Post Vajrayana in Kampuchea

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Vajra Diaries: Mapping the Thai-Cambodian Conflict

Concerning the present conflict between Thailand and Cambodia, keep in mind three things. First, what’s called the Dangrek genocide or Preah Vihear pushback, resulting in the death of many mostly sino-Khmer refugees who wee denied asylum by the Kingdom of Thailand in June 1979. If one travels north of those Preah Vihear cliffs, one finds one of the ancient Khmer capitals, Phimai. Its Prasat or temple ruins are a prototype to Angkor Wat’s construction and is still a dominant cultural exponent in that much Cambodian influenced area, now situated on du jour Thai soil. Second, I mention this to suggest that any disputing of present day borders based on cartography and the so-called watershed natural boundaries, designated by French colonialists, to further reduce Cambodia is grossly unfair and absurd. This, as the Khmer people’s land once extended far beyond the Dangrek Mountains, its watershed plateau and , significantly, included what is now on maps as Ayutthaya an...

Vajra Diaries: Tyranny in the Kingdom of Ends

12/7 Renunciation has another significant aspect other than the prevention and elimination of negative karmic actions. Daily, as deluded beings, we go around attaching ourselves indiscriminately to people, places, and things that will literally come back to haunt us during the process of dying and entering the after death state. Example, while scrolling we may come across an image like Trump’s poop-stained white pants seen from behind, and finding it extremely objectionable, click again for an alternate one. But if not objectionable then we lingered. But on what are we lingering? Later, parts or aspects, perhaps even the whole of that content, are remembered and at that point we don’t feel so favorable about it. This is analogous to our ‘karmic scrolling,’ the way we go about doing this or that without much discriminating wisdom, imprinting people, places, and things that will reside at gross levels of our consciousness. Here, they swim...

Vajra Comment: William Blake—A Tantric Retrospective

Online Buddha dharma communications signal many things, both positive and negative, like the nature of karma itself. One thing that alarms me is how it totally socializes the teachings, contextualizing them in dependency upon others’ views, mores, and habits, conventionalizing the Buddha’s speech and one’s hearing of it to the extend one’s own insights are drowned-out. To wit, comments are often just cookie-cutter (emojis) on Dharma posting sights. So is it a great leveler, making teachings more available? Or a constant invitation just to relax efforts in traditional practice—like isolated retreats—and forestall more genuinely advanced attainments? Virtual reality is ostensibly another ‘sealing off,’ a phrase the Romantic artist-poet, William Blake, used to describe the alienating effects of the Industrial Revolution (with its soulless, ‘satanic mills’) on society. Notably, from his revelatory fourfold, heavily anagogical, vision of the new...

Vajra Comment: The New Marshals of the Middle East are the Same Old ‘Thing’

People are not ‘a thing’ but rather a ‘process’ and, according to Kant’s philosophy, an end in themselves. They are not ‘things’ to be ‘consumed’ as was the case, for example, with the kings of the Khmer Empire. Further, according to Buddha’s dharma, what one experiences is all a cause and result, or karmic, ‘projection.’ It’s the playing-out of endless cause and result episodes or strings, as is featured in Twentieth Century Physic’s String Theory. At least, this is how it can seem to our ordinary perception, if we care to notice. In ultimate reality, however, once having penetrated conventional reality’s veil of ignorance, everything is really happening at once in an interdependency that transcends time and space. It is in fact void of inherent reality because of its very causeless, connate nature, one that is simultaneous and complimentarian with all phenomena. This is one’s primordial nature and none other than one’s own mind ‘in itself’ after a train...

Vajra Teachings: OM, AH, HUNG Vajra Breathing

His Eminence Deshung Rinpoche, Kunga Tenpay Nyima, introduced Vajra Breathing by saying something like this: ‘I know you’re interested in the highest Tantric practices His Holiness will give you in India. But I can teach right now the best one. And it’s very simple.’ The year was 1980. ‘Vajra Breathing’ is how Sonam Tenzin, I believe, translated it. Rinpoche showed us the basic pranayama rounds of ‘three-threes,’ blowing stale air out through our nostrils, left, right, (and together) center. Then he demonstrated breathing in steadily through his nose, instructing us to visualize a white OM. Then he demonstrated retaining that breath, telling us to visualize a red AH. He finished by saying to breathe out measuredly, with a blue HUNG in mind, so as not to rustle even a hair in the nostrils. I don’t remember him saying to imagine our breath going out farther and farther, with each round, as I believe is taught in the Nong Sum. But I’m certain he stre...

Vajra Diaries: Scorpio’s Razing, Free and Love at Sunrise, The One Poem and Form as Not a ‘Two’

19/6 ‘Scorpio,’ however the sign features in one’s horoscope—or in one’s love life—requires from others a test of faith. It says, “believe in me or not have me.” But this is all at one’s own risk. This is the significance of the often unforeseen, curled up, stinger-tipped tail that comes swiftly from behind. The stakes are always very high. To love a Scorpio or one with attributes I’d call ‘Scorpion,’ is to put everything on the line. To love them is to chase them and suffer a repetition of painful stings. The irony is that Scorpios always appear to think of themselves as only sweetness and light, influencing others as well to see them as such, even after getting repeatedly stung. Is it just Stockholm syndrome’s perverse attraction to abuse? Or the height of love’s romantic ideal? One can find out only by taking its passion filled ride at least once in this lifetime. 21/6 I have only to wait for dawn as it arises, like these words, a supreme blessing. A blissful resul...