sunyata

Many experiences have happened during these techniques, known as disciplines, at RSE. People have been hurt physically, emotionally, and otherwise. Post your experiences.
joe sz
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sunyata

Unread post by joe sz »

Once upon a time there was a teaching about the Light. Every good Spiritualist since the 19th Century knew, and all good Spiritualists today know that one must approach the Light after death to avoid getting trapped in the spook world with attachments to Earth life and sin and suffering. Helena von Hahn, nee Blavatsky believed in the Light too, but later she and her soul-mate Col. Olcott took pansila and converted to Buddhism.

Buddhism taught something different. The Light was still life and still suffering. The candle needed to be extinguished. All karmic attachment needed to be cut--good and bad. Only then could one re-enter "voidness'. Extinction! Nirvana!

Sunyata!
Śūnyatā, शून्यता (Sanskrit noun from the adj. śūnya: "zero, nothing"), Suññatā (Pāli; adj. suñña), stong-pa nyid (Tibetan), Kòng/Kū, 空 (Chinese/Japanese), Gong-seong, 공성(空性) (Korean), qoγusun (Mongolian) is frequently translated into English as emptiness. Sunya comes from the root svi, meaning swollen, plus -ta -ness, therefore hollow ( - ness). A common alternative term is "voidness".

In Buddhism, emptiness is a characteristic of phenomena, arising from the Buddha's observation that nothing possesses an essential, enduring identity (see anattā), by virtue of dependent origination. Thus to say an object is "empty" is synonymous with saying that thing is dependently originated. Śūnyatā generally holds that all things, including oneself, appear as thoughtforms (conceptual constructs). This view is roughly shared by the historically related Perfection of Wisdom Sutras, Mādhyamaka and Yogācāra[1].

All of extant Buddhism, including Theravada, considers any person to be a mere conceptual construct designated upon a bundle of aggregates.[2] However Theravada's Abhidharma makes the aggregates into 'primary existents'. Mahayana arose partly as a response to various "new" Abhidharmas, such as the one followed in Theravada, which put forth the notion that the aggregates are 'primary existents'.[3][4][5][6] Therefore Mahayana's Śūnyatā, but not Theravada, preserves the original attitude of early Buddhism by claiming that the aggregates themselves are empty (dependently originated).[7]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%9A%C5%ABnyat%C4%81
joe sz
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Re: sunyata

Unread post by joe sz »

So I ask you?
What is Ramtha doing still attached to all the sin and suffering of this life in the Spook world?
Getting drunk, selling bogus horses and having sex or yearning for the old days when sex was easier and all that through "his woman" thus complicating a host of lives in more and more karma:?:

Why the end times drama when true satori is tranquil, at peace, and singular knowing that when when the candle gently goes out, it is in the fullness of total bliss :?:
It is "empty" of all that drama of a drama queen.

happy Sunyata, everyone!
Kensho
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Re: sunyata

Unread post by Kensho »

A little more mind bending stuff: :-)

In the Buddhist philosophy, the state of samsara (cycle of birth, aging, sickness and death) goes on an on like a wheel spinning. This is the cycle of existence as we know it. Perpetuated by action and effect, also known as karma, interdependent origination unfolds that connection between cause and effect, stage by stage, over and over again.
Thus one would have to leave that cycle to be free of it (sunyata)...and that means giving up all attachments and concepts relating to it.
Thus there can be no such thing as a god called Ramtha outside of the cycle of samsara; for that is a concept and therefore such a thing is bound within the prison of samsara. So if Ramtha itself is bound in the prison of samsara whom can it protect? Like many other concepts, Ramtha is illusory and is simply a collection of causes, conditions, projections and imputations. When its causes and conditions no longer exist, just like a summer rainbow, it too will disappear.

After one ponders what sort of result Judith's actions in promoting such a thing as Ramtha out of sheer greed, all the while being indifferent to the harm it brings others in the process; it truly makes one wonder what her next adventure in consciousness will be.
Perhaps it is then not such a stretch to have compassion for parasites, blood sucking insects and the like. We can only hope that they all exhaust their karma of such negative actions and come back as better things eventually.
Probably takes a few million go-arounds though.

With love, Kensho
"Don't let any person bring you so low as to hate them."
Booker T. Washington
joe sz
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Re: sunyata

Unread post by joe sz »

reincarnation is problematic for a strict Buddhist. If all that is 'samsara' or just an aggregate of forces, emotions and properties that form a "self", there is no evidence that that "self" is the same identity or person reincarnated, Tibetan Buddhism and the re-appearance of a Lama notwithstanding. iow, the NewAge idea that Cleopatra reincarnated as Maggie Mae Smith from Toledo in 1953 or that a horse reincarnated to be with a Ramster is nothing but a self-imposed joke to a right-minded Buddhist.

My point is that JZ repeats the self-serving nonsense perpetrated by Blavatsky who, like JZ, was a kind of Spiritualist at first, claiming voluntary possession--accomodation of a spook, ie, John King. Then realizing how common that line of performance had become, HPB ventured into a form of Buddhism without letting go of her spook connections [eg Koot Hoomi, Morya, the Old Man of the Hills] even to her end in 1891.
If you are attached to spooks like Ramtha and claim they are "real" and independent of you, then you are nowhere close to approaching the state of the "Void" or Sunyata. RSE is a ridiculous contradiction and the very state of "hell on earth" or samsara to a Buddhist.
ex
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Re: sunyata

Unread post by ex »

rse="hell on earth" thats it. the Bodhisattva concept is new age or budist?
Kensho
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Re: sunyata

Unread post by Kensho »

I agree with you Joe...just didn't want to get too deep into philosophies :-)

ex: It is my understanding that bodhisattva refers to the manifestation of true nature and this is originally beyond concepts; thus it is outside of the cycle of samsara (birth and death). Because this state is difficult to fathom from a normal worldly perspective, descriptions and explainations of it are conceptualized (by religions and others), to help foster an appreciation/understanding of (and sometimes intentionally confuse) the ultimate true nature of all beings - that which exists beyond the emptiness of inherent existence.
What sort of story line gets added to it, is as limitless as imagination itself. ;-)

With love, Kensho
"Don't let any person bring you so low as to hate them."
Booker T. Washington
joe sz
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Re: sunyata

Unread post by joe sz »

yes, Kensho! limitless as the imagination :lol: no two artists paint alike and no two preachers preach the exact same religion.

ex
the Boddhisattva was a late development in Buddhist mythology, in the Mahayana tradition, around 5 centuries after the buddha.
The earliest textual evidence of "Mahāyāna" comes from sūtras originating around the beginning of the common era.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahayana

It was an answer to "what happens in the mean time?" if we need help in getting to nirvana.

Thus, the enduring pagan tradition of ancestor worship emerged in Buddhism [as with saints in Christianity] centuries after the original teaching of "work out your own salvation' by following my precepts of 8 Fold Path [similar to commandments of Jesus]. There were no saints or Boddhisattvas to speak of in primitive Buddhism or Christianity, but after a hero dies one needs something to sustain the "personal" reality. Even the atheist Communists in Russia preserved the body of Lenin by studying and reviving Egyptian mummification.

In Chinese Buddhism there emerged the concept of an avalokiteshwara from India, a "savior/protector/guide" who was male in the original myth, later turned into Quan Yin/female in the Chinese version of the same thing.

The Theosophists took off on this concept of superhuman intermediaries between heaven and earth, God and man, nirvana and samsara [ie boddhistattva] and generated the "Mahatma Masters," later the Great White Brotherhood, of which Ramtha is but a newer manifestation owned exclusively as fenced in property by you know jz who.

When JZ dies, and she will, it will be interesting to see if anyone make a staue of her posing as Ramtha so die-hard Ransters can continue to have something see and to worhsip.

-------not that I want to suggest any more bizarre ideas :shock:
joe sz
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Re: sunyata

Unread post by joe sz »

do not dismiss the statue idea.
The Agni Yoga sect out of Theosophy in Russia, now 3 million strong, followed this pattern in Great White Brotherhood worship by erecting statues of Helena and Nicolas Roerich who were the channels for Master Morya:


http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... erichs.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Roerich
btw, the success of this GWB cult far outshines anything JZ/ramtha will accomplish
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agni_Yoga
AY was my :oops: main thing from 1975 thru 1982 when i finally, finally saw through the entire Blavatsky line of pseudo-teachings
Ockham
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Re: sunyata

Unread post by Ockham »

At the risk of wandering slightly off the topic: Sometimes erecting a statue doesn't work out so well. This could be just a case of bad engineering with too many flammable materials, or might it be karma?

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/201 ... fire_N.htm
joe sz
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Re: sunyata

Unread post by joe sz »

ockham
that 'touchdown jesus' going up in flames article was LOL funny. bad art deserves to be burned. I think Zeus was pissed.

to me, religion is more about aesthetics and elegance than science and fact. I mean, if you are going to make a statue of a great hero, hire Michelangelo or Bernini. Do not demean the subject.

I admire Islam for that reason alone, the adherence to not-make an image of the undescribable, although some sects in Islam carry it way too far. There have been wonderful icons by Persian artists of Muhammed w Gabriel, for example.

This is one of my problems with almost all the Theosophical sects like RSE----badly conceived with crude, poorly developed narratives and rituals.

There is an elegance and refinement in many expressions of Buddhism, an poetic approach to 'voidness' or sunyata.
JZ, by building that godawful 'tank' and by pushing the blindfolds, made a mockery of something that took Buddhism centuries to refine.

someone may have used this analogy before: the RSE approach to the VOID is like doing brain surgery with a chisel and baseball bat.
Ockham
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Re: sunyata

Unread post by Ockham »

Hello Joe,

Thanks to you and Kensho for sharing on sunyata. I have had the opportunity to attend a brief series of lectures by Bhuddist monk prsented at a local cultural center. What a difference between the real deal in spirituality and the stuff put on by JZ Knight and company. It is like the difference in viewing sculpture at the Met. museum versus walking down the pots 'n pans aisle at Wal-Mart.

Even though the teaching of the Bhuddist monk covered very difficult to grasp concepts, he opened the door of understanding. I appreciate that it was just a glimpse and it takes perhaps decades of study to reach true understanding. I got kowldege that was new to me, it was done in a coherent way and all it cost was the request of a modest, "love offering," of a few dollars.

When I listen to JZ Knight, it is pretzel logic and contradiction, dosed with goofy uneducated justifications of quantum physics that are incomplete or incorrect. Then the stuff about space aliens and government conspiracy! Woot, woot! I've listened to her tapes and CDs and I don't feel like I know anything more than when I started. What a confused mess. Of course that is what she wants - hoping you'll blame yourself being insufficient to grasp the double-talk - all for a stratospherically high price. A friend played me a CD of JZ knight and the, "Ramtha," character talking about, "soul mates." It made me cringe. Even as a layman without formal psychology training, it was clear that anybody taking Knight's garbage would wind up in an emotional mess.
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