You've said this a few times now.Nemo wrote: ↑Fri Jun 04, 2021 4:42 am Is the Dharma really the Dharma if you practice for 30 years and it produces no realization? Buddha was not a man who taught a religion. He revealed the natural state. In his awakening he thought, "this cannot be taught." The Dharma is a finger pointing at the moon, not the moon. I see very few truly realized practitioners. Would it not be logical to think that what they call Dharma is just a photocopy of a photocopy so smudged and illegible they can no longer find the moon? A cult of Buddha was not the awakened one's intention.
Disagree. He set up a machine to remember and preserve his instructions trusting there would be those who understood. The ones who don't, he accounted for - the ones who proceed with prasada. He didn't turn those people away. He made space for them in the Sangha. Made simple rules and instructions for them too.
The Buddha was a great leader of people. He was trained to be a general and a king. He understood and accommodated a lot more people than you give him credit for. I think you are selling short those organizational skills and capabilities of harnessing religious impulses in people to keep the teaching flowing.
The picture you draw is of a snobby yogi wannabe lacking compassion for others. That guy would have wandered up to the Himavat and disappeared into the forest and you never would have heard the name Gautama.