Kaccayanagotta Sutta

Kaccayanagotta Sutta
To Kaccayana Gotta (on Right View)
(Samyutta Nikaya 12.15)

Dwelling at Savatthi... Then Ven. Kaccayana Gotta approached the Blessed One and, on arrival, having bowed down, sat to one side. As he was sitting there he said to the Blessed One: "Lord, 'Right view, right view,' it is said. To what extent is there right view?"

"By & large, Kaccayana, this world is supported by (takes as its object) a polarity, that of existence & non-existence. But when one sees the origination of the world as it actually is with right discernment, 'non-existence' with reference to the world does not occur to one. When one sees the cessation of the world as it actually is with right discernment, 'existence' with reference to the world does not occur to one.

"By & large, Kaccayana, this world is in bondage to attachments, clingings (sustenances), & biases. But one such as this does not get involved with or cling to these attachments, clingings, fixations of awareness, biases, or obsessions; nor is he resolved on 'my self.' He has no uncertainty or doubt that just stress, when arising, is arising; stress, when passing away, is passing away. In this, his knowledge is independent of others. It's to this extent, Kaccayana, that there is right view.

"'Everything exists': That is one extreme. 'Everything doesn't exist': That is a second extreme. Avoiding these two extremes, the Tathagata teaches the Dhamma via the middle: From ignorance as a requisite condition come fabrications. From fabrications as a requisite condition comes consciousness. From consciousness as a requisite condition comes name-&-form. From name-&-form as a requisite condition come the six sense media. From the six sense media as a requisite condition comes contact. From contact as a requisite condition comes feeling. From feeling as a requisite condition comes craving. From craving as a requisite condition comes clinging/sustenance. From clinging/sustenance as a requisite condition comes becoming. From becoming as a requisite condition comes birth. From birth as a requisite condition, then aging & death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, & despair come into play. Such is the origination of this entire mass of stress & suffering.

"Now from the remainderless fading & cessation of that very ignorance comes the cessation of fabrications. From the cessation of fabrications comes the cessation of consciousness. From the cessation of consciousness comes the cessation of name-&-form. From the cessation of name-&-form comes the cessation of the six sense media. From the cessation of the six sense media comes the cessation of contact. From the cessation of contact comes the cessation of feeling. From the cessation of feeling comes the cessation of craving. From the cessation of craving comes the cessation of clinging/sustenance. From the cessation of clinging/sustenance comes the cessation of becoming. From the cessation of becoming comes the cessation of birth. From the cessation of birth, then aging & death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, & despair all cease. Such is the cessation of this entire mass of stress & suffering."

Translated from the Pali by Thanissaro Bhikkhu

New Bön Forum online....

Approximately one month ago I created a new Bön forum, and since today we are ten people there. Of course, this isn't very much, but actually I thought that even this would take longer. I have some experience with online forums*, and I know that it can take quite a while until a forum is really active, or, as in the case of our Austrian Dzogchen Community Forum, it never really becomes very active. And therefore I'm happy that I was able to gather at least 10 people in 30 days....

If you're also interested in the Bönpo tradition - please feel free to join the forum at:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/yungdrung-bon


*or 'fora', if you want, but that word sounds strange to me, and I found out that even some native speakers have problmes with this word, so I stopped using it...

Vladi & Georgy in St. Petersburg....

At a joint press conference held in Russia on Saturday with Bush and Putin a reporter had asked Bush how his conversation with Putin on "concerns about Russian democracy" had gone.

"I have shared with him my desires for our country, and he shared with me his desires for his," said Bush. "And I talked about my desire to promote institutional change in parts of the world like Iraq where there's a free press and free religion, and I told him that a lot of people in our country would hope that Russia would do the same thing."

"We certainly would not want to have the same kind of democracy as they have in Iraq, I will tell you quite honestly," Putin said through an interpreter, drawing audience laughter.

"Just wait," Bush responded....

Om Mani Padme Hum

The mantra Om Mani Padme Hum is in the Sanskrit language. Sanskrit is a member of the Indo-European language family, and is distantly related to English. The Tibetan language is a member of the Sino-Tibetan family, and is distantly related to Chinese, but not at all to Sanskrit, though due to geographic proximity and religious/cultural influence, Tibetan has been heavily influenced by Sanskrit.

Sanskrit is most often written in the Devanagari script, which developed in north India about 1000 years ago, from ancestral scripts derived ultimately from the Brahmi script, which appears in the Emperor Ashoka's rock edicts of the 3rd century BCE. The Brahmi script was the ancestor of all the native scripts of south and southeast Asia, from Tibetan in the north, through the Indian subcontinent, Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and numerous defunct scripts of pre-Muslim Indonesia.

Although Sanskrit is commonly written in Devanagari, technically it is not strictly identified with any specific script (as, say, the Greek language is with the Greek script), and can be, often has been, written in the various scripts of the cultures/nations for whom Sanskrit is a sacred language.

For instance, in south India Sanskrit is written in the local Tamil, Kannada and other scripts, in northeast India in the Bengali script, etc. And of course Western scholars write Sanskrit in an adapted Roman script which, though perhaps not "authentic", works as well as the various native Indian scripts.

The situation is similar for the Pali language, which is written in different scripts -- Sinhalese, Burmese, Thai, Roman -- by the various peoples who have preserved the Pali Scriptures.

And Sanskrit can be written in the Tibetan script, easily done since the Tibetan script was derived from a native Indian script which in its time was used to write Sanskrit. In fact much of the Mahayana scriptures we have today only because they were preserved in Tibet, having been lost in India. Because Sanskrit can be written in Tibetan script in an exact, letter-for-letter transcription, these preserved scriptures can fairly easily be restored to the original Sanskrit versions.

The Tibetan script was developed in the 7th century CE, and adapted from a northwest Indian script that was one of the ancestors of Devanagari. As with the adapted Arabic script used to write Persian (a totally unrelated language), the adapted Cyrillic used for Mongolian (ditto), and various other similar "accidents of history", the Tibetan script is not a very good fit for the language, as Tibetan is a very different kind of language than the Indian language(s) whose script was adapted to write Tibetan (which was not a written language previously).

The Om Mani Padme Hum mantra is commonly seen written in two scripts: Tibetan and Ranjana, the latter another of the ancestors of Devanagari which was commonly used in north and northwest India about a thousand years ago, and survives today as a "liturgical" script for Buddhist scriptures (commonly seen in old manuscripts of Mahayana sutras) as well as for the Newari language spoken (and written) by the semi-Tibetan Newar ethnic community in Nepal.

In the graphic above showing six versions of the mantra, the first line is written in Devanagari, for reference (though it won't usually be seen in this script), with the sacred syllable "Om" in the standard stylized version. The second line is also Devanagari, with "Aum" written out in standard letters. The third line is the Ranjana script (often seen in talismanic usages, painted or carved in varying versions on surfaces, jewelry, etc.), also known as Lantsa script. The fourth, fifth and sixth lines show how the mantra is written several ways in the Tibetan script, depending on whether it is treated as straight Sanskrit transliterated into Tibetan letters, or written as if it were a Tibetan sentence.

The first Tibetan-script version is simply Sanskrit written in Tibetan letters: the six syllables om ma ni pa dme hum directly corresponding to the syllables written in Devanagari and Ranjana. In the second, the syllables are still written in Sanskrit form, but they are separated by the Tibetan "tsek" syllable marker (the little dot between the letters); this is a kind of senseless hybrid, since Sanskrit doesn't require the syllable markers, though Tibetan does. The third version has been fully "Tibetanized", with the word "padme" divided into Tibetan-style rather than Sanskrit-style syllables, i.e. "pad-me" rather than "pa-dme": in fact the words are still Sanskrit, they haven't been actually translated into Tibetan (for instance, the Sanskrit "mani", "jewel", would be "norbu" in Tibetan), but they are written "as if" they were Tibetan.

It is due to this "Tibetanization" that the mantra's pronunciation in Tibet has changed from the Sanskrit "Om Mani Padme Hum" to "Om Mani Peme Hum" -- because in a native Tibetan word the syllable "pad" is pronounced (in the standard Lhasa dialect) "pe". ("Hum" is also often spelled "hung"; the sound at the end of the word is not actually either consonant, but a nasalization of the previous vowel, like the "n" in the French name "Jean".) The common Tibetan name Pema is a similar case, actually written "Padma" (the nominative form of the Sanskrit word for "lotus"; "padme" is the same word in a different case, indicating "in") but the "pad" syllable drops the final "d" and flattens the vowel.

Although Buddhist teaching, concepts and scriptures were thoroughly translated into Tibetan as Buddhism was imported into the country (over the course of several centuries), as noted above many Buddhist scriptures were also preserved by simply transposing the Sanskrit texts into Tibetan letters. Thus, when studying Tibetan Buddhism, one encounters material in both Tibetan and Sanskrit, all written in the Tibetan script. While terms like "buddha", "bodhi", "samsara" are usually written in Tibetan translation ("sangs rgyas", "byang chub", "khor ba") in Tibetan-language works, mantras and similar formulaic items are usually preserved in the original Sanskrit.

taken from http://www.lioncity.net/buddhism/index.php?showtopic=31212&hl=

DAIP Update in progress....

It took quite a while, but soon the new update of the Dzogchen Atiyoga Info Page will be ready... Well, summer has begun, and I'm quite busy right now - studying, practicing, practicing, studying, and enjoying the sun.... Lately I'm very much into the Bön teachings, and currently I'm studying Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche's book "Wonders of the Natural Mind" - a really wonderful book. In October, Lopön Tenzin Namdak Rinpoche and Khenpo Yungdrung Rinpoche will give teachings on the Zhang Zhung Nyan Gyüd only 100 miles away from my hometown, and I'm very much looking forward to attend this retreat - that's why I'm in the "preparing phase" now.... Anyway, I hope that the next update will be online by the end of the month, and it will include a complete new section dedicated especially to the Bön tradition of Dzogchen :-)

Tibet: Cry Of The Snow Lion

YouTube

Official website

English pronunciation guide for beginners

<- This is a "ghoti", pronounced as "fish" -
"gh" as in "enough";
"o" as in "women", and
"ti" as in "nation"




<- This is a "ghoughphtheightteeau", pronounced as "potato" -
"gh" as in "hiccough";
"ough" as in "dough";
"phth" as in "phthisis";
"eigh" as in "neighbour";
"tte" as in "gazette", and
"eau" as in "plateau"



<- This is a "tiogh",
pronounced as "ship" -
"ti" as in "nation";
"o" as in "women", and
"gh" as in "hiccough"


....and if this way of spelling and pronouncing is too difficult for you, you can also adopt the following system which will make it much easier for you to pronounce english words:

A as in BREAD
B as in DEBT
C as in INDICTMENT
D as in HANDKERCHIEF
E as in GIVE
F as in HALFPENNY
G as in GNAW
H as in HOUR
I as in FRIEND
J as in MARIJUANA
K as in KNOW
L as in CALM
M as the first M in MNEMONIC
N as in AUTUMN
O as in PEOPLE
P as in PSALM
Q as in COLQUHOUN (a Scottish surname)
R as in FORECASTLE
S as in ISLAND
T as in CASTLE
U as in GUARD
V as in MILNGAVIE (a Scottish place name)
W as in WRONG
X as in SIOUX
Y as in PEPYS
Z as in RENDEZVOUS

Source

Interview with Namkhai Norbu

from RAI TV (in Italian)

Spiritual Paths

All the various types of teachings and spiritual paths are related to the different capacities of understanding that different individuals have. There does not exist, from an absolute point of view, any teaching that is more perfect or effective than another. A teachings value lies solely in the inner awakening which an individual can arrive at through it. If a person benefits from a given teaching, for that person that teaching is the supreme path, because it is suited to his or her nature and capacities. There is no sense in trying to judge it as more or less elevated in relation to other paths to realization.

Chögyal Namkhai Norbu

Kyabje Chatral Rinpoche & Chögyal Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche

from the 12 little Tantras of the ZZNG

All appearance (and) coming into being, transmigration (and) the state transcendenting suffering,
everything (is) perfect in the Pure-and-Perfect-Mind.
For that reason (it) is (called) Great Perfection.
To look at the profound state (of) the Great Perfection
is not investigating (and thinking) "this (is it)."
Since by investigating (it) will not be seen,
not seeing itself (is) the best seeing.

(The Twelve Little Tantras from the Zhang Zhung Nyan Gyüd 174,1)