The other day I was in a hotel with a bit of spare time waiting for the train and a copy of The Teachings of Buddha in the Gideon Bible drawer. It was an interesting read, and ticked a few boxes for me.
- Charismatic founder
- A long list of martyrs for the cause in the early followers
- Preservation of social values from 2000 years ago, such as "the key to harmony in the household is for the wife to obey her husband implicitly"
- Promises of a fabulous paradise for those who jump through the hoops
- Suggestions that you should be good to other people, and if everyone did that the world would be a better place
- Judgement at time of death based on acts during life
Add to that, where I am it is not very far to go before there is a community of underclass here. Oh, we don't talk about it, of course. But not talking about it isn't making the issue go away like they hoped it would. That caste structure stems solely from Buddhist beliefs relating to the occupations of the ancestors of these people.
I think a lot of the "Buddhism is a philosophy" thinking in the West is a bit of cherrypicking, and a fair degree of knowing the Devil of the Abrahamic faiths and not knowing the Devil of the oriental ones. Indeed, I could rewrite Hammer's post and insert Jesus Christ in there, if you accept the not unreasonable claim that the "Son of God" story was a mythology constructed in the early days of the faith to make it more palatable to, or maybe force it upon, the unwashed masses.