Talk:Dzogchen - Misplaced Pages

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Archives

Archive 1

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View and Philosophy of Dzogchen

There seems to be quite a bit in this article on the practice of Dzogchen - but very little on the view and philosophy of Dzogchen, which are very important and influential in the whole history of Tibetan Buddhist thought. I'll add some good sources on these aspects, which editors of this article might wish to pursue. Regards. Chris Fynn (talk) 12:49, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

@CFynn: Those sources would still be very welcome! Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 09:06, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

Longchen Nyingthig

Vic, it's not a matter of "singling out" some specific teaching, it's a matter of trying to understand what Dzogchen is about. Not everybody can understand it with the minimal resurces that you need. If there is better stuff, then please give me a shortcut (an not a 700-page book. And you know who says so; you know I read that kind of books.) Best regards, Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 21:31, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

All newbies seem to only know about Longchen Nyingthig, and you are perpetuating that.VictoriaGrayson 21:36, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

Ah, I see - and no more than that. Where do have to situate Longchen Nyingthig within Dzogchen? And do you please have some more info, a book, a weblink, which provides me with a little bit more info? This is what I've understood so far: external prelimininary practices, internal preliminary practices (these two are clear to me), trekcho, further practice to stabilise this insight, and to 'act from this insight', c.q enlightened behaviour in the world, instead of "dwelling in nirvana." Am I correct here, sort of? Best regards, Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 05:07, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

Sources - Berzin Archive

@VictoriaGrayson: I'm pretty sure you won't accept the Berzin Archive] as a source. Nevertheless, I want to propose it, since this article on The Major Facets of Dzogchen gives an overview of the path of Dzogchen. He gives the following structure:

Outer Preliminaries
Inner Preliminaries
Empowerment Stage
Mahayoga Stage
Atiyoga Stage

How about it? Best regards, Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 15:18, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

He's a scholar, but also a practitioner. His website seems to be written from an insiders-perspective. See About the Berzin Archives. Nevertheless, is it acceptable as a primary source? Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 15:21, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

Sources - Longchen Rabjam The practcie of Dzogchen

@VictoriaGrayson:Is Longchen Rabjam's The practcie of dogen a good source? (I've got the Snow Lion version). Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 15:27, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

Mahayoga is not Dzogchen

@Joshua Jonathan:, I don't know how you got the idea that Mahayoga is Dzogchen.VictoriaGrayson 01:03, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

Yo? That's a new tag for me. Anyway: Berzin uses the term in his description of the stages of practice, and Sam van Schaik mentions Atiyoga as part of Mahayoga, at the earliest developmental stage of Dzogchen:

"So when did Atiyoga become a vehicle? Moving on to the 10th century, there are a couple of texts from Dunhuang which do set out early versions of the nine vehicle system. Yet even here, though we see the beginnings of the standard distinctions between Mahāyoga, Anuyoga and Atiyoga, these three are not yet called ‘vehicles’. The texts carry on presenting Anuyoga and Atiyoga as modes of Mahāyoga practice, without any specific content of their own."

I'm working on it; encyclopedic entries by Buswell & Lopez and by Germano have yet to be incorporated, and a longer text by Sam van Schaik, The Early Days of the Great Perfection. Best regards, Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 05:51, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

Forget about the "earliest developmental stage". Mahayoga is not Dzogchen.VictoriaGrayson 16:21, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

More sources

I found some more sources:

Samten Gyaltsen Karmay (1988), The Great Perfection (rdzogs chen). A Philosophical and Meditative Teaching of Tibetan Buddhism, BRILL
David Germano (1997), chapter on ru shan, in Lopez (1997), "Religions of Tibet in practice"
David Germano and Jeanet Gyatso (2001), Longchenpa and the possession of the Dakinis, in White's Tantra in Practice, gives more info on Longchenpa
Sam van Schaik (2004), The Early Days of the Great Perfection
Sam van Schaik (2004), "Approaching the Great Peerfection", gives details on Jigme Lingpa's descriptions
Kurtis R. Schaeffer, Matthew Kapstein, Gray Tuttle (2013), Sources of Tibetan Tradition, Columbia University Press
Schaik, Sam van (2011), Tibet A History, Yale University Press

Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 10:31, 25 December 2014 (UTC)

From Germano (2005):

"Three historical problems have bedeviled traditional and modern scholarship on the Great Perfection:

(i) the chronological conundrum of authorship resulting from the veil of the tradition’s visionary practices of concealing and revealing texts,

(ii) the seemingly unified homogeneity indicated by the single rubric Great Perfection in contrast to the heterogeneity of its internal doxographical categories and sub-rubrics of identification, and

(iii) its relationship to late Indian Buddhist Tantra, particularly in terms of its frequent rhetoric of a transcendence of, or standing apart from, Tantra.

On these points, traditional historiography with its visionary biases has

(i) strongly portrayed Great Perfection in all its varieties as being fully developed in the eighth century by non-Tibetan authors,

(ii) stressed the consistency of distinct subtraditions rather than viewing them as sharply divergent and mutually critical traditions, and

(iii) failed to clearly account for the distinct relationships of each of these subtraditions to Buddhist Tantra.

Modern academic scholarship has tended to either uncritically accept these claims or to only suggest vague questions about their veracity. Samten Karmay’s The Great Perfection was a landmark in initiating the historical study of the Great Perfection, but the flood of subsequent studies has for the most part shed little additional light on historical issues."

And Vic comes up with this:

Tibetan Renaissance by Ronald Davidson. Particularly chapter 6
A Preliminary Note on Vimalamitra's Aural Lineage
David Germano (2005), The Funerary Transformation of the Great Perfection (Rdzogs chen)
"Religion, Medicine and the Human Embryo in Tibet" has a lot about Dzogchen
David germano (2007), “The shifting terrain of the tantric bodies of Buddhas and Buddhists from an Atiyoga perspective”, in Ramon Prats, The Pandita and the Siddha, talks about Menngagde being derived from Kalachakra.

Thanks! Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 14:48, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

Traditional accounts

From what I've seen so far, most books will only tell the traditional account. It's part of the story too, isn't it? And there's plenty of the other side, the historical story. NB: the traditional accoubts are also being mentioned by the serious sources. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 20:18, 25 December 2014 (UTC)

But later traditional accounts obscure earlier traditional accounts. Its better left unsaid.VictoriaGrayson 07:11, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

Good point, very good point. Let me think over it, for one or two days, okay? Best regards, Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 07:25, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

Semde, Longde and Menngagde are not practiced in order

Semde, Longde and Menngagde are not practiced in order. If Longchenpa says such a thing, it would be purely hermeneutical (I don't know if this is the right word). Longde is rarely practiced at all.VictoriaGrayson 16:33, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

I already found it a starnge comment; for that reason too I'd moved it into a note. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 05:24, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

Many changes in this article

Just to alert the reader and editors of this article, that there have been many changes made recently by Joshua Jonathan. There has been hardly any discussion here of these changes, either before or after. Many sections removed, others rewritten, new sections added, article re-organized.

For the extent of the changes compare the diffs: https://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Dzogchen&diff=640295086&oldid=634250698

and https://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Dzogchen&diff=617014339&oldid=613080236

This may need attention as an editor doing such a large scale rewrite so rapidly can't be expected to be expert on all the topics in the article, and hasn't got time to read or re-read all the citations in detail and review them.

One thing I noticed right away is that the section on Maha Ati was removed. Why? It is of interest to readers that Trungpa Rimpoche coined the term Maha Ati which is in quite widespread use, for instance one might encounter the term and wonder what it means - so why remove this section?

There must surely be many other things like that. Robert Walker (talk) 12:15, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

The info on Chögyam Trungpa's introduction of the term is unsourced, and totally WP:UNDUE. The second part is unintelligible, and also WP:UNDUE. I removed it already at 12 juni 2014, for precisely these reasons: "Removed unsourced; removed WP:UNDUE". No complaints from Vic or Chris, the obvious experts here.

After that, I've turned this article into a mature, readable and intelligible article; please stop WP:WIKIHOUNDING me, and quit your WP:DISRUPTIVE talkpage behaviour. @VictoriaGrayson: @JimRenge: @Montanabw: How about ANI for persistent disruptive editing and wiki-hounding? Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 12:34, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

His WP:DISRUPTIVE talkpage behaviour will inevitably end up at ANI (or ARBCOM if there is no solution at ANI). Several editors have asked him to stop writing walls of text etc. but he seems to be unable to comply with WP:TALK. JimRenge (talk) 14:19, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

What is better, to write a lot on the talk pages, or to do large scale editing of mature articles without writing on the talk pages? I do understand that other editors find my responses rather long so keep them as short as I can, also post less frequently, to give other editors time to catch up with the conversations here and collapse parts of longer responses to help readers who want just a short overview of the response. Robert Walker (talk) 15:29, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

Unsourced and WP:UNDUE? A google search for the term "maha ati" would have turned up citations right away. See for instance The Way of Maha Ati by Chogyam Trungpa and Rigdzin Shikpo and Maha Ati: Natural Liberation Through Primordial Awareness. Also wikipedia has a short article Maha Ati on it. A google scholar search turns up 76 citations that use the term: http://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?q=%22maha+ati%22 .

If a section has insufficient citations, you should start by adding a "citations needed" tag and ask on the talk page for citations, or search for citations yourself, not just delete it!

Yes I did find this article by looking through your recent edit history, but that's in preparation for posting about your edits to the Dispute Resolution Noticeboard as Robert McClenon recommended, I think it is reasonable enough to look at other articles that you have treated in the same way. And when I found it, I thought - good idea to alert other editors to this as there would be no way to know from the talk page, otherwise, that a major rewrite of the article has occurred.

Robert Walker (talk) 14:33, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

Jonathan's motive for these edits - to make the article "comprehensible to normal people like me"

I see now that you did say something in the Cleanup section which I didn't spot before as it is in the archive, https://en.wikipedia.org/Talk:Dzogchen/Archive_1#Clean-up "I've removed a lot of WP:UNDUE stuff, to make this article comprehensible for normal people like me ".

But - that doesn't seem a good motive to me. As far as I know, there is no wikipedia guideline saying that all content has to be comprehensible to "normal people".

E.g. much of the material here in wikipedia on mathematics, e.g. pretty much the entire Reimann Hypothesis article is only comprehensible to mathematicians, to take an example.

Extended content
DzogChen has a reputation as one of the most profound topics in Buddhism - and hardest to explain and to understand - and it is not too surprising if some of it gets rather technical at times. And your changes have been very extensive as the diffs show, removing sections, rewriting others, re-organizing it, etc etc, with just a few brief remarks on the discussion page. They are bound to introduce mistakes, especially done by an editor who doesn't understand the material being edited. I mean - if it is "not comprehensible to you" - then a corollary is that you don't understand it. Would you apply a similar treatment to Reimann Hypothesis? I'm sure most of that will be not comprehensible to you unless you are a mathematician. Would you expect that article to remain an accurate, thorough, and clear presentation of the topic after your rewrite? Is it not better to ask for someone to rewrite it who does understand the material? You could of course ask other editors to work on presenting the more technical sections in ways more accessible to readers not familiar with the content. That would be a reasonable thing to do, though in some cases content simply can't be expressed in non technical ways. That's true of the Reimann hypothesis at least. It can be stated in a single sentence, easily, but uses concepts so advanced you need to master several different degree level subjects before you can know what they mean. You only begin to understand it towards the end of a first degree in maths, and would need to do postgraduate research in that particular field to have a clear understanding of it e.g. enough to read recent research papers on the topic and have some understanding of what they are about. And this particular hypothesis is so technical, it is probably not possible to explain it to non mathematicians at all. That's just the way things are sometimes.

Extended content

DzogChen has a reputation as one of the most profound topics in Buddhism - and hardest to explain and to understand - and it is not too surprising if some of it gets rather technical at times.

And your changes have been very extensive as the diffs show, removing sections, rewriting others, re-organizing it, etc etc, with just a few brief remarks on the discussion page. They are bound to introduce mistakes, especially done by an editor who doesn't understand the material being edited.

I mean - if it is "not comprehensible to you" - then a corollary is that you don't understand it. Would you apply a similar treatment to Reimann Hypothesis? I'm sure most of that will be not comprehensible to you unless you are a mathematician. Would you expect that article to remain an accurate, thorough, and clear presentation of the topic after your rewrite? Is it not better to ask for someone to rewrite it who does understand the material?

You could of course ask other editors to work on presenting the more technical sections in ways more accessible to readers not familiar with the content. That would be a reasonable thing to do, though in some cases content simply can't be expressed in non technical ways. That's true of the Reimann hypothesis at least. It can be stated in a single sentence, easily, but uses concepts so advanced you need to master several different degree level subjects before you can know what they mean. You only begin to understand it towards the end of a first degree in maths, and would need to do postgraduate research in that particular field to have a clear understanding of it e.g. enough to read recent research papers on the topic and have some understanding of what they are about. And this particular hypothesis is so technical, it is probably not possible to explain it to non mathematicians at all. That's just the way things are sometimes.

Some technical articles and sections simply can't be given that kind of a treatment. Best you can do is to make as much of it comprehensible as possible, for as wide an audience as possible, wherever it is possible and reasonable to do so.

Does this make sense to you?

Robert Walker (talk) 14:42, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

User:Joshua Jonathan, Just adding something else that just possibly might help. When you read stories about some of the Buddha's first disciples realizing nirvana with just a few words spoken to them, or Zen Buddhist stories about Koans, is easy to think that all Buddhist ideas have to be simple to explain.

As I understand it, the complexity of the explanations reflects the complexity of our relative world, and the need of some people on some paths to need complex expositions. If the teachers only cover material that can be presented with few words - that may be all that needs to be said for some students, but others who need more words in their explanations will be left out. Robert Walker (talk) 12:03, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

ANI

I've filed an ANI-complaint at Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Disruptive talkpage behaviour. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 19:08, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, I've replied. Robert Walker (talk) 20:17, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

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