There is no reason whatsoever to think that Buddhism can successfully compete with the relentless evangelizing of Christianity and Islam.

Buddhism is not a religion

Given the degree to which religion still inspires human conflict, and impedes genuine inquiry, I believe that merely being a self-described “Buddhist” is to be complicit in the world’s violence and ignorance to an unacceptable degree.

Buddhism is very much like science. One starts with the hypothesis that using attention in the prescribed way (meditation),

and engaging in or avoiding certain behaviors (ethics), will bear the promised result (wisdom and psychological well-being).

For this reason, the methodology of Buddhism, if shorn of its religious encumbrances, could be one of our greatest resources as we struggle to develop our scientific understanding of human subjectivity.

Incompatible religious doctrines have balkanized our world into separate moral communities

religion is as much a living spring of violence