Spoon-Feeding Or Realisation
It doesn’t matter what scientists, philosophers or gurus say, their findings are theirs, not ours. Because we hear something doesn’t mean that we know; accepting what others say is merely hearsay. It is we who have to test and realise what is true. We will never ever find truth in a book or video, as truth is in the experience beyond mere words. Truth is experiential.
We may watch a plumber’s video on how to change a flush valve in a toilet. It’s useful information, and it’s kind of the plumber to make the video, but our toilet has a different configuration of pipes and connectors, and so we have to work it out for ourselves.* We could just rely on paying a plumber to do it for us, but we will never know how it works, and only have a general idea about it all.
Enlightenment is the same.
Our path to enlightenment is to realise the cause of our dissatisfaction, our confusion and our indifference – not someones else’s.
The Buddha came out of his father’s palace and found suffering everywhere;
old age, sickness and death.
The suffering that we see may be more complicated,
but the cause is the same:
the delusion of belief in a self image.
(* in our toilet, our flush valve had deteriorated and,
as it came from another country, it didn’t quite fit with the video
… but we now have a happy flush! 😀 )