You got to know when to hold 'em, know to fold 'em, know when to walk away, know when to run.
Kenny Rogers, as The Gambler.
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*nichole
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I take it that’s a spiritual night-cap as part of your own sadhana.Never trust a ‘guru’ who drinks ;). He might just turn out to be a charlatan
i really have a strong memory for music; and almost daily, as i am going about my day-to-day life, i will have some thread of lyrics come to mind that fits a current situation of mine just beautifully. a soundtrack for life, as random and varied as the real thing. 
core, i know you and are just having fun here, which i am enjoying :), but i wanted to share too that many of my recent quotation posts have been from Ch?gyam Trungpa Rinpoche, who was known by his sangha and his critics, to be quite a drinker. Many say that he died from the damage he did to his physical body by drinking as he did. many of his critics call him a drunk and a charlatan, and maybe he was in some ways, i didn’t know him so i surely cannot say either way, but his teachings are so potent and transcended that maybe all that was ok even if there was some truth to it all. i know i am sure grateful for what has been shared by him, and when his devoted, direct students speak of him, they do with such tenderness and gratitude…
*nichole
Me too! Drives Rachel nuts.
Really? I am affectionately known as the "little jukebox."
Gordon, maybe it’s because all your lyrics are coming from booty-shaking hip hop songs? :o (hehehe! just a friendly guess!)
The first time I saw my guru with a scotch on the rocks it was certainly a “WTF?” moment.
Oh, how I judged people and created an idea in my mind about how they SHOULD be. Heheh. I still have to be pretty darn careful about that.
[QUOTE=David;32338]The first time I saw my guru with a scotch on the rocks it was certainly a “WTF?” moment.
Oh, how I judged people. Heheh.[/QUOTE]
I thought that too when I saw a kundalini yoga instructor eating a piece of chocolate cake at nine oclock at night. LOL
[quote=Nichole;32335]i really have a strong memory for music; and almost daily, as i am going about my day-to-day life, i will have some thread of lyrics come to mind that fits a current situation of mine just beautifully. a soundtrack for life, as random and varied as the real thing. 
core, i know you and are just having fun here, which i am enjoying :), but i wanted to share too that many of my recent quotation posts have been from Ch?gyam Trungpa Rinpoche, who was known by his sangha and his critics, to be quite a drinker. Many say that he died from the damage he did to his physical body by drinking as he did. many of his critics call him a drunk and a charlatan, and maybe he was in some ways, i didn't know him so i surely cannot say either way, but his teachings are so potent and transcended that maybe all that was ok even if there was some truth to it all. i know i am sure grateful for what has been shared by him, and when his devoted, direct students speak of him, they do with such tenderness and gratitude...
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Hi Nichole,
It does'nt surprise me to hear of tibetan lamas being partial to or fond of a drink.Indeed i met one that taught n-gon-dro Zong-Chen practice(don't ask me how i remember the name of that.....it translates for teachings on the 'nature or essence of Mind' approx.)& other tantric stuff.It comes from the Bon Tibetan Buddhist radition which it is claimed by some is really old.I think he put in the date 10.000yrs or pehaps it was 20. He liked his drink particularly red wine which i'm not averse to especially chilean on the odd occassion.Though i would prefer to be teetotal quite honestly.I don't drink that often.This dude was'nt averse to red meat and even prescribed it. I think alot of this may have something to do with culture,local geography & climate(scarcity of food or arable land just to speculate for e.g). This guy was born in Tibet in the late 50's where oobviously received his education.Perhaps indeed he left when the Red Army tried to move into Tibet's Autonomous Region.They say Tibet was autonmous before the Chinese authorities tried to colonise it and disrupting & destroying alot of their age-old intensely spiritual culture.This tibetan rinpoche was a bit cranky though but human.....especially his teaching style and he required that his students prostrate at his feet.....not without weaknesses for sure.It was an eye-opener and i learnt something about self-style d or self-procalimed "gurus".It has become quite a loaded term that.
I did visit Dharamsala & McleodGanj when i was in India; it's the place of exile for Dalai Lama and (certainly some)Tibetans who fled Tibet during Chinese invasion & occupation, and (new) home to the world's biggest Tibetan libray.That journey over the mountains must have been difficult and arduous. These Himalayan foothill towns are located in what was then called the state of Himachal Pradesh,next to uttar pradesh in the Indian Himalayas pretty much north of Delhi ,as the crow flies.You can get there by bus fairly quickly from Delhi, that is..Not too far.I stayed at one of the Inns run by the lovely Tibetan peoples.There are a couple of monstaries up there two.You see the boys doing some strange practice out in one of the the mostaery courtyards during the day.One sits and the other tries to distract him with fake punches in the air and the like. I also remember attending a lovely little cinema run by a litte Tibetan boy. It was like double-bill ,it could have been 'The Lost Emperor'(1987) OR City of Joy(1992),with Patrick Swayze playing the god Samaritan on the poor streets of Calcutta. i think(?) & then a very revealing documentary on the invasion of Tibet using smuggled archive footage, i think..I don't think it was a propaganda stunt.The Tibetans are such a hardy people with an always cheerful disposition.They are very honest & don't steal nor are they rude.They charge very cheap reates in their inns & eateries(their lassa/yak-shakes and omeletes were nice, & very gentle & kind on the stomach,free of bugs perhaps) so they don't seem to be after the tourist dollar or pound.I was struck by how open and non-materialistic they were.There were middle-class Indians there on holiday visiting too and amazing thunder-and-lightning storms like you would'nt believe due to the combination of rising heat from the mid- dry plains of India and the monsoon tropical climate of the Himalayan foothills. They were not after your money and charged very cheap rates indeed.A meal was say under 50p and a pretty budget room about ?1.
About the venerable & venerated Mr. Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, this is one link i found when i googled:-
Apparently he set up in the Samye Ling centre near where i live in Scotland, and the first of it's kind in the west.And then it goes on to list many of his other acheviements and accomplishments.And so if he like a drink i don't think that disqualifies him from teaching. I remember seeing a video of Alan Watts in the 70.s, at the Zen centre he set up ,perhaps somewhere in the hills of California, near-ish San Francisco(?) ;he was sitting there puffing on a pipe and waxing lyrical beneath the grey beard..Also Nisragadatta Maharaj smoked fags;in fact i think he ran a shop selling bidets, a family-run business.Not that that's a good reason to smoke & drink.I think all things in moderation and i's up to the individual to decide what works for them.
I am so glad you see my warped at times sense of irony & humour.I think it's good to have a little chuckle at things.I think it can get one through trying times;a healthy sense of humour. So very Tibetan.They are such a warm,kind,simple & generous people.And i think the influence of Buddhism and their rich spiritual culture and heritage ,spanning millenia, likely has alot to do with that.
P.S --- There do appear to be a lot of interesting good links out there on Tibet. as well as the venerated dude you mention,the monastery he grew up in,how it was gettiing re-built and obviously one of the many threatened or destroyed when the Chinese moved in. Apparently restrictions on tourists are still somehwat tricky especially since some peaceful protests by Tibetans in March,2008.Not to be political but See-> FreeTibet.org, just for .eg. I think that was during the Beijing Olympics.Who knows what is really going or indeed what has occured. I know that some of the Tibetan monks took to opium pipes for a while after their torture experiences.Mmmm....Not the most savoury subject, i guess.But interesting nonethless.
[quote=David;32338]The first time I saw my guru with a scotch on the rocks it was certainly a “WTF?” moment.
Oh, how I judged people and created an idea in my mind about how they SHOULD be. Heheh. I still have to be pretty darn careful about that.[/quote]
Hahahahahaha…
Your jaw would drop if you saw that,especially after all the tallk of purification and the like.
Of course i’m kidding.In fact the scotch might even convince me he is authentic; that he is human .Like the true tantric he does not repress anything. A human guru with vices. I know that in some tantric sides or circles indeed possibly Tibetan ones, red-meat and wine may well be gorged.Like if there was a good harvest and food was plentiful that year then folk might celebrate. I know that this Tibetan Lma Rinpoche i referenced in the thread suggested to one of his students that she must eat red-meat.It was like a health consultation she had with him along with a number of other folk after the practice session and seminar intensive he held.It was actually a [I]loong[/I] transmission or “initation” beofre teaching the practices that would naturally follow from that. There was visualisation of stuff incl. deities, other worlds, i think, and …inner yoga going on basically. I don’t know if that makes sense or not.But it was ameditation path conisting largely of a lot of ritual and verbal mantra chanting (from possiby ancient texts tht he must have learned in Tibet).And yes at the 3-day intensive of i certainly had this sense of experiencing a steely one-pointedness of mind.They also burnt incense and so on.A certain amount of colour, sound, visualisations and pageantry.I remember the gong and the conch shell and perhaps other traditional musical instruments.
On one of the nights one of the students invited the party including the tibetan to he house. And like me he enjoyed the red wine.In fact his eyes positively lit up when the red-wine & food appeared laden on the table.I think some things are okay in moderation.(I think red-wine likely has more nutritonal value & anti-oxidants than say beer or spirits .Though i don’t really drink myself)It’s possible he saw the wine as a culturd ,civlised & sophsiticated thing fom Europe ; he was a simple spiritual person. passionate about his native culture’s teachings & what the [I]Bon[/I] tradition had to offer to the world.
[QUOTE=Brother Neil;32339]I thought that too when I saw a kundalini yoga instructor eating a piece of chocolate cake at nine oclock at night. LOL[/QUOTE]
Had my moments of shock as well then i realised i am judging, i am a cup full with my own pre conceived ideas of what a ‘guru’ should behave…
‘We were drinking gin,whisky & rum’ or something like that…hehehe
Interesting how that works, huh? Out of curiosity, does anyone know where they got these ideas from? Movies? Books? Or? I have no idea where I got the “should be like THIS” from.
[QUOTE=David;32384]Interesting how that works, huh? Out of curiosity, does anyone know where they got these ideas from? Movies? Books? Or? I have no idea where I got the “should be like THIS” from.[/QUOTE]
Yeah, pretty amazing… it is the same old story; garbage in garbage out…
Hi David,
I think some [I]are[/I] quite saintly,others less so.
But the character i referred to certainly was’nt, at least, in my eyes.I hate to dish a “spiritual teacher” ,for some,because i think they all have a purpose and value but this guy just appeared suspect. His teaching style was agressive, at times, in a brain-washy way i felt, and he expected his students to prostrate at his feet,as if he was God’s gift.I don’t think he deserved it or the guru status he had cultivated. But that is just my impression. In fact the hatha instructor that tookme there after one class said that they actually saw this guy as their own revered “dalai lama”. So he could still belch and get really annoyed, and of course,because he’s a divine incarnation or specially annointed or whatever, it makes no difference.I think it’s good to question where authority does come from.Spiritual authority is found within us,as well as outside, if we bother to listen to it.
I did’nt relly take to what was on offer. He would tell his students not to go “spiritual supermarket” shopping.That it was enlightenement in this lifetime with his highly effective [B]bon[/B] path consiting of [I]'zog-chen[/I] and a few other teachings. But i just felt i could see through this dude. Infact some of his teachings gave me the creeps a little bit because at one point you were imagining like little infernal hells and little dubious characters-tantric buddhist semi-deities. I just did’nt get a good vibe from his style.So as you can imagine i was’nt sure what to make of it but did’nt exactly warm to it either. If there is excessive amounts of ritual this to me makes me question what the point of it all is for, if only to honour relgious-inspired traditions alongisde the spiritual practices that developed alongside and out of them.
It’s like in the christain church there was those that thought frippery was not evidence of spiritual focus , indeed the opposite,and then some loved to paint gold leaf on their spires and hoard the money.
I think we want the guru to be always humble & wise.This dude was a Tibetan lama rinpoche born in Tibet.He semmed less than perfect to me.Some of his qualities struck me as unguru-like-lacking patience, short temper and agressive teaching-style.
I think i’m going close this file down for now, though.