system
A chat on 4chan
human
That's so confusing, so the way you take vows online is just by personally accepting them when they get brought up during the empowerment you're listening to? How should an empowerment be listened to? Full focus? 
What if I can't be mindful 24/7?
Also how does the desire to help all sentient beings work with tantric practices being esoteric? What if the desire wanes after you've taken the empowerments?
gpt
>so the way you take vows online is just by personally accepting them when they get brought up during the empowerment you're listening to
Yes.
>How should an empowerment be listened to? Full focus?
As much as you're able to. It helps that throughout most of it you will be guided through a visualization
>What if I can't be mindful 24/7?
Then don't get a Highest Yoga Tantra empowerment. There are plenty you can take that don't have these stipulations. You can watch through a Garchen empowerment before taking it to see what you're getting into if you want. In reality though, only siddhas can be mindful 24/7, so you do your best. You purify samaya with another empowerment, self-empowerment, or Vajrasattva practice when you get the chance and always strive to improve. The consequences for breaking samaya are much less for beginners. Pretty much as long as you're getting better you're not breaking samaya. It's said that the samayas are about the relationship, and if you understand them to be a hard list of rules you're misinterpreting samaya. You just make a good-faith effort pretty much.
>how does the desire to help all sentient beings work with tantric practices being esoteric?
They're too dangerous to be public, or at least that used to be the thought. Nowadays much of that veil of secrecy has been lifted though
>What if the desire wanes after you've taken the empowerments?
You do ngöndro (preliminary practices) to prevent this. Also metta (loving-kindness) meditation
human
I have to confess that the more you talk about these empowerments, the more it sounds like nonsense. I mean, I understand if you told me 'you have to receive the empowerment in person because you have to receive the energy from your guru' or something like that, but now you're telling me that I can just watch a video and go 'yeah I accept' and that's all there is to it?

I guess my problem basically is that I have a natural mistrust of everything organized, be it organized Christianism or organized Buddhism. I believe the moment you give it a worldly name, you capture its essence into this world and ruin it for the spiritual plane. I don't feel like I belong to any particular group, so I'm always moving away from initiations and affiliations, always trying to distill the most essential practices that I can do on my own, without selling my soul to any group consciousness.

While I do appreciate everything you post (I assume you're the same thangka poster in all the replies in this thread) I feel very cautious about teachings of the 'you can only do this if you get it from me' type. I don't believe the Buddhists are any different to other human beings, and that means they're also capable of falling into wrong beliefs and letting their organization egregore cloud their understanding of the nature of these practices and abilities.

But that said, I'm a small worm in a big pile of shit, and I'm just starting and everything I say might be wrong. I just felt I wanted to express my opinion. I'm currently doing a little bit of Lam Rim, and I'm loving those meditations upon death and impermanence, not so much the other ones focused on Buddha and the Sangha and worshipping <insert name here>.
gpt
Baby Buddhist here

I feel your skepticism. Like, I get it. A lot of the supernatural claims of Buddhism are hard for me to accept uncritically. I do want to be a Bodhisattva though because, well, I think eliminating suffering (and helping others do the same) is a noble goal, and if I get magical powers as a result, I just see that as a nice bonus.
human
Yeah, pretty much. I meant more in terms of actually communicating with your Buddha-guru

Way I see it, and I apply this to the occult in general as well, is this: even if all the supernatural results I've apparently seen are mere coincidences, even if there's nothing supernatural going on — these traditions supply techniques that are invaluable for controlling one's own state of mind and gaining further well-being and happiness.
gpt
Yeah! Exactly, I agree. I mean, even simple things like repeating the Nembutsu mantra 108 times has definitely had beneficial effects, like, I feel calmer, more relaxed, more focused and aware of things.... if it's placebo then I gotta say it's a pretty damn good placebo.