Video Blog Transcription:

(00:00):
So there's this really cool teaching in Buddhism, and I'm gonna try to try to talk about it here. So it really applies to using a Buddhist teaching, really any spiritual teaching for that matter, and it uses this metaphor of a finger pointing to the moon. You may have heard it.

And the teaching is don't mistake the finger for the moon. So metaphorically, the finger is the spiritual teaching, and the moon is the truth. And so a teaching's role is really to point you to the truth. And you can only really have a truth, a true truth in yourself if it awakens in you. So a teaching really is to point to something to awaken it in you.

(00:55):
Of course, the misunderstanding, the mistake, is we mistake the teaching for the truth. And then we start thinking that the teaching is the truth. And this creates a number of problems, specifically, two problems that I'm gonna talk about.

The first problem is kind of obvious. It's probably what the teaching was really in intended to clarify. When we mistakenly think the teaching is the truth, we're not utilizing the teaching correctly, first of all. And what happens is the teaching becomes dogmatic. Spirituality becomes a religion, right?

Whether it's Jesus or Buddha, and even contemporary teachers like Eckhart Tolle, or Pema Chodron, or whoever your teacher is when we start thinking that their words are the truth, it becomes rigid. It becomes a little more intellectual too because we're losing the whole idea is that the teaching is intended to awaken that truth in us.

(02:09):
So that's the first thing, and it becomes kind of static. It’s no longer this fluid awakening of truth. I've had the same teaching awaken different truths, or maybe different levels of a truth. If I keep the teaching the way it was intended, as something to awaken truth in me, then it can continue to teach me, and it can deepen.

Whereas if I kind of concretize it and say, “This is the truth,” and I put it into my intellect and it’s like, “This is the truth, and if it's not that, it’s wrong.” Then it loses its vitality. It loses its life, and its ability to awaken new things in me.

(03:00):
And there's a second problem, in my opinion, that is maybe less spoken about. And that is that when we treat the teaching as the truth, it also externalizes the truth. The truth becomes the Buddha’s, or the truth becomes Jesus's, or it becomes Pema Chodron's, it becomes their truth.

And the reality is that when a teaching resonates with you, it resonates because something has awakened in you. And when that happens, the truth is no longer the Buddha’s or Eckhart Tolle’s or whoever, it becomes your truth.

Now the Buddha may have pointed to that (to the moon), and it may have awakened it. But at that moment, it is you that's awakening and the truth becomes yours.

And it's really important to understand that because all of this happens inside of us. If the awakening isn't happening in you, the teaching's not gonna be meaningful to you. It's gonna boring. It's gonna be like, “So what.”

(04:07):
So it's really important to understand that. And so that's what I would have you consider is to realize that the awakening is yours. Even if a really cool teaching awakened in you, it's yours, and then you can use it, and it can evolve, and it can deepen.

So anyway that is my video for this week. Thank you so much for watching. I hope you enjoyed it. And I hope you have an awesome week in that you allow truths to awaken in you and realize that it was you that awakened them. So I will see you in a week.