Validity of recorded empowerments

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Malcolm
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Re: Validity of recorded empowerments

Post by Malcolm »

dzogchungpa wrote: OK thanks, but I was also wondering if there are supposed to be "signs" indicating that you have really "received the empowerment"?
You mean like stigmata? :buddha1:
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Re: Validity of recorded empowerments

Post by dzogchungpa »

Malcolm wrote:
dzogchungpa wrote:OK thanks, but I was also wondering if there are supposed to be "signs" indicating that you have really "received the empowerment"?
You mean like stigmata?
Ha Ha Ha Ha, more like dreams, vibrations :smile: and so on.
There is not only nothingness because there is always, and always can manifest. - Thinley Norbu Rinpoche
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pueraeternus
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Re: Validity of recorded empowerments

Post by pueraeternus »

dzogchungpa wrote:
Malcolm wrote:
dzogchungpa wrote:OK thanks, but I was also wondering if there are supposed to be "signs" indicating that you have really "received the empowerment"?
You mean like stigmata?
Ha Ha Ha Ha, more like dreams, vibrations :smile: and so on.
Thou hast gained an Eighth!
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"Men must want to do things out of their own innermost drives. People, not commercial organizations or chains of command, are what make great civilizations work. Every civilization depends upon the quality of the individuals it produces. If you over-organize humans, over-legalize them, suppress their urge to greatness - they cannot work and their civilization collapses."
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Re: Validity of recorded empowerments

Post by Palzang Jangchub »

pueraeternus wrote:Thou hast gained an Eighth!
I must admit, when I first read this it made me think of visions induced by something quite different than a properly received empowerment... :rolling:
Image

"The Sutras, Tantras, and Philosophical Scriptures are great in number. However life is short, and intelligence is limited, so it's hard to cover them completely. You may know a lot, but if you don't put it into practice, it's like dying of thirst on the shore of a great lake. Likewise, a common corpse is found in the bed of a great scholar." ~ Karma Chagme

དྲིན་ཆེན་རྩ་བའི་བླ་མ་སྐྱབས་རྗེ་མགར་ཆེན་ཁྲི་སྤྲུལ་རིན་པོ་ཆེ་ཁྱེད་མཁྱེན་ནོ།།
རྗེ་བཙུན་བླ་མ་མཁས་གྲུབ་ཀརྨ་ཆགས་མེད་མཁྱེན་ནོ། ཀརྨ་པ་མཁྱེན་ནོཿ
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pueraeternus
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Re: Validity of recorded empowerments

Post by pueraeternus »

Karma Jinpa wrote:
pueraeternus wrote:Thou hast gained an Eighth!
I must admit, when I first read this it made me think of visions induced by something quite different than a properly received empowerment... :rolling:
Well, at least something is still empowered. :tongue:
"Men must want to do things out of their own innermost drives. People, not commercial organizations or chains of command, are what make great civilizations work. Every civilization depends upon the quality of the individuals it produces. If you over-organize humans, over-legalize them, suppress their urge to greatness - they cannot work and their civilization collapses."
- A letter to CHOAM, attributed to the Preacher
JohnJ
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Re: Validity of recorded empowerments

Post by JohnJ »

Malcolm wrote:
JohnJ wrote:
It might be good to mention that in my personal encounters with Garchen Rinpoche and the lamas that teach through his Institute, empowerment is understood as something that is rarely actually recieved. In other words, the belief seems to be that empowerment only occurs when one has understood the nature of their mind through that empowerment.
This represents a misunderstanding of the nature of empowerments on your part.
As you can see above, my dialectical reasoning sprang from an attempt at understanding something, namely a quote by Garchen Rinpoche that is often repeated regarding empowerments. In that quote he states that the outer empowerment is the vase touching the head, the inner empowerment is visualizing oneself as the deity, while the real empowerment is seeing the nature of the mind. I have asked my local instructor as well as lamas connected with Garchen Rinpoche to help clarify this, and I was doing my best to understand them. I was not claiming to represent a definitive intellectual understanding of the nature of empowerment, nor was I positing my own certainty on the matter, but merely speculating based on instructions I have received.

I am very grateful for your clarification, however, as it has helped me understand the quote by Garchen Rinpoche that I referenced above. I think, in this case, that you are saying the same thing he has said but in much greater detail.

It makes sense to me based on the empowerments I have received, and I withdraw my speculation and all confusion it caused, and will assume that the instructions given to me proceeded along similar lines to what you have explained.

As to Garchen Rinpoche and recorded empowerments, I will state once again: The trust I have for Garchen Rinpoche settles the matter. I believe his realization and blessing extends to recordings, and I will not waver from this understanding until Garchen Rinpoche changes his own teachings on the matter. I do not possess his wisdom, and so I cannot explain how he continues to generate the various mandalas and provide the means for students. I can only say that he claims to be able to do this, and that I trust his claims completely. I will continue to encourage devoted students to receive empowerments by these means if they feel drawn to a particular practice. Between a realized being in whom I put my complete faith, and an respected intellectual whom I do not know personally, I must assuredly choose the former.

This isn't a choice I make out of a decision of the mind based on his renown, nor is it a dramatic sort of Guru Worship incurred based on misplaced emotionality and attachment. I trust him due to the experience of the transmissions and teachings that I have received in his presence. It is experience that has given me confidence, and nothing else. I have similar trust in ChNN, and I have great trust in my local teacher. For me, this experiential relationship is paramount.

Buddhism, in my experience, is not monolithic. My teachers do not agree on all points. This has been true of every religion that I have studied, personally and academically.

I spent many years as a very legalistic Eastern Orthodox practitioner. The arguments that I see in this thread for the way an empowerment "has to occur", the objects that "must be present", and the understanding that these things are based on unchanging scripture and tradition is absolutely no different than arguments that took place within that religion. Days and days of textual exchanges concerning the validity of Chrismation for converts not Baptized into Orthodoxy were rabid and vicious. The great vitriol and and pride, the ever present hubris, and the desperate ad hominem attacks that occur on this forum are no different than similar squabbles of rightness that broke out continually on Eastern Orthodox forums.

The rightness of one's teacher, the superiority of the doctrine of one's philosophical school, the pandering and feet-kissing of those perceived to have a greater intellectual understanding- these things are not different in any way.

The human need to frame concepts of rightness and bask in the security of having the correct definitions, the blind superiority of having received just the right enculturation and educational opportunities is identical among all spiritual paths. I am not a relativist regarding realization, but I am certainly one in regards to human failings. I am simply not enamored by these things.

It is for these reasons that I am not a fundamentalist, and do not accept fundamentalist assertions to the definitive nature and purpose of any given religion. This forum could be about encouraging one another and helping each other to develop faith in our spiritual friends and teachers. In reality, it is another arena of religious battle, where claims to rightness and resumes of experience are collected like achievements in a video game and used as leverage against all those who might disagree with us.

In taking my leave of this discussion I simply beg all those who might read this with simple minds and open hearts to abandon this kind of divisive thinking, and cultivate Bodhicitta with all the sincere effort you can muster.

John
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Re: Validity of recorded empowerments

Post by Alfredo »

Canon is incomplete without oikonomia!

(Rimshot)

(crickets chirping)
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Adi
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Re: Validity of recorded empowerments

Post by Adi »

JohnJ wrote:...This forum could be about encouraging one another and helping each other to develop faith in our spiritual friends and teachers. In reality, it is another arena of religious battle, where claims to rightness and resumes of experience are collected like achievements in a video game and used as leverage against all those who might disagree with us….
So you assert there is a single "reality" to this entire forum and that apparently you are somehow able to see it? That it's all endless conflict? And that this reality boils down to a video game metaphor? Interesting. Very Tron like.
In taking my leave of this discussion I simply beg all those who might read this with simple minds and open hearts to abandon this kind of divisive thinking, and cultivate Bodhicitta with all the sincere effort you can muster.
I suspect there might be more than a few people here who do this yet you can't compass them, their motives, or their actions since, for you, there is this one video-gamed reality. Apparently this is satisfactory and you don't have any need to look for anything else. But if one looks at Buddhist history one will note that things arise according to the needs of sentient beings, that there is no unitary way, style of teaching or apparent single purpose and that the methods and actions of one teacher will seem holy to some, evil to others, and usually incomprehensible to anyone without direct experience of that teacher.

Even western scholars such as William James have realized that what is true for one person is exactly and only that, true for that person. Their experiences can help inform others, perhaps inspire them, but they do not transfer.

So some find empowerments via view screen right and true and others do not.

Has it occurred, perhaps outside the video game metaphor, that both might be true? Isn't it legalistic to assume that if one is true then other must be false?

I don't know. I do know I am happy when anyone makes a profound connection with the Dharma. I know how such a thing might happen with me but I can't say for sure how it might happen with anyone else. I wish it does happen, though, for everyone.

Adi
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Re: Validity of recorded empowerments

Post by treehuggingoctopus »

JohnJ wrote:As you can see above, my dialectical reasoning sprang from an attempt at understanding something, namely a quote by Garchen Rinpoche that is often repeated regarding empowerments. In that quote he states that the outer empowerment is the vase touching the head, the inner empowerment is visualizing oneself as the deity, while the real empowerment is seeing the nature of the mind. I have asked my local instructor as well as lamas connected with Garchen Rinpoche to help clarify this, and I was doing my best to understand them. I was not claiming to represent a definitive intellectual understanding of the nature of empowerment, nor was I positing my own certainty on the matter, but merely speculating based on instructions I have received.

I am very grateful for your clarification, however, as it has helped me understand the quote by Garchen Rinpoche that I referenced above. I think, in this case, that you are saying the same thing he has said but in much greater detail.

It makes sense to me based on the empowerments I have received, and I withdraw my speculation and all confusion it caused, and will assume that the instructions given to me proceeded along similar lines to what you have explained.

As to Garchen Rinpoche and recorded empowerments, I will state once again: The trust I have for Garchen Rinpoche settles the matter. I believe his realization and blessing extends to recordings, and I will not waver from this understanding until Garchen Rinpoche changes his own teachings on the matter. I do not possess his wisdom, and so I cannot explain how he continues to generate the various mandalas and provide the means for students. I can only say that he claims to be able to do this, and that I trust his claims completely. I will continue to encourage devoted students to receive empowerments by these means if they feel drawn to a particular practice. Between a realized being in whom I put my complete faith, and an respected intellectual whom I do not know personally, I must assuredly choose the former.

This isn't a choice I make out of a decision of the mind based on his renown, nor is it a dramatic sort of Guru Worship incurred based on misplaced emotionality and attachment. I trust him due to the experience of the transmissions and teachings that I have received in his presence. It is experience that has given me confidence, and nothing else. I have similar trust in ChNN, and I have great trust in my local teacher. For me, this experiential relationship is paramount.

Buddhism, in my experience, is not monolithic. My teachers do not agree on all points. This has been true of every religion that I have studied, personally and academically.

I spent many years as a very legalistic Eastern Orthodox practitioner. The arguments that I see in this thread for the way an empowerment "has to occur", the objects that "must be present", and the understanding that these things are based on unchanging scripture and tradition is absolutely no different than arguments that took place within that religion. Days and days of textual exchanges concerning the validity of Chrismation for converts not Baptized into Orthodoxy were rabid and vicious. The great vitriol and and pride, the ever present hubris, and the desperate ad hominem attacks that occur on this forum are no different than similar squabbles of rightness that broke out continually on Eastern Orthodox forums.

The rightness of one's teacher, the superiority of the doctrine of one's philosophical school, the pandering and feet-kissing of those perceived to have a greater intellectual understanding- these things are not different in any way.

The human need to frame concepts of rightness and bask in the security of having the correct definitions, the blind superiority of having received just the right enculturation and educational opportunities is identical among all spiritual paths. I am not a relativist regarding realization, but I am certainly one in regards to human failings. I am simply not enamored by these things.

It is for these reasons that I am not a fundamentalist, and do not accept fundamentalist assertions to the definitive nature and purpose of any given religion. This forum could be about encouraging one another and helping each other to develop faith in our spiritual friends and teachers. In reality, it is another arena of religious battle, where claims to rightness and resumes of experience are collected like achievements in a video game and used as leverage against all those who might disagree with us.

In taking my leave of this discussion I simply beg all those who might read this with simple minds and open hearts to abandon this kind of divisive thinking, and cultivate Bodhicitta with all the sincere effort you can muster.

John
Thanks, John. It is a post well-worth reading time and again, IMHO.
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qwerty13
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Re: Validity of recorded empowerments

Post by qwerty13 »

One thing I dont get though. Garchen has said that even if you come to Dharma center to receive empowerment you may not get it. How come? As long as Vajramaster does his thing, and participants try to follow instructions as best as they can, the initiation happens. Unless you are sleeping or daydreaming or in some other way you dont participate in visualizations at all, you wont get empowemrent. Of course, i am not expert in the subject, I am just yeat another confused practitioner.
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Re: Validity of recorded empowerments

Post by muni »

So some find empowerments via view screen right and true and others do not.
If not it should be so that there is a variety of empowerments‘ ways/tools and only one standard state of mind.

Maybe 'life' gives more minds more chance, more powerful. Not guaranteed. All depends of mind.
Last edited by muni on Thu May 01, 2014 9:24 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Validity of recorded empowerments

Post by Pero »

Guess it should've remained at "it's pointless to reply"...
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Re: Validity of recorded empowerments

Post by Alfredo »

On a more serious note (than my previous quip), JohnJ, I broadly agree with you and would like to offer whatever encouragement I can. Transmissions are not magic spells--they are commitments to our gurus, and to our ideals. At the risk of sounding Orthodox again, it would be inappropriate to approach these things like canon lawyers.
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Malcolm
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Re: Validity of recorded empowerments

Post by Malcolm »

JohnJ wrote:but merely speculating based on instructions I have received.
That's a bad idea.
I am very grateful for your clarification, however, as it has helped me understand the quote by Garchen Rinpoche that I referenced above. I think, in this case, that you are saying the same thing he has said but in much greater detail.
I don't have any idea what Garchen has said, I merely note that a lot of people are claiming Garchen Rinpoche's endorsement for their own concepts. I have yet to see any formal written statement about this matter from him. For example, you can bet that were ChNN to do something as controversial he would publish a formal written statement and explain his reasons why he was doing this or that very precisely.
...to abandon this kind of divisive thinking...
The divisive thinking here that is being promulgated is being promulgated by those who claim against all reason and common sense that digital files can be "blessed" to "grant" empowerments.
Last edited by Malcolm on Thu May 01, 2014 12:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Malcolm
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Re: Validity of recorded empowerments

Post by Malcolm »

Alfredo wrote:Transmissions are not magic spells--
Correct, and imagining that digital files can be "blessed" to grant empowerments is precisely the kind of thinking that informs "magical spells".
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Re: Validity of recorded empowerments

Post by Alfredo »

An analogy might be with a wedding ceremony. What counts as a valid ceremony? Can it be performed by proxy (i.e., with a third person standing in for one of the couple)? Some religions, notably Catholicism, conceive of marriage (or technically, sacramental marriage--the following would not apply to natural marriage) as indeed involving some kind of spiritual bond, which comes into existence only under certain precise conditions. Others, notably Buddhism, defer to whatever standards each society may have.
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Malcolm
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Re: Validity of recorded empowerments

Post by Malcolm »

Alfredo wrote:An analogy might be with a wedding ceremony. What counts as a valid ceremony? Can it be performed by proxy (i.e., with a third person standing in for one of the couple)? Some religions, notably Catholicism, conceive of marriage (or technically, sacramental marriage--the following would not apply to natural marriage) as indeed involving some kind of spiritual bond, which comes into existence only under certain precise conditions. Others, notably Buddhism, defer to whatever standards each society may have.
The analogy is not apt. We are not comparing what an empowerment is in Buddhism and Catholicism.

Further, the definitions and procedures of empowerments (a practice unique in Vajrayāna Buddhism with unique requirements) are defined in the basic literature of the Vajrayāna (the tantras); unlike marriage ceremonies which are extra-canonical rites; despite the fact that there are considered one of the seven sacraments of the church.

There are hundreds of texts written by Indian masters on the subject of empowerments, how to conduct them, for all four classes of tantras.

There have been some disagreements among Tibetans in the past as to what constitutes a proper "maturational empowerment" -- those interested can read Sakya Pandita's Clear Differentiation of the Three Vows and the various responses to it by Kagyu masters such as Pawo Tsuglag Trengwa and so on (Here the issue is whether a sbyin rlabs can be considered to "mature" or "ripen" a student).

Nevertheless, everyone agrees that without an empowerment one is not matured as a student of Vajrayāna. The question here is whether one can be ripened by or receive an empowerment from an inanimate object such as a "blessed" picture, book or a movie. The answer is, "Of course not."

M
Malcolm
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Re: Validity of recorded empowerments

Post by Malcolm »

Alfredo wrote:An analogy might be with a wedding ceremony.
It was just pointed out to me that the analogy might be apt if one could be married by watching a recording of someone's else's wedding.
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Re: Validity of recorded empowerments

Post by pueraeternus »

Malcolm wrote:
Alfredo wrote:An analogy might be with a wedding ceremony.
It was just pointed out to me that the analogy might be apt if one could be married by watching a recording of someone's else's wedding.
Wait, are you telling me that the fight for same-sex marriage was unnecessary all along?
"Men must want to do things out of their own innermost drives. People, not commercial organizations or chains of command, are what make great civilizations work. Every civilization depends upon the quality of the individuals it produces. If you over-organize humans, over-legalize them, suppress their urge to greatness - they cannot work and their civilization collapses."
- A letter to CHOAM, attributed to the Preacher
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Re: Validity of recorded empowerments

Post by haha »

She hurried to place the tooth in a shrine and had a
reliquary chiseled in gold to contain it. Each day, she recited
prayers and made offerings in front of the holy object. People
from the neighborhood joined her in great numbers to show
their devotion.

After some time, the vulgar dog tooth began to produce
holy pearls (Tibetan, ringsels). As for the old woman, when
she died, her body disappeared in a rainbow with a shower
of flowers falling from the sky.

The tooth was only a dog's tooth. The old woman was
mistaken, but the power of her devotion was so great that it
produced such miracles.

Source: Secret Buddhism Vajrayana Practices by Kalu Rinpoche
Dog's tooth can do the Buddha's work. Why the rinpoche's empowerment video cannot do that??? How many people are going to watch that? and then how many people do get benefit from it? However, those ppl whoever want to connect with him definitely get benefit from it if the rinpoche said so.
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