What Buddha Taught

The Buddha taught enlightenment. 

He did not teach that we will never be depressed. 

He taught us not to be defeated by it. 

He did not teach us how to avoid suffering. 

He taught us to meet affliction and lively nobly, so that suffering is not unnecessarily multiplied. 

There is suffering enough in the world. 

He did not put himself above us. 

He was a man who never claimed divinity. 

He showed a way to live with reality, with all its alternations and with all the emotions and internal changes that result from them, and to see that this is our path.

*David Brazier
The Feeling Buddha
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Dharma practice

"...dharma practice is concerned not with proving or disproving theories of self but with understanding and easing the grip of self-centeredness that constricts body, feelings, and emotions into a tight nugget of anguish." Stephen Batchelor

In Joy & Oneness of Peace.