Siddhas and Supernatural Powers and Guru Finding and Tibet

[BrianG]

Personally, I feel it is very important for practitioners, especially Westerners, to experience "supernatural" pheomena, even if they are not the main point.

Why especially westerners? It isn't important for people from the east?

Also, there is no "supernatural" phenomena in Buddhism, only supernormal.

In an interview Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche said westeners question more, etc, maybe westeners get lost in their questionings and faith never arise.

Which interview?

[PadmeSamadhi]

The one in the Words of My Perfect Teacher

[Paul]

The only thing, besides my daughter's imaturity, that keeps me away from becoming a monk is that annoying bastard. When I come up with the thought "Oh, I've seen enough. Buddha had proved enough. I'm going to get ordinated right now"

There comes, suddenly, WITHOUT I EVEN MAKING A SINGLE EFFORT, the thinking:

"No. You didn't see a miracle. Everything you saw had a skeptic explanation or possibility of explanation. You can't be sure that it's all true."

Anything I have seen or heard about could have a 'rational' cause - to that extent your thinking is correct. It could just be coincidence, have some natural explanation etc. - but hang about in the right places and it's like Terry Pratchett's joke that "million-to-one chances happen nine times out of ten". These rainbows keep happening. These things like handprints or buddha's faces keep appearing in rocks. It just happens that a lama explains something that a person was thinking about etc.

You just have a mental habit that you're concretising. You could equally be some new-age loon who believes anything, and that would probably be worse. In the end the less energy you give it and the more you focus on practice the less of an issue it will be. To be honest, even if you saw something clearly miraculous I think you'd not have an easy time 'properly practising'.

[Sherlock]

dogchungoa likes to post snide sarcastic remarks.

[dzogchungpa]

dogchungoa [sic] likes to post snide sarcastic remarks.

No shit, Sherlock.

[Bakmoon]

I agree with you that there's no need to see a miracle to practice Dharma. I'm practicing Dharma. I'm training meditation, reading Sutras, apliying the wisdom.

What I said, is that I don't ordinate as a monk because there's this skeptical mind giving me hell. It's really anoying. Read my descriptions of it.

It's not something that I control. So I want it dead. The only real way to shutting it out forever that I see now is through a Siddhi.

That's why I want it for.

Best wishes.

How do you know that seeing a Siddhi will banish your skeptical doubt? Doubt can often be irrational and just keep questioning even in the face of insurmountable evidence. For example, the prominent atheist Sam Harris who is a meditation practitioner was once visited miraculously in a dream and received pointing out instructions from Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, but he just shrugged his shoulders and said it was just an anomaly. Even if you do see an incontrovertible miracle, irrational doubt can still rear it's ugly head and ask you "Are you sure?"

[Schrödinger’s Yidam]

This thread made me think of a documented case of what I can only assume to have been siddhi. Nat Geo magazine had an issue from the early 1950s (I think) where their guys were trekking up in the Himalayas. They were way high above the snow line when they stumbled on some dude wearing only pants and a shirt--no shoes. Of course the Nat Geo guys had state of the art trekking gear and couldn't believe that this guy was wandering around up there barefoot and with hardly any clothes. They asked him where he had slept the night before and he showed them a depression in the snow behind a hill. It wasn't even a cave. They took picture of him and he looked a bit like a bum. The closeups of his feet showed that the skin on his feet was badly chapped but there was zero frostbite.

He wasn't dressed like a lama, he had no accoutrements or anything. Nothing about him said "lama", just some guy wandering around were he should have died in very short order. But the way they stumbled on him reminded me of a couple Milarepa stories.

I saw that issue at my dentist's office. A couple of days later I went back to "permanently borrow" it, and it wasn't there. A lot later I went to the library to see if I could find the issue again and I couldn't. For some reason I thought it was early 1950s but I can't swear to it. So for now you'll just have to take my word for it, but this story is falsifiable if somebody wanted to really work at it.

[Admin_PC]

smcj - how about Wim Hof? Would that count as a Siddhi? I could've sworn I read somewhere that he spent a lot of time learning Tummo - of course that was before he started offering seminars.

[Schrödinger’s Yidam]

Could be. Did he learn Tummo? Good question for a lama.

Edit: a quick internet search seems to indicate that he uses Tummo-like exercises, at least that's part of what he does.

[PadmeSamadhi]

Mind reading is enough for you guys? Or you need more than that to help skepticism?

[dzogchungpa]

Mind reading is enough for you guys?

Works for me.

[ShakuShodoo]

Well...I ain't Sam Harris. With a reald-deal not-explainable-by-science Siddhi, specially if performed by a Lama, I know that I would be able to kill demon inside me.

In fact, he's already dying. I saw the Rainbow Bodies of some Rinpoches through the internet...the Penor Rinpoche's Rainbow Body was the most and totaly unexplainable, as the group of Physicists said it.

Today I was studying the concept of supernatural in my Philosophy class of my Political Sciences college. And it fits totally.


Also, a minor Siddhi happened this very week with me, it can be placed upon "luck", but it's funny to argue that.

Theses times, here in my city, a virus outbrak took place. My mother, daughter, grandmother and wife too the virus. I stood at their side all the week, drank in their glasses, touched their sputum, kissed my wife in the mouth, got my nose bitten by my daughter, etc. etc.

And I didn't catch nothing.

Then I remembered Lama Tsering talking about how Karma is the true origin of getting sick.

Oh, yeah, in the same week I ate horribly, drank few ammounts of water and did no exercise. So, my immunity was very low, to speak true.

[dzogchungpa]

Just drink the kool-aid already, dude.

[Loren]

Alright I'll tell this one because it is not so secret. Beneficial on not what to do. Once I was reading about Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo and I did not agree with how The Guru Chogyam Trungpa was talking so I called him a bad name.

(Never read anything about hells etc--Catholic bullsh*t. Knew nothing about iron except the iron horse and Dharma coming to the west Padmakara prophecy)

Had a VERY lucid dream in which there was some kind of iron clad man or Lord with a whip looking down on me. I was chained to the ground and there were what looked like to be iron sheep or dogs who he was going to loose upon me. Then the dream ended and I immediately jumped straight out of bed. Never experienced anything like that before. Scared me good.

Have had enough to cause me to believe with a faith.

[BrianG]

The one in the Words of My Perfect Teacher

The movie?

[PadmeSamadhi]

Yes, the CD-2 has one interview.

[ShakuShodoo]

Just drink the kool-aid already, dude.

Not needed. Everybody is already healed and I didn't catch nothing.

Loren, weird dream. I never dreamed with Lamas...but my mother had a weird dream with Tara. Very, very weird.

Best wishes.