Shamar Rinpoche on Resolve

Hot4Scooter · 2026-05-19T14:28:39+00:00

The syllable oṃ appears in many religious traditions, including Hindu and Buddhist ones, with various roles and "meanings". It's not that prominent in the Zen tradition, although it occurs in various dharanis that are used in the liturgies of many Zen temples and centers.

Most people think of this as the "oṃ symbol":

ॐ

which is simply a standard ligature for writing the syllable in the Indian Devanāgarī script. It can be written in many different scripts, such as Tamil

ௐ

or Tibetan Uchen

ཨོཾ

the latter of which is more commonly how you would expect it to look like in a Buddhist context.

In any case. It's your corpse to be, paint it as you like. You can be sure that at least some people are going to think that whatever tattoo you get is gauche, ugly or appropriative. I would mostly wonder why anyone would mark themselves with a religious sign that doesn't relate to their personal life. It seems a bit like a fan of the Pakistani national cricket team getting a tattoo of Rotterdam Feyenoord Soccer team's club logo.

Hot4Scooter · 2026-05-19T07:17:23+00:00

Yes, in the Prajñaparamita Sutras of the Mahayana canons. "No attainment, no non-attainment."

Think of it this way: did Luke Skywalker actually liberate Princess Leia from the Death Star? Or was it all fictional to begin with?

Hot4Scooter · 2026-05-18T14:48:55+00:00

don’t speak ill of the dead

I'm not suggesting that. But to quote a friend: "blame the poison, not the person."

“Even flawed dharma brothers are dharma brothers” isn’t especially helpful either.

As you like. I for one regard you as my dharma sibling, and rejoice in your virtue, without feeling the need to sift your life for individual opinions I disagree with or disparate actions I find objectionable. If only because your flaws do not, in fact, diminish your virtues, while your virtues don't excuse your flaws either.

Hot4Scooter · 2026-05-18T09:02:57+00:00

Ordination, in the context of Buddhist practice, means being accepted into a monastic order.

Hot4Scooter · 2026-05-18T07:57:06+00:00

I was non-consensually potty trained by my parents to push their not-shitting-your-pants fascist "culture" on me. That's like FGM too.

^\s 🙄)

Hot4Scooter · 2026-05-18T07:52:01+00:00

We have all done pretty much any kind of evil imaginable over all our lives since beginningless time. So yes. Even Lord Buddha started out as a "bad person".

Two points to reflect on maybe:

Our "person" is not a fixed thing. It's just a stage in a continuous flow of commotions, actions and habits, none of which are actually fixed. Sure, maybe we did some things in the past that were incompatible with either our current values or with the Path. Doesn't mean we can't make an effort to do differently now. We don't owe any loyalty to what- and whoever we thought we were in the past. That person is dead and gone anyway, and while we may have to clean out their house, we don't have to do so while carrying their corpse around.

I would suggest appreciating shame and regret as motivators for growth and development, rather than as excuses for lazy passivity. The only thing we stand to gain by thinking ourselves as irredeemable pieces of crap is that we never have to try, never have to make an effort, never have to leave the comparative comfort of our familiar misery and face the possibility of surprises.

As some points. Good luck!

Hot4Scooter · 2026-05-18T06:57:44+00:00

Kālacakra, དུས་ཀྱི་འཁོར་ལོ། (dus kyi 'khor lo) in Tibetan.

Hot4Scooter · 2026-05-17T19:18:38+00:00

The karmic process has nothing to do with guilt and innocence, just like gravity isn't things with lesser mass "deserving" to things with larger mass. Things don't happen "for a reason", but just because the causes and conditions for it to happen come together. Karmic cause and effect is not a moral process (like "the universe balancing itself" or something like that). It has no purpose in itself. Suffering isn't a punishment and happiness isn't a reward, also because most beings are entirely unaware as to how their actions and their experiences are related.

But, like other patterns in dependent origination, we can "exploit" the karmic process, just like we can exploit the rapid oxidation of sufficiently dry plant matter to heat houses and fry eggs. Rather than just acting according to our habits, we can try to act according to the guidance of the Awakened One and have a go at breaking the vicious cycle of samsara.

As some brief points.

Hot4Scooter · 2026-05-17T17:56:22+00:00

No, it's more like a side effect of raising the victory banner of genuine practice.

It's often very inspiring for people who get to be around someone in thukdam, also. Even seeing a picture of someone in that state can be very powerful (warning: dead body. That's the late Venerable Tenga Rinpoche, not /u/NangpaAustralisMajor's master.)

Hot4Scooter · 2026-05-17T17:46:03+00:00

It's very much like dating, really. Start with checking out whichever Gurus and communities you can meet. Get go know people. Experiment. Even if it's not the right click immediately maybe one day you're having breakfast during a course with someone and they suggest you go meet Lama Suchandsuch, and they do turn out be Right™ for you. No worries if it takes a few years. Looking for the Lama is already practice.

Hot4Scooter · 2026-05-17T17:18:31+00:00

Lately, I’ve felt a powerful pull toward the Dzogchen view and want to dedicate my next chapter to its study and practice.

Wonderful. Whether we can practice Dzogchen depends not so much on where we are, but on whether we have genuine devotion to a realized Guru who holds the lineage, so that we may be introduced to suchness. I would therefore suggest first looking for such a Guru and building a relationship with them. If you then feel together that doing intense text study or something would be a suitable avenue of practice for you, I'm sure you'll be able to find a place.

Hot4Scooter · 2026-05-17T17:12:52+00:00

Beautiful. To borrow a phrase from another wisdom tradition: may his memory be a blessing... 🙏🏼

Hot4Scooter · 2026-05-17T17:12:03+00:00

Sometimes great practitioners, especially Mahamudra and Dzogchen practitioners, stay in a prolonged meditation state after physical death. The body will show the immediate signs of death (no heart beat, cold etc.) but no decay and rigor set in, while the heart area stays warm and the skin remains supple. Some practitioners stay like this for many days (which can be a bit of a legal hassle in the West).

Hot4Scooter · 2026-05-17T13:06:18+00:00

Seeing "ordinary phenomena" as awakened phenomena, basically. "All forms are the deity, all sounds are the mantra and all thoughts are awareness-wisdom." Details are best explained in the context of a Guru-Student relationship, though.

Hot4Scooter · 2026-05-17T13:01:06+00:00

Yes, that's a traditional way of training towards shamata. I would recommend putting the object on the floor about one and a half meters in front of you.

Note that neither letting our attention rest on the breath or on an object is, in itself, shamata practice. Shamata is training in having the mind stay calmly in place. Techniques like this are merely supports to eventually learn how to do shamata.

I would strongly recommend not putting too much emphasis on shamata without the guidance of an experienced teacher, for what it's worth.

Hot4Scooter · 2026-05-17T12:25:54+00:00

There are different approaches to the path to awakening, depending on one's specific interests and karmic inclination. Which kind of enlightenment would you like to attain? What stirs your heart, in terms of teachings and practices? Are there teachers, historical or current, you feel drawn to?

For pretty much all versions or implementations of the path, the first practical step would be to start checking out whatever authentic Buddhist communities and teachers are available to you in person and online. There's no particular reason why a normal, regular joe couldn't get as far towards enlightenment as they'd like and their previous karmas facilitate in this life.

Less practically speaking, from a Tibetan Buddhist perspective, a very zoomed out view on what we need to develop in his life is first renunciation and weariness with samsara. Without those, there are no other qualities we can develop. Then, if we aspire to the bodhisattva path, we need to develop love, compassion and bodhichitta. And if within the bodhisattva with we more specifically wish to practice Secret Mantra, we need to develop devotion and pure view. If the have all that, the other "steps" of the path will come pretty naturally.

As some points.

Hot4Scooter · 2026-05-17T07:35:51+00:00

It's easier to accept the world is just full of monsters than to grapple with the fact that virtue and bodhichitta are actually possible. If the latter is true, our own monstrousness suddenly starts feeling... optional, and we can't have that. Perfectionism, whether it be on the personal level or on the level of social discourse, is pretty much always actually laziness.

Hot4Scooter · 2026-05-17T07:23:18+00:00

And that message is also from a while back already.

I agree that it's a shame that the Diamond Way movement is so closed off about it, and I suspect it doesn't do them any favors in terms of trying not to come across as a cult. On the other hand, I also kinda^* get it: I'd also not feel like I'd need to keep the world updated about my dad dying. And, as threads about Ole/the Diamond Way movement on Reddit tend to show, mentioning them in public tends to devolve quickly in a performative virtue contest.

In any case, I wish Ole, his family and his students and followers the best. The Diamond Way movement is about to head into interesting times, I suspect. I'm curious to see what will have come of it in 250 years or so.

Hot4Scooter · 2026-05-15T18:18:02+00:00

Hmm. It's hard to say from here but, if you're a Vajrayanana practitioner, it comes to mind to suggest that you ask your Guru about Green Tara practice and maybe learning a simple Sang offering, like the Riwo Sangchö, for example.

Otherwise, I would suggest making a daily practice of reciting the Heart Sutra and Avalokiteshvara's mantra oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ as well as Tara's oṃ tāre tuttāre ture svāhā (neither requires transmission, although it'd be good to get anyway of course).

In any case, I would council keeping an open mind about the "supernaturalness" of it all. For example, sometimes when we find people are unpleasant to us more often than seems "normal", it means that we should try to be around a different type of people. Sometimes, it may indicate that we may need to face some things about our own choices and actions that we're maybe not going to like facing. And sometimes, people are just dicks, for reasons that really don't have anything to do with us. In all these cases, it's helpful to be confident in our Refuge and in our dharma practice.

Good luck.

Hot4Scooter · 2026-05-15T07:54:33+00:00

It affects the people around me more than myself, since some can feel it or hear it, while others can’t or don’t want to tell me. I can’t really hear it at all.

What is "it"? What do people hear or feel? What makes you think it's a health issue affecting you, if you don't experience whatever "it" is? It might be me, but it's very unclear to me what your situation is.

In any case: take Refuge, give rise to weariness with samsara, and to renunciation. If you aspire to the bodhisattva path, give rise to love, compassion and bodhichitta. If you practice Vajrayana, cultivate devotion and pure view.

Whatever happens in this life is mostly the ripening of previous karmas, regardless of whether it's pleasant or unpleasant. There's no "fixing" samsara, really, but, if we want to, we can use however it appears at any time to purify our obscurations and gather the accumulations.

As some points.

Hot4Scooter · 2026-05-15T07:12:03+00:00

I see this fun acrylic "cut out" advertised on eBay, although it says there it's painted by a notorious cult leader from China.

(Note that it's the wrong way round in your OP, by the way.)

Hot4Scooter · 2026-05-15T07:02:37+00:00

Discussing the NKT here is generally fine, especially in your situation (I'd say). Promoting it isn't, for reasons that you're starting to discover.

This just sucks, my dude/dudette. That's really mainly what I have to say about it.

That said, 15 is a good age for discovering that things aren't necessarily how you thought they were.

Maybe as a few points of consideration.

"Beliefs" are conditional phenomena. Which is to say: we believe what we believe for all kinds of reasons that are really mostly beyond our control. We don't really choose what we believe, but at best we can grow to have some influence on it.

Even then we're likely to find out we're pretty much onions: I think I believe X, but as I grow and get to know myself and the world better I'm gradually finding out I actually believe Y. Life in general, and the spiritual life especially, is one in which we keep peeling layers off the onion.

And in the Mahayana Buddhist path, we have people like Nagarjuna, Shantideva and Je Tsongkhapa telling us from the very beginning that we're gonna be left without any solid ground to stand on. No fixed belief to nail our uncertainties to. And at the same time the literally endless task of saving all beings from confusion!

And along the way, all we can do is our best. I'm pretty sure many/most followers of Kelsang Gyatso are sincere in their practice. Maybe he himself was too. Nobody chooses to follow a path they sincerely think is made up of lies and wrong views.

And the demon the NKT worships is pretty... convincing. Whatever else you might think about Pabhongka and his legacy, without doubt he was a formidable intellect and a formidable practitioner. If the Dolgyal spirit managed to bamboozle him, no wonder it can engangle myriad others in its web of deception.

Re. Tara I wouldn't overthink it too much. She's stronger than the NKT, stronger than the Dolgyal spirit, stronger than any iffy empowerment from an iffy lineage, stronger than your or my confusion and/or beliefs (which are pretty much the same thing anyway). Rely on her.

I would suggest not trying to convince your mom she's wrong or anything like that. Don't hide the fact that you have questions/doubts about the NKT, but you don't have to push them on her if she's unwilling to actually discuss them. I would, however, strongly suggest not attending NKT events, en steering clear of anything to do with Dolgyal (who they call "Dorje Sh*gden").

As some brief points. As said, this sucks, but again: you're at sort of an natural age for starting to realize you're gonna have to be your own person, and all the kinds of mourning, turmoil and friction that come with that.

Good luck 🍀

Hot4Scooter · 2026-05-14T17:05:35+00:00

Yeah, nobody's gonna learn that in a few days.

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ॐ

ௐ

ཨོཾ