Date: Tue, 20 Apr 1999 09:11:05 -0600 From: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org> To: "G. Adam Stanislav" <zen@buddhist.com>, chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: FreeBSD and memetics Message-ID: <4.2.0.32.19990420075641.00b1a5f0@localhost> In-Reply-To: <3.0.6.32.19990419214106.00925800@mail.bfm.org> References: <4.2.0.32.19990419171213.03ed5730@localhost> <199904191711.MAA26033@hostigos.otherwhen.com> <4.2.0.32.19990419093753.0454e490@localhost> <19990418080429.A37740@holly.dyndns.org>
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At 09:41 PM 4/19/99 -0500, G. Adam Stanislav wrote: >Guess what, I had to chuckle when I saw that. The fact is that the world's >largest religion (as far as number of members goes), namely Buddhism, does >not seek converts. Never did either. Never faught in religious wars. Its >founder was reluctant to teach his disciples. Even to this day, when >someone wants to convert to Buddhism, monks question his reasons and try to >find out if there was a way for him to stay in his old religion, and only >if there is no other way do they say OK, good idea. And the Buddha himself >predicted that within 500 years of his time no one would even remember him >or his teachings. That was 2500 years ago. This is true of many branches of Buddhism, but is a bit of an oversimplification. First, the denial of a desire to evangelize is often seen as one of Zen Buddhism's many games of cognitive dissonance. In some ways, it plays on the ironic meme expressed by Groucho Marx and Woody Allen, among others: "I wouldn't want to be part of any club that wants me as a member." Also, not all Buddhist groups have the traits you mention. The most egregious example of a Buddhist group that went to the other extreme in terms of evangelism is the "Nishirin Shoshun" cult. This group does actively evangelize, and at its peak in the late 70's and early 80's had tens of thousands of members gathered in auditoriums, fervently chanting the Lotus Sutra. Many people adopt Buddhism because most varieties of it are "low overhead" as religions/philosophies go. They don't require a great deal of the member, e.g. going to church services or fasting or prayer. In fact, many Buddhists are members of another religion as well. (In Japan, it's common for people to embrace both Shinto and Buddhism.) It's easy to say "I'm a Buddhist." It requires far less commitment than, say, reformatting one's hard disk for a new operating system. ;-) To make a another analogy, it's kind of like running a Java Virtual Machine: you can do it within your own OS, whatever OS that might be. (This is an interesting argument for bringing FreeBSD emulation to other OSes, by the way. By doing so, one could give it Buddhism's adaptive trait of peaceful coexistence.) >I personally like the fact that no FreeBSD evangelists knock on my doors. This would make you a candidate for one particular mode of transmission of the FreeBSD memes. However, as I've mentioned earlier, the most successful memes have multiple vectors and modes of transmission. >There is nothing more powerful than the feeling that >one has discovered something worth its while on one's own. This is true for you, but I don't think it is for everyone. In the computer world especially, the overwhelming majority of users want -- in fact, demand! -- operating systems which are VISIBLY attracting large user bases and portfolios of third party applications. --Brett Glass P.S. -- Has anyone here ever heard a song called "Zen Gospel Singing?" It's a wonderful spoof -- a Zen Buddhist "hymn," done in the style of a gospel song. The multi-level irony is that the juxtaposition of Christian musical cliches and bad puns about both American Christianity and Zen Buddhism is, well, very Zen-like. I once joined in an impromptu performance where a group of musicians sang it a capella, in 4+ part harmony. Great fun. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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