Buddha like Brahma in Hindu tradition is someone whose nature is unknown or so transcended that it’s impossible for us to simply achieve the leave of understating, he is all compassionate and as of understanding, he is all compassionate and the tradition says breaker of cycle of life and death.

Throughout the history there has been multiple such personalities who have achieved such level of spiritual enlighten. Though they themselves didn’t cared about the practice of any specific rituals apart from basic percepts for a peaceful life their students or the followers created various schools of Buddhism which can be classified into Theravada, Mahayana, Bajrayana and Zen according to their basic principle of belief and practise of rites and rituals. Each of them schools have their historical, social and political importance but being different types same social tradition Buddhism have some remarkable fundamental differences in thin belief. Theravada is considered one of those schools which directly descended from the direct disciples of Shakya. Munni Buddha(bodhisattva Siddhartha Gautama) and is consider to follow the closest resemblance to set of knowledge and practices when Buddhism started. Mahayana is a vast school with multiple branches within itself and follows a great number of ritual and religious practices. Though practices of Theravada are more of spiritual one than religious, Mahanya’s practices can be considered highly religious. Bajrayana is practiced in Tibet, some region of Kathmandu valley is more secretive in their tradition than other schools and has close resemblance with tantric Buddhism. Zen on the other hand is most free form of Buddhism, it doesn’t follow any single sets of beliefs, nor does it have any similar tradition. It is something that’s not possible for me, to even begin to explain here.zen is about developing the understanding of reality as it is and each individual follow their best way for mindfulness of reality.

I myself have been student of theology and philosophy for past few years and deeper i delve into the topic matter the more i am baffled by the intricate level of design in which all these vast information and tradition came into creating what we know as Buddhism. So i don’t know if I am a Buddhist or not because i don’t know enough but one thing i know are the basic pieces of ideas that he created are a way to more peaceful approach to life. But as he himself said is samyutta nikaya,” don’t follow any paths of freedom just because someone told you to or me “Buddha” himself told you to, explore yourself and find out right and wrong by your own conscience and choose your own path”.