Coda: Hārītī often holds a pomegranate (as above), the "apple" that Adam and Eve eat in the Garden of Eden. Pics: Persephone tempted by Hades, and Mary with child, both featuring pomegranate.

Hārītī takes her iconography from Tyche and Demeter, and their Scythian equivalents. Mythic conversion is outer symbolic of a key inner practice in Vajrayāna, namely turning of bewildering confusion and habitual reactivity into timeless awareness and compassion. /

Vajrayāna has dozens of major and hundreds of minor mudrā, many secret. Ofc, every gesture imaginable has a sacred or secular meaning. Whether blessing or curse, prayer or profanity, it's emptiness to form and out into space. A sign, a seal. Check the etymology of "behave." /

Similarly with holding thumbs. It's superstition, or symbolism at best. It cannot possibly be a somatic way of shaping energy and recollecting one's mind without thinking or forcing attention.

> Note 3: there's a better take on this layered, messy thingy – quite a few senior teachers in any yāna are aware & skillful, doing what they can. There's an unacknowledged, unserved demand for such guidance. Meanwhile, consensus will do what it does best – play ball for perks. /

> Note 2: ofc most people don't look for these in teachers (ofc most teachers wouldn't know what or how to do) and when they do there's a ton of problems on both sides. In its legitimacy seeking, Consensus Buddhism chose to be part of [problem in] modern desacralization. >

> Note 1: meditation is made to sound more accessible than observance, art, and ritual, even tho minority of Buddhists ever meditated à la cold turkey with any genuine result. Plus, outlook / view is *not* "scholarly philosophy" by any stretch etc. >

> Also, consistently desacralized & psychologized: samadhi, insight, vows & oaths, compassion, mandala, mind (!), body (!), emptiness, awe & wonder, purification, bliss, grace, consecration, sacred beings, mystical birth & death & rebirth... the list goes on. /end

> Plus a few intense qualities arising in practice but regularly underplayed like faith, devotion, reliance, enthusiasm, fervour, ardour, heightened sensory awareness, visions (too many skt to list)...

Mostly cuz trying too hard to not sound like a religion. Or mystical path.

Paths, maps, stages do help, imperfect as they are, territory as they're not. If it's a process, there's no skipping. Take 8-fold path in reverse & be the train wreck. Also, whether it's oneself or loved ones, know by fruits. It's ok to err. It's better to learn. Good luck./

Mindfulness, vipassanā, jhāna, basic ethics, good or bad, are apples & oranges & avocados, depending on mode. "All fruits!" does zero to help & ∞ to obfuscate, thus failure. At culture level, tower-of-babel mess. Any yāna coming blind into this wherever will fail across modes. >

State chasing can be good or bad ¹therapy – always bad ³mystical. Group hopping, insight illness, king-of-the-hill taboo (yikes!) are used in discourse without addressing this within/between meta fallacy. Just so, ¹shift is not ³shift. Call it what you like, then live with it. >

Follow up. ¹-²-³modes (or more) can fail within & between at discrs level. To make sense, look within mode, and between modes. "Rearranging deck chairs on titanic" may refer to bad therapy vs good therapy, but also used to separate therapy *from* mystical practice. Know which. >

How hard is good? Just hard enough to respect, not so hard to fear it – doable. Noone to impress, no enemies to defeat. A good edge challenges motivation, skill, and capacity, yet isn't overwhelming. Consistent and sustainable, one day a time, a long game. Again, balance.

Note: academics, translators, even teachers-who-know-stuff, regularly flying blind in this semantic haze, must be aware of it, right? Well, the meaning of "aware" depends on *their* motives and aims. Never assume.

> mindful awareness, a key term, will have a diff meaning in each of these contexts, ditto devotion, purification, emptiness, compassion, power, or freedom. A tension persists at their intersection, exactly because of the resultant confusion. Motives & aims matter. Know yours. /end

> These & other modes may intersect somewhat, but their motives & aims are different. Beyond individuals, the 3 modes give rise to different adaptations in modern world (not just the West), as well as different meanings of terms and distinct practice languages. For example, >