Viswanathan K's Thoughts

If a region has a well-established and ancient belief and value system, whether one calls it a religion or not, it is hard to replace it. Since China had Confucianism, how was Buddhism able to replace it? The starting point for the transformation, as per William Dalrymple in The Golden Road : “It was war and devastation.” Not external war or devastation by external forces. Instead it was triggered by the fall of the Han dynasty in 220 CE. This power vacuum was soon followed by natural disaster like floods, famines and plague. The power of the Confucian elite eroded, and the general belief in Chinese cultural superiority too got chipped away. A vacuum now existed for new ideas…   Buddhist missionary work exposed the population to Buddhist practices, art and imagery. The emperor Wen soon became the most “enthusiastic champion” of Buddhism in Chinese history (he had been born in a Buddhist temple and raised by a Buddhist nun). He ordered the construction of many monasteries ac...

In The Golden Road , William Dalrymple mentions something strange - No Buddhist text or inscription survives from the times before Ashoka and Kalinga. (Dalrymple snarkily contrasts Ashoka’s “I am sorry” with other rulers from that time to present day, who will never acknowledge a mistake or express regret). But once Ashoka embraced Buddhism, a “waterfall” of records cascade from Kandahar to the Deccan. Ashoka was to Buddhism’s spread what Constantine was to Christianity’s, he writes.   But post-Ashoka, Buddhism never spread by any ruler’s recommendation or by the sword. “Instead, perhaps counter-intuitively for a faith that embraced poverty and renunciation as an ideal, it was spread around the globe most effectively by wealthy merchants engaged in trade.” For many Buddhists, wealth “could be taken as a sign of good karma ” and “poverty could be interpreted as a sign of moral failure”!   At the famous caves of Ajanta, the Buddha is shown less in his “monastic mil...

During one of his (as usual) awesome closing arguments in Boston Legal , Alan Shore asked: “ When did religion get such a good name, anyway? Be it the Crusades, the Reformation genocides, the “troubles” in Northern Ireland, the Middle East, mass slaughters supposedly in the name of Allah, and then, of course, the obligatory reciprocal retribution.” Religion now has such a bad name that even Buddhism isn’t spared. The wickedly satirical The Onion posted this hilarious article on how a Buddhist extremist cell (yup, you read that right) vows to unleash (hold your breath) tranquility on the West! The group’s leader, Tsuglag Rinpoche, declared: “In the name of the Great Teacher, we will stop at nothing to unleash a firestorm of empathy, compassion, and true selflessness upon the West… we will bring the entire United States to its knees in deep meditation.” Criticizing the US for “blatant disregard of karmic balance within the universe”, he vowed that his “ soldiers would cont...