Granted one can take inspiration. Personally I find the efforts of Vedanta teachers charming, similar to the efforts of children to play cowboys and indians, and so on. In the end, Vedanta teachings are heavily reliant on stock formulas (e.g., scriptures, analogous to cap pistols, straw cowboy hats, and feather headdresses).bhava wrote: ↑Wed Dec 26, 2018 7:07 am What are common points and differences in the way mind essence is introduced (how the recognition is further developed) in tibetan buddhism and in advaita vedanta system? I mean looking at satsangs of Mooji (mooji.org), teachings of Ramana Maharshi, Papaji plus the way this tradition is appreciated by some western dharma teachers (Elio Guarisco, Adriano Clemente), maybe one can learn and take inspiration from it even being a practitioner of tibetan buddhism.
As "Vedanta", i.e., the final message of the Vedic teachings, Vedanta puts a great deal of faith in the power of scriptural utterance (shruti). Those alone, properly applied to the ears of a disciple, are supposed to be liberating. There is no such dogmatic assumption in Dzogchen. In principle, Dzogchen can be introduced by a teacher to a student without relying on any external indication whatsoever, mind-to-mind, as it were. There's no such notion in Vedanta, as far as I know. To study Vedanta one must study the scriptures. Dzogchen has its abundance of scriptures as well, but they are not absolutely essential to the transmission, or empowerment of Dzogchen. For example, Tilopa used torture and a physical abuse to awaken Naropa to Mahamudra (which is essentially the same). In the final analysis, Vedanta is too conservative, and too disconnected from a thorough appreciation of the malleability of human embodiment, to accept such radical means to enlightenment.
I have never been satisfied that Vedanta has a coherent theory of mind, much less of "mind-essence". That is a Buddhist trend, and one that Vedanta is only slightly affined to. Vedanta is basically "atmavada" or a theory of Self, and the identity of Atman with a quality-less Brahman (nirguna-brahman) doesn't leave much room for discussion of "mind-essence", as you put it.
Instead, Advaita teachings and their contemplation are supposed to remove superimpositions (adhyaropana? can't remember the Vedanta term necessarily). The notion that reality and our superimpositions on it are different, and that the latter must be removed in order to realize the former, is an old one, older than Buddhism. All mystics grasp this basic distinction, and believe they have found a way to do something about it.
Dzogchen requires a teacher (much like Vedanta) to facilitate the process. But unlike Vedanta, there is supposed to be a "Eureka" moment, in one's practice, and/or at the moment of introduction from one's teacher. That notion is relatively absent in Vedanta. There is a profound undercurrent of agnosticism in Vedanta, and not coincidentally, a paucity of "Eureka" moments in the hagiographies of its adherents. It's hard to not suspect, coming from a Dzogchen perspective, that most Vedantic discourse leads into a muddled, if comfortable, morass of subtle confusion where the absence of certainty combines with an abundance of acquiescence, all backed by faith in a wealth of scriptural quotations.