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Dogs will eat anything. Your 'Home Science" sounds like a very useful subject (unless botched by useless teachers.) We had something similar, gender segregated -- boys were doing something in the mechanical shop and girls were knitting and sewing. I had neither the talent nor the patience for either, so my knitted goods self-limited to a scarf just big enough for a cat (should a cat agree to wear a scarf), and I also sewed a pretty nightgown that would probably fit someone very asymmetrical, with one arm three times the circumference of the other and one leg about a foot longer.

I like this video on the Don't Know Mind

From what I understand Guru Rinpoche (Oddiyana) and Amoghavajra (Sogdia) were both of Greco-Persian ethnicity but brought Vajrayana to Tibet and China respectively. Vajrayana was largely influenced by Kashmiri Shaivism and the shentong view of some schools is largely indistinguishable from Advaita Vedanta. There is so much that is similar, I'm not discounting Vajrayana - I'm a Dudjom Tersar practitioner.

It is impossible to know the real truth.

If you want to communicate and be understood, especially on a forum where everything is in words. Living in one's own head and following spiritual techniques that pop up in one's mind seems to me to be both unhealthy and unwise.

Mod Note: Discussion with Lairg moved here. Sorry, I botched the title, so it has the same title but I moved it to General. Please remember this is the Daoist section: A focus on Daoist teachings and practices as expressed through such as Taiji, Qigong, Bagua, Neigong, Zuowang with sub-forums to cover textual studies.

Does reality always fit human concepts?

My dog actually did eat my homework once ..... Subject was 'Home Science'

There is a photo provided. Test the energies

'Alchemy' brings 'em in ! Alchemy massage ..... alchemy this or that workshop ... Alchemy DJ .... 'Alchemy ' dance party !

granted it is an inaccessible part of the world, I dont think they were as isolated culturally as you might think, particularly in the 600-1000 CE timeframe when buddhism took over. at that time, tibet was a massive empire, which included the trade arteries through the tarim basin, an important juncture in the silk road and abutting the abbisids, as well as into india. they would have had access to a lot of cultural interchange at that time (otherwise, they'd still be practicing bön...) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibetan_Empire

interesting. nyingma was "founded" (if that is such a thing) at the height of the abbasid caliphate. the persian world at that time was highly academic and more liberal that most would think. as I understand, most of western scientific knowledge--medicine, astronomy, mathematics, etc.--has its roots in the ancient persian world, although our history books have overwritten much of their discoveries with western names. imagine trying to do multiplication tables with roman numerals, instead of the arabic, base-ten ones we use today. al-khwarizmi, who wrote the treatise al-jabr (i.e. "algebra"), was an interesting character. the extent that the buhddist knowledge was brought in from persian texts (rather than sanskrit) does not mean that they were not buddhist texts, since the abbasid academics would have translated and studied those texts. buhddism was widespread in the califate, and promoted in certain castes at different times. perhaps the abbisid-buhddists had their own treatises and understandings, although I suspect the parchment they were written on has long decayed, or was destroyed by the mogols. you have to wonder how much ancient knowledge was lost in the destruction of the baghdad library. one thing is for sure, the ancient world was highly interconnected, much more than most would think. so it should not be surprising that people were sharing ideas, methods and techniques across cultures, and that for a particular school of thought, that there is usually no one, single dogmatic source for the knowledge. the extent that vajrayana borrowed knowledge and techniques from cultures other than ancient india, does not mean that it is not buhddism, nor impinge on its validity as a course of study.