jamahir
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It's very true that Buddhism is very similar to Islam, as well as Gnostic Christianity.
The name is not a matter, but the most important is the essence.
Everyone can claim to be a gym member (religious follower), but not all are bodybuilders (spiritualists, defeating ego, and becoming a really good person).
Islam helped and saved billions of people in the Middle East. And Christianity as well in Europe.
The thing that Buddhism can't.
The essence is the most and only important thing, not the name.
Agree with most and you wrote quite well but I differ in two things :
1. Buddhism saved people too but in the past, not only during the time of the Buddha like in the story of Amrapali and Ajaatshatru I mentioned in post# 21, but also Alexander's entry into India led eventually to events of the Indian emperor Ashoka adopting Buddhism and spreading Buddhism all over India and sending preacher ambassadors to other places including his daughter Sanghamitra and her brother Mahinda to Sri Lanka and that leading to a female monastic order there and :
Saṅghamittā (Saṅghamitrā in Sanskrit, nun's name Ayapali;[1] 282 BC – 203 BC[1]) was the eldest daughter of Emperor Ashoka (304 BC – 232 BC) and his first wife, Devi. Together with her brother Mahinda, she entered an order of Buddhist monks. The two siblings later went to Sri Lanka to spread the teachings of Buddha at the request of King Devanampiya Tissa (250 BC – 210 BC) who was a contemporary of Ashoka. Ashoka was initially reluctant to send his daughter on an overseas mission. However, because of the insistence of Sangamitra herself, he finally agreed. She was sent to Sri Lanka together with several other nuns to start the nun-lineage of Bhikkhunis (a fully ordained female Buddhist monastic) at the request of King Tissa to ordain queen Anulā and other women of Tissa's court at Anuradhapura who desired to be ordained as nuns after Mahindra converted them to Buddhism.[2][3][4][5][6]
After Sanghamittā’s contribution to the propagation of Buddhism in Sri Lanka and her establishing the Bikhhunī Sangha or Meheini Sasna (Order of Nuns) there, her name became synonymous with "Buddhist Female Monastic Order of Theravāda Buddhism" that was established not only in Sri Lanka but also in Burma, China and Thailand, in particular. The day the most revered tree, the Bodhi tree, a sapling of which was brought by her to Sri Lanka and planted in Anuradhapura, and which still survives, is also celebrated every year on the Full Moon day of December as Uduvapa Poya or Uposatha Poya and Sanghamittā Day by Theravāda Buddhists in Sri Lanka.
The below extract from the same page is for the benefit of @langda khan who calls 14-year-old or 15-year-old girls as "children" because of being influenced by modern, dog-loving fake-feminists :
Will Langda Khan now say that Ashoka, whose Buddhist pillars adorn many places in South Asia and whose four-lions emblem and the wheel are the national symbols of India, is a pedophilia encourager because he married off his daughter at age 14 and she had sex that night or the next with her husband Agribrahma ( a pedo ??? ) and that should make Langda Khan immediately reject the national symbols of India ? A simple logical question.Early life
Sangamitta's parents were the Emperor Ashoka and his first wife, Devi, who was a Buddhist. Her birth in 282 BC,[1] as popularly known in published texts was as the second child of Ashoka and younger sister of brother Mahindra. She was born in Ujjeini (present day Ujjain in Madhya Pradesh in India). Her mother did not join Ashoka when he was crowned and her two children had embraced Buddhism. She was married at the age of 14 to Agribrahma, a nephew of Emperor Ashoka, who was also an Arhant. She had a son, Saamanera Sumana who also later became an Arhant and went along with his uncle Mahindra to Sri Lanka to preach Buddhism. Her teacher was Ayupala. She was ordained at the age of 18 into Theravada Buddhism Order by their preceptor Dhammapala. Her brother was also ordained at the same time. With her dedicated perseverance to Dhamma she became an Arhant Theri and resided in Pataliputra (now known as Patna).
2. When we mention Christianity in Europe we mustn't ignore what the popes did and the Crusaders did. The popes initiated persecution of humans ( the Inquisition ) and cats. They got the priests to throw cats off towers in a ceremony with rapturous crowds below. They created a system of callous people hunting down cats with cats and as the cat climbed into trees in fear to escape, the hunter with his two dogs firing arrows at the terrorized cat and if the cat fell injured or off balance, the dogs below ready to tear up him or her. They threw cats into bonfire. They tied cats to sticks and held the cat over fire. Imagine the pained shrieking of the cat. They chased cats out of houses. An entire insane continent involved in torturing cats despite prior or contemporary presence of Muslims in Europe who loved cats. Maybe this was the reason the popes hated cats, associating the Moslem, the Saracen with Satan who was personified by the cat.
But then came the Black Death that hastened up because there were not many cats alive to control the rodents. The mad priests and their madder followers had tortured the cats into almost extinction ( like is happening in India since 1999 ) and brought the Black Death onto themselves.
However, the Renaissance came and Europeans started wisening up and becoming civilized and over time stopped torturing cats. That elimination of cultural irrationality, brutality and overt respect for priesthood and beginning of questioning led to scientific advances that combined to prior Muslim advances and even prior Greek advances led to machineries and medical findings and instituted the Industrial Revolution.