[Buddha-l] The authentic Buddha

[John Chamberlin]

I have a question for those of you on this list that have an ongoing  
Buddhist Practice and have found refuge in that practice, and also at  
least flirt with Relativism. I seem to have this persistent and often  
frustrating belief that authenticity of a religious body of knowledge/ 
practice can only be “real” if it constitutes an absolute in the  
world…a Meta Theory in Postmodernist language. Strange I know, but  
nevertheless a source of great struggle for me, and although I  
persist in my practice, and seem to seldom stray from the Eight-Fold  
Path, it often feels as if I’m practicing an act of bad faith in the  
19th century Existentialist sense of the term. This bad faith coupled  
with my long-standing attraction to all forms of Relativism in  
general, results in producing a rather breezy religious refuge for  
me.  The Question: How does one find authenticity in any system of  
beliefs/practices if there are no absolutes? 
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