[Buddha-l] [Fwd: Kyabjé Pema Norbu Rinpoche Enters Parinirvana]

[Erik Hoogcarspel]

Jayarava schreef:
> --- On Sun, 29/3/09, Christopher Fynn <cfynn at gmx.net> wrote:
>
>   
>> Dear Dharma Friends,
>>
>> This is to formally announce that the 11th Throneholder of
>> the Palyul Lineage of the Nyingma School of Tibetan Buddhism, His
>> Holiness Pema Norbu Rinpoche entered the stage of /Thugdam,/  the final
>> stage of meditation, as of 8:20 PM on Friday, March 27, 2009, at the
>> Namdroling Monastery in Bylakuppe, South India.
>>     
>  etc.
>
> Not knowing this person or lineage I read this without much sense of loss and some incredulity. It is a fascinating study in rhetoric isn't it? A masterful press-release. All the long and important sounding titles and the mystical states attained, and the "highest" this and that, and yet so down to earth! Not a human being at all, but a Buddha has passed into Parinirvana (captial P). He was "universally revered" (not unlike Pope John Paul II) except unfortunately by me, because I'd never heard of him.
>
> I don't mean to be disrespectful to those who are genuinely grieving over his death, but I find the whole thing a bit of a mystery. Such pomp and circumstance! I note that he's not actually dead, yet, just meditating... 
>
> Have I got too cynical?
> Jayarava
>
>
>   
>   
Not cynical, but to modern. The retoric is a ritual. Normal people die, 
rinpoches enter into parinirvana. There are different words in Tibetan 
for bodies of rinpoches and bodies of normal people. But words are not a 
projection of the world. Different things can be called the same, 
identical things can be called by different words. The retoric just 
indicates the perspective from which people with more social capital are 
no longer a part of this world. In the modern world all things are part 
of the earthly causal chain, in the medieval world there are many 
heavens and hells, many discourses and perspectives.


-- 


Erik

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