Why do all gurus, teachers, masters and wotnot always have a table with a vase of flowers and a little glass of water next to them at satsang. Why not a jukebox or something ?

How big are your teacher's flowers ? Do they have prettier flowers than the other holy ones ? Who has the most ostentatious flowers - buddhists or vedantists ?

This is more obvious trolling.

I'm locking this thread as a result.

Chris Marti
DhO Moderator

we can't take the piss out of the affectations of dharma teachers here?

Is that what's happening here?

was the buddha fat?

This feels more like just venting than trolling, and it is not not-funny. It is not aimed at anyone in particular, so I do not see what harm he caused here.

If he puts it into an appropriate category - humor or whatever - I see nothing wrong with it.

As a principle, when we come to these "maybe/maybe not it's over the line" posts, it's reasonable to give priority to the principle of freedom of speech and expression over "let's shut them up" because of potential hurt to someone's feelings or linguistic aesthetics inclinations.

I was recently sent a YouTube video by a friend of someone called Rupert Spira and I had to turn it off because he had a vase. 

No idea who the dude is but his ceramics are actually quite impressive http://www.rupertspira.com/exhibition.aspx?intContentID=4

People may not remember, or may not know, how far off the wall this site got with more hands-off moderating in the not-so-distant past. It now has become a site that serious practitioners can enjoy reading and where people can post with the expectation of getting worthwhile discussion. I support Chris’s efforts at keeping it that way. 

I agree with you and Chris, and I think that without proper moderation, in a not very long period, serious meditation practice and Dharmma would lose its proper place in this forum, and would be lost among many different off-topic subjects that can appear here. The obvious result would be that serious practitioners prefer to leave this community.

I don't like flowers, either  

So can anyone tell me how much illicit sex I need to have to become a renowned teacher? Or are big flowers enough? And how do sex and flowers map onto the 4-path model? And, finally, do psychedelics help? Thanks!

This is metadharma. It's all the rage. 

chris has become the new guru

Um..... no.

Reminds me of some past AwakeNetwork conversations:


http://awakenetwork.org/forums/105-reading-listening-and-viewing-recommendations/9361-vince-s-awakening?start=25#13537


and

http://awakenetwork.org/forums/111-personal-practice-diaries-logs-comments-questions/9174-it-s-a-householder-s-log?start=325#13391

haha
buuut.....$1000/hour and hookers!

Thanks, shargrol, for the nice way-back machine.

That thread also relevant to this one and this one

If I may be nitpicky, this sounds more like shitposting than trolling. I do support the lock, but for shitposting.

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Shit%20Posting

This thread isn't locked. Maybe someone unlocked it because they don't like the vases and flowers. either.

More accurate! Is this where the term "shit show" comes from?

From Snowmass Interfaith Conference "Points of Agreement"


".....and a sense of humor are indispensable in the spiritual life..."

If anything - humor and whatever attempts at it (in the appropriate section : ) - needs to be encouraged. If someone does not want to see these posts in the "Recent posts" section, there is a technical solution to that.

Or do we want to create a commission of wise most serious mediators who will convene and pass judgement on what is funny and what is not? Are we going to tell someone that they are not a serious meditator because we do not appraciate their particular sense of humor? 

I’m thinking that the flowers may be something to rest one’s gaze on instead of having the whole audience staring at one dude throughout the session, which could become uncomfortable for the dude and boring for the audience unless the dude has a very interesting body language or something. Maybe they have a lot of viewers who are still easily bored or restless and want to accomodate to them, or maybe they feel naked and vulnerable without the props (or maybe they couldn’t care less but play along with the tradition). J Krishnamurti always had only a simple chair and nothing else, with a huge audience. I get the feeling that he needed no walls.

Sorry for the humorless answer.

Sure that's part of the function of seperate forums, but I'm unaware of any way to set up a filter for recent posts by forum. Due the low volume of posts in the DhO, I tend to just view the recent posts page rather than go through the individual forum boards. For me anyway, the recent posts page ends up being the face of the site.

Same here.

"I was shocked however, how little he mentions lotuses, dew drops, or dolphins. It makes me doubt the extent to which he truly has awakened. "  This important issue is clearly perennial.

Also: 

One of the Dzogchen transmissions is given by holding up a see-through quartz chrystal. I got that and smiled too. (And when the teacher turned see-through before my eyes too, I just thought that was a fun quirk of watching dharma teachings at 4 o'clock in the morning with an easily suggested mind... until someone else reported seeing the same thing... then I didn't know what to think. I still wonder whether that's part of the telepathic transmission that the tradition speaks of or if we were just being easily suggested in the same way. When I asked the teacher about it, she just laughed secretively and said that sometimes she gets restless and wiggles a bit and that there are many dimensions to wiggle in.)

This realization isn't about anything woo-woo at all. It's about the nature of mind. Mahakasyapa realized that the flower was a flower, Just this. THIS. The Buddha, seeing that Mahakasyapa was fully present with just this (the smile), granted the transmission. So there was no telepathy involved and the word "transmission" does not apply to the passing of anything other than the recognition of like minds.

Old timers - a little history lesson please

someone please sum up for a newbie like me why it was so important to some to create a whole new forum instead of just starting a new thread on an existing one...or even a whole new category? : )))

but if the topic is still potentiially too inflammatory, feel free to ignore this 

i just figured the Buddha was sick of those grim fuckers choking stuff to death with words and knew the whole thing needed someone with a sense of humor who could keep his mouth shut when there was nothing to say.

amen to this! Thanks Jano!

(though speaking for myself, if the topic is still potentially too inflammatory, please explain why at length, lol.)

I got what the symbolic transmission was. Of course that was about the nature of mind too. 

In the Tibetan transmission within Dzogchen there are traditionally four kinds of transmission involved. You read the text, you explain it, you show something symbolical, and then there is a telepathic aspect involved. Exactly what they mean with that, I don't know, but I think it may just be having one's own Buddha nature recognized by the teacher so that one gets some help recocnizing it for oneself. They call it telepathic.

I still think it was a funny story, that when I saw the teacher get see-through while talking about that aspect of the mind, someone else had the same hypnagogic hallucination. Maybe we subconsciously picked up on the meaning and our minds manifested it very tangibly. Or maybe things and people aren't really as solid as we tend to think.