Donald S. Lopez Jr.: evaluation

Transcript context

…Right. Who decides what’s real? From the point of view of the Sri Lankans, that’s real Buddhism. They got it first. They got it earliest. They’ve kept it the longest. It is the case that Buddhism died out in Sri Lanka three times and had to be reestablished over the centuries, but they claim to be maintaining the early, original teachings of the Buddha. But Tibetans would, of course, dispute that. They would say, “We have the complete Canon that also includes the Mahayana sutras and the tantras, and therefore we have everything that the Buddha taught. ” It’s just a question of who accepts which text as authentic. But I think, from the point of view of, what did Buddhist monks look like in the time of the Buddha, they probably looked most like the monks in Sri Lanka in terms of the robes and their comportment. There’s something a bit more original about it. It would be like visiting a Christian church in Armenia or Ethiopia. You wouldn’t say it’s necessarily the correct doctrine, but there’s something more primeval.…

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