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@Jeroen said:

Now the Buddha said to “test the teachings”, which seems to me a more sensible approach, but how can you test them if you do not know them? If you come across a tradition with a large amount of teachings and you think it may be for you, are you going to need to study for years before you can definitely call yourself a member with views aligning to theirs?

They may be the only physical branch of the Sangha around. I think if the 4NTs are at the core, then teachings that don't resonate can be sort of put on the back burner. I guess it would depend on how fundamentally different the group is doctrine wise but I've found that some teachers lessons are in their actions more than in their words. Do they move the story forward? Do their actions bear fruit?

Or are you going to admit that there is no such thing as aligned views, only the absorption of limited amounts of teaching which you can make your own, that you can never call yourself a member of any tradition? You can only keep learning, but to say you are a Theravadan or even just a Buddhist may be going too far.

That's basically why I am non-sectarian though Buddhism to me is not a collection of teachings we take on faith but a process of progressive awareness. The 4NTs point out that suffering has a cause and so can be uprooted by addressing the cause. That can be tested and that's the progression.

Doctrines such as the Two Truths may be a bit more tricky to intuit but can be experiential through logic and scientific interpretation.

We are all unique aspects of life in various stages so it would be odd to see complete alignment in views. A whole can be divided infinitely and an awareness of self that depends on how another sees is not an authentic expression. Just to use examples we all may know, look at Thich Nhat Hanh as compared to H.H. The Dalai Lama as compared to Ajahn Chah. They end up coming to the same conclusion but take different ways to get there. Sometimes they contradict each other but the teachings themselves are mere pointers to the truth they would represent all too well to an aspect of self in exact alignment.

I think Buddhism is more about how to see than what to see.

@FleaMarket said:

How does one consider how one relates to incoming phenomena?

I think understanding how some Zenists describe natural & deliberate thought as well as concentration & meditation...might help here.

As the moment to moment information of phenomena arrives as all that we see, hear, smell, taste, feel & think, the degree to which we allow that info to arrive, live and depart without trying to encourage, discourage or ignore it, is the degree to which that could be considered to be natural thought.
The degree to which we are unable to allow what we see, hear, smell, taste, feel & think to arrive, live, and depart without encouraging, discouraging, or ignoring it is the degree to which we are fostering deliberate thought.

In formal meditation, when natural thought is occurring then there is nothing to be done.
When deliberate thought is noticed then it's simply time to return directly to whatever the baseline starting point of the meditation is again. (eg, the following of the breath)
Continue with this baseline just as long as it takes to notice that the phenomena passing through is no longer actively being molested by our habituated inclinations.

Here you are sidestepping the mind's habituated attempts to assert the production and control over its storytelling and forcing the mind to start sharing more equal portions of life's stage with the other sense gates.

It's also important not to fall into the trap of considering natural thought as good and deliberate thought as bad.

Deliberate thought is a necessary preliminary concentration skill required to develop the baseline of one's meditation that one starts and returns to when needed.
Meditation is just what's left when deliberate thought is not being needed.

Some noodling from a zafu

Human nature, which has us rate a spiritual path in terms of whether we feel we are continuing to progress upon it or not, is just another dream about the dreamer.

If an awakening from this dream is what we'd prefer then consider instead how one relates to any incoming phenomena rather than deliberately attempting to align one's views to anything.
Emulating some part of the Dharma functions like an aircraft controller trying to keep a pilot, who is too nervous to land his plane, within sight of a landing strip so when the plane finally runs out of fuel, that pilot has the best chance of surviving that forced landing. This is what many teachers of the Dharma often think that they are doing. For many students, depending on their present karma, this is the best teaching of the moment for where they are.

I think though that it's usually safest to only recommend that folks hold teachings as possibilities best left to their best attempt at an unbiased observation. A thousand more mirages of water appear to the thirsty than to anyone whose thirst has been quenched. Would you rate the many sights a dehydrated observer reports of water over the observation of one adequately hydrated observer? Who is more likely to know what is a mirage of water and what is actually drinkable.

All Dharmas are simply what's revealed when we get ourselves out of their way. They are not so much the manufacturing of truth as they are what is left when we learn how to stop leaving our responses to all passing phenomena in the hands of our dreamer's storyline.

I think there does need to be a certain amount of blind trust at the beginning. Most people seem to come to Buddhism looking for some sort of spiritual help in their life and they see something in the people who practice it that tells them there may be something here worth checking out.

Then I think we learn about the tradition and take things on board. I've pretty much always been told if there was something I didn't understand or agree with it was alright to set it aside.

Early on I took refuge vows and considered myself a Buddhist, I more readily looked for reasons to believe the teachings were true. As I aged and learned more outside of the tradition I saw that what is true isn't so simple. That many things fall into the blind men and the elephant analogy and others likely post hoc arguments explaining why something they already believe to be true is.

At any rate, learning is a life long process and things we once thought true we later think otherwise and vis versa. And the more you know the more you realize you don't know. So I agree with most of your last paragraph, but would say its fine to have some reasonable conviction in a set of knowledge such that one is willing to make a commitment to it, at least on the provision that it isn't later shown to be mistaken.

It strikes me that in a lot of traditions you are expected to take a body of teachings “on faith”. You are supposed to commit without knowing exactly what these teachings are, usually you find out about them afterwards from some kind of book. Even in buddhism I remember from my early days at the Gelug Tibetan Buddhist temple that we got a “basics course” and were told that a lot of the topics covered were elaborated in these little booklets written mostly by the Dagpo Rinpoche, which we were assured we could borrow.

Now the Buddha said to “test the teachings”, which seems to me a more sensible approach, but how can you test them if you do not know them? If you come across a tradition with a large amount of teachings and you think it may be for you, are you going to need to study for years before you can definitely call yourself a member with views aligning to theirs?

Or are you going to admit that there is no such thing as aligned views, only the absorption of limited amounts of teaching which you can make your own, that you can never call yourself a member of any tradition? You can only keep learning, but to say you are a Theravadan or even just a Buddhist may be going too far.