Of course there is a massive spread of religion that comes under the title 'buddhism'.
The buddhism I practice doesn't resemble this, there are others (e.g Pure Land or Tibetan) which I do think incorporate some real 'religious' dogma and supernatural nonsense; but personally (and perhaps somewhat offensively.. Sorry!) I don't refer to these as Buddhism.
The only thing I think my sect would say buddhists as a whole believe is that we absolutely do not care what any given person believes. There is no dogma, no leap of faith involved in zen. If you want to believe in a magical dude in the sky, that's up to you. It's not related to zen.
It's quite easy to be mislead on this point, especially as a lot of zen texts were written at a time where such beliefs were common, but while e.g Dogen sometimes talks about literal rebirth and various hells and so on, these are not part of his teachings but the settings for it. Like how if I was to write some sutra today, I may set it in a contemporary setting, but that setting would not be the teaching..
The buddhism I practice doesn't resemble this, there are others (e.g Pure Land or Tibetan) which I do think incorporate some real 'religious' dogma and supernatural nonsense; but personally (and perhaps somewhat offensively.. Sorry!) I don't refer to these as Buddhism.
The only thing I think my sect would say buddhists as a whole believe is that we absolutely do not care what any given person believes. There is no dogma, no leap of faith involved in zen. If you want to believe in a magical dude in the sky, that's up to you. It's not related to zen.
It's quite easy to be mislead on this point, especially as a lot of zen texts were written at a time where such beliefs were common, but while e.g Dogen sometimes talks about literal rebirth and various hells and so on, these are not part of his teachings but the settings for it. Like how if I was to write some sutra today, I may set it in a contemporary setting, but that setting would not be the teaching..