Quotes about Followers

To be sure, there are great spiritual teachers among us.  However, all are human, so they are vulnerable to all of the same temptations and corruptions as the rest of us.  Perhaps we would be better off viewing spiritual teachers as entertainers.  To see them otherwise, often leads to our surrendering our common sense and distorting our boundaries.  Leaders cannot mislead us for long.  It is we, the followers, who mislead ourselves.

Many of us search for the answers, but in truth they are all around us. We don't always know how to home in on them. Religion isn't a prerequisite to finding God. Religion is merely a path but there are many paths. Some may try to tell you that their way is the only way but that is more a device created by people who want to attract and keep followers to a religion than an actual fact.

It is good to remember that the goal of Buddhism is to create Buddhas, not Buddhists, as the goal of Christianity is to create Christs, not Christians. In the same vein, my teachings are not meant to acquire followers or imitators, but to awaken beings to eternal truth and thus to awakened life and living.

When most are asked to quote their "I AM's," usually they come up with such things as: I am a farther, a male, an engineer, six-foot one, 160 pounds; or, a mother, wife, secretary, and so on. They have limited themselves to exactly what they are. Where are the men and women of today who will shout: I AM GREAT...I AM A LEADER? Where are the leaders of today? What has become of them? Why is this world made up of so many followers?

A light has dawned for me: I need companions, living ones, not dead companions and corpses which I carry with me wherever I wish. But I need living companions who follow me because they want to follow themselves— and who want to go where I want to go.