Earlier I said that I am not concerned with whether Buddhism is a philosophy or a religion (I suffer from far to much pragmatism to worry about what a thing is or is not - if it works), and then used four point Buddhist logic (as opposed to polar Western logic) to suggest that it may be both, or neither.
That kind of thinking may be confusing, but here is an outstanding essay on the subject:
A Philosophical Assessment of Secular Buddhism
I don't exactly agree with everything in the article, but most of it makes ginormous sense to me.
From the article:
...Everything about my own life would appear to align with a secular form of Buddhism–I could be the poster child of the movement. Although I’ve been existentially engaged with Buddhism for half a century, I’ve never at any point been able to:
Join a particular sect or lineage
Take vows
Wear medieval robes
Adopt an Asian name
Accept someone as my personal guru
Take an interest in future lives or parinirvāna
Or, due to a knee injury, even manage to sit in an appropriate Asian meditation posture
Talk about a “Buddhist failure!” The problem has been that whenever I’m tempted to do anything that looks traditionally Buddhist, I begin to feel like an imposter, someone posing as what he can’t possibly be. Yet even though all the surface signs of being a Buddhist are missing, I can’t help but conceive of myself as a Buddhist, a real Buddhist, albeit a contemporary American one...
Bookmarks