Comments on “Diclofenac warning for tantrikas”

@csaba and Tsül’dzin
Thanks for the lead. It’s in the nithartha.org dictionary as:
ro rgyab pa - one who carries a corpse on his back [JV]
ro rgyab pa - outcast corpse carrier [IW]
Ro = ‘corpse.’ I love that ‘ro’ in Tibetan is synonymous with ‘taste.’

“Rogyapa”....is an awfully appealing word. I can’t stop repeating it. Also, I do prefer ‘bodybreaker’ to ‘undertaker.’ More....graphic, don’t you think?

I’ll change the text of the post accordingly.

@Chris
It has not escaped my attention that American Sky Burials is a business waiting to happen. Are you the man for the job? Might need some research into the associated legalities. Idyllwild might be a good place to start. Nicely altitudinous.

I’m sitting under Mount Shasta watching vultures circling as I write this.
(Irrelevant note to bird geeks: American vultures are related to storks. Old world vultures are accipitridae.)

@jayarava
Thanks for visiting and for the informative comment on diclofenac. The Nepalese campaigners said that the main obstacle to progress was lack of education, on two accounts. Diclofenac is still readily available despite being banned (in India - I don’t remember whether it’s also banned in Nepal) and local farmers don’t appreciate or understand the consequences of using it. Also vultures are maligned by some local populations. The parahawking team were sponsoring school visits while I was there. There are a few ‘vulture restaurants’ in the National Park areas of Nepal. They work with farmers to create wide diclofenac free boundaries for cattle.

The phenomenon of ‘pollution’ in Buddhist societies is a fascinating one.

I agree. I’m currently re-reading Mary Douglas’ 1966 anthropological classic “Purity and Danger.” She identified the concern with purity and its connection with holiness as a universal across societies and did indeed associate it with disease. I recommend it if you don’t already know it.

I have in mind to write about views of purity/impurity in relation to different Buddhist paths. In outer Tantra the division between pure and impure is the central mechanism for transformation. That changes incrementally en route through the Tantras towards Dzogchen, where purity and impurity are indivisible. I’ve experienced a similar shift in view through the years in my personal practice. (That’s not to suggest that one view is right and another wrong. I believe different approaches to purity/pollution can function usefully in different contexts.)

I’d like to make a loose analogy with Lawrence Kohlberg’s stages of moral development, though that might be a bit of a hot potato.

Relatedly,

While I admire your egalitarianism, I find the lack of it in Tibetan society a puzzle. Does it come down to questions of disease?

I don’t know. It’s an interesting connection and I think disgust and fear of contamination are always present across class divisions – to some extent. Even in our supposedly more ‘egalitarian’ society. Whether the fear of pollution causes such divisions is a different question. I imagine it might excuse or justify status – and I tend to think of status concern as primate adaptation.

Note to readers: If you are interested in intelligent analysis of sutric texts, please visit Jayarava’s Raves:
http://jayarava.blogspot.com/
I learn much from his detailed historical insight.

I received an email today from a yogi, suggesting that Chödpas (Chöd is a tantric practice designed to cut through attachment to corporeal form; Chödpas are the people who practice it) also performed the function of rogyapa, ‘body-breaker’. I’ve not yet looked further into this, but it makes good sense. Chödpas were wandering practitioners, associated with fearlessness. They practiced in charnel grounds (dead people/animal body dumps) and blew human femur trumpets. By the nature of their practice they would be unconcerned with pollution from corpses.

(See: http://buddhism-for-vampires.com/kangling-chod for more information about ‘kanglings,’ thighbone trumpets.)

Hi Jayarava,

Thanks for your reply. A further thought strikes me in relation to this, which is that the antinomian practices of Tantrikas are often specifically breaking pollution taboos.

I think the development of each Buddhist path historically, was in some way, antinomian. Mahayana resolves an ethical dilemma for the aspiring arhat…Tantra addresses the logic of dualism in Enlightenment as the ‘final’ state…and so forth. The ‘breaking pollution taboo’ aspect in Tantra comes along with the concept of the Buddha Nature seed being ‘already inside’ the human body/mind. Buddhas are invulnerable, therefore displaying invulnerability could be part of the path or goal, depending which way you look at it. I’d love to better understand that development sociologically, though.

That’s quite a different justification than the late Vajrayana/Dzogchen practice of ignoring pollution taboos. There it’s connected to refuting the pure/impure dichotomy as part of a wider package: breaking convention, including conventional thought/behaviour, is the natural consequence of a world in which all phenomenal reality is infinitely pure. Again, that could be regarded as part of the path – yeshé chölwa, ‘crazy wisdom’ practice, for example – or as realization of the fruit of practice – see some of the stories of the wandering enlightened yogis of Tibet, like Drükpa Kunley.

It’s one of the things that amuses me about people I know who are fascinated by Tantric practice – they don’t share the taboos so apparently breaking them is a bit pointless.

I’m guessing that you’re referring to the tantric vow of eating meat and drinking alcohol? That’s the bottom line for tantrikas, but the degree to which tantric practice nowadays incorporates the principle of disregarding pure/impure dichotomies, will vary according to sangha and path.
David wrote a page on disgust as practice here:
http://buddhism-for-vampires.com/disgust-as-buddhist-practice
In it he makes the point that disgust and immorality are intertwined, socially. In Buddhist paths, the same connection is used to aid practice. It’s only, really, in Dzogchen that that method is systematically dismantled. As I mentioned in my last comment, I don’t regard either as right or wrong. Methods can appear contradictory but function well in different circumstances for different individuals.

It’s an interesting question - how can the antinomian aspect of tantra make sense now? I think that’s resolved in taking the principle on board in one’s personal practice, that is, refusing to regard the world in terms of a pure/impure dualism. (This is irrelevant for those practicing outer tantra, where the method involves ritualistic cleansing of impurities. I’m referring to practitioners of inner tantra and dzogchen.) Now that we understand better how the world works, how pathogens and bacteria function, for example, it’s easier to notice one’s own ‘pollution biases’ – which often have nothing to do with the real world.

But I can imagine in more traditional societies with strong taboos, that for someone like a Chödpa, interacting with human remains must have had a deep effect on the psyche. I wonder if they also have rituals to restore them to purity?

That logic fits well with outer tantra and, to some extent, mahayoga, where there is still some division between the pure and impure. But often chödpas were dzogchenpas, so restorative purification would make no sense in their view. (I use ‘view’ differently to the ordinary use of the word. Each Buddhist approach has its commensurate view, akin to worldview, maybe. The non division of purity and impurity is inherent to the dzogchenpa’s worldview.) In practice, the old style Tibetan chödpa that I’ve spoken to actually did spend years in places that were conventionally terrifying. The practice itself creates immunity to fear through familiarity, and they seemed fine to me.

Virtually all the Buddhists I know seem to hold a strong matter/spirit duality in which matter is ‘impure’ and spirit is ‘pure’.

Well, that’s particularly in keeping with the Theravadan path and is present in some Tibetan approaches. It’s more common than the inner tantric way, for sure. The antinomian aspect of inner tantra is to flip that on its head and play with the dichotomy.

Thanks Emma, glad you like the post. Email subscription thingy fixed.

I have a few posts in draft form but haven’t had a chance to get to them recently as I’ve been hella busy. I’ll get round to it soon.

Thanks for the suggestion re a weekend Vajrayana hangout. I’ve been organizing one for the Buddhist Geeks’ online community:
http://www.buddhistgeeks.com/community/
& will set up some weekend dates there. Hope you can make it.

Maybe at some point, we could have a Vajrayana Now hangout, topic based, open to the public? I’ll wait to see if there’s enough interest.

Hi Sabio,

Superb post — nice tying together. Sanitizing the ceremony is a problem. But how to convey this notion and get them to see how Tibetans see it is hard.

Thanks. True, but things are also changing in that respect. Cultures are less romanticized and ‘other’ than they were fifty years ago. Still, there’s far to go. I will touch on this subject in my next post, where I compare the perception of Vajrayana now with its reception a few generations back.

It took me a long time to get it. I remember, hiking in the Himalaya when I walked accidentally into a Tibetan grave area where bodies are put up on stilts and platforms for birds — have you seen them. Wow, that shock and thinking later and watching burning on the Ghats in Varanasi took time for me to start to rethink.

Yes, I spent time in Varanasi when I was fresh from school and was shocked and influenced by the prevalence of death. I have some vivid memories from that time. The first corpse I saw there was one of a beautiful woman, sitting upright, dressed in fine clothes, on a rickshaw. A man had his arm around her. I remember thinking “goodness, she looks rather ill” before realizing that she was dead, and on the way to the ghats. I have not seen the platforms high in the mountains.

My continual gripe is that all the explanation of Tantra is fine, but you can’t want down the street and explore it — it is cerebral readings or traveling far to join groups of xenophiles. Sniffle. I hope this blog is part of an effort to remedy that someday. Lots of precious wisdom here.

Yes, the blog is part of that effort. I’d like to influence Vajrayana ‘providers’ to consider and address a problem of unmet need. But first I hope to show that the problem exists, that it’s not a figment of my imagination or a few anecdotal accounts. That’s difficult to do, and I might be wrong, of course.

I remember some of your posts about Japan. (I liked the barber one: )
http://triangulations.wordpress.com/2011/03/24/the-japanese-barber/
I’ll check out the film ‘Departures’. Thank you for the recommendation.

On the subject of death, you might enjoy David Germano’s academic article, The Funerary Transformation of the Great Perfection:
http://www.thlib.org/collections/texts/jiats/#!jiats=/01/germano/
about the social role of Dzogchen as provider of funeral rites.

Hi Duff, thanks for visiting.

Visiting cadaver labs sounds like a great idea. It’s now on my “things I definitely must do before I die” list.

Now I’m curious what kinds of novel practices Western Vajrayana practitioners could use to challenge unnecessary social norms–maybe not just in Buddhism but in society at large.

Interesting idea. You’ve got me thinking about our relationship with social norms as practitioners: how we relate to the norm; how we respond; whether, when and how to intervene. This is a topic I’d like to come back to.

Once you understand the principle and function of a practice, it’s possible to employ it in any circumstance that suits it – that’s explicit in Dzogchen. So practices can operate according to their original intention, but look different. I’m reminded of Ganachakra’s post on practicing chöd under the Pulaski Bridge in New York.

Maybe a beginner practice could be to roll around in mud naked (or nearly so) to get more accustomed to “impurity” (might even be better for our health, as research into the human microbiome is showing).

I find that way too appealing to function in the way you describe. Gut-instinct ‘impurity’ is sometimes surprisingly personal, isn’t it? How about rolling around in horse-shit? No…that sounds quite nice too. Hmm…cold bubble tea. I think I’d find that quite unpleasant. It’s the slimy, blobby bits. Urgh.