Like vehicle, highway, destination. The journey is life.

If challenged to encapsulate secular, non-religious, lower-case "buddhism" in a few words, three candidates:

• Mindfulness: deliberate non-judgmental awareness – direct moment-by-moment attention to thoughts, feelings, perceptions ...
• Nonattachment: letting go – no clinging to externals or internals, no I/me/mine ...
• Oneness: fundamental unity of everything no barriers or divisions between people and among objects, only connections...

Mystical enlightenment experiences? Unnecessary, often illusory. Also optional: belief (or disbelief) in god(s), karma, reincarnation, afterlife, ... _{(cf. Einstein on Self, John Muir, Present-Moment Reality, Being with Your Breath, Beginner's Guide to Insight Meditation, Breath and Awareness, Indra's Net, Total Interconnectedness, MyOb, My Religion, 01, 0-1, ...) - ^z - 2011-10-17}