An Affirmation of My Choosing the Dhamma
I've bounced through many religions and spiritual systems over my decades of living. Some I stayed a while in, and some I just peeked in casually as an observer. A constant one lurking in the background has been Buddhism, but specifically the Buddhism described in the Early Buddhist Texts (EBTs).
I've taken refuge for many years now and the EBTs are my spiritual home. Yet I have this annoying tendency to explore new ideas in these areas even if I know I'm quite happy following the path that I already follow.
This weekend, I took a small course about learning a ritual from the Bön tradition, the native shamanism in Tibet. If you had put me in that class 20 years ago, I would have found it utterly fascinating, exotic, and wanting to learn more. But it fell completely flat for me. Not for poor instruction or not understanding every component, but it just did not ring my spiritual bell. Even felt a little disgusted, to be honest.
The Dhamma (Pāli for Dharma) has everything I need and the goals that I want to shoot for. Out of everything that I've explored, it has given me results, a direction, a sensible moral system, and much more.
For some time, that exploratory part of my mind has pushed me to look at different things even as my foundation in the EBTs and EBT-based practice grew stronger and stronger. Chasing rabbits this way and that to learn different things. Probably out of an old habit to be need to be seen as special (hello, gifted kid dynamic).
But now? I don't need any of the rest of it. I can be content knowing I have a good path sticking to the EBTs and following the Buddha's earliest instructions.
So that's what I'll stick with. Credit where it is due, if I hadn't taken that class then I probably wouldn't have been struck so hard with this realization.