I think you've about nailed it. The translators come from a western perspective, which is oriented in the intellect. But if you read into what they are saying, and identify it with your own experience of your energetic body, it resounds extremely profoundly and is usable advice.
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Replying to @questionaware @msutherl
this is absolutely fascinating if correct.
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Replying to @nosilverv @questionaware and
I know little about Zen, and zero about its energy practices, if it has them. Sorry!
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Replying to @Meaningness @nosilverv and
I’m not in a position to comment on the Zen Wikipedia articles, it’s not my expertise - but some of the Vajrayana Wikipedia articles are dreadful and that has, maybe wrongly, made me sceptical about religion on Wikipedia in general.
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Replying to @_awbery_ @Meaningness and
I think the cultural context of Ch'an is particularly relevant to answering this question but I'm hoping someone with more real scholarship will be able to say more than I can. In medieval China the whole domain of energy practice was already part of folk religion and Taoism.
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Replying to @danlistensto @Meaningness and
Historically curious that it (folk animism/shamanism) became so integrated into Tibetan Buddhism but purity/impurity separation and asceticism was retained more in Hinduism and later, Ch’an. Geoffrey Samuel is very good on the socio-economic structures in India that contributed.
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Replying to @_awbery_ @danlistensto and
A student of the way asked Yunmen, “What is Buddha?” Yunmen replied, “Dried shitstick.” In fermenting night soil Fat white maggots Stream with Buddhahood. — Robert Aitkin
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Also, I’m just rereading Life of Milarepa and it sure seems as though asceticism made it to Tibet—in force! And as far as I can tell Milarepa is considered exemplary, not eccentric, for his asceticism.
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Replying to @joXn @danlistensto and
Well there’s a lot of rhetoric about asceticism in the canon and the hagiographies are full of it, but there seems to have been little in practice as far as cultural historians can find. Monasticism increasingly became the norm in Tibet, but not asceticism >
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You probably know this, but the Tibetan folk/shamanic local practices were well integrated into the Nyingma during the 8th century. My curiosity was why that _didn’t_ happen so much in other times and places >
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Folk shamanism was (and still is) thoroughly mixed into actual Theravada as well. It’s only the Protestantized versions of Theravada that pretend otherwise.
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Replying to @Meaningness @_awbery_ and
Can we get a shamanized version of Protestantism?
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Replying to @ChasingMyself @_awbery_ and
Pentecostalism is roughly that, if I understand correctly? (Not something I know much about.)
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