---
title: "On Extracting Essence — Overview of Dharmic Landscapes (M007)"
heading: "On Extracting Essence — Overview of Dharmic Landscapes (M007)"
subheading: ""
updated: "2025-11-21T16:31:00+00:00"
words: 1945
url: https://ananda.icu/talks/metaloom-reviews/m007-on-extracting-essence-overview-of-dharmic-landscapes
description: "We have no need to craft and create new insight. It's all there in the countless traditions of contemplation. It's inherent in existence itself. When traditions become veiled by their specific clutter, it's time to re-extract. We look into decluttering and extracting patterns of essence and tour the Dharmic landscape of wisdom traditions."
...


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**Words:** 1945 ⁘ **Length:** 17:00 min ⁘ **Created:** 2025-08-16 ⁘ **Updated:** 2025-11-21

 We have no need to craft and create new insight. It's all there in the countless traditions of contemplation. It's inherent in existence itself. When traditions become veiled by their specific clutter, it's time to re-extract.

When lineages of insight transmission become shrouded with essentially worthless complexity, when subscription and adherence demands that we embrace their significant baggage, it stops being worth the trouble for a seeker of clarity.

We look at the general concepts of decluttering and extracting patterns of essence — the primary principles that become the dynamics of meaning in these traditions. For you — that you yourself would unveil the essence in every teaching.

We tour the Dharmic landscape of wisdom traditions. Vedas, Vedanta, Hinduism, Bhakti. Buddhism in its branches — Theravada, Mahayana, Vajrayana. Further in the orients, Taoism with its metaphysics. All with merit — all with issues too.

_#MetaLoom #Patterns #Essence #Dharma #Hinduism #Bhakti #Vedanta #Buddhism #Taoism #YinYang #Extraction #Universality #AnandaICU_



[ Table of Contents ]
- ¶ Peeling and Decluttering — Essence and Forms ↴
- ¶ Exploring the Landscape of Dharmic Traditions ↴
- ¶ Merits and Trouble in Hinduism and Sanatana Dharma ↴
- ¶ Merits and Trouble in Buddhist Traditions ↴
- ¶ Merits and Trouble in Ancient and Modern Taoism ↴
- ¶ Sorting It Out — Removables and Extractables ↴

"**There is nothing really new in what you're saying.** So much of this I've heard from so many other sources. So what's your point? Why do you repeat things?"

And there exactly, my friend, is the credit, the merit, and the very point of what I wish to share. None of this is of new invention, something that I've crafted in my fertile brains. Rather, all of these are extracts, declutterings, aggregations of understandings that have been there in countless traditions since the dawn of human contemplation.

The difference here, and with that, the point — if we must distinguish ourselves in order to validate what's being done — is that what I bring forward are, as noted, the extracts, the distillations, that are not bound to and fettered by any particular tradition, culture, lexicon, etc. The factors that put the dress on to a particular set of patterns and principles, and as they evolve and diversify, turn it into something too explicit to be of absolutely general relevance.


### Peeling and Decluttering — Essence and Forms ¶

The assumption has always been that there's something universal, something primeval, perennial, and timeless underlying the many traditions we humans have shaped around existence in contextualizing ourselves to everything that's going on. If this were not the case, if these were mere works of disconnected and unrooted fiction, they would have been washed away in the tides of time in no time at all. With that assumption.

To actually arrive at the underlying primaries, there is significant peeling and decluttering that needs to happen. Symbols, expressions, literary devices, cultural, temporal contexts. All of those give their vibe and specific tuning to an underlying essence. But we remain blind to the underlying essence for as long as our fixation is on the shapes, forms, and expressions of a particular tradition. This burden of culture and context is there quite inseparably, even in traditions of thought and cultivation where the need to transcend individuality and specificity is very explicit. 

Suppose, for example, the non-dual of Shankara through Ramana Maharshi, through Nisargadatta. Very basic, universal, and even self-evident teachings. But alas, all of it so burdened by the classic Indian guru archetype, and all the side effects that it brings into being. And all of it centralized around those particular individuals. The essence of the message itself becomes shrouded by the display, the actors who brought it forward.

And beyond that, we have the burden of commentarial traditions. There was, once upon a time, the core teaching, the baselines. Then, as it was passed on from generation to generation, it was elaborated on. It was interpreted, and many interpretations grew into being, conflicts among them, to a point where it's evident that at some point it stopped being rooted in the direct living experience and started being a matter of intellectual exercise, and the construction of systems that may or may not actually be verifiable by direct experience.


### Exploring the Landscape of Dharmic Traditions ¶

While we're at it, a quick round trip of traditions that have been significant or influential in the aggregation of all that is being brought forward. All of those looked at beyond the veil of their surface. Their patterns, their primaries sought for, extracted, and reconciled to one degree or another. At the level of the very primary abstract essence, really all of it links up gracefully. The more we get into the overlays of expression, the more the distinctions emerge, and the more things become difficult to reconcile. 

So, without further ado, quick reflections on the major traditions. Starting with the Dharmic oriental, then onward to Abrahamic and occidental.


### Merits and Trouble in Hinduism and Sanatana Dharma ¶

First, with due attention to Hinduism, earlier the Vedic tradition, or as the more niche term is, Sanatana Dharma, the timeless religion, or the timeless principles. That's where my journey started in 94-95, in a particular tradition, but with fairly broad exposure to the full spectrum of Indic thought. Specifically the Veda, Vedanta, Purana, the legends, and all that followed, the Bhakti traditions. That was a significant dig that went on for 12-13 years.

Now, as to the concept of Sanatana Dharma. Dharma, the pattern, principle, and Sanatana, something that is eternal or timeless. Yes indeed there are roots that are timeless, abstract to a point that is unbound by time and space. Unbound by any particular frame of reference.

But alas their countless expressions, and the countless sects woven around those expressions, those are anything but timeless. The conflicts between all of these sects and alignments, those are very much temporal, even vulgar. Rooted in significant tunnel visions, fixation on their particular lineage, inability to discover the same underlying essence in their peers.

So there is much that is of value and significant merit there, and also there is much that needs to be decluttered. Even for those who operate from within the tradition. For their pure, clean, undistorted and uncluttered experience of what the initial intentions were, and what the experiences of the ancient sages were, the devotional ecstatics were. You will not get those by sucking on the symbols that are put to the forefront for your reference, for your pointers.

You will only ever get there by unpacking the symbols, by seeking the realities that lie beyond. So all of that came to its natural and inevitable dead end for me, when I would not settle for the formal teaching as a substitute for evolving, living experience and progressive deepening inside. From the more devotional Hinduism, I moved toward the Nondual, Advaita. Went through the spectrum there, gained much.


### Merits and Trouble in Buddhist Traditions ¶

And onward, I sought the other side of the Dharmic tradition, the Buddhist teachings. Particularly the methods, models of meditation, absolutely fantastic work, systems beyond compare.

But alas, how scattered the Sangha or the one community is. From the very early days on, the Theravada that we have today, of the old school, the Hinayana, a non-preferred term but that, that splintered into 17 or 18 or how-so-ever many schools in a matter of mere couple of hundreds of years after the Buddha's passing. And after that, or around those times, we had the Mahasanghikas that became the Mahayana alignment that spread further to the east. In time, we had the Tantric variant thereof, Vajrayana.

And all of those with their vestiges, born of schisms, born of disagreements and reestablishments. Typically not over fundamental essence, but something that could have been reconciled, had there been will and orientation towards reconciliation. They distinguished themselves — and that was their downfall. Now don't take me wrong, they are not worthless. They have simply fallen from the pristine living essence, they are shrouded.

Say, Tibetan Buddhism. Marvelous methods of cognitive alchemy. But how caught up they are in the Guru institution, the personality cult of proprietary methods received by the grace of the teacher. And those of us hacking independent are scorned upon. "It will not ever work." But tell me, how is this ultimate reality, the Sunyata, the Rigpa and so on, what have you. How are they in the palm of anyone?  Will you go there and tell the great emptiness of essence and self-nature, you may not relate to this particular instance of cognition, because he did not bow to my Guru, he is not in an authorised lineage.

This is all so far beyond all of those essentially ritualistic and superstitious concepts that are established as a matter of preserving traditions and, really holding the throne stable, keeping the continuity that is not a continuity of essence, but a continuity of form. And of that, I unsubscribe.


### Merits and Trouble in Ancient and Modern Taoism ¶

Further in the orients, we have of course the Taoist tradition. Yin and Yang — who has not heard of. Taiji, the duality in unity, and Wuji, the one without axis, the non-dual substratum. Fantastic baselines, and a classic immersion into the underlying reflective flow of life. But it does not give you much of an operational structure of its older strata.

And when we get to the newer strata, yes we have Bagua, the eight principles, the derivations of Yin and Yang. The two become the four dual composites, they become the eight three-part composites. Those are all in the game here. They are undeniable basic structures of emanation from the root duality. But what has come of it?

Of the Bagua, we have Baguazhang, we have the martial art form that emulates these principles. We have Feng Shui. The old heaven is less of a relevant concern — the new heaven, the flux of the octagon is more of a concern in aligning your environment. Then we have the I-Ching, the 64, 8x8 combinations that we use as an oracle, and for forecasting, rather than simply looking at the archetypal junctions of our human frames of existence.

So, much of the Taoist tradition has steered into a ritualistic and superstitious direction from all of these very very essential baselines. Of that I have gained much, but I have never subscribed.


### Sorting It Out — Removables and Extractables ¶

So what we have there, as the removables and the extractables. The extractables are clear, the primary patterns that interrelate all of these to each other. And the removables are all the clutter that compromises the universality, the generality, that infringes upon the abstraction that underlies all of it.

We have the doctrinal fixation, interpretations upon interpretations, intellectual prowess at the cost of living experience, and we have all the proprietary traditions, particular methods and pathways of subscription in order to enter a valid path of cultivation, etc. And these are all problematic. And none of these problems, vestiges and hindrances are something that I wish to promote as such, to suggest that we subscribe to them.

Nor do I wish or ask that you subscribe to my channel or to any of this, but simply subscribe to the perspective of the underlying essence and the process of its extraction and decluttering. That's all that I am doing here — not creating a new false orbit around the messenger. Simply providing a message that deserves to become decentralized, for all of you unto yourselves, with nothing to do with me. Because reality itself is the message — no individual, no messenger.

So that was the east side in a nutshell. I was hoping to also cover the gist of the west side, but that seems too ambitious for a single take. It has gone on for long enough, my dog is getting impatient and doubtless so are all of you. So on these notes — to be continued. Thank you.