Buddhism in Europe

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

European contact with Buddhism first began after Alexander the Great's conquest of northwestern India in the 3rd century BC. Greek colonists in the region adopted Indian Buddhism and syncretized it with aspects of their own culture to make a sect called Greco-Buddhism which dominated the area of ancient India compromising modern day Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan for several centuries. Emperor Ashoka sent Buddhist missionaries to the Hellenistic world, where they established centers in places such as Alexandria, creating a noted presence in the region. Many prominent Hellenistic writers were well aware of Buddhist lore and tradition and wrote about it in detail. Some scholars believe that later Greek philosophers may have borrowed from the teachings of the Buddha and that Jesus Christ was influenced by certain principles.

An interest in Buddhism had been circling among academic cicles in modern Europe since the 1870s, with philosophers like Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche and esoteric-minded scholars such as Helena Blavatsky.

Russia, and perhaps strangely, Austria are the only two European states today that recognize Buddhism as an "official", though not necessarily "state religion" in their respective countries. On top of that, Russia also recognizes it, along with Islam, Judaism, and of course Orthodox Christianity, as native to Russian soil in the 1993 Constitution of the Russian Federation – all other religious groups are unrecognized, and must officially register and be subject to rejection by the state. Apart from Siberian Buddhist nations, the Kalmyk people's 17th century migration into Europe has made them today's only traditionally Buddhist nation west of the Ural. They now live in the Republic of Kalmykia, a Russian Republic.

Main article: Buddhism in Kalmykia