[Buddha-l] how many buddhists...

[Richard Hayes]

On Wed, 2008-07-23 at 01:14 -0700, Jayarava wrote:

> I recall reading somewhere that in the last UK census there where 0.3%
> Buddhists and 0.7% Jedi in Great Britain. Any idea how many Jedi in
> China?

I guess it would be some percentage of the prison population there.

This whole business of counting Buddhists stinks in my nostrils. It
nearly always smacks of a kind of triumphalism. Reminds me of the days
when dictators had long parades showing off all their missiles to prove
how potent and important (or is that portentous and impotent) they were.
(Why did I write that in the past tense? People still do that kind of
thing, don't they?)

Maybe I'm just in a bad mood because my department is undergoing one of
those periodic self-studies and peer review rituals that administrators
love so much. I'm so sick of seeing charts and tables full of
information on how many books, articles, book chapters, book reviews,
invited lectures, conference presentations, teaching awards, thesis
advisees and privileged parking spaces all our faculty have to their
credit that I retch at the very idea of trying to quantify excellence.
(Excellence, as I'm sure you all know, is the only product that
universities sell. No department is ever merely pretty good, or good
enough for a poor state like New Mexico. Everything is world class, as
in Garrison Keillor's home town, where all the children are above
average.)

Quantification, bah! If there is only one Buddhist in the world, that's
fine with me. (If I'm that one Buddhist, all the better. But I'm not.)
But what do I know? Only 0.27% of the penguins in Tierra del Fuego agree
with me.

-- 
Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico