The Buddhist Revival

Olcott and Blavatsky took the Refuges and Precepts in Sri Lanka in 1880. Olcott then founded Buddhist schools, wrote a widely translated Buddhist Catechism (1881), campaigned against colonial restrictions on Buddhist practice, and sat on the committee that designed the international Buddhist flag still flown today.

The heaviest item on the credit side, and it is very heavy. ⚠ It is also contested in an interesting way: scholars describe the result as Protestant Buddhism — a Buddhism reorganised along the lines of a Western reform church, with catechisms, Sunday schools and a scripture-centred rationalism. Help that reshapes what it helps is still help, and it is still reshaping. Both halves belong on the same card.