--- In [email protected], Vaj <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: It did > > not > >> die--it spread like wildfire. > >> > On Dec 11, 2006, at 4:13 PM, jim_flanegin wrote: > > Actually, it didn't. There are about two million adherents to > > Buddhism in the US, so we can conclude that just a small fraction of > > those are Tibetan Buddhists. > Vaj <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Actually it did. Just a century ago there were few Tibetan Buddhists > in any western country, that number has greatly increased since the > Tibetan diaspora. From 1990 to 2001, Buddhism grew 170% in the US > alone! I heard around 6 million Buddhists is the US and that was a > few years ago. This is where I got my numbers from:
http://jbe.gold.ac.uk/4/baum2.html > > The western country with the greatest percentage of Buddhists is the > > US with 1.6 percent. That's the "greatest percentage"(!), followed > > by France with 1.15 percent, then quickly dropping to Australia and > > Russia with .8 and .7 percent, respectively. > > I don't think that's correct Jim. My guess would be Kalmykia which is > around 50% Buddhist--even after the massive deportations and > persecution. Amazing! There's 300,000 people in Kalmykia, that's less than Las Vegas!- Hardly representative of a western country with a large percentage of Buddhists! > > > > > That's some wildfire, Vaj. > > Yeah I know, from nothing, to millions worldwide and for such an > advanced practice is indeed very unusual. Advanced? Are you joking? If you call letting the seat of the religion be extinguished advanced. Tibetan Buddhism is a failed tradition. Compare to something > roughly similar in terms of spiritual technology--Hindu mantrayana- - > and you'll find much, much less, maybe thousands. But keep in mind, > this is not TM, it's not all about quantity, it's more about quality. I am not comparing the two. You said Tibetan Buddhism was spreading like a wildfire. It isn't. I doubt that if you added all the new adherents to it in the West since the 1959 destruction of Tibet, it wouldn't equal the number of Tibetans who died. It just ain't spreading like a wildfire, though there is some interest in this failed tradition. Westerners can be so naive about Eastern religions. > Think of Tibetan Buddhism as a kind of "spiritual olympics" and maybe > you'll have a clearer idea. A *failed* spiritual olympics?? Doesn't make any sense to me... > And it's clearly thriving, unlike the Hindu Trika which has been > largely destroyed. As you know the Trika is related to TM and early > TMer's even visited Kashmir with M. Since then there was a major > migration out of Kashmir and it's largely been replaced by the Kali > Yuga religion, Islam, which is spreading all across north India. >
