Question: Why didn't Buddhism succeed in the West?


How interesting. I never knew this. :)

To find this story in other sources, I had to enter "Barlaam and Josaphat", since St. Josaphat tends to bring up a Ukrainian Catholic saint instead of the Christianized Buddha tale. Supposedly "Barlaam and Josaphat" came to the West via Sogdian Muslims. There's an account available on Project Gutenberg by Saint John of Damascus labeled "Barlaam and Ioasaph". :)

(Sogdiana was once a Zoroastrian region, and had many contacts between India and Persia well before Islam. I remember Sogdiana a bit from my Zoroastrian project years ago).

EDIT: Now, if only we can find Rand Paul's Aqua Buddha. . . :)
 
I'm assuming that Buddhism was probably more effectively propagated by ordinary people and through the Silk Road trade, as it did through the Han Dynasty. I suspect that Buddhist merchants probably plied the Silk Road in Central Asia, exchanging their goods with Persian middlemen on the borders with the Parthian Empire. As such, Persia itself probably did not come much into contact with the Buddhist traditions of East Asia - and I doubt even if it had, it would have survived for long, since a new religion would have competed with Zoroastrianism and therefore be seen by the ruling houses as a 'threat' to be stamped out.

Another major difference between Buddhism and the Abrahamic faiths is that Buddhism was rarely if ever spread at the point of a sword.
 
Related question -- would Buddhism (of whatever stripe) have had a better chance at making serious inroads in the Roman Empire if the latter didn't have Christianity to contend with?
 
I did RP a country in nationstates a long time ago that was a version of Egypt that converted to Buddhism in the Ptolemaic Era. All it took was the right monk traveling with the right merchants to do missionary work and set the wheels of history spinning.

Christianity in this version of Egypt didn't take off because everyone saw it as a rip-off of Buddhism and Judaism.
 
Now, if you enlarge the words 'west' and 'Europe' to include Armenia, Georgia, and western Russia(s), that could have been done a bit easier perhaps...

Maybe some missionaires from Ghandara, the Sogdians, etc reach one day along distant trades roads the Caucasian realms, and early slavs groups... There was links between the iranian world and the caucasian states I heard so...
 
Buddhism is not that appealing to those who don't come from a karmic-based culture. If you don't already accept the idea of reincarnation, then you don't worry about the threat of reincarnating as someone or something worse, or that the reincarnation cycle is itself something to be avoided. So why would you be interested in a solution to a problem you don't think exists? At best, it might appeal to a very narrow elite of over-educated philosophers.

When Buddhism did spread into non-karmic cultures, it did so in its variant of Mahayana Buddhism which did not yet exist when Asoka sent out his missionaries. Mahayana Buddhism introduced a lot of elements that made it very different from the proto-Theravada Buddhism of Asoka's time. Once you introduce an element that says, "There is this very great afterlife called a Pure Land, and if you are a good person, the Boddhisatva will take mercy on you and you will enjoy the afterlife", then you will get a very different response from people than, "After you die, you won't be reincarnated and can succumb to oblivion".

Why didn't Mahayana Buddhism spread to the West? By the time it was created, there was already a similar religion that promised people a good afterlife if they behaved well, it was called Christianity.
 
Buddhism is not that appealing to those who don't come from a karmic-based culture. If you don't already accept the idea of reincarnation, then you don't worry about the threat of reincarnating as someone or something worse, or that the reincarnation cycle is itself something to be avoided. So why would you be interested in a solution to a problem you don't think exists? At best, it might appeal to a very narrow elite of over-educated philosophers.

When Buddhism did spread into non-karmic cultures, it did so in its variant of Mahayana Buddhism which did not yet exist when Asoka sent out his missionaries. Mahayana Buddhism introduced a lot of elements that made it very different from the proto-Theravada Buddhism of Asoka's time. Once you introduce an element that says, "There is this very great afterlife called a Pure Land, and if you are a good person, the Boddhisatva will take mercy on you and you will enjoy the afterlife", then you will get a very different response from people than, "After you die, you won't be reincarnated and can succumb to oblivion".

Why didn't Mahayana Buddhism spread to the West? By the time it was created, there was already a similar religion that promised people a good afterlife if they behaved well, it was called Christianity.


By the first paragraph, I assume you're referring to Therevada Buddhism. What was religion like in Thailand and other Southeast Asian countries before they converted to Therevada?
 
By the first paragraph, I assume you're referring to Therevada Buddhism. What was religion like in Thailand and other Southeast Asian countries before they converted to Therevada?

Hinduism is often said to be non missionairies, but it was in the past at least - Indochina and the Malay Isles had been hinduised and influenced generally by the indian civilisation(s) quite... Angor Wat and Bali showcase it well.

The imported religious baggage mixed with native believes as local shamanism, and where a good reason and field for the arrival of Buddhism later...

(those trade and cultural links may be why the Malays became mostly muslims too, links with some states and parts of India, who had muslims or became offically muslim states..)
 
I think one factor that tends to be key is that AFAIK, it's actually quite rare for any religion to spread and last specifically without extensive state support; something which is especially true of Buddhism's initial spread, which for much of its lifetime in East Asia, at least, was dependent on state support and heavily tied to the governments of the states they resided in.
 
Hellenized Buddhism

Throughout history, India has had times when their religions expanded beyond the limits of the Indian subcontinent and others where it has been subject to rulers who had other religions. At the time of Alexander the Great after his conquest of the western part of India, Greco-Indian kingdoms where Greek religion coexisted with Hinduism and Buddhism were created...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco-Buddhism

Maybe if the Greek Buddhist kingdoms and their civilization had managed to survive, to maintain contact with their Western counter could have been the center of a Hellenized Buddhist irradiation toward the West.
 
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Historically for sure, but Thailand and Myanmar seem to have decided to try it against their Muslim regions. :rolleyes:

In the official POV they're removing the Muslim migrants to protect their countries from Islamic incursion.

In a certain sense, they are correct because it's basically certain that those people migrated/converted long after Buddhism became dominant, so it's not really "spreading Buddhism", stricto sensu.

*Not defending Wirathu's kind, but even extremists like him claim to be defending his country from Muslim invasion, not trying to convert nor invade Muslim countries.
 
In the official POV they're removing the Muslim migrants to protect their countries from Islamic incursion.

In a certain sense, they are correct because it's basically certain that those people migrated/converted long after Buddhism became dominant, so it's not really "spreading Buddhism", stricto sensu.

*Not defending Wirathu's kind, but even extremists like him claim to be defending his country from Muslim invasion, not trying to convert nor invade Muslim countries.

True, but that's not much different from a Reconquista or Crusade. After the Christians began crusades to retake lands they started launching crusades to grab new lads.
 
Hinduism is often said to be non missionairies, but it was in the past at least - Indochina and the Malay Isles had been hinduised and influenced generally by the indian civilisation(s) quite... Angor Wat and Bali showcase it well.

The spread of Hinduism has less to do with "missionaries" actively spreading their religion, and more to do that Hinduism was part of the greater "cultural package" of the more advanced society. As the relatively less sophisticated/complex societies in SE Asia and Indies came into contact with Indian merchants, explorers, etc. they encountered a civilization which was more advanced in a lot of respects and thus very attractive to local elites as a model. Once you start duplicating agricultural, legal, scientific, and other achievements of your model, it's very easy to adopt the religion too especially if the native religion is still relatively unsophisticated (lacks comprehensive theology that explains the kinds of things intellectuals like to talk about).

The same thing happened with the spread of Christianity and Islam as well, but those were supercharged by presence of missionaries who really believed they were called by God to spread the word. Thus those religions spread even in areas where civilization was more or less equally advanced.

In contrast, if a civilization is already advanced and have answered those kinds of questions, it is much more selective in what knowledge is taken and incorporated from another civilization. It will take bits and parts, not the entire cultural package. Therefore, once Buddhism did enter China (in its Mahayana variety), the Confucian elites were very antagonistic. It took a very long time for Buddhism to be accepted as one of the "three faiths of China", and probably only did so because Buddhism did address issues that Confucianism and Taoism did not or did not do as well.
 
Maybe if the Greek Buddhist kingdoms and their civilization had managed to survive, to maintain contact with their Western counter could have been the center of a Hellenized Buddhist irradiation toward the West.

It's possible, but it's very different to note that in areas where Westerners invaded Buddhist lands and had to deal with indigenous Buddhists, it produced a syncretic blend versus Buddhism spreading to new Western lands where it did not already exist.

I think you would need two things to happen.

1) the Greco-Buddhist lands would need to become dominant and act as a source of intellectual, political, and economic inspiration for the other lands. IOTL, they were on the fringe.

2) The syncretic religion would need to adapt to become more appealing to people who are not used to karmic concepts, just like how the original Buddhism eventually lead to Mahayana Buddhism which was successful in spreading.
 
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