StrawberrySystem June 21, 2022 Share June 21, 2022 Just realized that the term is a bastardized cultural appropriation term from Tibet. While I love Tibet, and root for their one day independent state, I cannot, as a white person, say that to describe Vee. I’d rather use the term “thought-form”, and I refer to myself as a parogenic host. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Candlelight Society June 21, 2022 Share June 21, 2022 (edited) There is multiple well laid out arguments against the cultural appropriation concept and most Tibetan Buddhists do not care and have said as much on r/tulpas. It is mainly pushed by sysmeds as another way to lash out at any non disordered form of plurality. If you really wanna swap to parogen be my guest but I find the whole reasoning behind dropping the word "tulpa" to be weak. You might also wanna get over that white guilt there. Edited June 21, 2022 by Michael Blackwater Hi, I'm Michael, I'm a tulpamancer and the original member of the Candlelight Society. I hope to contribute to the tulpamancy community in a positive way. I'm Shade, the first tulpa. I'm fairly reserved but love philosophy and psychonautics. I'm Dawn, I'm the most active tulpa in the system and also the most fun loving/party girl type. In our system there is also Spark and Ember, Cinderella, Astra, Scarlet, Jade, Rarity, Aqua, Ignis, Tony, Majima, and Sera. Our progress report and experiments thread Our memory experimentation thread Our system website for different projects and posts Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luminesce June 21, 2022 Share June 21, 2022 (edited) No Buddhist has ever used the term "tulpa". The Tibetan "sprul pa", a type of emanation body, was poorly translated by Alexandra David Néel, so it was a term no one but her had used. If we were going around calling them "sprulpas" or "emanation bodies" then I would absolutely agree it was appropriation, but as it stands, "tulpa" is a vaguely-related new word that's been exclusively used for plurality-type thoughtforms aside from its initial use by Néel. And I don't even really appreciate her own writings on her experience of a "tulpa" in the context of Buddhism, except that she noted it may have been an illusion. Creation of a sprul pa, and eventual recognition that it's no more real or fake than anything else, is just one of countless ways created to help people along towards enlightenment. Anyways, the term was just inspired by a concept. It doesn't have to have been "culturally appropriated". I feel like you don't know how many thousands of words in just English were inspired somewhere along their etymology by similarly related-but-disconnected concepts, not meaning or being used for what they were somewhere far back along the line anymore. That's just how language works and evolves. And you said you're fine with "Thoughtforms", but for completeness' sake I'd like to cover the related idea of considering "tulpamancy" to be bastardizing the Tibetan Buddhist practice: The term "Tulpa" is used to describe an existing phenomenon, and while many do create them on purpose, the concept didn't arise from bastardizing emanation bodies. My own tulpas were spontaneous natural occurrences created by fixation on characters, with no intent, prior knowledge, or even history of imaginary friends in my childhood on my part. And there are countless cases like ours. It's clearly just a possible natural phenomenon in human brains, that can also be induced purposefully - so I wouldn't call the concept of tulpas bastardized either. Edited June 21, 2022 by Luminesce Hi! I'm Lumi, host of Reisen, Tewi, Flandre and Lucilyn. Everyone deserves to love and be loved. It's human nature. My tulpas and I have a Q&A thread, which was the first (and largest) of its kind. Feel free to ask us about tulpamancy stuff there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StrawberrySystem June 21, 2022 Author Share June 21, 2022 You know, fair. It is the most common word for these things Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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