But to be even more precise, I think Buddhism has always been what we might call a type of 'transcendent psychology,' and it's only been relatively recently (at least in the West) that its more technical terms have been understood and translated in ways that make this clear. I think this shift is due in no small part to the decades of excellent scholarship that has been brought to bear on the texts and the religious-historical context in which they took shape.
Regardless of how it's been popularized, at its core, Buddhism deals exclusively with one subject, that of human mental suffering. The Buddha himself made it clear that:
Both formerly and now, monks, I declare only stress and the cessation of stress.
That's not to say there aren't 'supernatural' concepts in Buddhism, or that local customs, deities and religious practices haven't found their way into Buddhism wherever it's been established. But rather than a pure system of thought or a strictly faith-based worship of the supernatural, a critical analysis of the earliest texts reveals a much more pragmatic and specialized method of mental training than most traditional Buddhists and Western converts realize—one that seeks to diminish and even eliminate suffering by radically changing the way the mind relates to experience.
Whatever else this radical transformation may open one up to, I can't say, but I suspect that Thanissaro Bhikkhu's right when he says that we're "not committing spiritual suicide." The allegory of the cave in Plato's Republic immediately comes to mind here, where he uses the image of the philosopher turning the soul (mind) away from the darkness of the visible realm (samsara) towards the light of the form of the Good (nibbana).
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