For the sake of argument, Buddhism can be treated as a philosophy or a practice rather than a religion. The Cambridge dictionary defines the word religion as “the belief in and worship of a god or gods, or any such system of belief and worship”. Believing on the Buddha as a teacher and worshiping him simply makes Buddhism a religion on that context but the academic argument is that Buddhism is a practice or rather a philosophy. The teachings of the Gautama Buddha is something that he experienced and taught himself. In comparison to the supreme god concept in other religions such as Hinduism, Gautama Buddha stands on a different platform. On one hand he was human and on the one hand he is enlightened. This contradicts the idea of a god. Buddhism explains that the Buddha is a one who has put an end to the rebirth. Being enlightened, Gautama Buddha has stop his circle of rebirth and his passing away confirms that he does not exist anymore. This is different to the concept of god where we come across that Gods do not have a human birth or death. Hence Gautama Buddha is a not a god. He was born as human and passed away as human.
This is a blog that covers a variety of topics that are important to practical Buddhists. It is with great please that I decided to add these articles in English to this blog so that the Dharma can be communicated to a wider audience. May this in return result to end the sufferings of us.
Prasanna Hettiarachchi
About the writer
Prasanna is a working freelancer journalist. He is also a scholar in religious studies at the Griffith University in Queensland, Australia
