What is the Question?
What is the Answer?
The tao that can be told
Tao te Ching, verse 1
is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.
The unnamable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin
of all particular things.
Free from desire, you realize the mystery.
Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations
Yet mystery and manifestations
arise from the same source.
This source is called darkness.
Darkness within darkness.
The gateway to all understanding.
Frequently people come to the spiritual path motivated by the Big Picture questions of life, perhaps in a form like this:
- Why is _________ happening? (frequently this is about pain, suffering all the apparently bad things in this life experience)
- What should I do? What is the point of all this?
The Approach
So where should the seeker look for the answer? Perhaps the seeker has an idea or intuition about the answer, and is looking for confirmation. Where should that confirmation come from?
This is answered separately and completely by the teachings of yoga, the teaching of the Tao, the teachings of Christianity, and by my own experience. Stripping away the cultural trappings of each, the answer takes a form like this:
A solid and trustworthy approach to finding a source for the answer to the seeker’s basic spiritual questions will take one of these forms:
- Intuition or divine inspiration – the answer can come from within. This requires quieting the mind, emotions, ego, and self-centeredness. If any of these selfish individual tendencies are active than what appears to be divine inspiration may just be wishful thinking.
So how do you know if something that appears in this realm really is trustworthy? That question tends to answer itself, and confirmation will also come from other sources as much as is needed. - A trusted teacher – yoga and christianity each have their methods of marking what teachers can be trusted, as do many other spiritual traditions. It is difficult to say more about this without betraying favoritism toward one or another tradition.
- Scripture – by this we mean teachings of spiritual truth that have withstood the test of time. Scriptures have been trusted steadily and consistently for thousands of years. The essential, basic teachings of scriptures are unlikely to contradict each other, even across varying traditions and cultures. Where contradictions appear to exist there is just a need for further study and understanding.
My own path began with decades of asking the questions. Answers popped up here and there, but none were trustworthy. Intuition and trusted teachers were ignored, and I never had trust in scriptures.
That all changed in an instant one evening, and intuition, trusted teachers, and trusted scriptures were suddenly in abundance. All the questions were answered, with the same answers appearing wherever I looked.
Resources
Some seekers resonate with the path of yoga, and for other seekers other traditions are more suitable. The resources below have proven themselves to be accepted by seekers of varying cultural backgrounds, with minimal imposition of culture and belief systems.
In other words, try this, see if it fits:
- Taoism
- Tao te Ching. Only 81 short chapters, very concise expositions of Truth. Translations vary widely, read many translations. Try translations by Stephen Mitchell and Ursula K LeGuin.
- Yoga
- Yoga Sutras, accompanied by a teacher or commentary.
- Bhagavad Gita, accompanied by a teacher or study guide.
- 10 Principal Upanishads, starting with Mandukya Upanishad.
- Vijnana Bhairava Tantra, describing meditation techniques, best accompanied by a teacher.
- Christianity