Why Do We Misinterpreted Buddhism?

Buddhism is ranked one of the top 3 religions in the world, there are around 450 to 500 million Buddhists throughout the world; however, despite the major following, I am surprised with how misinterpreted Buddhism is. While many people realize that not everyone is a monk in Buddhism, knowing what is believed and why it is believed by a Buddhist is something not well understood throughout the world. There are major differences between Buddhism in different countries, but if a person learns something about Buddhism in one country—say that monks beg for food—that person will often erroneously generalize that image of Buddhism to all of Buddhism. I saw this naivety even in my time in Korea—a place which has many Buddhists. I met multitudes of people

By knowing the history of Buddhism, one can understand much of why and how Buddhism became the Buddhism known today. The long 2,500-year history certainly has influenced Buddhism; upon studying the boundaries Buddhism crossed, it makes sense that there are many different schools of Buddhism now. Despite this history however, it is interesting to note that most Americans never even think about there being more than one Buddhist school. The mere fact that Buddha was from India is shocking to many Americans as Buddhism is thought of as a pure East Asian religion. The history of Buddhism has really helped me understand why certain countries have the beliefs and traditions they have. Even Asian countries that are not predominantly Buddhism have experienced significant impacts due to Buddhism—including the acceptance and practice of some Buddhism traditions. Furthermore, Buddhist history explained why Buddhist practices are instituted the way they are; it explained why China practices differently than Shri Lanka and Korea. Buddhism does not reject all ideas that are not Buddhist; in fact, it often allows the practice of such traditions if the traditions are not damaging to the practitioners—like certain superstitions or honoring ancestors. Buddhism morphed to each region as it traveled and evolved, becoming something different from the religion originally taught by the

One of these potential upcoming problems is unity. Buddhism has many schools in different countries and the globalization of Buddhism is quickly spreading Buddhism even more. Buddhism will need to be careful to ensure it doesn't fragment itself; Buddhism has thus far easily accepted changes and made new schools, but this acceptance of change brings the possibility of too major of changes, which would lead people to question what Buddhism really is. These changes Buddhism experiences is not a major problem if all of Buddhism accepts and evolves together, but there must be some sort of unifying factor. For Christianity the factor is Christ, for Islam, Muhammad, Buddhism needs to make sure it has such a factor. To many Westerners the line of beliefs gets hazy as one examines Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism. Moreover, the discrepancies between schools in Buddhism bring all sorts of issues about what is true doctrine. Like mentioned above, Buddhism doesn’t reject harmless beliefs, but to some people, if there is too much variance, there is a possibility of diminished trust in Buddhism. However, Buddhism is addressing this issue, one such example being the meeting the Dali Lama had with Sri Lanka