In 209 BC, Buddhism still flourishes in India. There are converts and visiting co-religionists in Bactra. We are told that:
"At last the teaching of Gautama Buddha would ebb from his native India until there it was all but forgotten." (p. 47)
While Buddhism receded in India, the Buddha was repackaged as an avatar of Vishnu, the most comprehensive monotheist deity. Vaishnavism and Buddhism are a personalist and an impersonalist religion, respectively. If I ever came to be persuaded of a personal deity, then I would be drawn towards the former. But my present understanding is that the Teacher is all reality, the Teaching is all experience and the Community is all beings.
Poul Anderson treats religious traditions so sympathetically that we can (sometimes) be drawn into saying what we think about them.
Homage...
9 comments:
Relgion has been central to human experience since the emergence of behaviorally modern human beings about 80K years ago (actually between 80K and 60K years ago, which is when modern humans started to spread out of Africa).
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
It's also possible that questing after the ultimate is even older than 62/80 thousand years ago. Here I mean how the primitive hominins seen in "The Little Monster" are shown as also having that religious impulse, as seen in the veneration they had for the skull of "Old Father."
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: it's a byproduct of the modern human ability to 'introject' models of other people's minds. This is something we have to be good at, for social interaction: but then humans compulsively project personality and intention onto inanimate objects.
We can also respond to transcendence without personifying it.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
While I agree with what you are saying, as far as it went, I also believe that seeking for the ultimate was implanted in human beings as a means of finding their true end or goal, God.
I realize you are skeptical about such ideas.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: I've never felt it. It's one of those emotions I have to understand intellectually -- I think I've done that well enough.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And you have dome that very well, treating honest believers in God with nuance and respect.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: I've been accused of being a Wiccan missionary, and a Catholic one... 8-).
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I know, but I never thought that way about you. I admired how Andersonian you are in how you treat religious believers in your stories. You both treated religion far more seriously than many other SF writers.
Ad astra! Sean
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