Dharma Wheel

PS Montana, never mind. I saw your other posts--I assume you're thinking of Jabba again.

Jabba? Maybe I'm dumb because I don't know what thaet means.

Konchog1 wrote:

heart wrote:

Konchog1 wrote:Samaya or pledges are things that you promise the deity to do during empowerment. Samvara or vows are things that you promise not to do. One of the common samaya is to keep your Samvara.

You promise the guru, not the deity.

/magnus

That doesn't match with my recollection...

You receive the empowerment from the Guru.

http://kunzang.org/kplblog/2010/09/30/about-samaya/

/magnus

heart wrote:

Konchog1 wrote:Samaya or pledges are things that you promise the deity to do during empowerment. Samvara or vows are things that you promise not to do. One of the common samaya is to keep your Samvara.

You promise the guru, not the deity.

/magnus

Magnus is correct. The guru is the fourth Refuge.

Sure. But the Guru is the deity, too.

So, both...... But primarily the guru.

Maybe I have a warped view.
But I see the samaya being with the deity and the Guru being identical with the deity.
I also see the possibility that the individual human guru breaking samaya at a later time and no longer being identical with the deity. In which case the samaya with the deity and the deity as the Guru could remain intact when the teacher student relationship does not.

Maybe that's just a view I've put together out of optimism though. It just doesn't seem like a student who keeps their close connection to a deity could break their samaya because their teacher loses it and they have to distance themselves and not keep their promises to the teacher.

So like, people become schizophrenic, they become manic-depressive, they develop dementia or suffer brain damage and you can't keep the promises you made to the teacher any longer. I just don't see why the relationship to that person should effect the relationship with the deity.

heart wrote:

Konchog1 wrote:Samaya or pledges are things that you promise the deity to do during empowerment. Samvara or vows are things that you promise not to do. One of the common samaya is to keep your Samvara.

You promise the guru, not the deity.

/magnus

Is there really a difference during an empowerment...

Ultimately you recieve the empowerment from the Guru, not the deity. Also the meaning of the empowerment is that the Guru introduce the student to the real nature of everything and the deity as the path to arrive at it, but there are also empowerments that are not connected to a particular deity. You can read about it in detail in Tsele Natsok Rangdrol's "Empowerment and the path of liberation". The Guru is the most important part of any empowerment and because of this the samayas always give relationship with the Guru most importance.

So to say that the deity is more important or even of equal importance to the Guru don't really correspond to the meaning of the empowerment.

/magnus

practitioner wrote:

heart wrote:

Konchog1 wrote:Samaya or pledges are things that you promise the deity to do during empowerment. Samvara or vows are things that you promise not to do. One of the common samaya is to keep your Samvara.

You promise the guru, not the deity.

/magnus

Is there really a difference during an empowerment...

Or afterward, or before, or whenever. I'd say generally no, but practically yes. Most of us are probably not omniscient enough to really see the sameness. Its easier by far to perceive the Guru over the Yidam, as one can see them with one's water bubble eyes. During practise its easier to blur the distinction closer to the actual reality, perhaps close enough to grok the nature of the mind itself, when all walls of delusional self and other really fall apart. But for that to occur, you gotta keep the connection, and that is the samayas. Its quite important.

The commitments you keep to your guru even as the most blessed basis for accomplishing realization.

All the tantric lineages begin with the transmission from the deity to a guru.
If we are to show preferential respect to the guru of our guru when both are present, then given the situation of an empowerment, surely we should give preferential respect to the deity in every case.

What do you guys think of this line of reasoning?

I recognize this is potentially a dangerous view also, because there are a lot of wackos just waiting for a justification to create their spin off religions where they have a direct connection to some deity and no one can tell them they're wrong.

montana wrote:All the tantric lineages begin with the transmission from the deity to a guru.
If we are to show preferential respect to the guru of our guru when both are present, then given the situation of an empowerment, surely we should give preferential respect to the deity in every case.

What do you guys think of this line of reasoning?

I recognize this is potentially a dangerous view also, because there are a lot of wackos just waiting for a justification to create their spin off religions where they have a direct connection to some deity and no one can tell them they're wrong.

Read biography of Marpa the translator. He did the same mistake you want to do and for this reason his family lineage never blossomed. The Guru is always the most important.

/magnus

Marpa's family did not receive the lineage because he tried to give the dangerous ejection syllables teaching to his son dharma dodey against the wishes of his Guru and a tantrikka destroyed Dodey's body. However, I have no where read where any deity gave permission to Marpa that contradicted his guru's.

That is what you're talking about right?

montana wrote:Marpa's family did not receive the lineage because he tried to give the dangerous ejection syllables teaching to his son dharma dodey against the wishes of his Guru and a tantrikka destroyed Dodey's body. However, I have no where read where any deity gave permission to Marpa that contradicted his guru's.

That is what you're talking about right?

http://www.kagyudc.org/golden_rosary/vdolma_lineage_talks_3_marpa_mila_gampopa.html wrote: It was during this same visit that Naropa, as a test of his student, manifested the Hevajra mandala, asking Marpa to whom he would bow first: to the vision of Hevajra, or to himself, Naropa, its creator. Overwhelmed by the grandeur of the Hevajra deity and retinue, Marpa made the mistake of bowing to the emanated mandala first. Naropa immediately corrected him, saying in effect that the guru always takes precedence because it is he who makes the deities real for us. But the damage was done, and Naropa warned Marpa that this was an omen that his biological descendants would die out, but that his spiritual lineage would continue as long as the Buddha's teachings continued.

ooh. That thing, I forgot about that.
I don't think a biography is a suitable source to base doctrine on personally.
We have tantras, sutras, valid commentaries, reason, etc, that you can use to back up your views.

It occurs to me that what I said about Dodey is probably not in the biography of Marpa. It has been a long time since I read biographies of Kagyu lineage.

Namthar are certainly a source of generating devotion, if not the doctrine itself. Many of the most eminent masters have said that reading namthar is critical to remaining inspired while traversing the path.

Are they 100% historically accurate? Likely not. But they do represent how the lineage has come to see their forebears, and the lessons that can be learned from how they lived, having appeared (whether as ordinary or extraordinary beings).

Telling someone that doctrine shouldn't be based on the life stories of past masters is like asking a Muslim to approach Islam strictly thru the Qur'an, and to not base any understanding on the Sura (hadith, or sayings and life example of the Prophet). Or for a Christian to only read Jesus' sermons, but not pay heed to how He or his disciples lived that message.

All religious/spiritual traditions and paths have the ideal in their scriptures, but practitioners should be careful, lest those ideals be reduced to mere theories that only serve to increase one's conceptual thoughts and therefore detract from liberation in the long run. It's all much more messy and beautiful than being that simple.

Very few of us make it very far up the mountain, no less to its peak. Most of us are down here on ground level, looking up. But we should let those who have made it inspire us and inform our climb with what they did to reach the highest goal, and with what the view is like from the top.

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montana wrote:All the tantric lineages begin with the transmission from the deity to a guru.

No, they all begin with a transmission from the Sambhogakāya to a mahāsiddha, or in certain cases, like Virupa, from a Nirmanakāya to a mahāsiddha.

Karma Jinpa wrote:Namthar are certainly a source of generating devotion, if not the doctrine itself. Many of the most eminent masters have said that reading namthar is critical to remaining inspired while traversing the path.

The problem with this is when we discover that the Namthars we are supposed to rely on are merely pious fictions that deeply contradict the earliest accounts of this or that master -- Milarepa comes to mind here.

Are they 100% historically accurate? Likely not. But they do represent how the lineage has come to see their forebears, and the lessons that can be learned from how they lived, having appeared (whether as ordinary or extraordinary beings).

Or they represent an author with an agenda which may not be so obvious on the surface.

Malcolm wrote:

montana wrote:All the tantric lineages begin with the transmission from the deity to a guru.

No, they all begin with a transmission from the Sambhogakāya to a mahāsiddha, or in certain cases, like Virupa, from a Nirmanakāya to a mahāsiddha.

How does a Buddha deity differ from Nirmanakaya and Sambhogakaya?

montana wrote:

Malcolm wrote:

montana wrote:All the tantric lineages begin with the transmission from the deity to a guru.

No, they all begin with a transmission from the Sambhogakāya to a mahāsiddha, or in certain cases, like Virupa, from a Nirmanakāya to a mahāsiddha.

How does a Buddha deity differ from Nirmanakaya and Sambhogakaya?

The three kāyas are our gurus. Not the methods they provide us.