[Buddha-l] wiki wiki

[Richard Hayes]

Curt opined:


> A lot of the stuff on wikipedia about Hinduism is actually 
> pretty good

A few weeks ago when we were discussing books on Buddhism allowed in
American prisons, someone kindly sent me the list. There was also a list
of books on Hinduism. That list was almost unbelievably one-sided. There
was hardly anything on it except for works about Swami Muktananda and
Gurumayi Chidvilasananda.

>  - but just about every single word about Buddhism on 
> wikipedia is completely worthless. I think this says a lot about 
> "buddhism" in the west.

The books on Buddhism allowed to American prisoners were not bad
(including the works on such Buddhist classics as the Bhagavad-gita--oh
dear). I guess it goes to show that if you want a good education in
Buddhism, you're a lot better off in prison than on the Internet.

I'm not sure I would take Wikipedia as a reliable measure of the quality
of much of anything; I have hunch there may be a bit more to Western
Buddhism than what one finds on Wikipedia. Not that I'm planning to find
out. My curiosity about anything in Buddhism anywhere in the world after
about the second century is pretty feeble. Pretty much all of Buddhism
has been moving pretty precipitously downhill since Nagarjuna. (What
does Wikipedia say about THAT?)

-- 
Richard