Thoughts on Buddhism

[Abracadabra]

Greetings all,

I practiced Buddhism on and off in the past, and was up untill recently what you might call a 'religious Buddhist'. However in recent months I began to have my doubts about the whole thing. The attractive thing about Buddhism is that it poses itself to be completely free of the negativities seen in other religions, but to me given a dose of rational thinking it doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

Laurens

I didn't read this whole thread, but I wanted to comment on Buddhism in general.

Like Laurens, I have problems with the original form of Buddhism. It begins by assuming reincarnation and that the goal is to get out of it. And that wasn't Siddhartha's original idea anyway. That had already been established in the culture in which he lived. This Buddha didn't invent the religion, he simply made it popular, and created a specific way of thinking about it.

I recently took an in-depth course on Buddhism and there are as many different sects and slants on Buddhism as there are on the Abrahamic religions. So it really doesn't even make any sense to refer to "Buddhism" without specifying which style of Buddhism is being referred to.

There is a lot in Buddhism that I find useful in terms of pure wisdom and personal development, but like Lauren I find it difficult to accept any form of Buddhism as a dogma. However, there are actually teachings within Buddhism that teach not to accept dogma and to only take what feels right for you. So if you follow those kinds of teachings you can basically make "Buddhism" into whatever you want it to be.

I like Deepak Chopra's presentations of these kinds of mystical views. I think he makes a lot of sense and he tends to steer clear of any rigid dogma. So he only addresses that more abstract concepts leaving much room for people to decide how they will think of these concepts.

I've actually moved on from Buddhism to a form of "Wicca". Some people might think that's going backwards. That's probably because of their view of something like "Wicca". I have a view of "Wicca" that is quite abstract in its own right. So I can morph Wicca into something that is usable as a spiritual philosophy without any need to be taking things too literally.

The bottom line with any spiritual philosophy is that it needs to work for the person who is contemplating it. If that's not in place then there's no point to it.