  A -> "The Buddha's Not Smiling," by Erik D. Curren |
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Tara Carreon
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 Posted: Fri Mar 25, 2011 10:29 am Post subject: |
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Fifth paragraph of the preface:
| Eric Curren, Buddha's Not Smiling wrote: | | For the past three years, I have been a student of one of the main lamas involved in the controversy, Shamar Rinpoche. Thus I cannot claim to be a disinterested outsider. Shamar even suggested that I write this book. Four books have already come out in the last few years sympathetic to the views of his opponents. [2] These books raised many questions for me about the purity of Tibetan Buddhism, and I am sure they raised the same questions for many others. So it seemed only fair to investigate Shamar's claims and give him a chance to tell his story. The following pages try to disentangle the many knots in the web of claims, counterclaims, and outright deceptions that have come to enshroud the topic of the Karmapa today. |
This concept of "purity of Tibetan Buddhism" interests me. What is "purity"? People use that word all the time to describe religions as a whole, but what does it mean? Merriam Webster says "it's the quality of being pure," and describes a word that arose in the Middle Ages to describe "religious values" of chasteness, immaculacy, innocence, modesty, chastity. As if all those synonyms mean the same thing. As if they mean the same in all religions. As if different religions don't argue about what those terms mean all the time. As if these words reside in a pure realm of Platonian ideals, safe and "pure" from the "impure" world of actions. As if the ideal isn't "proved" in the "application." So we start and end with Plato, and erase all the problems inbetween. The day we are allowed to get away from Plato, please let me know, because on that day, I am going to dance through the streets naked.
But I guess, generally speaking, that means that all the ten million concepts of Tibetan Buddhism all have to have these qualiies -- because one word has become many -- or else "Tibetan Buddhism" isn't "pure." And of course, in Platonian fashion, the actors love to separate their "impurity" from the analysis. Lamas can be "impure" as long as the dharma stays "pure." Except that they are the judges of what is "pure" or "impure" in their religions. Or maybe it's their sects, or their cult.
So let's start with a basic idea in Tibetan Buddhism, which is that women are "impure" because they birth babies that are born into matter -- the evil physical world -- who then suffer, and can't fly through the space and be magicians except in their imaginations. This is a "pure" gnostic idea. But is it "pure"? Well, maybe to a lot of the men who run their little Tibetan Buddhist cults, which in their mind they join together and call the One Great Tibetan Buddhism. And to the Gnostic Nazis. But it's not "pure" to me. |
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Tara Carreon
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| Posted: Fri Mar 25, 2011 11:49 am Post subject: |
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Here's some "purity" from "Tibetan Buddhism" The kind of "purity" that Eric Curren didn't feel it was necessary to talk about. It's so much easier to talk in big generalities that mean nothing.
| Victor and Victoria Trimondi, The Shadow of the Dalai Lama wrote: | The bondage of the earth goddess Srinmo and the history of the origin of Tibet:
The Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara is considered the progenitor of the Tibetans, he thus determines events from the very beginning. In the period before there were humans on earth, the Buddha being was embodied in a monkey and passed the time in deep meditation on the “Roof of the World”. There, as if from nowhere, a rock demoness by the name of Srinmo appeared. The hideous figure was a descendent of the Srin clan, a bloodthirsty community of nature goddesses. “Spurred on by horniness” — as one text puts it — she too assumed the form of a (female) monkey and tried over seven days to seduce Avalokiteshvara. But the divine Bodhisattva monkey withstood all temptations and remained untouched and chaste. As he continued to refuse on the eighth day, Srinmo threatened him with the following words: “King of the monkeys, listen to me and what I am thinking. Through the power of love, I very much love you. Through this power of love I woo you, and confess: If you will not be my spouse, I shall become the rock demon’s companion. If countless young rock demons then arise, every morning they will take thousands upon thousands of lives. The region of the Land of Snows itself will take on the nature of the rock demons. All other forms of life will then be consumed by the rock demons. If I myself then die as a consequence of my deed, these living beings will be plunged into hell. Think of me then, and have pity” (Hermanns, 1956, p. 32). With this she hit the bullseye. “Sexual intercourse out of compassion and for the benefit of all suffering beings” was — as we already know — a widespread “ethical” practice in Mahayana Buddhism. Despite this precept, the monkey first turned to his emanation father, Amitabha, and asked him for advice. The “god of light from the West” answered him with wise foresight: “Take the rock demoness as your consort. Your children and grandchildren will multiply. When they have finally become humans, they will be a support to the teaching” (Hermanns, 1956, p. 32).
Nevertheless, this Buddhist evolutionary account, reminiscent of Charles Darwin, did not just arise from the compassionate gesture of a divine monkey; rather, it also contains a widely spread, elitist value judgment by the clergy, which lets the Tibetans and their country be depicted as uncivilized, underdeveloped and animal-like, at least as far as the negative influence of their primordial mother is concerned. “From their father they are hardworking, kind, and attracted to religious activity; from their mother they are quick-tempered, passionate, prone to jealousy and fond of play and meat”, an old text says of the inhabitants of the Land of Snows (Samuel, 1993, p. 222).
Two forces thus stand opposed to one another, right from the Tibetan genesis: the disciplined, restrained, culturally creative, spiritual world of the monks in the form of Avalokiteshvara and the wild, destructive energy of the feminine in the figure of Srinmo.
In a further myth, non-Buddhist Tibet itself appears as the embodiment of Srinmo (Janet Gyatso, 1989, p. 44). The local demoness is said to have resisted the introduction of the true teaching by the Buddhist missionaries from India with all means at her disposal, with weaponry and with magic, until she was ultimately defeated by the great king of law, Songtsen Gampo (617-650), an incarnation of Avalokiteshvara (and thus of the current Dalai Lama). “The lake in the Milk plane,” writes the Tibet researcher Rolf A. Stein, “where the first Buddhist king built his temple (the Jokhang), represented the heart of the demoness, who lay upon her back. The demoness is Tibet itself, which must first be tamed before she can be inhabited and civilized. Her body still covers the full extent of Tibet in the period of its greatest military expansion (eighth to ninth century C.E.). Her spread-eagled limbs reached to the limits of Tibetan settlement ... In order to keep the limbs of the defeated demoness under control, twelve nails of immobility were hammered into her”(Stein, 1993, p.34). A Buddhist temple was raised at the location of each of these twelve nailings.
Mysterious stories circulate among the Tibetans which tell of a lake of blood under the Jokhang, which is supposed to consist of Srinmo’s heart blood. Anyone who lays his ear to the ground in the cathedral, the sacred center of the Land of Snows, can still — many claim — hear her faint heartbeat. A comparison of this unfortunate female fate with the subjugation of the Greek dragon, Python, at Delphi immediately suggests itself. Apollo, the god of light (Avalokiteshvara), let the earth-monster, Python (Srinmo), live once he had defeated it so that it would prophesy for him, and built over the mistreated body at Delphi the most famous oracle temple in Greece.
The earth demoness is nailed down with phurbas. These are ritual daggers with a three-sided blade and a vajra handle. We know these already from the Kalachakra ritual, where they are likewise employed to fixate the earth spirits and the earth mother. The authors who have examined the symbolic significance of the magic weapon are unanimous in their assessment of the aggressive phallic symbolism of the phurba.
In their view, Srinmo represents an archetypal variant of the Mother Earth figure known from all cultures, whom the Greeks called Gaia (Gaea). As nature and as woman she stands in stark contrast to the purely spiritual world of Tantric Buddhism. The forces of wilderness, which rebel against androcentric civilization, are bundled within her. She forms the feminine shadow world in opposition to the masculine paradise of light of the shining Amitabha and his radiant emanation son, Avalokiteshvara. Srinmo symbolizes the (historical) prima materia, the matrix, the primordial earthly substance which is needed in order to construct a tantric monastic empire, then she provides the gynergy, the feminine élan vitale, with which the Land of Snows pulsates. As the vanquisher of the earth goddess, Avalokiteshvara triumphs in the form of King Songtsen Gampo, that is, the same Bodhisattva who, as a monkey, earlier engendered with Srinmo the Tibetans in myth, and who shall later exercise absolute dominion from the “Roof of the World” as Dalai Lama.
Tibet’s sacred center, the Jokhang (the cathedral of Lhasa), the royal chronicles inform us, thus stands over the pierced heart of a woman, the earth mother Srinmo. This act of nailing down is repeated at the construction of every Lamaist shrine, whether temple or monastery and regardless of where the establishment takes place — in Tibet, India, or the West. Then before the first foundation stone for the new building is laid, the tantric priests occupy the chosen location and execute the ritual piercing of the earth mother with their phurbas. Tibet’s holy geography is thus erected upon the maltreated bodies of mythic women, just as the tantric shrines of India (the shakta pithas) are found on the places where the dismembered body of the goddess Sati fell to earth.
In contrast to her Babylonian sister, Tiamat, who was cut to pieces by her great-grandchild, Marduk, so that outer space was formed by her limbs, Srinmo remains alive following her subjugation and nailing down. According to the tantric scheme, her gynergy flows as a constant source of life for the Buddhocratic system. She thus vegetates — half dead, half alive — over centuries in the service of the patriarchal clergy. An interpretation of this process according to the criteria of the gaia thesis often discussed in recent years would certainly be most revealing. (We return to this point in our analysis of the ecological program of the Tibetans in exile.) According to this thesis, the mistreated “Mother Earth” (Gaia is the popular name for the Greek earth mother) has been exploited by humanity (and the gods?) for millennia and is bleeding to death. But Srinmo is not just a reservoir of inexhaustible energy. She is also the absolute Other, the foreign, and the great danger which threatens the Buddhocratic state. Srinmo is — as we still have to prove — the mythic “inner enemy” of Tibetan Lamaism, while the external mythic enemy is likewise represented by a woman, the Chinese goddess Guanyin.
Srinmo survived — even if it was under the most horrible circumstances, yet the Tibetans also have a myth of dismemberment which repeats the Babylonian tragedy of Tiamat. Like many peoples they worship the tortoise as a symbol of Mother Earth. A Tibetan myth tells of how in the mists of time the Bodhisattva Manjushri sacrificed such a creature “for the benefit of all beings”. In order to form a solid foundation for the world he fired an arrow off at the tortoise which struck it in the right-hand side. The wounded animal spat fire, its blood poured out, and it passed excrement. It thus multiplied the elements of the new world. Albert Grünwedel presents this myth as evidence for the “tantric female sacrifice” in the Kalachakra ritual: “The tortoise which Manjushri shot through with a long arrow ... [is] just another form of the world woman whose inner organs are depicted by the dasakaro vasi figure [the Power of Ten]" (Grünwedel, 1924, vol. II, p. 92).
The relation of Tibetan Buddhism to the goddess of the earth or of the country (Tibet) is also one of brutal subjugation, an imprisonment, an enslavement, a murder or a dismemberment. Euphemistically, and in ignorance of the tantric scheme of things it could also be interpreted as a civilizing of the wilderness through culture. Yet however the relation is perceived — no meeting, no exchange, no mutual recognition of the two forces takes place. In the depths of Tibet’s history — as we shall show — a brutal battle of the sexes is played out. |
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Tara Carreon
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| Posted: Fri Mar 25, 2011 7:51 pm Post subject: |
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| Shadow of the Dalai Lama, by Victor and Victoria Trimondi wrote: | In a further myth, non-Buddhist Tibet itself appears as the embodiment of Srinmo (Janet Gyatso, 1989, p. 44). The local demoness is said to have resisted the introduction of the true teaching by the Buddhist missionaries from India with all means at her disposal, with weaponry and with magic, until she was ultimately defeated by the great king of law, Songtsen Gampo (617-650), an incarnation of Avalokiteshvara (and thus of the current Dalai Lama). “The lake in the Milk plane,” writes the Tibet researcher Rolf A. Stein, “where the first Buddhist king built his temple (the Jokhang), represented the heart of the demoness, who lay upon her back. The demoness is Tibet itself, which must first be tamed before she can be inhabited and civilized. Her body still covers the full extent of Tibet in the period of its greatest military expansion (eighth to ninth century C.E.). Her spread-eagled limbs reached to the limits of Tibetan settlement ... In order to keep the limbs of the defeated demoness under control, twelve nails of immobility were hammered into her”(Stein, 1993, p.34). A Buddhist temple was raised at the location of each of these twelve nailings.
Mysterious stories circulate among the Tibetans which tell of a lake of blood under the Jokhang, which is supposed to consist of Srinmo’s heart blood. Anyone who lays his ear to the ground in the cathedral, the sacred center of the Land of Snows, can still — many claim — hear her faint heartbeat. A comparison of this unfortunate female fate with the subjugation of the Greek dragon, Python, at Delphi immediately suggests itself. Apollo, the god of light (Avalokiteshvara), let the earth-monster, Python (Srinmo), live once he had defeated it so that it would prophesy for him, and built over the mistreated body at Delphi the most famous oracle temple in Greece. |
Well, I just read a story that is awfully similar to this one, in the Gnostics' "Pistis Sophia." There, they refer to the dragon of outer darkness as a male, but obviously that changed at some point in time, and the dragon became female. You wouldn't want to waste a good opportunity to blame a bad thing on a woman. But don't worry -- the whole rest of the book is devoted to a huge female sacrifice of Pistis Sophia. The ancient gnostics -- if the book really IS from ancient times, which is questionable like a lot of these "ancient" texts that were probably written the week before they were "discovered" -- knew how to do female sacrifice -- and take credit for it -- every bit as good as the Tibetans.
| Shadow of the Dalai Lama, by Victor and Victoria Trimondi wrote: | | In European alchemy the coarse starting material for the experiments is known as the prima materia and is of a fundamentally feminine nature. Likewise, as in the tantras, base substances such as excrement, urine, menstrual blood, part of corpses and so forth are named in the alchemic texts, no matter which culture they belong to, as the physical starting materials for the experiments. Symbolically, the primal material is describe in images such as “snake, dragon, toad, viper, python”. It is also represented by every conceivable repulsive female figure — by witches, mixers of poison, whores, chthonic goddesses, by the “dragon mother” so often cited in depth psychology. All these are metaphors for the demonic nature of the feminine, as we also know it from as far back as the early phase of Buddhism. We may recall that Shakyamuni compared women in general with snakes, sharks and whores. |
Those Tibetans really wanted to stick it to the woman, didn't they? They made sure she got ALL the punishments of the universe, and that she NEVER got away from them -- unlike members of the ancient Masonic brotherhood, who you could say a prayer for them, and the Ourorbos Dragon would let them go. BUT THIS TIBETAN WOMAN'S SOUL IS GOING TO BE BOUND FOREVER! Just substitute the word "temple" for "dungeon." Tibetan temples HAD dungeons in their basements, anyhow. So the analogy is pretty much exact.
| Pistis Sophia wrote: | CHAPTER 126
AND Mary continued again and said unto Jesus: "In what type is the outer darkness; or rather how many regions of chastisement are there in it?"
Of the dragon of the outer darkness.
And Jesus answered and said unto Mary: "The outer darkness is a great dragon, whose tail is in his mouth, outside the whole world and surrounding the whole world. And there are many regions of chastisement within it. There are twelve mighty chastisement-dungeons and a ruler is in every dungeon and the face of the rulers is different one from another.
Of the rulers of the twelve dungeons and their names.
"And the first ruler, who is in the first dungeon, hath a crocodile's face, whose tail is in his mouth. And out of the jaws of the dragon cometh all ice and all dust and all cold and all different diseases. This [is] he who is called with his authentic name in his region 'Enchthonin.'
"And the ruler who is in the second dungeon,--a cat's face is his authentic face. This [is] he who is called in his region 'Charachar.'
"And the ruler who is in the third dungeon,--a dog's face is his authentic face. This [is] he who is called in his region 'Archarōch.'
"And the ruler who is in the fourth dungeon,--a serpent's face is his authentic face. This [is] he who is called in his region 'Achrōchar.'
"And the ruler who is in the fifth dungeon,--a black bull's face is his authentic face. This [is] he who is called in his region 'Marchūr.'
"And the ruler who is in the sixth dungeon,--a wild boar's face is his authentic face. This [is] he who is called in his region 'Lamchamōr.'
"And the ruler who is in the seventh dungeon, --a bear's face is his authentic face. This [is] he who is called in his region with his authentic name 'Luchar.'
"And the ruler of the eighth dungeon,--a vulture's face is his authentic face, whose name in his region is called 'Laraōch.'
"And the ruler of the ninth dungeon,--a basilisk's face is his authentic face, whose name in his region is called 'Archeōch.'
"And in the tenth dungeon is a multitude of rulers, and every one of them hath seven dragon's heads in his authentic face. And he who is over them all is in his region with his name called Xarmarōch.'
"And in the eleventh dungeon is a multitude of rulers,--and every one of them hath seven cat-faced heads in his authentic face. And the great one over them is called in his region Rōchar.'
"And in the twelfth dungeon is an exceedingly great multitude of rulers, and every one of them hath seven dog-faced heads in his authentic face. And the great one over them is called in his region 'Chrēmaōr.'
Of the doors of the dungeons.
The angels who watch the doors.
"These rulers then of these twelve dungeons are inside the dragon of the outer darkness, each and every one of them hath a name every hour, and every one of them changeth his face every hour. And moreover every one of these dungeons hath a door opening upwards, so that the dragon of the outer darkness hath twelve dark dungeons, and every dungeon hath a door opening upwards. And an angel of the height watcheth each of the doors of the dungeons,--whom Yew, the First Man, the overseer of the Light,. the envoy of the First Commandment, hath established as watchers of the dragon, so that the dragon and the rulers of his dungeons which are in him, may not mutiny."
CHAPTER 127
When the Saviour had said this, Mary Magdalene answered and said: "My Lord, will then the souls which shall be led into that region, be led through these twelve doors of the dungeons, every one according to the judgment of which it is deserving?"
What souls pass into the dragon, and how.
The Saviour answered and said unto Mary: "No soul at all will be led into the dragon through these doors. But the soul[s] of the blasphemers and of those who are in the doctrines of error and of all who teach doctrines of error, and of those who have intercourse with males, and of those stained and impious men and of atheists and murderers and adulterers and sorcerers,--all such souls then, if while still in life they do not repent but remain persistently in their sin, and all the souls which have stayed behind without, that is those which have had the number of the circuits which are appointed them in the sphere, without having repented,--well, at their last circuit will those souls, they and all the souls of which I have just told you, be led out of [?] the jaws of the tail of the dragon into the dungeons of the outer darkness. And when those souls of the doors of the dungeons have been led into the outer darkness into the jaws of his tail, he turneth his tail into his own mouth and shutteth them in. Thus will the souls be led into the outer darkness.
How to save the souls of sinners.
The Saviour answered and said unto Mary: "If a sinner is deserving of the outer darkness, or hath sinned according to the chastisements of the rest of the chastisements and hath not repented, or a sinning man who hath completed his number of circuits in the changes of the body and hath not repented, -- if then these men of whom I have spoken, shall come out of the body and be led into the outer darkness, now, therefore, if ye desire to remove them out of the chastisements of the outer darkness and all the judgments and to remove them into a righteous body which shall find the mysteries of the Light, that it may go on high and inherit the Light-kingdom, -- then perform this same mystery of the Ineffable which forgiveth sins at every time, and when ye have finished performing the mystery then say:
A summary of the formulæ.\
"The soul of such or such a man of whom I think in my heart, -- if it is in the region of the chastisements of the dungeons of the outer darkness, or if it is in the rest of the chastisements of the dungeons of the outer darkness and in the rest of the chastisements of the dragons, -- then is it to be removed out of them all. And if it hath completed its number of its circuits of the changes, then is it to be led before the Virgin of Light, and the Virgin of Light is to seal it with the seal of the Ineffable and cast it down in whatever month into a righteous body which shall find the mysteries of the Light, so that it may be good, go on high and inherit the Light-kingdom. And moreover if it hath completed the circuits of changes, then is that soul to be led before the seven virgins of the Light who [are set] over the baptisms, and they are to apply them to the soul and seal it with the sign of the kingdom of the Ineffable and lead it into the orders of the Light.
"This then will ye say when ye perform the mystery.
"Amēn, I say unto you: The soul for which ye shall pray, if it indeed is in the dragon of the outer darkness, he will draw his tail out of his mouth and let go that soul. And moreover if it is in all the regions of the judgments of the rulers, amēn, I say unto you: The receivers of Melchisedec will with haste snatch it away, whether the dragon let it go or it is in the judgments of the rulers; in a word, the receivers of Melchisedec will snatch it away out of all the regions in which it is, and will lead it into the region of the Midst before the Virgin of Light, and the Virgin of Light proveth it and seeth the sign of the kingdom of the Ineffable which is on that soul.
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Tara Carreon
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| Posted: Fri Mar 25, 2011 8:23 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | Beneath the fortress are the dungeons where those who ran afoul of the Lamaist theocracy were imprisoned and tortured. In December of 1994, the Potala Place was listed as UNESCO’s World Heritage sites. |
Yeah, dungeons at the Potala, so turn it into a World Heritage Site. I wonder if Auschwitz got the same recognition. Maybe Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo will be turned into World Heritage sites. |
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Charles Carreon
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