Is there Buddhism without reincarnation?

There is a kind of American Buddhism that has been developing. There have been a number of recent books by authors like Jack Kornfield that present Buddhism for Westerners. There is even scientific research showing the psychological and physical benefits for meditation.

Out of curiosity and because there are aspects of Buddhism that I find appealing, I attended a meditation session given by a local Buddhist group.

There were no people there of Asian ancestry. The literature that was given out emphasizes the “experiential” aspects fo Buddhism. It hardly seemed to be like a religion at all. Being an atheist in search of a secular equivalent of religion, this suits me fine, but it still seems a little weird.

For something to be called a religion it should require a leap of faith of one sort or another. As I understand it, the leap of faith in Buddhism is the belief in reincarnation and this belief is as fundamental to Buddhism as belief in salvation is to Christianity.

Buddhists believe in separate physical and spiritual selves and their objective is to split the spiritual off from the physical. If you do not succeed in doing this in one lifetime you get to do it again in succeeding lifetimes until you get it right. Once you become pure spirit, you are permitted to enter Nirvana.

This is no more or less absurd to me than any other religious belief, but it seems to me that you can’t have Buddhism without it and that those who claim to be doing so are creating something entirely new and should own up to it.