Well, Buddhism in Thailand isn’t the same as Buddhism in Thailand (forest monk Therevada, vs. Mahayana), which isn’t the same as Buddhism in Sri-Lanka, Japan, China, Tibet, etc. There are several forms of Buddhism which all agree on a few core concepts, such as the four truths and the noble eightfold path. Whenever Buddhism moves to a new culture, it adopts to that culture. Western Buddhism isn’t different from other cultural variants of Buddhism in that regard, and it doesn’t make it less authentic. Only different.
Adopt whatever is useful to you and discard the rest. Buddhism isn’t a wholesale package with dogmas you have to believe in. If you like the ethics, practice them. If you want to grow less attached to contingent and impermanent phenomena, there should be no contradiction between Christianity and Buddhism in this regard. Do you like meditation? In Catholicism it is called contemplation. You could do far worse than reading Thomas Merton
etc.To avoid all evil: follow the Ten Commandments.
Actually, as I understand it, the point of Buddhism is to end the cycle of reincarnation due to continued entanglement with desir and suffering. Detachment and not caring allow the suffering. The person escapes the cycle of want and death is finally death. Oblivion, nothing, no eternal anything, no God. And when all can be converted to Buddhism, the universe will be complete and end. Nothingness, nowhere, Nirvana.
It is usually called rebirth in Buddhism, as opposed to reincarnation, to distinguish it from the idea of an Atman (self) that incarnates in body after body. The latter is a Hindu idea. Rebirth in Buddhism is more comparable to a flame moving from one candle to the next. It is never the same flame between two consecutive moments, even while on a single candle, and while there is a continuity when it passes from one candle to the next, there is no essence, substance, or truly existing identity passing from one candle to the next.
I don’t want to derail your thread, but this is nothing like the “Catholic idea of indulgences”, particularly as practiced in recent centuries (as opposed to Martin Luther’s time), so you probably don’t want to go around making that comparison. In recent centuries, indulgence practice has generally required that a person do some significant religious practice works including confession, prayers, and often Holy Communion. You cannot just make a donation, sit back and hope to obtain an indulgence. There is currently only one partial indulgence available for giving alms to the poor for food, clothing, shelter - note that the money or goods are given to the poor, not to the church - as opposed to dozens of indulgences that do not involve money at all. People are also often obtaining them for deceased people, not for themselves.
I didn’t mention money at all… One of the major sources of merit for laypeople is donating food to monks/nuns. If you find the comparison to the doctrine of indulgences disagreeable, I will stop using it.
Actually he enjoyed his non-being for 40 years; he was content knowing he was not, that his knowing was not, that his consciousness was not him. He was experiencing (he thought) contentment and complacency of desiring nothing eternally, the end of any flame. There is no self.
I know of at least two priest who are Buddhists, and one is even a Zen Master.
Non-being is simply the negative image of being. It is nihilism as opposed to eternalism. In Buddhism no permanent essence/self can be found in the five aggregates that make up human experience, but there is no lack of self in them either.