And yet, America has a ton of centers and places of Buddhist interest. A huge amount of Buddhist teachers either permanently resides in America, or often travels to America. It is a powerhouse when it comes to Buddhist presence. This doesn't mean that other countries cannot be open societies or cannot be democracies, or doesn't have a Buddhist presence. But to try to reduce America as "just another country" or just even as "not that important" when it comes to Buddhism in the Western world, is particularly strange.Könchok Thrinley wrote: ↑Thu Apr 14, 2022 9:29 pmSure let's ignore the huge amount of work that was done for transmitting buddhadharma to the west in Germany, Austria, France, Great Britain, Italy, Australia...Malcolm wrote: ↑Thu Apr 14, 2022 9:25 pmOur country, like it or not, is the founding nation of modern, liberal democracy. The international language of Buddhism is now English, not the English of the Crown, but American English.Crazywisdom wrote: ↑Thu Apr 14, 2022 8:12 pm Yankee Doodle Dharma. Come on. The US is not the only open society or the only democracy. There are almost 3 billion people living in democracies. I do not sympathize with this patriotism. It's silly.
Only 6.4 percent of the world population live in full democracies; that's only 21 countries and just over 500 million people. 66% of those people live in the USA, with the other 24 percent spread around the other 20 countries. The best chance Buddhism has is in these 21 countries, which have adopted the principles of liberal democracy, courtesy of the American Revolution. The vast majority of those democracies are less than 150 years old.
When I started looking for dots to connect in order to figure out Buddhism 22 years ago, when I got online, as where I lived had nothing Buddhist of any kind, I found that virtually every single source of information that helped me, had American origins. So websites for example. News sites. Book stores (SnowLion, Shambhala, Wisdom, Namse Bangdzo, etc.). And when I found online communities, be they discussion places or chat rooms, they were heavily dominated by Americans, easily 90% or more. The people who I got to know early on were all Americans. All of the interesting teachings, transmissions, and empowerments were given in America.
America is a very important country for Buddhism.