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Originally Posted by Shaunc
There's probably hundreds of different sects in buddhism. In that respect they make the Christians look like lightweights.
They all agree on basic teachings like the four noble truths and the noble eight foldpath. I practice my buddhism in a very simple way and I've picked the sect that's best for me but if for some reason I needed to change sects, for me it wouldn't be a major problem in my life.
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Yes indeed. The teaching as I heard it claimed that the dhamma can't be sectartian, and it can only regard the universal, so any member of any sect,
even Buddhists, have access to it.
In this sense no can actually be a Buddhist in any real sense, for that act of identification is sectarian in some way, but that in no way prevents anyone from being a member of sect that they determine to be suitable to themselves.
I have sat in with various sects, most of which I thought were pretty silly, but people were happy there, and they seemed to reap some benefits in their own way.
For example a Christian might visualise a Christ figure as shining divine grace upon them, and we might say that visualation is imaginary, of course it is, but the opening of grace is actual in its perceived affect.