(November 17, 2022 at 12:44 pm)Ahriman Wrote: Buddhism requires its adherents to believe in a number of supernatural things, such as karma, "nirvana", various otherworldly realms, etc. You can't be a "secular Buddhist". That would be like, if I still called myself a Catholic despite not caring about God. Like, no?
I suspect there are different sorts of people who describe themselves as "secular Buddhists." I'm not familiar with all the varieties.
From my experience I know there are people in America who use Buddhism as a sort of aesthetic, but whose Buddhist practice consists of meditation techniques borrowed from Zen, and "mindfulness" practices. In other words, without the Buddhist metaphysics behind it, what they do is mostly a kind of therapy.
Recently these techniques have be re-imported into Japan by psychologists. They recommend maindufurunesu as pure therapy, and don't associate it in any way with the Japanese religion from which it supposedly has its origins.
As I say, though, I don't know about every single group claiming that they are Buddhists without the metaphysics. Perhaps some of them have it worked out more carefully.
