Buddhism is almost entirely about ones inner self, and it is not a set of rules or laws, such as no sex before marriage or homosexuality is a no no.

__________________
Set your destination with your heart, get there with your mind.

"The wisest men follow their own direction." - Euripides

No - the view of karma (key to the Hindu caste system) is far more mutable and interactive. In the Hindu system, caste shows where you are karmically, and all events are preordained. In the Buddhist system, choices you make bring you lessons you need to learn - far more interactive.

BTW - Kabballah - the medieval mystic 'tree of life' from Judaism is also a karmic system that involves reincarnation. It tends more to the Buddhist view - choice is the key there, too.

__________________
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy.
Ernest Benn

I thought as much.

Well, basically, your duties as a member of your caste (I'm not sure how to spell it, but I think it's dharma) define your karma. If you've fulfilled your duties, then you get good karma and move up.

But Buddhism doesn't even have a caste system, right?

__________________
"Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states...Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds."



~Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Wow, I was only thinking of "chaste" in the terms of sex and not the broader picture of "pureness."

__________________
Set your destination with your heart, get there with your mind.

"The wisest men follow their own direction." - Euripides

No it doesn't have a caste system, well not that I know of.

The Abrahmic religions are all basically the same, because they all had the same origin, but they have very little in common with Hinduism and the Chinese religions. It is debatable as to whether or not Buddhism is even really a religion. Shinto, in Japan, has more in common with old European Paganism than anything else, but almost nothing to do with modern Neo-Pagans.

In short, no. The only basic similarity between religions is the criteria that makes them religions.

__________________
"When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation... We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness...."
- The Declaration of Independence

Gods/religions have been said to be the "dumping ground of our dreams". Because religions are purely human creations, it's not too amazing that all religions share certain universal commonalities...mimicking the universally human experience.

Some get into chicken/egg arguments over who made who in who's image, but the bottom line result is that religions fill some primal need for external and cosmic validation and meaning. And, there's only so many ways religion can do that and be considered palatable, marketable and relevant.

Besides, if some religion becomes too dissimilar, it's no longer very recognizeable as a religion at all.

__________________
Unfortunately, the Founders did not address the possibility of this nation becoming populated with obnoxious twits.

Right. Besides the monotheistic ones, anyway.

__________________
"Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states...Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds."



~Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

And there are those who don't believe Christianity is monotheistic - so even that is subject to debate.

On the other hand, someone once wronte a Masters Thesis on Magic that had as a central premise that all religion work as energy moving systems. Read that sucker years ago - can't even recall the name.

__________________
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy.
Ernest Benn

Well, I guess you could argue that Christianity is not monotheistic, but Jesus and the Holy Spirit are really just extensions of the same god.

__________________
"Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states...Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds."



~Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.