Theos-Talk Archives (June 2008 Message tt00195)

Daoist (Taoist), Buddhist, Christian 3%-4%, Muslim 1%-2%
note: officially atheist (2002 est.)

This data is officially published and is most reliable.  I don't
accept all the statements made about Buddhism in Theosophical literature.


--- In theos-talk@yahoogroups.com, "Konstantin Zaitzev"
<kay_ziatz@...> wrote:
>
> --- In theos-talk@yahoogroups.com, "Anand" <AnandGholap@> wrote:
> 
> > You will notice that most of the population belongs to Buddhism and
> > Taoism which are atheist religions.
> 
> Your data seems to be unreliable. An official ideology in China is 
> materialism, and even if there are many buddhists, their voice isn't 
> heard ? due lack of democracy. The tibetan buddhism is repressed in 
> China, also the taoist sect Falun-dafa which had millions of 
> adherents.
> 
> Mahachohan praised buddhism in China in his famous letter (see below).
> Leadbeater, being a christian clegryman, accepted buddhism.
> The democracy itself, which you praise, was invented in pagan ancient 
> Greece.
> 
> This is a quotation from Mahachohan's message:
> "As we find the world now, whether Christian, Mussulman or Pagan, 
> justice is disregarded and honour and mercy both flung to the winds. 
> In a word, how, seeing that the main objects of the T.S. are 
> misinterpreted by those who are most willing to serve us personally, 
> are we to deal with the rest of mankind, with the curse known as the 
> `struggle for life', which is the real and most prolific parent of 
> most woes and sorrows and all crimes? Why has that struggle become the 
> almost universal scheme of the universe? We answer, because no 
> religion, with the exception of Buddhism, has hitherto taught a 
> practical contempt for this earthly life, while each of them, always 
> with that one solitary exception, has through its hells and damnations 
> inculcated the greatest dread of death. Therefore do we find that 
> struggle for life raging most fiercely in Christian countries, most 
> prevalent in Europe and America. It weakens in the Pagan lands, and is 
> nearly unknown among Buddhist populations. (In China during famine and 
> where the masses are most ignorant of their own or any religion, it 
> was remarked that those mothers who devoured their children belonged 
> to localities where there were the most Christian missionaries to be 
> found; where there were none, and the Bonzes alone had the field, the 
> population died with the utmost indifference.) Teach the people to see 
> that life on this earth even the happiest is but a burden and an 
> illusion, that it is but our own karma, the cause producing the 
> effect, that is our own judge, our saviour in future lives, and the 
> great struggle for life will soon lose its intensity. There are no 
> penitentiaries in Buddhist lands, and crime is nearly unknown among 
> the Buddhist Tibetans." (Letters of Masters of wisdom, vol.I,1)
>