Quote by ChNNR about Dzogchen and God - where is it from?

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Malcolm
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Re: Quote by ChNNR about Dzogchen and God - where is it from?

Post by Malcolm »

Kunga Lhadzom wrote: Fri May 25, 2018 12:49 am
Aryjna wrote: Thu May 24, 2018 8:58 pm The point is, God, as seen by the Christians, does not exist, as can be proven by very basic logic
If you were evolved a million times more than you are now....would your logic be the same ?
Logic is logic, no matter how evolved one is, just as 2+2 = 4 in all math.
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Re: Quote by ChNNR about Dzogchen and God - where is it from?

Post by A Ah Sha Sa Ma Ha »

Malcolm wrote: Fri May 25, 2018 12:54 am
Kunga Lhadzom wrote: Fri May 25, 2018 12:49 am
Aryjna wrote: Thu May 24, 2018 8:58 pm The point is, God, as seen by the Christians, does not exist, as can be proven by very basic logic
If you were evolved a million times more than you are now....would your logic be the same ?
Logic is logic, no matter how evolved one is, just as 2+2 = 4 in all math.
OK...but being that you've evolved millions of years ....your brain would think and reason differently, also you would have more knowledge...about the Universe and the God phenomena...

Cave men had no idea about God....only when mans intelligence evolved did he come to these conclusions....so i can't imagine how man would think about these things in a million years.....
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Re: Quote by ChNNR about Dzogchen and God - where is it from?

Post by Spelare »

Aryjna wrote: Thu May 24, 2018 8:58 pmThis is probably the reason such threads are completely meaningless. What is the point of this discussion if everyone assigns whatever meaning they want to the words? (e.g. the word 'god').
It's not as extreme as assigning whatever meaning we want. It's a matter of acquaintance with a broad yet finite spectrum of what people mean by the word in question, in this case "God".

Language is by nature multivalent and open to interpretation. Just like our perceptions; just like almost every situation. There's never only one side.

There's a cognitive urge to simplify, but we don't need to obey it. Isn't some willingness to play with words and concepts more enjoyable than viewing them as having fixed identities? Isn't everything more enjoyable without imputing fixed identities?
The point is, God, as seen by the Christians, does not exist, as can be proven by very basic logic, and is completely out of place in the dharma.
There is no single Christian view. The position of dogmatic orthodoxy was arrived at as a bureaucratic compromise after centuries of squabbling, but there was always diversity of view and still is quite a lot. Possibly more than ever. Take two Christians at random: the character, precision, and sophistication of their God-concept will differ drastically. The same way that Buddhists who ostensibly adhere to the same teachings understand and implement them differently.

This plurality of views is complex, and most Christians think their disunity is a problem. As Buddhists, especially Vajrayana Buddhists or Dzogchenpas, it isn't a problem for us. We can just enjoy the wild profusion of religious forms, like any other display, without needing to charge them with value judgments or feel duty-bound to criticize them.
Last edited by Spelare on Fri May 25, 2018 1:17 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Quote by ChNNR about Dzogchen and God - where is it from?

Post by Virgo »

Spelare wrote: Fri May 25, 2018 1:12 am
This plurality of views is complex, and most Christians think their disunity is a problem. As Buddhists, especially Vajrayana Buddhists or Dzogchenpas, it isn't a problem for us. We can just enjoy the wild profusion of religious forms, like any other display, without needing to charge them with value judgments or feel duty-bound to criticize them.
That's the thing, we tend to look outside, and think and judge. In Dzogchen, we look inside. :)

Kevin...
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Re: Quote by ChNNR about Dzogchen and God - where is it from?

Post by Malcolm »

Kunga Lhadzom wrote: Fri May 25, 2018 1:08 am

Cave men had no idea about God...
Are you quite sure? And how did you come to this astonishing conclusion?
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Re: Quote by ChNNR about Dzogchen and God - where is it from?

Post by Norwegian »

Kunga Lhadzom wrote: Fri May 25, 2018 1:08 am
Malcolm wrote: Fri May 25, 2018 12:54 am
Kunga Lhadzom wrote: Fri May 25, 2018 12:49 am

If you were evolved a million times more than you are now....would your logic be the same ?
Logic is logic, no matter how evolved one is, just as 2+2 = 4 in all math.
OK...but being that you've evolved millions of years ....your brain would think and reason differently, also you would have more knowledge...about the Universe and the God phenomena...

Cave men had no idea about God....only when mans intelligence evolved did he come to these conclusions....so i can't imagine how man would think about these things in a million years.....
You're still just within the continuum of sentient beings however. Basically there are only two classes of beings: a) Sentient beings, and b) Buddhas. No matter what kind of sentient being it is, as long as it's a sentient being, it is bound by delusion, and it will inhabit one of the six realms. And there are many different kinds of sentient beings. But a Buddha on the other hand, is not deluded. A Buddha is omniscient. And you can start by studying the teachings of the Buddha in the Hinayana and in the Mahayana to see what he had to say about the concept of god.

Likewise many other realized masters of Buddhadharma did the same.

And so as Malcolm said, logic is still logic, despite your evolution.

But even then, logic or no logic, just read what the Buddha said, what Dharmakirti said, what Vasubandhu, Yashomitra, Asanga, Nagarjuna, Chandrakirti, Buddhapalita, Bhavaviveka, Shantarakshita, and so on and so forth said. Study Buddhadharma, and see for yourself how the idea of god in its many different varieties is dismantled and refuted thoroughly.
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Re: Quote by ChNNR about Dzogchen and God - where is it from?

Post by A Ah Sha Sa Ma Ha »

Malcolm wrote: Fri May 25, 2018 1:28 am
Kunga Lhadzom wrote: Fri May 25, 2018 1:08 am

Cave men had no idea about God...
Are you quite sure? And how did you come to this astonishing conclusion?
I thought it was logical. Also i'm making a big sweeping generalization just to compare mans intelligence through the span of time....
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Re: Quote by ChNNR about Dzogchen and God - where is it from?

Post by A Ah Sha Sa Ma Ha »

Norwegian wrote: Fri May 25, 2018 1:30 am Study Buddhadharma, and see for yourself how the idea of god in its many different varieties is dismantled and refuted thoroughly.
I figured it out myself before i read Buddhadharma. I don't believe in a Creator God. But i can understand how others do, and i don't like to judge them...because i've been there myself....
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Re: Quote by ChNNR about Dzogchen and God - where is it from?

Post by Malcolm »

This thread should have been put down weeks ago.
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Re: Quote by ChNNR about Dzogchen and God - where is it from?

Post by Fortyeightvows »

Malcolm wrote: Fri May 25, 2018 1:28 am
Kunga Lhadzom wrote: Fri May 25, 2018 1:08 am Cave men had no idea about God...
Are you quite sure? And how did you come to this astonishing conclusion?
Actually evidence of religion appears very early in the fossil records. Like it appears almost along side the use of tools and fire.
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Re: Quote by ChNNR about Dzogchen and God - where is it from?

Post by Virgo »

This thread needs to meet it's maker.

Kevin...
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Re: Quote by ChNNR about Dzogchen and God - where is it from?

Post by Fortyeightvows »

Virgo wrote: Fri May 25, 2018 2:37 am This thread needs to meet it's maker.

Kevin...
good one :tongue:
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Re: Quote by ChNNR about Dzogchen and God - where is it from?

Post by Virgo »

What happened to Buddhist sanctity?

Kevin...
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Re: Quote by ChNNR about Dzogchen and God - where is it from?

Post by Fortyeightvows »

Kunga Lhadzom wrote: Fri May 25, 2018 1:44 am Also i'm making a big sweeping generalization just to compare mans intelligence through the span of time....
Whoa there now..does not believing in god make man more intelligent? No way.
It just makes man more 'modern'
(I don't mean it in a good way)
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Re: Quote by ChNNR about Dzogchen and God - where is it from?

Post by dzogchungpa »

Virgo wrote: Fri May 25, 2018 2:37 am This thread needs to meet it's maker.

Kevin...

You mean emaho? They've already met.


Malcolm wrote: Fri May 25, 2018 2:25 am This thread should have been put down weeks ago.

That's a pretty disturbingly expressed bit of meta-discussion, even by your exacting standards, Acharya.
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Re: Quote by ChNNR about Dzogchen and God - where is it from?

Post by A Ah Sha Sa Ma Ha »

Fortyeightvows wrote: Fri May 25, 2018 2:43 am does not believing in god make man more intelligent? No way.
It just makes man more 'modern'
(I don't mean it in a good way)
I never said that. Actually I said the opposite. As man evolved , so did his concept of God.

Cave man probably worshipped the sun, moon & stars (example)
Modern Man has a million gods and religions....and zillions of books on the subject..
Last edited by A Ah Sha Sa Ma Ha on Fri May 25, 2018 3:14 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Quote by ChNNR about Dzogchen and God - where is it from?

Post by Spelare »

At least there's some life in this thread, even if it keeps flowing into weird tangents. The rest of the Dzogchen forum had gone eerily quiet until a few hackles were raised.

If nothing else, it's been spontaneous and at times absurd. Hopefully enjoyable. I'd say "educational," but that tends to put a damper on things.
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Re: Quote by ChNNR about Dzogchen and God - where is it from?

Post by PeterC »

Spelare wrote: Fri May 25, 2018 1:12 am
Aryjna wrote: Thu May 24, 2018 8:58 pmThis is probably the reason such threads are completely meaningless. What is the point of this discussion if everyone assigns whatever meaning they want to the words? (e.g. the word 'god').
It's not as extreme as assigning whatever meaning we want. It's a matter of acquaintance with a broad yet finite spectrum of what people mean by the word in question, in this case "God".

Language is by nature multivalent and open to interpretation. Just like our perceptions; just like almost every situation. There's never only one side.

There's a cognitive urge to simplify, but we don't need to obey it. Isn't some willingness to play with words and concepts more enjoyable than viewing them as having fixed identities? Isn't everything more enjoyable without imputing fixed identities?
But what is the point of "playing with words and concepts"? Does it help in our practice of the Dharma? No, because the concepts in question are, as others have pointed out, explicitly analysed and rejected in countless Dharma texts who describe them as wrong views, and the paths associated with them as wrong paths that do not lead to liberation.

Of course you can decide that (a) you assign different meanings to the words, or (b) you know better, or (c) you'd like to spend this precious human life experimenting to see if perhaps there are alternative undiscovered right paths. But then you are on the path of making-it-up-as-you-go-along, which leads to confusion and worse. This path is a major danger to many modern practitioners, because they think they're clever enough to impose their own understanding on everything.

This analogy is a bit of a stretch, but one could view this a bit like making a tarte tatin. They look remarkably simple - apples, pastry, butter, sugar, time in the oven - how hard can it be. Yet it's annoyingly difficult to get it right. If you want to make a good tarte tatin, you don't start by reading a dozen different recipes, then reading recipes on how to make a regular apple pie, and perhaps then recipes on how to roast a chicken, because that uses an oven too, and then trying to piece them all together into your own interpretation of the dessert. You take one recipe that works, and do it until you get it right. Only then do you - perhaps - start to innovate a little around that recipe. But if your tarte tatin takes an entire lifetime to make, you're not going to be doing very much innovating.

BTW - I agree with the other suggestions above that this thread should be forcefully liberated.
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Re: Quote by ChNNR about Dzogchen and God - where is it from?

Post by Spelare »

PeterC wrote: Fri May 25, 2018 3:26 amBut what is the point of "playing with words and concepts"? Does it help in our practice of the Dharma?


Yes. As someone who works with adolescents for a living, you might want to relax your rigid concept of pedagogy. Play is integral to learning.
No, because the concepts in question are, as others have pointed out, explicitly analysed and rejected in countless Dharma texts who describe them as wrong views, and the paths associated with them as wrong paths that do not lead to liberation.
Which we must confirm for ourselves. Until we are genuinely satisfied and convinced, pretending to be so is a barrier to the arising of genuine understanding.

To borrow what I think must be an old Tibetan cliché, we don't give our "nose-ropes" to anyone, no matter who they are. We practice and explore freely, to the full extent of our capacity and to the best of our knowledge.
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Re: Quote by ChNNR about Dzogchen and God - where is it from?

Post by Spelare »

PeterC wrote: Fri May 25, 2018 3:26 am This analogy is a bit of a stretch
It sure is! How can you learn to be uncontrived from following a recipe? A skilled cook in training will learn what works by experimenting and tasting, and build their repertoire so that they can play it by ear. They proceed on an empirical basis, observing their own experience carefully. What they certainly don't do is memorize a single recipe book and get frustrated if they encounter a working situation that doesn't conform exactly to what they prepared for. They are able to work with circumstances.

And then there's the classic analogy of gathering knowledge like a bee, going from flower to flower seeking nectar . . .
This path is a major danger to many modern practitioners, because they think they're clever enough to impose their own understanding on everything.
Which is why our rudder has to be valuing truth more than a) being right or b) conforming to expectations. Truth is determined based on what works, not based on prestige or personalities or the weight of convention. We attend carefully and, if we are entrapping ourselves through proliferating concepts, we simply notice without judgment. I don't think it helps to adopt a grave attitude. We should be serious, in terms of devotion to the path of realization, but not grave.
Last edited by Spelare on Fri May 25, 2018 4:12 am, edited 1 time in total.
Neither person nor skandha
but unstained wisdom is buddha.
In its knowing, ever serene—
I go for refuge therein.
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