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Advising Buddha
lobster
Veteran
in Philosophy
From another thread . . .
but how cool would it be to be able to talk to the Buddha himself, eh?
Talking to an attribute, imagined Boddhisatvah, the Buddha if sufficiently versed in sutra is quite possible. Not in some spooky ouija board sense but as a practice. You can do it with a favoured monk or teacher, without their presence. A dualistic advisory service. Question and answer ones inner Buddha. I have done it with mandala and other Buddha representatives such as teachers and cushions . . .
Who ya gonna call?
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Comments
They do this in Tibet I think. I am never going to try it though. According to Neel it was a bit spookey in the end I think I remember. Her created Avatar Lama began assuming so much personality and form that he appeared without being called and even others could see him.
Thanks but no thanks.
/Victor
Woah......
I vote with @federica and....
With former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins who once commented on a radio interview, "Meeting your favorite author is one of life's most reliable disappointments."
Now who's gibbering!
m m m . . .
The practice of talking to and from aspects of self is well developed in some Buddhism.
http://www.tsemrinpoche.com/tsem-tulku-rinpoche/buddhas-dharma/being-one-with-your-yidam.html
Many here will practice the invoking, arrival and sitting as a Buddhist representation. At the end of the experience the representation is dismissed.
Madame Alexandra David-Neel, a distinguished French academic and explorer who died in 1969, reported that while camped in the Tibetan highlands, she was visited by a young painter she knew vaguely from a previous stay in Lhasa. The man had a particular obsession with one of the many Tibetan gods. For years he had meditated daily on the deity and painted its image many times. As he entered the camp, Madame David-Neel claimed she saw a misty representation of the god hovering behind him.
She was so intrigued by this phenomenon that she studied Tibetan teachings about tulpas and eventually decided to create one for herself. To this end, she visualised a cheerful brown-robed monk, based loosely on Friar Tuck in the Robin Hood legends. After weeks of effort, the imaginary monk became so vivid that he appeared to her as if he were physically present – an induced hallucination.
But then, says Madame David-Neel, the monk began to turn up when she was not trying to visualise him. Furthermore, his appearance was changing: he grew thinner and developed a sly expression. When other members of her camp asked about the ‘strange little lama’ she decided the time had come to destroy her creation… and battled for weeks before finally managing to do so.
Read more on how to make a ghost? :hair: .
http://www.newdawnmagazine.com/articles/how-to-make-a-ghost-magic-and-mysticism-in-tibet
I have enough problems with the skeletons in my closet, TYVM.....
All sounds a bit too supernatural to me!
Hmmm... A tought struck me...
Do you think it is possible to maybe, instead of some lama or yidam focus very intenly on mmm lets say, i dont know, a Rihanna poster maybe?
You know just to have a tiny ...eeer.. chat on ... eeer... buddhism... kind of? You think?
.
/Victor
If there is a moral to be gleaned here, it's to not mess with what you don't know enough about..
Yes, well developed, indeed. It used to be a bigger part of my sitting years ago, but I admit to using it as a triage now. Buddha/Buddha nature/Bodhisattvas. Never did the ghost work ( wait, the aboved mentioned would be considered that, no? lololol)
Our guide at the Temple has touched on it briefly..The concept was easy for me to understand, and I've always been a visualization person. It helped me a lot, back in the day. And like I said, still now, when I just can't bring the mind back...it's a quick band aid to approach/look at the situation if I don't have the time to stop myself.
@federica But...I have already chosen the poster and everything...
And to put it in sutta terms. The benefit of meditating on a Rihanna poster is threefold.
Since the object of focus is pretty captivating I have a hitherto unparalleled shot at achieving jhana...
I have a perfectly legit reason to be staring at a Rihanna poster even though my woman is around and
I have a perfectly legit reason to be staring at a Rihanna poster even though my woman is around
/Victor
I LOOOVE Alexandra David-Néel!!! She's my idol and role-model (except for the fact that I am a total hedonist and she was more the ascetic type, hhmm).
Vegetarian, feminist, anarchist, devil-may-care adventuress, opera singer, Buddhist to a tee, Scorpion (just like me), a flamboyant and superlative character before her time. She travelled up and down the Asian continent for almost twenty years and was the first white woman to be admitted in Tibet. She was 100 when she died.
Her book "Buddhism: its doctrines and its methods" is a quaint but thoroughly brilliant introduction to Buddhism, which she learned first-hand during her long years of living in Tibet.
There is plenty of bibliography on her and a very beautiful film based on her life, "J'irai au pays des neiges," which as far as I know can only be viewed in French and German, but highly recommended if you have the chance.
I read her (one of her) book(s) about her travels in Tibet. Do not remember the title anymore. But many things stuck in memory. I'll look for the film.
.
Oh well in that case, it's ok then - fire away!!
If you use Rihanna as a personification of Tara or as an exploration of the transience of beauty all well and good.
http://www.wildmind.org/mantras/figures/greentara
Funny that we can be that independent?
Visualisation to physical appearance, verifiable by others, not just sensitives, spiritualists, the gullible or unwell is not common. If that is your experience all well and good. Often sounds like mind floss to me . . .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ectoplasm_(paranormal)
@lobster I guess as always with everything. It can be used or abused.
But if you read the link I provided some things were reproduced by scientific experiments. So it is not just bogus.
But in a dhamma sense it is still mind floss.
I like female bodhisattva's, and was thinking about studying green Tara in a bit more detail, you know get in touch with my feminine aspect. I am sure there are more girl bodhi's out there than I realise, but then they are probably helping me more by staying out of sight and not distracting me! ... \ lol / ...
m m m . . .
Part of the potential within non spooky Yidam practices, is to explore the nature of an attribute for example the compassion of Avalokiteshvara.
http://www.dharma-haven.org/tibetan/chen-re-zig.htm
. . . or to resonate with healing Buddhas, wise Buddha emanations and so on.
If one creates a mental visualisation or has a shrine statue it is quite possible to use them as a source of imaginary dialogue. The idea that they have to or should appear as visions is not required outside of Bollywood, Hollywood and popular culture . . .
Does the innate Buddha Nature have a voicing? An expression? A contacting capacity? Of course. Is this a dualistic practice? Sure.
I am not all out into yidam practice, but I have a very strong affinity with Green Tara.
I have a thangka in my altar and images of her all over the house.
@anataman, my son will probably agree with you on the distracting effect of Green Tara's bodily manifestation. He has already pointed out to me several times in no subtle wordery how positively impressed he is with her feminine attributes.
One...
Two...
Three...
Four images of tara, with more of a 'westernised' imagery.
I tend to focus on the last one...
Actually, @federica, the last two pictures you show, including the one I display in my avatar, are images of Kuan Yin, by Chinese artist Zeng Hao, and appear in Alana Fairchild's "Kuan Yin Oracle," a lavishly illustrated set of cards with guidebook.
The third image, especially, has often been confused on certain sites with Green Tara.
I particularly like the 4th one @federica - it is so tranquil and distinctly embodies the feminine without being 'sexual'
All the Buddha Lotus Babes are related. Starting as Kali\Durgha, they partially split into Tara and Chenrezig, then merged with Taoist deities to become Quantum Ying (that should be Quan Yin but I like what the intellisense-less has done) . . . and then Kannon.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guanyin
I like the sweetness in the smile of this Green Tara. It's also the one I have the most over the house, and no wonder, my son's favourite:
http://www.reikiaccess.com/Varanasi-India-Green-Tara-shankargallery.jpg
This is the Japanese figurine of Kuan Yin / Kannon that overlooks our dining-room table.
I tried to visualize a Buddha once, but all I got was a giant rabbit who said his name was Harvey and wanted to know if Edward was somewhere around.
Harvey, still a great film, was a pookah Simply a manifestation from a Celtic wisdom tradition.
In Sufism there is khidr
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khidr
Christians, right up to the most devout mystics pray to a personification.
. . . and now back to Buddha manifests . . .
I also forgot, it's Elwood P Dowd, not Edward.
"My mother used to say to me, 'In this world, Elwood, you must be oh so smart or oh so pleasant.' Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant. You may quote me."
Exactly so.
In Yidam practice, aspects of the dharma are given a series of personifications. It is similar to the single person forms in martial arts. We are preparing or awakening the being to its innate abilities. We can fight ourselves, others or ignorance . . .
So for example how do we connect to compassion, which for some of us is an abstraction? How do we enable compassion's unfolding?
We personify compassion as an attribute which we visualise, connect to and resonate with:
http://www.kagyu-richmond.org/chenrezig.html
http://www.dharma-haven.org/tibetan/chen-re-zig.htm