Buddhism is actually beyond religion.
Even Lord Buddha started His Teaching without the intention to declare His Teaching as a kind of religion.
Lord Buddha actually taught us to know what are the problems inside us that makes us trapped in the realms of sufferings.
When we could see our problems, we need to overcome them. He taught us the way to overcome them by introducing the Noble Eight Fold path in the guidance of the Middle path. He Himself saw that the extremes of both good and bad ways of living and practices are very difficult to lead to the solution of the problems. He found out that by following the Middle path, we can eventually discover our non-self which is the true nature of Truth and liberated ourselves from the sufferings. That self-liberation is what we known as the state of Nirvana.
We might not know what exactly the state of Nirvana.
We might not know what is it feel like when we got liberated from the sufferings.
But,
We could feel how is the feeling within us when the sufferings take full control in our life.
We usually let the defilements of greed, hatred and ignorance to choose decisions for us in our daily life.
Results?
We kept making mistakes and get trapped in Samsara (Sufferings) cycle endlessly.
The Buddha made His efforts tirelessly to make sure His students could attain the same state as His.
His Great Compassion, Great Wisdom and Great Determination are really our directions to learn on His teaching.
The Teaching of Buddha, is known as the Dharma. (The Truth of Nature)
The Dharma shows us that the real problems lies inside us which is our innerself.
When they are inside us, it is us ourselves need to solve our own problems.
Buddha, Dharma and Sangha (Triple Gems) merely show the way to the cessation of our problems.
It is us ourselves to work out and walk the practice ourselves to the destination.
This is the beauty of Buddhism.
No one, no things, no Gods and not even the Buddhas would replace your place to complete your journey of liberation.
We can not throw our problems to others and ask them to help us to cease the problems for our parts.
In Buddhism,
Praying is good.
Being religious is good
But, the Teaching of Buddha is beyond religion
Being religious brings help for us to strengthen our confidence to walk in the journey of liberation.
Let us not just stop in being religious,
we need to extend the practices of The Teaching and combine it in our daily life.
To the extend that,
there are no separated Buddhism and life in our daily life.
At that time,
We do not recognize Buddhism as a particular religion,
What we know is,
Even in every breath which
we are breathing in and out,
there is Dharma in it.
