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Message |
| Posted By: |
CGI_Guy |
| Date: |
5-Mar-2003-00:35:40 |
| Subject: |
VC2's response |
Hello,
I got the following email from Garuda regarding my comments this morning. Clearly the staff at RamaLila have failed to live up to his high expectations. Have a nice day. :)
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I am sending this letter to you and a number of Rama's monks. I want them to review the fruits of your time as
mesage board censor of Ramalila. It is amazing that Ramalila is run by Buddhist Monks ordained by Rama. It is amazing that you as an ordained monk of Rama have become an enabler in the trashing and deconstruction of our teacher Rama.
Ramalila today more resembles a website built by Mark Laxer than by any monks of Rama. I am sure Mark would agree with the ideas of your star-poster Barry Wr**** (Uncle Tantra). Many of your teacher links are also suspect and my freinds wonder if the teachers linked have mental problems.
The most sinister thing about Ramalila is how it lures in people interested in Rama. Yet once you cut through the gloss, the people are only presented with spaced-out teachers you link to or ruthless attacks of Rama, similar to those by CAN, LenzWatch, and the Skeptics Society.
Regardless of your idea's, these postings on your website are real. They will remain a part of Ramalila forever, and I will make sure others know about what you people post regarding Rama. It's your disk space, so the blame starts by looking in the mirror. My goal is to inform every x-student of Rama about the sinister nature of your website, a site that pretends to "teach" from Rama's teaching, yet has the underlying hate of a Mark Laxer or a Mark Lurtsema.
I encourage those I CC'ed to forward this informaton to others, it is about time our community faces up to the sites such as Ramalila that seek to lure students only for the purpose of trashing Rama and then asking the student to pay $100 dollars per hour to a phoney teacher (Roger Cantu). It is very important in my mind, that ST3 types are warned of the CAN-like attempt by Ramalila to portray Rama to a mentally-ill drug addict and chaser of women.
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Remarks Trashing Rama condoned by Ramalila:
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Rama flip-flopped on this issue [avatar]. In the beginning of his teaching, he was very clear about just being an ordinary Joe who was fortunate enough to realize enlightenment. In the latter days, in my opinion as a result of drug use and runaway ego and starting to believe his own PR, he shifted the myth such that it was all about him and his specialness.
I feel it [meditation] matters a lot, even for the enlightened. Possibly especially for the enlightened, if they teach. Personally, I believe Rama stopped meditating regularly soon after we moved to New York, and it showed.
I have a personal theory (which may have as little to do with reality as yours) that Rama died of jing deficiency...The symptoms of jing deficiency are a lack of energy, thoughts about death and dying, an inability to "get it up," both energetically and sexually, a preoccupation with one's state of health, and an all-pervading sense of hopelessnees, of watching one's life spiral closer and closer to the drain
I believe that when I first met him he was having pretty serious enlightenment experiences, but I didn't see *anything* in the last few years I was around him to indicate that those experiences were still going on..."
I *loved* Rama, and had one serious shitload of fun studying with him, for a while. And then things happened that made me question the "enlightenment thang." Once I began to do that, I was not as willing to write off all of his weird (sometimes near-psychotic) behavior
From the point of view of a female student who never got closer to Rama than the audience, he could easily have been perceived as safe and respectful. For some women, however, Rama's pursuit of them *outside* the meditation hall became rather problematic for them. It didn't matter whether the women were already involved in a relationship, or married, or whatever. If Rama wanted them, he expected them to want him, too. I personally know several women who left the study because Rama simply would not accept "No" as an answer, and the women got tired of getting midnight phone calls from Rama every time their husbands were out of town.
As I said, I knew many of them. Most of them left the study early on because their marriages or relationships meant more to them than submitting to Rama's advances.
We were *also* very aware (I mean, all you had to do was look around) that if any of us ever showed up with an attractive girlfriend or wife, that Rama would do his best to seduce her. It was simply a given. You dealt with that given however you dealt with it.
With all due respect, reliable first-hand reports suggest that at the time, the incarnation of Vishnu who said such things had a tendency to prepare for public events by gulping down 5-10 capsules of a Class IV narcotic. It's not like any of us know or will ever know the answer, but being a bit of a heretic I can't help but wonder how much of those talks was Rama in pain talking, how much was the Valium talking, and how much was enlightenment talking.
Well, if you are really curious you might do a Web search on Valium. You might find that many of the things that Rama interpreted as "psychic attack" or as physical indications that he was in ill health or dying are, in fact, common symptoms of Valium addiction. Such symptoms include "abdominal cramps, blurred vision, dry mouth, racing heartbeat / palpitations, shaking / slurred speech, convulsions, hallucinations, memory loss, trouble breathing, staggering / trembling, headache or confusion." I guess my point is that you obviously believe that Rama resorted to such drugs to cope with "the pressures and pain of spiritual teaching," whereas I wonder whether "the pressures and pain of spiritual teaching" came from the drugs themselves, not from the teaching.
My personal explanation for some (most) of Rama's bizarre behavior during that period [1994-1998] is 1) that he stopped meditating regularly (something he personally said to several people close to him) and 2) that he developed a dependency on Valium (which has been verified by several people close to him, and which drug has documented symptoms that parallel the behavior that I saw and considered bizarre).
While you are entitled to that point of view, I see it as the inevitable result of one of Rama's most common "teaching tactics" -- if anything went well and turned out successfully, it was always his doing; if anything went badly and turned out unsuccessfully, it was always our fault. The man was the Master Of The Imposed Guilt Trip. Some students of self discovery thrive on guilt and feeling bad about themselves. I just don't get off on that stuff any more, so you can have my share.
Might I suggest you go back and reread the "Status Reports" you had to submit from time to time? I know several people who have done that recently and were simply *amazed* at the stuff they "admitted to" or the bad stuff they claimed to have done in those reports, simply because it was expected of them, and they knew it was the only way they could stay in the program.
But rather than viewing it as "trashing Rama," I actually think my theory is fairly compassionate, because my only alternative is to believe that he was crazy.
Rama was VERY human, and in my opinion fucked up a lot. But in my view that does not mean he wasn't enlightened. He could very well have been an enlightened fuckup
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