thegoodfellas/blogset-br huggingface dataset:
in particular, not Sogyal Rinpoches role as spiritual director of Rigpa and public Buddhist teacher. This distinction is important because many Buddhists students are wondering how to explain this kind of scandal to their friends and loved ones. How can you talk about it with your little sister who goes to a Christian high school? Or to your new non-Buddhist boyfriend, who you really want to impress but who already thinks your eagerness to do anything this guru asks of you is really strange. So this is an issue that should be contemplated and addressed separately, especially in light of the increased media coverage Sogyal Rinpoches behaviour is bound to elicit. None of what I have to say here about the Vajrayana in particular is easy to explain. In fact, I am a bit concerned that I might end up raising more questions than answers. And Im also sure that my words will be misinterpreted. But I have decided to try to write this piece anyway, because there are many genuine Vajrayana practitioners out there who are struggling with how to view the present situation and who might want to consider the issues I wish to raise. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * The Guru-Disciple Relationship Nalanda University in India was one of the oldest universities in the world. It was at Nalanda that one thousand four hundred years ago, scholars confirmed that there is no such thing as an atom, or a smallest particle, or a god that inherently exists; and these scholars would have laughed heartily at todays theories about the Big Bang and democracy. My point here is that at Nalanda University there was absolutely no room for sentiment or blind devotion or blind belief. Naropa was Dean of that great university. His scholarly achievements were remarkable, but left him unsatisfied. So he relinquished his prestigious position and set out to find a teacher whose wisdom transcended his own great scholarship and all he knew. Eventually, he met Tilopa, a fisherman, and that meeting marked the beginning of an adventurous and highly unpredictable journey. Among many other inexplicable tasks, Tilopa told Naropa to pinch a princesss bottom in public and to steal some soup, as the result of which Naropa was badly beaten. Yet Naropa a fully trained sceptic wholeheartedly did everything Tilopa asked of him without asking a single question. His reward was the teaching on Mahamudra, which he passed on to his own students, who also passed it on. Over the centuries, Naropas lineage of Mahamudra teachings went on to liberate countless human beings. People who treasure Mahamudra are not stupid; they are neither sycophants, nor are they prone to cultism. Naropas Mahamudra lineage has spread far and wide not just to jobless hippies, dropouts, social misfits and rebels, but to some of the worlds greatest emperors. And the story of how Tilopa taught Naropa has been cited again and again. Not as some kind of legend, but as a teaching and an
example an example that most budding Vajrayana practitioners long to emulate. Naropas Mahamudra lineage continues to the present day thanks to great Mahamudra merchants from the Far East, like Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, who even transported it to the wild west of America. More than thirty years ago, Trungpa Rinpoche commanded his students, including successful lawyers and dentists from Boulder, Colorado, to move to the gloomiest place on the planet: Halifax, Nova Scotia. And they did. In modern times, such a command is the equivalent of ordering Naropa to steal soup. Amazingly, decades after Trungpa Rinpoches passing, those obedient dentists and lawyers are still living in Halifax, and have gone on to spawn a third generation of practitioners. By the way, if youre ever surrounded by a few of these practitioners, theyll talk about the glories of Trungpa Rinpoche until your ears fall off! This kind of story from the time of Naropa to Trungpa Rinpoche in the 20th century exemplifies the guru-disciple relationship on which the Mahamudra transmission entirely depends. Did Sogyal Rinpoche Do Wrong? Recently, it was alleged by some of Sogyal Rinpoches students, who also consider themselves to be practitioners in the Vajrayana tradition, that Sogyal Rinpoche regarded abusive behaviour as the skilful means of wrathful compassion in the tradition of crazy wisdom. However you describe Sogyal Rinpoches style of teaching, the key point here is that if his students had received a Vajrayana initiation, if at the time they received it they were fully aware that it was a Vajrayana initiation, and if Sogyal Rinpoche had made sure that all the necessary prerequisites has been adhered to and fulfilled, then from the Vajrayana point of view, there is nothing wrong with Sogyal Rinpoches subsequent actions. (By the way, initiation includes the pointing out instruction which is the highest Vajrayana initiation, known as the fourth abhisheka.) Frankly, for a student of Sogyal Rinpoche who has consciously received abhisheka and therefore entered or stepped onto the Vajrayana path, to think of labelling Sogyal Rinpoches actions as abusive, or to criticize a Vajrayana master even privately, let alone publicly and in print, or simply to reveal that such methods exist, is a breakage of samaya. This is not to say, as has been suggested, that tantra provides teachers with a list of ways they can abuse students sexually, emotionally and financially you will not find such a list in any of the tantras. At the same time, a Vajrayana guru will use anything he can to challenge and go against each individual students ego, pride, self-cherishing and dualistic mind, and might well end up telling a sexually voracious, horny man to become a monk. Im sorry, but we cant bend the rules on this point. When both the giver and receiver of a Vajrayana initiation are fully aware and clear about what has happened, they must then both accept that pure perception is the main view and practice on the Vajrayana path. There is no room whatsoever for even a glimmer of an impure perception. But what is pure perception? Ultimately, according
to the Vajrayana, the practice of pure perception doesnt mean just seeing the guru as a god, or even as a tantric deity. Although the Vajrayana does famously include techniques for visualizing not only the guru but every being on this planet and in the universe as a deity, the main point of pure perception is to go beyond dualistic perception altogether and realize the union of emptiness and appearance. To put it simply, pure perception is the highest form of mind training dag nang byang in Tibetan. Dag means pure; nang means perception, and byang means train or get used to. So, how does pure perception work? As a Vajrayana student, if you look at Sogyal Rinpoche and think hes overweight, that is an impure perception. To try to correct your impure perception you might then try visualizing him with the body of Tom Cruise, but that is still not pure perception. One of the Vajrayanas infinite number of skilful methods that are used to deconstruct and dismantle impure perception, is to visualize Sogyal Rinpoche with a horses head, a thousand arms and four legs. But even this technique must ultimately be transcended in order fully to realize pure perception. Basically, while the students perception remains impure, the guru they see will be a projection based on their own impure projection, and so it can only ever be imperfect. The only way we can change our impure perception and see the guru as an enlightened being is by training our minds, using the visualization practises provided by the Vajrayana path. No Vajrayana teaching or qualified Vajrayana teacher would ever expect a students perceptions to be completely pure from the moment they step onto the Vajrayana path. This is why the techniques we apply are called training and even the English word training implies that mistakes are inevitable. But theres a very simple way of checking your progress with this practice. In the Vajrayana, you are supposed to see not only the guru but yourself as a deity. So if, having just been taught that you are a deity, you skip lunch and feel hungry, it means your training is not complete. You will only be perfectly trained in pure perception once you have finally actualized the union of appearance and emptiness. So if a student of Sogyal Rinpoche were to see him floundering in the middle of a lake and based on their impure perception, project onto him the idea that he seems to be drowning, it would probably not be a good idea for that student to think, Rinpoche is an enlightened being and should be able to walk on water. A much better thought would be, This is my impure perception! Rinpoche is manifesting as a drowning man so that I can accumulate the merit of rescuing him. As your practise improves, your perception of the guru will no longer be bound or limited by the causes, conditions and effects that once made you think he was drowning. This is the point in your spiritual development when you will
truly see the outer guru as the Buddha and will also be able to see your own inner guru. Until then, when your guru chairs a board meeting and it becomes obvious that he has no clue about an issue, as a prudent member of that board you shouldnt hesitate to supply him with the information he needs. At the same time, as a Vajrayana student, you must skilfully remind yourself the guru only looks clueless to you because of your own impure perception, and that by appearing to need your assistance the guru is actually giving you the chance to accumulate merit. We all have habits, and its habit that makes impure perception inevitable. The moment we step onto the Vajrayana path, we start breaking samayas which are our commitment to maintaining pure perception. This is why the assumption that all Vajrayana practitioners will make mistakes is built into the Vajrayana path. A practitioners path is then to immediately confess, expose and fix any impure perceptions the moment they arise, and to continually aspire to make fewer and fewer mistakes. This is what is meant by keeping the samaya vows. In fact, Vajrayana practice cannot be separated from keeping samaya. There is no such thing as: Lets keep samaya and then practice. Ultimately, once we transcend all possibility of making errors or breaching samaya, even thinking that there is something to confess or such a thing as a confessor is a breakage of samaya. In Buddhadharma, not just the Vajrayana, the only way any of us can keep all the samayas, is by fully realizing a perfect understanding of shunyata. If an impure perception such as criticism of ones guru is made deliberately and consciously, and if it then goes on to become a well-organized, choreographed public discussion with no room for amendment or correction, it constitutes a total breakage of samaya. Once an initiation has been given and received, neither the guru nor the student can continue to analyze each other the guru cannot analyze the student and the student cannot analyze the guru. Having given someone an initiation, no matter how irritating, stubborn, neurotic or even criminal they may be, the guru must accept that person as his student and look after him or her as if they were his own child even more so, actually. I know that many of you dont want to hear it, but this is the Vajrayana view and this is what is taught in all the tantras. Its a big mistake to speculate about the possibility of continuing to analyze and criticize the guru after having received a major initiation actually its totally wrong. We cannot modify Vajrayanas fundamental view just because it doesnt suit the minds of a few liberal, puritanical, Abrahamic, or individualistic activists. If you find this view doesnt suit you, but you still want to follow the Buddhas path, you can always try the Mahayana and Sravakayana paths instead. If neither of those paths work for you if you are uncomfortable with the non-dual groundlessness of Buddhism you might
just as well follow one of the Abrahamic religions. These are the religions that follow a clearly grounded dualistic path and say things like dont eat pork, do eat fish, and women must wear burqas. If the label religion is altogether too embarrassing for your elitist so-called progressive minds, you might try some kind of quasi-atheistic secularism, coated with moralistic ethics and bloated with dogmatic liberal self-righteousness. Or you could blindly allow yourself to be swallowed up by existentialist angst, then get annoyed with those who get blissed out on hope. And yet, there may be some among you who long for tantric teachings because you quickly want to gain all the spiritual accomplishments you can, but without suffering any of the pain; or because youre the kind of person who has a strong sense of entitlement and love to bypass preliminary practices. Or you might be very smart and want to follow the simplest path that gets the quickest results, so you might try outwitting the system by cutting corners to get at the highest Dzogchen and Mahamudra teachings more quickly. Or you might be one of those who whine bitterly when the guru says its not the right time to give such teachings and then apply intense emotional blackmail to get what you want. If you fall into any of these categories, the all-or-nothing guru-disciple relationship is what you will get. Im sorry, but thats the way it is and theres nothing I can do about it. We cant change the Vajrayana view or invent some moderate version of Vajrayana Buddhism just to suit the 21st century western mind-set. If we did, it would be like saying that in these modern times, we should say that certain compounded phenomena are permanent and some phenomena do exist inherently but we cant do that either. The view is fundamental to Buddhadharma and therefore to the Vajrayana path. In Buddhism, the general idea is that we train our minds to actualize non-duality. Tantra offers us the most profound way of achieving that non-duality through the practice of pure perception; and in the Vajrayana we essentialize that practice by maintaining a pure perception of the guru. Ultimately, as Vajrayana practitioners, we must apply pure perception to everyone and everything without exception, which means we must also apply it to Donald Trump and even Hitler. But we will only manage to achieve a pure perception of everyone and everything if we can first maintain a pure perception of our guru. If you try to retain the option of questioning, criticizing and analyzing in other words if you retain some kind of selective impure perception as an insurance policy that allows you to question your very path then how will you achieve the cessation of the dualistic mind? How will one taste be actualized? How will you realize the union of samsara and nirvana? One of Buddhisms fundamental practices is that of working with our own projections. Its a practice that is particularly emphasized in the Vajrayana. I know many of you will roll your eyes
and accuse me of copping out when I say this, but everything Sogyal Rinpoches critical students are accusing him of is based on their projection. I know its hard to accept, I know it seems very real, but even so, it is a projection. The bottom line here is: if both student and guru are consciously aware of Vajrayana theory and practice, I cant see anything wrong in what Sogyal Rinpoche then does to his so-called Vajrayana students especially those who have been with him for many years. Those students stepped onto the Vajrayana path voluntarily; its a journey that they chose to make. At least, I assume they did. Do aspects of this journey go against commonly-accepted laws? Possibly. Do they contradict the way 21st century modern human beings usually think? Yes. From a worldly point of view, much of the Vajrayana seems unthinkable, perhaps even criminal. If Tilopa were alive today, he would have been locked up long ago. Come to think of it, which western country or culture would actually brag in its great literature about Marpa beating up Milarepa? Yet the Tibetans celebrate this story, holding it up as one of the most glorious examples of a true guru-disciple relationship. I also assume that these critical close students of Sogyal Rinpoche didnt originally go to him for advice about how to achieve worldly success or for therapy, but to find out how to transcend this ordinary world which necessarily involves going beyond all kinds of worldly values like morality, the rule of law, accountability, transparency and so on. You cant leave one foot firmly grounded in your worldly comfort zones and ambitions, then expect to be able to transcend them. This is the very reason the Vajrayana is said to be exclusively for disciples of superior faculties which in this context, has nothing to do with being clever enough to qualify for a Rhodes scholarship or graduate from Stanford. A person with superior faculties is totally disgusted with the dualism of samsara and nirvana, repulsed by ideas of fundamentalism and moderation, revolted by anarchism and morality, and single-minded and sincere in their devotion to the transcendence of duality. And this is why students are given so many warnings before they receive Vajrayana teachings. Were Sogyal Rinpoches Students Warned? Were the Necessary Foundations for Entry into the Vajrayana Laid? Anyone with even a modicum of common sense knows that a warning must come before, not after the event. So its a Vajrayana masters duty to warn aspiring students repeatedly and in advance about what they are letting themselves in for. Students must be warned about what they are about to undertake the full picture, not just the highlights. If Sogyal Rinpoche had given these warnings, if he had laid proper foundations by teaching the fundamentals of Buddhism, if he had made sure his students had established a strong foundation through study and practice, and if he had told them before they received initiation and teaching about the nature of the Vajrayana path and the consequences they would face if
they broke samaya, the chances are that this current situation would never have arisen. But I suspect thats not quite what happened. What are my suspicions based on? Partly my knowledge of Tibetan teaching habits, and also what little I know of Sogyal Rinpoches teaching methods. First of all, many Tibetan teachers are still in the habit of teaching non-Tibetans as if they were Tibetan. In Tibet, the Vajrayana wasnt taught nearly as secretly as it was in India, where the necessity for maintaining absolute secrecy about the nature of the teachings and even the identity of the teacher was emphasized again and again. Even initiations were given in secret, often in uninhabitable places like cemeteries and mountain tops. This is quite the opposite of how Tibetan lamas who usually sit on huge thrones in front of thousands of people give initiations. In India, our tantric predecessors were already extremely well-informed Naropa, for example, knew exactly what he was getting himself into. That was not the case in most of Tibetan Buddhist history. Its ironic that todays western students are so eager to emulate the Tibetan way of doing things habits which, by and large, really arent worth cherishing. Two millennia before the European Renaissance brought a new culture of inquiry and investigation into the modern world, the Buddha had already pointed out and emphasized the vital part analysis plays in the discovery of the nature of reality. More than two millennia before the downfall of authoritarianism in the west, the Buddha taught, You are your own master. No one else is your master. Neither of these pieces of advice has ever been taken seriously in Tibet. Not taking such teachings seriously is a very bad habit and certainly nothing to be proud of. Tibetan lamas often use tantric rituals as part of local public events, which means that Vajrayana initiations take place alongside flag hoisting and ribbon cutting. This use of tantra was unheard of among the Tibetans Buddhist predecessors in India, where not even a trace of sacred Vajrayana transmission or ritual could be seen before, during or after its discrete performance. Tibetan lamas also openly boast about their gurus, as if they are unveiling a commemorative plaque. But I would be extremely surprised to learn that Naropa put any effort at all into building up his CV, or that he ever announced publicly that his tantric guru was Tilopa. It might be possible to give Vajrayana initiations and teachings openly and publicly in places where the initiates are completely devoted, largely illiterate and have no academic training or custom of analysis. But its difficult to find that kind of person in a world thats full to overflowing with smart-arses. So nowadays, when Tibetan lamas apply their habit of openly giving Vajrayana teachings to non-Tibetans particularly westerners but forget that they are presenting these disciplines to people who read The New York Times, are groomed in critical thinking, trained to cherish analysis and contemplation, and applauded for rebelling against convention, isnt it inevitable that things fall apart? In stark contrast
to the characteristics that mark out modern western Dharma students, the majority of Tibetan disciples were culturally obliged to receive initiations and teachings as part of their traditional life. Very few Tibetans approached the Vajrayana with any thought of applying the proper, recommended analysis, and instead relied on blind devotion. To this day, many of us Tibetan lamas, not just Sogyal Rinpoche, stick closely to our traditional habits and therefore devote very little time to giving students the appropriate warnings and laying the necessary foundations prior to giving initiations and teachings. I know a little about Sogyal Rinpoche because I have visited several Rigpa centres and have witnessed the Rigpa set-up first hand. To be frank, I didnt see enough evidence to convince me that the appropriate warnings had been given, or that adequate foundations had been laid, or that the fundamental teachings were properly given. On several occasions it seemed to me that some of the students had been Christians until perhaps the day before they attended the teaching, then suddenly, 24-hours later, they were hearing about guru devotion, receiving pointing out instructions and practising Guru Yoga it was as extreme as that. If thats how it happened if no proper warnings and no fundamental training were given prior to the Vajrayana teachings then Sogyal Rinpoche is even more in the wrong than his critical students. Why? Because it is his responsibility to prepare the ground in accordance with the Vajrayanas prescribed and well-established foundation teachings and practice. There is no question that the person with the greater knowledge, power and therefore responsibility is also more culpable when those obligations are not fulfilled. How Western Students Respond But there are things about all this that puzzle me. The students criticizing Sogyal Rinpoche seem to be highly intelligent. Why, then, werent they smart enough to examine and analyze the teacher before signing up? How did they allow themselves to get so carried away by the Rigpa experience, those glossy, well-crafted pamphlets and all the other hoo-ha? And I really dont understand why they waited ten or even thirty years before saying anything? How come they didnt see all these problems in the first or second year of their relationship with Sogyal Rinpoche? I should also say that my puzzlement is mixed with sympathy, because we human beings are not only subject to our intellects, we get stirred up by our feelings. I can only speculate, but perhaps these students were moved and even awed by everything they encountered at Rigpa? Perhaps the glossy pamphlets, the incense, thrones and chanting did their job? And of course, Rigpa has hosted many very highly respected, illustrious lamas, including the highest of them all, which must have cemented the veneration and respect these students felt not only for the whole tradition, but for Sogyal Rinpoche himself. As a result of the unexpected eruption of pious feelings they then experienced, there must have been very little room left in their minds for further analysis, because emotionally they just wanted to jump! From what I have seen in