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I ran across this and just had to pass it along!

Gonzogopher 6 July 12
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Buddhism IS a religion, although it has never worshiped Buddha (quite the opposite) or had any other deity on offer. Divorcing parts of Buddhist practice from the Buddhist religion is also done, but it's disingenuous as an unqualified statement to say that Buddhism is not a religion.

Buddhist has a system of temples and ascetic clerics called monks that are distinct from its laity, it has an imagined cosmology full of supernatural beings and realms, deep and honored traditions, holy books (the Pali Canon), an afterlife concept, and most other trappings of religion. Like the Taoists and some Quakers and a few others, most Buddhist sects don't have a deity but deity-worship is, contrary to popular notions, not central to the concept of religion -- just a common feature of it.

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The more I learned about Buddhism, I came to realize this. It is a Tao, a way of life and does not require deity worship, as Zen, a somewhat more disciplined form, does neither.

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There is a grace of life in Buddhism. The Peace of living in the here and now.

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or conversely if you are an evangelical

Those stupid bastards will demonize anything of non-western thinking.

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Well, at least a practice tries to make Christians better. Something has to be done before they totally destroy society.

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Each and every time I said Buddhism wasn't a religion I received a stupid look from the listener. BTW, Hinduism isn't a religion either.

Technically Hinduism is a polytheistic Dharma, there is no direct translation, but it is safe to say Dharma includes religion within it but includes other aspects including lifestyle, tradition, ideology, spirituality, study and other concepts that can only be expressed in Hindi.

@LenHazell53 I heard about what you wrote. An Atheist I used to know was from India and he always told us that Hinduism was really a "way of life".

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