Using the Buddha's discourses correctly
In point of time, religious experience should come prior to religious interpretation but for the most part it doesn't. Still, one cannot, so to speak, reverse engineer religious experience by just reading the canon of Buddhism.
Who takes up the Meditation path should understand that religious literature is only a standard like a plumb line by which to measure their progress towards spiritual awakening. Underscoring this, religious literature cannot, of itself, awaken anyone as if reading a collection of the Buddha's discourses (sutra) given by the Buddha will suddenly awaken one from their deep sleep of ignorance.
On the opposite end, rejecting or not studying religious literature as if it were not a standard of experience is foolish. (Those new to Buddhism fall into this category.) How then can we know if our religious experience comports with the Buddha's own experience of awakening? Without the plumb line of the Buddha's discourses we will never know if our peak religious experiences are authentic as far as Buddhism is concerned. This becomes patently obvious when, for example, modern Meditations believe that awareness of the moment is enlightenment, or being in the here and the now, or just being aware. Nowhere in the Meditation canon are such experiences said to be enlightenment.
When we use the Buddha's discourses as standard by which to measure our own spiritual experiences we are using the Buddha's discourses correctly.
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