IS THE DHARMA MESSAGE ALSO DEAD?
BUDDHA DHARMA STILL PERSISTS ... BUT BUDDHISM IS VIRUS-INFECTED
Stained Modern Buddhism
What is stained Modern Buddhism? It is a Buddhism which is generating a religious approach to compassion and benevolence (clearly without a supreme being or soul). This “popular Buddhism” teaches without any meaningful reference to the richness of the profound teachings that lead through Dharmayana to the dissolving of Suffering and Identity, and to Bodhi Dharma, which is the Dharma of Awakening leading to the direct experience of No-mind and the elimination of Duality within conscious thought.
What is stained Modern Buddhism? It is a Buddhism that permits the constant reinforcement of conscious thinking and generates in those with developed cognitive intelligence an analytical and cold Buddhism that is only at best academic. The danger is that those captured by the worship of their own academic mind believe that they are on the path when they are actually wandering, immersed in the bogs of Mara.
What is stained Modern Buddhism? It is a Buddhism which at the elementary level in all disciplines from Theravada to Tantra teachings is applied at a superficial level, capturing adepts at one extreme by the academic and simple beauty of the teachings and on the other by ritual, rites and ceremony. These, contrary to their own Great Masters of the past, do not in any way teach the subtlety and profundity of even the first steps of refuge. They evolve parrot rendition of mantras and sadhanas and simplistic understanding of the Noble Truths without the profound understanding which is necessary.
What is stained Modern Buddhism? It is a collection of closed systems which has lost the richness of mutual understanding at the higher levels and has developed into a competitive arena in which the number of followers is counted as the measure of success and the building of stupas and temples is more relevant than the pledge to truly eliminate Ignorance from all human creatures and free all creatures from the destruction of the human stained mind. It is a Buddhism built and dependent upon names and labels, not upon the essence of the Dharma truth.
What is stained Modern Buddhism? It is the modern impetus that believes that the teachings of the great realized Masters of the past (from Buddha to Atisha, Tilopa, Naropa, Marpa and Milarepa in the Tibetan teachings; Huineng, Yunmen, Fayen, Caoshan, Dongshan, Linji, Guishan and Zongmi and others of the Golden Age in the Chinese teachings; and all that truly followed in their footsteps maintaining true at all times to the natural Dharma) can be modified to suit our times and even melded with eternalist ideas and the consumer world.
What is stained Modern Buddhism? It is the application of patches to suffering in a thousand different forms which trap those treated in a round of samsara. It is the proliferation of false compassion and false benevolence founded on the intellectual application of the Dharma melded with a natural and correct concern for social injustice. It is the great trap of Mara that permits pity, empathy, and identity to masquerade as compassion.
The use of the word Buddhism itself is a reflection of the disease and, as all “-isms”, it is best forgotten. While there have been many forms to divide Buddha Dharma into coherent groups, here we do not use the traditional triple division of Buddha Dharma into three vehicles (Theravada, Mahayana and Vajrayana). Instead, we use the designation of three paths which more correctly represent the flowing relationship in which it can be seen that the apparently separate vehicles actually meld into one. These are the paths of the true Bodhisattva pledge (Bodhisattvayana),which leads and continues into the path of the Natural way (Dharmayana); and the Dharma of Awakening to No-mind, the Primordial State (Bodhi Dharmayana).
These may best be considered not as three vehicles leading to separate destinations, but a single train in which passengers can alight and enter and in which the conductor may change. Beyond that there is the long walk within samsara with the constant presence of the No-mind that leads to final Enlightenment.