#tulpacourse

With how people speak about tibetians, you'd think they'd be actively engaged in supporting the indigenous people of Tibet from active colonization and not just using them as "gotcha!" Talking points to pretend they have a valid reason for crapping on non-traumagenics (let us not forget anti Endos don't support non-western-disordered plurality, y'know, the thing apart of tibetan culture). Especially since so many critics get the term of cultural appropriation wrong.

Genuinely pisses me off to no end that the only time I've ever heard about tibetians was just as a talking to get mad at Endogenics. And Tulpa makers are supposed to be the racist ones? Good god, not speaking over indigenious people is the bare minimum for being an ally. Every single tulpa making source I have ever looked has always credited back to the tibetan monks. And while I don't know if that's always been the case, it's certainly has been as of recent.

Indigenous, Asian people are not your tools for your intolerance for labels. If you actually fancy yourself doing a good deed for them, instead of misusing the words like cultural appropriation, read the article I'm linking below. Here's what I learned:

The religion, Tibetan Buddhism, is intrinsically linked to the culture and life of Tibet. The priests and nuns are responsible for teaching the population, however, the religion is viewed as a threat to the Chinese government (don't think America and Europe are any different. These regions pulled the same shit. If your country is powerful, they colonized). China is colonizing tibet by arresting musicians and educators attempting to teach their native language and promote their culture. China puts consistent pressure to have Chinese Mandarin be the primary language instead.

It's probably not what you want to hear, but no, not really. A lot of Tibetan practices and ideas are orally transmitted and directly taught from one person to the next and that is very intentionally done. Beyond general hand waves at the practices which aren't particularly well summarized into written sources and publicly available, a lot of the concepts you have to interact with and engage with directly from someone within the culture.

I was talking to a POC friend about this and how its a thing that I find frustrates a lot of white / western people, but its an orally transmitted culture / tradition by design and when people talk about if its an open or closed religion, I think theres a second dimension that people don't consider - private or public religions / practices.

Some traditions are public - in terms of the majority of their information - but closed in terms of who can practice. Judaism is an example of a closed public culture / tradition / religion.

For the record, I'm not Jewish so if I got anything wrong here, anyone is free to correct me. This is my extent of understanding and I may be wrong, but save for the deeper more niche knowledge, a lot of general information about Judaism beliefs, ideas, rules, philosophies, etc are out there for people to easily read and the culture typically doesn't have too much of an issue letting people who aren't Jewish know about what Being Jewish entails. People are welcome to look into and observe and learn about Judaism pretty freely regardless of if they are Jewish or not. That said, not everyone can claim to be Jewish and not everyone can pick up Judaism (or at least not easily without going through a lot of hoops).

Others are private - in terms of the majority of their information - but open in terms of who can practice. Tibetan Buddhism is an example of an open private culture / tradition / religion.

When it comes to Tibetan Buddhism, anyone is allowed to choose to study and practice Tibetan Buddhist. (There is some level of disagreement among Tibetan Buddhists about this, but generally speaking) Anyone is allowed to take some of the lessons and themes found in a Tibetan Buddhist perspective and use it in their life. Its open to people who want to engage in Tibetan Buddhism to engage with Tibetan Buddhist.

With that being said, MUCH of the information that differentiates it from Buddhism in general, Zen Buddhism, Theravada Buddhism, etc (and there is a good amount) is largely closed behind actually talking to a Teacher and having a mentor in the practices and learning about them in person study groups and discussions and it's really looked down upon to share or talk about any of the practices in depth without permission from the person who taught you - let alone write it down where it is accessible to all.

Tibetan Buddhism intentionally adds barriers to understanding / learning and intentionally makes even the texts that could be considered equivalent to the 'Bible' to be very esoteric, obscure, and confusing as a way to make it so that people who do have the book still have to consult with their teacher to really understand and decode it.

The information is not meant to be publicly available beyond maybe a hand wave general idea - enough so that even I don't know the details of the specifics because I have yet to have a place in my life where I can really dedicate myself to the study that would be asked of me.

Even if I did, I wouldn't write it down or type it out because that would be a disrespect to the practice.

I'm not explaining this to scold you or anything, but more so because I think its a good opportunity to put it out there for people in tulpacourse that you will not and cannot find good resources about the original practices inspiring Modern Day Tulpamancy because by the nature of it, anything that is written down is likely from an not credible source as writing it down is going against the very core principle that anyone who attended a teaching would know is strictly forbidden. Anything written down is either wrong or actively doing a massive disrespect to a culture that has been around for over a millennia as a primarily orally transmitted culture.

I deeply appreciate that about Tibetan Buddhism and so I think anyone who isn't a Tibetan Buddhist and isn't willing to dedicate years to studying it from a teacher ideally of the homeland culture who has dedicated their life to the lessons need to respect that they are unlikely to know or learn about it if their interest is just "curiosity".

I've held on to this for quite awhile, trying to think of a better example of this than our ex...

But yeah, basically quoting the Wikipedia article on tulpas, which at the time was almost entirely about the supernatural/fiction version, instead of reading any of the sources from the community? That was SUCH singletsplaining.

is the origin of tulpamancy steeped in orientalism and racism? yes. has the community evolved beyond that? also yes, in terms of the practice itself.

should the origins and such be acknowledged and condemned? absolutely. should the origins be the sole reason to be an asshole to people now? no. should how the practice is now, be used to brush past the origins? also no.

there's a lot of nuance to be had. there's also plenty of racism that gets perpetuated in this type of discourse, as syscourse is the place where nuance goes to die. it's really tiring to see asian people be used as a weapon to bludgeon others in this type of discourse, alongside people getting various facts wrong about tibet. tokenizing people isn't great, no matter who you are.

Sorry but the vast amount of tulpamancers aren’t even on tumblr? It’s dumb to change a term that connects us to research, media, tv episodes, Ted talks, huge communities, resources, etc. There are different languages that use a derived version of ‘Tulpa’ such as ‘タルパ’ (Tarupa) for the Japanese community.

Just because because a handful of already anti endo people/systems said that it was cultural appropriation, even when there are Tibetan Buddhists that don’t think it’s cultural appropriation. It’s not even the original word, is a mashup of Tulku and Sprul-pa. It’s not a word that existed, and the practice of tulpamancy has almost nothing to do with Tulku or Sprul-pa.

So say if we banded together and tried to change the term like suggested. How many tulpa systems would actually change. Probably not too many, just the tulpa systems on tumblr. Can we really get the majority of systems who use other websites like Reddit, discord, forums, etc to change? What about websites like Tulpa.info and Tulpa.io? Do we have to abandon those too?

So let me get this straight, we lose websites, major parts of the community, representation, research and almost all resources, for what? To please the anti endos who already don’t like us? Sorry but I’d rather make anti endos mad. I usually prefer to be respectful even to people with different opinions but not when that means dividing a whole community.

I don’t usually post about syscourse but I think this is a really dumb argument.