The Best Path

People often ask me what is the best?

Path what's the best spiritual path? What's the best meditative path.

And so forth.

When I get asked that question couple things pop into my mind immediately.

The first is that?

I feel this urge to say the best path is the light works for you.

It's been my experience that different approaches work best for different People at different times.

It's not an absolute what's the best path who's got the The real answer? Which one is going to you know, is the pure the authentic the true can take me to the one to the place where the other ones leave off etc, etc. I don't really think that's the issue so much. I think the issue is.

What works for you at a given time and it might change?

Overtime there are People that started out with me doing mindfulness practice and had certain experiences and I recommended that they go to Zen teacher.

My teacher Sasaki Roshi.

And after doing that practice they decided they wanted to work more within the Zen framework. The traditional zend framework so they transitioned from from Pasadena to them.

It can go the other way, too, though I have among my students. People that have long, long decades long. Zen practices that now feel more comfortable working within the mindfulness framework.

A number of years ago we had.

A meeting at the Spirit Rock Mindfulness Center in California Jack Kornfield's place.

Of Western teachers western teachers defined as People teaching in the Western world.

And I suspect there was a couple hundred of us there that at that meeting.

And.

Jack asked us an interesting question, he asked us how many people in this room.

Would say that more than one linneage of practice had been significant in their life In other words?

How many people in this room had done be possible and virtually honor practice for example, or void Rihanna Anzan practice that kind of thing.

And, of those People teaching in the West more than half of them, said that.

Very different lineages of practice were significant for them in their development. I find that very interesting in a sense, these sort of.

Immediate or perhaps somewhat cavalier answer that I feel like giving as well. The best one is whatever works. It's pragmatic and it may be different at different times for you.

One might say.

But isn't there.

Up a path that is in some way.

Absolutely better than others? Is there some way of lining up the paths in terms of well. This will will take you so far, but then you have to do this, then you have to do this some People make claims like that.

To be perhaps a little bit blonde. I'll buy it. I don't buy those claims. There is a way to compare Maps and spiritual paths, I believe.

But it takes a lot of courage or you need to be able number one and willing number 2.

Talk about

The strong points.

And the weak points.

Of whatever path you teach.

And that's

That's hard, OK, we tend to want to talk about the strong points.

But it has been my experience that if you want to compare paths what you compare is strengths and weaknesses.

And they tend to have certain strengths and they tend to have certain week weaknesses and to me. That's an honest comparison.

For example,

I would happily tell you.

What I consider to be bad about the way I teach meditation?

Maybe that would be another talk but.

Well, just briefly.

Here's all the things that are bad about how I teach meditation.

It's very complex.

There's a lot of subtleties you have to remember a lot of technical vocabulary because I'm very picky about words and precision and description. There's a lot of emphasis on.

Implementing procedures in a certain way, although it is an algorithm, meaning you're never asked to do anything you can't do.

You're not asked to do the impossible, but you're asked to do doable things. But in a very specific way. A lot of People want to be a little more free form about things.

I tend to place things in a sort of secular type of language, which may lack some of the.

More overtly or explicitly.

Spiritual symbols and terminology and so forth so anyway. That's a few of the things that may be bad about the way that I teach you if I thought about it. I could probably come up with some more so anyway. If you want to compare paths. I think you want to say OK. This one is strong. In this way, this way, this way. But it's sort of weak in this way, this way.

For example, TM strongpoint anybody could do it right away and have some experience of being a little bit calm, weak point well. You might not take you any further than that.

Now I said might not I didn't say it won't.

But that might be in fact, the weaknesses are tendencies. They're not absolutes this tends to be strong this way. This tends to be weak. This way as a path so I think if you want to compare things that's the way you compare them.

Tendencies.

Towards this strength or this weakness, then the other thing that I always like to keep.

In mind is that?

All of these paths are not very good, the ones that we have now.

That have come down to us that anybody has they can be vastly improved upon and as the result of improving upon them. We will see more democratization of enlightenment through over the planet.

So it always helps me to keep in mind that.

The best path is yet to be discovered if there is indeed a best one and that's exciting and wonderful.