Interesting ...
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Wouldn't it be an occidental vision which often considers Buddism as equivalent of a religion in the sense Christian, Islam are a religion?
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Yes, perhaps, as a form of outdated cultural rationalisation. However, as I said earlier, Spinoza and the other Christian philosophers moved on from the idea of a highly personified God and posited a kind of "infinite essence-of-everything that is God".
So perhaps they key difference is in the idea of 'something' that IS outside all of our perceptions and existence (ie. a basic Judeo-Christian starting point), and the idea that there is 'nothing' outside, and that the 'nothing' is in fact a liberation from the cycle of karma (ie. a basic traditional Buddhist perspective).
My point was an advocate from either camp could argue that the eternal 'something' and the eternal 'nothing' were, in terms of the human psyche, fulfilling the same role.
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One of my feelings is: Occidental beliefs tend to think that God is that absolute, Oriental ones that absolute is above gods.
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Possibly, although I think one gets into definition of terms here. I think there's also a danger of over-simplification, and I am conscious of that when commenting on world religions or beliefs, all of which have a multitude and range of interpretations and manifestations, despite apparent similarities or a shared origin. There is a world of difference between the Buddhism now popular among non-Asians in the West, and, for example, the traditional cultural model in Thailand. Just as there is between Catholicism and Judaism.
Peace [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]