Buddha was just a guy

I was at a dharma talk this past weekend, given by Jordan Thorn, and in it, I heard Jordan say, "This is a Buddhist Temple." And I immediately laughed, at the timing of things, because literally, two days before, I had admitted in my way-seeking-mind-talk that I had no idea that the "zen center" was a Buddhist temple.
And then I thought about the word Buddhist, and how it seems to be made up of the name of a guy- Buddha- and the suffix ist, which I think means study. And then I thought about the word Christianity and how that word is made up of a guy's name- Christ- and anity, which I'm guessing means something to the effect of  "acting like" or "emulating."
And I thought, "Oh, these 'religions' are named after their 'leaders,' and the people who follow them are following them because they want to follow their example, maybe to be like them, maybe to live like them."
And then I thought about leaders from our time, like Martin Luther King Junior and how if there were a statue of Martin Luther King Junior on an altar, I would totally bow to it. (Well, actually, I don't know if that's true, I think it would feel weird to bow to Martin Luther King Junior). But he is a guy whose example I would like to follow. And he is a guy to whom I am grateful- for his courage, for his ability to speak in a way that drew our attention to our common humanity, that made us see that how we were treating each other wasn't how anyone wanted to live.
And Martin Luther King Junior was an actual person. He was born just like everyone else, grew up like everyone else, tried to find his way in this life, and then did some amazing things that, I believe, moved us forward in our humanity (or maybe brought us back to where we were all along).
But the point is, he was just a person. And following him isn't turning him in to a god or some other worldly being. Following him, or wanting to be like him, is simply saying, I'd like to live that way. I respect the way he did things and would like to act in a way that can have the same effect.
I don't think anyone thinks of Martin Luther King Junior as a god. I don't think anyone thinks of him
as from another world. I think everyone knows he was a human being, just like everyone else.
And that brought me back to Buddha. As far as I know, he was just a guy too. From what I've heard,
he was a prince who stepped outside his castle gates, saw suffering and said, "No way! This is out
there? And I'm in here? I need to figure this out." And then left his castle (or whatever it is that
princes lived in back then) and tried to figure it out. And he struggled with it a lot and tried all these
different ways to, I don't know, relieve suffering or understand it... I'm not really sure, but then he came to this place in which he felt like he did understand it, or at least made peace with it.
And then he shared. He said, "This works for me. It might not work for you, but this is how I'm doing it." (okay, darn good thing there aren't any rights or laws about paraphrasing religious leaders, I think I'd be silenced forever at this point!) And I think some people tried it and they were like, "Yeah, this does work. Let's follow him and try to live the way he is living."
And then I thought about how we often 'pay homage to' the ancestors of the temple: Boddhidharma and Ei Hei Dogen and I'm pretty sure that they were people too. And I'm pretty sure that they each had some teaching to offer, that they had a way of understanding this practice in their lives and that they shared that with others. And I think that when we 'pay homage' to them we're saying "Dude- thank you so much for your way of seeing these things and for sharing that with us. It totally helps us to get a better understanding of how to put these things into practice."
It's like being a Buddhist doesn't mean you're becoming some ascetic or some other worldly person, you're just saying "Huh, I think I'd like to live my life this way, or at least part of it. I believe in what that guy was doing. I think it's an effective way to live and I'd like to live that way too. So I'm going to study it, see what it's all about, learn about how other people put it in to practice and then try to put it in to practice in my own life."
And yes, I am fully aware that I am writing this blogpost to make peace with my own issues around Buddhism. Yep, got it.