Much of the original literature of Buddhism (usually referred to as the "Pali canon") reflects a culture of response to Gautama's considerations at a lesser level than that of Enlightenment. That is, the original literature embodies responses to Gautama and not merely the ultimate Teaching of Gautama, and those responses are largely characteristic of the beginner's mind.

The culture of practice described in the Pali literature of Buddhism is primarily monastic and associated with a rudimentary form of practice. It is the practice of programmatic strategies of self-purifying activity that are intended to bring an end to desire and the subsequent generation of negative effects or states of phenomenal being. That practice was to be carried out in great detail in every level and moment of functional, personal, and relational existence. And it was presumed that only after a long period of such discipline (even after many lifetimes of self-purifying discipline) would Nirvanic Enlightenment be attained.

The problem created by the dominance of this beginner's conception of the Way is that it suggests a conception of Enlightenment that is conditional and indirect. It suggests that Enlightenment (or Realization of the Nirvanic Condition) is a conditional effect of phenomenal activity (or a state that can somehow be caused by action).

Gautama Awakened in a moment of perfect intuition that was indeed preceded by self-purifying activity, but it was founded on insight (or radical understanding) alone. Those who considered his Dharma or Teaching were mostly beginners. Attention and energy were not sufficiently free in them to represent a capability for direct Realization of the Nirvanic or Transcendental Truth. Therefore, they were offered a progressive Argument and a progressive practice of the Way, in the form of the "Noble Eightfold Path," a complex system of behavioral rules, and so forth. And that culture of progressive Argument and practice later became the basis for a complex systematic analysis of the "dharmas" (or constituents of phenomenal existence) and a Way of practice that included routines of analytical meditation.

Gautama's own ultimate consideration or insight was most simple and direct: Conditional existence (apparent as the phenomenal self and the phenomenal not-self) is inherently painful (or disturbed) and unnecessary. This insight permitted Gautama to Awaken suddenly and spontaneously into the Transcendental Samadhi or most profound Realization of the most prior "unborn," or unconditional Reality. And it is this insight and intuitive Realization that is the core of Gautama's Teaching.

The Hinayana (or Theravada) tradition of Buddhism has continued to maintain the progresive culture of self-purifying activity as the necessary means of Nirvanic Enlightenment. But the Mahayana erudition began as a philosophical reaction to the conceptions associated with the progressive method. The original Mahayana philosophy was based upon the granting of dominance to Gautama's core Teaching—the Teaching of radical insight leading directly to Awakening. And the meditative schools of the Mahayana (such as Ch'an and Zen) are all devoted to this most direct form of the Way.

The great Mahayana philosophers saw that the conception of a progressive Way was founded on un-Enlightenment, or the tendency to be serious about concepts and conditions that should simply be understood and directly transcended. They were well aware that people must generally grow (or gradually release energy and attention for the ultimate Realization) through a difficult and even prolonged regimen of disciplines and learning situations, but the Mahayana philosophers were not willing to allow the practical necessity of progressive discipline to transform the philosophical conception of Enlightenment into that of a conditional Realization. Therefore, they proposed Enlightenment as a matter of direct knowledge, radical insight, or intuitive Wisdom—rather than as the effect or result of self-purifying action.

The Advaitic (or non-dualist) tradition is also associated with a radical consideration of Enlightenment as a matter of direct insight and intuition rather than as the result or effect of action. Indeed, this insistence upon the Way as "knowledge" rather than as action is one of the most fundamental Arguments of Advaita Vedanta. The Vedantic Emanationist schools of the first five stages of life are all basically dualistic, and they always advocate progressive forms of the Way, founded on action and the results of action, that will eventually produce "Realization" in the form of terrestrial contemplations, phenomenal rewards, and cosmically mystical states of one kind or another. But the sixth stage schools of Advaitism advocate only direct "knowledge" (or insight and intuition) rather than progressive action. Therefore, the ultimate consideration or insight of the Emanationist tradition is, like that of Gautama, simple and direct: Conditional existence (apparent as the phenomenal self and the phenomenal not-self) is only an unnecessary or merely apparent disturbance in, to, and of Transcendental Consciousness.

The sixth stage Advaitists, like the philosophers of the Mahayana, certainly offer a culture of progressive disciplines that generally correspond to the first five stages of life, but that culture of discipline is not directly associated with Enlightenment or Self-Knowledge. Rather, as in the Mahayana schools, that beginner's culture is regarded to be simply an ordinary means of preparation (or the preliminary effort devoted to the release of energy and attention from the stream of phenomenal limitations), after which the primary and direct exercise of intuitive insight becomes the basis of practice. And it is only that ultimate practice that qualifies philosophically to be the true Way in the Advaitist tradition.

Therefore, both the Buddhist and the Advaitist traditions are historically associated with a radical or ultimate philosophy of practice. It is the Way of (1) direct insight into the status of conditional existence, and (2) direct intuition of the Transcendental or Unconditional Reality. Gautama's form of the Way is based primarily on moment to moment inspection of the event of self and not-self, until the merely conditional and unnecessary status of all of that becomes obvious and, on that basis, Transcendental Awakening appears spontaneously. The Advaitist form of the Way is based primarily on two exercises. First is the exercise of insight, done by locating the actual self, or the consciousness, which has no form, but merely witnesses the body-mind and its relations. And the second exercise is that of intuition, done by constantly remembering that consciousness until its Transcendental Status and the illusory or unnecessary status of self and not-self become spontaneously obvious. In either case, the Way is conceived in terms that transcend the cause/effect, subject/object, or self/not-self dichotomies of conventional and dualistic consciousness. Both traditions are basically opposed to any conception of Enlightenment as an effect or result of conditional causes (or actions). Therefore, in both traditions, all forms of practice that take the form of action (or the efforts of the first five stages of life) must be understood to be conventionally useful and even inevitable disciplines that belong only to the preliminary, preparatory, or beginner's domain of the Way. In all of the Buddhist and Advaitist schools, actions are regarded to be phenomenal, karmic, or effect-producing, but the Way is intended to transcend karmas, effects, births, deaths, and thus all actions. Therefore, the ultimate form of the Way involves a natural or free relaxation of attention from the plane of actions (or self-transcending efforts) and a direct resort to insight and intuition (which are inherently self-transcending).

The Way of the Heart is, likewise, a radical Way of observation, understanding, insight, and intuition. Its simple, direct, and ultimate consideration or insight is this: Conditional existence (or the play of the phenomenal self and not-self as a mortal machine, independent of perfect Happiness) is an unnecessary apparition created by the self-contraction (or contraction within and recoil from the Real Condition). The Way is to observe the self as contraction (rather than as entity or merely factual being), and re-cognize all the forms of the self-contraction, until the Transcendental or Divine Condition stands out as the Obvious. Thereafter (or in the seventh stage of life), it is simply a matter of Abiding in and as that Condition, tacitly and continually recognizing self and not-self in That. The practice may necessarily be associated at the beginning (and for a long time) with disciplines of the active and functional body-mind-self—but all of that is a "yoga of consideration" that gradually releases energy and attention from the binding concerns of the first five stages of life (and even the sixth stage of life). When energy and attention are profoundly free, understanding of the self-contraction and radical intuition of the Transcendental Condition appear in the form of a most profound and direct process in which Radiant Transcendental Being is Self-Revealed as the Obvious. And once there is the Awakening of the seventh stage of life, neither action nor the abandonment of action helps, supports, maintains, threatens, or dissolves the Awakened Realization—but the Power of Self-Abiding in the Transcendental Condition, recognizing all conditions (and all actions) as transparent, or merely apparent, unnecessary, and non-binding modifications of unconditional Happiness (or Radiant Love-Bliss), at least gradually reduces the activities of the body-mind to a state of motiveless simplicity (or apparent renunciation), and, finally, all conditions and all actions are Outshined in Radiant Transcendental or Divine Being.

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