>>Hi Charles,
>>
>>Well written. I agree with everything except that Sri Lanka disproves your Buddhism statement...
>
>Hadn't thought about the Tamil/Sinhalese thing. Don't know much about that one. But it does seem that conflict is pretty tribal and ethnic and despite rather than fueled by the Buddhist culture. ( there were some pretty hairy wars between the Thais/Laos/Burmese too ) Khmer Rouge functioned in a traditionally Buddhist culture, but the Buddhism didn't fuel the fire.
>

Charles,

To my knowledge there has never been a war fought in the name of Buddhism. That is not to say that a Buddhist has never fought in a war, but that they have not done so in the name of Buddhism. I believe of the major religions only Buddhism can claim this.



>The thing that always struck me about Buddhists was the lack of any need to create more Buddhists or to purge and punish apostates. It was instructive to see Christian missionaries "convert" Buddhists ( who would sometimes - usually out of politeness - add a reverence to "Phra Jesu" to the list of Bohdisats ) and then be surprised to realize their converts still retained all their Buddhist beliefs and didn't see religion as a zero sum game. Most Buddhists I knew in village society were still anamists as well <s> Early Christian missionaries of course also ran into that in Europe and Britain - but in those days were more flexible and we got Christmas trees, mistletoe, the cult of the Virgin, a broad list of sacraments, a pantheon of local saints and a whole lot of appropriated holy places.
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>But Buddhist crusade or jihad ... sort of like anarchist bureaucracy <s>
>
>
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