[Buddha-l] women & , er, religion

[Margaret Gouin]

2009/7/25 Jayarava <jayarava at yahoo.com>

>
> All known forms of Buddhism, even those forms portrayed in the Pāli texts,
> show clear signs of syncretism - the living forms are all highly syncretised
> with local customs, beliefs and practices. Buddhism is all about change and
> adaptation, everything by definition is change, a swirl of social forms and
> cultural manifestations around a single idea: praticcasamupada, which itself
> encapsulates this idea (my spelling of it tends to demonstrate the principle
> of fluidity as well).
>

When I was doing my doctoral research, I paid particular attention any time
I read (in the scholarly literature, yet) 'This is manifestly not Buddhist'
or 'This is obviously pre-Buddhist' (with regard to Tibetan practices).
Usually I could trace whatever was so manifestly not-/pre-Buddhist back to
impeccable Buddhist roots... great fun.

Margaret