IS BUDDHISM A RELIGION OR A PHILOSOPHY?
Keywords:
Buddhism, philosophy, religion, atheism, categorizationAbstract
From the early colonial encounters with Buddhism to the present day, this religion has been classified as philosophy due to the lack of theism and its challenging fit into Western religious categories. Furthermore, Western converts often do not perceive it as a religion but label it as philosophy, psychology, a personal path, and so forth. This paper aims to critique such positions as unfounded in reality and factual information because neither ethnography nor the foundational teachings of Buddhism can support categorizing Buddhism as philosophy or anything other than religion.
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