June 4, 2024
[In a recent YouTube video, prominent spiritual teacher Igor Kufayev strongly recommends Vedic astrology. As a former professional astrologer, I reject Vedic astrology, and the following excerpt from my forthcoming book Nonduality and Mind-Only Through the Prism of Reality explains why I reject it.]
Combining the Kashmir Shaivism tattva system with the classical Sefirotic/astrologic Tree of Life clearly serves to upgrade the Tree as a theosophical chart. That said, I’m sure many traditionalists will recoil in response to my “creative” redrawing of the Kabbalistic Tree.
I’m also sure that many into Hindu Vedic astrology will not be happy with my rejection of the sidereal (mutable constellation-based) zodiac they embrace, and my allegiance to the tropical (immutable solar-system-based) zodiac, which most Western astrologers endorse. Here [below] for those who will be reading our exchange, is a brief comparison of the two zodiacs (excerpted from the article “Sidereal and Tropical Zodiacs” at universallifechurch.org):
Both sidereal and tropical zodiac systems typically use the same 12 astrological signs, with the Sun taking 30 to 31 days to transit each sign.… Read the full article
April 29, 2024
[This is an excerpt from my book Radical Dzogchen: The Direct Way to En-Light-enment, which is available in Kindle and paperback at Amazon, and from other book sellers.]
Can you clarify the definitions of Dharma, Dharmakaya, Dharmadhatu, Dharmamegha, and Dharmata?
Dharma, when capitalized, means the True Condition of a thing. When not capitalized, dharma means a thing or existent. Dharma, when capitalized, is also a synonym for Truth Teaching. Hence, the Dharma, or Doctrine, taught by Gautama was about realizing the True Condition of Reality, Nirvana.
The Dharmakaya is the Truth, or Reality, “Body,” or Dimension. It is timeless Awareness, or Mind, the ineffable Self-Existing, Self-Conscious “Substance” underlying and transcending all dharmas, or things. When the Dharmakaya is referred to as the “basic space of phenomena,” it is called the Dharmadhatu. But Dzogchen errs when it conflates the Dharmadhatu with space; for, in reality, the “space” in which phenomena arise is spaceless as well as timeless. Hence, Dharmadhatu is simply the term for the Dharmakaya as spaceless Awareness, the universal Context of all content, or phenomena.…
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