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As usual I see a lot of sense in your standpoint @person, gassho

I think blind trust will be difficult to come by for westerners who have not been brought up in a buddhist tradition. Certainly for me there is a lot of resistance to concepts like karma and reincarnation.

But I see what you mean — that people see the inner beauty of the Buddhists, and feel that is possible for them as well, and are willing to set some of these more difficult-to-accept aspects of the tradition to one side. I remember making that compromise too. Its also true that the more you come across things that are true, the more you will be inclined to also believe the things you have set aside, or at least to let them be.

And while I agree it would be a beautiful thing to have confidence in a body of knowledge, I’m not convinced Buddhist knowledge is coherent enough to be considered as one body. Different books, different authors, different times, different levels of advancement. The best buddhist books I have read have been like mines with here and there the odd gem of a statement.

The thing is, my sense of progress in buddhism really levelled off, and I came across some things which made me seriously doubt the end goal. Thats what kicked off my second stage of seeking, casting the net wider for some different approaches.

@FleaMarket said:
What would be an example of natural thought that could not be determined as deliberate thought?

I thought about this and then my head hurt.

The last thing you want to end up as when watching your thoughts in formal meditation is what the Tibetans would liken to "a cat watching a mouse hole".
I know, isn't that a great image.

Our mind has had a lifetime of experience in creating and maintaining a storyline of its dominion over all other presentations of reality. Meditation is a means of weaning us off our habituated support for our minds maintenance program of that storyline. Any direct confrontation against our minds storyline will quickly introduce you to a master opponent so skilled in all the adversarial arts that you will have lost before you started.
This mind state is not something that can be out-thought or convinced to participate in a makeover of any substance.
The only passage I know to address the habituated conditioning of a ruling mind is to stop inadvertently conflicting with it on its home turf.
Because anything you hope to acquire in this process can easily become an attachment and be weaponized against you, I think the less delusive approaches to meditation are more through processes of renunciation.

The description of natural thought, as opposed to deliberate thought, was to present an alternative to the supposition of a need to align your views to someone else's.

I think meditation serves us much better as an acceptance of fluidity or the wider state of chaos itself than as something that can be solidified or codified.

@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.