I am attracted to the idea of meditating upon the mind as a path to liberation, as I understand is emphasized in mahamudra. However, I dislike the idea of guru yoga, or meditating in reverence or worship towards living or recently deceased individuals, like the 16th Karmapa. Holding another person up on such a pedestal rubs me the wrong way, and I do not know if I can honestly practice guru yoga. (I wouldn’t mind meditating upon the Buddha. I understand you are supposed to imagine the guru as the Buddha, but I do not want to do that either.) Do you have any recommendations on what to do? Are there other schools that offer meditation upon the mind, but do not have such emphasis on the guru aspect? Similarly, I am discouraged by having to do so many prostrations, but this is not as discouraging as guru yoga.

Is it plausible or possible in Buddhist thought for a being to experience nirvana, enlightenment, without adhering to Buddhist thoughts or viewpoints? It it possible for people to receive true dharma from a not-Buddhist framework? From my standpoint, there are many people in the world from various traditions who practice deep meditation and live virtuous lives. It seems reasonable to me that in their practices they, too, come into the presence of the deepest grounds of being, and achieve profound realizations and transformations. Yet, if they are not Buddhist, they may not report back things like emptiness of self and all phenomenon, or reincarnation. They might instead discuss the soul, the self, God, for example. Hence my questions. In some Mahamudra texts, I have read things like “one must recognize the emptiness of the mind” in order to get to the most advanced levels. Is that really so? What happens if we get to the deepest levels in meditation, and we decide that there is not emptiness of the mind? I would imagine the answers are different for different schools of Buddhism. I am interested in specific schools’ thoughts, and general Buddhist perspective as a whole.