[pradn]

Throughout Buddhist history, the contemplative, meditative, "philosophical" Buddhism has always been practiced by a small minority of monks and nuns. Even at the height of Buddhist fervor in the middle of the first millennium, far under 0.5% of the population of, say, China were monastics. (In fact most of those simply had certificates of monkhood that exempted from corvee labor - taxes in the form of labor, and weren't seriously committed to spiritual practice.)

Most Buddhists have been lay followers content to pray at temples to ease their worries and bring good luck, seek the monastics for ceremonies like weddings and funerals, and donate to monasteries to keep their spiritual practices going. The whole of Mahayana Buddhism is far more concerned with the worship of spiritual intercessors called Bodhisattva's, those who have achieved enlightenment but have chosen to stay behind to help devotees. This form of Buddhism constitutes the bulk of religious practice in East and South East Asia. To ignore it in favor of only one strand of Buddhism is like seeing Christianity only through the eyes of Flagellants or Dominican monks or anchorites.

[travisjungroth]

The source of the conflict is that when most people in the US say “Buddhism”, they mean “Buddhism that was exported to the US in the 60s.” which was an odd combination of monastic and secularized. It’s actually a strange combo when you think about it. Most Buddhists are more like Americans on Easter Sunday.