On Buddhism

In the past, when I heard that someone had become a buddhist (Richard Gere for instance) I always felt it was a bit ridiculous. The small effort that I dedicated to the critic of such people left only room for making fun of it. My respect and sympathy for the figure of the Dalai Lama, however, has existed since I heard about him, so I was left in the middle of these two attitudes, in a shaky ground only supported by carelessness.
A superficial aesthetic interest on japanese poetry led me to read about Zen buddhism. Now I must confess my current attraction on buddhism, which is all the more unexpected since I am a devote atheist. Of course buddhism being a religion which grounds itself not in a belief in god but in the need to reduce suffering a clash is much less likely than with theistic religions. However, I have not yet understood how deeply rooted is the concept of reincarnation in buddhism, or if it is only in some (many?) of its versions that this concept exists. I find the concept totally absurd, but that has not diminished my admiration for the profoundly honest reasoning in buddhism, which much more resembles a philosophical current than a religion in the regular sense.