World Fellowship of Buddhists promotes ethical treatment of animals

World Fellowship of Buddhists promotes ethical treatment of animals

World Fellowship of Buddhists promotes ethical treatment of animals

Posted: 23 Jul 2012 08:00 AM PDT

The World Fellowship of Buddhists, established in 1950 to foster cooperation between Buddhists of different sects all over the world, called on humanity to extend compassion and loving-kindness to all living beings in its final Declaration at its 26th General Conference held in South Korea last month. This stemmed from Ven. Senaka Weeraratna of the German Dharmaduta Society, who handed in a draft resolution at the conference calling for an animal welfare subcommittee of the WFB Standing Committee for Humanitarian Services.

You can read the full text of the draft resolution at lankaweb.com, available here.

(Photo by Craig Nagy via Flickr using a CC-BY-SA license.)

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Pew survey tallies larger Buddhist population than previously thought

Posted: 23 Jul 2012 07:00 AM PDT

A new study by the Pew Forum on Religious and Public Life estimates that between 1 and 1.3 percent of the United States population—between 3 and 4 million people—identifies as Buddhist, a dramatic increase from a 2007 Pew survey that found only about .7 percent of the population to be Buddhist.

The new study, which focused on religious identity and practices of Asian Americans, also estimated that around two-thirds of American Buddhists are Asian American, about double the proportion found in the 2007 survey. The study's authors said the probable reason for the increased estimate of Asian American Buddhists is that the previous survey was only conducted in English and Spanish, while the new survey was also conducted in seven commonly spoken Asian languages.

You can read the full report here.

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