Apech

Most Buddhist Dzogchen teachers are Nyingmapa which upholds the Prasangika madhyamika - which is a kind of ultimate scepticism regarding the reification of anything and thus emptiness is emphasised.

but…but … what do I do if my talents are far from modest?

Brother Luke as always another pearl.

Complete means literally 'full' and a 'system' is an arrangement of parts to make a whole. A complete system would be a like a once and for all method for enlightenment, like a kind of mega-manual which contained all the answers. This in itself is I think a) impossible and b ) undesirable. In fact I don't think Buddhism (or any other genuine path such as Daoism and so on) is a system at all. Even though people spend their best efforts to make it so. Fundamentally you can't capture the absolute in a finite (or set of finitudes). I once saw a documentary about a Zen sect which held that if you could walk a particular (literal) path wearing a very large and heavy hat - it was a very long walk which few had attempted - without assistance then you would achieve Buddhahood. The documentary showed one young chap attempt this - and he more or less succeeded - and at the end was declared a living Buddha. This is a kind of rudimentary example of believing in a defined method, step by step, for enlightenment. It is tosh of course but is the kind of thing people like to believe. Its the same kind of thing as when you see people prostrating their way long distances to distant temples - these are exercises which someone might undertake (and all to the good quite often) but they have no automatic result. Buddhism is a bit prone to this kind of thing - repeat this mantra a million times and hey presto. No it doesn't work. I'm not saying that there are no benefits in anything like this but simply a system or method is only a kind of training to help develop confidence. And that the goal itself is beyond the conceptual framing of any system. Buddhism or buddhadharma is not static. This can be easily seen by looking at how it moved from culture to culture and through time adapting to circumstances but without loosing it's essence as dharma. People like to claim it became contaminated through this process but that is not true. Although it is fair to say in this Kali Yuga there is a continual tendency for entropy to cause things to break down. Very often in Buddhist history there was a need for a great master to put things straight where corrupt practices and beliefs had intervened. But people mistake adaptability for contamination. In Buddhism you take refuge in the three jewels. Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. The most important of these is the Buddha. And in this case it is the Buddha's enlightenment itself in which you are taking refuge. So the highest appeal, if you like, is to the realisation that the Buddha had - that which made him the Buddha. This realisation is beyond concept and even personality. In a way you are taking refuge in the truth that perfect liberation and perfect wisdom is real, for all sentient beings. This is not temporarily true or subject to change or updating. From the earliest times people paid homage to this fact, through various forms of practice such as the circumambulation of stupas and so on. The Buddha's realisation was complete and does not require updating because it will remain true no matter what we discover through neuroscience or whatever.

I don't know of Warder particularly but he seems to belong to a particular class of British academic who while they made great contributions to 'Indology' and the like, indulged themselves somewhat, as do the current batch of Oxford people like Gombridge, in allowing themselves to 'objectively' have a superior knowledge of Buddhism than Buddhists themselves. I would suggest that the reason 'Zen folks' like to quote 'the unborn mind' is because it relates closely to actual realisations achieved through Zen practice. I think it is a fundamental mistake to replace actual practice and realisation with academic skepticism and 'objectivity' (although they are useful things some of the time) - because the Western academic approach is based on Protestant scriptural criticism and analysis. One of the mistakes western scholars made on studying dharmic religion was to project onto it the same kind of desire for original correctness and not see the developed path as a whole.

i’m a very boring cat once I get going.

Seriously?

I could argue it is, or I could argue it isn't - which would you like?

I remember everything - unfortunately - 'sexcapades', genderwarz, Buddhawarz ... KAP/Kunlun ... it seems gentler now - maybe we're all just older and bit calmer.

Yes I would have said Dzogchen - of both the Buddhist and Bon varieties. It became very popular because of Namkhai Norbu I think.

I think we may be going round in circles here, so I'll leave it. Best wishes in all you do!

"There is an Unborn, an Unoriginated, an Unmade, an Uncompounded; were there not, O mendicants, there would be no escape from the world of the born, the originated, the made, and the compounded." Udana 8:3 Khuddaka Nikaya Emotions as such are the ground in which we work - because human beings are 90% (?) emotional in their actions. Insight meditation is (partly at least) to see those emotions and other mental activity against the background of the mind/nature as consciousness itself (one way of putting it). Examining the intricacies and details of emotions is part of the process of unpicking their nature - just that. Buddhism is not static. It has over the last 2500 years migrated to different countries and cultures and developed forms of expression to suit the psyche of the people there ... like Zen in Japan for instance. Being adaptable does not mean incomplete. There are a very great many forms of technique, some are helpful others not so much, depending on the practitioner.

Discuss. Follow on from the other thread (you know the one I mean)

I think in this thread there is a fundamental conceptual mistake being made. That, being that the Buddha was presenting a model of reality. Other systems do this - like vedanta - but the Buddha specifically didn't. This did not prevent of course the many schools of Buddhism producing their own subsequently. Buddhism does use world models like the mandala of the abhidharma - Mt Meru and the four continents and so on - but this is symbolic of the universe and the Dharma does not depend on it being correct. There is no Mt. Meru and yet the sky doesn't fall down. Strictly speaking the Dharma is (and only is) the realisation or awakened nature of the Buddha post enlightenment. Which he himself said is not directly expressible. The teachings of the dharma are vast - traditionally 84,000 in variety - not because the truth varied but because the audience did. Different people needed different approaches to becoming awakened. The Buddha himself compared what he had taught to a handful of leaves compared to all the leaves in the forest. What is written down in the Pali Canon is incomplete - because it is a finite collection of accounts. Written down some hundreds of years after his death and subject to the preferences and editorship of those who compiled it (who were by that time scholastic monastics). But the Dharma is not incomplete in the sense which is being implied in this thread i.e. that some things could be discovered later which would alter or add to it. That is because the Buddhas awakening was complete. Nothing is added and nothing is taken away from it. Or to put it another way - anything discovered later like say, the existence of quarks is only significant if it leads to awakening - to the same complete awakening of the Buddha - if it does not, it is not dharma it is dross.

the dominant philosophical framework at the time of the Buddha was samkhya - there were others but the sramana sages tended to use terms from it.

I love it when you talk in French

good

He worked with Samkhya

its a quote from a song

I found out today, we’re going wrong.

Stange brew, kill what’s inside of you.

But fruity ...

The Buddha used whatever beliefs were current in order to teach dharma. Clinging to the aggregates is valid. Also there are some things which are true in a relative sense but not in an absolute sense - so yes he might have said things which we know to be factually inaccurate today but it makes no difference to the dharma.

Emotions are linked by the identification of self with compounded phenomena. This is clinging. The Buddha did not propose an ontological analysis of the nature of the world but just worked with the current interpretations of his day. Hence Mount Meru and so forth. It makes no difference whatsoever if these descriptors of the world are true or not.

yes but it is irrelevant to his teachings whether it is complete or not