Keeping Up All Lines Of Investigation

This mean not taking one side or another, but seeing the effect. Taking sides incapacitates people from seeing clearly. It delays keeping up all lines of investigation because we’ve already adopted a bias.

This is why investigation into mind and consciousness is an individual process. We may come across others who see things in a similar way, but that is very rare. The gambit is to give away everything we cherished to gain clarity.

Information can be difficult to identify as being man-made by offering a plausibility that isolates us from our own realisation.

Look at the effects, rather than the words.

A spiritual group may look good for a while, but we then realise that there are sub-divisions and other traditions and, within that, different yanas/levels of understanding of the same words, and of compassion.

“The Bodhipathapradīpa of Atisha” (980-1054 CE), quoted in Gampopa’s (1079-1153 CE)
“Jewel Ornament of Liberation” makes reference to people of three capacities:

“People are to be known in three ways:
As inferior, mediocre and excellent.

Those who by any means whatsoever
Provide for the pleasures of Saṃsāra
For themselves alone,
Is called inferior.

Those who turns their back to the pleasures of the world
And abstain from evil deeds,
But provide only for their own peace,
Are called mediocre.

Those who seriously want to dispel
All the misery of others,
Because in the stream of their own being they have understood the nature of misery,
Are excellent.”

‘Yana’ is determined by capacity and propensity brought about by merit (personal endeavour), not by a specific teaching or lineage.