Can I consider myself Buddhist?

I guess OP shouldn't practice then? Is that what you are saying?

We all hold wrong views. We don't actually know what wrong views we hold, either. That's why we need to practice. We do not actually know for a fact that awakening is possible until such time as we awaken. We have to believe it's possible to really try to do it, but the point of believing it is not to be morally correct: it is to motivate us to do the work required to reach it.

Similarly, it may be that at the moment of awakening or at some moment after that, we directly see either that rebirth is a real phenomenon, or that it was a skillful teaching the purpose of which was to bring us to awakening. Before that moment, we neither know that rebirth is real, nor know that it is not. We have to motivate ourselves to practice either way, and it is not morally wrong or even incorrect to proceed on the assumption that rebirth is not a real phenomenon, when we have no proof either way.

So while from a doctrinal perspective, what you say is consistent with what many lineages teach, you are not correct in any meaningful way. You are simply asserting a doctrinal position, which may or may not be true. If you think it is true, and it helps you to practice, that is wonderful, but if insisting that it is true leads someone else to abandon practice, you have not served them with your insistence.

This is why we have to distinguish between what we have been taught, what is true, and what is skillful. There is no one answer that works in all contexts. Even if you have reached awakening, you still can't tell me that rebirth is a real phenomenon in any way that I can accept other than by simply trusting that you are not lying. So whether you tell me that rebirth is a real phenomenon or not must be motivated by your understanding as to what will help me, as a practitioner, not by your devotion to doctrine.

/r/Buddhism Thread Parent