Lewis Lancaster on Buddhism’s “Portability”

Lewis Lancaster: Buddhism in a Global Age of Technology

This is really an interesting speech about Lancaster’s attempts to answer the question of what it is in the Buddhist tradition that lead it to become “the first world-religion.” That is, why did it spread so far and so well? To this he answers partially by discussing what he calls “portable sanctity” and “fixed sanctity.” He discusses translation right around 20:40 on the recording. He also discusses the “two most important problems of our time”: 1) cosmology and 2) causation, Buddhism in a digital age, and he makes some interesting statements about freedom of information and the internet. Although some of what he says is a bit off-target, most of what he says is very interesting and the speech is worth the time it takes to listen.

Here is the URL in case the above link breaks: http://www.uctv.tv/search-details.asp?showID=14331