Killing The Buddha Motion Comic

We wanted to give you a sample of our Bestseller: Killing The Buddha Motion Comic! The motion comic is featured with audio and video, can be read on any smartphone, computer or iPad.

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Catholic Priest Earns Degree in Buddhism

Catholic Priest, Father Francis Tiso is featured throughout Killing The Buddha Movie and Killing The Buddha Motion Comic, in this clip he speaks to Director Barclay Powers about Christianity and Buddhahood.  

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Biography of Father Francis Tiso

Father Francis V. Tiso is Associate Director of the Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, where he serves as liaison to Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, the Sikhs, and Traditional religions as well as the Reformed confessions.

Father Tiso has written and lectured widely. He is the recipient of grants from the American Academy of Religion, the American Philosophical Society, the Palmers Fund in Switzerland, and the Institute of Noetic Sciences in Petaluma, CA.   

A New York native, Father Tiso holds the A.B. in Medieval Studies from Cornell University. He earned a Master of Divinity degree (cum laude) at Harvard University and holds a doctorate from Columbia University and Union Theological Seminary where his specialization was Buddhist studies. He translated several early biographies of the Tibetan yogi and poet, Milarepa, for his dissertation on sanctity in Indo-Tibetan Buddhism. He has led research expeditions in South Asia, Tibet and the Far East, and his teaching interests include Christian theology, history of religions, spirituality, ecumenism and interreligious dialogue. 

Father Tiso has researched the phenomenon of the Rainbow Body in Tibet. Francis Tiso remarks that one of is most intriguing interviews was with Lama A-chos. He told Tiso that when he died he too would manifest the rainbow body. "He showed us two photographs taken of him in the dark, and in these photographs his body radiated rays of light."

Tiso is a musician and paints in acrylics and watercolors. 

 

To listen to Father Francis Tiso lecture on The Rainbow Body, click here. 

Lucid Dreaming: Part 1

The art of dreaming represents a fundamental difference between the modern scientific understanding of dreams and the hunter-gatherer archaic description of reality. In the latter it is believed that dreams can be consciously controlled and used to enhance the well-being of the practitioner and the tribe. Dreams are an important source of information, which is independent of the sequential time framework of consensus reality. The shamanic belief is that dreams are actually the source of waking consciousness, and that one dream can completely alter the entire life of an individual. Even in the Western experience, many creative and scientific discoveries have originated from the world of dreams.

Reality can be divided into waking, dreaming and sleeping states. The concept of meditation is that these three levels can be permanently unified by the breathing pattern at the deepest level of sleep, which is when the physical body is the most rejuvenated by the pre-birth energy system.

Buddhism has a very strong component of dream work, as in the following description of dream yoga:

The Middle Way view provides the philosophical framework of the contemplative practice of dream yoga. In a nonlucid dream—in which there is no recognition that one is dreaming—all objective phenomena seem to exist by and of themselves. They, like one’s own personal self in a dream, seem to be real. But upon awakening, one recognizes that neither one’s own mind nor any person or situation encountered in the dream had any such independent existence. This is equally true during the waking state, and in the daytime practice of dream yoga one maintains this awareness as constantly as possible. Everything experienced throughout the day—contrary to appearances—arises in relation to one’s perceptions and conceptions. Every person encountered is perceived in relation to one’s own sensory and conceptual faculties. Never does one encounter the radically and absolutely “other,” for apprehension of the other is always dependent upon one’s own subjective perspective. Thus, upon fathoming the emptiness of inherent existence of all waking phenomena, one maintains throughout the day a sense of the dreamlike quality of all events, recognizing the profoundly intersubjective nature of all relationships with other beings and the environment.
- B. Alan Wallace, Contemplative Science

In shamanic cultures, it is believed that dreaming presents an opportunity to avoid misfortune in waking life, if fears and obstacles are successfully confronted and transcended in the dreamworld. Even though many scientists solve significant theoretical problems using dream information, our culture has only just begun to understand and investigate the potential of dream practices, including lucid dreaming, to enhance creative problem solving. Artists and poets and writers are clearly dependent upon dream information from the unconscious, yet very few scientists are using hypnosis or self-suggestion to achieve greater clarity in dreams.

The Third Yoga of Naropa: Illusory Body Yoga

The concept of the illusory body practice is twofold. (1) To realize that the physical body is an insubstantial form projected by a subtle body, which is in turn projected from an even more subtle body, which is void. (2) Illusory body practice results in allowing the practitioner to travel to non-physical realms to access information. Successful illusory body yoga using a mirror is also a means of the subtle body separating from the physical body.

The illusory body yoga is an exercise to prove the existence of the void, emphasizing sunya, or emptiness, as the ground of non-being. Since Buddhism is non- theistic, the reality that is achieved by the successful practice of these yogas is described as the void; this helps to differentiate it from other worldviews, which describe the self as being linked to a supreme deity. The Western interpretation of these kind of experiences is inherently theistic because of the Judeo-Christian framework. In fact, the individuals who experienced mystical experiences and out-of-body trance states were often accused of sacrilege and punished by the Church.

The Second Yoga of Naropa: Dream Yoga

The goal of this practice is to have lucid dreams. Many Tibetan texts have been created by Tibetans dreaming and communicating with deities. Tibetan literature is believed to be a creation between the tantric deities and the Tibetan masters.

Dream yoga is an ancient practice based on the idea that gaining lucidity or awareness that one is dreaming while one is dreaming provides a quantum leap of awareness. The practitioner uses self-suggestion until lucidity occurs and success is said to provide great spiritual and health benefits to the practitioner. Like all Asian arts, dream yogic practices are transmitted in a teacher to student lineage, usually with an initiation ceremony of some kind.

In Tibet, it could be argued that dreams within dreams are from other dimensions. Skilled practitioners can communicate with enlightened deities, ancestors, etc. and bring this information back as powerful teachings.

Many Western scholars ignore the influence of dreams and their consequences within shamanic cultures. Western society has lost the ability to use dreaming as a survival tool. Hunter-gatherer cultures are essentially based on the visions or dreams of the shamans who function as intermediaries between the world of the living and the world of the dead. It is normal for example, within a hunter-gatherer culture, for individuals to be guided by dreams with either ancestors or animal guardians. Similarly, in China, many of the meditation lineages in both Buddhism and Taoism consider consciousness projection to be one of the results of successful energy cultivation. The founder of the water-boxing martial arts system, Chen Tuan, was known to leave his body for 100-day periods. Here once again we have the primordial archetype of a shaman who can hibernate like a bear while he travels out of body for three months intervals; during this time fellow practitioners were guarding his body.

Story of the Rainbow Body

In 1998 a strange story emerged from a village in the remote Kham region of eastern Tibet. It is said that a rainbow appeared one day above the cabin of Khenpo A- Chos, a devout lama who had continued to practice and teach Buddhism despite the severe restrictions of the Chinese government. He was in his eighties, but not sick. Nevertheless, he lay down on his bed, began reciting the Tibetan mantra "Om mani padme hum," and died.

Shortly after the nuns, monks and others who studied with him began the Tibetan Buddhist prayers that accompany death they noticed that Khenpo A-Chos' skin began to turn soft and pinkish. His students hurried to another lama to ask about this, and he told them to cover the body and continue their prayers. They placed a thin yellow monk's cloak over him and as the days passed, they saw his body was shrinking. By the end of the week, the students reported, nothing remained—just a few hairs left on the pillow. Khenpo A-Chos had apparently become what is known in Tibetan Buddhism as a Rainbow Body.

The story spread through Buddhist circles, making its way to the United States, where Brother David Steindl-Rast, a Benedictine monk, heard it. He realized that the miraculous event had implications for Christianity: "If we can establish as an anthropological fact that what is described in the resurrection of Jesus had not only happened to others but is happening today," he said, "it would put our view of human potential in a completely different light."

Brother David enlisted the aid of Father Francis Tiso, an associate director of the secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in Washington D.C., who also has a doctorate in Buddhist studies. Father Tiso journeyed to Kham with a translator and recorded the testimony of several people who had witnessed the events.

The lama who had been consulted by the students, Lama A-Chos (no relation), told him that achieving the rainbow body "is a matter of inner realization. It's not a philosophical idea. It's not a metaphor." He also showed Father Tiso photographs of himself, indicating what looked like light radiating from his body. Jane Bosveld, Discover Magazine, June 07.

Tiso interviewed Lama Norta, a nephew of Khenpo A-Chos, Lama Sonam Gyantso, a young disciple, and Lama A-Chos.

They described the following: A few days before Khenpo A-Chos died, a rainbow appeared directly above his hut. After he died, there were dozens of rainbows in the sky. Khenpo A-Chos died lying on his right side. He wasn’t sick; there appeared to be nothing wrong with him, and he was reciting the mantra Om mani padme hum over and over. According to the eyewitnesses, after his breath stopped his flesh became kind of pinkish. One person said it turned brilliant white. All said it started to shine.

Lama A-Chos suggested wrapping his friend’s body in a yellow robe, the type all Gelug monks wear. As the days passed, they maintained they could see, through the robe, that his bones and his body were shrinking. They also heard beautiful, mysterious music coming from the sky, and they smelled perfume.

After seven days, they removed the yellow cloth, and no body remained. Lama Norta and a few other individuals claimed that after his death Khenpo A-Chos appeared to them in visions and dreams.

Shrinkage of the body occurred with another guru, Lama Thubten. His miniature-sized frame is now kept in a monastery in Manali, India. Tiso has ascertained that incidents of bodies shrinking or disappearing shortly after death were documented centuries ago, such as in the classic story of Milarepa, a Buddhist saint from Tibet who lived in the 11th century.

Understanding the Yin and Yang

The ancient Taoists, those natural philosophers of change and balance, used the concepts of yin and yang to symbolize the polarity of existence. Everything that exists can be assigned either to yin or yang, thus identifying its polar aspects. In this way, all elements are paired and balanced with each other—night and day, sun and moon, moist and dry, dark and light, fire and water, male and female. It is through this interdependence and interrelationship that the universe, and we humans within it, remains in balance and harmony.

The principle of yin/yang is fundamental to any understanding of Taoist philosophy or sexual yoga. As do so many Taoist ideas, this concept of yin and yang comes from nature. Originally yang stood for the light side of a hill, the side facing the sun. Yin stood for the shady side, away from the sun.

The qualities of yang are brightness, heat, activity, upward and outward direction, aggressiveness, expansion and what we might think of as maleness. The qualities of yin are darkness, water, cold, rest, inward and downward direction, stillness, receptivity, and what we might think of as femaleness.

It is very important to understand that when we talk about yin and yang we are not talking of gender or sex. We all have both yin and yang qualities, whether we are male or female. The balance of these two qualities is not static and concrete, but ever moving and shifting. At times our yin side may assert itself, at other times our yang side.

By being aware and sensitive to the balance and subtle shifts of our own yin and yang qualities we are better able to make proper decisions and conduct ourselves with greater integrity and foresight in our dealings with others.

Yin and yang are not two completely separate forces. They are, instead, different facets of one unifying principle.