Somewhere in the sixth century BCE Buddhism was born, born from a single man Siddhartha Guatama, the Buddha. After gaining his enlightenment under the Bodhi tree, the Buddha didn't think that the rest of the world could handle all that he had learned. He did not want to teach others, nor did he want to spread his wisdom. Until at last his great compassion came over him and he started to gain the respect of few by going to his old peers first. By starting with other intellectuals he secured that they at least had the capacity to learn what he had to teach. From this point on he spread his philosophy on the middle path with everyone who would listen.

He preached pacifism and that it was wrong to take any life be it a man's or any lesser being's. He taught that the noble eightfold path was the route to end all suffering, and that the individual was the most important factor in achieving enlightenment. The Buddha taught about the five aggregates, the notion that the human being is made up of matter, sensation, consciousness, perception, and mental formations. In all of his teachings however the Buddha did not do so much as a lay a groundwork for which his followers could build a soci

In many areas, where this sense of a Buddhist community had been created, the members had a great deal of pride in what they had created and were a part of, but their pride was kept in check by their inability to justify the right course of action. For example the Buddhists of Sri Lanka believed that they were the custodians of the teachings of the Buddha. It was there, on their Island, where the Theravadan tradition, the only sect of the Hinayana still around, had been born. Buddhism had prospered in Sri Lanka for over sixteen hundred years, until the first colonizers came from Portugal in the 1550's CE. Sri Lanka was then ruled, by one or another European colonizers, until the year of 1948. The reason for their inability to rule themselves was not because of lack of numbers, for 75% of all people in Sri Lanka ascribe to Buddhism, but because of the non-violent nature of their resistance. In the contradiction between pride and pacifism they had simply seen pride as a vi!

Though they came forth from different stimuli, Protestant Buddhism and Socially Engaged Buddhism share a lot in common, mainly as examples of the evolving nature of Buddhism as a whole. Whereas the integrity of the ancient teachings can be preserved, but not with the rigidity that would prevent them from being applicable to today's world.

The socially engaged Buddhist wants not only to live a life of good karma and further their journey to a state of enlightenment, but also wants to create a society that would be beneficial to be born back into. A society where each person helps each other, every person contributes to the greater community, and especially where the community aids the individual. The only way for this goal to be reached is to do something about it in this lifetime. To address the need for a Buddhist perspective on public policy, in essence, to merge the inner with the outer beings.

One example of a Buddhist view on social reform comes from the Digha-nikaya, where it teaches that poverty breeds many crimes such as theft and violence. And that in order to eradicate this evil, government must not punish the wrongdoers, because this just causes more of the same types of action, but rather should do what it can to help the impoverished people. Once poverty is gone the Buddha says, then these crimes of poverty will also vanish. This is a bit idealistic, but holds much more truth than any other leading party will admit, in that if given the chance to earn an honest living most people would rather accept it than deal with a life of "necessary" crime. In this way, peaceful, non-intrusive Buddhist ideals can be coupled with activism.

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Another example of the modernization of Buddhism, is the idea of "Socially Engaged Buddhism". This seemingly new aged phenomenon has been born out of the ignorance of many to the potential

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