1.11 QUESTION: Why is it that you don’t often hear of charitable work being done by Buddhists?

ANSWER: Perhaps it is because Buddhists don’t feel the need to boast about the good they do. Several years ago the Japanese Buddhist leader Nikkho Nirwano received the Templeton Prize for his work in promoting inter-religious harmony. Likewise a Thai Buddhist monk was recently award the prestigious Magsaysay Prize for his excellent work among drug addicts. In 1987 another Thai monk, Ven. Kantayapiwat was a warded the Norwegian Children’s Peace Prize for his many years of work helping homeless children in rural areas. And what about the large scale social work being done a mong the poor in India by the Western Buddhist Order? They have built schools, child minding-centers, dispensaries and small-scale industries for self-sufficiency. Buddhists see help given to others as an expression of their religious practice just as other religions do but they believe that it should be done quietly and without self-promotion. Thus you don’t hear so much about their charitable work.

1.12 QUESTION: Why are there so many different types of Buddhism?

ANSWER: There are many different types of sugar: syrup and icing sugar but it is all sugar and it all tastes sweet. It is produced in different forms so that it can be used in different ways. Buddhism is the same. There is Theravada Buddhism Zen Buddhim, Pure Land Buddhism, Yogocara Buddhism and Vajrayana Buddhism but it is all Buddhism and it all has the same taste - the state of freedom. Buddhism has evolved into different froms so that it can be relevant to the different centuries in which it exists. It has been reinterpreted over the centuries so that it can remain relevant to each new generation. Outwardly, the types of Buddhism may seem very different but at the center of all of them is the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path. All major religions, Buddhism included, have split into schools and sects. But the different sects of Buddhism have never gone to war with each other, they have never expressed hostility towards each other and to this day, they go to each other's teples and worship together. Such tolerance and understanding is cerntainly raes. continue Page 1.5
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