Reflections on "The Diamond Sutra:" Beyond Is and Is Not

The Diamond Sutra is a profoundly important text in Mahayana Buddhism. Composed in India somewhere between the second and fifth century CE, The Diamond Sutra extols the bodhisattva vow to save all beings while claiming that there are no separate beings to save. How does one hold this paradox?

Zen embraces such paradoxes yet also asks us to leap beyond them. The Diamond Sutra offers a metaphorical nudge.

Here's an adapted and abridged translation, followed by some discussion.

The Diamond Sutra [translation by Mu Soeng]

Bodhisattva-mahasattvas should cherish one thought only: “When I attain perfect wisdom, I will liberate all sentient beings in every realm of the universe.”

 
Yet although immeasurable, innumerable, and unlimited beings have been liberated, truly no being has been liberated because no bodhisattva who is a true bodhisattva entertains such concepts as a self, a person, a being, or a living soul. Thus there are no sentient beings to be liberated and no self to attain perfect wisdom. If they cherish the idea of a dharma, they are still attached to a self, a person, a being, or a living soul. If they cherish the idea of no-dharma, they are attached to a self, a person, a being, or a living soul. Therefore, do not cherish the idea of a dharma nor that of a no-dharma.

The truth is ungraspable and inexpressible. It neither is nor is not. What are called dust particles are not dust particles. That is why they are merely dust particles. What is called true perception is indeed no-perception. This is what the Tathagata teaches as true perception.

The teaching of the Tathagata on the perfection of patience is really no perfection and therefore it is the perfection of patience. A bodhisattva should also practice generosity without dwelling on form. The reason he practices generosity is to benefit all beings. Practicing generosity while still depending on forms is like walking in the dark. Practicing generosity without depending on forms is like walking in the bright sunshine seeing all shapes and colors.

The past mind cannot be gotten hold of, the future mind cannot be gotten hold of, and the present mind cannot be gotten hold of. The dharma called the anuttara samyak sambodhi is at one with everything else. That is why it is called the perfect, unexcelled awakening. It is self-identical through the absences of a self, a person, a being, or a living soul, and that is why it is fully known as the totality of all the wholesome dharmas. And yet, no dharmas have been taught by the Tathagata. Such is merely a name. Thus they are called “wholesome dharmas.”

The true nature of the Dharma cannot be understood. No one can be conscious of it as an object. At the same time, no one should say that those who have set out on the path of the bodhisattva need to see all dharma in terms of their annihilation. Do not entertain any notion of the annihilation of dharmas.

So you should view this fleeting world:
A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream; 
A flash of lightning in a summer cloud;
A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.

Reflections:

The Diamond Sutra begins by celebrating the bodhisattva's vow to attain enlightenment and save all beings.

Many of us begin our practice aiming for the first part of the vow, the aspiration to attain enlightenment for ourselves. We initially imagine that we will rise above karma altogether like we are some sort of orb, impervious to of cause and effect. We picture ourselves as entirely separate, enlightened beings who are not susceptible to the vicissitudes of life. 

Over time, we see that this is not how we actually exist, and the gap between our expectations and our experience weighs on us. Liberation never looks the way we think it should. We may persist in our self-interested approach to practice, but for many of us, the second part of our vow to save all beings begins to feel appealing. Maybe focusing on saving others will help us open beyond this painful self-concern?

The vow to save all beings does touch our hearts. We realize that our immature notions of ourselves at the center of the universe are limiting and inaccurate. We expand our awareness and begin to serve something greater than ourselves. Altruism can feel good.

But dualistic ways of thinking persist. Practicing the precepts without the wisdom of nonself is inherently egocentric. We begin to formulate strategies to improve our "selves" and save “others.”  We might aim to cultivate generosity (or any of the six paramitas), but our motive for being generous is, ironically, self-improvement. We may get caught by a grandiose idea of being a bodhisattva, of being the one who saves other beings, or even of being a helper. It's quite a little ego booster. We identify as bodhisattvas in contrast to those who are the recipients of our charity. There is something condescending in our efforts. Our pride becomes their shame. With this identification as a fixer or helper can come a sense of superiority, aloofness, distance, sadness, and isolation. We are just painting the walls of our prison.

Seeing ourselves as bodhisattvas, we may also reify the idea of others who need to be saved. We may hope to resolve our own anxiety and pain by "fixing" other people's lives. We might find ourselves running ragged volunteering and cajoling others to join us. We may burn out after biting off more than we can chew. Or we may begin to think we are better than other people who we believe are doing less. Unfortunately, our lack of tolerance of suffering provides little solace. If we desire to help too much, others may play along and become our dependents. We may nourish our identity as helpers but disempower others by stealing their agency and even trying to replace their existing support networks. 

Despite our efforts, we eventually also see that there is no way to prevent all suffering in the world in any conventional sense. We all lose everything and everyone we love. It's our first noble truth. We may begin to feel like failures. Our hearts may break, then break open, for all the beings we cannot save, including ourselves. 

If we are honest, we may realize that we simply do not know how to save all beings. Our strategizing and directional efforts inevitably fail. If we can bear sitting with disillusionment, we may begin to see what underlies our struggle -- a conception of the self, of others, and of suffering as abiding, separate entities. 

When we are attached to ideas of ourselves, we act on behalf an imagined, enduring entity that does not actually exist. We long to protect this supposed entity, and we suffer when our self-concept is punctured by inevitable change. When we hope to fix others, as if there were other selves who could be brought to a separate, permanent state of salvation, we find that there is no such place. There is nothing substantial that we can attain for ourselves or for others. Everyone and everything is subject to change.

But our dualistic way of thinking is our basic operating system; we project independent substantiality into things. When we take our bodhisattva vow with integrity, one effect is that, like a mirror, it helps us see the dualistic operating system that undergirds suffering. 

But we still don't know what else to do. Should we just give up? 

What if we do give up trying to save all beings according to that dualistic framework? What would happen if we "give up the pursuit of happiness" (as if it were "out there" somewhere waiting) and choose instead to bear witness and be with things as they are without knowing in advance what to do? What might it look like to honor our bodhisattva vow to save all beings non-dualistically?

According to an ancient Chinese story, Layman Pang once fell in the mud. Ling Zhou, his daughter and a Zen adept in her own right, then threw herself down in the mud with him. When he asked her what on earth she was doing, she replied, "helping." Layman Pang laughed.

Ling Zhou did not reach down from above but simply joined in without knowing "the answer." Here there is no gap between self-and-other.

Did she save her father? Ling Zhou’s wisdom and her gift was her compassionate non-separation. Sometimes being "saved" means being free to be exactly as we are. 

Maybe saving does not need to look as we imagine. Maybe it doesn't always fit into our narrative of us fixing someone else's life. Maybe saving can be meeting on equal ground and just being "in it" together. Attention can be our guide, not imposed dualistic ideas. We can let go of our expectations for particular outcomes. We may find that sometimes, being together in the situation is not only enough but exactly right. Sometimes people don’t want to be fixed, and many problems can’t be solved. In such moments, we share Buddha’s sanctuary. We don’t need to escape people's pain by running away or by fixing them.

When my mother slowly degenerated with Alzheimer's, there was ultimately no fixing that could be done. Eventually, all my strategies failed. Not knowing what to do next, my role was to simply be with and love her. As she lost the use of language altogether, I still felt deeply connected with her. I could not stave off her disease, but our togetherness was of absolute value, quite beyond the scales of success or failure. Even when there's no cure, it's possible to heal.

This does not mean we are unresponsive. While suffering has no fixed essence, people still suffer, and as interwoven beings, our hearts may break. And, we can sometimes be of benefit. In allowing ourselves not to know what to do in advance and in openmindedly bearing witness to the entire situation, possibilities emerge that are often more appropriate than anything we can plan in advance. As Bernie Glassman says, "Healing cannot arise until we bear witness to the suffering," like Buddha leaving his protected childhood palace. We let the imagined walls between ourselves and others come down.

We meet on equal ground when we open beyond our dualistic ideas of self and other, saved and unsaved. We open beyond dualistic notions when we acknowledge but see through the senses of self that we think separate us from everything and everyone.

There is some basic reasoning that can help us comprehend the lack of a fixed, separate self. This is reasoning we can easily understand. From the perspective of time, there’s no fixed self, only change. The cells in our body are constantly dying and being replaced. So are our thoughts and values. More gradually changing aspects of ourselves may lead us to believe there is something abiding in the mix, but any amount of change undermines identity. Even yesterday’s and today’s “me" are not the same. And from perspective of space, there is no separate self because a self is made of non-self elements. We sometimes call this "dependent arising." We are water, earth, air, and sunlight. We are culturally inherited languages and practices of our ancestors. Remove these non-self elements, and nothing remains. There’s no innate or intrinsic self; every bit of us is borrowed and relational. The bubble is nothing without the water surrounding it. There is also not a unified self, just parts that can be broken down endlessly.

The same analysis applies to all beings. Thus there are no fixed, separate selves or essences anywhere. Therefore, "no dharmas have been taught by the Tathagata." No phenomena exist in an enduring or independent way. However, we really need to meditate to see this for ourselves. In looking closely, we begin to see that intrinsic essences are indeed unfindable, including our self.

We do not need to try to stop senses of self from arising. In fact, we need our senses of self to honor appropriate boundaries. We do not need to go to war with our shapeshifting ego. The moment we compassionately see senses of self as merely senses of self, they lose their grip on us. When we see that senses of self are actually shapeshifting, dependent arisings, we are less attached to them, and we suffer less as they change. We can simply witness senses of self as merely senses of self, and we are liberated from their grip.

However, The Diamond Sutra goes on to warn not to get stuck in the idea of “no self” or “no dharmas” either. The teaching of “no self” is just medicine to liberate us from the suffering and isolation caused by clinging to ideas of self and other. The idea of no self becomes a nihilistic hell cave when we cling to it. And in trying to annihilate the self, we create the notion of the self that needs to be annihilated! This circular argument could go on endlessly.

Zazen is the practice of leaping beyond the many and the one. When we see that self and other are "merely names" and that thoughts are merely thoughts, we are liberated from belief and disbelief. Even the notions of form and emptiness are nails hammered in the sky. 

Liberation is the practice-realization of things just as they are, which is truly beyond comprehension, beyond is and is not. Our mental models fail to capture what is. Ironically, this is profoundly liberating. We are no longer bound by our conceptions. We are entering the stream of life.

We can still use language to talk about this phenomenal world but with the recognition that language too is a dependent arising; names depend on provisional referents. Still, we operate in "conventional reality," which language helps us navigate. Even though there are not abiding essences anywhere, we use language to refer to shapeshifting phenomena that have no fixed, separate essences. The key is to wake up when we get lost in our conceptual maps. When we are lost in ideas and desires -- even the desire to help others -- we tend to suffer and cause harm, and the precepts help us wake up to what we are doing.

We all get lost sometimes. We so desperately want to be able to hang onto moments when we feel good about ourselves. We take pride in our accomplishments and in our mind's ability to comprehend reality. For a long time we may not be able to recognize thoughts as merely thoughts and senses of self as merely senses of self because of pride -- an attachment to positive senses of self. The inverse of this is shame when we make mistakes. As children, we were expected to know things and were perhaps embarrassed when we did not. We got bad grades in school. Interestingly, sometimes we believe shame even more readily than pride. But both are merely fleeting senses of self.

We are released from our attachment to intellectual pride and shame when we see that "the truth is ungraspable and inexpressible. It neither is nor is not.... The true nature of the Dharma cannot be understood." Our inability to conceptualize the true nature of reality is not a failure but simply accurate.

In opening beyond our conceptual maps, we see that our ideas of fixed essences were misleading. Even suffering has no fixed, separate essence. Pain is a flash of lightning in a summer cloud. Grief is a mask worn by love.

When we open to suffering just as it is, compassion, a non-dualistic acceptance of what is, reveals that even suffering is empty. Ironically, when we let go of the protective distance that we create between ourselves and our hearts -- when we let go of our idea of suffering as something separate -- it opens like a flower, and its imagined solidity dissolves. Beyond good and bad, just tears. 

In learning to tolerate our own suffering, we learn to tolerate others’. This releases us from the need to fix and allows us to bear witness with great compassion. In this way, emptiness -- things exactly as they are -- is a refuge for us all, one that we can share with all beings.

Like the self, suffering is no suffering. We merely call it suffering provisionally. This does not mean it is nothing or that we should slip into denial. Denial reifies whatever we are denying. We are invited to be intimate with whatever is.

When we look deeply, we find that everything is subtle, mysterious, and beyond description. This is our freedom.

So you should view this fleeting world:
A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream; 
A flash of lightning in a summer cloud;
A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.

We may still wonder, how can we fulfill our bodhisattva vow to awaken and save all beings? I am reminded of a quote from Catcher in the Rye: "The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one." Bodhisattva practice does not make us special, and we don't need to be. Mary Oliver writes, "You do not have to be good. / You do not have to walk on your knees / for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. / You only have to let the soft animal of your body / love what it loves." And as the late, great Tina Turner sang, "We don't need another hero." We just openly pay attention and offer an appropriate response, moment after moment. We may sit with a grieving friend, write a letter, attend a demonstration, offer incense, or even sweep the floor. Sometimes we get it wrong, atone, and begin again. A life of vow.

There's a story about Ryukon, the Japanese poet, zen master, and hermit. He lived in the mountains but would sometimes spend time with his family and play with the village children. One day a relative found him to ask for help. Ryukon's nephew, a teenage boy, was causing trouble. Ryokan agreed to see what he could do. So he went to stay at his brother's house where his nephew lived. After a few weeks, Ryokan decided to leave and go back to the mountain. He began to lace up his sandals, and the boy came into the room and sat across from him. Ryukon's hands were shaking with age, so the boy decided to help him with his sandals. As he knelt before Ryukon, tears from Ryukon's eyes landed on the boy's hands. When the boy saw the tears streaming down Ryokan’s face, he knew they were for him. From that moment, the boy completely changed.

Bearing witness without knowing in advance what we will do, we might bandage a child’s boo-boo, a child who stands before us with tears on her cheeks. This uncontrived response, which does not depend on the concept of self and other but which also does not negate the shimmering suchness of a child, is like "walking in the bright sunshine seeing all shapes and colors." Though without any separate, fixed essence, each intimate presence shines forth uniquely. We see the tears on her cheeks and hear her cry. We bandage her cut because it is simply the thing to do. We think, but we are not lost in our own ideas. We are awake with this child who, in this moment, is our life, this child of the universe. Caring for this one child is caring for the universe in the form of a child. There is no "other" anywhere. This may sound like a great mystical revelation, but it is just things as they are.

Since there is no self to awaken separate from the totality of wholesome dharmas, and since there are no separate dharmas anywhere (wholesome or otherwise), all beings are included in this moment. Indeed, all beings are included in each bow we make. Our forehead touches the floor. The earth holds us up. The air fills our lungs. The stars give shape to infinite space, which is nothing other than our mind, which is not separate from all beings. Each breath and each bow includes all beings throughout space and time. When we bow, we hold nothing back, and we are given the universe. We give ourselves away completely in this moment, and we are given everything in return. This is non-dualistic generosity in which giving is receiving and receiving is giving. Ultimately, there is no giver, no receiver, and no gift. We merely call it giving. With Avalokiteshvara as our guide, we open our bodhisattva heart as a refuge for all beings, and we let ourselves be held by all beings. Hearing the cries of the world, without knowing in advance what to do and without expectation of what the outcome will be, we each make our unique offering. As Bernie Glassman writes, each of us are one of Avaolokiteshvara's thousand hands responding to the cries of the world. Because there are no separate beings anywhere, all beings save all beings.

Theravada, Mahayana, and Vajrayana Buddhism

Due to changing life and sangha circumstances, it is not uncommon that folks who have practiced in one Buddhist tradition find themselves practicing in a different tradition. Perhaps they move or their home sangha falls apart or their teacher moves away, and to continue practicing, they join a different group and tradition. Or perhaps you are considering practicing, have options, and are not sure which tradition to practice. While nothing can replace simply visiting a sangha to see whether the community seems healthy, it may be helpful to understand some basic similarities and differences in the three primary traditions. In this post I offer rough sketches of Theravada, Mahayana (specifically my tradition of Zen), and Vajrayana Buddhism.

Theravada Buddhism, which most closely adheres to the earliest Buddhist sutras, emphasizes the model of the arhat who attains enlightenment by following the 8 fold path. Meditation, the precepts, and the six paramitas are the vital practices. The ideal is monastic practice, but this tradition is also available to lay people often through classes and extended retreats.

Mahayana Buddhism is the second "turning of the wheel of Dharma" and, among adherents, is considered a natural development of the Buddha's original teachings. For example, the concept of nonself evolves into the teachings of dependent origination and the emptiness (lack of intrinsic essence) of all phenomena. Given interconnectedness, the bodhisattva practices to save not a separate self but all beings. This aspiration is modeled after Buddha, who taught for the remainder of his life after awakening.

Photo by Sandra Raponi

Vajrayana is a form of Buddhism that developed in India and neighboring countries, perhaps most notably Tibet. Considered the third turning of the wheel of Dharma, Vajrayana offers tantric practices that emulate Buddha's enlightenment, particularly the identity of wisdom and compassion.

Broadly speaking, the first "stage" of practice in all three traditions is taking refuge in Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, vowing to honor the precepts, and practicing concentration or calm abiding.

Still, adventitious suffering based on a lack of alignment with our true nature persists; we project enduring selfhood where there is none (this is our ignorance) and thus experience intensified grasping and aversion (which are the primary forms of suffering). These 3 poisons of ignorance, grasping, and aversion block our innate compassion.

In the Theravada tradition, one progresses further down the path by cultivating loving kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity through meditative exercises, such as sending feelings of compassion to oneself and others. One might think during meditation, “May you be free of pain and sorrow. May you be well and happy.” Practitioners begins by sending compassion to friends and family. Then one sends compassion to people whom one might not be inclined to wish well, such as people who may have hurt us. Gradually, one learns to extend compassion to all beings. Practitioners also cultivate insight into the lack of an innate, unchanging self. In Vipassana meditation, one labels sensations and mental formations and notices their impermanence. This practice breaks our identification with such states, alleviating ignorance, grasping, and aversion.

In Zen, the teaching is that we are already Buddhas sitting on the bodhi seat. We just do not necessarily realize this. Hakuin’s Song of Zazen says, “All beings by nature are Buddha, as ice by nature is water.... This very body is the Buddha." In the Soto Zen tradition, we practice zazen (meditation) with this "great faith" that whatever arises is buddha-nature manifesting. We give up looking outside of our experience for enlightenment, and we deepen our appreciation of things exactly as they are, regardless of the content of our minds. We don’t do zazen to become Buddhas; zazen is Buddha’s practice. We have faith that “Nirvana is right here, before our eyes," and "this very place is the Lotus Land" (Hakuin).

In addition to practicing with great faith, Zen encourages "great doubt.” Believing concepts and senses of self have fixed referents is the fundamental delusion inspiring painful grasping and aversion. In zazen, we practice "opening the hand of thought." We do not need to make this happen; awareness is its own action. Delusions are self-releasing. Our task is simply to sit still, be quiet, and pay attention. In this practice, we recognize concepts and senses of self (even notions of emptiness and Buddhahood) as concepts and senses of self. In practice, we see that all mental formations come and go. Indeed, all phenomena are like a rainbow -- without any enduring substance and dependent on changing causes and conditions. Recognizing this alleviates ignorance, grasping, and aversion. There is no “thing” to reject or hold onto.

But even great faith and great doubt might be described as just ideas. Beyond "is" and "is not," beyond affirmation and negation, this dream-life shape-shifts like clouds in the sky. Inspired by a deep feeling of interconnection as we open beyond self-concern, compassion moves us to respond to the cries of the world. Bodhisattvas dedicate themselves to actual people and everyday problems (including but not only our own) rather than any abstract notion of compassion. Awakening does not make us infallible gods. On the contrary, we see just how deluded and fallible we are. We make many mistakes in this life of vow, and we atone and start over again and again. We just do our best, moment after moment, to alleviate suffering, though there are no separate beings to save.

Some Zen traditions also offer koans to help us awaken to the dance of life. It is essential to study with a trained teacher in practicing koans -- one who has completed a koan curriculum themselves. We do not need to "work on" the koan but to allow the koan to express itself through us. Time and again, we move into the dark of no knowing, then trust what arises. In this practice, we come to see see through the eyes of the ancestral teachers. Our eyebrows are entangled. We embody and express the wisdom and compassion of the ancient masters. Thus the Dharma is transmitted.

The second stage in Vajrayana practice is "deity identification" or "guru devotion." In tantric practice (which requires a skillful teacher), practitioners identify with their deity's or guru's realization rather than with their small sense of self, "purifying" afflictive states into awareness itself. In the beginning of this practice, the deity or guru may seem external to oneself and may even take the form of a wrathful deity; through practice, one realizes the awakened aspects of one's own mind. We might think of this as a development of the Mahayana teaching that we are already Buddhas; this tantric practice essentially offers a skillful means of realizing this, as koan practice does in the Zen tradition.

And stage three in Vajrayana practice might be described as "energy work" that cultivates insight into the emptiness of the deity or guru. Any identification with enlightenment is extra and must be left behind. This is reminiscent of the ancient teaching that when we cross the river samsara, we do not bring the raft with us on the "other shore." It also reminds us of the Zen teaching, "If you meet the Buddha, kill the Buddha." Of course this is not literal; it means that the Dharma is medicine for particular forms of suffering, and once we are free, we should no longer be attached to that medicine. That would become a burden for us.

While there are parallels between the three turnings of the wheel of Dharma, there are also differences in terms of content, emphases, techniques, aesthetics, and in how the Dharma is presented. For example, in Zen, though we have our ox herding pictures describing developmental stages, we also explicitly acknowledge from day one that even the conceptual maps of the Dharma must be held lightly. A student once asked the Korean nun and teacher, Manseong Sunim, "How do I cultivate the Way of the Buddha?" "No cultivation," answered Manseong. "What about obtaining release from the cycle of birth and death?" the student persisted. "Who chains your birth and death?" Manseong replied. As Grace Schireson explains, "While there is awakening, we cannot self-consciously follow a map or a list of the right steps. The to-do list tends to pervert our practice into an idea of gain" and "chains us to desire" (Schireson, Zen Women, p. 134). From the perspective of great doubt, there’s no path, nowhere to go, nothing to attain, and nothing we can hold onto. Put affirmatively from the perspective of great faith, when we sit zazen, enlightenment is already present, and all the precepts are fulfilled. Practice is realization. Still, we must not imagine that this means we do not need to practice. That's just another idea. Practice requires great effort. It's just that the entire path is contained in this very moment of practice-enlightenment.

Though the technologies and descriptions of Theravada, Mahayana, and Vajrayana vary, the Lotus Sutra suggests there really is only "one vehicle," and any differences are merely matters of expedient (skillful) means. Why is there only one vehicle? Because practice does not take us anywhere other than where we are. We are already at the end of the path. And, we need to realize this deeply for ourselves, so we practice. 

On the surface, practices do appear different, but ultimately I think they are different yet often overlapping means to similar ends. For example, in tantric practice, one may invoke wrathful deities, which are, at least in part, "the very embodiment of the negative karmas or emotions they help us confront" (Lee Kane). The practice of facing these wrathful deities helps practitioners integrate with them and see the emptiness of what initially appear to be obstacles (such as fear and anger). In this way, these obstacles can be realized as dharma gates. Though beautifully personified in tantric practices, all Buddhist traditions invite us to face our demons to realize wisdom and compassion. Tantric practice may appear different from the practice of shikantaza (Zen's practice of just sitting still and paying attention to whatever arises), but shikantaza inevitably includes meeting our "inner demons" in the same way Buddha met the demon Mara on the evening of his enlightenment. When Buddha faced Mara, he stayed still and simply said, "I see you Mara," and Mara's arrows turned into flower petals of emptiness. In Zen, we say "awareness is its own action." Compassionately bearing witness is enough to realize the emptiness of phenomena, even scary demons, and this is precisely what we do in shikantaza.

Rest assured, all three traditions will challenge what we often hold most dear -- our often unconscious attachments to concepts and senses of self that undergird suffering. All three traditions will encouage us to face what we otherwise might avoid (and thus be unconsciously controlled by). Many aspects of our traditions resonate with each other, and they fundamentally align in that we practice to actualize awakening in the world.

So why choose one tradition over the next? Perhaps it is simply a matter of trying them to see where we feel the deepest affinity with the Dharma, the teacher(s), and the sangha. Having said this, I do think it is important that once we choose a tradition, we follow through over the long haul if possible. While we can't control all circumstances and may need to find another teacher and sangha at some point, repeatedly bouncing from one tradition and teacher to another might be a way to avoid those practices and teachings that we find the most challenging, and that are also the most liberating.