A wonderful segment from Then and Now, session 26:
One of the ways that the Tibetan tradition is expressed and translated is that this is the path. And that I’ve always had a little bit of tension with that because the stages of the path that you were meant to follow never worked for me, so I’ve always had to find my own way. And then I realized that I actually do the same thing with every student that I work with. I never work with two people exactly the same way. And then some comments that I was listening to from Stephen Batchelor pulled the whole thing together for me. There isn’t the path. You find a path; and what you actually do is you find your path. So it’s a path to awakening for you.
Now it’s very much working with that genesis of awakening which we all have, and finding, discovering through a lot of trial and error, and a lot of effort, how to provide that genesis of awakening with the conditions in which it can grow and find expressions in our lives. And I don’t think that any one person’s path is identical with anybody else’s. There are certain factors which really help and which have been tested by time and experience.
And that’s what Gampopa is relating here, you know, everything we've talked about in terms of impermanence and karma, and the six realms, and loving-kindness, and compassion, etc. All of these things--and what I talked about in Wake Up to Your Life--these are things which all help in this, but one has to find one’s own relationship with them. And it is through taking them in and finding one’s own relationship that you find the path for you, through which you wake up, or this awakening manifests in your life.
Is that clear, what I am saying? Okay.
