[Buddha-l] The dying forest

[Malcolm Dean]

Fellow Buddha-l-ists,

A new can for you to kick in any direction you care to:

I heard Thanissaro Bikkhu at UCLA this week, talking about the short
history and very tenuous future of the Forest tradition to which he
belongs. Long story very short, where monks once used to disappear
into forest hermitages, they now protect what remains of those forests
by surrounding their temples with acres and acres of private land. In
sacrificing its forests to commercial interests, Thailand is also
sacrificing an aspect of its Buddhist history.

As China's hegemony increases over the entire region, exercised
through resource trade, military and diplomatic agreements, Buddhist
cultures are being swept away, little by little.

This is depressing enough, but the evening news is often full of
equally depressing items reporting on Africa. How does this relate to
the situation in Thailand?

Here's a suggestion. Indigenous African religions appear to be
shamanic, and not all that dissimilar from the religions which early
Buddhist missionaries to Tibet would have encountered back in
Mediaeval times. Buddhism did not spread by gilded invitation; it
cleverly adapted itself to the prevailing religious consciousness,
just as Christianity did in the Americas, producing new sets of saints
and adapting old rituals.

So, if we are about to see Buddhism die out in Asia, when are we going
to see some missionary response to this situation? Why do we not see
an amalgam of African shamanism and Buddhism, a la Tibetan Buddhism?


Malcolm Dean
Los Angeles CA

Recent Lectures/Publications:
"Outline of Cognitive Thermodynamics," SCTPLS, August 5, 2005
"Cognitive Thermodynamics in Culture & Religion," SSSR, Oct 22, 2004
"General Theory of Cognitive Systems," UCLA CAG, May 13, 2004