Abandoning ourselves to a Jesus or a Buddha (Bhakti) or just abandoning our selves (Jnana) both have the same spiritual end: freedom from the false, fabricated self. One way leaves a trace of ash while the other consumes all. As I continue to read "TBLD" I am reminded here and there where Buddhism falls short for me. It boils down to using the mind to generate beneficial visualization, to "invoke" deities and mantras and such. Even wrapped in the deepest absorption, something that begins in the mind remains attached to that subtly gossamer golden chain to nowhere that always leads back to its origin: mind. Invoking anything is an act of mind and therefore a veil, no matter how filmy and fine.
If a tree fell alone in the forest, would Wallace Stevens hear it? You bet.
The Snow Man
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter
Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sounds of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,
Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same place
For the listener, who listens in the snow
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
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