[Buddha-l] The dying forest

[jkirk]

Depressing about the tudong tradition in Thailand.
China has so much money they can buy up any government in SE Asia and get 
access to destroy the local resources. Burma is an especially bad case in 
point here, but Thailand isn't far behind.

As for Africa, well I have to disagree that their various religious 
practices are shamanistic a la central and northern Asia (or if you like, 
Tibet). They aren't.

African religious cults, practices etc are more like the village cults that 
once were very predominant in India but are going fast toward the "great 
tradition" under the political and economic forces of "development."  Their 
main features are or were deity cults, possession by deities rituals, lots 
of sorcery and magic, and overall general paranoia, since all of these 
whether India or Africa were situated in shortage economies where the "image 
of limited good" prevailed: "your gain is my loss", whether by luck, by 
magic, by deity intervention, acts of nature (flood, drought, earthquakes), 
etc. These events and experiences were always attributed to evil human 
motives, usually based on envy, or fear, or on suspicion that one did 
something wrong oneself that antagonized a deity or ancestor spirit, or on 
interfamilial competition for resources, or on any occasion where someone 
could accuse or suspect another human being.

I don't look forward to any amalgamation of Buddhism with any of the above, 
any time soon.
Joanna K.
=========================================================>
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
>
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