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Author: TomTom Date: Jan 15, 2008 22:43
I think that magicians in general are ambivalent, often energetically so,
about the idea of a spiritual teacher. On the one hand, they often regard
the penetration of the Mysteries to be an autodidactic process and anyone so
presumptive as to try to teach them anything is treated with contempt on
general principles. On the other hand, there are all sorts of secrets to be
learned and *somebody* is going to have to whisper them in your ear.
To parody the Pat Benatar song that was popular a few years back:
"I need a guru who won't drive me crazy.
Someone to thrill me and then go away."
Two of the biggest challenges to a magician are contained in the problem of
the guru: trust and control.
With that in mind, let's look at Chapter Three of Trungpa's "Cutting Through
Spiritual Materialism", entitled "The Guru".
In the Kagyu lineage of Tibetan Buddhism, the one Chogyam Trungpa comes
from, the teachings are passed on from the guru to the student through a
process which is not merely an exchange of factual information or practical
techniques. The guru presents situations to the student that provide
opportunities to open up, cut through confusion, and discover enlightenment.
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Author: TomTom Date: Jan 17, 2008 11:12
> On Jan 15, 10:43 pm, "Tom" wrote:
>>
>> In the Kagyu lineage of Tibetan Buddhism, the one Chogyam Trungpa comes
>> from, the teachings are passed on from the guru to the student through a
>> process which is not merely an exchange of factual information or
>> practical
>> techniques. The guru presents situations to the student that provide
>> opportunities to open up, cut through confusion, and discover
>> enlightenment.
>
> And how does one get to be a guru in the Kagyu lineage?
By having received the teachings from a guru of the Kagyu lineage. Not that
the teachings are their property. It's just the path by which the teachings
got to you. You don't have to be a part of the Kagyu lineage to discover
enlightenment. Kagyu is simply a style by which one may, if one is so
inclined, express and understand what the Buddha was teaching.
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Author: mikamika Date: Jan 17, 2008 11:52
On Jan 17, 11:12 am, "Tom" wrote:
> "mika" wrote
>
>> Seems he wants to sugar-coat the word 'guru' to make it more
>> appetizing for people who are put off by the assumption of authority
>> that 'guru' implies, which is bogus. It would be better if they
>> simply acknowledged that if you want to learn, you have to submit to a
>> guru's authority and trust him/her completely. Because that's what
>> you're expected to do.
>
> Do you "submit the the authority" of a friend by respecting the rules of his
> house when you go to visit? Or is that common courtesy? It is no different
> for the student who visits the guru's house. Now, some people have rules in
> their houses that might make some visitors feel uncomfortable. Such peope
> usually choose not to visit that person. So it is...
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Author: Monkey MindMonkey Mind Date: Jan 17, 2008 12:09
"Tom" comcast.net> writes:
> "mika" gmail.com> writes:
>> Sure. All great advice. And at least he specifically says
>> "searching for a teacher" and doesn't try to get away with brushing
>> off the authority angle with language like "spiritual friend".
...
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Author: AbsorbedAbsorbed Date: Jan 17, 2008 17:29
Tom wrote:
>> On Jan 15, 10:43 pm, "Tom" wrote:
>>> "At the beginning, a kind of courtship with the guru is taking place.
>>> How
>>> much are you able to win this person over to you? There is a tendency to
>>> want to be closer to your spiritual friend, because you really want to
>>> learn. You feel so much admiration for him. BUt at the same time, he is
>>> very frightening: he puts you off. Either the situation does not
>>> coincide
>>> with your expectations or there is a self-conscious feeling that 'I may
>>> not
>>> be able to open completely and thoroughly'. A love-hate relationship, a
>>> kind of surrendering and running away process develops."
>> More than...
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Author: TomTom Date: Jan 18, 2008 11:48
> On Jan 17, 11:12 am, "Tom" wrote:
>>
>> It is very difficult to surrender yourself when you're thinking so much
>> of
>> yourself, when you consider it so vital that you not be destroyed.
>
> Aha! It's *not* so vital that I not be destroyed, that's not the
> issue. The issue here is choosing who is *worthy* to destroy me.
Who can I trust to destroy me properly? A good question. You don't want to
have some incompetent nincompoop screw it up.
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Author: TomTom Date: Jan 18, 2008 12:15
> "Tom" comcast.net> writes:
>>> Of course the person who sees himself as a student is going to seek
>> a teacher. That's perfectly natural. However, magicians are
>> generally autodidacts. They don't like the idea of simply being
>> told what to think or do. They challenge conventions instead of
>> meekly accepting them. They don't intend to submit, not even to
>> God. Instead they will invade and conquer the Holy City and take
>> Truth as their loot. Magicians are their own teachers.
>>
>> It's a different style.
>
> Granted, it's a different style.
>
> But a guru is not a teacher, a source of information, a preceptor.
> All that talk about "spiritual friendship" is not...
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Author: TomTom Date: Jan 18, 2008 12:16
> Tom wrote:
>>
>> Lots of people study with more than one guru.
>
> I think that even an imbecile can be a guru, if they happen to teach you
> something.
In a more casual sense, that's true. It's possible to open yourself to
anyone, but people are genarally disinclined to do this, at least without a
lot of previous experience at opening up to someone.
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Author: TomTom Date: Jan 21, 2008 11:39
>I like this book a lot, I don't know a lot about the Holy Guardian
> Angel - my interpretation is that it represents a higher moral part of
> yourself with whom you can have a conversation?
In a sense it is. The cosmology goes this way. God is the source of
reality, but there are many levels of that reality, many different
overlapping expressions of it, much like the way the Greeks conceived of the
various concentric spheres of the heavens.
http://www.aip.org/history/cosmology/ideas/greekworldview.htm
So God connects directly with the Holy Guardian Angel, who connects directly
with us. So the Holy Guardian Angel represents God on a level that humans
can understand. It's not God, though. It's an intermediary form, a lower
level sphere.
> In Trungpa's book, in
> the chapters about having a spiritual friend (not the same thing as a
> guru for anyone who hasn't read the book), does he not say that
> admitting the truth to yourself is never enough, it must be admitted
> to an actual person, you cannot really get around that?
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