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Your Inner Guru Is Secretly Wrestling With Your Outer Mind

Whoever wins will determine your destiny.

Rami Dhanoa
Orient Yourself
7 min readOct 29, 2024

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Photo by Amu Juntraparn on Pexels.

My meditation journey began when I signed up for a 10-day silent Vipassana course in 2019. By the third day, I was existentially blown away.

I saw how deep the mind could go, and how much work was needed to clear the obstacles to that depth.

There was just one slight problem.

With all the traumatic junk in the subconscious, was it really as simple as sit for two hours a day?

I realized, slowly, that this tradition had an anti-studious nature: they emphasized direct practice, and actually looked down on excessive intellectual theorization.

Meanwhile, Tibetan Buddhism — arguably the most complete and diverse form of the Buddha’s teachings found anywhere on Earth — compared such an approach to someone trying to climb a mountain without limbs.

Study gives you the grip and foothold necessary to progress!

Fast forward to today: I’m attending a cutting-edge English-medium ‘condensation’ of the traditional 16 year Buddhist monastic education program. This time, it’s just 3 months a year for four years — the absolute bare minimum a practitioner would need.

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Orient Yourself
Orient Yourself

Published in Orient Yourself

Eastern philosophy crafted for Western modernity — so you’re able to fertilize your inner toolbox when you need it most.

Rami Dhanoa
Rami Dhanoa

Written by Rami Dhanoa

Re-thinking human potential with meditation & Indic philosophy.

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