[Buddha-l] Lamas and such

[S.A. Feite]

On Dec 3, 2009, at 4:06 PM, Richard Hayes wrote:

> On Dec 3, 2009, at 1:32 PM, S. A. Feite wrote:
> 
>> Lopez points out an interesting phenomenon re: "Lamaism": the pairing
>> of Tibetan Buddhism with Roman Catholicism. Early commentators went
>> to considerable lengths to compare the two.
> 
> The Jehovah's Witnesses still do this, with an interesting difference.  
> Tibetan Buddhism has come to represent all of Buddhism, so all  
> Buddhists are, in the eyes of our earnest JW friends, worshipers of  
> the Buddhist Pope, the Dalai Lama. This is about as accurate as the  
> claim that Quakers worship foxes.

I think it's helpful as a thought-experiment, if you're familiar the devout religiosity of early 20th century Christianity piety via grandparents, etc., to imagine an even more devoutly Christian, more superstitious and even less scientific forebear arriving after some extreme travel at a place where the people appear very friendly, but appear to be worshipping what clearly appears to be demons of some sort, feasting on blood, etc. (tantric sacraments). It's more like a copy of the Claviculae Solomonis, Durer's Inferno or Bosch's art to a devout Christian of that era. 

Surely it must be a aberrant form of original Buddhism (to their eyes). And so you parse it accordingly. If you want to say something nice, you compare it too the Mass.