6 ms·

... but also remember that Buddhism mutated quite a bit as it spread around asia, and the term "Buddhism" encompasses quite a few different schools of thought..

• x5n1 11y ago
  The Western form of Buddhism itself is mostly a mutation where usually a few ideas are borrowed and then espoused as something profound (I am not talking about Western Buddhist monks, which again are their own Western version of these ideas). It takes a lifetime to understand many of these things, and so monks spend a lifetime trying to come to grasp with the mindset of what is being said, to cultivate that mindset. The Western user of these ideas is usually a lay person who read maybe a few books and then starts pretending as if they are a monk who has spent a lifetime developing a certain mindset. Religions are just that, a mindset. To be a religious person is to adopt a certain set of ideas as an ideology and a mindset and to become that sort of person. And often that sort of person can only exist within a society that is conducive to those ideas. And so monks go off into the forest with other monks and then have rituals and practices to try to cultivate the right mindset to become that sort of person. This is a very personal thing, it has implications for society but its most profound affect is on the thinking and behavior of the individual. The monks then interact with lay society as some sort of role models for how people ought to act. And the society support them with supplications of food and money to aid in their journey. Because all society can't be a monk.