One Dharma

This text is from The Excellent Path to Enlightenment. 

He says they are all the paths to Enlightenment, his is just one, there are others. I guess that begs the question, which route is best for you?

But I want to finish up on One Dharma.

On p. 137 of One Dharma Goldstein Writes, "Instead of "who's right?" the question becomes, "What  learn from this teaching? Can it help me free the mind from clinging?""

One Dharma p.183 "...in light of the One Dharma, there is a way of seeing all the different perspectives as a manadala of skillful means, each contributing to our liberation."

It's been said many times that Buddhism isn't a religion of belief, but a religion of practices. Meditating, chanting, prayer, ethics, devotional, confession, activism, generosity, aesthetics, adoption, veganism, and on and on... There is no orthodoxy, there is only orthopraxy, and even that is among various teachers. Every teacher creates a new dharma.

This is not to say we can't have clear expression of a sangha, an order, a practitioner, a teacher. I like to think my blog as a record of my explorations, mostly cultural, of the world around Buddhism, with interjections about practice and sangha, etc.

One Dharma p. 191, "The foundation of nonsectarian Western Buddhism is the understanding that whatever the various descriptions of awakening or the path may be, the words themselves are not the experience. It is only in our own direct realization that transformation occurs. Freedom is the vital issue, not our ideas about it."  

This introduces the idea of Western Buddhism, what ever that will develop into, if we don't blow ourselves up because of lame guy pissing contents that involve nuclear weapons. Talk of virtues is fine and all that, but what you do matters most.

As you can see, I'm moving onto my next Dharma book. Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche has a fair amount of books you can read. I'm not sure if I'm going to do the practices, but waking up and saying what the photo has above wouldn't be a bad practice.