There are a lot of wisdom teachings on the internet. I know because between 2015 and 2020 I tried to study them all.
But I hit a roadblock.
Many of the best teachings I found claimed to be "the one true way"—to the exclusion of all others. If you've done enough reading this will sound familiar to you.
I struggled with this for a whole year...
Which "one true way" was THE "one true way"?
They couldn't all be right!
Or could they?
Two considerations turned out to be vital in getting through my roadblock:
Imagine a teacher who realized ultimate wellbeing through mindfulness.
Now imagine this teacher showing up in a village where residents were sacrificing goats to appease their gods.
That teacher was always going to speak with conviction about their method. It was for the benefit of those villagers for the teacher to destroy their existing belief system—if only so they could keep their goats.
This was likely playing out in every region of every country where some form of mindfulness was practised.
Fast-forward to 2016 and there's me: desperately trying to figure out which teaching to pick so I could put the others down. I was overwhelmed.
Resolution came when I stopped focusing on the differences between teachings and started focusing on their similarities.
See, what I was interested in was *irreducible truth—*the kind that's not about belief or opinion but, rather, what remains in the absence of beliefs and opinions. This truth must be true everywhere and for everyone.
If it's true for Buddhists but not for Christians, I'm not interested.
If it's true for mystics but not for scientists, I'm not interested.