It all resolves to the mind being our common essence, with the collective mind belonging to that of the first essence of creation. One bread, many slices. One blood, many veins. One mind, many thoughts. As the story goes, we will eventually all awaken to All in All, or each part realizing the whole. It's a larger process to know the unknowable, of which, we are all part.

I wouldn't blame Christian upbringing on all of it. I was brought up in a
Irish Roman Catholic enviroment and educated by Nuns yet at a very early age realised what I was being taught was not how I felt deep inside, there was more to it.
I personally think that you are where you are for a reason and when the time is right it will all come together like pieces of a puzzle, regardless.

The Student and Master is YOU!
 

When the student is ready, the Master appears. This aphorism has a twist most miss. We are both master and student. Our mastery in life brings our own enlightenment from within. In Zen, there are 10 directions. North, South, East, West, Past, Present, Future, Above as Below. These are nine. The missing direction is inside, or the only direction that mirrors the outside. Your mastery appears when your student is ready. Always. The answer is always in the question. Quest.

What irrationality are you referring too?

"When dirty water becomes clear,
No effort is required for the reflections of the sun and moon to appear"

Yes, but you have to be able to see the water...:smile:

Please elaborate

The Three Buffalo

The buffalo’s head sprouts horns
As he emerges from the weeds (relatives),
In a dream, he tries to speak
Of the valley of the timeless spring.
Although he has bathed in the fragrant waters,
I hit, saying, “Not Good Enough!
How will you impart strength to others?”

Buffalo one is a mud buffalo. It rears its horns as an uncontrolled Animal (OX) and appears covered in its own weeds. As it rises into Rajas from Tamas, it begins to enter clear water, rising off mud. The Water Buffalo is in a state of baptism, or entering the stream. From this, it reaches higher until it realizes something. It's Buddha Nature. From here, it becomes the domesticated White Buffalo, or the servant to the Family (BodhiSattva).

Compassion is imparting strength (previously uncontrolled) to others. Service. Each of the 10 OX herding pictures fit into this form 1 - 10, divided by the first 9 into threes. Tamas, Rajas and Sattva.

What I quoted from Sky in particular but also in general to construct similarities between different religions which is just a manifestation of grasping at a truth that cannot be found since it does not exist.
All just fabrications and mental fashionings.

I think grasping at them is the source of religions but otherwise they seem to point to that which can't be grasped. A symbol or reflection of the truth that cannot be grasped.
That's how I see it anyways