Resolves “yes” if most plausible statistics show there are more than 500mill Buddhists worldwide on 1st January 2030
Resolves “no” if the statistics show there are fewer than 500mill Buddhists on that date.
Resolves “n/a” if plausible statistics disagree with each other over whether there are more than 500mill Buddhists exist on that date or not.
Only people who follow Buddhism as a religion count for this market, not those who treat it as a secular philosophy.
The point in that criterion was to eliminate anyone who just has a Buddha statue and says “Namaste” a whole bunch, but doesn’t actually practice Buddhism in any meaningful sense. The way of measuring that could be how they answer a census, which should be easily standardised.
@DaisyWelham would you count someone who believes that suffering is an intrinsic aspect of desire, thus practices meditation with the aim of reducing their desires thus suffering, and who credits Buddha as the first to do this, despite them not believing in the supernatural aspects such as reincarnation, deities etc?