Is Buddhist doctrine a philosophy or religion ? The answer depends largely on how one defines philosophy and religion. Webster's dictionary defines philosophy as " love of wisdom ", as a search for a general understanding of values and reality by chiefly speculative rather than observational means while religion simply as " the service and worship of God or supernatural ".
Team like philosophy and ethics are used to designate certain discipline of human thought and behaviour. This usually results from logic and speculative thinking. But the Dhamma is the truth discovered by the Buddha as a result of his supreme enlightenment. The Dhamma i a way of life, a system of thought by which we live and on which we base our moral conduct. Both philosophy and ethics can be found embodied in the Dhamma, but the Dhamma covers a much wider scope. When the Buddha taught the Dhamma, he did not intend it to be characterized as either philosophy or ethics. He simply explained the truth and the course of action to follow in order to lead a happy and useful life .
If we regard the Dhamma as plilosophy, we can see that, according to the Buddha's teachings, man has been the central problem. Metaphysical speculation concerning problems not relate to human activities and the attainment of Nirvana - such as weather the world is infinite or finite, whether the soul and the body are identical from each other, or whether a perfect person exists after his death - is discouraged, and to be regarded by the Buddha as a non exposition problem.
Admitting the transitoriness of everything, the Buddha did not want to assume the existence of my metaphysical substance. This attitude was logically derived from his fundamental standpoint. The Buddha reduced things, substances and souls, to force, movements, functions, processes and adapted a dynamic conception of reality. Life is nothing but a series of manifestation of generation and extinction. It is a stream of becoming and change.
Buddhism views all phenomena in terms of causal relationship. This means that all occurrences whether empirically perceivable or otherwise, are subjected to the law of cause and effect. Everything is conditioned by causal factors and all things are themselves conditioning factors for other occurrence. Nothing is absolutely independence, for, according to the Buddhist philosophy, absolute existence is not possible as we can observe the metaphysical standpoint in various Buddha's core teachings.
The Buddha's teaching are not regarded as philosophy. They take the form of phenomenological analysis in the sense that analyzes and describes what is given to our experience, also being an analytical method of thinking based on mindfullness, awareness, vigilance and observation.
Whatever any reason, according to Sangarava Sutta, the Buddha classifies himself, his predecessors and his contemporaries into 3 groups:
1. The traditionalist, who derive their knowledge wholly from a scriptural tradition and interpretations based on it.
2. The rationalist and metaphysicians, who derive their knowledge from reasoning and speculation.
3. The experientialists, who depend on personal experience of higher knowledge.
The Buddha then says that he belong to the third group. According to him, an appeal to experience is necessary for judging the truth of a theory. The teaching of the Buddha are qualified as ehipassika, inviting one to " come and see " because they can be tasted by experience. They are based on the empirical, concrete facts of experience. Experience here is not a mere experience but also intuition and insight. By this way, the Buddha does not regard scriptural tradition and logical reasoning as sufficient criteria of knowledge as claimed by the traditionalistic and idealistic philosophers.
If we regard certain parts of Buddhist teachings as philosophy, the doctrine of anatta, a Buddhist rejection of the self, and the Buddhist conception of consciousness is considered one of the cornerstones upon which the edifice of the Buddha's teachings is built. Buddhism stands unique in the history of Indian philosophy in denying the existence of the self, atta, atman and soul. They readers will observe some parts of Buddhist teaching as philosophy which the compiler has quoted and early Buddhism, a comparative study of Selflessness theories, by Phra Medhidhammaporn [ or at present - Phra Thepsophon -Prayoon Mererk ], as follows.
By THE BUDDHA'S Core Teachings
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