Do you think one can ever reach enlightenment without meditation?

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The Buddha didn’t invent enlightenment, nor do Buddhists have a monopoly on its definition or how to get there. The concept had been kicking around the Indian subcontinent for a thousand years. The Buddha merely figured out a faster way there.

There’s plenty under the sun to do and accomplish, and you don’t have to do Buddhism ‘all the way’. I’ve been blending Buddhism and Christianity for years, forging my own form of spirituality with all the raw materials of thousands of years of history.

I can’t hang with the really hardcore meditators, yet I am comfortable saying I’m enlightened and writing about it. That said, I would never try to do that if I didn’t have extensive experience meditating. Because the reality is, without practice, theory is useless. You can’t just read about a bunch of practices and expect that to get you anywhere.

You need to first read, then practice, then master, then teach. Teaching is important because it gets you out of your own skin and forces you to see it from the outside in the mind and feet of a beginner.

Once you’ve taught, then you can start forging your own path because you’ll finally have a complete enough understanding of what it is you’re shooting for and why the existing paths won’t work for you. If you just start going your own way from the beginning, well it’s just very hard to get anywhere unless you’re immensely talented.

You can choose your own way, but realize it’s a much harder way to go about it if you’re to actually get anywhere. And avoiding the existing paths out of laziness and not exploring them out of curiosity to find out where they lead is a great way to get nowhere.