A new story enters a host most easily where the host lets people hold several stories at once, and through the people the host ranks low; it spreads when the host's keeper loses its grip. In Ansary's ch. 8 Buddhism failed going west, against master narratives with no frame that could hold both, and took root going east, where people "didn't have to choose", where despised traders shared air with Taoist peasants, and where the fall of the Han opened cultural space. For a commons: do not ask contributors to leave their other communities.

Evidence 5 passages

• groundsSource document

  The two frameworks were incompatible and there was no larger framework that could incorporate the ideas of both Buddha and Zoroaster

• backsSource document

  unlike the Western world, the Chinese had no tradition of jealous gods demanding exclusive worship.

• groundsSource document

  Traders were the very people converting to Buddhism in ever greater numbers at this time, so Taoists and Buddhists were breathing the same air. Buddhism made slow headway in China as long as the Han emperors kept a strong grip on social reality.

• groundsSource document

  In China, the same person could practice Taoist rituals, bow to Confucian values, and burn incense to minor spirits inhabiting some particular place. They didn't have to choose.

• backsSource document

  In those conditions, Taoism found a growing audience, and as Taoism flourished, cultural space opened up in China for Buddhism too.

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