Buddhism by the Numbers: For a religion that’s supposed to be all about nothing, Buddhism is pretty complex. I was thumbing through the Harper-Collins Dictionary of Religion and Religious Traditions of the World by H. Byron Earhart, and I came across the following numerical tenants:

• 3 Jewels
• 4 Noble Truths
• 5 Precepts of Morality
• 8 Fold Path
• 10 Precepts for the Sangha
• 12 Elements of the Cycle of Samsara

Goodness, this is almost as complex as Jewish Kabbalah! The Christian Trinity seems pretty simple by comparison.

Complexity aside, the problem with all of the major religions is that they were formed at a time in human history when people thought about the world quite differently. Judiasm, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam all stem from a time when the forces of nature weren’t very well understood. It was easy to assume the presence of a conscious meta-force (or several competing meta-forces) deciding the course of the sun and moon and winds and rains. Moses and the Buddha and Jesus and Mohammed (and Joseph Smith and the Mormons, for that matter) could never imagine that the Universe runs on auto-pilot through gravity and electromagnetism and quantum forces.

In the age of science, the only reason for religion is to ask a question and give an answer. The question is whether there is a God. Religion should be about asking that question, but not about answering it. In modern times, there is no answer; it is nothing more or less than a Zen koan. The “answer” that I refer to is for a different question – i.e., how do we live our lives. And the answer to that question is The Golden Rule; Golden Rule all the way, even unto self-sacrifice. The old religions should either reform themselves around this question and this answer, or they should die off to make way for new religions strictly centered around them. Too bad that’s not happening. Until then, we’ll keep playing numbers games. And until then, I’ll have nowhere to go on Sunday mornings.