[Buddha-l] A great transition and deja vu ?

[jkirk]

http://www.well.com/user/davidu/cultural.html 

CULTURAL TRANSITION AND SPIRITUAL TRANSFORMATION: 
FROM ALEXANDER THE GREAT TO CYBERSPACE
David Ulansey

In, The Vision Thing: Myth, Politics, and Psyche in the World,
edited by Thomas Singer (London and New York: Routledge, 2000)
pp. 213-31.

I've not read The Vision Thing..., but Ulansey has posted his
contribution to that anthology on his website, and it's quite
interesting. In fact, a lot of other aticles based on his
classicist research can also be found on his website. Lots of
intriguing reading.  Main URL:
http://www.well.com/user/davidu/index.html  

Buddhist content: not obvious except in the opening preface to
Ulansey's article from The Vision Thing:

"Let us suppose that in modern Europe the faithful had deserted
the Christian churches to worship Allah or Brahma, to follow the
precepts of Confucius or Buddha, or to adopt the maxims of the
Shinto; let us imagine a great confusion of all the races of the
world in which Arabian mullahs, Chinese scholars, Japanese
bonzes, Tibetan lamas and Hindu pundits would be preaching
fatalism and predestination... a confusion in which all those
priests would erect temples of exotic architecture in our cities
and celebrate their disparate rites therein. Such a dream, which
the future may perhaps realize, would offer a pretty accurate
picture of the religious chaos in which the ancient world was
struggling before the reign of Constantine." [1]

Franz Cumont, 1906
[My exception: in our times Buddhism is not exactly "preaching
fatalism and predestination"]

Cheers, Joanna