Is Tiger's return to Buddhism for real?

But as any convicted believer will tell you, it’s no sin to be lapsed – as long as you rededicate yourself to your redemption in earnest. And, with its emphasis on disciplining thought and action to overcome base human desire, you could argue that no religion does redemption better than Buddhism. And despite Fox News commentator Brit Hume’s calls for conversion, citing Christianity as the best way to recover from Tiger’s particular vices,). neither Christianity nor Buddhism has cornered the market. As Boston University religion professor Stephen Prothero put it so succinctly in an op-ed earlier this year, “Which of these two traditions [Christianity or Buddhism] offers more resources for adulterers on the mend is to me an open question.”…

Life is suffering, teaches the Buddha. The self is a transitory thing. Material comforts and selfish impulses have no value. “The eradication of cravings,” as the Perennial Dictionary of World Religions put it, can be achieved through following what in Buddhism is known as the eightfold path: “moral conduct (right speech, right action, right livelihood); mental discipline (right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration); intuitive wisdom (right views, right intentions).” The eightfold path, like the Ten Commandments, is as useful a guide for living a moral life as any on earth. Along that path, Tiger clearly has a lot of renouncing to do.