I'm on those riddles!
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Buddhism's relationship to Hinduism mirrors the relationship between Christianity and Judaism to some extent - Buddha being the "reformer" who takes the spiritual ideas and Hinduism but leaves the deities behind.
Oh, if you like SF you would probably like this book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_of_Light
Reads as if it were written yesterday!
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Buddhism splits roughly into three parts: Mahayana (The Great Vehicle), Hinayana (The Lesser Vehicle), and Theravada (The Teachings of the Elders).
Huge oversimplification, but Mahayana says it's all about enlightenment, that the Buddha was just some guy, and there have been a million Buddhas in the past and more in the future, all of which Gautama Buddha, "the" Buddha, specifically said himself very clearly.
The other two are more ritualized and treat Buddha as a deity
Zen is the most austere variety of Mahayana and has been a go-to for artists and freethinkers in the West even before John Cage brought it gently to our attention.
If you are at all interested in Buddhism, I strongly recommend Zen Flesh, Zen Bones by Paul Reps. It's really entertaining and full of koans, which are little jokes as to how to become enlightened.
Here's one of my favorites.
A woman gave up everything to join a monastery to seek enlightenment but got nowhere, and years later was still there doing menial work.
One night she was carrying water in an old pail, and noticed the reflection of the moon in the water. At that moment the bottom of the pail fell out, and she was enlightened.
She wrote a poem that ends "No more water in the pail/No more moon in the water".
That one is more moving than anything - it makes me cry every time - but there are some that are downright funny.
You won't learn anything much about the history of Buddhism from that book, though, just how to do it.
I don't have a recommendation for a life of the Buddha - let me know if you find one. The rough story is this:
Gautama was a prince and grew up sheltered from all suffering, but then he snuck out of his palace and saw a sick man, an old man, and a dead man.
He returned home, even married and had a son (named Rahula, "The Fetter", giving some idea of his feelings about the matter!) but became dissatisfied, and eventually left for good, becoming an ascetic.
After starving himself with the other mystics, he had a revelation, which I would summarize as, "This is stupid."
So he had a good meal, cleaned himself up, and then went and sat down outside beneath a banyan tree now called the Bodhi Tree
And - I love this next detail - he strikes the ground three times with the heel of his left hand, and declare he is not going to stir from that spot until he figures it out, suffering and human existence and how to deal with it all.
And well, he does. Mostly.
He came up with the Three Noble Truths and the Eightfold Way and, well, as good as we have gotten out of this sort of process.
It lacks two things though.
One is an explanation, "Why? Who put this together? What happens when we die?"
But... does such an explanation exist?
The other is some feedback system that will prevent us from destroying the planet.
Gautama was a smart and funny guy but he could not possible have seen clear to a far-distant future where we needed to make decisions at a planetary level that would affect the planet centuries in advance.
So... the Gautama Buddha gets a score of 8.5. OK, 9 because it might well be that no explanation exists.
