Self-Knowledge and Self-Realization

I have problems with all Hindu and Buddhist traditions, including Advaita Vedanta and Theravadan Buddhism. Meditation is not open-ended self-discovery, but directed to realizing truth as embedded in their Sutras.  This is merely learning someone else's truth.t

I used to recommend the book "Stages of Emptiness Meditation" until Max--at least I think it was him--pointed out that the entire thrust of the book was to discover the truth and weaknesses of different philosophical positions, such as Samkhya, Yogachara, and Vedanta regarding the nature of reality, time, Consciousness, dual and non-dual.

Once I spent a lot of time with Sri Ratanasara, a very senior Buddhist monk from Sri Lanka.  I kept pestering him with questions about Consciousness, mind, Self, no-self, etc., and he pointed out these were all philosophical positions that depended on definitions and logic.  he was very clear that real truth lay outside of the mind that tried to figure things out with concepts and logic.

The way I advocate is to find the self-sensation within and abide there. This is different from finding the source of the I-thought, which is emptiness, the Void, and discovering that, destroys the entire matrix of conceptual knowledge.  The various schools of Buddhism and Hinduism cleave to philosophical traditions and often equate enlightenment with a deep understanding of one or another philosophical schools and the truths they teach.

Having a misspent youth getting a BA in philosophy, rejecting it as bullshit, then going to Rinzai Zen that teaches in an entirely different and less intellectual constraining way, I have a deep loathing of book learning and a highner acceptance of the go-it-alone school of enlightenment seekers.

Yet, had I not spent 12 years in Zen and many years in the Advaita milieu, I am absolutely certain that without the base they provided me. I would never have discovered my Self.

For me Self-Realization is a process of  progressively parsing out differing aspects of my own experience, penetrating to ever more subtle levels of consciousness, the various conceptual bodies experiences, the energy body, the sense of presence, feeling the divine, feeling grace and forgiveness, as well as very deep layers of love resulting in an identification with love, and finally leading to an experience of Self.  The Self is found through loving one's own sense of self, and going ever more deeply into that sense of self until Self itself is thoroughly uncovered, exposed, and integrated into your life.

This is not Advaita, Zen, Buddhism, but radical self-investigation without words or concepts.  Each person invents their own path and shares it with others through a radical openess, and in so doing helps others to open to similar or deeper levels.