Posted by dhivan thomas jones to Western Buddhist Review on Sun, 22 Apr, 2018 - 19:46Here is a review by Ben Atmer of Vajragupta’s new book from Windhorse Publications:
Vajragupta, Wild Awake: Alone, Offline & Aware in Nature
Windhorse, Cambridge, 2018, £10 pb
review by Ben Atmer
Vajragupta, a member of the Triratna Buddhist Order and writer, has had published a new book based on his long and deep immersion in the practice of solitary retreat. He attempts, for the most part remarkably successfully, to convey his sense of intimacy with the natural world, and tries to suggest just what it...
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Sadhu to all involved, may it benefit many. A 12% growth in 7 years in big. Do you know which faiths have grown even more than Buddhism in Ireland??
Kind wishes
Vajracaksu
Hi Vajracaksu,
Interesting question! Looking at the information from the Central Statistics Office (which you can find here) there were two other religions which grew more than Buddhism in Ireland between 2011 and 2016: there was a 28.1% increase in the number of Muslims (up to 63,443 people) and a 34% increase in the number of Hindus (up to 14,332 people). Buddhism is the next largest non-Christian religion after that. The next census will be in 2021 so it will be interesting to see if the upwards growth of Buddhists in Ireland continues!
With Metta,
Sadayasihi
Thank you Sadayasihi for taking the trouble to respond, I’ve taken a bit of a look at the link you sent. It seems to me that the wording of the original article was not accurate. The numbers of Buddhists are growing in Ireland but that Buddhism is one of the slowest or the slowest growing one:
Hindus 34%
Jewish 28.9%
Muslims 28.1%
Buddhist 12.1%
It is great that more people are interested in the Dharma of course but in this day and age I’m especially fond of ‘accuracy of narration.’
Thank you for the job you’re doing.
Kind wishes
Vajracaksu
Thanks for pointing this out Vajracaksu. I take your point about accuracy of narrative. Just to say that I think Maitrikaya got that statistic from an article in the Irish Times, a national newspaper.
If you look at the list of religions (in the database list) there are 53 listed. Without going through all 53 (and deciphering which are Christian and non-Christian) and calculating the % growth or otherwise between 2011 and 2016 I can’t definitely dispute whether Buddhism should now go from being described as the fastest growing to the slowest growing religion or not.
However the fact remains that the numbers of Buddhists in Ireland according to the census indicate that it is the third largest grouping after Muslims and Hindus, which seems the most significant point, and why at this juncture an Irish Inter-Buddhist network would be warranted.
I hope things are going well in Istanbul.
With Metta,
Sadayasihi
Excellent. Very impressed by the RTE video -beautifully done. Your second and third links above are the same btw.