Last week I received an email from someone asking if a certain Buddhist sect was “True Buddhism.” Looking back now, I wish my response had been more like this:
True Buddhism is a way of life to help people wake up to who they originally are and to live out their true self.”
Anything that does that is True Buddhism.
We can find dozens of other equally great and laconic statements about Buddha-dharma. But this is the one that resonates with me at the moment. It’s from New Mahayana: Buddhism for a Post Modern Era by Akizuki Ryomin. I read it some twenty-five years ago. He had some interesting things to say but much of it was specific to Japan. He was trying to reform Buddhism by creating a new movement and his program involved chanting the title of the Maha Prajna-Paramita Sutra as a sort of universal mantra.
One other thing I remember from the book: he says it is bad luck to meet a monk in his robes in the first three days of the year. Keep that in mind.