[Buddha-l] NYTimes.com: Let Us Pray for Wealth

[Richard Hayes]

On Monday 05 November 2007 12:05, curt wrote:

> If anyone knows of any evidence for any survival of any religions from
> Europe, North Africa or the Middle East - other than Christianity, Islam
> and Judaism - that would be another significant contribution to human
> knowledge. 

I guess we would have to know your criteria for survival. In Europe and North 
American Christianity there are plenty of elements of indigenous European and 
native American religions that have become incorporated into what is 
nominally called Christianity. One might even argue that far more of European 
and American indigenous religion than middle-eastern Christianity has 
survived in European and American Christianity. Similar observations could 
probably be made of Judaism. So we might say the forms of non-Abrahamic 
religions have survived, but not the names.

If I understand you rightly, you would say precisely the same is true of 
Western Buddhism, namely, that it is more Western than Buddhist. If I do 
understand you rightly, I think you are right about this. Where we might 
disagree slightly is how much we approve of the bastard children than have 
been born of the mingling of European paganism with Buddhism, Christianity, 
Islam and Judaism.

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