Word: buddhism
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Finally, last week began the Dhukor Wangchen (the sermon of the Wheel of Time), one of Buddhism's most elaborate rituals. For each of three days, the air exploded with the bellowing of conch shells and rhythmic prayer chants. Then, in the hush that followed, the Dalai Lama delivered an eight-hour discourse on tantrism, the most magical form of Mahayana Buddhism. Renunciation, enlightened motive and a correct understanding of sunyata (nothingness) are the three prerequisites for the tantric practice, he explained. Disciples were given two reeds to sleep on, one under the pillow, the other under the mattress...
Step Toward Bliss. Such persistence is not hard to fathom. The Dalai Lama is, after all, believed to be the very reincarnation of the Buddha in Buddhism's Tibetan variant. To see him during one of his rare public appearances is a step toward bliss. To hear the Wheel of Time sermon, however, is a guaranteed shortcut to nirvana. Such a blessing is rarely available. A Dalai Lama delivers the sermon only a few times during his lifetime, six being the customary maximum. At Leh, the current Dalai Lama was delivering his sixth sermon...
Much of the thought is borrowed from Zen Buddhism: the need to "stop thinking and let go" (the "slaying of the mind" in Buddhism), the invitation to live a life of pure experience and alert passivity. But in est "you get what you get," and Erhard stirs an activist message into his intellectual pudding for those who want it. The urging to "be the cause, not the effect of your life" seems to work well with est trainees who are blamers or professional victims. In est it is very important to change the world or very important to give...
Dianetics was secular, but subsequently Hubbard's "research" discovered the existence of the soul or, in his terminology, the "Thetan," the conscious being that inhabits a human body. Embroidering on Hinduism and Buddhism, Hubbard announced that Thetans are reincarnated over trillions of years, which meant that there were aeons of engrams to be erased. For Scientologists, truth became stranger than science fiction. Hubbard's explanation of why someone might have difficulty crying: he was once a primordial clam whose water ducts had been clogged with sand...
...great religions of the East, Hinduism and Buddhism, have never swung away from mysticism as the pinnacle of holiness, though they also value deeds of compassion. Traditional Islamic belief views the saint or wali (friend of God) as a person with a foot in both worlds-one whose special communion with Allah coincides with his excellence in good works. As for Christianity's own rich tradition of monastic mysticism, which goes back to the fabled desert anchorites of Egypt, it seems to be undergoing a revival there and elsewhere...