It could be called a methodology in some respects.PrincessPeach wrote: I was under the impression that Buddhism is not a 'religion' it is a way of life, thoughts?
There are two not terribly distinct Buddhisms though.
One is the philosophy, and one is the dogma (which is for the lay people who don't study, or understand any of it, and just want to be blessed or whatever).
Tibetan Buddhism is at the extreme end of dogma, while Mahayana Buddhism is more philosophical, dealing more with practical morality and less with superstition.
As a dogma, it has kind of mingled with Confucianism and Taoism and Asian mysticism (throughout most of its domain) to become a conglomerated syncretic religion.
Shinto is an interesting offshoot in that regard; quite removed from Buddhism proper.
Most of the supernatural dogma comes from Vedic traditions, but there's a strong mix of animism and a bunch of other stuff in there too.
As a philosophy, different branches of Buddhism and different teachers can be hugely different.
You could almost look at it as the Eastern version of philosophy, where the West had Socrates.
It's substantially less formal, and more intuitionistic -- but there is and has been (now and then) some logic there too.
It's complicated.
The most 'authentic' Buddhism is a bit hard to nail down. But we could argue that the most authentic is the most consistent with reason, because Buddhism or oriented around enlightenment and knowledge- and it supposed to grow and adapt rather than being rigid.
I would say it's inherently atheistic, even in its inception, because Gautama cautioned against following gods, since they are mortal and lack enlightenment too- in the same cycle of Samsara humans are in (amazingly similar to Epicurus' argument, logically, but taking the opposite stance). They have traditionally been recognized as real beings- but also irrelevant beings and not really 'gods' in any proper theologically Western sense.