Reification in Tibetan Buddhism

[phosphene_glow]

Reification is a catchphrase of the contemporary Buddhist (especially Tibetan Buddhist) mindset. Often you get instructions like this - visualize the deity and identify without reification. They say that this means one shouldn't believe that a deity actually exists.

My question presented to you who care is this. We are exhorted to be free from extremes of beliefs and nihilism. We are exhorted to not think a deity has permanence. And then we are told that say, the Dalai Lama 14 is Chenrezig's avatar on Urth. We get empowerments where the lama acts as conduit of the initiating deity - say Palden Lhamo. But then we are exhorted to not believe as such.

I mean what the fuck? Should we accept the hype and think the lama is the deity initiating you. Or should we think they are just acting?

 

[Shrooms00087]

I actually have come across my favorite Zen quote.

Student walks up to teacher, what is the meaning of the teachings?
Teacher cuts off students index finger.
Student returns the next day and asks the same question.
Teacher says, show me your palms.
Student becomes enlightened.

In this scenario the teacher is acting AND initiating. The teacher teaches nothing*, the student learns everything.
Is this not what they are saying? The Lama is not a deity, and certainly has no permanence. But you give your lama all the visual identification of a deity, so that the lama may indeed be a conduit. It's a kind of symbolic mystical authority that you freely give unto whatever religious teacher you have.

Or like in Christianity the priests still have a divine quality to inspire (or bore) under a house of worship. So that church itself is the visual identification and the priest and the congregation student/teacher.

Or everything I said is complete bullshit. But I enjoyed typing it.

*Simplifying.

 

[ebola?]

Coming from a social science perspective, reification is the process by which dynamic processes in continual flux come to be perceived (indeed, represented) as static objects or symbols. Commodity fetishism, whereby we come to view the culmination of the division of labor of (concrete human collaborative activity) as a collection of static, discrete objects with seemingly intrinsic properties, is reification par excellence.

So applied to Buddhism, the idea is to make use of symbols without mistaking them for the underlying reality they are supposed to lead you toward.

ebola

 

[Foreigner]

You have to understand that Tibetan Buddhism is a synthesis of the Buddhism which came from India, and the local deity worship of the Tibetan people. The two synergized in such a way that both could be accommodated without disregarding the other.

I lived in a Tibetan Buddhist centre for almost 2 years and the explanation we were given (which I am not going to do justice here) is that the deities are merely vehicles by which we can understand virtue and attain merit. They're not meant to be larger than life gods who we supplicate ourselves toward as in the Abrahamic traditions. On a more basic level, some people just need the real-world representation in order to do the work which connects them with present awareness and their subtle mind. Others can do these rituals in their internal sactum of meditation and use it for their liberation from suffering.

For the record, not all Tibetan traditions follow the current Dalai Lama anymore. Some years ago he proclaimed that Dorje Shugden, the Dharma Protector in the Gelug tradition and others until that point, was actually a hungry ghost and should no longer be venerated. This prompted sects of the Gelug tradition, such as the Kadampas, to break from the Dalai Lama's lineage.

So... although these deities are supposed to be viewed as part of the immaterial as illusions, there's still major politics over which ones have the right to be venerated, which IMO comes from the Tibetan aspects embedded in the tradition. You don't see Zen Buddhists fighting over stuff like this, which is why I eventually had to walk away from the Tibetan school. The practice of empowerments is a little too culty for my taste, especially given that there is no world and no self perceiving it.