Philosophical Buddhist who is still an atheist

[kılıç_mehmet]

I wanted to see if there can be reasonable reconciliation on these beliefs for me.

I've been an atheist for almost a decade and a half now. Back then, I made a deal with any deity out there: if you exist and you want me to believe, it's well within your power to reach out to me so you can do that. Until then, I'm going to not believe and assume that if any God does exist, it doesn't want me to believe. As you can guess, no supernatural being has revealed themselves to me.

However, about four years ago, I had some big changes go through my life and as much as the changes were for the better in the long run, they were also very stressful at the time. Emotionally, I hit a low point; I made multiple suicide attempts, cried almost constantly and made a bad habit out of cutting myself on a fairly regular basis.

After about a year of that, things changed. One of the first things to change for me was that my personal life stabilized more and, yes, this played a big role in changing my mindset. It's hard to be emotionally stable if you aren't socially stable. However, there was more to it. I also looked up more information on gaining calmness and peace of mind and things like that. As a result of that research, I learned a lot about Eastern philosophies, especially Buddhist philosophy. The meditation, the mindfulness, the connection to the rest of the universe and the laid back perspective all resonated with me and thinking that way seemed to be a positive influence on my life.

That's not saying I believe in Buddhism as a religion. As much as the philosophy has helped, I have still had no sign from a supernatural being that has convinced me of anything. I have no reason to believe reincarnation exists or that karma is anything more than an abstract idea. In fact, most of the benefits of Buddhism for me can be interpreted as benefits via psychology. However, I know that a lot of people DO consider Buddhism a religion and they take it very seriously.

I guess what I wanted to ask is, is it reasonable to be both an atheist as far as the supernatural goes but believe in a Buddhist philosophy?

I used to have a strong bias against Buddhism for some time.
But I had changed my mind for a little after I started pondering on "Emptiness is form and form is emptiness.". I tried to make sense of it, and at the end, when I could capture it's meaning in words and could actually write them down, it really came to me that there is a philosophical truth behind some of it's teachings.

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Absolutely, in a cheap, Hallmark sort of way.
(I'm more than a little pissed that the Dalai Lama keeps getting reincarnated as a coddled peddler of inexpensive wisdom and woo btw. I can never really decide whether or not I think he's a hapless rube, a tool; or a clever con is his own right.)

The Dalai Lama is actually a title which did not start with the first Dalai Lama it was awarded to. The first Dalai Lama to which the title was given to was actually given as the title of 3rd Dalai Lama, whose name was Sonam Gyatsho leader of the Gelug order of Lamaism(or Tibetan buddhism), two others were awarded this title posthumorously.
It actually had deep political reasons behind it, being related to a certain Altan Khan, who wanted others to believe that he was a reincarnation of Kublai Khan(And Sonam Gyatsho proclaimed him as such), and used the Lamaist ideology to make his reign legitimate where it was illegitimate, due to his missing blood relations to Chingiss Khan.