Western Buddhism as an Immature Tradition
There are Buddhisms for all four cardinal directions: Southern Buddhism, Northern Buddhism, Eastern Buddhism, and Western Buddhism. Southern Buddhism is the Buddhism practiced in Sri Lanka, Myanmar, and Thailand. The term โNorthern Buddhismโ either covers everything else, or only refers to the Buddhism practiced in Tibet and Mongolia. In the latter case, Eastern Buddhism is the Buddhism found in Taiwan, Korea, Japan, China, and Vietnam. In the two-way North/South distinction, India is part of Northern Buddhism. In the three-way North/South/East distinction, on the other hand, India is missing, indicating that this isnโt a classification of historical Buddhisms. However, while Buddhism...
“Protestant Buddhism”
The term โProtestant Buddhismโ was introduced in 1970 by Gananath Obeyesekere to describe a development in Ceylonese Buddhism that started with Anagarika Dharmapฤla almost a century earlier. The notion was further developed in a 1988 book he co-authered with Richard Gombrich, but variants of the term have also been used outside the Ceylonese (Sri Lankan) context โ in reference to certain trends in Western Buddhism, for example, as well as to the switch from โself-powerโ ่ชๅ jiriki to โother-powerโ ไปๅ tariki in Japanese Pure Land Buddhism. The term is also sometimes used in a more general sense in reference to...