Thursday 11:00 p.m.
"Similarly, the Mahāparinibbāna Sutta (D 16), too, records how the Buddha, after declaring that even he, as an awakened being, has to pass away, admonishes us through Ānanda:
Therefore, nanda, you should live as islands unto yourselves,15 being your own refuge, with no one else as your refuge, with the Dharma as an island,16 with the Dharma as your refuge, with
no other refuge."
This is from an essay by Piya Tan. You can get it on Wikipedia at the bottom of the entry under his name. It's about bad gurus and bad religious friendships. The section on Chogyam Trungpa is riveting.
I keep coming across stuff about the Trungpa guy. Drinking himself to death and behaving in the worst possible way ... Lama Yeshe says in a CD I have that his students loved him because he would let them drink and smoke (and hump each other!!)(and give each other diseases!!), but when he died, he was able to be in samahdi for the whatever number of days. This is the between life and death scene somehow where you don't develop rigor mortis.
I'd like to know how that works!! Maybe it's a great inadvertent teaching... don't crawl up anyone's backside just because they can do the juju. Or, you don't have to be in the slightest bit holy to train your mind though I should think restraint must be a huge, huge help at least in the preliminary stages.
Someday a great buddhist novelist should write a novel about that guy, or based on that story. Unfortunately, it's not for such as me. I don't have that kind of talent!!
The first meditation today shows progress. I'm doing a bit with the symbols and chakras, but not much. As long as I don't fung up completely, I think my mind is moving slowly (because I am not holy or restrained in my habits!!) towards samadhi. Of course, I don't know what samadhi is. But my mind is going somewhere very nice indeed.
The sun is shining. It is a beautiful day. Many times when I was writing during my holidays, I used to watch the beautiful day from where I was typing and have to type on. This morning the curtains are closed in my room. But it's worth it. it really is!
6 comments:
You omitted to say whose backside you should crawl up then!
Have you tried a Google comparison between "great buddhist novelist" "great Bavarian humorist" and "great Australian politician"?
Considering how little sunshine we got this year it seems silly to close it out. Go out and meditate in the sun.
Practice looking into the light so when you get to samahdi you will know which direction to travel and not get lost.
Marie! The sunlight on your eyelids does feel great! I could look at the sun with my eyeballs rolled up. Straight eyeballing the sun might not be such a good move right now! Hotboy
Albert? What could a Google comparison be? The foreman's. Then you can get fifty poms in the back of a mini because that's what they do! Hotboy
Hotters, I may need to come back later to make sense of all that.
PS - I think even the whites of your eyes can get sunburnt. Don't do it. Angie was using my sunlamp, and took the goggles off just for a moment to watch Neighbours on the TV. She got engrossed, and was still watching half an hour later. I had to drive her to casualty.
Albert? I think you should try staring into the sun first, just so we know. Hotboy
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