ABSTRACT
Buddhism's ability to adapt to cultures and reframe the basic teachings in vernacular language has a lot to do with how it has been able to survive for 2500 years. Christopher Lewis writes that sensible religion, refers to reasonableness in people and beliefs: having beliefs and practices which are both consistent with what is considered to be true and which also correspond to what is seen as reality'. Life in the Buddha's place and time, North India in the fifth century BCE, was different in many ways from our lives in the developed world of the twenty-first century. Bhikkhu Bodhi characterizes mindfulness meditation in this way: The practice of Satipatthana meditation centers on the methodical cultivation of one simple mental faculty readily available to all of us at any moment. The long-running civil war in Sri Lanka, pitting a majority Buddhist Singhalese population against minority Hindu Tamil, was inflamed by Buddhist monks advocating violence and even carrying guns.
