Which branch of Buddhism rings most true to you?

[Blue3]

Mahayana. Theravada's epistemological humility isn't enough to balance Mahayana's increased emphasis on compassion for others.

Also, the idea that there's no evidence that the Buddha believed in reincarnation is hilariously false.

Not reincarnation as we think of it.

That depends on how "we" think of reincarnation, doesn't it?

The Buddha taught of "emptiness," how everything originates based on the chain of cause of effect. Everything is conditional, there is no core sense of being. There is no permanence. There is no eternal soul to reincarnate.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Mahayana. Theravada's epistemological humility isn't enough to balance Mahayana's increased emphasis on compassion for others.

Also, the idea that there's no evidence that the Buddha believed in reincarnation is hilariously false.

Not reincarnation as we think of it.

That depends on how "we" think of reincarnation, doesn't it?

The Buddha taught of "emptiness," how everything originates based on the chain of cause of effect. Everything is conditional, there is no core sense of being. There is no permanence. There is no eternal soul to reincarnate.

No eternal soul, no. Early Buddhist communities spent centuries debating what, then, the reincarnating substance was. I've briefly alluded to the Yogachara school's eventual answer on this board in the past:

(after all, even if you personally don't "deserve" to be a rag-and-bone man or whatever, presumably your mindstream did back before it was dunked down into the storehouse consciousness and then ladled back up again into your body)