I think of this one as kinda sutric in that it tries to drop desires which produce bad feelings; but then that is also happening in service of some greater purpose rather than for its own sake, so I don't think of it as renunciate as such.
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Replying to @xuenay
Yes, that seems Sutric to me too - & also seems accurate that renunciate practice occurs in service of a greater purpose (I think that’s usually the case, & I wouldn’t discount it being renunciate because of that).
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Replying to @_awbery_
Hmm. I was thinking that I've understood renunciation as being something like withdrawing from ordinary life and the world (as described at e.g. http://arobuddhism.org/community/an-uncommon-perspective.html … ), and that if you are using a technique to accomplish your aims *in* the world, it wouldn't be renunciate?
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Replying to @xuenay
Yes: when Sutra/renunciation is your yana (path/worldview) that’s right, it would make no sense at all. But Tantra is meta to Sutra, by definition, so when Tantra is your overarching worldview, Sutra is ‘object’ - ie, you can approach it as a method.
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Tantric worldview is entirely different to Sutric renunciation. It looks, sounds and feels different. It can’t be held at the same time as Sutric worldview, they’re either-or. I mean, they are saying different things about the world and how it works that can’t both be true.
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When Tantra is approached as a path, adopted as a worldview in its own right, Sutra/renunciation looks slightly different to how it looks when it’s your guiding worldview - and its purpose is subsidiary to the aims of Tantra, (ie, always localized and contextualized.)
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Because Tantra is meta to Sutra, adopting renunciative, Sutric worldview and trying to incorporate Tantric-style practices within that as tools doesn’t really work, imo. Not only that it doesn’t make sense, I mean it actually doesn’t work: Tantric practice can’t function >
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toward achieving the aims/purpose of Sutra, it can only mess it up. One *could* approach Tantric practice from a renunciative path if they’d been practicing renunciative methods exclusively very long-term, over many years. >
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At that point Tantric practice functions with the whole intent of messing up the renunciative worldview! That can be extraordinarily powerful for long-term renunciate practitioners, as is any expansive psychological/spiritual breakthrough.
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Replying to @_awbery_
That makes sense. I guess in that case, my original objection could be rephrased as something like "you said that sutra is the Buddhism that most people are familiar with, but in practice I think that reading many modern teachers ends up imparting a tantric worldview".
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Roughly this is argued by @agleig in this paper (which is a must-read if interested in the topic).
I would agree with her that there’s been a synthesis, and with @_awbery_ that it’s a dubious one and conceptual clarification should help.https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14639947.2013.832496 …
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Replying to @Meaningness @xuenay and
Well, I started out in Vajrayana/tantra, i.e. Shambhala, then Nalandabodhi. Switched to Theravada, i.e Sri Lankan tradition (never Insight Med). I am now a tantric Theravadan. I do both, and I don't try to make sense out of it, I just live and do it the way it suits me.
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Replying to @engagedharma @Meaningness and
The interesting things was a dissertation I read on the history of the Abhayagiri vihāra, which showed that tantra was widely practice in Sri Lanka, among monks and lay people, even more than Mahayana.
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