Buddhists traditionally consider themselves the only ones authorized to determine what constitutes true Buddhism, because their understanding of truth is not based on discursive description or theoretical reasoning, but on what they call direct spiritual experience.

Buddhist Truth: Beyond Discursive Boundaries

Buddhists traditionally consider themselves the only ones authorized to determine what constitutes true Buddhism, because their understanding of truth is not based on discursive description or theoretical reasoning, but on what they call direct spiritual experience. In other words, within the Buddhist paradigm, true knowledge cannot be fully conveyed through words or analysis – it is grasped through a personal inner transformation and experience that defies complete description.

In this system of criteria, the authenticity of Buddhist teaching is determined by the outcomes of subjective spiritual experience experienced within the framework of Buddhist practices themselves, rather than through an external, objective assessment. Thus, Buddhists believe that only those who live according to the traditional teachings and rely on such verified experience have the right to claim what true Buddhism is. However, contemporary study of Buddhism, which predominantly relies on historical-cultural analysis, linguistic research, and comparisons between different traditions, does not always align with these strictly defined conditions of subjective truth inherent in the inner experience of Buddhists.

To summarize, one could say: on one hand, according to the internal criteria of Buddhist understanding, truth cannot be established through external discourse, but only through personal spiritual experience—this grants Buddhists the exclusive right to define what constitutes authentic teaching. On the other hand, contemporary academic study of Buddhism often focuses on textual, historical, and cultural analysis, which is not always capable of fully conveying those experiential criteria that traditional Buddhists insist upon.

Supporting citation(s):
"When studying Buddhism, we learn that '...no Buddhist system has ever been regarded as a teaching proclaiming the truth in the final instance,... the Buddhist view is that truth cannot be grasped discursively, nor described within the categories of discursive thought, nor expressed by means of discourse.' We may agree that any description of truth does not capture its full entirety, but not that the existing expression of objective reality is untrue simply because it represents an expression of truth rather than truth itself." (source: link txt)

"This is about Buddhism. Moreover, Buddhism teaches that spiritual experience is the criterion for the authenticity of any spiritual teaching, and of Buddhism in particular: '...psychotechnology and yogic experience have always played a decisive and dominant role in Buddhism,... it is precisely the results of contemplation that laid the foundation of a given teaching and served as the criteria of its authenticity.' This view is not new, but essentially flawed: any spiritual experience contains elements of theoretical knowledge and is always interpreted based on the mystic's existing worldview assumptions, not to mention that mystical experience can be misinterpreted." (source: link txt)