Expert: Joe McSorley - 3/21/2004

Question
I would like to know whether Buddhist teachers or missionaries are working among peoples who are still grabed in loincloths if at all.

Teachers from traditional Buddhist society from the East come to teach meditation and nirvana to Westerners living a high standard of life compared to their own in their own societies of origin.

And Buddhism is also about helping people who can use help, like those peoples who are still clothed in loinstrips or nothing at all.

I think this is a legitimate question.

About Christian missionaries, Catholic ones are really into converting the kinds of folks I mentioned above. Protestant ones give me the impression that they are working to turn Catholics in backward societies to become Protestants.

Please give me your view or reaction.

For my part, I believe in God, but I am aware that I am not doing except very little to teach about Him to peoples who don't know Him or live without Him.

Susma Rio Sep  

Answer
Dear Susma Rio Sep,
  You make the assumption that the lifestyles of the ‘loincloth' people have been made better by religion and I think that's a tough argument to make.  There has been a lot of good done by religious groups in terms of providing food, education and other charitable work but there has also been a huge amount of destruction in the names of their god.  Many so called ‘heathen pagans' have been slaughtered like animals for not having the faith of the conquerors.  Faith based religions can go out and convert, and in some cases by force, native populations for all one has to do is claim to believe.  Buddhism is the religion of self-actualization and not faith so there is no conversion here.  One has to come to realize awakening solely on their own merits.  Because of this we do not have the social structures in Buddhism that you have in other religions.  In one sense this is a weakness of Buddhism that it's hard to mobilize the masses in doing works of charity.  Most religions feed the poor to eventually win their support so it's not as altruistic as you might imagine, though still good.
  If God is everywhere and everything then how can any people live without God and why does God need to be taught?  How weak is God that man has to preach about him, is his being not self-evident without man's intervention?  You also have to realize that there are many different versions of God, even in the Christian Bible from the warrior, punishing God of Abraham to the compassionate father of the Christ, so belief in ‘God' is a very nebulous statement.  Extremists pray everyday that the God they believe in to bless their attacks on innocent people and they are quite sincere in their belief.  Because someone believes something other than them does not remove the strength of their conviction nor invalidate it.  If there is this God out there it would be nice of him to give us a definitive version of who he is and stop all of this squabbling.   Since this isn't happening we have to come to awakening ourselves and leave those concepts out of it.
  Take care,
             Joe