When it is seen clearly how the mind is delusion, then the rest of the teachings fall naturally from that observation.
It's an incredibly depressing religion. The premise is basically get off the wheel(of samsara) and exist or cease existing in Nirvana and or keep suffering.
The depression is assuming life has the lasting qualities we're seeking and continuing to be disappointed until we are crippled. People try and put that on Buddhism because they refuse to see it. The Buddha was actually offering an incredibly hopeful message: see this mass of aggregate sensations for what it is and be liberated, be truly happy without dependence on conditions, without dependence on the world to offer you anything.
All it takes is to see people, interacted with people who are living examples of this, paragons of whatever is furthest away from this "depression" you ascribe to Buddhism. They walk around with huge smiles on their face. Every interaction with them is pure love, pure compassion. They do not have bad days and here they are with nothing more than a robe and a bowl to their name.
May all people know real kindness, really happiness. I'll tell you here and now, what Sasha is peddling is not it. I strongly condemn what Sasha is offering and other teachers who assume the mantle of power for their own egos. He has abused his position of authority to distort the message of the Buddha, to bring confusion to the path and has brought confusion to his own life that is disharmonious, a life of more attachment not less, a life of imbalance not balance and he is passing out this message to anyone who will listen. This is very bad practice, very bad ethics, because he condemns not only himself, he condemns anyone who buys into his poison.
What do you consider the paragon of Buddhist practice? Maybe I can check them out online. I've hung around DhO and people complain that Buddhist practitioners have more of an emptiness dryness aspect to them as opposed to lively joyous qualities of other traditions like Advaita. I'm not impressed with Zen masters. They espouse very dry rigorous qualities and they don't appear to me carelessly joyous and happy.
You can if you're doing a "no true Buddhist" argument.
Those people wouldn’t for one second judge a person who wanted to practice a “less advanced” form of Buddhism. It’s all about what the person is ready for, according to them.
So anyways the vajryana is the racecar. The point of that metaphor wasn't to flesh out which schools corresponded to a sedan or anything, but more like to point out how few people drive racecars, how few tasks or challenges are well solved by racecars, how much training, respect, and caution you might want to have before you started driving racecars at full speed, the conditions under which you would consider driving a racecar, etc. etc. And like you said, there's no judgement for not driving a racecar -- if anything there's a lot of respect and/or demand for people to drive more practical vehicles.
tho idk, personally, even though in my material life I prefer a bicycle, in my spiritual life I'm still trying to train to drive the racecar, so maybe it needs an even less sexy anology.
Personally, I don't think there is a paragon of Buddhist practice. If you're looking for one I think you might be doing it wrong, so to speak. All three yanas have great teachers, just use your discernment as you follow your path.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E1%B9%ACh%C4%81nissaro_Bhikkh...
As a fraction of worldwide Buddhism, using a low end estimate of 488 million, that's about 1.3 percent.
So, by analogy, if you're looking for a Christian denomination that's about that size proportionally within the larger religion of Christianity: think of the Amish, the Mennonites, etc. (distinctive because of their dress). Numerically that's a close comparison. Maybe throw in the Quakers too. All together that's about the same size, fractionally.
The point is that, when you're dealing with such a small & unique subgroup, you run the risk of misunderstanding the larger group. You might have complaints about the Amish & the Quakers, but as a subgroup they are so small & unique that it seems a little off to use them as a proxy to criticize Christianity. I would suggest the same is true of Tibetan Buddhism as compared to Buddhism globally.
That is not the impression one gets from looking closely at the history of East Asia: numerous examples of mostly-Buddhist leaders and elites, and even states with Buddhism as a state religion / ideology, engaging in brutal wars of conquest, exploitation of the poor etc. Just like everybody else.
You can argue that this was all "not true Buddhism". But it's not a sustainable argument when this represents the majority of historical societies that self-identified as Buddhist and were acknowledged as such by basically everybody else.
In sheer body count, none rivals that of the Abrahamic religions and, unexpectedly to some, those with no religious or ethical framework at all.
I don't hate Abrahamic religions and I am not espousing hatred. But it starts to look like a false equivalence when people say look Buddhism has been violent too without taking stock of the numbers.
Look folks, I know it's vogue in a post post post world to deconstruct all the things but there's a reason why Buddhism has thrived for thousands of years producing good, kind people and rebel dharmas have withered on the vine. Yes, there are exceptions but overall, it's been wildly effective as a method for awakening that also spares others violence. That said, there are good rebel dharma people out there like Daniel Ingram who do promote ethics as an essential cornerstone of practice (and it is, try it).
The Twitterati of dharma are not it. They do not come bearing the gift of conscious revolution, they come bearing more poisoned seeds of self delusion because that's what Twitter thrives on: the grand illusion of Self thrumming to the crowd of their creation.
In this particular article, Sasha declares that endgame meditation looks like more neuroses, pride and immoral acts and that's the dirty secret of the community. Well, yes, when your community looks like Twitter and you think you've endgamed Buddhism, that is what it will look like because you are not actually attained in anything other than building shrines to self.
Sasha then declares at the end that one should build strong attachments to things and allow them to wound you, the exact opposite of craving and bondage, which the Buddha asks us to avoid. This person is playing games with the Buddha, playing games with dharma, and writes for a crowd that will pay them to continue playing these games.
My ultimate point here, which weaves in with some of the rebukes I've been writing lately here, is more focus needs to be placed on fundamentals and really grokking them with the aid of actual accomplished teachers who have spent decades endgaming your chosen practice. People of real ethical fiber. People who do not need your money to continue existing, do not want it, and have no motive to take it. People like Thannisaro Bhikku [2] or honest to God forest monks or other renunciates who demonstrate supreme compassion, generosity, and whose actions are blameless. These are people worthy of giving advice on the topic.
[1] https://sashachapin.substack.com/p/my-recent-divorce-andor-d...
[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E1%B9%ACh%C4%81nissaro_Bhik...