- Joined
- Feb 2, 2010
- Messages
- 27,101
- Reaction score
- 12,359
- Location
- Granada, España
- Gender
- Male
- Political Leaning
- Libertarian - Left
... the idea there is as many forms as practitioners. I do not think this is the best way to put it, certainly everyone's spiritual journey, even in Christianity, is individual, but everyone also requires the support of a living religious form and tradition. If you completely try and turn such a religion into pick'n'mix then you will not get far.
Tradition is very important in all Buddhist thought. Each school, especially important in Zen, traces its teachings back through a line of masters to its foundations. If you follow a particular tradition, you will be aware of that lineage, but you are never expected to accept anything on faith alone. You must use your own reason, your own mind and you must meditate.
There is an extent to which one can 'pick'n'mix'. In doing so you may stray away from the traditional teachings of the school whose teachings you learned your practice from, but if that works for you, what's the problem? Without dogma, no one is going to say, "you aren't following our teachings, you are not a Buddhist, you must leave our school". There is no membership of schools, indeed most people who practice Buddhist teachings would never call themselves a Buddhist because doing so feeds into dualism, the sense of 'this' and 'other'. We are all the same, we are all part of one existence, so saying, "I am this" and "You are that" perpetuates the false perception of a world divided into individuals. The idea of the oneness of self and environment is fairly central in many schools of Buddhist teaching.
There's no merit placed upon affiliation to a particular school or tradition. I first learned about meditation and Buddhist practice from a monk connected to a monastery of Tibetan tradition. I found greater depth in study and practice with an order of monks from a Japanese Zen tradition, and I now practice a more Zen-like style of meditation and go on retreats at a Zen centre from a different lineage. I have been on retreat at monasteries of Thai and Khmer Theravada tradition and another of Chinese Chi-an tradition. No one was interested in knowing what my background in practice had been. They simply accepted and taught me the knowledge accumulated by their tradition. I was welcome to participate in their services and ceremonies without having to accept their philosophical viewpoints.
You could ask, therefore, am I a Buddhist. I would answer that I am nothing.