Father Francis Tiso and Director Barclay Powers discuss Buddhahood, and how it can be found in the vagina of a woman. To listen to more interviews with Father Francis Tiso and Barclay Powers, subscribe to Killing The Buddha Movie Blog.
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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.
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.
Science is clearly one of the most profound methods for discovering truth, while religion remains the single greatest force for generating meaning.
-Ken Wilber, The Marriage Of Sense And Soul
It seems like common sense.
We know we have a body, and we know we have minds. But it often feels like there's something more to life. It feels like there's some almost intangible instinct within our minds and bodies that wants to lead us beyond the physical into the world of spirit.
Sometimes we call that a soul, but it seems safer to call it spirit, a word derived from the Latin word for breath. Just as a body is informed with breath, so body and mind are informed with spirit.
So, it follows that if the body seems to produce our minds, and our body is the product of the reproduction of our mother’s and father’s bodies, then our spirits are the product of something beyond. A first Father or Mother or both, or, in any case, a first
Spirit or Spirits of some sort.
We're not only told we have spirit by those in authority, but it certainly helps make sense of things. Our bodies die, and sometimes our minds go before our bodies. Do we exist for nothing? Is there something that remains of us after death beyond a corpse or ashes?
Religion and spiritual teachings comfort us. A comforted and meaning-filled spirit and mind certainly feel good in human bodies.
Still minds wonder about other things.
For instance, minds wondered about the sun.
For some races of early humans the sun was God, or at least, like Apollo in Greek myth, a god.
We would not exist without the sun. However we would not exist if our planet was closer to the sun, or further away. The sun is our main source of energy.
Early humans didn't need science to realize that.
They looked up and they saw the sun's progress across the sky. Since things seemed to pretty much stay still, it was easy to assume that the sun, and the stars, moon and planets traveled around us.
Earth, after all, was the center of the cosmos.
SPIRITUAL OR IMMORTAL EMBRYO. In Chinese culture the Spiritual Embryo is the core energy in a human being, the original energy of the body’s conception. It is this energy, when led through various practices, to the center of the brain (the pineal gland, or nihuan point in the Chinese medical system) that results in full-realization enlightenment. Through various breathing techniques, one can return to the original embryonic breathing pattern, which is the union of yin and yang and the basis of the realization of the Tao. The cultivation of the Spiritual Embryo is the central metaphor for the evolution of mind and body in Chinese culture.
This idea of the Immortal Embryo (sheng tai) goes very far back in Taoist internal alchemy practices. The basic idea is that through continually practicing internal alchemy, one develops an immortal, spiritual embryo. Then, after further practice and refinement, this spiritual embryo actually emerges from the body of the practitioner, out through the crown or Heavenly Gate point at the top of the head. We can see illustrations from ancient China of the practitioner sitting in meditation with a small fetus floating above his head. The Immortal Embryo is also described as a form of pure yang spirit. Upon death thispure yang energy will live on outside the body.
In Taoism it is believed that not all people achieve reincarnation. For the vast majority of people who do no spiritual practice, upon their death their hun and po souls separate and they are basically “recycled back into the Tao.” But those who do cultivation have an opportunity to come back into the world again for further teaching or to help others along the Way.
Here is a description of the nine stages involved with creating the Immortal Embryo.
(1) the living ch’i circulates freely and unimpeded throughout the body; (2) the essence, the semen (ching), collects in the lower cinnabar field; (3) the sacred embryo begins to assume the form of a human embryo; (4) the two souls of the sacred embryo come into being; (5) the embryo is fully formed and has various supernatural powers; (6) inner and outer yin and yang reach their highest intensity and the embryo merges with the body of the adept; (7) the five internal organs are transformed by the power of ch’i into those of an immortal; (8) an umbilical cord develops, through which the breath is channeled during a practice known as embryonic breathing; (9) form and Tao combine and clouds form below the feet of the practitioner, on which he ascends toward Heaven thereby completing the metamorphosis.
- The Shambhala Dictionary of Taoism
Now whether this is an actual physical experience or if it is more of an inner spiritual or energetic one, the spiritual attainment is the same. There will be physical and energetic experiences connected with this. Just as with a mother carrying a child, much care must be taken to nourish and strengthen both the body and the spirit of the practitioner. It is only in this way that a successful birth of the Immortal Embryo can happen.
The concept of the chakras, or energy wheels within the body, is common to both Chinese and Indo-Tibetan subtle body theoretical frameworks. The Chinese describe the energy as moving in circular patterns in the body. The Indo-Tibetan systems describe a central channel with a solar and lunar set of parallel meridians, which must be united to fully open the central channel. When these energies are integrated, there is said to be realization. Similarly, the kundalini theory describes the energy as traveling from the base of the spine to the top of the head.
The nihuan point, which corresponds with the pineal gland, represents the third, or wisdom eye. The human body is actually a universe which can be described in alchemical terms as "as above, so below" which sees the human body as both the microcosm of the multiverse and the fundamental source of the design of the cosmos.
According to Taoist alchemical theory, the pineal gland of the enlightened adept becomes equivalent to the North Star because everything between heaven and earth has become one being. The mind and body of the adept is identical to the mind and body of the universe simultaneously. This idea that the inner dimensions are actually more real than our conventional third-dimensional reality is based upon the ability of advanced practitioners who travel between inner worlds. The other basic idea is that the reproductive energy of the lower body can be taken to the head to activate the brain and increase the luminosity of the mind.
Chinese alchemy is based on the idea that aging can be dramatically reduced if the original pre-birth energy of the body is restarted by natural breathing practices. The basis of Taoism is that embryonic breathing results in a kundalini activation, the Golden Flower, or the union of the individual with heaven and earth, the higher and lower dimensions of reality being unified into a single whole. This single whole is the Tao or universal void.
The goal of meditation is for the individual to open the third eye by systematically cultivating the mind and body, using variations of heat yoga. All of these alchemical systems describe the human body as a crucible, which can be heated by specific practices, both internal and external, which greatly increase the overall luminosity of the mind/body continuum.
Is enlightenment elitist? To get good at something one must study and practice. There is more access to information about the various practices used to achieve enlightenment through the globalization of our information systems. The nirvana meme has gone into the advertising industry, as well as commercial sports, which use Zen concepts like the Zone or Peak Performance to enhance an athlete's psychological condition. The end result is that a spiritual, non-religious dimension is recognized in Western science as normal. What do you think?
