There is a Zen saying that teaches that teachings are like a finger pointing at the moon; the finger is not the moon, and unless the student looks beyond the finger towards what is being pointed at, nothing is gained. It’s a pretty common postmodern-pluralistic assertion that Religion, Philosophy, Spiritual Practice and New Age Metaphysics all point to the same thing. Some will even say that modern science -- cosmology, quantum physics and evolutionary biology -- point there as well. But usually that is a way of saying that all these things point to the thing I believe in. But all of these fields of thought and practice are analogous to each other -- they all address the same fundamental questions at the same level; only the perspective differs. If it’s attached to a hand then it’s a finger, not a moon.
