To have gained the Teaching is to abandon the Teaching.
If you haven’t gutted the Self-Eating Expression to empty, taken it all the way back to ‘True Nothing’, you aren’t done yet.
The Buddha didn’t think much of ascetics, god-men, philosophers or sages.
And he liked concrete metaphors. And this is the earliest concrete analogy of the hitherto abstract Self-Eating Expression. It is the central metaphor of the Buddha Dharma.
From the Diamond Sūtra:
‘My teaching of the Good Law is to be likened unto a raft. [Does a man who has safely crossed a flood upon a raft continue his journey carrying that raft upon his head?]
The Buddha-teaching must be relinquished; how much more so mis-teaching!’
You ‘Burn the Sūtras’ once their work is done. [You know any other Tradition that suggests its core Teachings be gotten rid of once grasped?]
