Buddha's Prophecy On Buddhism Survival - Part 1

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Many people look for sexism on part of Buddha in the context of this history of Buddhism. But they ignore the social context and practicality from where Buddha was coming from. He was by no mean objected initially the ordination of nuns because he believed in masculine supremacy. Buddha was mostly concerned that the rest of society, which supported the Sangha, would not approve of the ordination of nuns. Many suggest that Buddha might have simply been protective of women, who faced great personal risk in a paternalistic culture when they were not under the protection of a father or husband. Ordaining female disciples was a revolutionary step; there was nothing like it in the other religions of India at the time.

Going back to the point of predicting the originality of the teaching of Buddha, its quite fascinating to observe that Buddha himself prophesied that his teachings will last for 500 years.

The teachings dated back more than 2000 years ago were essentially oral teachings which were passed down from generation to generation. The writing system was not sophisticated and there was no distribution of information in writing among mass. Now from a very common sense point of view the longevity and reliability of oral teachings can not retain its purity for long. Even within one generation it start to become obscure.

The teachings of Buddha remained an oral tradition for over 200 years, only after 200 years they were written down. So one can imagine how much original teachings of Buddha was left and how much was filtered through 3 generation of monks and followers. Similarly the earliest surviving complete copies of the Christian Canonical Gospels date to the 4th century which also sheds light how much originality could possibly be retained by the time the organized religions of past became so called "organized".

So as these great world teachers appeared in history of humanity, their teachings had a certain time period within which it retained its originality and its spirit. After which it started to vanish. The shell was retained perhaps, but the spirit was no longer there. Names of many great teachers are even not known, let alone their teachings. For this very reason, the ancient the religious and wisdom tradition is, the more likely that the original teachings of the great enlightened mind from where it came through is lost in the flow of cosmic time.

Its possible for only few to reach enlightenment by following the path of out-dated religious tradition, but it will be close to impossible for majority of recent time.