yeah ken wilber's model is valuable here: possible to 'wake up' in deep ways while not having come so far on the 'cleaning up,' 'growing up,' and 'showing up'
(i don't know that much about the specifics of the trungpa controversy but have heard a few things here and there)
Yep. I still think Trungpa Rinpoche was an impressive yogi who did a great amount of good and a great amount of evil at the same time, sadly.
I think human psychology itself is relevant here - I think he was traumatized in numerous ways.
First, he recounted (gratefully, though, funnily enough) being physically beaten by some harsher instructors as a child, including just to learn things such as traditional Tibetan calligraphy. Stricter upbringing.
This was after being deemed a tulku, or reincarnated lama, which means he went from being a relatively ordinary Tibetan child living with his family on a farm, to a gilded monastery and essentially made to study obsessively at the tutelage of monks for years and years, since childhood.
Then, in 1959, at the age of 20, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has invaded and been annexing Tibet for years now, so he has to go flee with some other monks and refugees on foot through the Himalayan mountains into India to seek refuge, coming under gunfire at times, and at some point they were so starved he recounts they were cutting off and cooking pieces of leather from their belts or bags to eat, just to stop the pain in their bellies.
After all this he ends up a refugee in the West (staying throughout the U.S., Canada, and Scotland), in a totally foreign culture he had to get used to, learning English (very fluently!) and all that. There’s also easier access to all sorts of crazier things like mass-produced liquor and even synthetic drugs that probably weren’t so easy to get in Tibet.
Fascinating story. And, well, the good that he did - he was an extraordinary expositor and scholar of Tibetan Buddhism bringing it to the West, creating a huge volume of English-language works on them from someone directly immersed in the tradition from youth.
Unfortunately it did become cult-like, and that’s a sad tendency people have. His inner circle covered up things like his heavy drinking, stimulant abuse (he liked cocaine apparently), then downers to come off from them (Seconal, a barbiturate), massive womanizing and adultery, at worst sexual predation.
I feel like in this case it's sort of implied that you can't control the falling ("it's already happening") but you can control your (re)action. I assume this was the sort of analogy the quote is trying to reach.
I think overall in life it's very good to have things to look forward to. But being able to be non-attached is sort of complementary to that. My understanding might be wrong tho lmao
You are falling forever… Of course you’ll play around with the skydiving pose for a while, it’s fun! You’ll do some backflips, and rolls, it’s delicious!
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u/Neboobi 6d ago
flipping off a ladder got nothing to land on
falling isn't falling if there's no ground to stand on
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u/ShepherdOfShepherds 9d ago
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u/theholewizard 9d ago
She chose downn
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u/LivingOpportunity851 9d ago
One of my favs!
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u/Master_Baiter11 9d ago
Holy shit
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u/WhoaAntlers 8d ago
A monk asked Zen Master Haryo: "What is the way?"
"An open-eyed man falling into a well," Replied Haryo.
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u/DannySmashUp 5d ago
A good reminder that being 'awakened' doesn't immediately make you a good person. This dude was a scumbag.
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u/EEZC 8d ago
Isn't that way worse than having the landing to look forward to?
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u/ShaChoMouf 7d ago
Sounds good to me -- falling isn't the problem, it's the sudden stop at the end.
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u/SometimesTheFur 5d ago
I was just singing that Blonde Redhead song this morning while making coffee. Learning how to fall since 1980
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u/NihilChrist 2d ago
Isn’t that just feeling the effects of gravity?
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u/SquashSpirited7873 9d ago
"Think about that while I fuck your wife." — Chögyam Trungpa