[demonsbane]

Originally Posted by b-dog

(...) Maybe they aren't clerics, they are something else? If anyone has any better understanding of the religion and such please help me create a Buddhist cleric, thanks.

True, they weren't clerics from a strict point of view. Clerics are linked to religions, but Buddhism is/was instead primordially an upaya, a mean to Enlightenment.

Spells are usually refered as siddhis, yogic perfections, or "powers". However there were, sometimes, magic involved (and tomes). But focusing on magic was usually seen as a sign of weak understanding or worse.

Originally Posted by Brett

IIRC claiming to have supernatural powers is one of the five offences that can get you thrown out of the Sangha (Buddhist monkhood).

A Buddhist monk makes little sense in a Dungeon Fantasy context. Unless you take all the symbols for translating them into literal earthly entities and phenomena.

Originally Posted by tantric

Legendary buddhist priests defeated entire pantheons of gods and converted them - many of the 'good' gods just converted, but not all of them went peacefully A good, cinematic tact is that the Buddhist cleric is on the side of mortals, and against all immortals, be they angels or demons. This makes the Buddhist cleric a nice counterpoint to both Druids and holy/unholy clerics

However b-dog you can draw inspiration from some kind of avâtara like Padma-Shambhava, who slayed hundreds of demons and wrote books about things like that. However that is very far from the usual Buddhist monk.

Originally Posted by tantric

Let their powers be tied to various hand gestures (the buddhist cleric points to the ground with his index finger and says "the earth is my witness" which destroys all illusions).

Originally Posted by tantric

Yep, it's saved me from many an Elder God experience (...) I use that mudra to stop things from getting out of hand weird. Ritual for its own sake is pointless, but some ritual help focus the mind, like tea ceremony.

Using mantras, mudras, yantras, etc... without them being handled personally to you by a true guru is pointless. It results in mere psychological effects, at most (I'm not doubting of that tantric is telling here, however, only saying that's a psychological effect and that isn't the intended purpose of such things). Additionally, these things were handled in their proper contexts (Buddhist, in this case, and to Buddhists), and not outside of them.

Additionally, it's true from the point of view of metaphysics -as the Buddhist-, an "Elder God" isn't but a vulgar demon, or the own ego, or both . . .

Originally Posted by Molokh

Anyway, I thought it was considered a long-awaited realization that all rituals are focusing aids to be discarded later (at best) or a waste (at worst). Of course, I'm no big expert.

Concerning rituals being pointless . . . that is a gross simplification, and the part of truth in such claimings is only true from the higher doctrinal point of view, understood but very few individuals. There were some interesting paradoxes in masters pointing to the vanity of rituals while at the same time they were practicing them. Wisdom isn't straightforward like mass culture.

Originally Posted by tantric

Honestly, it depends on your sect. Tibetans love rituals, Zen has fewer. They all know the rituals lack inherent meaning, but that doesn't mean they aren't useful.

Originally Posted by tantric

Thus as the Buddha came to understand that his teachings would become a true religion and not just a philosophy

Glad to see some people acknowledge eastern teachings like Buddhism weren't comparable to philosophies -misconception shared by western academicians, scholars and OFC philosophers.

Originally Posted by jason taylor

Interesting. Then planting the British, Indian, and Nepali flags on top of the highest mountain in the world reminds that all glory is fleeting?

That sort of behaviour pertains to another point of view, lesser and more tied to the phenomenic experience. The ego rules there. Buddhism doesn't care properly of such points of view because its perspective is more focused and at the same time more limited than the one of the Hinduism, the root of Buddhism and from which it was rejected. Upayas are, by nature, limited and focused to attaining the designed goals and nothing more. It's true Buddhism was expanded and enriched later (Tibet, China, Japan . . .) but that's another story.

Originally Posted by jason taylor

No, I was assuming that you would think that a temporary glory can be used to remind one of the lack of permanent glory from earthly achievement.

Certainly you can to interpret such things in that way, but they weren't made for helping to remind people the wordly vanity, rather at the contrary.