A historic Buddha doesn't matter

It does not matter that Gautama the Buddha actually existed. The fact is that his teachings, composed by other minds or authentic, have been advanced by many peopleand are still being advanced. This is the reality of Buddhism that we must deal with. It matters not if we cannot prove the Buddhas actual existence unlike the problem Christians are faced with if the story of Jesus miraculous birth from a virgin, crucification and resurrection cannot be proved to have actually taken place.

What we have of Buddhism, in its huge canon, is a path that teaches us that the substance of reality can be intuited by us thereby freeing us from our bondage to the world of phenomena (including rebirth) which endlessly rises and ceases, again and again, bringing nothing but suffering.

If anyone intuits such a substance, after studying the canon of Buddhism, Buddhism, as a teaching, is validated in much the same way that the Socratic method is of great value even though we cannot prove that Socrates was an actual person who lived in Athens.


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