Attacks on Buddhist temples in Bangladesh.

A wise man once said, "Never talk about religion unless you want a fight!". Though this seems to be true, with the late turn of events, its impossible to keep filtering out whats happening in that part of the world.

Buddhist communities around the globe seems to be protesting against these attacks and one such event in Sri Lanka ended up in a mob attack to the high commission in Colombo. Therefore, I believe it is important to look at the macro image of these conflicts. The fact that a human being can kill or harm another human being and feel good about doing so is simply unimaginable to the rational mind. Yet, we seems to be having an up rise in the world arena of such incidents. The riots in the middle east over a silly you-tube video is a classic example of such atrocities. My intentions are not to single out any particular religion in this article. On the contrary, my objective is to demonstrate the ability of monotheistic religions to poison the human mind into thinking doing bad in the name of a god is a noble deed. This is exactly what happens when people in the information era still hangs on to beliefs from the Bronze age!

Buddhism has an advantage in this playing field merely owing to the fact that it is a philosophy and not a religion. Yet, recent events that occurred in Sri Lanka begged to defer that case and starts to portray a religion in disguise within Buddhism. People simply follow some aggressive monks on to the road and throw rocks at institutes with diplomatic immunity  without the trouble of thinking through the morality of his actions. This in my belief is the real threat to Buddhism. It tarnishes the very principles this philosophy was founded on and furthermore, blur out the fine line that separates the radicals from the peaceful protestors.

YES, we do have to protest against these barbaric acts of violence. But not with the slight hint of violence. We need to make sure that the international communities hear about this story and make sure that its told the right way. Someone with very little background knowledge if presented with two consecutive news articles about two sides stoning and burning, the message Buddhists want to convey will be lost in the white noise. Lets unite against these barbarism and act promptly but, please leave weapons and violence outside of this matter.