Indeed. It is the rough equivalent of Catholics praying to saints; they pray to bodhisattvas, those few humans who have achieved enlightenment and whom they believe to be operating on the behalf of us muggles.

They also have a cosmology full of what amount to demigods and demons, even if they aren't deities by our lights. They have the concept of "hungry ghosts", people who die in violent or tragic circumstance -- very much like what "ghost hunters" are after on various reality TV shows. In other words, like all religion, they have some form or other, of "woo".

@mordant not to put a damper on the high hopes of erstwhile converts to buddhism, but it's more woo than woo HOO!

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@genessa Yeah I think the core concepts of Buddhism are actually an early and fairly timeless self-help methodology and I crib some ideas from it. But the religion itself is just as nutty as any other really.

@mordant hey, i crib from judaism ALL the time! i mean, during my "religious" year (age 14-15) i went to bible study. know what we studied? if a cart and a mule are going one way on a mountain pass and a guy on foot is going the other way, which one should use the inside lane? i forget the answer though.... but there's all this stuff about how to treat each other, and i do NOT mean stoning adulterous women to death (jews don't do that anymore; we tend not to be literalists!) i mean like recycling and helping the poor and feeding the hungry. you don't have to be directed by a deity to do those things, right?

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