Key ideas from Donald S. Lopez

• The Buddha is considered omniscient in Buddhist theology, knowing all past, present, and future, including that the next Buddha Maitreya won't appear for six billion years
• Buddhism has no creator deity or God - karma operates as a natural ethical law where virtuous deeds lead to happiness and negative deeds to suffering
• The Buddha had 32 physical marks including webbed fingers, a retractable penis, arms extending below his knees, and a tongue that could lick behind his ears
• Buddhist monks are beggars (bhikshu means beggar) who cannot touch money or till soil, making Buddhism dependent on royal patronage that has largely disappeared
• The Dalai Lama succession system is highly inefficient - after death, there's a 25-year interregnum while searching for and educating the reborn child
• The Tibetan Book of the Dead was randomly named by American theosophist Walter Evans-Wentz, who never studied Buddhism seriously but influenced Western perceptions
• Buddhism is declining globally due to loss of monarchical patronage, with monks predicting their own disappearance when yellow robes turn white
• Thailand remains the wealthiest Buddhist nation because it avoided colonization while maintaining trade relationships and royal support for monasteries