Buddhism did not start out as a philosophy.
It is the revelation of one man through his personal
experience of life, that experience was
then in later centuries put to words, complied and later become
what we called the Suttas. The Abdhidhamma, a later compilation is
the philosophical aspect of the Suttas, setting out to explain and
analyze the early Buddhist teachings in a logical and systematic
way. This is the first stage in the development
of Buddhism itself. It is a doctrine of the Saint.
Buddhism became what we called a religion
during the second period of its development when the Mahayanist
forsake the ideal of a human Buddha and replace it with a divine
Buddha in a Nirvana full of life. Instead of
just individual salvation, it is replaced by the ideal of Universal
salvation of every life. The Buddha here ceased to be human, under
the name of his Body of Highest Bliss (Sambhogakaya), he became a
God. He however was not the Creator of the world.
Buddhism is a religion of Experience to
this day and that is why the practice of Meditation is such an
essential part of the religion itself.
To me, Buddhism is a philosophy because it began
with examining a fundamental problem –
‘birth, aging, sickness and death’. And this issue is
connected with existence. The
1st Noble Truth states: Existence is Suffering.
This is arrived at by theorising in deep contemplation. It
did not come about by some practice or experience. Prince
Siddhartha was searching for wisdom – to
know ‘what is life or existence’, and why there is ‘aging, sickness
and death’. Expanding this further (Dependent Origination),
it was about ‘old age, death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief and
despair’. Prince Siddhartha indeed was searching for insights
as to what irks this world.
Appended here is the definition of philosophy
plucked from Wikipedia:
Philosophy is the study
of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with
existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. It is
distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its
critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on
rational argument. The word "philosophy" comes from the Greek
(philosophia), which literally means "love of
wisdom".
