Buddhism...

[Malandro]

...'A religion founded on philosophy' is this a fair description?

[TRINITY]

Buddhism can be called a religion. Often however, "service and worship of God" (Webster's dictionary) is mentioned, and Buddhism does not include belief in a God. Buddhism can be called a philosophy in a practical sense of the word. However, the Buddha repeatedly emphasised that his teachings were not intended as a doctrine, but should be guidelines along the path of spiritual development. One could even call Buddhism a system of psychology as well. The main object of interest in Buddhism is how we can observe, analyse and change our own mind. So in a nutshell it is religious,philosophical and pyscological in it's nature, open to opinion of course!!

[Malandro]

Sorry TW, I couldn't give three to trinity and you - trinity nearly wrote my essay for me! :0}

[TRINITY]

If u fail just don't come knocking on my door ;.) hope all goes well!!

[treaclefight]

i (a buddhist) will be going to disagree that buddhism founded on philosophy, because buddha did not study philsophy and then base a religion on that. a series of experiences revelaing the inevitability of the human situation of sufferering and death and his meditations on, and sharing of those experiences enabled him to become enlightened. the teachings taken from his path to enlightenment can be described as a philosophy, but the philosphy is their product rather than their foundation. it is possible to describe the foundation of a religion as being a god, so maybe buddhism can be described as being founded on philosophy because it does not have a god at its foundation. my own path to buddhism became clear when i studied philosphy, so here i have to agree that my buddhism is founded in philosophy. so to say that this is a fair description will be true in some contexts and not in others and neither buddhism nor philosophy will ever give you a more vague or defintate answer than that. :-D

[treaclefight]

and i havent even started on whether it's a religion or not....

[treaclefight]

TW, I certainly didnt mean it to come across that buddhism is athiesm, must have explained myself badly there. but i am going to argue against your claim that buddhist believe in a higher power, because i dont and none of my teachers has ever described 'it' as being a higher power. we focus on how we are part of the world and that nothing is either above or below us in the spiritual sense. nothing influences us or has a power in that sense, we are the result and the source of causes and effects, theres no higher power at work. whats more, describing a higher power implies something unattainable for humans and i have always been encouraged to believe in the possibility of complete enlightenment for humans, that being the objective of our practice. it about seeing your real place in a whole and how you affect and are affected by that whole, i dont see any stratification going on, quite the opposite. :-)

[omblod]

In response to Tartanwizard, Buddhists couldn't claim nature to be a higher power than humankind given that humans ARE nature. This suggestion that there is an inherent stratification or hierarchy within Buddhism is similar to the mistaken belief that Buddhists in some way worship the Buddha (perhaps as a deity). All human beings ARE already Buddhas but not all come to the realization of this within their lifetimes. Buddhist literature constantly warns against the dualistic thought processes that would be necessary for any theistic notions to exist. Zen Buddhism, perhaps more so than Mahayana Buddhism, clearly manifests a philosophical origin with its debts to Chinese philosophies such as Taoism.

[TRINITY]

We are all one and the same from earth to mammal to sea.......... ;.)