So also, when it comes to the use of any technique whatsoever, whether it’s yoga or LSD or what have you for spiritual awakening there applies to it. The Buddha’s symbol of the raft, the Buddha likened his method, his dogma or doctrine or method to a raft. It’s also called a genre of vehicle. Hence the Mahayana, the big vehicle, the Hindu Yana, the little vehicle. And it takes you across the river of which this shore is birth and death. And the other shore liberation nirvana.
And when you get to the other shore, you leave the raft behind. Same way they say in Zen Buddhism, their technique, the use of the Koran or meditation problem is like knocking at a door with a brick when the door is open. You don’t carry the brick inside, you leave the brick behind.
So with all these things, they are means to pyre and they have as their objective deliverance from means. The Christian mystics speak of the highest state of contemplative prayer or union with God as a union without means.
And I would extend the the sense of the word means even to ecstasy. In other words, ecstasy is in variables in the great religious traditions, not a final state. Ecstasy is an intermediate state. So, for example, in in Zen, when the experience of Satori or awakening comes about, there is an ecstasy. You feel marvelous. You feel as if you were walking on air. You feel absolutely unobstructed. You feel as happy as a lark. You feel, you know, this fantastic bang.
Zen saying says that Monk, who has a satori, goes to hell as straight as an arrow. In other words, to have it is to cling to it. And if you think that the ecstasy is the important thing, it isn’t. The ecstasy is an intermediate stage to bring you back to the point where you can see that everyday life that your ordinary mind, as they say in Zen, is the Buddha mind that everyday life. As it is, is the great thing and there is no difference between that and the Divine Life.
