pwa wrote: ↑19 Jan 2022, 7:25am
One useful legacy of my flirtation with a Western form of Buddhism more than three decades ago is my ethical code, my way of deciding what is good and and what is not. Simply put, they shifted the emphasis from the action itself, to the motivation behind the action. So an action might be judged good or judged bad depending on whether the motivation came from love or from hate. The motivation was the key. If you killed a family member out of selfless love, to spare them an agonising death, it would be morally good. But if you killed them to get your hands on their dosh, it would be bad. This made more sense to me than morality based on Christianity, which had a muddled approach to morality. I kept it when I stopped attending Buddhist events.
That is a good and wholesome moral ethic,something most forms of religion don't adhere to.
AFAICS from study of Buddhism it isn't a religion but a coping strategy for the pressures and suffering of life through a method of meditation of the here and now which is mindfulness that ultimately leads to a better understanding of Love,many things have been hung on it(reincarnation,the many worlds,praying,effigies of the Buddha,etc,etc)some of which is also found in religion which is a belief in a father figure or superior being(God) or gods in various form.
But in my understanding in essence Buddhism is a way(the middle way)of coping with life,as with religion there's an aweful lot of crap been added by men(overwhelmingly men)claiming all sorts of untruths added over the centuries.