Why is Buddhism still so popular today despite centuries of persecution and a general attitude of non-resistance?
The answer has been part of the religion since its founding: the idea that Buddhism needs to speak to people in their language and through their culture.
Their sages always knew who they were talking to
If a warrior-king should be so fortunate as to survive childhood and manage to win an empire for himself, he’s likely to start wondering what it was all for.
Thus, when King Menander I, Bactrian Greek conqueror of much of India, asks the Buddhist sage Nāgasena, a question, his answers frequently make analogies from marshaling, feeding, and leading troops. At other times he draws examples from statecraft, everyday life around the capital, and other subjects the warrior-king thoroughly understands.
Often, the sage refers to the Buddha as “the Conqueror” for overcoming his fears, desires, and moral shortcomings.
This is the spiritual meaning of immortality: not letting death affect you can be as good if not better than never dying. Being able to fully and consciously choose how your life ends and for what beats being trapped in it forever.
When asked why the Buddha would give his followers the option to stop following his precepts after his death, Nāgasena refers compares him to a great king who would test his princes by asking them to retreat after his passing,
"This great country, my children, reaches to the sea on every side. It is a hard thing to maintain it with the forces we have at our disposal. So when I am gone you had better, my children, abandon the outlying districts along the border." Now would the princes, O king, on the death of their father, give up those outlying districts, provinces already in their power?'
Just as no royal would dream of permanent retreat, but would instead seek to extend his holdings, so too would no true seeker of the good life give up his morality just because he’d been given permission.
Not only was he an advisor and teacher, but the king even saw Nāgasena as an ally in his personal war to liberate transcendant truth from falsehood, what the Greeks called logos. Over and over he calls on the sage to do things like, “Tear in sunder this net of heresy, put it on one side, break in pieces the arguments of the adversary!”
Indian-sourced, locally cultivated
When Alan Watts called Buddhism "Hinduism stripped down for export," he meant that the aspects specific to local culture and context had been distilled away so that only the bare necessities required for achieving transcendence remained. From here, a culture can graft onto Buddhism the traditions and practices they need to make it work for them.
This is why no definitive answer exists whether a Buddhist should cremate, bury, or embalm the dead. Or any injunctions for or against organ donation. It’s why later Bodhisattvas, like the infamous mad monk Drukpa Kunley who was said to have enlightened 5,000 women by having sex with them, were so radically different from the Buddha himself.
How Buddhism is like curry
Like India’s second most-famous cultural export, curry, the religion can take on the tastes and characteristics of each new home while retaining the core essence of what it is.
The Thai variety is lighter and simpler than that found in India, while Japanese Zen is so austere as to border on bland compared to the spicier, more colorful versions found in Tibet. And then there is the Chinese Mahayana, which, by being widely available to the greatest number of people, has become the de facto mainstream for much of the Asian world.
Buddhism’s success holds to a simple dictum first expounded by the Buddha himself that religion must work with the local traditions, customs, and myths. Not the other way around.
Their gods could even become goddesses.
It's so intrinsic to the theology that some Buddhist deities, like the Bodhisattva Guan Yin, are gender fluid, represented as male in India and female in China.
Become what they need you to be.
Speak softly and carry a priceless treasure
One of my favorite Guan Yin stories comes from The Journey to the West, and involves her mission to spread the Pali Canon to China. To get the Chinese emperor to support the venture of finding a great monk and sending him to India, she shows up at the capital in the guise of an old hag with a wondrous monk's robe.
She tells the captain of the guard that the robe is intended only for the most learned and virtuous of Buddhist monks, one worthy of high office. Recognizing an opportunity for brownie points and even a promotion, the captain brings it to the emperor and relays her words.
Now the emperor's interest is piqued. And so begins a great search across the Middle Kingdom for their greatest monk, who shall don the robe and become China's "Master of the Law". Only after the monk Xuanzang is found does the Bodhisattva reveal herself and the true mission.
Imagine if she'd appeared as the magnificent goddess queen from the get-go and issued orders like some chthonic Bronze Age deity.
Would the emperor have truly produced his best and brightest for this perilous quest?
Would the captain have passed on her gift or seen it as a curse?
The lesson: no matter how important your beliefs are, people won't listen or share the good news unless it's crafted to make sense to them.
If you want to deliver your message, you must learn to speak their language.