How is the spread of Buddhism an example of cultural diffusion?

I can only add that the same process took place in Tibet and the other Himalayan kingdoms, where Buddhism successfully merged with the pre-existing animist religion, the Bon Pa, and of course, this is now occuring here in the West. Through both literature and the Tibetan monks who were displaced by the Chinese Communists, we have received the dharma, and in order to absorb it fully, a vast transformation is happening. Our culture is sufficiently different from the Eastern tradition that this process requires more than reconciliation with Judeo-Christian teachings: barriers of language, values, and folkways are undergoing synthesis as well. This not confined to just Europe and the Western hemisphere, but also in Asia, as the "core" reacts to events on the periphery..