Realizing Buddha Nature Beyond Vampiric Immortality

[LadyBoi]

Do you think it would be possible to attain a true kind of permanently existing self through vampirism and then branch off into realizing buddha nature so instead of deifying the self the traditional way, one attains immortality then dissolves the self into buddha nature rather than some karmic causes and effects which motivated you to become a certain kind of person so that one can continue experiencing that state of bliss eternally without the problem of impermanence? I've heard that clear light is akin to realizing buddha nature or something very close to it and I question whether or not the attainment of clear light would make the path of a magician significantly easier or more bearable in the face of the obstacles one expects to encounter along the way. Also, might it not make the loneliness of the path no longer painful? I'd like to hear your take on the matter.

You know, I've heard what you're saying about there being no you to experience the bliss but how is it that figures like Padmasabhava and the like seem to still have an individuated consciousness besides having directly realized being a part of all things? Is there not someone there within that energetic field which makes him, him? Also, there are buddhists who have attained clear light through dream yoga and the like but they're clearly not gone or entirely dissolved because they are still alive and with us today. If the experiencer is gone and there is no bliss to be experienced, isn't this somewhat of a contradiction to the existence of a bodhisattva who is said to have realized buddha nature and abides in bliss yet has not exited the wheel of samsara because not all beings have been liberated? I don't think Nirvana is an appropriate goal for me but there are vampiric sorcerers like Alexander W. Dray or people from the temple of set who claim to be able to fend off the astral decay and attain an immortal state beyond which there is no return and no possibility of death. I'm struggling with this idea that one can become immortal and realize buddha nature (since there is no governing authority on how unethical or twisted you can become until you realize buddha nature) and clear light is a state of realization that can't be defiled or altered by anything and is not subject to the laws of karma or cause and effect so it must be a kind of permanent state of bliss. No?

 

[IllusiveOwl]

there is no governing authority on how unethical or twisted you can become until you realize buddha nature

Isn't life grand? This is freedom, and Karma. You may be as you like, and only you suffer the truest consequences.

It may not be what you're looking for, but i enjoy the simplicity of the cosmology given in the RA contacts.

The All is Buddha, all beings are Buddha, all manifestations are fluctuations in the great infinite ocean of Buddha. With that established as the basic understanding, that makes you Buddha, the pure light you were talking about. Now you can just be pure light, hurray, and live happily ever after on a mountaintop, fucking off from society and never changing... or you can decide to be something, the choice is yours. If you take the latter, you have an infinite number of choices, as you said, however the more defined you become, you are likely to polarize either two ways: positively or negatively, in your journey towards becoming the All.

You can become Buddha either through service to all, because all are Buddha and so you use love as a bridge to all, or you become Buddha by self-identifucation and serving primarily yourself, seeing all as fractions of you and connecting yourself to all by power & dominion. Left & right hand paths. Both polarities wind up in a similar place, with neither really objectively being better than the other, it's all personal preference.

What you're talking to would be the negative path, serving only yourself, because you are Buddha, and using all parts of yourself to empower yourself. If you wanna get pop-culture-chic, you could liken it to the Jedi being service to all positive, and the Sith being service to self vampiric negative. From the sounds of it you're gunning for Palpatine, no judgements, you do you.

If you're asking if it's possible, then sure, anything's possible, you're the wizard here, you create your own limits.

 

[sherab]

Depends on your POV. Mixing paradigms or creating your own seems counterproductive.

From certain Buddhist POVs, there is no self no matter what you do or don’t do. There’s only the appearance of self. What this means can only be learned experientially. Installing a bunch of ideas in the alaya or acting wickedly will only make it more difficult. Not due to some authority, but that’s how cause and effect works.

 

[IllusiveOwl]

Not due to some authority, but that’s how cause and effect works.

There was a Buddhist I heard say once "It is Dharma not to lie. Not because it is bad, but because it makes things very complicated."

 

[Xingtian]

Do you think it would be possible to attain a true kind of permanently existing self through vampirism and then branch off into realizing buddha nature so instead of deifying the self the traditional way, one attains immortality then dissolves the self into buddha nature rather than some karmic causes and effects which motivated you to become a certain kind of person so that one can continue experiencing that state of bliss eternally without the problem of impermanence? I've heard that clear light is akin to realizing buddha nature or something very close to it and I question whether or not the attainment of clear light would make the path of a magician significantly easier or more bearable in the face of the obstacles one expects to encounter along the way. Also, might it not make the loneliness of the path no longer painful? I'd like to hear your take on the matter.

In some of the Mahayana literature there are accounts of different kinds of beings, including demonic ones, suddenly attaining Buddhahood. Buddhas and bodhisattvas can also manifest as any kind of being. However the whole point of Buddhist teaching of impermanence and non-self is not that a true kind of permanently existing self is undesirable, but that it is impossible. It can't be done. Even the gods eventually wear out and are reborn.

That said, there is also the teaching of Buddha nature and tathagatagarbha, which does seem to posit an abiding eternal substance of some kind. But this is realized only by relinquishing all grasping at self and permanence and as such is only realized by the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas.

So it's kind of paradoxical and confusing and there is debate as to how various terms are to be understood.

As for a vampire becoming enlightened I think a closer analogue would be found in Daoist folklore, where there are nine-tailed fox spirits who have attained immortality and become gods by essentially practicing vampirism.

 

[sherab]

That said, there is also the teaching of Buddha nature and tathagatagarbha, which does seem to posit an abiding eternal substance of some kind. But this is realized only by relinquishing all grasping at self and permanence and as such is only realized by the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas.

Most Buddhists schools that I'm aware of hold that the tathagatagarbha is ultimately empty with a few exceptions (although I have not heard of it referred to as a substance). Once you posit an eternal, abiding X then it is easy to cling.

 

[whome]

an abiding eternal substance of some kind

This may be a reference to the Five Electricities that in the Hindu tradition are the means by which cosmic life generates substance on all planes.

In that system the human initiate progressively discards substance/energies that are no longer of use, and eventually has a body that mostly behaves as physical but actually comprises the five electricities.

Walking through walls can occur through that mechanism

 

[LadyBoi]

Isn't life grand? This is freedom, and Karma. You may be as you like, and only you suffer the truest consequences.

It may not be what you're looking for, but i enjoy the simplicity of the cosmology given in the RA contacts.

The All is Buddha, all beings are Buddha, all manifestations are fluctuations in the great infinite ocean of Buddha. With that established as the basic understanding, that makes you Buddha, the pure light you were talking about. Now you can just be pure light, hurray, and live happily ever after on a mountaintop, fucking off from society and never changing... or you can decide to be something, the choice is yours. If you take the latter, you have an infinite number of choices, as you said, however the more defined you become, you are likely to polarize either two ways: positively or negatively, in your journey towards becoming the All.

You can become Buddha either through service to all, because all are Buddha and so you use love as a bridge to all, or you become Buddha by self-identifucation and serving primarily yourself, seeing all as fractions of you and connecting yourself to all by power & dominion. Left & right hand paths. Both polarities wind up in a similar place, with neither really objectively being better than the other, it's all personal preference.

What you're talking to would be the negative path, serving only yourself, because you are Buddha, and using all parts of yourself to empower yourself. If you wanna get pop-culture-chic, you could liken it to the Jedi being service to all positive, and the Sith being service to self vampiric negative. From the sounds of it you're gunning for Palpatine, no judgements, you do you.

If you're asking if it's possible, then sure, anything's possible, you're the wizard here, you create your own limits.

Is it not possible to mix both service and self interest in one’s life? Is there no room for a gray Jedi? An example I could think of is Saint Cyprian working alongside Jesus and demonic entities simultaneously. I would even consider the possibility that one might be able to ally oneself with Jesus as a vampiric sorcerer but I can’t say because I don’t truly know yet. Also, how could I decide truly? Wouldn’t my decision just be a reaction to a previous chain of causes and effects which influenced me to be the kind of person who would do that instead of abiding in bliss on said mountaintop or taken a step further in the astral/inner worlds or even beyond any kind of plane of existence (I assume a Buddha resides in some kind of void where he just sits in lotus position as a body of golden light or something like this without there ever being anything to sway him or make him move at all)? Wouldn’t it just be karmically motivated action to do otherwise? I want a continually existing awareness which feels no pain and is totally blissed out forever but doesn’t stop existing. I have no problem with abandoning personality since it’s really just a karmically influenced process but what I do have a problem with is the cessation of experience and the destruction of awareness.

 

[IllusiveOwl]

Is it not possible to mix both service and self interest in one’s life? Is there no room for a gray Jedi?

This is a constant gripe found with the uncertain. No it is not possible to do both and experience the extremes of either. If you want to bring Jesus into this, I refer you to his truth "One cannot serve two masters". If you wish to go to the extremes, a path needs to be committed to, otherwise you will hang around the middle as a moderate, this is just logic.

Saint Cyprian working alongside Jesus and demonic entities simultaneously.

Solomon used demons as well. It is not the acts but the intentions that determine polarity. You can do dark things in service to the whole, and holy things in service to yourself.

Wouldn’t my decision just be a reaction to a previous chain of causes and effects which influenced me to be the kind of person who would do that instead of abiding in bliss on said mountaintop

No. This is why you reach the mountaintop first as pure radiance. From that state you are liberated from all Karma and may choose your path in freedom and true individuality with no karmic motivations.

I want a continually existing awareness which feels no pain and is totally blissed out forever but doesn’t stop existing.

The most direct way to do this then is to just go full Buddhist and drop all esoteric vampirism because this would get in the way of your goal as chilling as perfect radiant light.

 

[sherab]

is the cessation of experience and the destruction of awareness.

This seems to be the model of renunciant traditions, like Samkhya or Theravada, that describe cessation in this way. A Mahayana Buddha is often described as infinitely expressive in order to help all sentient beings. A crude metaphor, but we might think of a sentient being as awareness bound or frozen whereas Buddhahood is awareness unbound or fully expanded. You can see that working in one direction undoes the other.

Different tradtions have different maps. One isn't right or wrong IMO, just different. Like dreams. None of them are actually real, but they have different rules.

I would add plenty of tantrikas work with both divine and demonic entities.

 

[LadyBoi]

This is a constant gripe found with the uncertain. No it is not possible to do both and experience the extremes of either. If you want to bring Jesus into this, I refer you to his truth "One cannot serve two masters". If you wish to go to the extremes, a path needs to be committed to, otherwise you will hang around the middle as a moderate, this is just logic.

Jack Grayle seems to be able to worship two masters. He still works with Jesus using the PGM but devotes himself to Hekate. Jason Miller does the same thing except it's not PGM but instead Jesus is part of his pantheon of deities and both seem to have good results. IMO, the thing about worshipping two masters is Christian propaganda that was thrown around so that people would abandon their pagan deities and devote themselves to the Christian/Catholic pantheon of saints, virgin mary (kosher goddess) and Jesus (kosher pagan deity).

From that state you are liberated from all Karma and may choose your path in freedom and true individuality with no karmic motivations.

If you're choosing then it's still karmically influenced. You wouldn't choose one thing over an other unless something had previously inclined you towards such thing that you're "choosing" to do. No such thing as free will. What made you into the kind of person that one choose one thing over another? Previous influence or karma. There are only decisions made out of ignorance and understanding. Whether you know or don't know or whether or not you're willing to go the extra mile or not is also something that you had no genuine control over. You read this and you'll probably change the way you go about doing things (maybe aligning with your own best interest) or deny it. I don't know you well enough to determine that but it is predetermined nonetheless. But I do agree with you that it may be in my best interest to see things from the mountaintop before I indulge in something I'll ultimately regret if that state can't be maintained indefinitely. It would be nice if there was a history of this being done before.

The most direct way to do this then is to just go full Buddhist and drop all esoteric vampirism because this would get in the way of your goal as chilling as perfect radiant light.

No because full on buddhist means the destruction of awareness so there would be no radiant light chilling. There would be no experience. There would be absolutely nothing. Full buddhist is self annihilation. I want to attain chilling as radiant light but not self destruction. There is nothing there and it's not some peaceful state. It's literally a state beyond experience so you could never experience it. I'd like to retain consciousness and exist blissed out. Bliss feels good. Non existence doesn't. There's nothing there.

Post automatically merged: Yesterday at 11:47 PM

As for a vampire becoming enlightened I think a closer analogue would be found in Daoist folklore, where there are nine-tailed fox spirits who have attained immortality and become gods by essentially practicing vampirism.

Thanks for sharing this. I was unaware. I'll be researching

 

[IllusiveOwl]

IMO, the thing about worshipping two masters is Christian propaganda

Good for Jack, but it isn't propaganda, it's about priorities & focus. You cannot deny that if you focus yourself to one thing wholeheartedly, you achieve more intensity than if your will was bound between several things. Simplifying the problem this way makes the point clear. It doesn't matter where you devote yourself, if you devote yourself fully, you reach more extremes. There will be a point where you cannot serve both yourself and others equally, one will have to come before the other, that's just how reality works, the more power and responsibility you have the clearer this will be.

If you're choosing then it's still karmically influenced

This is very frustrating, Ladyboi. It's like trying to explain to you a color you haven't had any experience of so you aren't getting my meaning.

Imagine you are a ball of light. Nothing fucks with you, you are completely free and unaffected, even if God himself shot a lightning bolt at you and said "Cease to Be" you would perceiver. No needs, no pain, no time, only infinity and your ability to perceive it. You could just see an incoherent and never repeating stream of experience if you want, or you could remain still and in the dark, it doesn't matter. The point is you're not bound to or touched by anything. You are just Will, a ball of floating will, yeah? How can you karmically be predetermined? You would simply see all things as they are, then, according to your individuality, choose what to do next. You are as untouched and unblemished as a baby born in the vacuum of space, a perfect clean & radiant slate. You are not choosing out of pleasure or pain, morality, vice & virtue, or anything like that because you're just some ball of light. So what is choosing? You have to look and find this yourself, but what is important here is that the choosing is completely free of past karma.

The point of attaining enlightenment is to be free of Karma and make real choices as a real individual, not a karmic-machine. If you cannot conceive of that, then you should add Solar Consciousness onto your to-do list. I understand what you are saying, the iron chain of cause & effect since beginningless time. If you never reach freedom, then yes, free-will is a very faint dim thing, often a delusion, and you would be correct in what you've said. From the box you are in, you are correct.

No because full on buddhist means the destruction of awareness so there would be no radiant light chilling

I see a fundamental misunderstanding of Buddhist philosophy here. I will take this moment to flat out tell you you're wrong, Enlightenment is not the destruction of awareness, you will find in every sutra that awareness hoisted up as all that there is, as the one thing that can never NOT be in this universe of constant change.

If you want to understand Buddhist practice, do not read someone elses interpretation and analysis of it, read the sutras: the Diamond Sutra, the Heart Sutra, the Platform Sutra, the Lotus Sutra, the Latavankatara Sutra, take your pick and you'll find Nirvana, they literally are handbooks on how to cross the Samsaric river in order to get to the other side.