This Teaching is Not a Doctrine

Consider academic knowledge of whatever topic comes first to the mind. This knowledge is handed to learners by a teacher. This teacher researches within institutions adhering to the sourcing of research results via methods of verification and provides the stats, data, study documents or whatever materials are used with confidence that the learning going on is of value based on the confidence that these methods of sourcing are sound. Here, the underlying take away is that the education one receives requires an adherence to and cooperation with the mechanism through which the education is provided.

When coming to the inner journey, this same type of authoritative hierarchy exists in the form of organized religion and the release of texts therein. Within the exoteric realm, the words of sages are kept by administrators and slowly altered in the name of this belief in organizational authority.

Meditation is the experimental science at the very heart of all things. Does this require an abandonment of all authority? Not at first. Initially, most are introduced to this science, this art, via a school of practice or organization of one sort or another. Going deeply into the guidance of a trusted teacher is the foundation of a sustainable practice and in our post-modern era, this may even be a guide we have only seen online or read in a book. All in fine with this, but as a means to engage in personal practice and not sticking to any of the means of access to the teachings along the way.

“When you know the Dharma to be similar to a raft, you should abandon even the teachings; much more so, things contrary to the teachings.” (Buddha)

Experience of the state of yoga, the state of complete union with the existence, is not some creation or attainment from practice. The practice of meditation can be said to be actually a destructive practice – a stripping away of the unreal, the non-essential, the maya, the societally induced dream of who/what/why one is.

What is left? This is where words end; not literally, but beyond the literal – in actuality. Languages, such as Sanskrit, which are vibrational resonances of energies within the Spirit, within Nature, are not languages of the marketplace and never have been intended as such. Much like Jesus chasing the shopkeepers out of the temple, this type of stripping away of the policeman, the shopkeeper, within the mind, is an immersion into the real, the Atman.