You may choose to call yourself a Buddhist if you follow the path of Siddhartha Gautama, the man who was born into a royal family in 563 B. C. in the area that is now called Nepal. Early in his life, he realized his royal birth and extravagant wealth offered no more protection against sickness, death, and pain than the lowliest beggar received from his unenviable position in life.
The Buddha nature is not assumed or created by an individual, it is uncovered and realized. Everything and everybody has Buddha nature. Realization of this Buddha nature sets one upon the path toward what one may call enlightenment.
This is the realization of the validity of everything that is, and the illusory nature thereof. Rather than viewing the world in terms of good and bad, one begins to understand that the world cannot be without the dichotomy of what would be called the yin and yang, the dark and light; the material world that would not exist without the opposites.
Most people will attempt to ward off what they perceive to be the bad, or the dark, or the yin. In reality, it is the dance between the opposites that is life. Good would not exist without bad. Light would not exist without dark. Yang would not exist without Yin.
When a person understands this, they can begin to live their life in a manner to honor and accept the opposites, and to know that their existence in the material world would be impossible without the opposites. When a person transcends the yin and the yang, they can move on to pure enlightenment, which is nothing more than the ability to incorporate the opposites into their experience without discrimination, and cannot be accomplished within this material existence.
The person may choose to label oneself a Buddhist. The enormity, all-inclusiveness, and inter-dependence of everything and everyone may present a different perspective. When the significance of this realization is absorbed, the need or wish to label has become irrelevant.
Prosaically, a person who follows the path as described by Siddhartha Gautama can be called a Buddhist. The internalization of this realization is something much more awesome.
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