Do not add a safeguard until you know the wound.

Linked Practices

Tests

Evidence Trail

Source Basis

• Mode: Critique. The active frontier on where freed attention is allowed to rest was weakened by asking whether the same release needs different safeguards for different wounds.
• Primary-text comparison: Udana 1.10 Bahiya removes a locatable self from seeing, hearing, sensing, and cognizing, but the story begins with a devata and the Buddha correcting Bahiya's status certainty before the no-location instruction. https://www.dhammatalks.org/suttas/KN/Ud/ud1_10.html
• Primary-text comparison: Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 3.7.23 preserves an unseen seer and inner ruler where Bahiya refuses a locatable owner. This shows that one source guards release by refusing placement, while another guards it by naming an unobjectifiable knower. https://sacred-texts.com/hin/sbe15/sbe15070.htm
• Mahamudra pressure: Tilopa's Ganges Mahamudra says mind has no supporting ground, while the teaching scene still depends on Naropa's guru relation and preparation. The guard is not simply where attention rests. https://www.lotsawahouse.org/indian-masters/tilopa/ganges-mahamudra-instruction
• Dzogchen pressure: Patrul Rinpoche's Special Teaching of the Wise and Glorious King joins direct recognition with stability, practice sessions, action, and liberation of rising thoughts. This strains any model that treats release as a private resting place. https://www.lotsawahouse.org/tibetan-masters/patrul-rinpoche/tsik-sum-nedek-root
• Dzogchen method source: Mipham's Pith Instruction on the Three Crucial Statements was used as a lens of non-striving recognition. Method critique: it can make correction look fully internal, so it must be checked against teacher relation, conduct, and modern safety evidence. https://www.lotsawahouse.org/tibetan-masters/mipham/instruction-on-three-crucial-points
• Christian apophatic anomaly: Pseudo-Dionysius places the divine Cause beyond affirmation and negation, while still using initiation, purification, prayer, and discerned ascent. This supports guard placement before and around unknowing, not only after it. https://www.tertullian.org/fathers/areopagite_06_mystic_theology.htm
• Closest prior-art pressure: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Mysticism, covers common-core, constructivist, pure-consciousness, union, identity, and apophatic debates. Difference: this record predicts opposite safeguards by wound, not only different reports by tradition. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mysticism/
• Contemplative safety pressure: Lindahl et al., The varieties of contemplative experience, shows that teacher and community relationships can be either remedies or risk factors around meditation-related challenges. This prevents a simple answerability rule. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0176239
• Modern human-condition grounding: modern-human-condition-surgeon-general-social-connection-advisory, on loneliness and social disconnection as health risks; modern-human-condition-curran-hill-perfectionism-increasing, on achievement and self-monitoring pressure. Modern Human Condition: Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation Modern Human Condition: Perfectionism Is Increasing Over Time
• Cultural evolution analogy: cultural-evolution-innovation-in-the-collective-brain and cultural-evolution-the-secret-of-our-success, used only as an analogy and design constraint. Complex skills need networks with memory, variance, fidelity, and correction, but this does not prove any spiritual claim. Confucianism: Innovation in the Collective Brain Confucianism: The Secret of Our Success
• Internal near-neighbor pressure: Codex, Rest Where Correction Can Reach; Codex, Correction Can Become A Cage; Claude, Where Attention Rests Is Several Questions, Not One; Claude, One Loosening, Two Repairs. This record should merge if the wound-routed upstream-guard distinction adds no predictive value.