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by haswell
486 days ago
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Buddhism is both religion and not religion. Most of the core ideas are not metaphysical, and most modern (certainly western) practitioners don’t engage with the metaphysical (what most would consider to be “religious”) aspects at all. Having come from a conservative Christian religious background (and finding I was wholly incompatible with it), I avoided anything even remotely resembling religion for most of my 20s. It wasn’t until my mid 30s that I went down the Buddhism rabbit hole and what I found was entirely unlike what I expected based on my former experience with western religion. There are also many forms of a Buddhism with varying positions e.g. Zen Buddhism is explicitly non-religious, tapping into the core insights without asking the practitioner to believe anything. |
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However, I believe Zen Buddhism is one of the more ritualistic versions, as opposed to 'Secular Buddhism', which removes the spiritual aspect for a more personal philosophical take on some of the core principals.
A couple of the principals of Secular Buddhism resonate with me in particular:
- Karma is not some metaphysical storage of actions, but instead just consequences. If you constantly speed everywhere, eventually you'll probably end up with a ticket - Thats your "karma" (consequences) of your own actions you chose to take.
- Rebirth is instead interpreted as the rebirth of the self, in that each living moment you are not the same person you were a moment ago. The idea is that in striving to be a better person, you are 'reborn' as a better version of yourself in each moment which compounds over time. Almost like the "1% rule" where your goal is to be 1% better in some aspect than you were yesterday.