Written Assignment Help

paxton

Hi NB Community,

First time poster here but I read the forums quite often. In my first year Intro to Buddhism class, we were just given an assignment to write 2.5page max essay on Vajrayana and Zen Buddhist models. I was wondering if anyone had any pointers or knowledge they would like to share regarding the topic.

Here is the assignment outline:



Any information you guys care to share on the listed topics would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
-Pax

Palzang

You're supposed to cover all that in 2 and a half pages? Better write really, really small!

Vajrayana borrowed tantric techniques that were developed in India long ago. The main idea is that by bringing the so-called mental body into alignment, i.e. the winds and the channels, enlightenment is expedited. This is what is worked on with the higher yoga tantras, such as Tsa-lung, Trekchod, and so forth. What you're doing, essentially, is bringing your entire being into play to reach the goal.

I really don't know what your teacher is talking about with dzogchen and the origin of the universe. It is true that mandalas are symbolic maps of the universe with Mt. Meru in the center and the four continents and their subcontinents surrounding, and that such a mandala has a correspondence to our Buddhanature, or our secret nature. Beyond that I'm not sure what he/she's talking about.

Zen is (to put it perhaps oversimply) a marriage of Buddhism as taught by Bodhidharma, who brought Buddhism into China, and the native Taoist religion. Tao teaches the "still point", which is very similar to the Zen idea of meditative equipoise. It is thought that reaching such a state helps break through the conceptual thoughts in the mind that prevent us from experiencing our "true face", as they put it.

Palzang

paxton

Thank you very much for the reply Palzang.

If anyone else has any information regarding the topic, feel free to share! I will start writing it tonight.

Thanks again.

NamelessRiver

It is best if you get one of those Buddhist encyclopedias. There is one by Robert Irons I think that has mostly what you are looking for. Answering those from the top of my head I would have to say this:

At a time in China there was a southern and a northern school of Buddhism. Shen-hui was from the southern. He established that his teacher, the sixth patriarch of Zen, was part of an unbroken lineage that went all the way to the Buddha and that Zen existed in India. He also criticized the northern school a lot. Apparently the northern wanted a more gradual path, and he wanted a more sudden approach to enlightenment. At a point in history he got royal favors, and his school flourished. After his death, when monks from the Zen tradition got together to determine what were the orthodox teachings of Zen they chose his school, from the South, as the orthodox one.

That is all I know from your questions.