‘Our Duty to Fight’: The Rise of Militant Buddhism

NY Times ^ | July 8, 2019 | Hannah Beech

[C19fan]

The Buddhist abbot was sitting cross-legged in his monastery, fulminating against the evils of Islam, when the petrol bomb exploded within earshot.

But the abbot, the Venerable Ambalangoda Sumedhananda Thero, barely registered the blast. Waving away the mosquitoes swarming the night air in the southern Sri Lankan town of Gintota, he continued his tirade: Muslims were violent, he said, Muslims were rapacious. “The aim of Muslims is to take over all our land and everything we value,” he said. “Think of what used to be Buddhist lands: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kashmir, Indonesia. They have all been destroyed by Islam.”

[Cronos]

Buddhism is only about 300 years older than Christianity.

it arose out of the adharma (athiest) aspect of Sanatana Dharma (what you would call hinduism) as a way to “escape” the cycle of birth-death-rebirth.

It’s a milder form of Jainism, which arose around 700 BC.

Both of them believe there is no creator god and that you can escape the cycle by attaining nirvana