction and Buddhist Thought. These have filled in a lot of gaps in my knowledge. Overall, my impression of the value of most of Mahāyāna thought is as an antidote to when Nikāya schools are taking themselves too seriously. The extension of the ideas of conditioned arising, dependent origination, and so forth into a doctrine of emptiness (in both the Madhyāmaka and Yogācāra expressions) seems primarily valuable to me for using as a philosophical method for breaking up any attachment to anything discovered through the practice of satipaṭṭhāna which one might be tempted to reify into ultimate or objective reality. I'm still principally guided by the Crowleyan notion that was so important to me when I was 18, "by doing certain things, certain results follow; the student is warned against attributing philosophical validity or objective reality to any of them".
The other thing that has caught my attention, to the point where it's distracting me when I do my sitting practices, is Tantra. With regard to Tantra, I am finding two responses. First, and most disturbing mentally, is my memories of interactions in the past with Tantric practitioners who exude arrogance and make it very clear that their practice is definitely the superior practice but also everyone needs their own. The kind of person who refers to the Inferior Vehicle but insists that it's not derogatory, just a plain and neutral description as anything that's not Mahāyāna as inferior. Of course, part of what's going on there is my own reaction to them, as well as my identification with the Pali tradition which mainly comes out of my own familiarity with it. So I need to learn to navigate that when dealing with their egos. That is, I need to not do my own selfing around the topic. And, really, since I don't believe in rebirth, the distinction of bodhistattva vs arahat path is kind of irrelevant to me; my primary concern is liberation from dukkha through awakening, and whatever teachings and practices get me there are fine.
Which brings me to the next response. I am quite simply skeptical of tantric methods. From what I've gleaned, key to the tantric procedure is a rejection of renunciation. I am not convinced that is going to effectively work for a person to become liberated. I mean, it's hard for me to believe that a man who once crashed his car while drunk, and moreover drank himself into an early grave, was a fully awakened and liberated being! This could easily be a mote in my own eye, though. What I have seen claimed to be the province of tantra is the idea of integrating and working with what are typically regarded as "defilements", instead of attempting to suppress or repress them. That is something I can agree with; it's also the understanding of practice that I have from teachers like Gil Fronsdal and Thich Nhat Hanh. I really haven't spent enough time with the Ajahns or Sayadaws to have a real sense of whether that's part of modern Theravāda or if that's something introduced from Zen. At any rate, I have purchased Lama Tubthen Yeshe's Introduction to Tantra. Overall, it seems that proper practice requires a teacher, anyway, which I don't have access to, but I'll go ahead and mine that for anything useful.
I've also completed reading both The Buddhist Religion: A Historical Introduction and Buddhist Thought. These have filled in a lot of gaps in my knowledge. Overall, my impression of the value of most of Mahāyāna thought is as an antidote to when Nikāya schools are taking themselves too seriously. The extension of the ideas of conditioned arising, dependent origination, and so forth into a doctrine of emptiness (in both the Madhyāmaka and Yogācāra expressions) seems primarily valuable to me for using as a philosophical method for breaking up any attachment to anything discovered through the practice of satipaṭṭhāna which one might be tempted to reify into ultimate or objective reality. I'm still principally guided by the Crowleyan notion that was so important to me when I was 18, "by doing certain things, certain results follow; the student is warned against attributing philosophical validity or objective reality to any of them".
The other thing that has caught my attention, to the point where it's distracting me when I do my sitting practices, is Tantra. With regard to Tantra, I am finding two responses. First, and most disturbing mentally, is my memories of interactions in the past with Tantric practitioners who exude arrogance and make it very clear that their practice is definitely the superior practice but also everyone needs their own. The kind of person who refers to the Inferior Vehicle but insists that it's not derogatory, just a plain and neutral description as anything that's not Mahāyāna as inferior. Of course, part of what's going on there is my own reaction to them, as well as my identification with the Pali tradition which mainly comes out of my own familiarity with it. So I need to learn to navigate that when dealing with their egos. That is, I need to not do my own selfing around the topic. And, really, since I don't believe in rebirth, the distinction of bodhistattva vs arahat path is kind of irrelevant to me; my primary concern is liberation from dukkha through awakening, and whatever teachings and practices get me there are fine.
Which brings me to the next response. I am quite simply skeptical of tantric methods. From what I've gleaned, key to the tantric procedure is a rejection of renunciation. I am not convinced that is going to effectively work for a person to become liberated. I mean, it's hard for me to believe that a man who once crashed his car while drunk, and moreover drank himself into an early grave, was a fully awakened and liberated being! This could easily be a mote in my own eye, though. What I have seen claimed to be the province of tantra is the idea of integrating and working with what are typically regarded as "defilements", instead of attempting to suppress or repress them. That is something I can agree with; it's also the understanding of practice that I have from teachers like Gil Fronsdal and Thich Nhat Hanh. I really haven't spent enough time with the Ajahns or Sayadaws to have a real sense of whether that's part of modern Theravāda or if that's something introduced from Zen. At any rate, I have purchased Lama Tubthen Yeshe's Introduction to Tantra. Overall, it seems that proper practice requires a teacher, anyway, which I don't have access to, but I'll go ahead and mine that for anything useful.