Beyond Lineage.

[Shi Da Dao]

'We are ultimately going to make it through on a specific lineage. We may not have a guide in form, we might be advait, meaning non-dualistic, the formless, which would attract us ultimatly to perhaps Zen Buddhism or Jhana Yoga. Ultimately, we start to fall into a lineage, not because it's the hip thing to do, not because our intellect tells us how its interesting, not because it's a nice community and we like the way they dress, but because that way pulled us. It's our way through.

And as we tune to that lineage, our perception shifts, and we begin to notice changes in figure and ground in relationship. We notice teachers we never noticed before; we notice people to be with we never noticed before. The whole process starts to narrow in perceptually...But to know that all ways lead to the end does not nullify the requirement that, sooner or later, we will have to make some sort of commitment or other. A process of surrender is required.

And we go through the lineage. A lineage which is pure is one that catapults us ultimately out the other end; it isn't designed to make us followers of a lineage. It is designed to take us through itself and free us at the other end. A less pure teaching of a lineage traps us in the lineage, makes us a Buddhist or a Christian or a Hindu, not a free being, because when the people that lead do not have the the full connection, they cling to the vehicle rather than the truth towards which the vehicle is directed, and vehicles (institutions) corrode unless they are constantly fed by the living spirit.'

(Grist For The Mill: By Ram Dass - Pages 68-69).