One of the main reasons to visit China was to get to know real Buddhism as it is today. Surely, I respect this religion and understand its impact on the world, but also, I just wanted a little more. In my head, Buddhism was way better than any other religion and I thought that monks are the wisest people ever born. Sadly, that is not the case, my friends. Those people are smart, that's for sure. But like any other people, they only have academic smarts and lack the real knowledge.
Ironically, I don't know what knowledge is, but I know for sure what it is not. And what I saw among most of the monks was not knowledge. It was kindness, humanity and all the beautiful things, but not knowledge. And once more I realized that religion today is nothing more than a well functioning organization full of employees and employers.
Buddha is the main stakeholder of the company but he is dead by now so other high ranked lamas got his shares. And the rest are just employees who follow all the rules. Buddhism even has its strict dress code without casual Fridays. Yes, it is that bad. And the competition is fierce. Even though Buddhism is still controlling most of Asia, it has very weak grounding in other continents. And of course, the Chinese government is trying to kill the business as fast as possible. Isn't that tragic?
What is the meaning of all this post? Well, I wanted to remind you that you should not trust anything that does not give you actual proofs. Buddhism, per se, did not prove to be any better religion than Christianity or Islam. Buddhist people are also not smarter nor dumber than the rest of the world. As for monks and lamas, they are very kind and helpful and academically-wise, but it seems that real knowledge of life is lost somewhere in transition. Welcome to the 21st century.
