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The Vocabulary of Yoga Meditation Techniques and the Spiritual Cultivation Tradition

One problem with the meditation field today is the sectarian nature of the beast. People grow up in one spiritual tradition and only know the words of that tradition, blinding themselves to the fact that an entirely different tradition or sect recognizes the same meditation-cultivation-spiritual training technique and stages of kung-fu (gong-fu), but uses different words and phrases to describe the principles and outcomes (gong-fu or kung-fu) of that technique.

Sound familiar? Sound reasonable? Have you not experienced this?

So while Christianity talks about "incendium amoris," yoga talks about "kundalini, " Buddhism talks about the "fire element" of the body, Taoism talks about the "clumsy fire" or "real chi," and so on it goes. Every school is using a different phrase for the same phenomenon.

Here's the problem it leads to ... The phenomena of the path, stages of the path and common, non-denominational principles  of the path go unrecognized because of the different terminology pointing to the same thing.

By far, without a doubt, Buddhism offers the clearest explanation of most of the phenomena of the path and th eproper way to cultivate. It takes you higher than Brahmanism and Hinduism because one goes BEYOND consciousness.

If we want to talk about physical changes in the body due to meditation, however, it’s best to turn to Taoism.

If we just want to focus on chi channels and chakras, we can turn to yoga and the esoteric schools (though all schools mention them in one way or another). 

Behavior? Try Confucianism and Christianity. Discipline - Islam.

Oneness with nature? Shintoism and Taoism. The multidimensional nature of existence? Buddhism and Hinduism.

Every school has a distinct flair for accenting one or another aspect of the path and rises above the rest in terms of the terminology developed around that aspect. That’s why I urge people to READ the spiritual accounts of saints and sages in various traditions to discover the underlying ONE PATH beneath it all. After all, there is only ONE original nature, fundamental substrate, … and many words and paths that lead to it.

Instead of fighting about the superiority of one religion over another, it is just as Buddha said: "Don’t believe me, or the traditions handed down from ancient times, or sagas or Holy books or anyone. Just cultivate and SEE what happens and prove to yourself that what I’m saying is true." That’s one of the ways Buddhism differs - it’s all about the actual experience of achieving the Tao,   the wisdom of how to do that, and the wisdom of understanding all other cultivation phenomena as well.

If you’re a sheep, you don’t cultivate scratch and just believe what the  "authorities" in your tradition tell you…and by the way, if study made them an "authority" rather than the achievement of actual kung-fu spiritual accomplishment, that’s not authority. That’s just intellectual parroting of what somebody else said without knowing if it’s truly true, and without being able to understand it because you didn’t achieve the stage yourself. Lions cultivate to experience and prove the truth. Once awake, they KNOW from experience, not belief.

Think about it. How many people do you know went through  their life believing in something that was false, and never awoke to  the truth of the matter? Well, consider further….if there’s all these religions out there, they can’t ALL be right, can they? Some of those folks must be wrong, but they’re all clinging to doctrines handed down from some new intellectual innovator. Those schools always say JUST BELIEVE whereas the meditation practitioner says I’m GOING TO PROVE IT AND FIND OUT FOR MYSELF. That one is the hero.

So if you want to learn spiritual truth, PRACTICE MEDITATION. All sorts of traditions have it, use it, champion it. Without it, there’s no way you’ll make progress on the spiritual trail other than collect some merit from doing good deeds, staying away from evil and generally being an okay person. That will help your life and subsequent incarnations get better in the realm of birth and death, because your store or merit went up (which you’ll end up spending the next time around anyway) but you’ll never escape the whole shebang.

Only accomplishment in meditation will help you with that.

Think about how you’re spending your time with religious affairs, and whether they are helping you. Throw belief out the window — your belief is just as valid as the guy in the religion next door, so that’s no good — and rely on personal proof that you achieve from climbing the spiritual path instead.

Replace BELIEF with ACCOMPLISHMENT. There’s nothing you have to believe blindly because truth you can prove via samadhi attainments and other spiritual accomplishments. Then you’ll know.