Without a Teacher: Do I Need a Teacher to Be Buddhist?
By John Pendall Like most red-blooded Americans, I am quite stubborn when it comes to what I perceive as subjugation. This stubbornness has led me from Zen teacher to Zen teacher, usually dispersed with periods of lackluster practice and cognitive dissonance in between. But it is entirely possible to practice Buddhism without a formal teacher. Now before anyone reading this starts throwing stones at my ridiculously large head, I respect Dharma teachers. Dharma transmission and monasteries have kept Buddhism alive throughout the millennia. In some cases, formal teachers were heavily persecuted by the governments of the countries...
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