[Buddha-l] Re: Buddhist Charities (was Will new the pope verify...

[Richard P. Hayes]

On Tue, 2005-04-26 at 12:48 +0100, Andrew Skilton wrote:

> My experience seems to contradict Richard's, in that my impression has
> been that many UK Buddhists I have met have not been involved in
> "social actions, political causes and charitable work". This has been
> paralleled by a bizarre indifference to external events, e.g.
> Tiananmen Square or the Dec 26th tsunami.  Like Richard's observations
> (?), my comments are anecdotal, and so are not representative of the
> whole picture even in the UK, but may go some way to addressing
> Joanna's query a while ago about US/UK differences.

Yes, my observations are entirely anecdotal and pertain mostly to small
groups lacking national or international affiliations. (I seem to have a
constitutional inability to belong for long to any group that has a
membership larger than a graduate seminar. When the membership swells to
twelve, I head for the nearest exit.) No doubt this skews my
observations, and probably invalidates them altogether. What one really
needs to get a complete picture is what larger outfits are up to. When I
think of some of my mostly informal contacts with larger outfits (whose
names I'd rather not mention), my impressions confirm what Andrew says
about his experiences. On the whole I find the picture of Buddhism in
the West pretty discouraging. 

> Has anyone mentioned the issue of conversion yet?

My mission in life is to get everyone to convert from Windows to Linux.
Just as one cannot be a Buddhist and a Republican, one can't be a
Buddhist and a user of Windows. That much is just plain obvious, as
close as anything in this world gets to being an absolute truth.

But Andrew was probably talking about conversion to Buddhism, not Linux.
That really is quite an interesting topic. My impression has been that
Western Buddhists like to think of themselves as not being at all
interested in proselytizing, because they like to think of themselves as
being as unlike Christians as possible. But my impression is that
Western Buddhists are in fact deeply interested in proselytizing and are
mostly in denial about that fact. Fortunately, I have learned not to
trust my impressions very much, for they have so often proved to be
completely wrong.

One issue that has concerned me a lot for a long time is the way in
which individuals (of whom I know too many) have dedicated almost all
their time, energy and money into working for Buddhist (and other non-
Christian) organizations that either fold or lack the resources to take
care of these individuals when they become old or sick. They end up
having no retirement funds, no health care and no resources to provide
for a dignified senility. In a country like the USA, where every herring
hangs by its own economic tail and where the very idea of society taking
care of individuals in need is increasingly under attack, this is a very
serious problem.

-- 
Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico