( Twelve minute read)

Buddhism means different things to different people, and whether or not it can ever be truly classified as a philosophy or a religion remains shrouded.

It’s one thing or the other.

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It doesn’t believe in a creator God, unlike theistic religions such as Christianity.

It’s a belief system that endeavours to teach how to escape the suffering-laden cycle of  life, death, and rebirth.

But death isn’t the only suffering in human life.

Buddha believed that humans suffer  at birth (both the mother and the baby), and throughout life due to desire, envy, fear etc.

He also believed that everyone was reincarnated in the samsara and doomed to repeat this process forever.

Therefore Buddhist teaching aims to break this cycle.

The “Four Noble Truths’ illustrate Buddha’s approach.

• Life is suffering
• The cause of suffering is craving
• The end of suffering comes with an end to craving
• There is a path which leads one away from craving and suffering

These truths provide the basis for the entire purpose of Buddhism, which is to find the path away from craving and suffering through enlightenment.

It strongly encouraged people to engage in critical thinking and draw on their own personal experience to test what he was saying.

This type of attitude is extremely different to religions such as Christianity and Islam, where followers are generally encouraged to read, absorb and accept scripture unquestioningly.

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Buddhist teachings employed standard philosophical tools and techniques to make their point.

However, their reasoning was underpinned by a total belief that whatever Buddha said was right and true.

Eventually, people from distinct but related Asian religions began to analyze Buddhist teachings, forcing Buddhists to branch out into traditional areas of philosophy to prove the value and worth of Buddhism to other people who didn’t consider Buddha’s teachings as authoritative.

If Buddhists want to be reborn into the realm of humans, which Buddha believes is  the best one to achieve enlightenment, then they must earn good karma and follow Buddha’s teachings. 

Many world religions also offer some sort of ultimate reward for its followers to try and aim for  throughout their lives.

For Christians, this is reaching Heaven after death. For Buddhists, this is a state of  enlightenment known as nirvana.

However, nirvana is not a place but rather a liberated state of mind.

Nirvana means that someone has realized the ultimate truth about life.

If an individual achieves this state  then they have escaped the cycle of suffering and rebirth forever, because in their enlightened mind all the  causes of this cycle have been eliminated.

As we can see, Buddhism contains many characteristics which blur the lines between philosophy and  religion.

But the idea that we need to distinctly classify it as one thing or the other tends to arise within Western societies far more than in other parts of the world.

In the West, philosophy and religion are two very distinct terms. Many philosophies (and philosophers)  within the Western tradition would not have considered themselves to be devoutly religious individuals. Or if they did, contemporary followers have managed to successfully extricate the philosophical from the  religious aspects of a particular school of thought.

Many people who consider themselves atheists or agnostics tend to favor ignoring the religious aspects of Buddhism, for obvious reasons.

After all, Buddhist teaching fits easily within the mindfulness, meditation  and yoga movements which have gained in popularity in Western countries over the last few decades. 

Sometimes these teachings are appropriated without a proper understanding of their roots, as when  people post Buddha quotes on social media or claim to be interested in Buddhism without having studied any of its key texts.

The truth is that Buddhism is both religion and philosophy, and the two aspects of its teachings can co exist in relative peace.

It is possible for an atheist to follow plenty of Buddha’s teachings without also feeling obliged to carry out acts of worship.

In the future AI will take over religion that are founded on books.

Buddhism being a system of thinking it will perhaps be the saving belief of the world.

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