Tantric Practice, Shaman and the Tao

"Emptiness, or how to untie what has never been tied" --Sunyata

Learn to yield and be soft
If you want to survive
Learn to bow
And you will stand 
at your full height

Learn to empty yourself
and be filled with the Tao
the way a valley empties itself into a river

Use up all that you are
And then you can be made new
Learn to have nothing
And you will have everything

Sages always act like this
and are Children of the Tao

Never try to impress, their being shines forth
Never saying 'this is it,' people see what the truth is
Never boasting, they leave the space they can be valued in
And never claiming to be who they are, people can see them
And since they never argue, no one argues with them either

So the ancient ones say
Bend and you will rule
Is this a lie? 

You'll find its true
Be true to yourself,

 and all will be well with you.

--Tao Te Ching, Chapter 22, translated by Man-Ho Kwok

To the Western mind, the Tao is often misconstrued. Most often, it's through a lack of experience with the world in which it comes forth, and even less experience with the ancient world in which its wisdom was written. So for most Westerners, having little or no contact with Asian civilization, society or its antiquity, there leaves a gaping hole which is often filled with something, something that may well be an assumption based upon western experience--or imagination. The meanings are then misconstrued.

Know that while there was a person called Lao Tzu historically, he was known to the Chinese philosopher, Confucius as the person, Li Ehr Tan; little else survives about who this person may have been. 
The Tao Te Ching along with other wisdom books, T'ai Shan Kan-ying, Chuang Tzu and Lieh Tzu, as well as the I Ching are important writings of the Taoist Cannon.
And while the authorship of these ancient texts made be deduced, many scholars are of the opinion that the book we call the Tao Te Ching, like the Greek text, Homer, was actually written by a number of persons over a span of time.

It is important to consider and appreciate that the values of the Tao were radically different from those of Confucius' imperialism; one of the most significant differences was the practice of Shamanism. It is a core belief of Taoism that there exists two worlds, the material, physical world which we experience, and a greater, unseen world, the spiritual world existing side by side with the everyday world. Sometimes the Taoist believes this spirit world breaks into the everyday world; a mystical experience arises.

The Shaman is key in his role of one who is able to intercede between the two worlds, heaven and earth, if you like; often using meditation, trance, drumming or tantric methods, the Shaman is able to move between these worlds. This idea is key to the Taoist notion that these intercessors flow between the worlds, riding  upon a river of the true, natural, forces of the universe.
Shamanism believes certain creatures or structures are divinely inspired and more open or receptive to the forces of the Spirit world. It continues to the present day. Thus the sage, the Shaman, remains open, or empty so as to be the receptor of the spirits. Some think them to be like chameleons, able to take many poses or forms.

What You See Is Not Always Golden*

"When psychologists don the cloak of expert in areas in which they have no more authority than the average man--that is, when they invade religion, ethics, and politics--they will often be found...to be wearing very little, and sometimes nothing at all." --The Emperor's New Clothes by W.K. Kilpatrick 

In the story of The Emperor's New Clothes originally as written by Hans Christian Anderson, naturally enough, is about an Emperor, a proud man, although sometimes prone to insecurity about how his subjects regard him, who values their esteem and respect above everything. Like many of his kind, he is very susceptible to flattery, as well as wanting to be able to prove his superiority over his subjects.

One day, two con men arrive in the country and realise they can exploit these weaknesses of the Emperor to their financial advantage. Disguising themselves as fashion designers, they gain access to the Emperor and tell him they are the most talented craftsmen in the land, able to create the most fashionable clothes from the finest material. The Emperor is terribly impressed by their sales pitch and immediately commissions them to create the most extravagant ceremonial robes for him to wear at the next royal procession. An event where he would be sure to be seen and admired by all his subjects.

Of course, the con men have a ruse that they know will both confound the emperor and make them rich without any real effort at all. So, when they start to "make" the fabulous robes, they invite the emperor to choose the fabric, and ingeniously show him a roll of material, apparently so fine, it is invisible to all but the most discerning clients. Now, the Emperor could not see this marvellous cloth for the simple reason that it did not exist, but could he admit it? Well, he could not, not even to himself.


Neither could the Emperors courtiers; they could see no cloth, but they were not about to admit it; if the Emperor could 'see' it, then indeed it must exist. Anyway, no one wanted to acknowledge that they lacked the discernment to be able to see such finery. The con men finish the "robes," receive their payment and sensibly disappear, never to be seen again in that part of the world. In the days leading up to the royal procession, the city was abuzz with rumours about the wondrous outfit the emperor was to wear. Expectations could not have been higher.

The Emperor, himself, was even more convinced of the reality of his robes; even though he sensed himself to be a fraud, so lacking discernment as he did, whatever uneasiness he felt was more than compensated by the high praise the robes received from all those around him. "Such fine stitching", "so beautifully cut", "what lovely colours" they chorused. The day of the procession arrived, and with full pomp and ceremony. The emperor paraded through the city - well - stark naked. The citizens, though, were not about to admit that what they could see or not, as it happened, cheered and roared their approval of the emperor and his new 'suit of clothes.' This happy, if a little undignified delusion would have continued unhindered, except for one thing, or rather one quite small child.

The child, one of the many spectators, was waiting expectantly to see the emperor and the much heralded robes, but what did he see? A naked emperor; unable to stay silent, he shouted out, "He's completely naked". Of course, those around him laughed at his 'stupidity' and told him to shut his mouth. The child insisted, "But he is, he is...". Well, to bring this tale to an end, eventually the crowd became restive; uncertain whispering broke out, as did the occasional guffaw of laughter. Then, like a punctured balloon, the pomp began to deflate as spectators, courtiers and Emperor alike realized that what the child was saying was indeed true. I don't have to describe the subsequent humiliation and deflation that followed.

It also carries another equally powerful message. After all, it is only the child who sees through the charade. The story of the Emperor's new clothes tells us that overweening pomposity and grandeur usually gets its come-uppance, and sometimes from the most unlikely source. For after all, how could a small, ordinary child be a threat to the highest authority in the land?" version by: http://www.critpsynet.freeuk.com/Baker.htm

In the Land of Oz, there lives a fairy godmother, a wicked witch , an innocent young girl and a small, tremulous man hiding behind a curtain, so as to seem to be something else. That is, until he's uncovered. In his book, The Zen of Oz, Joey Green writes, "Oz is actually governed by the Tao." Does The Wizard of Oz "touch a spiritual chord in each one of us because it has a certain Zen to it?"

Dorothy while searching for her place in the world experiences a series of mis-adventures in which at one point, in a cyclone, she is knocked unconscious. She then, we learn, enters into a mysterious, dream-like world. Starting off on a path called the Yellow Brick Road, the tale's author, Frank Lyman Baum, recounts to us, that she, along with her dog, Toto, and others encountered along the way go to find The Wizard of Oz. "The Wizard while claiming to be beneficent, rules Oz through fear and manipulation-- from behind a curtain.

He extols himself, like the Emperor in the previous story as "great and munificent," writes Green of the discovery of the Oz castles, and the little man otherwise known, but the unseen, Wizard of Oz. It is like in the previous tale again, a small, harmless creature, this time a tiny dog rather than a child who runs towards the Wizard behind the curtain, pulls it back to reveal the truth about  Oz. The Wizard, now humiliated, makes amends to Dorothy and her party by promising his help to return her home.

The theme of these stories, it may be said is that one should not insult the real with the unreal. For if you do, you too will at once revel in your own nakedness.

*This article appeared here on January 14, 2010

Origins: The Bon-po, Part One

Sunyata, or how to untie what has never been tied. ~Emptiness.


Although some medieval and modern Tibetan histories written by cloistered Buddhist monks portray the ancient pre-Buddhist religion of Tibet as a nefarious mixture of sorcery, black magic, shamanism, and bloody sacrifices, this appears to be just so much anti-Bon-po propaganda providing a melodramatic effect. The principal aim of these Buddhist historians was to glorify the role of Indian Mahayana Buddhism in Tibetan history, suggesting that there was no culture nor civilization in Tibet before the coming of Indian Buddhism to Central Tibet...

Another problem is that the Tibetan term Bon, probably deriving from the old verb form 'bond-pa, meaning to invoke the gods, has two different cultural references. In the first usage, Bon does indeed refer to the indigenous, pre-Buddhist, shamanistic, and animistic culture of Tibet, a culture that possessed many characteristics in common with other shamanistic tribal cultures of Central Asia and Siberia.

Although these cultures involved various types of religious practice and belief,
the central role was occupied by a practitioner known as a shaman. The activity of the shaman was definitively characterized as entering into an altered state of consciousness by way of chanting, drumming, dancing, and so on, whether this altered state of consciousness or "ecstasy" was understood to be soul-travel, as an out-of-the-body experience, or a form of spirit possession.

The principal social function of such a practitioner was healing.
A traditional form of Central Asian shamanism involving spirit possession continues to be practiced widely in Tibet even today among both Buddhist and Bon-po populations, as well as among Tibetan refugees living elsewhere in Ladakh, Nepal, and Bhutan. Such a practitioner is known as a lha-pa or dpa'-bo.

Elsewhere on the borders of Tibet in the Himalayas
and along the Sino-Tibetan frontiers, among certain Tibetan speaking, and related peoples, there exist shamanic practitioners known as Bon-pos; for example, among the Na-khi in China, and among the Tamangs in Nepal... there exists a second type of religious culture also known as "Bon" whose adherents claim to represent the pre-Buddhist civilization of Tibet.

This form of Bon is known also as Yungdrung Bon (g.yung-drung bon); these practitioners of Bon assert that at least part of their religious tradition was not native to Tibet, but was brought to Central Tibet sometime before the seventh century from the previously independent country of Zhang-zhung, west of Tibet, and more remotely from Tazik (stag-gzig) or Iranian speaking Central Asia to the northwest.

"The Eternal Teaching," a term which could be reconstructed into Sanskrit as "Svastika-dharma," where the swastika or sun-cross is the symbol of the eternal and the indestructible, corresponding in most every respect to the Buddhist term vajra or diamond (rdo-rje). In addition to ritual texts relating to shamanic and animistic practices, this ancient tradition possesses a large body of texts, also claiming to be pre-Buddhist in origin, relating to the higher teachings of Sutra, Tantra, and Dzogchen (mdo rgyud man-ngag gsum).

The Bon-po Lamas, instead of looking back to the North Indian prince, Siddhartha Gautama, as their Buddha, looked instead elsewhere as the source of their higher teachings of Sutra, Tantra, and Dzogchen. To the outsider, this Yungdrung Bon nowadays appears little different from the other schools of Tibetan Buddhism in terms of their higher doctrines and monastic practices.

Contemporary Bon possesses a monastic system much like the Buddhist one and a Madhyamaka philosophy fully comparable with the other Tibetan Buddhist schools. In contrast, Old Bon (bon rnying-ma), or Yundrung Bon as such, consists of the teachings and the practices attributed to Shenrab Miwoche, and in particular, this means the higher teachings of Sutra, Tantra, and Dzogchen.

These teachings are said to have been brought to the country of Zhang-zhung
in Western and Northern Tibet where they were translated into the Zhang-zhung language. Zhang-zhung appears to have been an actual language, distinct from Tibetan, and apparently related to the West Himalayan dialect of Kinauri.

The Bon-po tradition possesses as its highest teaching, a system of contemplation known as Dzogchen, "the Great Perfection."
These teachings reveal in one's immediate experience the Primordial State (ye gzhi) of the individual, that is to say, the individual's inherent Buddha-nature or Bodhichitta, which is beyond all time and conditioning, and conceptual limitations (time and space, as previously discussed in posts).

This Natural State (gnas-lugs), is spoken of in terms of its intrinsic, primordial purity (ka-dag) .
Both the Buddhist Nyingmapas and the Bonpos assert that their respective Dzogchen traditions were brought to Central Tibet in the eighth century: the Nyingmapa transmission from the Mahasiddha Shrisimha in living in Northern India, and the Bonpo transmission from a line of Mahasiddhas dwelling around Mount Kailas and the lake country of Zhang-zhung.

Thus there appear to exist two different historically authentic lineages for the transmission of these teachings... the historical origins of Bon-po Dzogchen, for this second authentic lineage of the Dzogchen teachings also did not originate in India proper, but was brought to Central Tibet in the ninth and tenth centuries.

Until the eighth century, Zhang-zhung had been an independent kingdom
with its own language and culture. It lay in what is now Western and Northern Tibet, and the center of the country was dominated by the majestic presence of the sacred mountain of Gangchen Tise or Mount Kailas.
Examining the available evidence, it now appears likely that before Indian Buddhism came to Central Tibet in the seventh and eighth centuries. Zhang-zhung had extensive contacts with the Buddhist cultures that flourished around it in Central Asia, and in the Indo-Tibetan borderlands.
Just to the west of Zhang-zhung, there once existed the vast Kushana empire which was Buddhist in its religious culture. It was an area in which Indian Buddhism interacted with various strands of Iranian religion-- Zoroastrian, Zurvanist, Mithraist, Manichean, as well as Indian Shaivism and Nestorian Christianity. Some scholars have seen this region beyond India as playing a key role in the development of certain aspects of Mahayana Buddhism, and later also in the development of a Tantric form of Buddhism known as Vajrayana.

This Buddhism, known as "gyer" in the Zhang-zhung language and as Bon in the Tibetan language,was not particularly monastic, but more Tantric in nature, and its spread was increased by the presence of various practitioners in the region... Into this century, Kailas remains an important site of pilgrimage drawing Hindu sadhus and yogis from India...

Such a mixed Buddhist-like culture, being both Tantric and Shamanic, was suppressed in the eighth century at the instigation of the Tibetan king, Trisong Detsan, the last king of Zhang-zhung, Ligmigya.

Within modern Buddhism, Dzogchen is a vehicle of the Nyingma School.
It’s the ninth vehicle, and it cannot be separated from the Nyingma School, or the Lineage that goes back to Garab Dorje. However, this does not mean that the Nyingmapas own Dzogchen. Nor does it mean that the Bönpos own it. Anyone from any school can practise Dzogchen. There have been many Lamas from all the schools who have practiced Dzogchen; in fact several Dala’i Lamas have been Dzogchen masters, such as the Great Fifth Dala’i Lama. Any discussion of the origin of Dzogchen will include a mention that it comes from the Nyingma Lineages. And it also comes from the Bön-pos.

This tradition has also received explicit support from His Holiness the Dalai Lama,who made a statement at the 1988 Tulku Conference in Sarnath in which he stressed the importance of preserving the Bön tradition, as representing the indigenous source of Tibetan culture, and acknowledging the major role it has had in shaping Tibet's unique identity.

Sources:
http://www.bonfoundation.org/aboutbon.html
www.angelfire.com/vt/vajranatha/bondzog.html
www. tibet.com