Stupid comment on Dzongsar Khyentse article

[DharmaDefender]

Have you lot read this article? www.dorjeshugden.com/all-articles/dzongsar-khyentse-rinpoche-china-and-chinese-will-be-the-protector-of-buddhism/ Wow theres one comment there that really got my goat 

“… the sacred lineages that the CTA is destroying. …”

CTA can’t destroy any lineages at all. Nothing can destroy all the dharma lineages. Just look at the fact that bon is within mankind about 18.000 years and all other buddhas like Shakyamuni and Garab Dorje refreshed the dharma transmissions after Tönpa Shenrab Miwoche.

All the dualism and violence within mankind since was not able at all to stop dharma transmissions. Self araising wisdom and compassion (rigpa rangshar) will araise within mankind anyway and nothing is able to stop this. It’s just impossible.

My experience with the spirit of Rime is that we not only received Teachings and Empowerments from our own Teacher but also from many other Teachers of all Lineages as well. We also study, practice and protect all lineages.

There is always something special about each Teacher, they also give diffrent advices to study and pratice that are very helpful to be able to make the next step within dharma practice. Rime is very important because it is very helpful.

My heart is Rime

I dont often make personal remarks but when I read this, wow. What an incredibly stupid person for thinking Rime is okay.

Ive said it before and Ill say it again - RIME IS NOT OKAY. I dont care who thinks Im sectarian for carrying this thought. If you want to play pick and mix with your practice, go ahead but stop trying to convince everyone that your "open" way of thinking is non-dualistic and superior.

If you think your better because your Rime and its the way to go, then you think Lama Tsongkhapa and Guru Rinpoche and Sakya Trizin and the 5th Dalai Lama and all the greats are ALL sectarian idiots who went about their practices in the wrong way.

There are traditions and lineages for a reason and to think your thinking and approach transcends that of the great masters is just sheer arrogance. If you REALLY want to know, methinks Rime is just a ploy to get more money and followers because its an excuse to reach out to people across all traditions. Rime people throw big words about like non-dualism and emptiness and free from labels when in reality, its a bunch of airy fairy bollox that didnt find its footing until the CTA started bandying around the term to force people to abandon Dorje Shugden.

The fact this person left a comment there just proves to me what everyones been saying all along. The CTA are destroying the lineage because their convincing people to think its beneficial NOT to have a lineage. Flippin idiotic comment.

[DharmaSpace]

This reminds me that each unique Buddhist tradition has their own particular protectors.

Should we call the Kagyu, Nyingma and Sakya sectarian for having a protector that safeguards their  lineage?

Absolutely NOT!

Rime as I understand it,was formed to protect some of the lineages that were in danger of disappearing. It is not meant to combine various disparate traditions, doing so would defeat the initial purpose of why the Rime movement was started in the first place. So learning from various traditions and mixing it together, in theory seems electic but actually a 'true' path to confusion, each as lineage has its own 'true' path towards Enlightenment, to think otherwise would mean each path cannot be by itself or sufficient to lead practitioners towards enlightenment.

Beings of the degenerate age, have little merits, this is not the time, when practitioners can hear one thing and put it into practice unlike the golden era of Buddhism, where people like Naropa can visualize perfectly the Vajrayogini, drawn on the sand by Tilopa, or the practitioners who can read Atisha's prose form of the 'Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment' and get realisation, we have to study the Lamrim as expounded by Je Tsongkhapa. Now is not the time to put complex

That would mean, Kagyu lineages, Nyingma and Sakya lineages by itself cannot lead us towards full enlightenment, which is a ridiculous notion in my humble opinion bordering on absurd. If someone were to say why not learn more from other traditions,I would say to them if you have gotten sufficient instructions to be enlightened why the need for excess teachings and initiations?

[DharmaDefender]

That would mean, Kagyu lineages, Nyingma and Sakya lineages by itself cannot lead us towards full enlightenment, which is a ridiculous notion in my humble opinion bordering on absurd. If someone were to say why not learn more from other traditions,I would say to them if you have gotten sufficient instructions to be enlightened why the need for excess teachings and initiations?

Hear ye, hear ye!

Lets mix and match and toss up a fruit salad and hope that gets us to enlightenment! LOL

[grandmapele]

LOL...maybe, someone wants a shortcut to enlightenment. If one can pick and choose the best of all the lineages, then wouldn't that give us enlightenment faster???

And, say,  Lama Tsongkhapa has many teachers from different lineages and traditions, so we can do so too??

Water's getting murky here. I guess, for the ordinary practitioner, we should just concentrate on the pure lineages before we even think of other traditions.

 

[Rowntree]

 

I believe the spirit of Rime is good, but not practical. It is like us trying to learn a new language from more than one teachers. Each of them has different methods that will help us to learn the language well but they may not agree with a certain point and so the confusion begins. What do we do next? Seek more advice from other teachers or trying to figure out which teacher to listen to and follow? Either way, it will mean more confusion for us.

It is all great and nice to say that we have many spiritual teachers and we have the freedom to learn from anyone but when it comes to a contradictory point, we remain stuck in our situation and couldn't proceed further. We cannot simply choose any of the advice because in spirituality we are dealing with our mind and there is no room for trial and error per se. One wrong move, we'll be stuck or degenerate from there.

Another thing is, although many say they do Rime, somehow Rime does not include the Gelug lineage, there's always a mixture of the Nyingma, Kagyu and Sakya lineage, just like the lineages that Dzongsar Rinpoche himself practices. The only logical explanation is that the Gelug has many different views as compared to the other lineages and it is too difficult to refute or oppose any of them, so the safest thing to do is to not practice that and continue to pretend we accept all lineages.

[Celia]

Even in a secular situation, if the formula works and yields results, why the need to mess with it? Changing for the sake of changing without proper analysis and justifications, will just cause much confusions and disruptions. More so when it relates to Dharma practice, where the consequences are just too severe for any wrong deviation from the real path to enlightenment.

It is not the case where there cannot be change but logically change should only be effected when there really is a need to do so or where such change is necessary/justified to improve things.

Here, we have a situation where there is nothing to warrant the need to change and such proposed change will likely create more confusion. In addition, such Rime movement actually distorts the importance of lineage in the transmission of a practice.

[Ringo Starr]

That would mean, Kagyu lineages, Nyingma and Sakya lineages by itself cannot lead us towards full enlightenment, which is a ridiculous notion in my humble opinion bordering on absurd. If someone were to say why not learn more from other traditions,I would say to them if you have gotten sufficient instructions to be enlightened why the need for excess teachings and initiations?

Hear ye, hear ye!

Lets mix and match and toss up a fruit salad and hope that gets us to enlightenment! LOL

Rime was a movement in reaction to the Chinese Communists' suppression of Buddhism. This is what Jamyang Kongtrul, a very prominent Buddhist master in Tibet in the 19th century and who is credited as one of the founders of the Rimé movement has to say about having to be grounded in one tradition:

"The scholars and siddhas of the various schools make their own individual presentations of the dharma. Each one is full of strong points and supported by valid reasoning.

If you are well grounded in the presentations of your own tradition, then it is unnecessary to be sectarian. But if you get mixed up about the various tenets and the terminology, then you lack even a foothold in your own tradition. You try to use someone else's system to support your understanding, and then get all tangled up, like a bad weaver, concerning the view, meditation, conduct, and result.

Unless you have certainty in your own system, you cannot use reasoning to support your scriptures, and you cannot challenge the assertions of others. You become a laughing stock in the eyes of the learned ones. It would be much better to possess a clear understanding of your own tradition.

In summary, one must see all the teachings as without contradiction, and consider all the scriptures as instructions. This will cause the root of sectarianism and prejudice to dry up, and give you a firm foundation in the Buddhas teachings. At that point, hundreds of doors to the eighty-four thousand teachings of the dharma will simultaneously be open to you."

Source: The Ri-Me Philosophy of Jamgon Kongtrul the Great: A Study of the Buddhist Lineages of Tibet by Ringu Tulku, ISBN 1-59030-286-9, Shambhala Publications

[DharmaDefender]

If you are well grounded in the presentations of your own tradition, then it is unnecessary to be sectarian. But if you get mixed up about the various tenets and the terminology, then you lack even a foothold in your own tradition. You try to use someone else's system to support your understanding, and then get all tangled up, like a bad weaver, concerning the view, meditation, conduct, and result.

Unless you have certainty in your own system, you cannot use reasoning to support your scriptures, and you cannot challenge the assertions of others. You become a laughing stock in the eyes of the learned ones. It would be much better to possess a clear understanding of your own tradition.

In summary, one must see all the teachings as without contradiction, and consider all the scriptures as instructions. This will cause the root of sectarianism and prejudice to dry up, and give you a firm foundation in the Buddhas teachings. At that point, hundreds of doors to the eighty-four thousand teachings of the dharma will simultaneously be open to you."

Source: The Ri-Me Philosophy of Jamgon Kongtrul the Great: A Study of the Buddhist Lineages of Tibet by Ringu Tulku, ISBN 1-59030-286-9, Shambhala Publications

In essence, Rime has been abused by people too lazy to go in-depth into their own traditions, in order to justify their pick and mix tendencies. Because if you actually studied your tradition and were certain of your knowledge, thered be no need for Rime.

Ironic its now been abused to add to "the root of sectarianism and prejudice", considering that people these days almost use "non-Rime" as a slur.

[DharmaDefender]

I believe the spirit of Rime is good, but not practical. It is like us trying to learn a new language from more than one teachers. Each of them has different methods that will help us to learn the language well but they may not agree with a certain point and so the confusion begins. What do we do next? Seek more advice from other teachers or trying to figure out which teacher to listen to and follow? Either way, it will mean more confusion for us.

It is all great and nice to say that we have many spiritual teachers and we have the freedom to learn from anyone but when it comes to a contradictory point, we remain stuck in our situation and couldn't proceed further. We cannot simply choose any of the advice because in spirituality we are dealing with our mind and there is no room for trial and error per se. One wrong move, we'll be stuck or degenerate from there.

Another thing is, although many say they do Rime, somehow Rime does not include the Gelug lineage, there's always a mixture of the Nyingma, Kagyu and Sakya lineage, just like the lineages that Dzongsar Rinpoche himself practices. The only logical explanation is that the Gelug has many different views as compared to the other lineages and it is too difficult to refute or oppose any of them, so the safest thing to do is to not practice that and continue to pretend we accept all lineages.

Well heres the thing see. I see a lot of Rime practitioners around and many of them seem to have forgotten to bring their common sense back with them when they left Nepal back in the 60s. So for them to label themselves "Rime" becomes a sort of a badge of honour. Oooh look at me. Im so open-minded and non-sectarian and really quite wonderful.

Then Rime becomes used to pander to ones ego. The thing of it is yeah, that Rime is about non-sectarianism. Your talking about becoming so open to all traditions, it is without label. Yet Rime practitioners like to draw divisions between themselves and non-proponents of Rime. Isnt that a division in itself? Boggles the mind these hippies cant see the irony in all of this..

[DharmaSpace]

On another note this article, really opens our eyes on how clear it is that CTA singles out Dorje Shudgen people.

All the accusations about Chinese Money, actually goes back and incriminates other Tibetan lamas as well from non Gelug traditions. The next time CTA people accuses Dorje Shugden people of accepting money, well I have more ammunition against them now. 

 

[SabS]

Hmm after reading the comments, I just have my simplistic view. Lama Tsongkapa had explored and taken the best of all traditions to give us the Gelug tradition. So why would still want to explore others when we already have the best? Lama Tsongkapa's teachings are so precious that Nechung had came to search for that special Protector to keep his teachings alive to benefit us in these degenerate age. That is what Protector Dorje Shugden arose to do. I simply do not think that we are so attained that we are able to know what part of each practice to seek for with each tradition. So better I stick with my Guru and his pure lineage.