&gt; I can&#x27;t tell if you are talking about actual Buddhism or &quot;Western Buddhism&quot;.<p>This article doesn&#x27;t have anything to do with Western Buddhism. It&#x27;s about how what people currently believe&#x2F;practice as Buddhism in Asia comes from the west.<p>The point is that before 150 years ago there was no core set of ideas that could really be distilled into what we think of as Buddhism today. Rather there were just different peoples worshipping different local gods. Westerners then went to Asia and translated a smattering of ancient texts and then went around and told the local people that they were practicing their religion wrong, and what they should actually do&#x2F;believe instead is X, Y, Z. That&#x27;s what modern buddhism is, and then Western Buddhism is an offshoot of that which was designed to appeal to Americans as a practice. (As opposed to being designed to appeal to westerners as a reason not to genocide various Asian populations.)