[Buddha-l] Re: Greetings from Oviedo

[Joy Vriens]

Dear Dan,

> For those who have never heard of Rabad, and don't resent posted links, see
> http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=420&letter=A

Thanks, I didn't know the second link. Can you imagine a man of these 
qualities, before humanism even came in vogue, is totally unknown in the 
town where he lived?

> It has struck me over the years that Buddhism seems particularly
> ill-equipped to handle sustained persecution. Not only was it persecuted out
> of existence in its homeland and Central Asia by the advent of Islam there,

I am totally ignorant of the reasons why Buddhism left its homeland and 
I don't doubt it that the advent of Islam didn't help, but I understood 
that Buddhism has mainly itself to blame for the disappearence from its 
homeland. Somehow its message became too subtle or complicated to appeal 
to the masses and it was a religion based on renunciation right from the 
start anyway. Any advertiser can tell you that is not the way to reach 
the masses, unless the reality one lives in is so bad it's better to 
renunciate.

> but even the history of Buddhism in East Asia (China, Korea, and Japan) is
> probably more definable by political and persecutional vicissitudes than by
> doctrinal, practice, or institutional considerations in isolation from
> that -- though in Japan the picture gets more complicated since the
> persecutions (until the Tokugawa) were often perpetrated by one Buddhist
> group upon another.

> Has anyone give this much thought?

Religions that are persecuted are necessarily religions that don't have 
much political power or support. Religions that flirt with power or 
state religions obviously have a bigger chance to survive. Exoteric 
religions or religions with external display have a bigger chance to 
succeed than esoteric ones. This tendancy also exists within a religion 
itself. Mysticism has always been persecuted or condemned. Mysticism 
goes for the direct religious experience without intermediary. The fact 
it is without intermediary means it can't be controlled. Ever since the 
Lhasa debate, the more mystical approaches have been under fire in 
Tibet, or needed to show themselves to be embedded in more external 
practices. You can be a mystic privately as long as you join in in the 
external display of religion.

Joy