Its up to you!! It was not my intention to discuss about what's better of Mahayana or Hinayana here, since you mentioned I just asked
Anyway..... with regard to this particular post, the situation that being portrayed here..... in my earliest comment what I've being trying to point out is that..
The closest and the prominent form of Buddhism in the western world is Mahayana, there's no doubt about it... Whatever the differences between the variants of Buddhism, we should ask the question what makes these westerners possibly act the way they have been doing towards Buddhism...
In my opinion, this has got to do a lot with the people they witness whom they call Buddhists themselves, Like for an example lets take majority Chinese... if you ask them they would tell you they are Buddhist or some would say they belong to Japanese Buddhism (which I think they refer to ZEN) and regardless of what Mahayana Buddhism or its close versions teach them, does their lifestyles reflects the depth that Buddhism has???
Look at them..... their whole life is money and money only... they go to temple burn fake money in front of the gods, go to a funeral you'll see carvings of BMW cars, pot full of fake money.... etc.. etc.. and when you ask why.. they say "Oh! in our religion we believe that the person deceased will get these item his/her next life time ", during the new years there's no mentioning about religion all they do is worship a money god with a long beard!!! It's very hard for them to see a religion without money.... NOW you decide what's the connection with Mahanyana or Hinayana with money??
As for us in SL, we go to temple to worship lord Buddha to get blessing NOT to burn money... when someone passed away we call monks to actually bless that person and even our festivals such as new years are very closely bonded with religion.....
So if we really see there's an invincible line drawn a between money and religion in certain cultures....
So in my opinion this is the difference that the western world does not see... if they do.... they would think before they commit these kind of acts.. besides which CHINESE, JAPANESE, KOREAN Buddhism movement is actively engaged in stopping these nonsense? Because they don't really care.... If not, ideally if we look at the Asian Pacific communities that live in the western worlds.. their voice alone is enough to stop/reduce these things...
BUT the case is as such that, they let Bhuddism ruin and we has to shout all the way from South Asia begging them to stop... and I'm afraid this less than 19 million people's voice is NOT enough!!!
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