Inquiring Mind, Jet Li, and the Buddha’s Tooth July 17, 2007
Posted by Philip Ryan in Random Notes.trackback
Happy birthday, Inquiring Mind! The Bay Area journal is throwing a daylong 25th anniversary party / benefit at Spirit Rock on July 21st, according to the Berkeley Daily Planet. There’ll be music, auctions, a lot of great guests, and all kinds of stuff, so if you’re in Marin County, swing by and help celebrate a great publication.
Seems like the Dalai Lama is more popular than the Pope in Germany. And the Pope’s a hometown boy, too. I bet the Dalai Lama is more popular than most people, most places. Scientology is illegal in Germany. I wonder what they think of The Secret?
For you Buddhist Celebrity watchers out there, Jet Li makes some oblique references to his Buddhist beliefs in an interview about his upcoming movie with Jackie Chan. (Jet says Jackie is a very nice guy, and even fetched some bug spray when mosquitoes attacked the production.)
Bangladesh is donating a Buddha-hair relic to Sri Lanka. Bangladesh of course has a very small Buddhist community. In other relic-related news, experts say the Buddha’s Tooth in Singapore is more likely from a cow. Oh well. But if we listened to these “experts” all the time, where would we be? We’d all be walking tightropes about what we can eat and say and do, and there’s a new expert born every day.
In the blog world, Terry at More coffee, less dukkha (the best-named blog, topped only by That was Zen, This is Tao) listens to Philip Glass’s Satyagraha, and Indranet talks about dualism. Something about Indranet, I don’t know if it’s the tone or the layout or what, is very calming. Check it out, you’ll see.
– Philip Ryan, Webmaster
Tricycle Editors' Blog 
On the Buddha’s tooth, I think its too quick for your editor to dismiss “expert” opinions. After all, they are experts in their fields like forensics and animal biology and there are scientific methods that can be used to determine the originals of the tooth. Are we now starting to question science in favor of blind faith, just because someone said this tooth is “real”?
I think Buddhism must be able to stand up the scrutiny of science and not be afraid to allow science to look at it, after all this is what the Kalama sutra teaches us. If not, then its nothing more then another teaching on blind following and blind faith, in which all we need to do is believe and not to question “truthness” of any issues.
Metta
Kelvin Wong
Moderator of Heartland
http://www.heartlandsg.org
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