Finding The Teaching of True Dharma

January 2, 2025 4 mins to read
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Stumbling Onto Gold

Recently I was recommended a practitioner and a teacher of meditation based on Buddhist, Daoist, and Yoga traditions. In teaching Dharma, he emphasizes that true Dharma is the same in all the spiritual paths. The knowledge may use different words but ultimately, they all talk about the same things.

I already started watching the videos and reading the books of this teacher and find them to be incredibly well put together. Many details of the highest spiritual truths are finally coming together for me and the whole system makes sense. I encountered and studied parts of this knowledge in various books and forms before but the challenge has always been in putting all the pieces together and understanding the overall course and goal of the spiritual practice. This teacher solves this completely as he has already done this in his own journey of around 30 years.

Core Teachings

The core of his teachings is based on Buddhist sutras but since the root of all these teachings are in Yoga the common threads are seen throughout all the different traditions that espouse true Dharma. The practical system that is described concentrates on adhering to the moral guidelines, practices of preserving energy and bringing it up the chakras, and technical meditation practices that hone concentration and one-pointedness of the mind.

The end goal of the practice is enlightenment, achievement of nirvana, realization of the true Self (the Atman) which are all synonyms for the same thing. In that state the liberation from external factors is achieved and one is free to remain in the eternal bliss of one’s true nature. Before reaching that state one goes through the stages of more and more refined states of meditation in which one sheds the layers of the false self which are mostly accumulations of external experiences and data.

The True Self and Real Spiritual Practice

The 5 accumulations, the skandhas, is what we mistake for our self. The data in these accumulations circulates between our surface level mind (our everyday consciousness), our subconscious mind, and our superconscious mind. The superconscious mind contains all the possible data, it’s like the master database. The subconscious mind pulls the data from the superconscious and serves it to our conscious mind based on the karma we have been accumulating. If we are not conscious of the laws of Dharma and the rules of karma, we have no conscious input into this process. This is where the spiritual practice comes in.

First, we deliberately try to clean up and improve our karma which affects the data our conscious mind gets served. This literally changes our reality, but the goal is to contemplate any thoughts and experiences that come our way without getting enmeshed in them. With enough good karma accumulated, at the end of our lifetime we get a chance to reincarnate in higher realms where spiritual practice is easier and there are more chances to further improve our karma and approach the state of nirvana. It’s also possible to work through all the karma in this lifetime and achieve Buddahood (since we don’t really know how much karma we have accumulated and how much we worked through).

Next Steps

There are many more nuances and structures of knowledge to understand which I am still going through but what I understood so far makes sense to me. Ultimately, there is still an element of belief one needs to practice while on this path but it’s the practicality and logic of it that convinces me that it is a true path to enlightenment. My main question still remains whether we are expected to apply all this effort to adhere to the right living and spiritual practice or if this is some kind of a hack or an escape from a system into which someone put us.

The 4 month online group meditation course starts in February and by then I intend to finish reading the books covering the theory as well as finish restructuring my practice to follow the prescribed regimen. For now, I have moved away from the Kriya Yoga practices. In the morning, I practice a few minutes of metta followed by 20-50 minutes of shikantaza. In the evening, I practice 30-60 minutes of anapanasati. Will be gradually incorporating meditation and energy practices from the books as I read through them.

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