[Buddha-l] Buddhism, the second largest religion in the world

[Richard Hayes]

On Monday 05 March 2007 15:45, Jeff Wilson wrote:

> Counting Buddhists is on the whole about as productive as herding
> cats, I tend to think.

Having two cats, and a dog who is very good at herding them, I am inclined to 
think that herding cats is far more productive than counting Buddhists. 

I think we should follow the example of Buddhist texts themselves and simply 
be content to say that there are as many Buddhists as there are grains of 
sand on the banks of the Ganges. A Buddhist is someone on the path, or, as we 
say in academia, taking the course. 

The number of people who complete the Buddhist course is, needless to say, 
pathetically small. We might even say that graduates are possible to count on 
the little finger of one hand, but one might have to wait many millennia to 
find as many graduates of the Buddhist course as one can find little fingers 
on one hand. (Of course in China, where for many centuries devout Buddhists 
have cut or burned their fingers off in bursts of painful piety, this whole 
business of counting anything digitally has become a bit complicated.)

-- 
Richard P. Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico
http://www.unm.edu/~rhayes