(This post is a few months too late to be relevant, but unfortunately I wasn't on Lemmy three months ago. Fortunately, this post will be relevant again in nine months.)

On Vesak of this year, I spent most of the morning looking for a website where I could send an online card to someone for Vesak. It was a frustrating task.

First of all, let me say "Booo!" to the following websites, ALL of which have Rosh Hashanah cards (for Jews), Eid cards (for Muslims), and Diwali cards (for Hindus), and numerous cards for Christians, but no cards for Buddhists.

• Blue Mountain
• 123cards
• Greetings Island
• SmileBox

Please join me in writing to them and asking them to have some cards for Vesak next year.

Now, let me say "Yay!" to the government of India which has a wonderful selection of more than 80 beautiful "Buddha Purnima" (that's what they call Vesak in India) cards on their e-cards website: https://egreetings.gov.in. (Yes, the government of India runs a greeting card website.) Unfortunately, it's only for residents of India. You have to create a MyGov.in account, and it will ask you which state of India you live in.

The only useable Vesak cards I could find were on a website called Punchbowl (https://punchbowl.com). However, their selection isn't great. (They had five designs, most of them rather generic.) And I found them a bit pricey. There is no option for sending free cards, or for paying per card. You have to sign up for a yearly membership. One option is to pay $35.88 USD for the year, but the cards you send will contain ads. If you don't want the recipient of your card to see an ad, you have to pay $59.88 USD for the year. For me, that's about $80 Canadian, which is too much to pay considering I'd likely only send a few cards a year. But if you send a lot of e-Cards every year, like for birthdays or whatever, that might work out a bit better.

So, all up, it's not great news. Maybe we can hope for it to be better next year. And if you know of another website with Vesak cards, please let me know in the comments.

The Canadian government recognizes a number of “heritage months”. April is Sikh Heritage Month. May is Canadian Jewish Heritage Month. October is Canadian Islamic Heritage Month. November is Hindu Heritage Month.

There’s no month for Buddhists, even though Canada has more Buddhists than Jews according to census figures. (There’s also no month for Christians, but Good Friday and Christmas are official holidays in Canada.)

Does anyone know how we go about getting a heritage month for Buddhists?

Some people think the way to promote Buddhism in the West is to emphasize the ways in which Buddhism is different from Christianity. That is, to not just explain Buddhist teachings, but to specifically point out how they differ from Christianity.

I don't think that's a good strategy, for many reasons. For one thing, I think it leads to a distorted view of Buddhism. By focusing on ways in which Buddhism differs from Christianity, important pillars of Buddhism like the monastic sangha and taking refuge can be neglected because they appear similar to aspects of Christianity, like the priesthood and baptism.

Another reason I think it's a poor idea is because it tends to attract people who dislike Christianity rather than people who actually like Buddhist practice. I don't think you can build a community on that.

And finally, I think there's a lot of value in recognizing the similarities between Buddhism and other world religions. Similarities like gods, heavens, hells, dragons, scripture, moral codes, and clergy.

There are many reasons why I like to talk about the similarities. One reason is that I hope it can lead to more inter-faith harmony. Nineteenth century physicists had competing models of the atom (not all equally correct), but they understood that they were all allies trying to understand the same thing (that is, the nature of matter) and that they agreed more often than they disagreed . Likewise, I think followers of different religions should remember that we're all trying to understand the same thing (the nature of non-material things), and that we agree on very much.

Another reason is that I take comfort in knowing that many of my Buddhist beliefs are echoed in other religions. I guess I feel that Buddhism can't be completely wrong if so many of its ideas are echoed by its competitors. For example, believing in dragons can't be that crazy if Hindus, Christians, and Muslims (I googled) also believe in dragons.

And, I won't lie, I like to emphasize the similarities because I live in a Christian culture that doesn't always respect Buddhism or even acknowledge it as a religion, and I feel emphasizing the similarities is a way to gain some respect for Buddhism. (Oh, your religion teaches about heaven and hell? My religion was teaching that 600 years before your religion existed.)

This isn’t to say that our religions don’t have their differences, and I am not claiming that all religions are equally correct. But I like to see the similarities between our religions as evidence that our religions must all be based at least in part in some universal truth.

I live in Canada and the shows I see on my TV are mostly Canadian or American. There aren't a lot of shows on my TV centred on Asian families, and I understand why. But there's something I don't understand: Why are Asian characters always shown going to church?

Every time I see a show about Asian families, their involvement in a church seems to be prominent part of the show. I feel like I see Asian characters on TV attending church far more often than I see white characters attending church. I even see Asian characters attending church where it would make more sense for the characters to be Buddhist.

I'm going to go over a few examples. None of these examples are too odd by themselves, but as a pattern, I find it curious and I'm wondering what's going on.

Kim's Convenience

Kim's Convenience is a Canadian show about a Korean-Canadian family. It's notable for launching Simu Liu's career. The family attend a Presbyterian church and their pastor is a recurring character on the show.

The show is based on a play by Ins Choi, and he's a Christian (his father was a pastor), so I guess this isn't too surprising.

Fresh off the Boat

Fresh off the Boat is an American show about a Taiwanese-American family. It's supposedly based on the memoirs of celebrity chef Eddie Huang.

In one episode, the lead character Eddie decides to start attending church and become a Christian, to the chagrin of his mother. (In this episode, it is mentioned that the family are lapsed Buddhists, which never comes up again.)

It has been pointed out to me that the real-life Eddie Huang is Buddhist (he invokes Amitabha in his cooking show), so I find it odd that the show so explicitly makes him Christian.

Beef

Man, what a great show Beef is. Go watch it if you haven't yet. (It's on Netflix.) Beef centres on the conflict between two Asian-American characters, Danny and Amy. Danny is Korean. Amy is half-Chinese and half-Vietnamese (like Ali Wong, who plays her), and her husband is Japanese-American.

Danny's involvement with his Christian church is a significant part of his story, spanning several episodes.

In contrast, there is one single line in the whole show that suggests Amy and her husband might be Buddhist.

American Born Chinese

American Born Chinese is another show that I love. (It's on Disney Plus. Go watch it.) Loosely based on a graphic novel by Gene Luen Yang, it's about a Chinese-American teenager named Jin who gets caught up in a quest for a magical scroll involving various characters from Chinese folklore.

One of the characters in the show is Guanyin, the Buddhist Bodhisattva of Great Compassion, played by Michelle Yeoh. (Though the Chinese dialogue refers to her as a Bodhisattva, the English subtitles somewhat inaccurately use the term "Goddess".) Clearly, in the world of American Born Chinese, Buddhism is unambiguously real.

Despite that, Jin's family are Christian, and his mother is shown participating in activities at their Christian church (a detail that does not come from the graphic novel).

Crazy Rich Asians

Okay, this one is a movie, not a TV show. But still, it's one of the few products of Hollywood centred on Asian families. Based on a novel by Kevin Kwan, Crazy Rich Asians is about a Chinese-American woman who is surprised to learn that her fiancé is from one of the richest families in Singapore.

In one scene, her fiancé's mother (another appearance by Michelle Yeoh) is shown participating in a Bible Study Group. Now, that detail comes from the novel, so I guess it's not too odd. But I didn't think it contributed much to the movie, and I do wonder why it was included.

Now, I do know of counter-examples, where Asian families are not portrayed as Christian, but not many. If we go back 30 years, the Souphanousinphone family on King of the Hill (the Laotian neighbours of the main characters) are Buddhist. Someone told me that the Chinese-American family on the Netflix kung-fu show Wu Assassins are apparently Buddhist, but it's not particularly explicit. And those are the only examples I know of.

So, I'm not just imagining this, am I? This is a pattern, right?

What's going on? Is there some imperative to portray Asian characters as Christian? Or is it an aversion to portraying Buddhism?

You might not have heard of Theosophy, but there's a good chance you've felt its impact.

Theosophy was a "new religious movement" founded in New York City in 1875 primarily by Henry Steel Olcott and Helena Blavatsky. They were interested in Hinduism and Buddhism (which they learned about from books) and believed that they were telepathically guided by beings called Mahatmas.

In 1879, they travelled to India to learn about Hinduism, and the following year they travelled to Sri Lanka where they apparently became the first Americans to convert to Buddhism. But despite taking vows of refuge, their primary allegiance was to Theosophy, not Buddhism, and Olcott was known to disparage the local Buddhist beliefs as being inferior to his understanding of the Buddhist religion.

Olcott remained in Sri Lanka where he became an important figure in the local revival of Buddhism, mostly by funnelling money into scores of Buddhist schools. (Buddhism had suffered in Sri Lanka until British rule.)

Blavatsky died in 1891 and Olcott in 1907, and the Theosophy movement was taken over by Annie Besant. In 1909, Besant took custody of an Indian boy named Jiddu Krishnamurti (over the objections of the boy's father) and proclaimed the boy to be Maitreya, the foretold "Messiah" of Buddhist scripture. As an adult, Krishnamurti distanced himself from the Theosophy movement, but remained a popular author and orator until his death in 1986.

Despite some early schisms and paedophilia scandals, Theosophy was a great success, and by the 1920s they had tens of thousands of members across the United States, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. Apparently many of them could be found in the British suffragette movement. D.T. Suzuki, the Japanese author and philologist who translated multiple Buddhist sutras into English, was a Theosophist.

I'm not sure I understand Theosophical beliefs well enough to summarize them in a fair way. They believed in reincarnation, karma, and single divine "Absolute". They believed that there was an ancient universal "true" religion that modern religions were incorrect corruptions of. Many of their leaders claimed to be clairvoyant. They also had some odd racial theories.

Despite having the hallmarks of a religion, the Theosophists denied that they were a religion and insisted that they were a philosophy, and claimed to eschew any code of ethics.

The movement went into decline after 1929 when Krishnamurti departed the organization, apparently repudiating claims of his Messiahhood. But the Theosophists are still around, still promoting their ideas, and they very well might have a presence in your city. It is often said that Theosophical ideas were influential in the "New Age" movement which started to take off in the 1970s (and which was definitely still a thing when I was in university in the 1990s).

To me, the biggest legacy of the Theosophists is they created confusion in the West about what Buddhism is, by deliberately conflating their organization's beliefs with Buddhism. I still encounter this confusion all the time. If you ever hear someone say "Buddhism is more of a philosophy, not a religion", you're probably hearing the echo of the Theosophists.

I'm not sure why the Theosophists were so successful around the turn of 20th century. I guess it points to a certain dissatisfaction amongst Westerners with their own religions (a dissatisfaction that would continue throughout the 20th century with the decline of Christianity in the West), and a hope that they would find more satisfaction in Eastern religions.

But unfortunately, Theosophy was not an Eastern religion. It was a Western religion dressed in Eastern garb.