A Q&A with C. Pierce Salguero

Author photo: C. Pierce Salguero. Cover design: Carol Chu

Asian spiritual practices, from yoga and tai chi to qigong and mindfulness meditations, permeate our culture. But these practices are often casually used in the West, and sometimes little understood. As informative as it is inviting, C. Pierce Salguero’s A Lamp unto Yourself introduces “spiritual explorers” of all experience levels to embodied Eastern spiritual practices. Employing decades of personal and professional experience with Asian spiritualities, Salguero explains the origins of key Asian spiritual practices. He grounds them in their historical and philosophical contexts and provides information on how the reader can begin and deepen their personal practices. In this self Q&A, he emphasizes the importance of exploring more than one practice and tradition to find the one or ones most aligned with your spiritual journey.

What was your primary goal in writing A Lamp unto Yourself?

My primary goal in writing the book was to honor the complexity and diversity of spiritual experiences. Too often, spiritual traditions try to establish a singular “truth” or path, which can be limiting and even dismissive of other valid perspectives. The book is meant to be inclusive, providing a way to map different kinds of spiritual experiences without privileging one over another. It’s also intentionally ontologically neutral—it doesn’t claim to describe ultimate reality but rather focuses on how people experience and interpret the world through different lenses.

This model of spirituality fully acknowledges that, based on our unique dispositions, conditionings, and configurations, what gets activated and highlighted for each of us will vary widely. For some, the somatic energetic dimension may be central—the whole journey is experienced as a process of energy awakening. For others, non-dual glimpses of oneness and transcendence of self are the primary thread. Some may find heart-opening and ancestral healing to be interwoven into every aspect of their process, while others touch on it only minimally. The variations are endless.

By shifting from a standardized, one-size-fits-all idea of spirituality to a pluralistic framework, we make space for the full range of human capacities to manifest and express themselves in infinitely diverse ways. We’re no longer holding everyone to the same template but encouraging each person to attune to the threads most alive and active in their own experience.

How can spiritual communities honor the radical uniqueness of each person’s path while still providing meaningful guidance for the journey?

One of the great gifts of our time is a sort of “spiritual biodiversity”—the extraordinary depth and richness of expressions, modalities, and revelations that are available in the modern spiritual ecosystem. We are blessed with an unprecedented abundance of resources, and the opportunity to weave together elements from different traditions to discover what most resonates and catalyzes our unique being.

At the same time, this very proliferation can also foster a certain kind of confusion, overwhelm, and even spiritual materialism if not held in a proper context. In a world where the classical reference points and reality-checks are quickly dissolving, it can be all too easy to get lost in the spiritual supermarket, endlessly sampling exotic states and peak experiences without ever quite landing in an authentic awakening.

As such, I feel that spiritual friends, mentors, and communities have a more important function than ever, but one that requires a certain kind of departure from the traditional “top-down” model. Lamp suggests a new form of relational spiritual praxis, one that honors the intrinsic sovereignty and independent trajectories of each practitioner while also providing meaningful orientation and reflection drawn from across the spiritual spectrum.

This is the opposite of spiritual gatekeeping, when individuals or groups insist that their particular framework or thread is the ultimate truth and dismiss other perspectives. The book actively resists this by emphasizing ontological neutrality. It validates the relevance of multiple phenomenological experiences, each of which are the results of different kinds of practice. Rather than setting different perspectives or belief systems against each other, the book creates space for all of them to coexist. By doing so, it undermines the gatekeeping mentality and fosters an environment of mutual respect and openness.

Lamp argues that each of the traditional spiritual frameworks has its strengths and limitations, and understanding what each is designed to address can help you navigate them all more skillfully. The key is to recognize that no single spiritual framework can address all aspects of human experience. Having a broader model can help you integrate insights from multiple frameworks without feeling constrained by any one of them. This approach allows you to draw from the strengths of each tradition while remaining true to your own unique path. Over time, developing your own inner authority will help you navigate dismissive environments with resilience and clarity.

The book presents a framework that identifies multiple dimensions of spiritual experience, each representing a different way of engaging with and understanding reality. Different spiritual teachers or traditions might prioritize one of these aspects over others. What makes this book’s different approach significant is its refusal to impose a hierarchy or suggest that any one way is the “right” or “best” one. Instead, it’s designed to accommodate the wide variety of spiritual experiences people have. This openness is especially important in a world where many people draw from multiple traditions or have unique, individualized paths. It allows for a more comprehensive understanding of spirituality without the rigidity or exclusivity that often accompanies traditional frameworks.

How can I discern the skillful way to navigate my process and get support and guidance along the way?

There’s no singular answer, but the key starting point is to develop and trust your own inner sense of discernment and authority. Learn to check in with yourself regularly and sense what your own being is authentically calling for at each stage.

For some, that authentic call is to work intimately with a specific teacher or dive deeply into a particular tradition or practice lineage for a time. For others, it’s to sample more eclectically from different streams, gathering perspectives and finding what resonates. And for some, a more independent “DIY” approach of radical self-reliance feels most aligned. The common thread is learning to trust your own embodied sense of rightness and letting it guide your choices.

In general, I encourage seeking out teachings, practices, and environments that light you up and support the growth and aliveness of each of your key threads. Stay open and flexible, continually course-correcting based on your lived experience and shifts in your inner knowing. Find ways to keep accessing both the raw immediacy of your own embodied presence and reflections from the larger field of those walking a similar path. Let your understanding be informed by the wisdom in the traditions but not overly confined by it.

The independent path can be incredibly empowering and revelatory. But it’s also important to beware of its pitfalls. It’s easy to get lost in ungroundedness, inflation, or lack of mirroring. We’re interdependent beings and most of us need reflections and external support structures to keep integrating and stabilizing. So, part of the ongoing discernment is tuning into where you authentically need more relational holding and active guidance and where you’re being asked to trust your own inner knowing.

About the Author 

C. Pierce Salguero is a historian of Buddhism and Asian medicine, and a long-time practitioner of several different forms of Asian spirituality. He has a PhD in the history of medicine from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine (2010) and teaches Asian history, medicine, and religion at Penn State University’s Abington College, near Philadelphia. He is the author of many books on Buddhism and Asian medicine, including Buddhish: A Guide to the 20 Most Important Buddhist Ideas for the Curious and Skeptical. When he’s not working on a manuscript or teaching a class, you might find him traveling the world with his wife and kids, making huge batches of homemade Sichuan chili sauce or out on his back porch meditating on a cup of Tippy Yunnan.