who are your spiritual role models?

[Plenum]

have you looked at early buddhist texts like the pali canon? The amount of direct teaching and life details of gautama buddha make the new testament's jesus look like scratches on a cave wall.

hey, good point spero!

I guess I was a bit more clouded in my thinking, because of the huge amount of commentary and additions that have occurred in the buddhist tradition over almost 2500 years.

"It is known, that whenever the Buddha gave a discourse to his ordained disciples or lay-followers or prescribed a monastic rule in the course of his forty-five year ministry, those of his devoted and learned monks, then present would immediately commit his teachings word for word to memory. Thus the Buddha's words were preserved accurately and were in due course passed down orally from teacher to pupil. "

http://www.palicanon.org/