Mi'sen

Yes. Excellent point. In fact I was going to go on to rant about that but figured everyone had had more than enough ranting already

More rants.

I was going to say that Buddhist innovation has always started with a creative misreading of scripture. You need to understand what problem the author was trying to solve in their historical context, and find an analogy with the problem you have in your historical context.

(This requires understanding scripture as written by people struggling with historically-situated cultural problems, rather than Ultimate Truths From God. I think most Buddhist innovators, going back 2000+ years, have at least semi-understood this.)

So you deliberately misread the text as suggesting solutions to your different problem. If there’s a structural analogy that works, this is productive. Especially when you try to turn it into a new way of meditating.

Exhibit A is the invention of modern meditation by creatively misreading Pali Abhidhamma, which is speculative metaphysics, as if it were meditation instructions, which it isn’t.

In a close parallel, early tantra was invented in large part by misreading Mahayana Buddhological metaphysics as meditation instructions. (It’s interesting to speculate about why this worked, in both cases, but it would just be speculation…)