Libya's 2007 census has over 15,010 workers from
Sri Lanka and some other Buddhist countries (about 12,000
Koreans
Koreans ( South Korean: , , North Korean: , ; see names of Korea) are an East Asian ethnic group native to the Korean Peninsula.
Koreans mainly live in the two Korean nation states: North Korea and South Korea (collectively and simply re ...
and more than 2,000 citizens from China) which made up about 0.3% of total population of Libya. This makes Libya the country with the one of highest proportions of Buddhists in
North Africa
North Africa, or Northern Africa is a region encompassing the northern portion of the African continent. There is no singularly accepted scope for the region, and it is sometimes defined as stretching from the Atlantic shores of Mauritania in ...
despite there not being any Buddhist
pagoda
A pagoda is an Asian tiered tower with multiple eaves common to Nepal, India, China, Japan, Korea, Myanmar, Vietnam, and other parts of Asia. Most pagodas were built to have a religious function, most often Buddhist but sometimes Taoist, ...
s or temples.
Theravada
''Theravāda'' () ( si, ථේරවාදය, my, ထေရဝါဒ, th, เถรวาท, km, ថេរវាទ, lo, ເຖຣະວາດ, pi, , ) is the most commonly accepted name of Buddhism's oldest existing school. The school' ...
Buddhists make up two thirds and are primarily
Sinhalese
Sinhala may refer to:
* Something of or related to the Sinhalese people of Sri Lanka
* Sinhalese people
* Sinhala language, one of the three official languages used in Sri Lanka
* Sinhala script, a writing system for the Sinhala language
** Sinha ...
while the remaining third follow
East Asian Buddhism and are Korean or Chinese nationals.
History
Hegesias of Cyrene
Hegesias ( el, Ἡγησίας; fl. 290 BC) of Cyrene was a Cyrenaic philosopher. He argued that eudaimonia (happiness) is impossible to achieve, and that the goal of life should be the avoidance of pain and sorrow. Conventional values suc ...
was a philosopher of the
Cyrenaic school around 290 BC.
It has been thought by some that Hegesias was influenced by
Greco-Buddhism
Greco-Buddhism, or Graeco-Buddhism, is the cultural syncretism between Hellenistic culture and Buddhism, which developed between the fourth century BC and the fifth century AD in Gandhara, in present-day north-western Pakistan and parts of nort ...
.
Notes
References
* Country Profile of Libya (Religious Intelligence
* Religious Freedom Profile of Libya
* The US State Department's International Religious Freedom Report 2006 - Libya
Libya
Libya (; ar, ليبيا, Lībiyā), officially the State of Libya ( ar, دولة ليبيا, Dawlat Lībiyā), is a country in the Maghreb region in North Africa. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to the east, Suda ...
Sinhalese people
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