There’s a new post by Jason Miller on the Strategic Sorcery blog regarding “Whole Magic.” It begins:
Whole Magic Part 2: Research vs Revelation
An Ancient Conversation…
Amdo Tibet, circa 1618. A conversation between a Gelugpa Lama who stresses the importance of Tantras that come from India and a Nyingma Lama, who embraces Terma – hidden treasures – thought to be left or communicated directly by the lineage founder Padmasambhava. It might have gone something like this….
Gelugpa Lama: “Dude, do even research? There is nothing in Indian scriptures to support that!”
Nyingmapa: “Whatev’s fucker! Padmasambhava appeared to the Terton in rainbow light and said ‘go write this shit down, its new and cutting edge shit for today, not that old-skool stank.”
Gelugpa: “Real stuff is old and time tested from the ancient scriptures, not some shit some thom-yor ngakpa* made up last week claiming “a spirit told him“.
Nyingmapa: “NO. Your tired-ass scriptures are so far removed from the source that THEY are what’s inauthentic. Have you never played the Telephone game? Your scripture has been passed through generations of people fucking it up along the way – a nice fresh terma is like Guru Rinpoche calling you up on the phone himself and saying “sup dawg…” Short lineage wins Homey! ”
Gelugpa: “You just don’t like to study and do the hard work. You just wanna have sex in the temple all day.
Nyingmapa: “I DO want to have sex in the temple all day, but I also want to learn from the source – not just value something because its old…”
Gelugpa: “Ugh…Do Research!”
Nyingmapa: “Receive Revelation!”
Does this sound familiar? I can easily picture our Gelugpa Scholar as a Solomonic magician bitching about people that don’t follow the script or do magic based on newer processes. I can just as easily see the Nyingma Ngakpa as some wingnut claiming that “what the spirits tell me is all that matters”. The scripture based magus never bothers to ask what the book, or even the living tradition got wrong. The spirit based sorcerer never bothers to doubt their own gnosis, often no more than a brain-fart, even slightly.
My point in illustrating this through a dialogue between Gelugpa and Nyingmapa Buddhists in Tibet 400 years ago is simply to illustrate that this is not a new problem.
Read the whole magilla: http://www.strategicsorcery.net/whole-magic-part-2-research-vs-revelation/.
