Pagodas over Pungo September 5, 2007

A victory for the International Campaign for Tibet: Congress passed a resolution allowing them to host a ceremony honoring the Dalai Lama on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol on October 17th, 2007. That same day in the rotunda Congress will also give the DL the “highest civilian honor” Congress can give (the Congressional Medal of Freedom?) It’s actually pretty amazing. Don’t worry, we’ll hear from China on this one.

Some Buddhist monks are running into trouble from neighbors in Pungo, Virginia who want to keep their neighborhood rural. Three monks want to live in the house and hold services there. There’s an issue over property rights — in order to attend services, could people come visit the house? Yes, but how many? It’s hard not to think a Christian prayer group wouldn’t run into this kind of trouble, but a Christian prayer group probably wouldn’t put in a request to build a 6,000 square-foot pagoda on the front lawn.

Warning shots fired at monks at a protest march in Burma. And there’s more bullets where that came from. Two amazing weeks of open dissent in Myanmar so far!

Brad Warner on Buddhism and Violence, citing a Stephen Batchelor article originally published in the Winter 2001 Tricycle. Can Buddhism end violence in the world? Short answer: not really.

Fun haiku stuff on ZenFrog! And always good poetry stuff on A Hoodie Monk.

And finally a great post on Buddhism-informed vs. Buddhism-inspired blogging from peaceful turmoil. Although there’s really no “versus” here — it’s inclusive rather than exclusive, which is a big thing. But still it reminds me of Meeting It Everywhere on Buddhists vs. “Buddhists” in the wonderfully titled post Buddhists are Jerks.

– Philip Ryan, Webmaster

Join the club — Or else! August 29, 2007

“You just cannot be a meat-eating environmentalist,” says Matt A. Prescott, manager of vegan campaigns for PETA. Many of us have heard by now that cows are worse for the earth than cars. (The carbon cost of ice cream is particularly high, as it must be refrigerated throughout its “lifespan” — hence just being vegetarian isn’t good enough.) None of this nonsense in beef-eating Britain, where they are working instead to change cows’ diets to cut down on methane production. But hold on, John Bull, it’s not just the methane: You save more water by not eating one pound of beef than you would by not showering for a year (or so says Treehugger.com.) Is it a bigger lifestyle change to downsize your car (or — horrors — take the bus) than give up eating meat? I don’t know, PETA — let’s try for inclusion, things we can do together, rather than exclusion. Telling everyone they should be vegans is not going to get a good response. Let’s say veganism is a long-term goal for the people of Texas. What should they do in the meantime? It seems a bit early in the game to declare meat-eaters enemies of the people. But it could be later than I think!

Buddhism is rising in popularity in Europe, especially Germany, says a German delegation visiting Sri Lanka. Well, duh — haven’t Germans been down with Buddhism since pre-Theosophical days? But according to this article, Buddhism is still not officially recognized as a religion by Germany. Man, they’re strict. I thought they had a debate over whether Scientology was a religion or not. (Answer: Not. Germany strongly objected to Tom Cruise playing the role of Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, a great German hero who plotted to assassinate Hitler.) The Nazis were into Buddhism, especially Tibet, so I suppose it was tarred with that brush. Germany and Austria still have to tread lightly very around a lot of issues that barely register with Americans and even other Europeans.

Speaking of Tibet, in case you thought it was all rainbows and unicorns before the Chinese army rolled in, this Chinese government press release is here to tell you there were problems in Tibet under Lamaist rule too. So there!

Here’s a long, tortuous (and almost torturous) essay on homosexuality in Sri Lanka / Theravada Buddhism that ends on a note of tolerance. We have some issues with this on our own shores in the U. S. of A. One of the opponents of tolerance of homosexuality is of course involved in a “juicy scandal” — The more repressed your society, the more titillating your scandals.

12th-century Buddhist sculptures found in an Indonesian cave. Buddhism used to be a big deal there. (What evidence will survive for archaeologists to discover that will prove Buddhism flourished in the West?)

Some heat for the Dalai Lama vis a vis Darwinism. It is probably dangerous for Buddhists to trot out quotes like Einstein’s saying Buddhism is the most compatible religion for science. (This quote may be apocryphal anyway, according to religioustolerance.org.) No religion will satisfy the rigorous demands of science, nor should any religious believer try to justify his religion in the light of science. Einstein had a religious sensibility, but today’s science is atheistic, which doesn’t necessarily mean it is innately hostile to religion, but rather that religion has no place in the workings of science, nor does science have a place in religion — or if you prefer, spirituality. Buddhism is the least repulsive religion to scientists for a variety of reasons, many of them misconceptions and holdovers from antiquated Western understandings of Buddhism. But if you embrace Buddhism because you are scientifically minded yet crave some sort of spiritual dimension in your life — oh, hell. Well then enjoy it.

– Philip Ryan, Webmaster

Collateral Damage? August 29, 2007

Human Rights Watch says that 89% — or 2,196 — of the people killed by the “separatists” and “insurgents” in southern Thailand since January 2004 are civilians. They are careful to say separatist and not use the “T” word — a good thing, since the word’s overuse by the current junta in Washington has rendered it essentially meaningless. Oh, I guess there’s two “T” words — terrorist/m and torture. The obfuscated meaning of both is part of the shining legacy of the Department of Justice under Bush 2.

What does it mean when nearly 90% of a separatist or insurgent group’s victims are civilians? I guess I’m naive. I guess I just don’t understand modern asymmetrical warfare. Of course most victims are civilians — they’re there.

There seems to be very little curiosity in the United States about the numbers of Iraqi (let alone Afghan) civilian dead — some would ask how a civilian, living or dead, could be distinguished from a combatant anyway. I know (or I think I know) that around 57- or 58,000 Americans died in action in Vietnam. But how many civilians died? I don’t know. A million? More?

I just looked it up (this being the internets there may be other answers out there):

The Hanoi government revealed on April 4 [1995] that the true civilian casualties of the Vietnam War were 2,000,000 in the north, and 2,000,000 in the south. Military casualties were 1.1 million killed and 600,000 wounded in 21 years of war. These figures were deliberately falsified during the war by the North Vietnamese Communists to avoid demoralizing the population. . . .

Note: Given a Vietnamese population of approximately 38 million during the period 1954-1975, Vietnamese casualties represent a good 12-13% of the entire population. To put this in perspective, consider that the population of the US was 220 million during the Vietnam War. Had the US sustained casualties of 13% of its population, there would have been 28 million US dead.

And that doesn’t count Laos or Cambodia. The sad thing with Iraq is that we’ll probably never know. We thought the 20th century was the century of genocide and death on fantastical scales, but it turns out the trend continues into the 21st. The death of a soldier is a terrible thing, but the bitterest tragedy of war is what it does to civilians.

– Philip Ryan, Webmaster

[Photo: David Longstreath — AP]

Fox News misses some big stories August 27, 2007

Check out this screenshot of the Fox News website this evening. (Click the graphic to see it life-size.) I think they missed a big story concerning the attorney general, but I’m not sure. I guess they’re not on the ball today, because they also seem to have missed the hospitalization of Owen Wilson, a sad tabloid tale that would fit right in with their other top stories.

The talented actor and screenwriter Wilson is perhaps best known to the Buddhist blogging community as the man who labeled the Dalai Lama “a corny purveyor of goofball ideas.” But I’m sure the DL, not one to hold a grudge, joins us in sending Wilson and his friends and family our sincere best wishes during this trying time. Shanti.

– Philip Ryan, Webmaster

Bombs and Buddhists August 27, 2007

Three bombs were discovered in Sri Lanka on Sunday, one of them in the town of Kandy along the route of a procession to honor the Buddha’s Tooth Relic. The 10-day festival will go on regardless. Sri Lanka has lived with terrorism for a very long time, and the Temple housing the Tooth was damaged by a truck bomb in 1998.

Meanwhile, a Buddhist delegation arrived in Sri Lanka from another majority-Buddhist country involved in a civil war, Thailand. The fighting there is getting more violent. Visitors from Myanmar / Burma are also due in Sri Lanka.

Is it ironic that a Tooth Relic is held in a town called Kandy? Teeth are tough customers. They can survive amazing things. I think we’ve commented on this somewhere previously.

– Philip Ryan, Webmaster

Still Looking for the Ox under Sacred Mountains August 23, 2007

I’ve always liked the Ten Oxherding Pictures, and I came across these beautiful ones recently, from an artist named Tim Jundo Williams (©2001) on pages belonging to the Boonville One Drop Zendo. This one is the first, Looking for the Ox. Click the picture to see more. The style reminds me of the paintings Tolkien did for the The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

Sad news of the Reverend Gyosei Handa, who died in a freak accident involving his rider-mower. Good for him, cutting his own grass. No work, no food. He worked tirelessly for peace and will be sorely missed.

We all remember the Danish cartoon controversy over the images many Muslims found offensive. A Malaysian newspaper recently printed an image of Jesus holding a cigarette. There probably won’t be any riots over this. The image of Jesus, unlike Mohammed, is quite ubiquitous (and often commodified) and also, as some pointed out in the wake of the Danish imbroglio, Christians, even fundamentalist Christians, have a profoundly different relationship to art and artistic representation than many Muslims, fundamentalist or not. And defusing things further, the Malaysian newspaper promptly apologized.

A piece in The Times of India about “the inclusive nature of Buddhist philosophy”:

It is clear that in order to practise Buddhism you are not expected to become a monk or retire to a forest or cave. You can practise it even while living with and caring for family and discharging your duties towards family members. Similarly, the caring and sharing is extended to [the] entire society in which you live. It is through compassion that you evolve, and thereby raise your consciousness.

Well, ok. Is this article explaining Buddhism to Indian audiences, or to Western audiences? Or is it another piece of India’s half-hearted embrace of its wayward son? If it written to de-mystify Buddhism for an Indian audience, I don’t think it will placate the small group of Hindu nationalists who view Buddhism and Jainism as threats.

China meanwhile is doing its part to protect its Buddhist heritage, this time coughing up some coin to preserve a small Buddhist temple, said to be the smallest in the world:

Costing two million yuan (263,800 U.S. dollars) and occupying 380 square meters, the museum would also benefit the tourism industry in Xinjiang, Wu said.

The temple is only four square meters, with a 65-centimeter Buddha statue inside. So presumably the temple will be inside this museum? The West likes Buddhism. And the West has money. So put away your computers and iPhones and get on a plane to China (or India.) Heck, you can even bring the iPhone with you.

China also banned mining in the sacred Wutai mountains in the north-central state of Shanxi after local monks protested:

The Wutai Mountains, the dwelling place of Manjusri Bodhisattva, the Buddha of Wisdom, are home to 47 temples dating back to the Eastern Han Dynasty (25 AD- 220 AD) and about 3,000 Buddhist monks and nuns. …

But the sacred mountains are also home to rich iron ore deposits, and have been vigorously exploited by mining companies. About 10 mines have been set up in the area.

This follows a similar protest by Buddhists in southwest China (i.e., Tibet) over the same thing, mining in sacred mountains. Unfortunately for Tibet and its sacred mountains, there are resources under there the People’s Republic wants. They need that iron to make steel products to sell to the West. It is a simple economic analysis very faintly flavored by the cost of bad P.R. — What brings in more money, tourists or iron ore? Everyone knows they are re-shaping Tibet to make it more tourist-friendly — the majority of tourists at this point come from mainland China — but guess which will win in the end?

This brings up a depressing analogy that applies to all of us all over the world — renewable sources of energy will never be implemented by money-hungry corporations (and their shareholders who demand dividends) until it is cheaper than using fossil fuels, and fossil fuels will only be cheaper than green solutions in terms of plain dollars when it is very late in the game indeed. So without some vision and leadership from our elected leaders on this (since private corporations, driven to maximize profits, don’t believe it is in their economic interest to develop green technologies) things look pretty dark. But China’s galloping economy will arrive at this crisis point first, unless they industriously drain Africa’s resources for a long time, and therefore will develop the technologies first. Then the West can buy those technologies from China the same way we buy everything else China makes.

More oxherding pictures from a Japan Times Online article on a new exhibition in Tokyo on the Gozan (Five Mountains) Zen temples: Tenryuji, Shokokuji, Tofukuji, Kenninji and Manjuji. Plus an older article on “Madi-Zen Avenue” marketing:

Mara Einstein, author of Brands of Faith: Marketing Religion in a Commercial Age, said Christians, Jews and Muslims have media watchdog groups that protest when advertisers offend. But Buddhists and Hindus generally don’t have such groups.

“There’s a sense in advertising that Eastern religions are fair game,” she said. “There’s no fear of reprisal.”

Finally, everyone’s favorite Urban Monk, Barry Graham, points us to a smashing post by the estimable Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed, On (Not) Getting By in America:

Global capitalism will survive the current credit crisis; already, the government has rushed in to soothe the feverish markets. But in the long term, a system that depends on extracting every last cent from the poor cannot hope for a healthy prognosis. Who would have thought that foreclosures in Stockton and Cleveland would roil the markets of London and Shanghai? The poor have risen up and spoken; only it sounds less like a shout of protest than a low, strangled, cry of pain.

– Philip Ryan, Webmaster

Jodo Shinshu, the Khampa Festival, and NRO August 17, 2007

Interesting posts on D.T. Suzuki and Jodo Shinshu and Other-Power over at The Buddhist Nerd Haven, and a good article on China’s (stage) management of Tibet courtesy of the New York Times.

Also, the National Review takes note of the controversy over making Buddhism the state religion in Thailand. Funny, the NR telling Thailand, a country with an active and virulent Muslim insurgency within its borders, to exercise patience and discretion in dealing with a terrorist threat. Physician, heal thyself. To be fair, the writer Doug Bandow, who had some Abramoff-related troubles in the past, also writes for antiwar.com and so is not in lockstep with the NR party line. In fact, Buckley himself declared “the American objective in Iraq has failed” a while ago, but no one paid the old man any heed.

– Philip Ryan, Webmaster

Buddhists vs. Environmentalists in New Jersey and the Kalinga War Revisited August 14, 2007

Members of the Amitabha Buddhist Society, a Pure Land sect, released various fish, reptiles and other critters destined for dinner plates in New York’s Chinatown into the Passaic River in Paterson, New Jersey this past Sunday. Well, someone told New Jersey and the state apparatus may be irked to the point of issuing a $1,000 fine. The Amitabha folks, many of them strict vegans, were doing their part to spare the animals some extreme suffering, but the state remembers those freaky walking snakehead fish (see pic, courtesy the U.S. Dept. of Transportation) and the bighead carp, among many others. I never thought I’d say this but I’m with the great state of New Jersey on this one. Amitabha member Ann Chin said the Passaic River was chosen because it was the closest body of freshwater to New York. (What about the Hudson, you ask? It is estuarine. But if you know that much, wouldn’t you have a good chance of knowing about invasive species and such?) A Princeton professor said that with the U.S. becoming an “increasingly pluralistic society,” we can expect more of this.

“They probably thought they were doing a good deed and didn’t think about permits,” he said, stressing that he was neither defending nor attacking the group. “The Buddhists are probably going to learn they’re in a non-Buddhist culture, and the Americans will learn they’re in a culture with a lot of Buddhists.”

The Wall Street Journal discusses China’s repression of Buddhism in Tibet. The WSJ hates Commies, even though the world economy is balanced on Hu Jintao’s pinky. The Dalai Lama has said he won’t be reborn in Tibet. Smart money is probably on India, but if enough people let His Holiness know that California would really love a homegrown DL, maybe he could pull some strings in important / celestial places.

Also, The Hindu features an archaeologist who locates the Buddha’s birthplace in the east Indian state of Orissa (where Ashoka realized the horror of war and converted to Buddhism) rather than Lumbini, which is inconveniently located across India’s northern border in Nepal. Don’t forget India’s campaign to embrace its prodigal son, Buddhism, before China can. Competition can be good, right? So the future of Buddhist tourism in South and East Asia should be bright.

– Philip Ryan, Webmaster

Buddhists at War August 8, 2007

Danny Fisher reminds us of Hiroshima, sixty-two years (and now two days) ago. What is there to say but to wish for peace and hope that all of us may be free from suffering?

Speaking of Buddhist chaplains, check out this and this. And, here’s a review of a book by a Buddhist at Abu Ghraib. Tricycle ran an interview with another Buddhist at Abu Ghraib in our summer issue. [Unfortunately, the interview is behind a paywall. Subscribe here if you absolutely have to read it.] And yet more on the (alleged) Buddhist vigilantes in Thailand. And more fighting in Sri Lanka in the expanding civil war there. 5,000 Sri Lankans have died since the 2002 Norwegian-brokered cease-fire broke down in late 2005.

Going back to Danny’s post about Hiroshima, I’ve been reading on and off about the end of World War II in Europe and the incredible horrors of the Red Army’s push to Berlin. It turned from revenge and hate into something even worse — brutal indifference. These days we mostly hear about Japan and Germany having enough civil structures and middle class to make reconstruction a simple task for Uncle Sam (vs. Iraq) — but the brutality Germany and Japan underwent is overwhelming. The crimes of the Nazis muted pity for German citizens for many years, but think of it. Think of what East Germany in particular went through. One monster after another.

– Philip Ryan, Webmaster

Custodians of our Shared Heritage July 18, 2007

The Asian Classics Input Project is working hard to locate, catalog, digitally preserve, and rapidly disseminate Tibetan and Sanskrit manuscripts. Here’s a pdf describing their work. The website is cool, too. They have a lot of stuff from the Bhagavad Gita and Rig Veda in addition to loads of Buddhist material for those of us with a scholarly bent.

Climate change may be changing the course of rivers in Tibet and reducing their flow, according to the China Daily (a government-controlled newspaper.) So the government of China is marginally more aware to the reality of human-caused climate change than the U.S. government. But they’re still taking pride in destroying traditional life on the Tibetan plateau, here crowing about pulling cowboys off the prairie into wonderful new lives in factories making plastic baubles for Western consumers.

UNESCO has expressed concern about the Potala Palace, which makes a lot of money from tourists for China. “Nonsense!” says China. “In fact, our new railway is making life better in every way!”

Speaking of secretive, authoritarian bureaucrats, have you heard about Dick Cheney’s role in the big salmon die-off in the Klamath River? Farmers wanted water from the river, the White House / Vice President stepped in and gave it, and the result was disastrous for salmon and fishermen. This was considered a victory for property owners and their lawyers pooh-poohed the idea that this would hurt the river or its fish. The House Natural Reources Committee will look into Cheney’s role in this situation — it seems like he may have made a couple phone calls to pull strings; nice that he has time for things like that — but the Veep will probably not be called to testify, nor would he come if he was called. Expect a lot more hard decisions like this (business / property rights vs. environmental “concerns”) to come, and expect the U.S. and China to support business and private interests versus the greater good for years to come.

– Philip Ryan, Webmaster