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I’ve always looked at Buddhism more like Hinduism, with most of the fancy God’s and supernaturalism cut out of it. There’s a ‘lot’ of overlap otherwise, between the two.
Buddhism’s often looked at as an atheistic religion, that either has no God’s at best, or “doesn’t make use of God’s,” at worst, in its practice. But it’s open to anyone’s use and import of the concept. Theravada and Mahayana Buddhism don’t make very heavy use of the supernatural when you compare it to Tibetan Buddhism, which makes ‘very heavy’ use of the supernatural.
Eh, the Buddhists say they don't believe in God, but the way they talk about Dharma or the Buddha nature is indistinguishable from how other religions talk about God. The contradictions seem to be the point in Buddhism though. It seems like they are trying to play a joke on you by passing off obvious contradictions as if they really make sense if you think about them enough. And then after you've wasted your life meditating on them you don't want to admit you got duped so you keep passing it on.
I've noticed this in the way some Pure Land traditions interact with Amitahba, or some ethnic traditions like the Tibetan's retain their traditional polytheistic gods, but in the Cha'an descended Mahayana traditions or the Sri Lankan descended Theravada there's nothing like the treatment of Siddhartha Gautama as a deity.
There are jokes though, something the Abrahamic faiths seem pretty light on. In general the laity don't seem to take it as seriously as the monastics do, its largely an ethnic church where you go to temple on certain times and perform certain traditions, try to live my a set of moral norms, and don't get all to bothered over it day to day. Buddhism also leaves space for traditional superstitions to co-exist in many cultures like the relationship with Daoism and Trad. Chinese folk beliefs or with Shinto in Japan.
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