Buddhism II

An Appreciation

It has been a long time since I started this series or last published an entry in it, so to recap: I’ve written on my appreciation for Judaism, Islam (twice), Zoroastrianism, Hinduism (also twice), and once on Buddhism. In the previous post on Buddhism my primary goal was to lay out something of my own story with Buddhism, particularly the cultural and academic exposure I’ve received to it, and to talk about the diversity of Buddhist languages, cultures, forms, and more that proliferate South, Southeast, and East Asia, and that have filtered Westward. I’ve also had the chance to talk a bit about Buddhism in the “Ethical Cosmopolitanism” series that I will, I promise, eventually get back to, particularly in the form of the cakravartin and the ethics of the Mauryan Emperor Ashoka. In this post, what I would like to do is lay out, as far as possible, the ideas and practices of Buddhisms that I find generally appealing, and that I feel I’ve learned the most from.