[jonesboy]

Originally Posted by Rain95

How do you know your opinion is true? What is it based on? Can you name one objective source that would support this opinion of yours?

None of the people you listed ever claimed to be a Buddha.

Tolle, Mooji, Watts, Merton, Krishnamurti, Ram Dass, Yogananda, Castenada, Rajneesh, Ramana Maharshi, Bede Griffith, Khandro Rinpoche, it's everywhere in movies, music, and on and on...one could argue most of those were influenced by Buddha's teachings though. And lets not forget Plato, Aristotle, and Socrates

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None of these people have ever claimed to being even close to being a Buddha.

Tolle, Mooji, Watts, Merton, Krishnamurti, Ram Dass, Yogananda, Castenada, Rajneesh, Ramana Maharshi, Bede Griffith, Khandro Rinpoche

Tolle had an open heart experience, Watts doesn't even claim to be an Arhat, Krishnamurta, Ram Dass and Yogananda follow a different tradition and never even claimed One like Siva. Krishnamurta tried but he was also addicted to smoking. A clear sign of attachments which is well below an arhat.

Ramana followed and preached Advaita Vedanta which is very different than Buddhism. Advaita Vedanta and Ramana specifically preached that silence was the goal. In Buddhism that is only one side of the coin. Void/silence = form is the other side.. Actually it is void=form and form=void are one and the same.

Khandro Rinpoche is a Rinpoche and has never claimed to be a Buddha.

Castenada was a shaman which is a level 6, 3rd eye guy. Never claimed to be a Buddha.

Plato, Aristotle, and Socrates were philosophers which is about thinking. It is completely different than the realization that the Buddha was teaching.

Here is the Buddha on the subject.

Then Mahamati the Bodhisattva-Mahasattva spoke to the Blessed One, saying: You speak of the erroneous views of the philosophers, will you please tell us of them, that we may be on our guard against them?

The Blessed One replied, saying: Mahamati, the error in these erroneous teachings that are generally held by the philosophers lies in this: they do not recognize that the objective world rises from the mind itself; they do not understand that the whole mind-system also arises from the mind itself; but depending upon these manifestations of the mind as being real they go on discriminating them, like the simple-minded ones that they are, cherishing the dualism of this and that, of being and non-being, ignorant to the fact that there is but one common Essence.

On the contrary my teaching is based upon recognition that the objective world, like a vision, is a manifestation of the mind itself; it teaches the cessation of ignorance, desire, deed and causality; it teaches the cessation of suffering that arises from the discriminations of the triple world.

http://buddhasutra.com/files/lankavatara_sutra.htm