Buying Into The Package

Some of us like it complicated and exotic, having lots to do – the 4×100,000 preliminary practices, prayers, pujas, chanting, ringing bells, visualising deities in a complicated manner, and waving dorjes: it’s seen as a means to get out of ordinary life. It’s our escape plan. The above describes Tibetan Buddhism, but other religions each have their own ways of bonding.

Being organised into another’s culture with rules and doctrines is the creation of a religion to which we ‘bind ourselves’. We buy into the package, which makes us feel different from the others. 😀

Religion: based on Latin religare -‘to bind’.

You can see the obvious problem, can’t you? Religions talk about salvation and freedom, while at the same time, binding us. Of course, a tradition or religion gives us a foundation, but we might find that we have become stuck in the cellars of the foundations – which can become a dungeon – instead of ascending up into the light. To think, “Hmm…I need to do a lot more practice because I’m not quite perfect yet!” shows a misunderstanding: the conventional ‘I’ projection can never be perfect. Being able to perform a practice perfectly doesn’t mean that realisation is taking place – it’s just a matter of monkey-see, monkey-do. By continually binding ourselves to a practice, we can forget to rest in pure consciousness, which takes no skill at all because we are not ‘doing’ anything.

If you don’t want all the bindings, you don’t have to have them.

Find the essence of the teaching, which is the essence of our being – pure awareness – and rest there. To rest is to regain lost energy. To regain our sense of being is just being pure awareness. It’s all you need. Always travel ‘light’!