Post Vajrayana in Kampuchea

Auld Lang Syne (for old times’ sake) is generally sang in appreciation of friendships at the time of an outgoing year on the eve of an incoming New Year. One could even think of it as an ‘old’ anxiety song, as it can also be sung to symbolize other life endings, or new chapters, including funerals, farewells, and graduations.  A thoughtful Buddhist might recognize this popular tune as a salve—or drinkers’ bandaid—for the suffering of transiency and impermanence, the first mark of suffering in conditioned existence. Either way the real nature of friendships—indeed, all social relationships—is called into question by the mere mention of Auld Lang Syne. Singing this song, and drinking its Kool Aide, is just one way socialization makes everyone artificially dependent upon each other. In reality, we’re already dependent upon each other, within or without a social context, as determined in Buddha’s doctrine of interdependent origination. So, while having social dependencies is ultimately...

This is an article inspired by a controversy ignited by Sakya Pandita (1182 - 1251)—one of the five founding fathers of the Sakya School of Tibetan Buddhism—whose competitive criticism of ‘Paramita Mahamudra’ (also known more positively as ‘Essence Mahamudra’ by both the Kagyu and Gelugpa schools) ignited a long standing debate. I then found an article—‘The Gelug/Kagyü Tradition of Mahamudra’ (a collaborative writing by His Holiness Dalai Lama and Dr. Alexander Berzin [3.])—further distancing the Sakya from recognizing such a tradition, by saying this: “Thus this tradition seems, I believe, to be a synthesis of Kagyu and Gelug approaches. Although at various points in his autocommentary, the Panchen Lama quotes several texts from the Sakya tradition, he specifically mentions here a list of Kagyu masters of old, not Sakya ones, who have concurred on this anuttarayoga tantra level of mahamudra. Furthermore, the Sakya tradition asserts only a tantra level of mahamudra, whereas both the Ka...