“Trying to run away is never the
answer to being a fully human being. Running away from the immediacy of your
experience is like preferring death to life.”
Pema Chodron
“Many people
have found in Buddhism—and in its suspicion of mental and intellectual
abstractions—a practical way to resist the “power of ideologies, systems, apparat,
bureaucracy, artificial languages, and political slogans.” But such is the hold
of secular ideologies in the modern West that a mainstream intellectual
invoking Buddhism would more often than not provoke the kind of derision
reserved for anything vaguely religious or spiritual. It is a grim reflection
on the life of the mind in the new century that while apparently respectable
intellectuals recycle selective historical “facts” and line up to serve the
manipulators of reality in the widespread trahison des clercs, a subtle
moral philosophy such as Buddhism cannot speak its name in the public sphere.”
Pankaj
Mishra, The disappearance of the spiritual thinker,
Tricycle , Spring 2007, pp. 62 –
67.
“. . . Buddhist thinkers from Shakyamuni on
have presented their counterculture through rigorous debate and dialogue with
the religious and scientific traditions of each civilization which has hosted
them. Seeing the Vajrayāna through Tibetan eyes, then, involves comparisons
with the world history of spirituality and science. “
Joseph Loizzo,
Vajrayāna Buddhism In Tibetan Perspective. A Spiritual Science of Civilized
Happiness.
THE LIFE OF FREDA BEDI [HERE]
H.H. THE 16TH KARMAPA IN LONDON
The Tantric View of Life as
A New language
“Thousands of people may live in the
world but we cannot call it a fellowship until they know each other and have
sympathy for each other. A true community is a place where truth and wisdom are
its light, and where the people know each other and trust each other and have
things in common, and where there is a harmonious organisation. In fact,
harmony is its life and its happiness and its meaning.”
Mahaparinirvana
Sutta
-
Maitri:
South African Buddhist Quarterly,
No. 7, Cape Town, 27th March 1979
“The art form of the future is the
group. The intelligence and benevolence we need can only come from the group,
from associations of men and women seeking to struggle against the impulses of
illusion, egoism and fear.”
Jacob
Needleman, The American Soul
[
HERE]
"Everywhere on earth there are people
of our kind. That for a small part of them, I can be a focal point, the nodal
point in the net, is the burden and the joy of my life."
Hermann
Hesse, private letter, 1955.
The cycle of existence is of unknown origin.
No beginning is known for the beings who run and move (from one existence to
another), hindered (to recognize their true Being) by their lack of intrinsic
awareness and fettered by the craving (for continued existence). For this
reason, frustration has been experienced for a long time; pain and decay have
been experienced and the cremation ground has been filled.”
46 - Pali Cannon:
Samyutta-nikaya, Pali Text Society Edition, N II, 179
Herbert
V. Guenther:
“It is my conviction that Tantrism in its Buddhist form is of the utmost
importance for the inner life of man and so for the future of mankind. If the
life of the spirit is to be invigorated, there must be a new vision and
understanding, and there is hardly anything of such value as the study of the
Buddhist Tantrics. For Tantrism is founded on practice and on an intimate
personal experience of reality, of which traditional religions and philosophies
have given merely an emotional or intellectual description, and for Tantrism
reality is the ever-present task of man to be.”
Herbert
V. Guenther,
The Tantric View of Life,
Shambhala Pub;ications, Boulder & London, 1976, p.ix.
This was written in
1976. More recently, Joseph Loizzo writes:
“With their literature encoded in symbolism and
their practice veiled in secrecy, India’s diverse Tantric traditions have
provoked an array of speculative readings by modern Indian and Western
scholars. This is an ideal time to explore the philosophy of the Buddhist
Tantras, since the last decade has witnessed a renaissance in Tantric
scholarship based on unprecedented access to Vajrayāna Buddhist traditions
preserved in Tibet. Viewed from the Tibetan perspective, the Tantras appear not
as a fossilized curiosity but as a living paradigm of contemplative science and
civilization.”
Joseph Loizzo, Vajrayāna Buddhism in
Tibetan Perspective. A Spiritual Science of Civilized Happiness, p.2.
“The second basic theory of Kālacakra
physics expands on the physicalist insight that the bodies of animate beings
emerge from the inanimate matter of the world and so tend to mirror the
patterns and rhythms of their environment. Expressed in the dictum, “as
without, so within,” this theory of macrocosm-microcosm nonduality is elegantly
formulated in the interweaving of Kālacakra astrophysics and
psychobiology.”
Joseph Loizzo, Kālacakra and the
Nālandā Tradition: Science, Religion, and Objectivity in Buddhism and the West,
p.359
“. . . Buddhist thinkers from Shakyamuni on
have presented their counterculture through rigorous debate and dialogue with
the religious and scientific traditions of each civilization which has hosted
them. Seeing the Vajrayāna through Tibetan eyes, then, involves comparisons
with the world history of spirituality and science. “
Joseph Loizzo, Vajrayāna
Buddhism In Tibetan Perspective. A Spiritual Science of Civilized Happiness.
What Is Dream Yoga and How Do You Do It? By Andrew Holecek, April 21,
2016. Adapted from Dream
Yoga: Illuminating Your Life Through Lucid Dreaming (Sounds True,
2016). Andrew Holecek completed a traditional three-year retreat under the
direction of Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche and is the author of The Power and the Pain, Preparing to Die, and Dream Yoga: Illuminating Your Life
Through Lucid Dreaming. Article online [HERE]
APOLOGY TO THE NAGA REALM [HERE]
ASTROLOGY AND DIVINATIONLongchenpa’s Bardo Aspiration - Erik Pema Kunsang
[
HERE]
Interview with Dr Nida
Chenagtsang on Tibetan Tantra and Medicine [
HERE]
Ester Bianchi, The
Tantric Rebirth Movement in Modern China: Esoteric Buddhism Re-Vivified By The
Japanese And Tibetan Traditions, Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum
Hungaricae, Vol. 57, No. 1 (2004), pp. 31-54
Ancient Anatomical Drawings in Tibet, The
British Medical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 2600 (Oct. 29, 1910), pp. 1361-1362
Per-Arne Berglie, To
Tell the Future by Using Threads — and Some Reflections on Tibetan Divination,
Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, Vol. 43, No. 2/3 (1989), pp.
171-176
Alexander Berzin, An
Introduction to Tibetan Astronomy and Astrology, The Tibet Journal, Vol. 12,
No. 1 (Spring 1987), pp. 17-28
Charles Burnett, East
(and South) Asian Traditions in Astrology and Divination as Viewed from the
West, Extrême-Orient Extrême-Occident, No. 35, Les Astres Et Le Destin
Astrologie Et Divination En Asie Orientale / Stars and Fate Astrology and
Divination in East Asia (2013), pp. 285-293
Geoff Childs, Michael
Walter, Tibetan Natal Horoscopes, The Tibet Journal, Vol. 25, No. 1 (Spring
2000), pp. 51-62
Michael Erlewine,
Tibetan Astrology, The Tibet Journal,
Vol. 37, No. 2 (Summer 2012), pp. 31-72
Herbert Franke, The
Taoist Elements in the Buddhist Great Bear Sūtra (Pei-tou ching), Asia Major,
Third Series, Vol. 3, No. 1 (1990), pp. 75-111
HERBERT V. GUENTHER @ WIKI
Herbert Guenther, Three, Two, Five [ HERE]
Dreams
Come True
[HERE]
Siegbert Hummel, The
sMe-ba-dgu, the Magic Square of the Tibetans, East and West, Vol. 19, No. 1/2
(March-June 1969), pp. 139-146
Berthold Laufer, Bird
Divination among the Tibetans (Notes on Document Pelliot No. 3530, with a Study
of Tibetan Phonology of the Ninth Century), T'oung Pao, Second Series, Vol. 15,
No. 1 (1914), pp. 1-110
Michael J. North, A
Mongolian Manual of Astrology and Divination, The U.S. National Library Of
Medicine [ONLINE HERE]
Charles Ramble, The
Assimilation of Astrology in the Tibetan Bon Religion, Extrême-Orient
Extrême-Occident, No. 35, Les Astres Et Le Destin Astrologie Et Divination En
Asie Orientale / Stars and Fate Astrology and Divination in East Asia (2013),
pp. 199-232
Tulku Thondup, The Terma Tradition of
the Nyingmapa School, The Tibet Journal,
Vol. 15, No. 4, Shakabpa Memorial Issue: Part I (Winter 1990),pp. 149-158
Giuseppe Tucci, Oriental Notes: I The
Tibetan «White-Sun-Moon» And Cognate Deities, East and West, Vol. 14, No. 3/4
(September-December 1963), pp. 133-145
Chinese and Tibetan
Esoteric Buddhism edited by Yael Bentor, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and
Meir Shahar, Tel Aviv University
Bringing together
leading authorities in the fields of Chinese and Tibetan Studies alike:
Chinese and Tibetan
Esoteric Buddhism engages cutting edge research on the fertile tradition of
Esoteric Buddhism (also known as Tantric Buddhism). This state of the art
volume unfolds the sweeping impact of esoteric Buddhism on Tibetan and Chinese
cultures, and the movement's role in forging distinct political, ethnical, and
religious identities across Asia at large. Deciphering the oftentimes
bewildering richness of esoteric Buddhism, this broadly conceived work exposes
the common ground it shares with other Buddhist schools, as well as its intersection with non-Buddhist
faiths. As such, the book is a major contribution to the study of Asian
religions and cultures. Contributors are: Yael Bentor, Ester Bianchi, Megan
Bryson, Jacob P. Dalton, Hou Chong, Hou Haoran, Eran Laish, Li Ling, Lin
Pei-ying, Lü Jianfu, Ma De, Dan Martin, Charles D. Orzech, Meir Shahar, Robert
H. Sharf, Shen Weirong, Henrik H. Sørensen, and Yang Fuxue and Zhang Haijuan
Absorbing items on Buddhist Research is posted at my Page on Facebook:
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