My introduction to Buddhism

[fabianfred]

I would like to share with you some material which you might enjoy.

My first introduction to Buddhism came from the books by Lobsang Rampa. It was in the early '70's that I first read one, and then collected the whole series as they were being published throughout the '70's.

Although i later visited Thailand for the first time in 1989 it wasn't until then that I had met my first monk or visited a temple. My reading then focused upon the Buddhism practiced in Thailand which led me to become Theravada, but I still look upon my introduction through his books as being a great benefit to me. Before them i knew nothing of Buddhism nor Tibet.

This link takes you to a website which has detailed info about him as well as downloadable copies of his books in various formats.

http://www.lobsangrampa.org/research.html#Te

[Gaccha]

I am all a little stunned with this. I knew you were more into the magical and myth side of things, but this really stuns me...

Your hero is mentioned in the The Guinness Book of Fakes, Frauds and Forgeries. His particular occult is known as Rampaism.

He claimed one book was dictated to him by his cat. In one book, explains axnimals can use telepathy but not people. In another he explains how to use a crystal ball.

Well, we all can use different methods to get to the same goal...

My own way to enlightenment is via Berkeley, Kant, Schopenhauer, Wittgenstein, and onto the Indian ancient texts.

Edited December 19, 2013 by Gaccha

[seabear]

My first intrduction to Buddhism in Thailand came from a book:

"Phra Farang. An English Monk in Thailand." by Phra Peter Pannapadipo.

[fabianfred]

When jealous people make themselves your enemy and attack you through the press you have no recourse to defend yourself. The press enjoy sensational stories and don't care if they are true or not...sometimes even inventing them.

This happened to Lobsang Rampa. If you have read his books you will know that he was not a fake...especially the book written by a woman who knew him and helped him for 25 years.

But I always say that even if he were a fake...the introduction to Buddhism and Tibet his writings gave me were priceless.

More background to the claims of fakery are on the site I linked to.

Edited December 19, 2013 by fabianfred

[huli]

I consider myself a Buddhist now, and that I got my start in the 70's when I first became acquainted with Krishnamurti. He did not claim to be a Buddhist, but his views were similar.

[Gaccha]

My biggest influence was Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation. It is enormous and obviously his magnum opus.

He had been impressed by Kant's attempt to explain all that we can know about the World ( in the virtually unreadable THe Critique of Pure Reason). Kant had been jolted into this ('awakened from my slumbers") by David Hume's radical skepticism. Hume had argued we can know nothing of what causes everything. We may think the white ball causes the red ball to be knocked into the pocket, but we can never know this.Schopenhauer's brilliance was an awareness of inductively reasoning from our sensory awareness of the world the very small glimpses of the real world (noumenon) beyond our sensory perception.

Schopenhauer's ideas pushed western philosophy into the same realm as Indian religions. After writing his work, he came across Buddhism and felt it was closest to reality. Everyday (, however,) he would read a section of the Uppanishads before going to bed.

If you buy his ideas, you find yourself confronted by a world that is wholly pointless. This was why he was described as the pessimist philosophers. That all that can be done is to be detached from it.... this may sound familiar......

Strongly recommend for those educated in the western tradition/religions/education systems. Best to read Hume's An Enquiry into Human Understanding. This will generate the momentum. it certainly changed all of science.

[fabianfred]

I would rather read Eastern philosophy than Western ...too scientific and not spiritual.

[sabaijai]

http://www.skepdic.com/rampa.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobsang_Rampa#Controversy_over_authorship_of_The_Third_Eye

Cyril Hoskin was the Carlos Castenada of his time.

I confess I was taken in by Castenada's writings myself, in the first three books. It became increasingly clear to me, though, as the series moved forward, that the tales were almost pure fantasy, as they were later revealed to be.

Wisdom imparted by fakes is still wisdom. The sad thing is that some people become disillusioned when they identify valuable teaching points with a teacher who has deceived them.

My introduction to Buddhism began with a bronze Buddha statue my father brought back from Japan after WWII. I would gaze at it for hours, wondering what it meant. At age 17 I read Towards the Truth, a collection of Buddhadasa Bhikkhu essays compiled by Donald K Swearer, and I was on my way to Thailand as soon as I finished college.

[Gaccha]

I would rather read Eastern philosophy than Western ...too scientific and not spiritual.

I find this more interesting than you might imagine.

I find it fascinating that you are put off for something for any reason, if it can get you where you are going. So instead I imagine the way you imagine the western philosophy is written has qualites that you define as 'scientific' and the in contrast the work of the east you offer a positive meaning of 'spiritual'.

Let's pull these apart.

'Scientific'. This notion is now so dominant that it is effectively a kill argument in the world if your side of the argument is shown to be scientific. The impression is of test tubes, carefully calibrated guages and so on. But and yet there is also an underlying negativity in it. It feels as though it has lost the real purpose in a desire to find a plastic, surface of truth. It does not involve incense, candles and gorgeous rainbows of colour. This criticism was the origin of 'unweaving the rainbow'; that science tramples on all that is majestical to find its view of reality. This helpfully links us to the next word...

'Spirituality.' The term is used to denote a lack of depth in science. It is also used to disparage atheists. It suggests that something is lacking. They have not gone far enough in their thinking. They are failing to grasp the ungraspable. The irony is the science fans equally use the word spirtuality as a disparaging term against its advocates on the same grounds. They see religious spiritualists as vacuous and empty of thoughts and so on.

My point is you could have said the exact same thing and meant the exact opposite meaning. You are allowing yourself to be trapped by binary discourses that are shaping your world view. Go to the primary texts. The Schopenhauer is gorgeously poetic (read: spiritual).

Example (after googling for 5 seconds):

“Human life must be some kind of mistake. The truth of this will be sufficiently obvious if we only remember that man is a compound of needs and necessities hard to satisfy; and that even when they are satisfied, all he obtains is a state of painlessness, where nothing remains to him but abandonment to boredom. This is direct proof that existence has no real value in itself; for what is boredom but the feeling of the emptiness of life? If life—the craving for which is the very essence of our being—were possessed of any positive intrinsic value, there would be no such thing as boredom at all: mere existence would satisfy us in itself, and we should want for nothing.”

The irony is modern Buddhism is a product of the extraordinary domnance of western thinking. Just look at the work of McMahan. A book review by the famed David Loy makes this painfully clear: http://www.tricycle.com/reviews/how-buddhist-modern-buddhism

You are being gamed.

[camerata]

I confess I was taken in by Castenada's writings myself, in the first three books. It became increasingly clear to me, though, as the series moved forward, that the tales were almost pure fantasy, as they were later revealed to be.

This was my experience too. After the second book and the initial disappearance of Don Juan, I read the books as fantasy entertainment.

While I remember seeing The Third Eye in every bookshop in the 70s I never thought to read it. Oddly enough, decades later I would thoroughly enjoy reading Alexandra David-Neel's Tibet books. One of them was made into a movie - Valley of Flowers - that I've always had a soft spot for.

[fabianfred]

There is much of value in Rampa's books.... and those who deny themselves the experience because they swallowed the 'fake' line put about by the press, and then, like gossip, repeated by many who never bothered to read anything themselves, are to be pitied.

There were many Tibet experts who didn't like the popularising of their pet subject which Rampa's book 'The Third Eye' created...and often they had never even been there, Tibet having been such a closed Country.

The private eye who 'exposed' Rampa was probably employed by Heinich Harrer, author of 'Seven Years in Tibet' who had made a name for himself and didn't like 'his' Tibet being revealed thus decreasing his exclusive position,

As we know, shit sticks, and many used to believe that what appeared in the newspapers had to be true...nowadays we are a bit less gullible and more suspicious of the media.

Edited December 20, 2013 by fabianfred

[fabianfred]

The same Skeptics dictionary linked to by Sabaijai also attacks Edgar Cayce, another great man who was certainly not fake.

There are always those in life who will never be great themselves, so instead of trying to raise themselves up, they seek to drag others down to their own level. They are to be pitied, since not only do they destroy the good works of others, they also deny many who are a bit unsure and likely to follow the 'popular' stance, from learning about the truth and the real potential of mankind. They cause themselves great harm by their karma, as does anyone who repeats gossip without verifying its veracity.

[fabianfred]

Actually, the Wikipedia entry linked to by Sabaijai is very fair and although it describes the attempts by people to slander Rampa it doesn't state that they were true. The links include a link to the Skeptics Dictionary article, but then that is what a good Wiki article is supposed to do...link to all references, not take sides in a debate.

[rockyysdt]

Hi Fred.

An ongoing interest I've been mindful of is what influences our paths in life.

Reading your story, I'm wondering whether a different initial exposure may have led you on a path of Mahayanan belief/practice.

I'm learning that early beliefs/influences/conditioning set our paths.

When debating such leanings we often look for that which justifies/reinforces our beliefs, rather than to be open and receptive to new thought.

A friend of mine will not waiver an inch when it comes to Jesus.

You are quite firmly behind Theravadan teaching.

Others may follow the same path but with different emphasis.

Yet others have a significantly different take on what the Buddha was teaching.

Is our conditioning getting in the way?

How far off the mark is each of us?

Edited December 21, 2013 by rockyysdt

[Gaccha]

This raises an issue of how westerners' learn of the east. The exotic other. We are all products of our time and conditioning. All of us.

Take Zen Buddhism. It reached the west via the fringe, radical Buddhists such as Suzuki. And it proved appearling to westerners because it converted their metaphysics in eastern esotericism.

This has an analogy to a tourist. They go to Thailand not to see Thailand but to find their provincial image of Thailand; once they find that, they can Instagram it for those waiting back home.

[sabaijai]

Cyril Henry Hoskin

Born 8 April 1910, Plympton, Devon, United Kingdom

The above facts are clear. After that it gets murky. If Hoskin was truly a plumber's son who became a medium for a Tibetan 'soul' after a blow to the head, it's strange that so many of descriptions of Tibetan beliefs in his books run contrary to actual Tibetan Buddhism, and odd that he couldn't speak the language.

Press bias is a convenient strawman argument to put forth any time you don't agree with what the press writes. But it was academics who were the most scathing critics.

Hugh Richardson, who had served in the British mission in Lhasa in the 30s and 40s, and who was fluent in spoken and written Tibetan, read the manuscript of the Third Eye before publication, at the request of the publisher. He concluded the book was 'a fake built from published works and embellished by a fertile imagination.'

Richardson's review in the Daily Telegraph in 1956: "Anyone who has lived in Tibet will feel after reading a few pages of the Third Eye that its author T Lobsang Rampa is certainly not a Tibetan ... There are innumerable inaccuracies about Tibetan life and manners which give the impression of Western suburbia playing charades."

Noted British Tibetologist David Snellgrove criticised Rampa's descriptions of Buddhism and Tibetan language, In his published opinion: "This fellow is a complete imposter, and has probably never ever been to Tibet."

Harrar's book Seven Years in Tibet came out before The Third Eye. Kenneth Rayner Johnson, a student of the history of the occult, wrote in his essay "The Strange Case of :Lobsang Rampa" that he believed that Hoskin's The Third Eye borrowed heavily from Harrar's descriptions of Lhasa.

The original publisher reportedly had a difficult time deciding whether to publish The Third Eye as fiction or non-fiction.

Many people remain sceptical of Edgar Cayce as well. Like Hoskin, Cayce believed in the existence of aliens and Atlantis, and claimed that "soul-entities" on Earth interbred with animals to produce 12-foot giants.

[fabianfred]

People are often quick to take a critic at his word....and there is no real way to verify anything. I have read all of his books and disagree with the critics.

We all have to decide for ourselves what is believable and what is not....a personal decision which we should not try and force upon others.

I opened this thread to give people the chance to read for themselves, perhaps learn something, and at least have given the author a chance by having actually read his works.

''Many people remain sceptical of Edgar Cayce as well. Like Hoskin, Cayce believed in the existence of aliens and Atlantis, and claimed that "soul-entities" on Earth interbred with animals to produce 12-foot giants. '' ... claiming the existence of things which the majority find hard to believe doesn't make one wrong. The majority are almost never right. The Buddha said that the wise were like the number of horns on a cow, whilst the unwise like the number of hairs..

To those with an open mind the existence of Atlantis and Aliens is not a matter of conjecture, but a certainty.

Edited December 23, 2013 by fabianfred

[rockyysdt]

To those with an open mind the existence of Atlantis and Aliens is not a matter of conjecture, but a certainty.

Hi Fred.

Isn't an open mind one which is open to both possibilities?

To say that something is a certainty is just as closed and to say it is not.

[fabianfred]

To me, an open mind means that you do not immediately dismiss things as preposterous without fair consideration. Just following the popular view or having prejudice without even considering another angle is close-minded.

Christianity represses free-thinking in many Westerners, because it teaches that we are made in god's image, and man is the highest form of life on the planet, and we are the centre of the universe, or that nothing happened before the mythical adam & eve a few thousand years ago. ...all utter BS.

It is obvious to anyone with a lick of sense that of all the billions of galaxies and planets out there, our could not possibly be the only one inhabited by life....and then the law of averages suggests that many would be more advanced than us too and capable of interstellar travel.

Someone does not just wake up one day and think....I'm going to start a myth about a place called atlantis. There had to have been a reason for the story to start.

All those strange and difficult to prove or disprove things like aliens, flying saucers, werewolves, vampires, ghosts, bigfoot, yeti, etc. had to have been started by some actual sighting.

Imagine if a cataclismic upheaval, as has happened in history, caused many areas of land to sink beneath the oceans, and other land rise up..causing almost an extinction event, the survivors would have many tales to tell. But after a few generations when there are no more first-hand witnesses alive, these tales become myth and debatable history.

[rockyysdt]

To me, an open mind means that you do not immediately dismiss things as preposterous without fair consideration. Just following the popular view or having prejudice without even considering another angle is close-minded.

Christianity represses free-thinking in many Westerners, because it teaches that we are made in god's image, and man is the highest form of life on the planet, and we are the centre of the universe, or that nothing happened before the mythical adam & eve a few thousand years ago. ...all utter BS.

It is obvious to anyone with a lick of sense that of all the billions of galaxies and planets out there, our could not possibly be the only one inhabited by life....and then the law of averages suggests that many would be more advanced than us too and capable of interstellar travel.

Someone does not just wake up one day and think....I'm going to start a myth about a place called atlantis. There had to have been a reason for the story to start.

All those strange and difficult to prove or disprove things like aliens, flying saucers, werewolves, vampires, ghosts, bigfoot, yeti, etc. had to have been started by some actual sighting.

Imagine if a cataclismic upheaval, as has happened in history, caused many areas of land to sink beneath the oceans, and other land rise up..causing almost an extinction event, the survivors would have many tales to tell. But after a few generations when there are no more first-hand witnesses alive, these tales become myth and debatable history.

Agreed, but to then say it's all fact is closed minded.

Using your very own argument the Christian stories also come from fact.

Further using such logic has the power of making every religion ever dreamed on earth as true.

A story is a narrative, either true or untrue.

Much better to say one is open minded to their possibility.

Getting back to the title of this thread, the very power of our conditioning make us susceptible to accepting certain paths we come across.

This special influence in your life may have been Mahayanan, possibly causing you to espouse a different view right now.

I suspect this subtle conditioning of ours is a major roadblock towards Awakening.

Edited December 26, 2013 by rockyysdt

[bankei]

I have a closed mind on this - Lobsang Rampa was a cruel joke played on unsuspecting westerns who longed for the mystical east - which doesn't and never existed.

Reminds me of the interesting documentary on the fake guru.

[sabaijai]

Excellent doc, watched it a few weeks ago.

Scientific or historical facts have nothing to do with open or closed mind, they have to do with the predictive power of rational thinking. There is no rational, empirically based evidence to support the existence of aliens, angels and so on.

I am open to the possibility that they exist -- what the heck, leprechauns and fairies, too -- once there is empirical evidence to demonstrate they once existed or still exist.

To believe in their existence despite the lack of empirical evidence is not a closed mind, but perhaps a deluded one.

Just as core Buddhism suggests we believe what can actually be seen and/or experienced, and nothing more.