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The Many Schools Of Buddhism
By OnTopic | August 1, 2010
For its emphasis on finding out for oneself, Buddhism has been lauded as a religion like no other. It’s closest in spirit to the ancient Greek philosophers, who for all their diversity of opinions were united in the one belief that inquiry trumps ideology.
Buddhism, despite the popular superstitious forms it has taken, remains for many much more a philosophy than a religion – but a philosophy in the ancient Greek sense of the word, which we might more correctly render these days as “lifestyle.”
Indeed, all religions are actually lifestyles, different methods of living and being, but the point here is that Buddhism, or what some Buddhists call “school Buddhism” or “philosophical Buddhism,” concerns discovering out the truth for oneself. There is no reliance on gods or prophets – even the Buddha himself is considered a bad example; a popular Buddhist saying is, “When you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.”
No other religion attacks itself as mercilessly as Buddhism. When you think you’ve got it right – that’s when you’re wrong. The Buddha’s most famous exhortation is, “Be you the author of your own salvation.”
Zen Buddhism in particular has become one of the most well-known “brands” of so-called school Buddhism for its philosophy that stresses self-revelation instead of divine revelation.
But what about God, and good and evil?
For Zen Buddhists, such dichotomies as good and evil can be misleading. Though not official dogma, it may well be said that “good” comes from, simply, basic living. Basic living comes from just going about your business with full concentration: “When eating, eat; when chopping wood, chop wood.”
It’s a sentiment many of the original Greek philosophers would have shared, a preference for the practical over anything metaphysical. And interestingly, Buddhism originated during the great Axial Age, which fact is all the more tantalizing for the numerous connections between the Hellenistic World and the Indus Valley.
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