Quoting kaligrafr <[log in to unmask]>:
> Looking for a little clarification. Are you suggesting that Tibetan
> Buddhists do magic more or less despite the guidance to put such
things aside, but don't acknowledge it?
> ...<snipped>
Aloha, Pitch!
Mostly I meant that whatever is being done in ritual, and whatever it's
being called, I frequently recognise as a magical technique. For
example, in a discussion of Medicine Buddha on the web, one senior lama
suggested the following method for increasing the efficacy of a
prescribed medicine (this is as I recall, roughly): Put the medicine on
a small altar; visualise Medicine Buddha in a bright light above the
altar; visualise rays of healing light emanating from the heart of
Medicine Buddha and flowing into the medicine until it glows with
healing light. Job done. This is given as a Tibetan Buddhist healing
ritual, but it sounds like good ol' spell-work to me!
From my reading, it seems that Tibetan Buddhist lamas, at least in
Tibet, were familiar with the full range of practices from the most
esoteric tantric generation/completion stages to simple 'vernacular'
rituals usually done for the benefit of/at the request of Tibetan laity.
For example, 'mo' (divination), healing blessings (often accompanied by
the giving of a blesed substance to ingest or a blessed thread to wear),
etc. And furthermore that it didn't bother them unduly. In fact, doing
rituals for the laity is seen as one of the primary functions of the
monk or lama.
This does appear to have been somewhat lost in the west, as suggested
from the desire of Western disciples to see Buddhism as pure, atheistic,
philosophical, rational and so on.
Margaret
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