Rev. Danny Fisher

Today’s quote is yet another from our friend and former Naropa University professor Dr. Reginald A. Ray, whom I previously quoted and wrote a little biography for here.  This is it–a quote posted this morning on the Tricycle Editors’ Blog:

You read these books on Tibetan Buddhism, and it’s very 
complicated. Has anyone read any
 of those books? They’re very 
complicated. There are a lot of
 stages and paths and different levels, and sometimes you become completely
…confused. Eventually you begin to 
feel that the Buddha’s way up there you can barely see the top of the ladder—and it’s very important to remember that actually that’s a metaphor, and the Buddha’s actually right here. The closer we come to our own heart, the more we have gone through what they’re talking about.

So the way to make the spiritual journey is to become more and more and more familiar with who we actually are. The journey unfolds by itself. Then the people standing around us say, “Well, that person’s this and that, and they’ve reached this level and that level.” But actually, that doesn’t really mean anything. We simply live our lives and we relate to who we are, and that’s how the journey happens.

So I don’t want to be critical of my own tradition, necessarily, but at the same time I feel that sometimes it’s a little confusing. We begin to think that the spiritual journey happens somehow outside of ourselves, or it’s a way of moving beyond who we really are. Nothing could be further from the truth.