In response to your question, it can be said that views considering Buddhists as pagans form part of interreligious stereotypes, emphasizing the conditional “otherness” and exoticism of Buddhism in comparison to the more “civilized” world religions.

Religious Dualities in the Perception of Buddhism

In response to your question, it can be said that views considering Buddhists as pagans form part of interreligious stereotypes, emphasizing the conditional “otherness” and exoticism of Buddhism in comparison to the more “civilized” world religions. Such positions are often based on two extremes. On one hand, there is rhetoric asserting that Buddhism has never been a cause of bloodshed or wars – “Buddhists are the only believers in 2,500 years who have never been the cause of bloodshed. Buddhists have never started wars, let alone fratricidal or civil ones. Unlike Christians, they never imposed their religion by fire and sword” – which highlights their “pacifism” (source: link txt; link txt).

On the other hand, a parallel argument is made that Buddhism is capable of providing justifications for crimes committed by its adherents. An example provided is an answer from the Dalai Lama, who justified the use of violence in exceptional cases, when the killing of one person capable of causing enormous harm is seen as a way to save many lives. This demonstrates the complexity of religious ethics: “When Burdukoff asked the Dalai Lama how, as a Buddhist monk, he could carry arms, fight, and kill, the Dalai Lama replied: ‘This truth (“spare all living beings”) applies to those who are striving for perfection, but not to the perfect ones... If the perfect one knows that some person may destroy a thousand similar people and bring calamity to the nation, he may kill that person to save a thousand and prevent disaster for the people. By doing so, he will purify the sinner’s soul by taking his sins upon himself’” (source: link txt; link txt).

Thus, in the context of interreligious stereotypes, portraying Buddhists as pagans reflects a tendency towards an overly simplified, binary polarization of religious values. On one side, Buddhism is portrayed as an extremely peaceful and ascetic religion in contrast to the “bloodthirstiness” of Christianity; on the other, historical and ideological contradictions within its doctrine, including instances of justifying violence, are overlooked. Some works also note that Western scholars tend to emphasize the peaceful image of Buddhism while forgetting that many rulers, referred to in Buddhism as “cakravartins,” “bodhisattvas,” or “buddharajahs,” sometimes displayed extreme cruelty (source: link txt).

This polarization contributes to the formation of biased judgments: some depict Buddhists as carriers of pagan traditions and “foreign,” archaic practices, while others exaggerate their moral status in contrast to other world religions. Such an approach oversimplifies complex reality by ignoring the historical and cultural context as well as the diversity of interpretations within Buddhism.