This has come up in another thread:
So how do we make sense of this, without becoming discouraged?Dhammanando wrote:Stentorian claims to the effect: “The true path was long lost, but thankfully through my personal reading of the Suttas I have rediscovered it. Re-opened are the gates to the Deathless!” are made by many Buddhist teachers. Yet it’s hard to find any two of them whose conception of the “true path” tallies.
But what is an actual viable alternative to this?That being so, what would be extremely foolish would be to embrace this or that that teacher’s approach merely on the strength of his making such claims; and especially if one’s embracing of it is in the spirit of Idam’eva saccaṃ mogham’aññan ti, “This alone is truth, all else is vanity!”
I find that the idea to come and see for oneself, however nice it may sound, doesn't really solve or help anything; and it's also not clear whether it really means a kind of free invitation as the phrase is sometimes used by Westerners.
People (and doctrines) of other religions, too, invites us to "come and see", but they, too, teach that their doctrine is self-evident, and it's we who "just need to look."Ehipassiko means 'calling one to come and see' the genuine Dhamma. This though does not mean that we should go out calling other people to come and see it. 'Ehi' refers to teaching the one listening to Dhamma and practicing it, so turn your heart to look inwards to where the truth is found.
Using more worldly terms, we can say that the truth is constantly proclaiming itself, constantly inviting and challenging — because of its candour and honesty it challenges us to, "look here!". This 'ehi!' invites you to look, rather than getting other people to come and see. How can others see, when they neither know the truth nor where to look for it. The truth is in themselves but if they don't search for it there then they are certainly not going to find the truth inside us.
Ehipassiko — the Lord taught us to look at the truth, the truth about ourselves that is right here.
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/thai ... astbr.html
Well, the fact is that all kinds of people teach this, so it's not helpful, unless we are to take the absurd trivial position that all religions are true.
How can we move past this?
Thank you for the discussion.