[Buddha-l] how many buddhists...

[Curt Steinmetz]

Richard Hayes wrote:
> 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.
>
>   

Emperor Liang:  "How much karmic merit have I earned by ordaining 
Buddhist monks, building monasteries, having sutras copied, and 
commissioning Buddha images?"

Bodhidharma: "None."

Or so goes the tale.

But I would add that "counting Buddhists" is only a side-issue. The real 
game is asking the question: *who* is a Buddhist? And of course that 
requires some definition of what *any* religion is, and what it means to 
"belong to" such a thing. And those really are interesting questions if 
for no other reason than the fact that we constantly talk as if we knew 
what the answers to those questions are - without having actually looked 
very deeply into them.

Curt Steinmetz

P.S. Are they proposing to turn your department into a "Center of 
Excellence"?