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

[Erik Hoogcarspel]

jkirk schreef:
>> Counting Buddhists is on the whole about as productive as herding
>> cats, I tend to think.
>>
>> Sincerely,
>> Jeff Wilson
>> Dept. of Religious Studies
>> UNC-Chapel Hill
>> ====================
>>     
> Depends on the reasons for counting, yes? Some of us are social sciency and 
> enjoy dealing with demographics of all kinds......how many angels can dance 
> on the head of a pin, for example. If others prefer to be stuck by the pin, 
> that's their lookout.
> This list has run through a multitude of topics, not the worst of which is 
> the current thread which, if renamed, might not seem so megalomaniac or 
> silly.
>
>   
If you're counting something it's very usefull to know what you're 
counting. In the good old days we threw the heathens out of the village, 
and maybe in some villages our good fathers are still practicing this 
lovely old tradition, so we were sure everybody appeared in church on 
sundays and was a therefore Christian.
But times change. Even then Catholics could pray to Saint Josaphat or 
Saint Barlaam not knowing they were praying to the Bodhisattva and the 
Bhagavan. Nowadays in the pools of sin they call cities people frequent 
all types of religious meetings and call themselves Buddhist or Taoist 
as they please. Why count things that change so easily, it's even easier 
to count people who wear red shoes. Schopen hauer called himself a 
Buddhist, does this make all the people who like his writings Buddhists? 
And what about secret Buddhists, Pratyeka Buddhas, was Socrates a 
Pratyeka Buddha or Chrystosomos? I would say what the heck, appoint some 
western philosophers as Pratyeka Buddhas and give those tallymen 
something to think about.


Erik


www.xs4all.nl/~jehms
weblog http://www.volkskrantblog.nl/pub/blogs/blog.php?uid=2950