This is all nice, but in reality it is just so much conceptual proliferation. Commitments are connected with a path. If you decide you are not going to follow that path, then what is the point of maintaining commitments to a path one is not following? None.Yontan wrote:There's no benefit to "worrying" about past commitments, but from our confused pov, the importance of maintaining prior commitments is not something to poo-poo and abandon. When we commit to and engage in a higher practice it encompasses the intent of the lower practice. It reminds us of the parable of the friends who made a boat to carry them to the island of gold and then carried the boat on their heads out of respect.
If we abandon prior commitments, it robs us of the power to commit. When we commit to a higher practice, we can feed all of our resolve into it and make aspirations that all previous dharmic committments be fulfilled in this practice, and that any failing of commitment will be mitigated by our even stronger current commitment. This keeps us from being lazy and from falling into the fault of abandoning the lineage.
M