Spiritual Teachers

[django]

I think there's a fine line between someone who genuinely has something that needs to be shared about spirituality and someone who just wants their opinion to be dominant.

Submitting to someone elses idea of what is right without thoroughly examining the basis of their teaching seems inherently wrong to me, I admire the Buddha saying to examine what he taught to see if it was true, not just to accept it, slavish acceptance is what the Christians and the muslims demand, I suspect Buddhists don't require slavish acceptance.

Still we do need some sort of guidance. As far as I can see ideally we would come to be guided from within, but that's a lot trickier to set up than just blindly submitting to a dominant spiritual opinion.

[Centered]

If one professes from an all-knowing attitude, then what's left to learn?

I believe being humble and learning, as well as teaching is a good balance in this reality.

[naturesflow]

Originally Posted by django

I think there's a fine line between someone who genuinely has something that needs to be shared about spirituality and someone who just wants their opinion to be dominant.

Submitting to someone elses idea of what is right without thoroughly examining the basis of their teaching seems inherently wrong to me, I admire the Buddha saying to examine what he taught to see if it was true, not just to accept it, slavish acceptance is what the Christians and the muslims demand, I suspect Buddhists don't require slavish acceptance.

Still we do need some sort of guidance. As far as I can see ideally we would come to be guided from within, but that's a lot trickier to set up than just blindly submitting to a dominant spiritual opinion.

I prefer not attaching to labels when it comes to life and movements of life in myself and others. So for me its more about openness to listen and allow the inward reflective shifts to naturally support what wants to be opened and made known to self.
When a shared union comes together whether it be two or more people, its the openness to allow what is, to move through yourself, that supports one to listen and adapt the sharing as their own awareness and guide. What you take in will move in you as you need for you. What moves outside of you, if held lightly and without resistance, abled to be listened to as it is, can open one naturally to the space within themselves, that may need the "activation" for something else in yourself connected. We are all seeds of potential through all life, so no matter what life is being and doing, your own guide within you will source what it needs more naturally in this way. This is effortless being, effortless sharing and not attaching, or being designed by others, but designed by your own uniqueness that houses everything within you. What you are as the seed of potential can be filtered through any other seeds of life as it is, if one is open to notice itself as that life when it wants to be noticed and moved in you in some way.

[Jeremy Bong]

Originally Posted by django

I think there's a fine line between someone who genuinely has something that needs to be shared about spirituality and someone who just wants their opinion to be dominant.

Submitting to someone elses idea of what is right without thoroughly examining the basis of their teaching seems inherently wrong to me, I admire the Buddha saying to examine what he taught to see if it was true, not just to accept it, slavish acceptance is what the Christians and the muslims demand, I suspect Buddhists don't require slavish acceptance.

Still we do need some sort of guidance. As far as I can see ideally we would come to be guided from within, but that's a lot trickier to set up than just blindly submitting to a dominant spiritual opinion.

I know what you're pointing at my posts. I paste them here to let you or others to see , whether I'm exaggerated to what I have said.
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That's Hinduism practice. So it's obviously a Hinduism, instead to call it --- Buddhism. Their practicing are totally different from the teaching of Buddha Sakyamuni. And their founder Gods are demons who are staying in the cellars in jungle (because they fight me when I say they're not Buddhism.....). So how to consider to name it as Buddhism is ridiculous.

And Buddha Sakyamuni never considered it as Buddhism teaching because their "Buddhas" produced by them has a low level of dharma-subtlety abilities and they're not staying with or at pureland of Buddha Sakyamuni group.

I'm a spirit-Buddha but they fight me. So can a true Buddha fight a Buddha? And they're influenced by alien beast of the standing up green lizard staying underneath their temple in Tibet in the spiritual realm. They're never not to relate with the bad spirits. And they (Lama) like (or practice) to see rebirth as an honor but Buddha Sakyamuni teaching is to stop to rebirth as in the Samara.
L
My viewpoint is they can call them as Buddhism or Buddhist only when they're following the teaching of Buddha Sakyamuni. But you can't mix with a different religion and different practices and say, they're from Vajrayana Buddhism in India. That means from India they're following the concept of other religions but not Buddhism anymore. And their results are totally different from Buddhism practices. Can a Buddhist using spells and incantations or insignia to bewitch or hypnotize their followers in order to control them? That's evildoings. That's against Buddha teaching of empathy, compassion, unconditional love.... ways of belief.
L
Buddha Sakyamuni is the founder of Buddhism so how to consider him as a Buddhist? It's like Jesus Christ isn't a Christian. And his teaching is different from Shamanism. He has his own way of teaching ,so that has to be considered as a role model or role symbol of this Buddhism. Other than that is nothing more deliberately mystifying or adding on it. If the followed Buddhism is an abuse children as their final practice. I'm not to say personal abuse of children. I'm saying as a practice and that's a fact of Tibetan Buddhism or Dzogchen as YabYum for their highest practice in their religion. So you think that that's occasionally happening or religion practicing? That makes the differences.

Or can we say this way, it's because Tibetan Buddhism or Dzogchen is practicing of YabYum sex then all Buddhist or Buddhist monks have to practice YabYum as a Buddhism religion practice? The answer is, NO. That's no more a Buddhism religion belief. And we can't serve two philosophys of different ideas as one philosophy of one religion and that isn't a small differences. That totally changes the outlooks of the original spiritual belief and principle of personality and direction carving for uplifting the religion.
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They're practicing of images when they're having YabYum sex activities. That's totally a low level of practice. And their main purpose is to controlling others or their followers. That's they'll bewitch or hypnotize to control others. They're trying to do this joke to me when they're fighting me endlessly. Their Buddhas' images are not from Buddha Sakyamuni side of Buddha's images. So it's a different practice differ from Buddha Sakyamuni killing of images when they appear inside him.

[Imzadi]

Originally Posted by django

I think there's a fine line between someone who genuinely has something that needs to be shared about spirituality and someone who just wants their opinion to be dominant.

Submitting to someone elses idea of what is right without thoroughly examining the basis of their teaching seems inherently wrong to me, I admire the Buddha saying to examine what he taught to see if it was true, not just to accept it, slavish acceptance is what the Christians and the muslims demand, I suspect Buddhists don't require slavish acceptance.

Still we do need some sort of guidance. As far as I can see ideally we would come to be guided from within, but that's a lot trickier to set up than just blindly submitting to a dominant spiritual opinion.

I think the term "teacher" may not be the most accurate definition for those among us who genuinely share and exchange spiritual insight. They may serve as guides, pointers, and reminders etc. but they are not necessarily "teaching" anything by way of demanding adherence to a spiritual opinion. They guide, point, and remind us that our answers and what we seek already lies within ourselves and our own process of SELF discovery. Of course there are many tools and practices that can be used to support the spiritual process that could be "taught" per se, but then those are only tools. :)

[Jeremy Bong]

(I paste it here for more people to see and it isn't written by me but a person who is cheated by the so called Tibetan Buddhism teaching).


Writer (June Campbell) was a Tantric sex slave

For years June Campbell was the `consort' of a senior Tibetan Buddhist monk. She was threatened with death if she broke her vow of secrecy. But then enlightenment can be like that.
Paul Vallely Wednesday 10 February 1999
Feet of clay? No, it was a different part of the anatomy - and of all too fleshly substance - which caused the trouble. But, I suppose, you don't expect Tantric sex to be a straightforward activity. Then again, sex of any kind isn't really what you're planning when you become a celibate nun.

It was, said June Campbell as she began her lecture, only the second time she had been asked to give a talk to a Buddhist group in this country since her book, Traveller in Space, came out three years ago. Small wonder. The topic of her talk was "Dissent in Spiritual Communities", and you don't get much more potent types of dissent than hers. For she not only revealed that she had for years been the secret sexual consort of one of the most holy monks in Tibetan Buddhism - the tulku (re-incarnated lama), Kalu Rinpoche. She also insisted that the abuse of power at the heart of the relationship exposed a flaw at the very heart of Tibetan Buddhism.

This was heresy, indeed. To outsiders, the Rinpoche was one of the most revered yogi-lamas in exile outside Tibet. As abbot of his own monastery, he had taken vows of celibacy and was celebrated for having spent 14 years in solitary retreat. Among his students were the highest-ranking lamas in Tibet. "His own status was unquestioned in the Tibetan community," said Ms Campbell, "and his holiness attested to by all."

The inner circles of the world of Tibetan Buddhism - for all its spread in fashionable circles in the West - is a closed and tight one. Her claims, though made in a restrained way in the context of a deeply academic book subtitled "In Search of Female Identity in Tibetan Buddhism", provoked what she described as a primitive outpouring of rage and fury. "I was reviled as a liar or a demon," she said during a public lecture last week at the non-sectarian College for Buddhist Studies in Sharpham, Devon. "In that world he was a saintly figure. It was like claiming that Mother Teresa was involved in making porn movies."

But it was not fear of the response which made her wait a full 18 years before publishing her revelations in a volume entitled Traveller in Space - a translation of dakini, the rather poetic Tibetan word for a woman used by a lama for sex. It took her that long to get over the trauma of the experience. "I spent 11 years without talking about it and then, when I had decided to write about it, another seven years researching. I wanted to weave together my personal experience with a more theoretical understanding of the role of women in Tibetan society to help me make sense of what had happened to me."

The practice of Tantric sex is more ancient than Buddhism. The idea goes back to the ancient Hindus who believed that the retention of semen during intercourse increased sexual pleasure and made men live longer. The Tibetan Buddhists developed the belief that enlightenment could be accelerated by the decision "to enlist the passions in one's religious practice, rather than to avoid them". The strategy is considered extremely risky yet so efficacious that it could lead to enlightenment in one lifetime.

This is different, it's their final highest practice in their religion. That's the same as YabYum sex practice with many sex partners. They're Buddhist Lama or monks of Tibetan Buddhism or Hinduism Buddhism teaching. A total different type of Buddhism teaching. That's far away from Buddha Sakyamuni teaching. Or they're not or no more a Buddhism religion anymore.
L

[django]

Originally Posted by Imzadi

I think the term "teacher" may not be the most accurate definition for those among us who genuinely share and exchange spiritual insight. They may serve as guides, pointers, and reminders etc. but they are not necessarily "teaching" anything by way of demanding adherence to a spiritual opinion. They guide, point, and remind us that our answers and what we seek already lies within ourselves and our own process of SELF discovery. Of course there are many tools and practices that can be used to support the spiritual process that could be "taught" per se, but then those are only tools. :)

So many of the tools and practices don't seem to lead where the teacher/opiner promises, it's just such a mess in the field of spirituality, and this goes back centuries.

Muhammad decided that an angel was talking to him, and the supposed angel said a whole lot of stuff that seemed to be in favour of Muhammad. And billions of people take him as a teacher. Paul did the same for Christianity, thought he had a direct line to Jesus and his opinions have held sway for millenia.

These guys just had opinions, and apparently opinions can be very powerful, and can dictate what entire nations believe. But their opinions are not necessarily the truth.

Thousands of teachers have now set up in the West, each claiming to know the truth, and they promote their opinions as the truth, and will gladly try to take others there, but more likely than not it is the blind leading the blind and naked, and both are heading straight for the ditch.

Truth is more likely to be found within, but where would you find the right tools to find that truth?

[Imzadi]

Originally Posted by django

Truth is more likely to be found within, but where would you find the right tools to find that truth?

You are correct that Truth is found within and a tool that is often used by many to look inward is meditation. We all meditate in one fashion or another whether we go running, swimming, dancing, painting, writing etc. Sometimes people prefer to practice a particular form of meditation such as a Za Zen style which is simply staring lightly at a wall for an hour or so. This is a very useful and cheap tool that anyone can use and the instruction is simple. I am also a dancer and I dance nearly everyday as a form of meditation and spiritual expression that connects me to my own Inner Truth. Dance and other forms of art are definitely some of my favorite tools to use on my spiritual adventure of SELF discovery. I think a simple and effective way to begin to connect to one's own Internal Truth is finding the passion and drive within our Being and letting it guide us. I imagine everyone would come across various tools and experiences that they either keep or discard along their own paths as they continue their spiritual evolution. What tools do you use? :)

[Gem]

Originally Posted by django

So many of the tools and practices don't seem to lead where the teacher/opiner promises, it's just such a mess in the field of spirituality, and this goes back centuries.

Yes, the false promises are a problem in the real life sense of inciting temptation and craving. A good rule of thumb for me is 'a promise is a lie'.

Muhammad decided that an angel was talking to him, and the supposed angel said a whole lot of stuff that seemed to be in favour of Muhammad. And billions of people take him as a teacher. Paul did the same for Christianity, thought he had a direct line to Jesus and his opinions have held sway for millenia.

It is a common coercion strategy to assign the discourse to angels and other 'higher powers'.

These guys just had opinions, and apparently opinions can be very powerful, and can dictate what entire nations believe. But their opinions are not necessarily the truth.

Yes indeed. It is a power game that operates on very subtle levels.

Thousands of teachers have now set up in the West, each claiming to know the truth, and they promote their opinions as the truth, and will gladly try to take others there, but more likely than not it is the blind leading the blind and naked, and both are heading straight for the ditch.

Truth is more likely to be found within, but where would you find the right tools to find that truth?

The tools of conscious awareness and deliberate attention, which we all have, coupled with our 'truth ability' as it is applied to real lived internal exploration. It has nothing at all to do with true or false propositions.

[lemex]

Originally Posted by django

Truth is more likely to be found within, but where would you find the right tools to find that truth?

As you've said, within. Yourself.