1. THE TEACHINGS

The teachings must begin with a tough lesson.

The minds of those seeking the Dharma path today are quite different from those three generations ago and light-years away from those who sought the truth in the times of the Great Masters of the Golden Age of China.

We live in an age of great dependence upon cognitive intellect.

We are immersed in a society that is bombarded by complex and aggressive temptation and have little sense of what gladness, compassion and benevolent affect are.

We dwell within the illusion that we are free and capable of deciding our path on the basis of our own Identity evaluation.

We have bought the foolish notions of the importance of Self Esteem and the idea that the personal Pursuit of Happiness is our natural right. In fact we have been so brainwashed that we fear the ideas of any who claim that Identity must be restrained and that all is illusion, despite the fact that such is the almost universal conclusion of science and those with a clear and directly experienced transcendental knowledge.

We have to realize before we begin that we are ignorant about the true force that has generated and guides all life and we insist that there is some great divine controller to account for our human self-inflicted suffering.

Now the great difference between Dharma seekers of the far-away past and those today is that while in early times there was a quest for truth, now there is a quest to find a better life of peace and calm, to eliminate personal suffering, or to achieve a grand illumination which solves all problems and sets us equal to or above a fabled god.

Now before anyone begins to stroke their ego, it must be made clear that a search for knowledge which is an egocentric impulse is not the same as a search for the truth for the benefit of all living creatures.

So the first task is to introspect as best one can and truthfully see what motivates your Dharma Search.