Rimé is a movement within Tibetan Buddhism in which one does not study just one school of Buddhism, but learns from many. The goal is to preserve the many teachings and traditions and also to eliminate sectarian views. Rimé is beneficial for Tibetan Buddhist practitioners, but the strength of Rimé is that it is also beneficial for all Westerners who practice Buddhism. This explanation comes from the website of H.H. the Dalai Lama:

“The tradition I follow places great emphasis on Lam Rim (the stages on the path to enlightenment), and it is said that the greatness of Lam Rim lies, among other things, in the fact that one can understand all traditions and sees that they are not contradictory to one another. I have noticed that when I listen to teachings from other traditions (Zen, Pali, etc.), they all sound like a Lam Rim teaching. On the surface, the various traditions may seem very different, but they complement each other very well.”

Laying a foundation

“At the same time, Rimé does not mean practising everything without a fixed core. All the great Rimé practitioners learned from other traditions, but retained their own tradition or school as the centre of their practice. As if their own tradition were the main component and the teachings from elsewhere were supplementary parts. My teacher once remarked that Western Buddhist practitioners tend to want to learn something about everything, which is good. But it is about deepening our understanding. If we know a little bit about everything, without deeper insight, we become a spiritual scrap heap.”

The various Buddhist traditions are like stairs leading upwards. One staircase might be Zen Buddhism, another Theravada Buddhism, and yet another Tibetan Buddhism. It is useful to learn something from all the different stairs, but eventually, there will come a time when you will choose one of them. Otherwise, you are just spending time studying the stairs without ever going up. I am not sure when someone decides that it is time to follow one particular tradition or school; that is a rather personal decision. People should take as much time as they need to figure that out, but the point is that they ultimately have to choose if they want to make serious progress.

Z.H. de Dalai Lama