Is the truth the Buddha discovered about himself the same as the truth you’d discover about yourself, if you “woke up” and saw your mind clearly, as it actually is? I’m talking about the truth of our reality—what’s real—beyond the surface of our opinions, assumptions, and even our everyday perceptions. That truth is changeless.
What’s real and true remains so; it’s not different from century to century. It’s not like fashion, something that changes every season, so you have to keep up with it. We can have spiritual fads, too, and be a follower or setter of trends. We might like ‘mindfulness’ right now, and next season be a fan of yoga. You sweat, you feel good, and yoga studios can be very chic. You can buy cool stuff to wear, to drink from, or to jump on. We can go on and on trying out and casting off the latest approaches to truth, without ever seeing the real truth they can lead us to. If we’re still not happy and looking for a new truth—a new explanation of reality—with every change in the weather or in our circumstances, then we won’t be able to find the deeper truth that goes beyond time, fashion, and self-interest.
If you’ve found what seems to be the truth and it keeps changing, then you haven’t found the truth yet. If you think today, “this is the truth,” and tomorrow it seems fishy, then that’s a clear sign it’s not the truth. If what the Buddha found 2600 years ago is false in today’s world, then it wasn’t the truth to begin with. Truth doesn’t change with the passing of time. It doesn’t change color with the color of people’s skins. It doesn’t wear sandals in one culture and Nikes in another. No matter how we label or conceptualize it, truth doesn’t change its essence. Truth is the basic reality of what it is.
Comments
The truth that calms all suffering .. go Rebels!
Looking forward to the Book Tour & having my ‘bel’ rung!
Tashi Delek …
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Ethan Nichtern, Nalanda West and Alfonso Acosta, mike . mike said: Awesome website for @Ponlop Rinpoche's awesome new book Rebel Buddha. http://bit.ly/dkfRZT /via @ethannichtern […]
Interesting. Is this a marketing campaign, a prelude to a book tour? Or, an attempt to escape the rigid structure and control of Tibetan cultural affectation. Can Ponlop really “step out”? That would be something worthy of the rebel label. Frankly, medieval Buddhism needs to be melded into modern thought to undue the faddish nature of west imitating east.
Can he? Can we?
Its not a bad thing to want to sell books, its just very “rebellious”.
Mark, of course, there’s nothing inherently “rebellious” about “selling a book”, but you should read the book before you decide to what degree Ponlop Rinpoche’s message is “rebellious”.
I think Ponlop Rinpoche is at the forefront of creating a truly Western form of Buddhism that isn’t so tightly bound to Asian cultural forms (yet, doesn’t reject them out of hand either). He’s doing it without losing the essential message of the teachings and lineage(s), which is very tricky.
You can’t judge a book by its website.
I think the rising of buddhism in West is due to the teaching of Tibet’s buddhism. However, one thing of most people forgot, including East people, when they start practising or believing in buddhism that they need to have a strong theoretical foundation of Eastern sutra before they start practicing the Tibet school. Unfortunately, there are very limited English translated; most of them are only in Chinese version. Again, it is very difficult to translate the actual meaning.
For example, like Philip said he can only see his face on the mirror which is true…..I would ask further that your face is the truly “you”, what about your legs, body, arms…..they are all part of your “you”, if these parts were all separated, where are “you”.
Yes…ultimate true is never fell into both right or wrong or middle. People always tend to like finding things outside themselves and never think the truth is actually within themselves.
Basically, Buddha left three major principles (1) there is nothing can be exit forever in the universe, (2) all methods are not absolutely right and can stand forever, (3)you will become freedom from all dimensions once you understand the true nature of mind.
The actually thing that never change according to my personal experience that we all have it: think about your 6 senses. For example, your ability of hearing. In ancient time, master asked their students to meditate and listen to all sounds until nothing can hear anymore, of course, including hearing your internal sounds. However, this is a little too complicated. Simply speaking, your capability of hearing function won’t be loss even when you become dwarf because if you really lost this function, how come you can still hear nothing. Again, you can hear when you are in your dream. Your ear organs are not function in your dream but your hearing function is still working. Same idea apply to other senses and the only problem is each sense will become more difficult other than ear and vision.
I hope this would help each other and some of my opinion. Any question should ask your rinphoche.
Just to clarify, I meant to say:
Its not a bad thing to want to sell books, its just NOT very “rebellious”.
Whether “truth” exists or not matters little. I experience my perceptions constantly changing, my understanding expanding and then contracting again. The flow of energy, ever changing, dances, barely noticing my thoughts, amused by my attempts to understand.
“Whether truth exists or not” … I couldn’t possibly count the number of times I’ve rocked back to listen to well positioned members of the Buddhist community spin off into nonsense this way.
Now in fact I’ve had the good fortune of being exposed to Rinpoche’s teachings, and teachings by other Kagyu masters, so in a very real way my cup runneth over.
And, also in fact, I don’t take the above-mentioned nonsense as anything other than substantial experience of the dis-ease that is sentient human life in modernity.
But I’m still astonished by the lack of ground.
When you fall out of bed, do you fall to the ceiling? Towards one of the walls? Or to the floor?
So, really, whether sophistic and elaborately self-deceptive or brazenly manipulative, that particular brand of nonsense is never other than mis-direction. At best its indulgently specious logic … the stuff that makes Zenist like me cackle with amused delight. (Ah, human all too human!)
But still and all, in the end, I wonder at how folk refuse the brilliance of the game itself. So the “mere” facticity (Which is like saying, “the mere jewel encruste gold”.) is brushed aside.
It’s wonderous. No, not wonderful: terribly sad, tragic, catastrophic … but wonderous at how mind works. And with mind, the flow of social activity.
What frightens me is only that my cohort is so well educated, so well practiced, so skilled, and so wealthy. Power in the service of self-deception and delusion … that frightens me.
Mangalam / kyeho
p.s. I didn’t here distinguish between “truth” and “fact”. (For French speakers these words have a vastly different resonance. I imagine other languages have similar existential differences.) My point is that human individuals i.e. person pursue what they take as happiness, and nothing’s easier than word games.
True enough. But, Rinpoche can’t really rebel at all. For one, he is bound by the lineage and family. Secondly, most significantly, his western students expect all the cultural trimmings from Tibet. Its a very conservative trap.
I had some expectations from his writings. The scene around him was disappointing. The teachings are very traditional, which is good to a point. Our Tibet friends have a superficial understanding of western humanist traditions.
Sorry, but Beethovens 9th has more to say, at least to me, then Kagyu rhymes.
Perhaps one more generation spending time with the barbarians will help.
Rebel views in this case are not revolutionary.
These comments are offered with respect.
“True enough. But, Rinpoche can’t really rebel at all. For one, he is bound by the lineage and family. Secondly, most significantly, his western students expect all the cultural trimmings from Tibet. Its a very conservative trap.”
Mark, that may be true to a degree. Maybe Rinpoche has noticed this and that’s why he is now bringing up these points. From my personal experiences with Rinpoche, I would say that he’s the best of the “old school” and “new school” of Tibetan Buddhism. Not referring to the lineages, but to the style of transmitting and preserving the essence of the teachings and practices. I would not call it a “very conservative trap” at all, but rather, a somewhat conservative approach that is working quite well for many people.
As far as what “Kagyu rhymes” mean to you, no apology necessary! I find Kagyu teachings to be subtle, powerful and all around brilliant but I don’t expect everyone would experience them that way.
And “rebel views…are not revolutionary”? Who said anything about being “revolutionary”? The revolution was a long, long time ago. We just haven’t realized it.
Fascinating response, Robert. But the revolution is always now.
We have a thousand years of stories. Magnified and deified. Translated, now scripted.
What if there are no reincarnated lineage’s? No Tibetan royalty. No religious culture. Strip it down. Let go of the Buddha myth. Quit bowing. And assuming that guru devotion is like going to Lourdes.
What then is left? If the truth is really the truth, that would be a good place to start the rebellion. Risky?
I have an inkling that Rinpoche might agree. But, not a rebel is he. At this point, anyway.
Dont mean to darken the tour. I just though the title was a stretch.
Mark
I love the rebelliousness of your comments, and your points are all good.
I also hear your commitment to, and impatience for, a truly western buddhism.
My feeling is that the stripping down you refer to is exactly the same as what the real message of buddha-as-rebel is.
That is:
-the real rebellion is within – to rebel against our tireless habit of focussing on the appearance and not the awareness/mind/self. ‘wisdom’
-To have a break from taking ourselves so seriously and to begin caring about more than just me. ‘compassion’
These are not easy. They are and always will be rebellious.
And I love that you bring up Beethoven – those of us with good taste certainly have found a way to bridge 300 years in our appreciation for music. Or those who enjoy Shakespeare, or whoever.
I feel it’s going to be something similar in dharma – like we can appreciate it despite the antiquity of the outside, because inside it is something vital, and necessary. And represents a rebellion against our habits.
With appreciation
Luke
Mark, the revolution I’m talking about is our nature as sentient beings. I think the moment mind appeared on the scene, that was the be all, end all of revolutions! Yet, we still seem so confused about what we are. Are we an “emergent property” of the brain? Are we Buddhas? Are we rebels, devils and angels? Are we none of that and/or all of that?
I can tell you first hand based on over a decade of absorbing Ponlop Rinpoche’s teachings, he is first and foremost encouraging us to look at who we are, what mind is, and discover the truth for ourselves.
You keep saying how Ponlop Rinpoche is “not a rebel”. Well, I don’t think he’s talking about himself specifically with the handle “Rebel Buddha”, except to the extent that that rebel spirit exists in us all to varying degrees. So, really, I think your point about Rinpoche not being a rebel is kind of like saying that L. Frank Baum is not the Wizard of Oz.
“What if there are no reincarnated lineage’s? No Tibetan royalty. No religious culture. Strip it down. Let go of the Buddha myth. Quit bowing. And assuming that guru devotion is like going to Lourdes. What then is left?”
Those are good questions, Mark. First of all, re: reincarnated lineages, I don’t think anyone would dispute that the lineages exist. So that leaves the question of “reincarnated”. Well, who knows about that one? That’s a whole other discussion that we should take up at some point here on rebelbuddha.com…
I think the Tibetans have done an amazing job preserving and evolving a system of philosophical thought and mind-expanding practices. I think the system is highly effective when properly understood and consistently applied over a reasonable period of time. So, I bow to those that work to preserve and disseminate the teachings, just as I applaud those that work to heal, protect and even entertain the world.
“Guru devotion” is only like going to Lourdes for the most immature of practitioners. Gurus have no power to bless (i.e., inspire) a being that cannot assimilate and grasp the teachings and put them into practice. That said, the presence of a master like the Dalai Lama brings forth a lot of positive thoughts and feelings in most everyone who encounters him. Who knows what the dynamic there is, but why reject it?
And I say, yes, yes, strip away SOME of the Tibetan cultural veneer, but certainly not all of it! It’s beautiful, colorful and engages our minds with a lot of amazing, powerful imagery. I love art and symbolism and would hate to see Tibetan Buddhism stripped of these elements in it’s journey Westward. We need to cultivate ability to distinguish between the essential message and the cultural trimmings. When we do that, there’s no need to preemptively reject the cultural aspects.
Found by chance: a literary reference apropos this discussion.
Our high-school age daughter was reading Hesse’s Demian for one of her courses.
The following is from Thomas Mann’s 1947 introduction to the book:
“‘The new is beginning…. What will you do?’ The right answer would be: ‘Assist the new without sacrificing the old.’ The best servitors of the new … may be those who know and love the old and carry it over into the new.”
How’s that for a Mission Statement of American Buddhism 😉
For those of us who have not actually read the book, the following synopsis (from wikipedia) shows a familiar sounding theme:
In Demian the protagonist, Emil, “struggles between two worlds: a world of illusion and the real world, the world of spiritual truth.”
In the course of the novel, Emil “detaches from and revolts against the superficial ideals of the world of appearances and eventually awakens into realization.”
It is “the mysterious Demian” who leads Emil to realization.
This revolution cannot be televised 😉
-mike
Thinking about the truth is an impossibility. Either you know it or you don’t.
Another comment about the truth:
“If the mind when filled with some desire
should seek a goal
it only hides the light”
Truth does not have to be achieved. It simply has to be realized that it is there..!
See more on my website about tibetans in Denmark
Rinpoche does not need to be a rebel–he is already awake. He is encouraging *us* to be rebel buddhas.
An analogy that he often uses to illustrate transfering Buddhism from one culture to another is that of a monkey leaping from one branch to another…that you cannot let go of the first branch too soon (Tibetan Buddhism) before grasping the second branch (American/Western Buddhism) otherwise you slam to the ground. I personally think Rinpoche is being very skillful in weaning us off the non-useful cultural forms of Tibetan Buddhism as we discover what is more useful in the context of our culture. And *we* also need to be participating in this process of discovering what is useful and what works and what doesn’t.
Devotion is the bull’s eye path, but one must connect properly. Just because it is difficult or often misunderstood does not take away from the genuiness, directness and profundity of that path.
Just my 2 cents
As a member of the Danish sangha for about 40 years I can see today, that many of them are grasping to both branches and therefore getting nowhere!
Maybe it’s better to let go and be grounded to realize the fundamentals of Buddha’s teachings and let go of religion.
Religion is yet another symptom. It’ not the disease and it’s not the cure.
“We can go on and on trying out and casting off the latest approaches to truth, without ever seeing the real truth they can lead us to.”
This statement reminds me of the times when, as a teenager, I would go into a “clothing frenzy” trying on one outfit after another, never satisfied it was the “right one.” Seems like the post is saying that, whatever we “put on” in the way of outer dharma “clothing” we won’t get anywhere unless our ultimate goal is to know a changeless truth, a truth that can wear any outfit and still be complete and whole, exactly as it is.