The Path
I have chosen to write this based upon my own personal experiences and insights. It has become overwhelmingly clear to me why all the great masters throughout history have always taught that one should follow a single path. Though so much of what is a “Universal Truth” exists within the various “reasonable” religions, the actual paths vary greatly. Thus the Enlightened Ones stand by the teaching that a person should be devoted to a single path. For me, I thought that as long as one keeps their eye on the Universal Truth of the matter, many different paths can be traveled upon. That view was certainly not a “right view”. It's like the analogy of a person trying to take two different routes up a mountain, one starting on the North side and the other starting on the South side. One will never actually traverse any profound distance up the mountain this way. A second analogy that really got me was of a person wanting to sail a boat and yet surf a long board at the same time. Even if that person came up with a clever way to do this, it would be clumsy, ill-effective, and certainly not skillful. Plus, they would never be able to traverse the globe in any reasonable way. Yet there I was attempting to do this ridiculous “trick”.
Therefore, having seen that I was doing such a thing and seeing that it was not skillful and not creating anything truly virtuous, I renounced every path that I had taken up as a practice but one. I chose one path to be completely devoted to – not for my own glory or to look good in the eyes of others, or even to make myself somehow feel “accomplished”, but to truly subdue my own clinging and attachments. Interestingly enough, during one of my own personal daily studies, I came to a teaching that says, “Of the two witnesses, hold the principle one”. This strongly reminded me that no matter how another may see me, whether they see me as having any accomplishments or severely lacking in that department or anything in between, that is nothing more than a signal to continue to subdue my ego. Though I am empowered to and will continue to teach publicly, which is a practice given to me by my own personal teacher within CABP, I have resigned taking ‘private students’ and will leave that to the true gurus.
It is very important to understand too that being devout to a single path does not mean that a person should become closed-minded to the other reasonable faiths in this world. Rather it becomes an opportunity to be more open and supportive to those other faiths without having to ever step off our own personal path. Without ever climbing off our own bicycle, we can still encourage the person that just passed us on their motorcycle.
When we devote ourselves to a specific spiritual practice, it is generally well laid out for us… that is why it is called a “path”. Much like climbing a great mountain, we follow the clip-points that a previous master rock climber left for us. We only truly tempt real danger when we begin to wander off the given course like when we try to change back and forth from one distinct path to another.
Even though we may clearly see the Universal-ness vibrantly in numerous paths, to take up more than one path is at best unwise and at worst, self-destructive. I found it very interesting that of every great master that I could find who promoted peace and harmony among all religions, they themselves were only devoted to one specific path, whether that was or is Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity, etc. I have to admit that I did find some teachers that were indeed “multi-religious”, but interestingly enough, they were never considered to be truly great masters and there is not much left of their legacies or traditions. I am reminded of a teaching on this topic from back in my days of Jewish studies that stated a religion that is actually true will last more than 300 years, and those that are not true will not last. I am not sure how true that teaching is, but is something to really think about – fads vs. reasonable faiths. This is not to say that a person should not leave one path for another, sometimes it takes a while to find the “right” path for us, but it does imply that when we do change from one to another, so should our devotion. If we change from riding a bike to sailing a boat, we should not try to hold onto the bike or the methods of riding a bike and try to apply them to sailing. As silly as this might sound, this is what many of us try to do - I know I tried it.
Having realized the mistakes I made both knowingly and unknowingly, I have returned to my “root” path and let go of the others. I have wholeheartedly resubmitted myself to a specific tradition and the specific path this tradition offers. Now I understand that all the empowerments and transmissions that I have been given or will be given in the future are for me and my personal practice only. My ordination to teach exists in the specific realm that it was given and that is its role. I am no guru and my authority is limited to only what I actually know.
