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It wasn't. Not just Sri Lanka, even in Japan the common man practices a sketchy mixture of Shinto and Buddhism. The 100% "pure Buddhist" practice is a post-colonial phenomenon led by the likes of Anagarika Dharmapala. It was inspired by protestant Christianity. After all Anagarika was born a...

That's reinforcing my point. Silabhadra was a Buddhist monk (most Buddhist monks were Brahmins or Kshatriyas) and Nalanda was mostly a "Buddhist" university funded by the Vaishnava Guptas. Now you might say that the distinctions between "Hinduism" and "Buddhism" were meaningless. And there is...

But you need expansion, institutions and centralised power. The world has no status quo, anything that doesn't expand only contracts. Perhaps a different form of Dharma is needed for export purposes? Interestingly, Alan Watts called Buddhism the export form of Hinduism

Exactly. That's what I'm trying to convey. Hinduism is like a distributed system. Even when defeated its very difficult to wipe out compared to an institutionalized system like the Buddhist sangha. However, the flip side of such a decentralized system is you can't expand easily when you're in...

That's a huge innovation. Rejection of an "ultimate reality" and having a somewhat nihilistic outlook, but with ethics is radical. In the modern urban world would you rather have a bunch of people who're woke or Buddhists with belief in Karma, reincarnation etc ? Buddhism had already declined...

Basically, as wealth and comforts increase people become materialists and lean towards atheism and even nihilism. How do you encourage ethical behaviour in such situations? How do you calm your mind with infinite distractions and without belief in "god" ? Buddhism has answers to these. Either...

Buddhism is great for the modern, urban world. Buddha had a similar upbringing (prince, luxury etc). It attempts to solve a very hard problem - how do you uphold Dharma in the face of materialism and loss of bhakti

That's what I thought too since it's apparently "common knowledge" But if you actually read Buddhist texts, some of the most sophisticated and refined stuff like Avatamsaka Sutra was composed much later after the 3rd century AD - i.e Gupta Empire time which was considered "Hindu" Buddhism...

I feel Mahayana (Tibet, Japan etc) sect of Buddhism is more platable to Indian tastes. Beautiful and quite similar in flavour to mainstream Hinduism Theravada sect (Sri Lanka etc) is very dry.

Yes and no. That whole "Buddhism lost because of non violence" is BS. Buddhism was basically the belief system of elite Kshatriyas. Non violence doesn't even figure in the 4 tenents of Buddhism, this perception is because of Western hippie culture. My understanding is that Buddhism is...

"GBC will be organised under the overall framework of the flagship event of the Ministry of Tourism. Eminent scholars from prominent Buddhist universities/institutions in India and abroad will participate in the GBC. In the run-up to the GBC, four regional conferences in India: Telangana...

Many folks don't know this but most of current Sri Lankan "buddhist nationalism" was created by Anagarika Dharmapala (late 1800s to early 1900). He was heavily influenced by European indologists and Christianity. Totally believed in Sinhalese being the pure Aryan race. Some even called his...

You're making up some weird fantasy of religious conflict which simply did not exist. India has places like the Ellora caves where Hindu, Buddhist and Jain temples co-exist side-by-side (600-100CE) The only Indian centres of learning which were actually destroyed were Nalanda and Taxila by...

@HeinzGud you can participate as long as you don't flame-bait. I merged your existing thread since it was pointlessly inflammatory == Now on topic: I used to have a different view on this - that Buddhism was "reformist" and "rational" etc. This does not hold up to scrutiny. I feel most of this...