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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Can you please tell me more about the doctrinal quality of Buddhism?  It's #3 on the list of 7 qualities of a religion.  I'm Unitarian Universalist and I'm wondering if we "fail" as a religion on this point. anyway, Karma and rebirth are listed above as Buddhist doctrines-- does that mean that you can't be a Buddhist unless you believe in karma and rebirth?  Any other doctrines you must believe in?  Who defines the parameters of such doctrines?

thanks-- I'm a Californian and I have been raised with so many wrong ideas about Buddhism that I fear it will take me a long time to correct myself.[/quote]

OP here, so sorry for this late reply, I had not been keeping an eye on the thread!

That's great that you want to know more about Buddhism! There's no need to feel guilty about getting concepts wrong as long as you aren't consciously doing it because it's "easier to swallow" - the vehemence of my original post was really a response to the deliberate, fingers-in-the-ears, "la la la I can't hear you!" attitude that some Western "Buddhists" take when called out on something like this, and probably because DCUM - the Internet itself, really - is a place where you wonder if you need to shout to be heard. :P But as long as you are being mindful and respectful in your approach to learning about Buddhism, that's really all that matters; and your attitude is great!

Well, acceptance of karma and reincarnation is a central tenet of Buddhism, it's just that the definition of reincarnation changes. In Tibetan Buddhism alone, for example, the less evolved aspirant has no control over the place, time, or circumstances of the next birth. The more evolved aspirants, who have growth through compassion and destruction of their egos, choose the time and place of their rebirths, and also reincarnate less frequently.

The tricky thing here is that another central tenet of Buddhism is that there is no self. Adi Shankaracharya wrote in his treatises that one of the distinguishing characteristics of Buddhism, which separated it from its parent religion Hinduism, was that Buddhism believes there is no self, while Hinduism does believe in a self. This creates a paradox: how can reincarnation happen when there is no self? This is another argument that some atheists use to argue that reincarnation can't be a part of Buddhism. But the deeper metaphysics of Buddhism are lost on the atheist when they argue this.

This is a really hard-to-explain topic, and if I want to explain it properly without diluting it into fluff like so many New Age practitioners do, I would need to write a book. I will say that if you really want to see two Buddhists get into a ferocious argument, ask them to define what the "self" is.

The common, nutshell explanation: No self exists, but attachment exists. The attachment is consciousness, which is thoughts, feelings, perceptions, reactions, everything that goes on in the "mind", basically. The attachment to these mind-qualities is what causes karma, which is external (physical reality) action, as opposed to kriya, which is internal (causal reality) action. Attachment to the mind-qualities --> karma --> illusory consciousness carries over into a new body.

If no self exists, who is attaching themselves to mind-qualities? Where does this consciousness come from? Books have been written examining this paradox and how it all leads back to anatta, but the "no self" remains a fundamental doctrine in Buddhist thought - it's just that the way to explain and conceptualize that changes, much like how Christians of all denominations agree that salvation leads to Heaven, but disagree on how salvation is obtained.

Karma and reincarnation are also part of Gautama Buddha's original teachings (in the Pali Canon), and he is the source of all Buddhist thought. So yeah, I would say that despite differences of opinion over how karma and reincarnation are conceptualized, along with the "no self", they are core teachings of Buddhism.

Re: Unitarian Universalism, I think you could probably argue that it is a real religion, just a new/young religion. Theological frameworks build [i]slowly[/i], and intermingling and mixing is a part and parcel of that. Unitarian Universalism's "parent" is Christianity (correct me if I'm wrong), just as Buddhism's "parent" is Hinduism. Buddhism is sometimes unfairly stereotyped as Hinduism stripped down and boiled in a bag, but there is evidence that Buddhism's separation from Hinduism actually influenced the way Hinduism itself later developed - so really, they both influenced each other. [/quote]

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