[boxed]

This is why you need to do what the Catholic Church does:

- Own your name

- Excommunicate those who claim to be of your movement that you don't like

Otherwise you will lose control over the term you invented and it goes to hell. Witness Buddhism (Pure Land is basically anti-buddhism), Christianity (where to even begin with all the splitting?), Islam (two big sects trying to murder eachother), communism (pol pot, mao, stalin).

Protect your brand or see your name be dragged through the mud.

[tptacek]

Just for what it's worth: it's a lot easier to get excommunicated from EA than from the Catholic Church, where it is more or less impossible to accomplish that. I think this comes up a lot because Catholics "own" the term "excommunication", but if you've got the sense that it's an ordinary thing that happens in the church, well, no. Sinéad O'Connor had to beg for it, and still didn't get it. (Has anyone in the world ever been as thoroughly vindicated as Sinéad, though?)

[boxed]

The threat and the ownership of the trademark is the point though.

[zozbot234]

Pure Land simply preserves the tradition of what Buddhism was like prior to the Western-influenced revitalization of it in the 19th century. It's the closest analog to the Catholic church with its long history, whereas what most people think of as Buddhism is relatively recent.

[boxed]

Pure Land rejects lots of stuff in the tripitaka. It's clearly BS. Replacing all of Buddhas teaching with "some god will save you if you say these magic words" is very similar to how the Catholic Church rejected the teachings of Jesus with indulgences. "Never mind what Jesus said, pay us some money and you'll go to heaven even if you're a mass murderer". Pure land is basically the same type of crazy.