`From Mitchell, Buddhism, Oxford University Press, 2002 (2nd ed 2008; the quotations below are from the ist ed, but the 2nd doesn't look much different @ a quick glance; the review quoted below is also of the 1st ed)  page 1: ``Buddhism, one of the great religions of the world, is a diverse complex of doctrines and institutions, as well as ritual, moral, devotional, and meditational practices ... From its beginning ... Buddhism has focused on the realization of enlightenment. It has placed a high value on developing spiritualities that lead to enlightened insight through the cultivation of morality, meditation, and wisdom. While the vast array of Buddhist religious cultural forms define the breadth of the experience of Buddhism, its profound spiritual quest for enlightenment—and its wealth of teachings about this quest and its goal—define the depth of Buddhist experience.  Given the extent of this beadth and depth, one is faced with many choices in writing an introductory textbook on Buddhism. On the one hand, a writer needs to introduce the reader to the richness and diversity of the historical and cultural forms of Buddhism in a balanced way. On the other hand, one needs also to introduce the reader to the more fundamental depths of Buddhist experiences as they are articulated in those many forms. If one emphasizes the diversity of Buddhism too much, the danger is that a little is said about many things and the textbook becomes a catalog of people and sects, practices and ideas, dates and places, rites and customs, and art and literature. If one emphasizes the depth of the Buddhist experience too much, the danger is that so much is said about spiritual matters that Buddhism becomes a kind of abstract and idealized religious entity without any correspondence to social, historical reality.  What this textbook does is to focus on introducing something of the depth of Buddhist experience as evidenced in both thought and practice within the context of telling the story of its historical development. There are good reasons, both from without and within the Buddhist tradition, to introduce Buddhism in this way. First, from without, one could argue that the fundamental [page 2] ideas and practices that express and generate the experiences of Buddhism are the foundations of the religion. Whatever the cultural shapes and textures that Buddhism has taken in popular practice, monastic life, art, literature, and so on, below this diverse landscape one finds these foundations of thought and practice. Second, one could point out that only in recent centuries has the term Buddhism been used to name this religion. This name was coined by Western scholars and eventually became accepted by Buddhists themselves. Previously, the religion was often referred to as the Buddha's teaching or message and the Buddha's way or path of attainment. These words used within the tradition itself indicate the central importance of doctrine and practice to define the experience of what we now call Buddhism.  ...  Fundamental to the variety of Buddhist traditions is the classical opinion that to be a Buddhist means to take the Three Refuges or to take refuge in the Three Jewels: the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha.``  Reviewer's comments (Philosophy East and West, vol 54, pages 269f):  ``... some historians of Buddhism will likely find unsatisfactory the distinction presented in the introduction between the ``vast array of Buddhist religious cultural forms`` and its ``profound spiritual quest`` or ``the more fundamental depths of Buddhist experiences`` (p. 1). Such language, although widespread, perpetuates the ``core philosophy and practice``–versus–``culturally accumulated baggage`` picture of Buddhism constructed by early western Buddhologists, implicitly suggesting that scholars can extract this original tradition from later cultural accretions ...``  Lopez, Story of Buddhism, page 8 (Buddhism, the British ed of the same book, may have a slightly different pagination): ``... Buddhism as it has occurred across historical periods and across geographical regions. This Buddhism is not a coherent unity. But, if one adopts a different perspective, a perspective that offers a different view of time, of history, and of people, then something we might call Buddhism, in the singular, begins to appear.`` He then goes on, on page 9, to talk of Buddhism as a wide variety of (skilful) means to achieve liberation from rebirth, this liberation being described in many different ways.  I've no idea what all that perspective stuff is all about.     `