On the Wise Use of Maps
Don't throw the theory out with the bathwater
Enter into a spiritual community today and it’s likely that you will find some disdain towards conceptuality, doing, representing, and storytelling.
This makes sense given that in conventional stages of development, humans cannot recognize how their abstractions are actually impacting their perception of reality.
It’s also true that the deepest spiritual insights are nonconceptual.
Still, it’s critical that we don’t delude ourselves into thinking that we can permanently do away with concepts.
Even those who can access deep meditative states where perception fades don’t permanently function from that place.
The key in spiritual practice is not to permanently dissolve representations but to no longer be trapped by them.
The dharma teacher Rob Burbea speaks on the wise use of concepts when he writes…
“ There might be the concern that the use of concepts in meditation would only lead to a proliferation of more concepts, and could never possibly lead to a transcendence of conceptuality. In practice, however, we find this is not the case. When reason and concept are used skilfully in meditation to undermine the conception of inherent existence, those initial concepts and the conceiving mind will then be dissolved in the process too, for there will be nothing left to support them.”
The Buddha’s teachings are often compared to a raft that can be discarded once it gets us to the shore of nirvana.
In this way, each level of the teachings is a temporary placeholder that dissolves once a deeper level of insight is reached.
Much of the same can be said about theories, models, and frameworks.
We must remember that maps are not the territory but they are useful and often necessary tools for navigating it.
Each theory, model, or framework is simply a lens of looking at reality - It may be helpful in one instance and irrelevant or detrimental in another.
It is up to each of us to use maps with wise discernment.