[color=#0000FF][i]Mod’s note: Another thread about Tibetan Buddhism exists but the OP limited it somewhat in scope: forumosa.com/taiwan/viewtop … 6#p1458085. I’ve started this thread to account for the possibility of more critical, or any other relevant discussion.
If you were not interested in using this forum as a platform to push your organisation’s anti-Tibetan Buddhism agenda, I wouldn’t bother calling you out on your ludicrous claims.
I suggest you stick to the dogmatic mumbo-jumbo, which, as you pointed out, I’m not interested in reading, let alone opposing.
[quote=“ādikarmika”]…I asked you to name the emperors who were supposedly engaging in tantric sex orgies.
I also asked you to name the tantric traditions into which they were initiated.
And I asked you to name their Tibetan tantric gurus…[/quote]
See how you focus on the subjects of the merest trifles instead of the crucial issue:
For example, when a shepherd notices that a wolf has cloaked itself within his flock of lambs, he will immediately bash the wolf and drive it out of his flock, without worrying about the cloak’s size, material, brand or design, right?
Would anyone tell the shepherd to be “tolerant”?
This Bodhi Way is telling the readers what true Buddhism is, and what Tantric Lamaism is when occasion arises.
By revealing the truth about Tantric Lamaism, I am acting in the same way as the child in the King’s New Suit;
I am simply pointing out the fact that sexual practice of lamas violates Buddha Sakyamuni’s teachings, and therefore such a practice should not be deemed as Buddhism. It is as simple as that.
The issue is not about being disrespectful or so, please don’t mix up the issue.
It is about the truth behind the term.
Thank you.
[quote=“buddhism”]For example, when a shepherd notices that a wolf has cloaked itself within his flock of lambs, he will immediately [color=#0000FF]bash the wolf[/color] and [color=#0000FF]drive it out of his flock[/color] , without worrying about the cloak’s size, material, brand or design, right?
Would anyone tell the shepherd to be “tolerant”?[/quote]
While I do understand that you are an unfortunate victim of Zhengjue indoctrination and manipulation, if you stopped bashing Tibetans for a moment, you might realise that they are not wolves but people like you and me. In fact, in my experience, most of them are good people, though like any cross-section of human society, there are of course a few frauds and opportunists among them.
Moreover, the rest of us aren’t sheep, and we certainly aren’t members of your flock. We are smart enough to recognise the frauds and steer clear of them. We don’t need intolerant people like you to bash all Tibetan Buddhists with your big stick.
The Chinese government does a good enough job at that already.
But you don’t reveal any truths. It’s just references to irrelevant articles, quotations from anonymous blogs, and stuff that you made up.
That’s why you can’t come up with any evidence when asked to substantiate your ridiculous claims.
Actually, it’s not that simple, and you know it.
Remember that it’s not just the psychosexual practices of tantric Buddhism that you dismiss as non-Buddhist, but the whole Tibetan Buddhist tradition.
It was you, remember, who made the absurd claim that even though you and the Tibetans followed the same scriptures, the Tibetan versions were non-Buddhist because their translators were not enlightened (unlike the translators of the Chinese versions.) forumosa.com/taiwan/viewtopi … 0#p1373016
Your position is so obviously ridiculous, that one does have to wonder what the motives of your organisation really are.
The issue is not about being disrespectful or so, please don’t mix up the issue.
It is about the truth behind the term.[/quote]
Somehow, I was afraid my proposal would have been too radical for someone as blindly dogmatic as you.
What are these “Rambling of Askew Arrows” for?
What have happened to your English semantic basics?
Tantric Lamaism ≠ Tibetans
An example is an example!
My goodness, you sure can do much better than these sorts of rambling of askew arrows.
While I do understand that you are an unfortunate victim of Zhengjue indoctrination and manipulation, [color=#BF0000]if you stopped bashing [/color][color=#FF0000]Tibetans[/color] for a moment, you might realise that they are not wolves but people like you and me.
Moreover, the rest of us aren’t sheep, and we certainly aren’t members of your flock. We are smart enough to recognise the frauds and steer clear of them. [/quote]
[quote=“buddhism”]
The issue is not about being disrespectful or so, [color=#BF0000]please don’t mix up the issue.[/color]
It is about the truth behind the term.[/quote]
Rambling of Askew Arrows is the title of a new book to be published by the Foundation to refute the heretical doctrines propounded by a certain lama.
Seeing the fact that ādikarmika’s ramblings also deserve the new title, so I daringly take it to fit this occasion!
Thank you for your feed back, in fact, I expect you to do much better!
[quote=“buddhism”]Tantric Lamaism ≠ Tibetans
An example is an example![/quote]
Of what?
Could you please clarify what the wolf in your example is supposed to signify.
Who or what are you metaphorically bashing?
Is it Tibetan Buddhism (sorry, “Lamaism”), Tibetan Buddhists, or both?
If it were only the religious tradition, somehow disembodied from its practitioners, why does your organisation put up large signs saying “Tibetan Buddhism is not Buddhism; Lamas are not Buddhists”?
I hope not.
It is telling, however, that your question implies that you are bashing Ole Nydahl.
What for?
For simply teaching something that he and his followers consider to be a form of Buddhism, yet which doesn’t come within the purview of your own narrow definition of Buddhism?
Is it because your beliefs about enlightenment are “true”, but Nydahl’s are mistaken?
I know next to nothing about Nydahl, but I’d hazard a guess and say that he probably thinks many of your beliefs are mistaken. However, I’d be surprised if he wanted to bash you (metaphorically speaking, of course) or count you as non-Buddhist for holding them.
I suggest that you go out and meet a few Tibetan Buddhists. They are generally quite decent people, really.
I think you’ll find that outside of your organisation, intolerance and bigotry among Buddhists is the exception rather than the rule.
[quote=“ādikarmika”]…I suggest that you go out and meet a few Tibetan Buddhists. They are generally quite decent people, really.
[/quote]
I fully agree with your statement here, I personally knew some lamas when I was in Europe, we were friends.
It’s not the persons, it’s the religious doctrines they are in and this religion will keep on attracting more ill-informed people into it with the name “Buddhism.”
That’s what it is all about this issue.
Don’t talk about someone you hardly know about then.
Did you ever wonder why the friendship went cold after you converted to Zhengjue and joined their anti-Tibetan Buddhism crusade?
Do you think it could have anything to do with the fact that an attack on the things that people closely identify with such as their culture and religious beliefs is tantamount to a personal attack?
It must be reassuring for Tibetan Buddhists to know that you are only bashing Tibetan Buddhism, not Tibetan Buddhists themselves.
(BTW, tantra isn’t a doctrine. It’s just a kind of meditative practice, which is less important – your acceptance of the Jonangpas, who are doctrinally aligned with your sect yet practice the Kālacakra tantra, is a tacit admission of this fact.)
I just wanted to know why you’re bashing Nydahl. You didn’t say.
[quote=“ādikarmika”]…
.[/quote]
As mentioned several times earlier on, my posts have never meant to be personal; my focus (on the Lama subject) is purely on the fact of Tantrism that under the guise of Buddhism.
Also the fact that many Tantric Buddhist novice are unaware of the truth regarding Tantric Buddhism and have thus been deceived and misled all along. And the general public, unaware that Tantrism is not a real part of Buddhism, have been blaming Buddhist masters and Buddhism for the “sex scandals” that have occurred at Tibetan Tantric cultivation centers. Their Tantric practice and misdeeds tarnished the image and reputation of Buddhism in countless occasions.
Of course, as I have emphasized, everyone is free to choose his religion, and it will serve him better if an individual can have some general knowledge about that religion. Don’t you think so?
Some extra readings for the weekend, a link created by an ex-Tibetan Buddhist
extibetanbuddhist.com/ TIBETAN ‘BUDDHISM’ IS LAMAISM, A THOUSAND YEAR OLD CULT OF THOUGHT CONTROL
“Thirty years inside the cult of Lamaism as a western, Tibetan Buddhist, about the average life span of a Tibetan in pre 1959 Tibet; three decades that I believed I was a Buddhist, a non-theist, and on my way to the realization of a higher consciousness , more compassionate and free….”
"…Three decades in Tibetan “Buddhism” I studied with many of the ‘celebrity lamas’ and had teachings from many of the minor ones. This included those trained in Tibet , such as Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, and later with his notorious Regent who spread AIDS among his students, also CTR’s son, the Sakyong, the “Goldman Sachs” Lama….”
[quote=“Buddhism”]Some extra readings for the weekend, a link created by an ex-Tibetan Buddhist
extibetanbuddhist.com/ TIBETAN ‘BUDDHISM’ IS LAMAISM, A THOUSAND YEAR OLD CULT OF THOUGHT CONTROL[/quote]
Was the purpose in posting this link to make your own diatribes look like the epitome of common sense?
According to the site, “Tibetan Lama cult members and Dalai Lama groupies” have infiltrated prestigious American universities and Silicon Valley global corporations as part of their conspiriacy for “world conquest” and the establishment of a worldwide Buddhocracy headed by the “religious tyrant”, the Dalai Lama, under which we will all be enslaved by the “thought-control” techniques of Lamaism. People are unaware of this because they have been “programmed by the western controlled media”
Nothing in the blog’s “About Me” page convinced me that the putative author, Christine Chandler, is a real person. She looks very much like a fictitious creation of the CCP.
Here are a couple of clues:
When ordinary Tibetans living in Tibet are referred to, they are always called “Chinese Tibetans”.
And this: “The West has … very stubbornly and foolishly ignored the Chinese government’s warning about the Dalai lama being a ‘wolf in sheep’s clothing’”
Your posts and your personal website clearly indicate that you are nothing but a troll and a Beijing stooge, incapable of anything resembling intelligent discourse on either Buddhism or Tibet, and who treats this forum simply as a platform to push your pro-China, anti-Dalai political agenda.
Actually, Googling of Christine (or Chris) Chandler and “Trungpa Rinpoche” will show that there is actually such a person who was a member of Trungpa’s entourage and a caretaker for his autistic son (Google images turns up at least one photo of Chris with Trungpa’s son), who became disillusioned with the predatory sexual practices of some of the leaders in the spread of Tibetan buddhism into the West. She has posted some fairly articulate posts on that subject on a number of message boards, and those posts seem to be genuine. There are also some rather more strident posts that left me, too, wondering whether her name/writings had been partially commandeered by others, or whether she simply grew more adamant in her convictions against exploitative practices. I tend to think she is genuine, though.
So how come there aren’t any accounts of these shocking experiences mentioned on the blog?
I haven’t searched any forums for posts by Christine Chandler, which according to Rotalsnart, “seem to be genuine”, but one of the things that makes a post seem genuine to me is the voice of personal experience.
However, despite being very extensive, as far as I can tell, Ex Tibetan Buddhist is completely lacking in actual reports of the blogger’s own personal experiences. To me, the whole project therefore lacks authenticity.
Normally, on this kind site we would expect the disaffected ex-cult member to tell us about his or her experiences of being manipulated/abused/brain-washed etc. We would expect to read detailed reports of things that were said or done to him/her, specifics of particular events that were turning points. That is, the blogger wants to put out in the open things that are not otherwise publicly known. But no. As far as I can tell, there’s nothing on the site that is actually new or original or cannot be found on the other similar sites that Buddhism occasionally likes to draw our attention to.
If the apparently real Christine Chandler who took care of Trungpa’s own son is the same person who authored the Ex-Tibetan Buddhist blog, I find it suspicious that there is nothing at all that looks like a first-hand account of the close encounters she must have had with Trungpa. Don’t tell me she wants to avoid presenting Trungpa in a bad light.
That said, I am nevertheless willing to concede that there may be a real nutcase called Chrsitine Chandler who seriously believes that Tibetan lamas, aligned with multinational corporations, are plotting to establish a Global Buddocracy under which we will all become thought-controlled slaves of Lamaism.
I don’t think we need to worry about her or the immanent enslavement too much.
I don’t think you are being fair to Ms. Chandler. My impression is that in her process (along with her husband Robert Chandler) of shedding their long-and-deeply-assumed Tibetan Buddhist identity after some very negative experiences with elements of the Tibetan Buddhist community in the United States, she has turned for support to, and been influenced by, writings that address some negative elements of Tibetan Buddhism. Evidently, her thinking has been influenced by the writing of the Trimondis (see the Shadow of the Dalai Lama by Victor & Victoria Trimondi - aka Mariana and Herbert Röttgen at trimondi.de/SDLE/Contents.htm ), which has been discussed previously on this board. Regardless of what one thinks of the Röttgens’ work or slant, I don’t think that is sufficient grounds for inferring that Ms. Chandler is a CCP mouthpiece, or a nutcase.
I don’t think the blog’s author is being fair to American academics.
“She” gives a long list of prestigious American universities that have apparently been infiltrated by “Dalai groupies”, yet fails to cite a single example from an academic work that even suggests that scholars at these institutions have lost their academic independence.
Look beyond the by now well-known reports of the activities of a few opportunistic and predatory lamas and ask yourself whose political interests would be furthered if genuine well-researched scholarship on Tibet were devalued or delegitimised – research that may contradict official narratives when it shows, for instance, that “apart from a very thin layer of privileged Tibetans, the beneficiaries of Tibet’s unbalanced economic development are almost entirely Chinese” (p.302, Authenticating Tibetucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520249288) to cite just one of many such examples.
I can’t belive I am defending Tibetan Buddhism, but all the original Chrinstine Chandler stories points out is that Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche was not a good Buddhist monk, certainly not one who lives by the code of Buddhist monks. However, that’s hardly a secret. She simply pointed out there are people within the one branch of Tibetan Buddhist traditions that often went out of bounds and there may have been cover ups to keep it quiet (not very successfully). People making ethical and moral mistakes, shocking… oh, wait, it happens every freaking day. How does that negate the actually teachings of Tibetan Buddhism? If that were the case, then we should probably denounce Catholicism as well, with all those cover ups of child molestation…
AFAIK, he gave up celibacy when he was relatively young, but he didn’t give up wearing monk’s robes until he was about 30. That is, soon after his car accident.
Having read it, I accept that Christine Chandler is a real person who had a major falling out with a certain section of the Shambhala community. As far as I can tell, her main disagreement was with Sakyong and some of the innovations that he tried to implement, which she and others saw as altering his father’s “vision”. That’s understandable.
However, if she really is the same person who authored the Ex-Tibetan Buddhist blog, what caused her to go from reasonable criticism of Sakyong to writing long tracts of wild anti-Dalai Lama, anti-Tibetan Buddhist, propaganda? (And just because some of what she says is true, don’t think for a moment it’s not propaganda.)
It doesn’t add up.
Is she still a Buddhist, albeit not a Tibetan one? If so, which tradition of thought control does she now follow?
Has she abandoned Buddhism completely? If so, why doesn’t the blog have anything to say about that?
(Maybe she joined Zhengjue; that could explain it.)
[quote=“On Aug 27, 2011, BigJohn”]
Yes, there is a tradition of Tantric Buddhism in Tibetan Buddhism, but it is not the common practice in Tibetan Buddhism, whatever references you can drag up.
So, you can complain against certain non-mainstream forms of Tibetan Buddhism, but this is not the same things as saying that all Tibetan Buddhism or most Tibetan Buddhism contains these practices.
Even within those parts of TB that are focused on the Tantric side, you have presented no evidence that the sexual element is usually or often coerced.
Basically, you need to fine tune your argument so that it is not against Tibetan Buddhism but against people who abuse it for sexual reasons.[/quote]
This circus is in its third year, and “Buddhism” is still propagandizing for the sect referred to as Zhengjue while ignoring all of the above. At least i have to give him points for persistence… his masters will be pleased with him?
