Question: “How do I know when I can call myself a Buddhist? I’m still studying but it resonates with me so strongly, but I don’t want to call myself a Buddhist but be ignorant.”
“Technically” and traditionally, you can call yourself a Buddhist when you’ve studied with a teacher at a temple for at least a year and have taken the five precepts in an official ceremony. That’s in Mahayana Buddhism, though. If you go to a Theravada temple, you can pretty much walk in and take the precepts. Hah. Half kidding.
I wouldn’t call yourself Buddhist even if you’ve been a devout for ten years. Calling yourself anything and having yet another “title” defeats the purpose of what your practice (in Buddhism) is supposed to eradicate; ego and identity. The whole point of Buddhism is to realize that you are not John Doe, you are not grown up and independent, and you are not the “person” you think you are. But that you are simply a being stuck in another cycle of rebirth in this body people call John Doe. That you are not independent, because you are dependant on the people who make the food you eat, oil field workers to supply the gas you put in your car, and the general public for giving your company work at https://syntheticurinereview.com/monkey-dong/ so you can be employed, get paid, and buy food and gas.
I don’t call myself Buddhist. I have to sometimes to give “direction” of what my practice is, but everyone knows me as being the “nice, sometimes inappropriately honest, and spiritual” person that just happens to go to a Buddhist temple, study Buddhism, and writes a Buddhist blog and book. No one needs to know what you are, nor do you need to announce it to the world. As long as you know what you’re practicing and why you’re practicing it, that’s all that matters.
Smile and be well!