The Wrath of Buddha / 佛的憤怒

Explosions in Bangkok

2006-12-31T12:55:00.000-05:00

The previous post was supposed to be my last for a while, but I just saw on the news that bombs have exploded in Thailand's capital of Bangkok.

The Bangkok Pundit is liveblogging the events. There's also an up-to-date summary of news at ScandAsia. It's not clear at this time who planted the bombs.

May all beings be safe.

南無阿彌陀佛

Hiatus and Happy New Year

2006-12-31T00:13:00.000-05:00

I will be very busy in the upcoming month, so I'll probably not post here again until the end of January.

I wish everyone a Happy New Year.

南無阿彌陀佛

Discrimination against Dalits in India

2006-12-31T00:04:00.000-05:00

More on the murder of a Buddhist Dalit family in India, which I wrote about in this previous post, and the on-going discrimination suffered by the Dalits in India. From BBC News:

The brutal killing of a family from the lower castes – known as Dalits – in India's western state of Maharashtra has revived the community's demand to be treated as equals in a society that has labelled them as outcasts.

The incident took place in a remote village called Khairlanji in Bhandara district situated in the north-east of the state.

On 29 September, Surekha Bhotmange, her 17-year-old daughter Priyanka, and two sons, 19-year-old Roshan and 21-year-old Sudhir were at home when an upper-caste mob broke into their mud hut and murdered them.

The details are gruesome. The four were reportedly dragged out and beaten with bicycle chains, sticks and other weapons. The mother and daughter were allegedly stripped and raped by the mob, many of whom lived in the same village and were possibly their neighbours.

The father and only surviving member, Bhaiyyalal Bhotmange, is a broken man but shows steely resolve when demanding justice for his family.

[...]

Thirty-year-old Baby Manohar Ramteke is a Dalit by birth and works in the fields.

She has lived in Bhabal, a village about two hours drive from the city of Nagpur, all her life and says they have always been ill-treated by others on the basis of their caste.

"First they wouldn't let us fill water from the common well, then there was an incident of someone vandalising the village temple statue so they blamed us for it. They keep calling us names and telling us we are dirty people," she said.

She finally got a separate water tap installed in the village for Dalit families.

[...]

In order to escape the caste system, many Dalits have adopted Buddhism as their new faith, as their leader, Dr Ambedkar, did.

The chief architect of the Indian constitution, Dr Ambedkar was born a Dalit but rose to a respectable position in society despite all odds. He enjoys iconic status among his people.

Retired professor and social worker Dr Rupa Kulkarni says those who followed him have forged ahead in life socially and financially. She said many of them have become top doctors, writers and bureaucrats.

"Leaving Hinduism and accepting Buddhism changed the entire mentality of Dalits, made them believe that even they were someone. They realised they had to revolt against the caste system and because of this their self-respect awakened," she said. [...]

Dr Kulkarni said discrimination in cities may not be as obvious as that in the villages, but it still exists and Dalits are not allowed to forget the caste they were born into.

"Before giving a house out on rent here, the tenant's caste is asked and Buddhists are banned completely even though their economic condition is such that they can buy the place. Inter-caste marriages are still prohibited.

"No matter how progressive people call themselves, that really progressive element – a generous and big heart – is still missing."

Mob violence, separate water taps, exclusion from certain neighbourhoods, and prohibitions against mixed marriage — why does all that sound so familiar?

南無阿彌陀佛

Buddhist temple built in Sri Lanka with Turkish funds

2006-12-30T23:46:00.000-05:00

From Hürriyet (via The Buddhist Channel):

Among the 450 homes ordered built by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in a Buddhist region of Sri Lanka hit hard by the tsunami two years ago, a Buddhist temple was also built with Turkish funds. State Minister Mehmet Ali Sahin yesterday recounted his impressions of the work done in Sri Lanka following the tsunami to the Council of Ministers in Ankara.

Sahin had newly returned from a ceremony in the region dedicating the new homes to the victims of the tsunami in both Sri Lanka and Indonesia.

Said Sahin yesterday "In particular, the Buddhist temple built by Turkey in Sri Lanka has attracted a lot of interest. In fact, Buddhist monks came to two mosques in Colombo to thank the imams there for Turkey's initiative." Sahin reported that in both Sri Lanka and Indonesia, gratitude to Turkey for keeping its promises following the tsunami disaster was at an all time high.

A shining example of interfaith solidarity.

南無阿彌陀佛

Fire of hatred continues to burn in southern Thailand

2006-12-30T23:10:00.000-05:00

In this previous post, I wrote about how Islamist insurgents in southern Thailand are targeting civilians and using fire as a weapon. It's now more than a month later, and the fire of hatred continues to burn. From the International Herald Tribune:

Two teachers were shot and burned to death in Thailand's restive south Friday by suspected Muslim insurgents, while a government worker and a grocery store owner were killed in other attacks, police said.

[...]

Despite offers of peace and reconciliation by the country's military-backed government, violence has increased in recent months.

Just as Christians worldwide aren't paying enough attention to what's happening to their co-religionists in the Middle East (see this previous post), Buddhists worldwide haven't been paying enough attention to the changing nature of the interaction between Muslims and Buddhists, and between Islam and Buddhism, in Southeast Asia (see these previous posts).

Update: The following article from The Nation refrains from naming the religion of the victims or that of the killers and bystanders, despite explicitly alluding to religious differences:

The wife of a teacher who was shot dead and set on fire by suspected militants has accused local villagers of doing nothing while her husband and his colleague were set ablaze.

On Friday, suspected militants shot dead Chamnong Chupatpong, the director of the Ban Bado elementary school, and a teacher, Manoe Sonkaew, and set their bodies on fire on a road just 100 metres away from the village school at which they worked in Yala's Tambon Yupo.

Kawin Chupatpong said the attack on her husband and his colleague had taken place in front of the villagers, who remained inside their homes instead of coming out to help the two victims.

"My husband has been helping them and educating their children for the past decade, and the differences in our religious beliefs was never an obstacle. But this shows that our good deeds were not reciprocated," Kawin said.

"My father and his school helped raised money for the construction of the local mosque, so the children could have a place to pray. He even used his own money," said the couple's daughter Monthida, a senior at Kasetsart University.

The context makes it clear that the victims were Buddhists while the villagers were primarily Muslim. While I understand the family's anguish, the villagers were probably too terrified for their own lives to do anything to prevent the murders.

Police Maj-General Phaitoon Choochaiya, commander of the Yala Provincial Police, told reporters yesterday that the absence of eyewitnesses has made his work much more difficult.

He said the brutal attack had sent a chilling message to the entire community, and hence the refusal of the villagers to come forward with information. [...]

Authorities said a new generation of militants have effectively shattered the fabric of the local community by singling out monks and teachers, along with security officials and their informants. [...]

This sentence is written in code: "monks and teachers" means "Buddhists", "informants" means "Muslims" (i.e., those who are sympathetic to Buddhists), and "shattered the fabric of the local community" means "driven a wedge of distrust and fear between them". And that is precisely the goal of the terrorists.

南無阿彌陀佛

Salon profiles B. Alan Wallace

2006-12-30T22:30:00.000-05:00

In "Buddha on the brain", Salon profiles B. Alan Wallace, the author of "Contemplative Science":

The debate between science and religion typically gets stuck on the thorny question of God's existence. How do you reconcile an all-powerful God with the mechanistic slog of evolution? Can a rationalist do anything but sneer at the Bible's miracles? But what if another religion — a non-theistic one — offered a way out of this impasse? That's the promise that some people hold out for in Buddhism. [...]

B. Alan Wallace may be the American Buddhist most committed to finding connections between Buddhism and science. An ex-Buddhist monk who went on to get a doctorate in religious studies at Stanford, he once studied under the Dalai Lama, and has acted as one of the Tibetan leader's translators. Wallace, now president of the Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies, has written and edited many books, often challenging the conventions of modern science. [...]

In his new book, "Contemplative Science: Where Buddhism and Neuroscience Converge," Wallace takes on the loaded subject of consciousness. He argues that the long tradition of Buddhist meditation, with its rigorous investigation of the mind, has in effect pioneered a science of consciousness, and that it has much to teach Western scientists. [...]

I have a long list of books on the theme of "Buddhism and Science". Someday I will actually get around to reading them — and when I do, I will post my reviews here.

For now, however, my list has just increased by one.

南無阿彌陀佛

Merry Christmas, everyone

2006-12-30T19:13:00.000-05:00

Yes, I wrote "Merry Christmas" — and not "Happy Holidays" or something more generic.

Even though I'm not a Christian, I think there's nothing wrong with wishing someone Merry Christmas or having someone (Christian or not) wishing me the same. People who avoid saying the word "Christmas" because of its religious connotation are just being silly.

Regardless of what one calls it, it's still a Christian holiday that celebrates the birth of Jesus Christ. Yes, I'm aware that many aspects of Christmas (including its date) originate in pre-Christian European pagan beliefs and practices. The exact same argument can be made of Vesak Day, the Buddha's birthday, with respect to the pre-Buddhist customs and religious beliefs of the Asian cultures for which it is now a holiday. If we can't refer to a holiday by its name because it borrows elements from pre-existing customs or because it might be perceived as exclusive, we'd have to refer to most holidays by generic names.

In the spirit of the season, here is a link to a list at fanpop! of 101 Classic Christmas videos which can be viewed online.

南無阿彌陀佛

Christians disappearing from Bethlehem and the Middle East

2006-12-29T23:12:00.000-05:00

The town of Bethlehem [בית לחם], the birthplace of Jesus according to Christian tradition, is emptying of its Christian population. From the Daily Mail:

It is one of the most sacred sites in Christendom, but there are no tourists queuing to see it.

Just 500 yards down the road, Joseph Canawati is not looking forward to Christmas.

The expansive lobby of his 77-room Hotel Alexander is empty and he says: "There is no hope for the future of the Christian community.

"We don't think things are going to get better. For us, it is finished."

Life for Palestinian Christians such as 50-year-old Joseph has become increasingly difficult in Bethlehem — and many of them are leaving.

The town's Christian population has dwindled from more than 85 per cent in 1948 to 12 per cent of its 60,000 inhabitants in 2006.

There are reports of religious persecution, in the form of murders, beatings and land grabs. [...]

The sense of a creeping Islamic fundamentalism is all around in Bethlehem.

A mosque on one side of Manger Square stands directly opposite the Greek Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches, while in the evening the muezzin's call to prayer clashes with the peal of church bells. [...]

This isolation was heightened when, last year, Bethlehem found itself behind Israel's security wall, a 400-mile-long concrete barrier which separates Jewish and Palestinian areas and is designed to stop suicide bombers - in 2004, half the Israeli fatalities caused by such attacks were committed by extremists from Bethlehem. [...]

The terrorists obviously chose the town of Bethlehem as a staging ground for strategic as well as symbolic reasons. If Israel had build its security wall to include Bethlehem, it would have left itself vulnerable to attack. By excluding Bethlehem, however, Israel is effectively strangling one of the holy places of Christianity and thus earning the ire of Christians. Either way, the terrorists win.

Here are two articles about Christian disapproval of the Israeli wall due to its isolation of Bethlehem:

The following article from Times Online begins by placing the blame for the flight of Christians from the Middle East squarely on the shoulders of the West:

Christians in the Middle East have paid a high price for the Iraq war, the publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad and the Pope’s controversial remarks about Islam.

Egyptian Copts, Iraqi Chaldeans and the Palestinian Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Protestant communities have faced violence and even death at the hands of their Muslim neighbours. [...]

The problem with this theory is that Middle Eastern Christians have been persecuted by and "faced violence and even death at the hands of" their Muslim neighbours long before the relatively recent events mentioned above. The article is accompanied by the following graphic and even notes that the flight of Christians from the Middle East started more than a century ago:

Christians in Jordan and other neighboring states began leaving for the West more than a century ago to escape the poverty of the Ottoman Empire. Estimates put the number of Arab Christians living in the diaspora at 4 million, with between 10 million and 15 million living in the Middle East.

It is a pity that the West, which is ostensibly Christian, does not pay more attention to the plight of Christians in the Middle East.

南無阿彌陀佛

China ordains Catholic bishop without Vatican approval

2006-12-04T10:38:00.000-05:00

In this previous post, I discussed the Chinese government's attempts to assert control over Tibetan Buddhism by taking over the process of choosing the next incarnation of Tibetan Lamas.

The Chinese government also ordains its own Catholic bishops without Vatican approval. From The New York Times:

China and the Vatican exchanged renewed criticisms over the weekend about China’s selection of a new bishop over the Vatican’s objections, but there were hints on each side that the dispute might be papered over in the months ahead.

[...]

The Vatican said in a statement on Saturday that Pope Benedict XVI was “deeply pained” by the ordination of Wang Renlei [王仁雷] last Thursday as a bishop in Xuzhou [徐州] Diocese in Jiangsu [江蘇] Province in eastern China. The statement was slightly shorter and slightly less condemning than the one issued when the state-approved mainland church consecrated two other Chinese bishops last spring over the Vatican’s objections; a statement at that time said the pope “has learned of the news with profound displeasure.”

The pope warned then of the excommunication of the two bishops, Liu Xinhong [劉新紅] and Ma Yinglin [馬英林], although the Vatican has not begun the paperwork for such an action. In his statement on Saturday, he cited the same section of canonical law that includes excommunication for clergy who defy the Vatican. The Vatican’s statement was less directly critical of Beijing than the statement issued here late Thursday night by Cardinal Joseph Zen [陳日君], who is the bishop of Hong Kong and the only Chinese cardinal. He accused the Chinese government of kidnapping clergy and forcing them to participate in the consecration on Thursday, and he said the government sought to disrupt the unity of the Roman Catholic Church.

Liu Bainian [劉柏年], the vice president of the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Church Association [中國天主教愛國會], which oversees the government-approved mainland church, denied in a telephone interview that anyone had been kidnapped or coerced. He also provided further details of the selection of Wang Renlei to become the auxiliary bishop of the diocese. [...]

China has a history of religiously inspired rebellions, and the loyalty of large numbers of Chinese citizens to any organisation outside of state control makes the Communist Party very nervous.

南無阿彌陀佛

One prisoner's path from racism to Buddhism

2006-11-25T05:21:00.000-05:00

I try not to post news stories verbatim without some commentary, but the following story (by AP writer Maria Sudekum Fisher) speaks for itself.

From The Wichita Eagle, Kansas:

Tony Farnan's back tells a story.

"White Trash" is tattooed across the lower portion. A handcuffed, clenched fist with lightning bolts and a swastika takes up much of the middle. Farnan got the tattoos when he was younger, doing drugs, picking fights and living up to his identity as a pretty rough racist.

Picture of Tony Farnan showing back his tattoo.
From this article in the Lansing State Journal.
But now "White Trash" is covered up with another tattoo, a large purple lotus blossom. The clenched fist has been turned into a great big foo dog, the mythical Chinese protector of sacred places. If you look hard enough, you can make out the fist. But you have to know it's there.

Farnan, 41, has spent hours and thousands of dollars having his tattoos covered up; at $300 a square inch, the cost of removing them was too high. But he's made other, more important changes too.

He now takes care of his 95-year-old grandfather at their farmhouse outside Newton. He has sworn off drugs, violence and anything else that helped land him in jail. He's no longer racist.

Farnan owes this new life to a discovery he made in prison.

"Buddhism has basically saved my life," Farnan says.

Farnan is one of a growing number of people who have discovered Buddhism while behind bars, thanks in part to the popularity of the religion nationwide and to the scores of Buddhist volunteers heading into prisons to tend to inmates, male and female, who were raised Buddhist or those who discovered the ancient religion later.

[...]

Several organizations nationwide now serve Buddhist inmates. The Prison Dharma Network in Boulder, Colo., gives yoga and meditation classes to inmates and also sends books and correspondence to prisoners across the country. The Buddhist Peace Fellowship in Berkeley, Calif., has meditation, yoga, and journal writing programs in several California prisons. The National Buddhist Prison Sangha in Mt. Tremper, N.Y., has been supporting prison inmates with visits and letters since 1984.

Farnan's route to Buddhism started on his third trip back to prison in 1999.

"I was known as a mighty whitey," he says. "In the '80s, in prison you had to pick sides, so I picked the white guys. You could say I was an extremist."

Farnan picked a fight with a young inmate at the Sedgwick County jail, where he was serving time for possession of drugs and burglary. Farnan roughed up the other guy badly.

When Farnan returned to his cell, he was overcome with something unfamiliar.

"I had the feeling like I had just beat up my little brother," he says. "I thought, `I have to do something.'

"Two hours later I was sitting on the cell floor crying because I had no idea what to do. I thought, `What I want to do is I want to be a man of honor and integrity, most of all.'"

[...]

He had learned about meditation from studying martial arts. So he started meditating. That helped some. Then Farnan started studying philosophy, ordering books from the outside. Immanuel Kant was appealing.

"I knew what not to do, and eventually things started becoming more clear to me about what was right and what was wrong."

He got books on Buddhism, which gave him some guidelines. But months later after he had been sent to the Norton Correctional Facility, Farnan needed a teacher. He looked for a Buddhist session - or callout as it is referred to in prison. Norton didn't have one, so Farnan got by with his books and meditation.

Then he was moved to the Lansing Correctional Facility, where a Buddhist group had been meeting regularly.

"I wasn't looking for a religion. I was looking for some direction and something that could help guide me."

The callouts helped. But for the most part Farnan did "a lot of deep meditation and thinking," trying to keep things simple.

"I don't know, it was probably 2002, early 2003, when I really understood that compassion was kind of the answer.

"So here I am with the realization that I had to be nice. How am I going to do that in prison? I was little concerned about acceptance. More so than I had ever been."

In prison, where hierarchy and pecking orders are a way of life, child molesters are on a bottom rung. But Farnan, armed with a need to show kindness, sought them out. The child molesters ate alone, so Farnan joined them for meals.

Other inmates told him he was nuts to be sitting with them. Farnan told them they were all capable of horrible things. Some might not act out, but they were capable.

He started curbing his impulses, too. If another inmate was playing music too loud, the old Farnan would have gone over, picked up the radio and smashed it.

"Now I realized that everyone is suffering, and he's probably playing the music loud to ease his suffering. I still might ask him to lower the volume. But I wouldn't smash it."

Farnan, who was released from custody in February 2006, makes a living doing foundation repair. He also tutors people in math and meditates daily. His friends and family notice the change, and ask him what's different.

He doesn't give long explanations. But if they ask about the lotus blossom and the foo dog tattoos, he might tell them how they relate to life as a Buddhist.

"I don't take my shirt off a lot," Farnan says. "But if I do, I don't want to offend anyone.

"I used to be proud to wear those tattoos, but this time in prison, I was ashamed. I decided if I really believe what I'm doing, then I have to change everything, including that."

So he is.

The Lansing State Journal has another article by the same writer containing more information about Buddhist prison ministry.

南無阿彌陀佛

The fire of hatred

2006-11-25T02:56:00.000-05:00

Update: Flopping Aces questions the authenticity of reports of burnings from Iraq, noting that they might contain fabrications or exaggerations by those wishing to exacerbate the situation there. See also The Lede (a New York Times blog).

Fire is one of the most destructive and fearsome processes in nature. In Buddhist teachings, fire is often used as a metaphor for anger and hatred, due to its ability to spread quickly and burn out of control, leaving a trail of devastation in its wake.

Two horrific stories today illustrate the close relationship between fire and hatred.

In Thailand, the Islamist terrorists continue to target civilians. From The Nation:

Nont Chaisuwan, 51, the director of Bang Kao School in Pattani, was shot while driving home after school. His car crashed into the roadside after the attack. The gunmen then set fire to the car and burned him alive, police said.

Four men and a woman were injured in a bomb blast at a grocery shop in Yala's Yaha district at 2pm. Police said the bomb was hidden under a stall in front of the shop, which is at the mouth of a lane leading to the Yaha Pracharam Buddhist temple.

Shop owner Apinan Yothinkamchornchai was severely injured, along with his customers.

Insurgents burned down a Provincial Electricity Authority office in Yala, causing a Bt15-million loss.

Security guard Manwan Ismail said at least 10 hooded insurgents wearing black arrived at the authority's office in Bannang Sata district at around 3am.

One forced him to crouch at gunpoint. The others destroyed the closed-circuit-camera control room and then other rooms before setting fire to the building. They also used burning motorcycle tyres to set fire to five cranes and trucks.

Police suspect the attackers were the same group that burned down the district's Land Office on Monday. Their faces were captured by closed-circuit cameras during that attack.

In Narathiwat, a building at Ban Bo Thong School in Rangae district was set on fire just after 1am.

School director Banyat Tannu said the 10-year-old building with five classrooms was for 261 students in kindergarten and first and second grades. It also had a prayer room. He said he would find tents to use as classrooms.

The arson attack occurred despite the best efforts of the village chief and defence volunteers to protect the school, which made people feel discouraged, he said.

Meanwhile, in Iraq, the cycle of revenge continues. From The Sydney Morning Herald:

Revenge-seeking militiamen seized six Sunnis as they left prayers and burned them alive with kerosene in a savage new twist to the brutality shaking Baghdad today.

The attack in the Iraqi capital came a day after suspected Sunni insurgents killed more than 200 people in Baghdad's main Shi'ite district.

Iraqi soldiers at a nearby army post failed to intervene in yesterday's assault by suspected members of the Shi'ite Mehdi Army militia or subsequent attacks that killed at least 19 other Sunnis, including women and children, in the same area, the volatile Hurriyah district in north-west Baghdad, said police Captain Jamil Hussein.

Most of the thousands of dead bodies that have been found dumped across Baghdad and other cities in central Iraq in recent months have been of victims who were tortured and then shot to death, according to police. The suspected militia killers often have used electric drills on their captives' bodies before killing them. The bodies are frequently decapitated.

But burning victims alive introduced a new method of brutality that was likely to be reciprocated by the other sect as the Shi'ites and Sunnis continue killing one another in unprecedented numbers.

The gruesome attack, which came despite a curfew in Baghdad, capped a day in which at least 87 people were killed or found dead in sectarian violence throughout Iraq.

In Hurriyah, the rampaging militiamen also burned and blew up four mosques and torched several homes in the district, Hussein said. [...]

But Imad al-Hasimi, a Sunni elder in Hurriyah, confirmed Hussein's account of the immolations. He told Al-Arabiya television he saw people who were drenched in kerosene and then set afire, burning to death before his eyes.

The Association of Muslim Scholars, the most influential Sunni organisation in Iraq, said even more victims were burned to death in attacks on the four mosques. It claimed a total of 18 people had died in an inferno at the al-Muhaimin mosque. [...]

The insurgents in Thailand and Iraq are in fact contravening an injunction by the prophet of Islam forbidding the use of fire to burn one's enemies. From the hadith collection of Bukhari, Volume 9, Book 84, Number 57:

Narrated 'Ikrima:

Some Zanadiqa (atheists) were brought to 'Ali and he burnt them. The news of this event, reached Ibn 'Abbas who said, "If I had been in his place, I would not have burnt them, as Allah's Apostle forbade it, saying, 'Do not punish anybody with Allah's punishment (fire).' I would have killed them according to the statement of Allah's Apostle, 'Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him.'"

See also Bukhari, Volume 4, Book 52, Number 260.

The insurgents claim that they are fighting for Islam. The least they can do is to refrain from violating the dictates of the religion. (That they murder apostates is abhorrent — but it is not also hypocritical.) But they are so consumed by hatred that they likely won't care about such technicalities.

The Buddha taught that there is only one way to overcome hatred. From the Dhammapada [法句經], Chapter 1, verse 5:

Hatred is never appeased by hatred in this world. By non-hatred alone is hatred appeased. This is an eternal law.

在這世上，恨絕不能止恨，唯有慈愛方能止恨，這是永恆的真理。

When someone has wronged you, it is extremely difficult to maintain a feeling of loving-kindness [Pali mettâ; Sanskrit maitrî मैत्री; Chinese 慈] towards that person. And yet, this is a lesson that the terrorists must sooner or later learn. Their current habit of acting out in violence not only causes injury and death all about them, but will ultimately visit destruction and ruin upon themselves.

南無阿彌陀佛

South East Asian Muslims to promote "home-grown Islam"

2006-11-24T23:30:00.000-05:00

As I have described in this previous post, the kind of Islam that was traditionally practised in South East Asia is mystical, tolerant, and heavily influenced by Hinduism, Buddhism, animism, and other local religions. For the past several decades, this kind of Islam has been gradually replaced by more hardline strains of the religion from the Middle East.

Muslim clerics and scholars from SE Asia plan to fight this trend. From Reuters:

Muslim clerics and scholars from Southeast Asia endorsed on Friday a regional plan to promote and preach home-grown Islam to check the rising influence of radical teachings from the Middle East.

Three days of discussion in Manila on the state of Islamic preaching, education and law in Southeast Asia ended on Friday with a plan to formulate a local method of interpreting Islam, focusing on moderation and development.

[...]

Some Muslim leaders in SE Asia seem to have realised that it is not in the interest of their communities to be turned into pawns of foreign powers from the Middle East. However, their fight to preserve local religious attitudes and traditions against Middle Eastern influence will be an uphill battle, since their adversaries are both well-financed and can lay claim to being from the historic and geographic heart of the Islamic world.

The alternative, however, is to lose their culture, as the following story from The Wall Street Journal (via The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette via Dhimmi Watch) illustrates:

Rohimah Zakaria, dressed in a fringed black tunic and matching pants, with a silver dagger tucked into the waist, rocked hypnotically on a wooden stage at the edge of this rural village. [...]

Mrs. Zakaria, who is a Muslim, is one of the last experts in Mak Yong, an endangered form of dance theater rooted in the animist and Hindu religions that held sway in Southeast Asia long before Islam arrived eight centuries ago. In more recent times, the dance has been deemed un-Islamic by Parti Islam, the political party ruling this lush, tropical seaside state of Kelantan on the South China Sea.

Since the local arbiters of taste banned Mak Yong 15 years ago, people like Mrs. Zakaria have performed it in secret. And because interest is waning, her troupe has been able to stage just a handful of shows in the past year.

The version Mrs. Zakaria did this recent night was just a 20-minute sketch, not the traditional three-hour performance. And there was no shaman to put in his traditional healing appearance at the end. The performance was put on mainly to give visitors from Kuala Lumpur a taste of the culture.

"It's not the same," Mrs. Zakaria sighed. "But at least people can see a little of what it's like."

[...]

For centuries, ancient traditions coexisted easily with Islam. In Malaysia, village girls learned dances like the Mak Yong, which is performed by an all-female cast. Village boys learned the Wayang Kulit, a shadow puppet theater that originated in Indonesia and Malaysia to tell Hindu epic tales.

No longer. A handful of senior citizens in Kelantan, the heartland of Malay culture, are the last to practice traditional theater.

"What you have is the gradual emergence of a new generation of Malaysian Muslims who will be completely cut off from their past," says Farish Ahmad Noor, a Malaysian political scientist at the Center for Modern Oriental Studies in Berlin. "They're losing their cultural compass."

Many Southeast Asian Muslims now navigate by guideposts from the Arab world. Young men in Indonesia are starting to wear turbans and grow beards. In Malaysia, Malays have adopted the Arab word for prayer, salat, to replace the Malay word, sembahyang, which literally means "offer homage to the primal ancestor."

[...]

Kelantan is also Parti Islam's stronghold. When the party won the state in 1990, its ultraconservative state leader, Nik Aziz Nik Mat, ordered grocery stores to provide separate lines for men and women, and told girls they could no longer take part in Quran reading competitions that are popular in schools. He banned Mak Yong and Wayang Kulit.

"We need to purify our local theater from those alien elements," says Mr. Aziz, a somber-looking man in a flowing white robe who has a thin gray beard on the point of his chin. Mak Yong and Islam co-existed peacefully for so long only because Malay Muslims didn't know any better, he says. [...]

I would like to know just how Mr. Aziz can justify his claim that the indigenous cultural traditions are more "alien" than Islam.

Rituals like this are now performed in secret by a handful of retirees like Mrs. Zakaria and Mek Jah binti Deris, 61, another Mak Yong dancer who grew up in a village in South Kelantan. Mrs. Mek Jah last performed in October for a neighbor who was feeling low. Mrs. Mek Jah knows Mak Yong is illegal, but she doesn't care. "We have to do this to balance nature," she says.

Mrs. Mek Jah's two sons-in-law are having none of that. They have forbidden their children to learn the dance. The two men used to pull Mrs. Mek Jah aside at family dinners and beg her to quit, says her brother, Muhammed Nor, 64. "It's terrible. Nowadays, you have young people who tell their parents 'Don't die and go to hell because of this.'"

"The younger generation is very narrow-minded," sighs Mrs. Mek Jah, a compact, feisty woman dressed in a tunic and a bright yellow Muslim headscarf.

Life is more black and white, argues Mr. Aziz. Things are either Islamic or they aren't. He recently lifted the ban on the Wayang Kulit, provided puppeteers substitute Islamic stories for the traditional Hindu epics. And shamans are out. "That kind of 'healing' is not in line with Islam," he says.

Although many moderate Malays worry that their culture is fading, few speak up. One of the most vocal champions of Malay culture in Kelantan is Eddin Khoo, who is of Chinese-Indian descent. He runs a foundation to keep Malay arts alive and has scrounged up funding to stage a few traditional shows each year and train youngsters in Kelantan in traditional Malay arts. No kids have signed on. [...]

It's noteworthy that even as Malay Muslims discard their indigenous culture, it is preserved by someone who is not of Malay descent. Non-Muslim minorities often become the guardians and preservers of the pre-Islamic cultures in Islamic societies. For example, the art of wine-making and traditional Persian music were safeguarded in Shi`ite Iran by Iranian Jews.

This tension is beginning to worry some in the capital of Kuala Lumpur. "The upsurge in Islamization is part of the process of searching for identity," says Culture Minister Rais Yatim. "If we don't guide that, it could well go off on a tangent, and it could be very difficult to revive culture."

His office staged Mrs. Zakaria's recent performance of a watered-down Mak Yong. Her bit was followed by a five-minute Wayang Kulit show. The event drew a few hundred villagers. At the back of the field, a group of women wearing headscarves sat on the grass, feeding their children rice and coconut curry. It was enough, however, to upset Parti Islam, which later described the show as "a sign of disrespect."

Why can't the Parti Islam respect the indigenous cultural traditions?

南無阿彌陀佛

Cutest. Lama. Ever.

2006-11-19T01:39:00.000-05:00

From Buddhism-Online:

Four-year-old Goinbo Dungzhi has been enthroned as the seventh Kungtangcang living Buddha and the reincarnation of the sixth who died in 2000, said officials in a Tibetan community of northwest China's Gansu Province on Thursday.

A grand enthronement was held at the Labrang Lamasery in Xiahe county of the Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture on Monday in line with the rituals of Tibetan Buddhism.

[...]

The sixth Kungtangcang Danbawangqu living Buddha, who died aged 75, was enthroned in 1931 when he was six years old. He was a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, China's top political advisory body, and vice president of the Buddhist Association of China.

There are basically two sets of Tibetan Buddhist Lamas — one loyal to the Dalai Lama, and a parallel one loyal to China.

When the tenth Panchen Lama passed away, the Communist government of China kidnapped the child recognised by the Dalai Lama as the eleventh Panchen Lama, and enthroned its own appointee instead. This is significant because the Panchen Lama is responsible for finding the next incarnation of the Dalai Lama.

By asserting control over the process of selecting the next incarnation of Tibetan Lamas, the Communist government is gradually taking over the Tibetan Buddhist religious hierarchy. The seventh "Kungtangcang living Buddha" will undoubtedly be carefully taught by the Communists to toe the Party line.

南無阿彌陀佛

Wishful thinking blinds us to dangers of religious fanaticism

2006-11-19T00:13:00.000-05:00

As the situation in Thailand deteriorates (see this post and this post), Buddhists are waking up to the reality and dangers posed by fanatics who wish to impose Islamic rule upon them. But in spite of the situation, many Buddhist leaders, such as the Dalai Lama, continue to insist that Islam is a peaceful religion that has been misappropriated by extremists.

I have already commented in this post on one major reason why it is difficult for some Buddhists to conceive of Islam as a religion that is based on very different values and assumptions about the world than Buddhism, and I want to elaborate on that here.

Up until only a generation or two ago, the Islam practised by most Muslims in East and South East Asia had been heavily syncretic, blending elements of Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, animism, spiritism, and various indigenous religions with a gentle and mystical interpretation of Islamic beliefs. It was only relatively recently, with the return of a generation of young Muslims educated abroad primarily in the Middle East, and the introduction of Islamic schools funded by Muslim organisations from the heartland of the Muslim world, that East and South Easth Asian Islam has taken a more literalist, exclusivist, and puritan turn. From the perspective of the Buddhists who had been living alongside liberal Muslims for generations, it is the syncretic local Islam that is the "true Islam", and the puritanism introduced from elsewhere that is the abberation.

An article which appeared two years ago in the Asia Times (November 2, 2004) described the situation in southern Thailand as follows:

Ethnic-Malay and Thai Muslims traditionally practice Sufism – Sunni Islam with a mystical, moderate edge – which has prevailed in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand since Islam supplanted animism, Buddhism and Hinduism a few hundred years ago.

"There is the traditional kind of Muslim beliefs common in the region and there are the newer beliefs, reformist ideas brought back by those who studied in the Middle East," says Michiko Tsuneda, a University of Wisconsin cultural anthropologist studying Thai-Malay Muslim communities in southern Thailand.

Note that here it is the hardliners who are referred to as the "reformists", while the liberals are the "traditionalists" — which is the reverse of the situation found in Middle Eastern countries such as Saudi Arabia and Iran.

That fundamentalism should appear is not surprising. It is strikingly visible in the men's dress, which is more Afghan or Middle Eastern than Malay, and the face-covering chadors worn by women. Increasingly they can be seen in Tak, Chiang Rai and other parts of the country, not just the south.

[...]

This is yet another example of Islamic imperialism — the replacement of a non-Arab people's culture and history by an Arab-Islamic construction.

Fundamentalism's rise in the Middle East took off early in the 20th century, if not before, but only really started to reach the Malay Peninsula in the 1970s, as cheaper travel allowed more Southeast Asian Muslims to seek higher education in the Middle East. "Usually Islamic schoolteachers, if they've had higher education, they usually studied in the Middle East," says Tsuneda. Some returned preaching fundamentalism. A few became followers while fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan.

[...]

"If you hear people talking about these things, they are emotional. From the perspective of the traditionalists, what they have believed all their lives is being attacked. The villagers, the traditionalists, don't really have the social capital to back their point of view. The reformists have higher education, they have been to the Middle East, they can claim they know better than the traditionalists, leaving the villagers in a difficult situation," says Tsuneda.

[...]

And this is precisely the problem. In addition to oil wealth, Middle Eastern Muslim nations can also boast of places of religious significance and historical importance to Islam. The Thai Muslim traditionalists simply do not have the resources to compete with them.

From WorldWide Religious News (April 14, 2004):

Each year, 300 Thai Muslims win scholarships from institutions in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and other Middle Eastern countries, while another 200 are funded in other Muslim countries, including Brunei, Sudan and Indonesia.

Some families have sent abroad generations of sons who become imams at mosques and directors or teachers at pondoks. These teachers place more emphasis on study of Arabic and the Quran.

The traditionalists for the most part do not use Arabic except for a few formulaic phrases, and place more emphasis on the Qur'an's role as a talisman than as a book to be studied.

The Middle Eastern influences also have spilled over into everyday life.

Islamic practices in southern Thailand used to be mixed with local traditions. These customs are now being branded un-Islamic by clerics.

Until a few years ago, women rarely wore headscarves. But the foreign-returned Muslims are insisting on purer form of Islam such as "hijab" for women and regular attendance at mosques.

The Bangkok Post ran an article earlier this year (no longer online; mirrored at The Buddhist Channel, August 28, 2006) about the decades-long friendship between Ven. Buddhadasa, a renowned Thai Buddhist monk, and a Thai Muslim named Prayoon Vadanyakul. I think it serves very well to illustrate the kind of Islam that was traditionally practised in Thailand and how South East Asian Muslims have historically understood Islam in the context of Buddhism and other religions.

Bangkok, Thailand -- The roar of bombs. The macabre, pervasive scent of death. In the deep South and across the whole globe, strife in the name of religion is steadily growing.

But there was one remarkable friendship that cut across religious boundaries: The friendship between Buddhadasa Bhikkhu and a devout Muslim named Haji Prayoon Vadanyakul.

The title "Haji" denotes a Muslim who has made the pilgrimage to Mecca, the Hajj [حج].

Born to a Muslim family, Haji Prayoon was well-known among his close associates for his seriousness in practising his religion. But his interests were not restricted to Islam. He was sent to a Christian school, and later made friends with several Buddhists. One day he decided to travel to the Suan Mokkh forest monastery to pay a visit to Buddhadasa Bhikkhu. [...]

Note how Haji Prayoon Vadanyakul syncretises Islam and Buddhism in the following passages:

The first meeting between Haji Prayoon and Buddhadasa lasted eight hours.

"The way Than Acharn [Buddhadasa] discussed Buddhism, it sounded as if he was guiding me toward the goal of Islam as well.

"Truth exists in both [religions], but lacking are those who can show that they are one and the same. Most people keep their guard up during [inter-religious] dialogue. That's not true education. They try to discredit others; that's not the path toward mutual understanding."

On that very day, it could be said Haji Prayoon found a guide to lead him toward the same truth. Religious differences did not pose a barrier, but instead served to help him attain the essence of his own faith.

"The kind of Buddhism I learned about was mundane, at the ethical level. Nothing special about it. But having met Than Acharn, read his books and contemplated them, I came to understand the ultimate truth.

"From that day on, I continued to study his books, comparing them to the Koran, and I became more and more enlightened. I didn't come to pay respects to him that often. I only came once in a long while. But there was this deep tie. Every time I visited him, it was like I came to report to him about my spiritual progress. This mutual understanding kept me growing steadily.

"I try to avoid saying that Buddhadasa's views are the right ones. Otherwise some others [schools of thought] might charge me with being presumptuous. They might say, 'How do you know that your teacher is correct?' I'd rather say that his views are sensible and sound. Other people may not agree with me. But his views of Buddhism helped me to understand Islam correctly.

"Being registered as a Muslim, I'm able to expound on the teachings of Islam. But if I didn't grasp the essence of Buddhism through Buddhadasa, I might not be able to grasp the essence of Islam as well. I would have still memorised the teachings that have been passed on by tradition, without discovering any real solution.

It's interesting that he described himself using the words "registered as a Muslim", rather than saying more straightforwardly that he was a Muslim. (In neighbouring Malaysia, a person's religion is printed on his national identity card.)

"The Muslims like to lull their child to sleep by a short phrase - 'La illaha ill-Allah' - the declaration of truth made during prayer. They will keep reciting 'La illaha ill-Allah' on beads - until they achieve a state of mental concentration. Unfortunately, most people do not understand the core meaning; they usually translate it as 'There is no god but Allah.'

And that's because that is the actual meaning of the phrase, in Arabic.

Note the folk practice of using the Islamic profession of faith (the shahâdah [شهادة]) as a lullaby, and the very Buddhist idea that the purpose of the recitation is to "achieve a state of mental concentration".

Haji Prayoon Vadanyakul continues:

"The word 'Allah' consists of three letters: A, L and H. The word 'Araha[t]' consists of the letters: A, R and H. Typically, the L in the West has been transformed to R in the East. Thus 'elephant' becomes 'Erawan'. So does 'Ali' [the Noble] become 'Ariya' as in Ariyasaj [The Noble Truth].

This is just bad linguistics, and would be easily and decisively refuted by someone who had gone abroad to study Arabic.

"I used to discuss these linguistic issues [with others]. Here I repeat it for those who haven't heard about this principle. Allah is in fact Arahat. The meaning of Allah is broader than Illaha, which means 'idols', and La, which means 'no', or 'do not'. Most of the Muslims take Illaha to mean things like sculptures, trees and so on. But I think [the word] refers to the clinging to that very object in their heart. Those statues and trees are in themselves nothing sacred.

"But when people hold on to such things, they become objects of worship. If people do not hold on to them, they cannot be sacred. These things don't have their own power; it's the people who give them power. Therefore, illaha does not refer to those external objects, but to the clinging in human heart. So the sentence La illaha ill-Allah means not to hold on to anything. Such is the state of Allah, or Arahat. How that is literally identical to the heart of Buddhism that professes against any attachment! How couldn't I say then that the heart of Buddhism is one and the same as that of Islam?" [...]

Even if we accept that the Arabic word 'ilah [إله] means an object to which one clings, the formula would still mean "do not hold on to anything except Allah", where, following his interpretation, Allah would mean The One Thing to which one clings.

Haji Prayoon Vadanyakul also leaves out the second half of the shahâdah, which declares that Muhammad is the messenger of Allah. I don't see how this can be reconciled with his interpretation of the word 'ilah.

"Than Acharn wants every religion to unite to bring peace to the world. He once told me, 'Khun Prayoon, let's work together to merge religions.' I told him that, on the level of customs and traditions, it might not be possible. For example, at the time of death, some groups want to bury [the body], other groups want to burn [the body]. But at the level of truth, even though we don't merge, they are already one and the same. It is the individual religious teachers who can't arrive at the truth. It is not the case that religions can't reconcile, if we take their purpose as the goal, be it on the mundane or supra-mundane level."

Haji Prayoon was a driving force in propagating Buddhadasa's ideas of inter-religious understanding - through his writing, talks, and donations - to the point that some of his cohorts charged him of being haek khok (literally, "breaking out of the cage; rebellious").

[...]

In the current climate, his coreligionists would undoubtedly have charged him with heresy or apostasy.

"This understanding is not limited to the thing called religion, be it Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Brahmanism, Sikh and so on. It's about understanding dharma that has no other name besides dharma.

Not even the Arabic word deen [دین]?

"The enemy of religion is the absence of dharma. Religions cannot be like men rowing different boats, trying to compete against each other. They must be rowing the same boat and helping each other. We need cooperation to save the world. We have to chip in, not fight and quarrel against one another. But whichever religion one wants to follow depends on one's individual preferences.

"Every time I take part in helping any religion, I just hold to one principle: To spread the rightful dharma among the people, for it's what the world urgently needs - that's all.

"When a monk comes to take up abode in the compound of my house where there are a lot of trees, I only have one request: When asked for some auspicious objects, please give the people Lord Buddha's dharma and not something superstitious like an amulet. Otherwise I have to ask him to leave. Buddhism must be preserved, even in a Muslim house. And we have to do it seriously to shore up Buddhism. [...]

Sadly, with the introduction of more literalist and puritan strains of Islam from the Middle East, the syncretic and liberal Islam of Muslims such as Haji Prayoon Vadanyakul might become a thing of the past. And this trend towards rejecting local traditions in favour of Arab-Islamic imperialism isn't happening only in Thailand, but all across the Muslim world, under the influence of petrodollars.

Many Buddhists continue to believe that Islam is a peaceful, compassionate religion that is being misused by extremists for political ends, because the Muslims that they know are peaceful, compassionate people. But just as Islam should not be judged solely by the actions of some terrorists, it likewise should not be judged solely by the behaviour of some Muslims who practise a syncretic form of the religion. Islam, like any other religion, must be judged based on its own merits and demerits: its teachings, its core texts and how they are interpreted in practice, its history, and so on.

The first component of the Buddha's Eightfold Path (八正道) is Right View (正見). Before anything else, a practitioner of Buddhism must strive to see the world as it is, and not be clouded by wishful thinking such as the desire to think the best of every religion or the assumption that all religions teach the same things.

南無阿彌陀佛

Human Rights Watch tells terrorists in southern Thailand to stop targeting civilians

2006-11-18T17:47:00.000-05:00

Human Rights Watch has condemned the actions of the Islamist terrorists in Thailand. From Human Rights News:

Separatist insurgent groups in southern Thailand must stop targeting civilians in their effort to establish an independent state, Human Rights Watch said today. In the past week alone, insurgents have killed and injured more than 30 civilians in targeted attacks in the country’s southern provinces.

What makes Human Rights Watch think that the terrorists will care about what they have to say?

“Insurgent groups are targeting civilians to show their power and highlight the Thai government’s weakness,” said Brad Adams, director of the Asia division at Human Rights Watch. “But it’s illegal, and morally indefensible, to attack civilians in pursuit of political goals.”

[...]

I doubt that the terrorists are concerned with either the legality or morality of their actions. The problem is that they believe they have God on their side.

Human Rights Watch expressed deep concern about the enormous and growing numbers of attacks by insurgent groups on civilians since the renewal of violence in southern Thailand in January 2004.

According to a study released by the Thai Journalist Association and Prince of Songkhla University, insurgent groups are responsible for most of the 5,460 violent incidents in the southern border provinces of Thailand between January 2004 and August 2006 which resulted in 1,730 deaths and 2,513 injuries. Civilians – including government employees and local officials – have been the principal targets of daily attacks, totaling 60 percent (or 1,873) of the victims, followed by police (16 percent, or 481), soldiers (12 percent, or 373), and others (12 percent, or 369).

The statistics would have been more useful if they had separated out "government employees and local officials" from regular "civilians". But in any case, many more civilians are affected than are counted by the study, since they have been fleeing to escape the violence and threats of violence.

The study found that the majority of victims were Muslims; 924 Muslims were killed and 718 injured, compared with 697 Buddhists killed and 1,474 injured. The religion of the remaining victims is unknown.

“The insurgents claim to be defenders of the Muslim population against abuses and exploitation at the hands of the mainly Buddhist Thai authorities,” said Adams. “But hundreds of Muslims as well as Buddhists have died in their attacks.”

I appreciate that Human Rights Watch wishes to point out the hypocrisy of terrorists who murder Muslims while claiming to be protecting Muslims. But the numbers don't support the claim that "the majority of victims were Muslims" — they show 1642 Muslims and 2171 Buddhists among the casualties whose religions are known.

It is true that more Muslims have been killed than Buddhists, and that could be because the terrorists are more precise when they target Muslims, i.e., they specifically murder those whom they consider to be traitors.

Common insurgent tactics include drive-by shootings from motorcycles or pickup trucks and the use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs). The use of such devices, apparently emulating tactics used by insurgents in Iraq, has increased the intensity and lethality of attacks on civilians since June 2006. Human Rights Watch has documented disturbing evidence that insurgent groups have engaged in beheadings and in mutilation of corpses as a form of punishment of Buddhist and Muslim civilians suspected of being informants, or of collaborating with Thai authorities.

At least 17 victims have been beheaded, and more than 40 Buddhists and Muslims have been hacked to death with machetes, over the past two years.

I noted the religious significance of beheadings in this previous post on the situation in southern Thailand.

There have been hundreds of insurgent attacks on teachers and schools since January 2004. Some districts have shut down all government schools due to security concerns after attacks. Buddhist monks in Narathiwat decided to stop taking alms after a bomb ripped through a column of monks, along with the soldiers guarding them, on October 22. That was the latest in a series of attacks on Buddhist monks — including shootings, bombings and hacking with machetes. On November 8, the entire Buddhist population from three villages in Yala’s Than To and Bannang Sata districts fled their homes and sought refuge at a Buddhist temple after armed insurgents killed Boon Iamsa-ard, 68, and his daughter Aree Iamnirand, 28, and then burned down their house.

Since the new spate of violence began in 2004, insurgent attacks have become increasingly coordinated and targeted against civilians. On September 16 insurgents targeted department stores and related locations in Hat Yai district of Songkhla province, killing four civilians and injuring 59. Another series of coordinated explosions took place on August 31, targeting commercial banks in Yala. On June 15 and 16, insurgent groups launched a series of bombs attacks in 31 of 33 districts in the southern border provinces.

“Increasingly, insurgent violence is being used to scare away Buddhists and keep Muslims under control,” said Adams. [...]

Human Rights Watch called on the Thai government and insurgent groups to institute concrete measures to protect civilians and immediately cease all attacks that do not discriminate between combatants and civilians. In addition, Thai authorities and insurgent groups should permit independent, impartial and effective investigations of allegations of human rights abuses, and ensure that those found responsible be held accountable.

“Neither side in the conflict in Thailand’s southern border provinces pays enough attention to human rights issues,” said Adams. “The failure to address human rights concerns adds to the growing hostility, making peaceful conflict resolution through dialogue an impossible goal.”

Does Human Rights Watch really believe that the terrorists will "permit independent, impartial and effective investigations of allegations of human rights abuses, and ensure that those found responsible be held accountable"?

I don't understand why human rights organisations always act as though they were under the obligation to treat every side in every conflict as if they were all equally morally culpable. The Thai government has on occasion acted in a heavy-handed and callous manner that did not distinguish between insurgents and civilians, but the insurgents have been deliberately targeting civilians. Surely, there is a world of difference between callousness and premeditation?

The violence has actually gotten worse since a coup in September put a more conciliatory government into power. From Yahoo News:

Since September, the month of [former Thailand prime minister] Thaksin's removal, Dougherty [of Bangkok-based security consultants Hill and Associates] said the daily violence was claiming almost three times as many civilians victims as before, a clear indication of a shift in tactics.

In one week alone, 90 percent of casualties were civilian, the remaining 10 percent being described as "officials" — anything from soldiers and border police to village volunteers and local government bureaucrats.

And where are all the voices who condemn Israel every time a Palestinian civilian is killed, even if the death resulted from terrorists using civilians for cover?

南無阿彌陀佛

US removes Vietnam from religion blacklist

2006-11-18T17:21:00.000-05:00

From BBC news:

The United States has removed Vietnam from a list of countries which it says severely violate religious freedom.

The list is published annually by the state department and includes China, North Korea, Iran and Sudan.

Vietnam was removed just days before President George W Bush travels to Hanoi for a meeting of the Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation (Apec) forum.

However, a US bill to normalise trade relations with Vietnam failed to get approval in Congress.

Another attempt to pass the bill is expected to be made later this week.

Announcing Vietnam's removal from its countries of concern list, the US state department said there had been "significant improvements toward advancing religious freedom" in the country.

[...]

While the timing of Vietnam's removal from the list was probably motivated by the APEC forum, the situation has actually been improving for religious groups in Vietnam.

There has been a revival of religious feeling in the country. New Buddhist pagodas are springing up and the Catholic Church has ordained new priests.

But there are limits. Only religious organisations that pledge loyalty to the state enjoy freedoms and dissidents, both Buddhist and Christian, face harassment.

The rights group Christian Solidarity Worldwide said this week it had evidence of a crackdown on Protestantism among ethnic minorities in the north-west highlands.

The UK-based group said it had acquired an internal government training manual outlining a plan to "to resolutely subdue the abnormally rapid and spontaneous development of the Protestant religion" in that region.

Many Protestant Evangelical groups are extremely active in converting ethnic minorities in Asian countries. Because the minorities are marginalised from the mainstream by language, appearance, or custom, they are especially drawn to the social services offered by the Christian missionaries. Furthermore, by converting to a minor sect of Protestantism, they can also preserve their identity as a distinct group. On the other hand, the totalitarian governments in these countries often see religious conversion as an act of political subversion.

南無阿彌陀佛

Shaolin Football

2006-11-18T16:18:00.000-05:00

There was a movie from Hong Kong a few years ago that was quite popular called Shaolin Soccer (IMDB entry). The movie starred Hong Kong comedy legend Stephen Chow [周星馳] as a down-on-his-luck disciple of Shaolin kung fu [少林功夫] who popularises the martial art by combining it with soccer.

In a case of life-imitates-art, Venerable Shi Yongxin [釋永信], the abbot of Shaolin temple [少林寺] (whom we have previously met in this post), plans to develop a football program there. But by "football" I am referring to American football here, not to what is called "soccer" by Americans.

From Buddhism-Online:

In the days following his first experience with American football, Abbot Shi Yongxin, leader of the Shaolin Temple in China, is developing plans to start a football program at the Temple.

In an effort to promote cultural exchange, the Abbot's goal is to develop a series of football teams that would tour the United States and play exhibition games. The names of the teams would mirror current American football teams.

[...]

Thank the gods that the high school team in Pekin, Illinois, long ago changed their name to the Pekin Dragons.

As part of the plan, the [United States Sports Academy] would provide football coaches and administrators to train athletes and build a program at the Shaolin Temple. For over 30 years, the Academy has delivered sports programs in more than 60 countries around the world. [...]

A 10-part certification program to teach Kung Fu and other martial arts is also being developed as a joint effort between the Academy and the Abbot.

The United States Sports Academy is an independent, non-profit, accredited, special mission sports university created to serve the nation and the world with programs in instruction, research and service. The role of the Academy is to prepare men and women for careers in the profession of sports.

In traditional Chinese Buddhism, kung fu is not considered a sport, but is one component of an integrated program of mental, spiritual, and physical training, the aspects of which are inseparable from one another. Of course, the physical training had long ago been separated from the rest, resulting in many schools of martial arts most of which have nothing to do with spirituality. But one would hope that the Shaolin temple of all places would try to maintain the traditional stance.

南無阿彌陀佛

Glenn Beck presents "Exposed: The Extremist Agenda"

2006-11-18T14:38:00.000-05:00

I saw this program on CNN Headline News a few days ago:

There's nothing surprising in this program for those who pay attention to world news or who are personally acquainted with people of Muslim background (or with non-Muslims from predominantly Muslim countries). But for many Westerners who assume that all religions share the same humanistic values of the post-Enlightenment era, the contents of this program may be very shocking. There are still, in large swaths of the world, people who hold what is essentially a mediæval view of the world — except that the diatribes of their hatemongering clerics are broadcast over loudspeakers and the Internet, and their armies are equipped with modern weapons of mass destruction.

南無阿彌陀佛

Men excluded from Montreal neonatal clinic to accommodate religious sensibilities

2006-11-18T14:10:00.000-05:00

From CBC news:

A Montreal community health clinic has come under fire for excluding men from their neonatal classes to accommodate the sensibilities of Muslim, Sihk and Hindu women.

ADQ Leader Mario Dumont said the prohibition exceeds the limits of common sense. He said it's unreasonable that a Quebec taxpayer is barred from joining his pregnant girlfriend at a health clinic because his presence would offend others.

The article doesn't make it clear how the "sensibilities of Muslim, Sikh and Hindu women" are accommodated by the exclusion of men. Is it because they're non-relatives?

I also find it interesting that the paraphrase of Dumont uses the word "girlfriend" rather than "wife" (or, more inclusively, "wife or girlfriend"). Does no one in Montreal (presumably outside of the Muslim, Sikh, and Hindu communities) get married any more? And is it the presence of unmarried couples (who have obviously had sexual intercourse) that is offensive to religious sensibilities?

And I wonder if it's really the sensibilities of the Muslim, Sikh, and Hindu women that are being accommodated, rather than those of their husbands. (Or should I have written "husbands or boyfriends"?)

Religious and cultural accommodations in light of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms no longer makes sense, Dumont said ahead of a weekend convention of l'Action democratique du Quebec.

He pointed as well to a suggestion by Montreal police that female officers call male colleagues to avoid offending male Hasidic Jews.

And will police completely leave anarchists alone in order to avoid offending their sensibilities?

"We are completely moving to misusing the Charter and that is starting to worry me."

Dumont said it's not racist for a majority of citizens to defend their own values. [...]

That a "it's not racist" defense is needed at all shows just how confused Western societies and politicians are about the distinction between race on the one hand and beliefs and culture (in particular, religion) on the other.

The article has mentioned nothing about race. Now it may very well happen that the majority of the "Muslim, Sikh and Hindu women" at the clinic are of East Indian/South Asian descent, but that's completely beside the point. If the complainants had been white, the response should have been just the same. It's unfair to the other women in the clinic to exclude their husbands or boyfriends on the basis of not offending the religious sensibilities of some of the participants.

People should not be afraid to criticize culture or religion in a free society. Racism is wrong because a person neither chooses his genetics nor is he able to change it. (Some belief systems, such as Tibetan Buddhism, hold that certain people can influence the circumstances of their births, but even then such people are rare exceptions.) However, culture and religion are matters of choice (assuming that one does not believe in strong predestinarianism). A person can always in principle choose to hold values and beliefs contrary to those with which he was raised, even if his society or other circumstances might make it difficult in practice.

Because religion involves choice, it doesn't belong to the same category of things as race, but should rather be classed with other systems of belief such as Capitalism, Communism, Nazism, geocentrism, etc. And in a free society, all systems of belief must be open to critical scrutiny. Irrational or outdated beliefs and practises should not get a free pass merely because they are part of a culture or religion.

南無阿彌陀佛

Balbir K. Punj on the Dalai Lama's characterisation of Islam

2006-11-16T21:23:00.000-05:00

I had wanted to write something on the Dalai Lama's characterisation of Islam as a religion of "compassion" which has been twisted by extremists. However, Indian MP Balbir K. Punj has beaten me to it, so I'll comment on his article instead.

The op-ed piece by B.K. Punj appeared in The Pioneer (via The Buddhist Channel) and was written in response to the Dalai Lama's comments at a conference in San Francisco in April earlier this year:

There can be no bitter irony than a Buddhist monk defending Islam as religion of compassion. Except for mountainous pockets like Ladakh, Tibet and the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), Buddhism disappeared from India under the sword of Islam. BR Ambedkar, who later embraced Buddhism along with his followers, writes in the essay, 'The Decline and Fall of Buddhism', "There can be no doubt that the fall of Buddhism in India was due to the invasions of the Musalmans. Islam came out as the enemy of the 'but'. The word 'but', as everybody knows, is an Arabic word and means an idol. Not many people, however, know what the derivation of the world 'but' is. 'But' is the Arabic corruption of Buddha. Thus the origin of the word indicates that in Moslem mind idol worship had come to be identified with the Religion of Buddha. To the Muslims, they were one and the same thing. The mission to break the idols thus became the mission to destroy Buddhism. Islam destroyed Buddhism not only in India but wherever it went. Before Islam came into being, Buddhism was the religion of Bactria, Parthia, Afghanistan, Gandhar and Chinese Turkestan, as it was of the whole of Asia. In all these countries Islam destroyed Buddhism... (Writings and Speeches, Vol 3, p 230)

"Musalman" is another word for "Muslim".

The word but [بت] meaning idol (which entered the vocabulary of the Islamic world through Persian rather than Arabic) is still used with that meaning in the Islamic world. For example, one of the titles of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was bot-shekan [بت شکن], the "idol-breaker", or more to the point, the "Buddha-breaker". Note that bot-shekast [بت شکست], which is considered meritorious in Islam, corresponds to mie4 fo2 [滅佛], which is rather frowned upon in Buddhism.

B.K. Punj continues the quote by B.R. Ambedkar:

He continues: "The Musalman invaders sacked the Buddhist Universities of Nalanda, Vikramsila, Jagaddala, Odantipur to name a few. They razed to the ground Buddhist monasteries with which the country was studded. The monks fled away in thousands to Nepal, Tibet and other places outside India. Muslim commanders killed a very large number outright. How the Buddhist priesthood perished by the sword of the Muslim invaders has been recorded by the Muslim historians themselves...".

Seen in this light the destruction of Bamiyan Buddha by the Taliban in February 2001 does not seem out of place. Smashing the head of Brahma in Thao Maha Brahma or Phra Phrom Erawan Shrine in Bangkok on March 21, the "mentally disturbed" Muslim youth who did it, proved there is a method in this madness. It reflects the atavistic iconoclastic behaviour of Islam.

While the attacker of the Phra Phrom Erawan shrine, Thanakorn Pakdeepol, was a Muslim, he had a history of mental illness and it isn't clear whether the attack was motivated by religion.

However, the genocide being carried out by Muslims in Bangladesh's Chittagong Hill Tracts against non-Muslim religious minorities, which B.K. Punj mentions next, certainly has an air of religious imperialism about it:

The tragedy of Chakmas (Buddhists) in CHT is also on predictable lines. It will be interesting to know whether the Buddhists of Ladakh and CHT too feel Islam as a religion of compassion.

Peace Campaign Group (PCG) is a New Delhi-based organisation run by Chakmas, who are Buddhist monks as well, but who fled Bangladesh due to Islamic persecution in the early 1990s. They later obtained Indian citizenships and now actively focus on human rights violation in CHT. PCG recently demanded a Darfur-like UN intervention in CHT, which has been a victim of Islamic demographic aggression, systematically carried out by Bangladesh. Bhante Bhikkhu Prajnalankar, general secretary of PCG, travels around the world on a shoestring budget, to highlight the plight of his people in Bangladesh. A monk, he has no inclination to teach the world Zen and Nirvana. Pursuing Nirvana, he says, will not help when the ground beneath your feet is taken away.

For more information on the genocide in the CHT, see the following:

The op-ed piece by B.K. Punj continues:

Buddhist Thailand is more aware. It has a no-nonsense approach towards the Islamic secessionism in the south - Narathiwat, Pattani, Songhkla and Yala. Buddhists civilians are frequent targets of Muslim attacks in Narathiwat province of Thailand. But the Thai Government's approach is as decisive as it could be in a democracy. On October 26, 2004, Thailand police entered a historic mosque in Pattani where recalcitrant elements had made a stronghold, and flushed them out. Seventy-eight detained Muslims perished, many of them crushed and suffocated, after hundreds of detainees were loaded in two trucks. Thailand rejected any UN probe into the massacre of Islamist militants in southern Thailand.

As I wrote about in this post, the new government, which was installed by a military coup in September, has decided to soften their approach, which seems only to have emboldened the terrorists.

P.K. Punj concludes:

Buddhism is a compassionate religion; with its stress on non-violence, it was ill-prepared to meet Islam militarily. The Dalai Lama's comments reminds me of Gandhi, whose message of compassion found no takers amongst Muslims. Speaking about Gandhi's tour of England during Second Round Table Conference, Subhas Chandra Bose said, "During his stay in England, he had to play two roles in one person, the role of a political leader and that of a world-teacher. Sometimes he conducted himself not as a political leader who had come to negotiate with the enemy, but as a master who had come to preach a new faith - that of non-violence and world-peace." (The Indian Struggle 1920-1942, p 252). The Dalai Lama is playing world teacher, more than Tibetan supreme leader, and this time he has gone overboard.

I think the Dalai Lama is well aware of Islam's history of persecution against Buddhists and Buddhism. However, there have also been centuries of mostly peaceful and productive relations between Muslims and Tibetan Buddhists in Tibet and the surrounding areas, and the Dalai's Lama's view of Islam is likely heavily influenced by these historical interactions and his personal acquaintance with Tibetan Muslims.

I have met some Tibetan Muslims and the form of Islam that they practise is very much shaped by Tibetan culture and social traditions. For instance, they referred to the Dalai Lama very respectfully as "His Holiness", something which a Muslim from Saudi Arabia, for example, would never do. For someone who has grown up with liberal Muslims, there does not seem to be any reason, at first blush, why their form of Islam should be considered any less legitimate than that of the textual literalists or extremists.

I don't think that the Dalai Lama is as naïve as he might appear to be. I think rather that his words are chosen very carefully out of political considerations.

南無阿彌陀佛

Dalai Lama claims that secularism is the basis of all religions

2006-11-15T19:05:00.000-05:00

From Phayul (also Tibet.net; via The Buddhist Channel):

His Holiness the Dalai Lama said Friday that secularism is the basis of all religions.

This is a very strange comment coming from a man who, in addition to being the spiritual leader of Tibet, is also its temporal leader, at least according to several hundred years of tradition.

Just what does "secularism" mean to the Dalai Lama?

“Secularism does not mean rejection of all religions. It means respect for all religions and human beings including non-believers,” he said speaking to a crowd of 8,000 Japanese and foreigners at Ryogoku-Kokugikan stadium in Tokyo.

If this is what he means by "secularism", then secularism certainly isn't a part of any religion with aspirations to political power.

“I am talking to you not as a Tibetan or a Buddhist but as a human being having a friendly discussion and sharing my experiences on the benefits of cultivating basic human values.”

[...]

If he was talking merely as a human being and not as a leader of Tibetan Buddhism, it is doubtful that eight thousand people would have shown up to hear him speak.

To a request from the audience to hold the next Kalachakra teachings in Japan, the Dalai Lama said it could be organized if there were sufficient interests among the people.

The Kâlachakra Tantra [कालचक्र तन्त्र] and its attendant literature prophesy an apocalyptic war for world domination waged by Muslims, who are defeated by the (Buddhist!) warriors of Shambhala so thoroughly that Islam is completely annihilated. These texts were probably composed during the Islamic invasion of India and reflect the reaction of the Buddhist community to being under constant seige by followers of a hostile religion bent on their destruction.

For more information on this and other controversial aspects of the Kâlachakra teachings, see, for example:

The Dalai Lama is certainly aware of the contents of the Kâlachakra teachings, which describe a Buddhist emperor leading a Buddhist army in a war against the followers of another religion. I'm curious to know how he reconciles the Kâlachakra teachings with his claim that "respect for all religions and human beings including non-believers" is "the basis of all religions".

南無阿彌陀佛

Buddhists targeted for genocide by Islamist terrorists in Southern Thailand

2006-11-14T22:05:00.000-05:00

Islamist terrorists in southern Thailand are carrying out a campaign of genocide aimed at eliminating Buddhists from the three provinces with Muslim majorities. Buddhist monks are especially targeted for attack due to their symbolic value, and also because they're unarmed and easy to identify by their saffron robes. It has now become too dangerous for monks to continue their tradition of going around for alms.

From AsiaNews (November 13):

As from today, Buddhist monks in Narathiwat province in southern Thailand will no longer ask for alms in the streets as they used to do every morning. The risk is considered too great in the region, where militant separatists have killed several Buddhists in recent years.

Several? Now there's an understatement. Over 1700 people have been killed since January 2004, including both Buddhists and Muslims.

Prakru Papassorn Sirikhun, abbot of Kao Kong Temple, said the decision was made in a meeting of senior monks on 10 November. It is a custom of the monks to go every morning in the streets of cities and villages to ask for alms. But in recent months, the monks have become the target of attacks by the Islamic insurgency, which is demanding the separation of the southern provinces from Bangkok. Recently, soldiers have been escorting monks but still there has been no letup in attacks. In October, militants injured monks who were asking for alms in the morning, killing two soldiers who sought to protect them.

The abbot said army Intelligence had informed them that an increase in attacks against monks was expected in the coming days. [...]

In other words, the army has noticed that the terrorists are deliberately targeting Buddhist monks as a part of their strategy. The goal of the terrorists seems to be to drive out all the non-Muslims so that they can implement and rule by Islamic Shari`ah, and murdering unarmed Buddhist monks is an obvious way to intimidate the Buddhist population.

From Yahoo News (October 22):

A remote-controlled bomb killed a soldier and wounded 11 people in Thailand's Muslim south on Sunday, police said, the latest attack in a separatist insurgency which has killed more than 1,700 since early 2004.

Militants used a mobile phone to detonate a 5-kg (11-lb) bomb hidden in a rubbish bin in the city of Narathiwat as soldiers accompanied five Buddhist monks to protect them as they sought alms, police said.

One soldier died on his way to hospital, while other soldiers, monks and four passers-by were wounded, police said.

The insurgency in the three southernmost provinces of Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat — an Islamic sultanate until Bangkok annexed the region a century ago — has shown no sign of abating since a September 19 coup led by a Muslim general overthrew hawkish prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra.

A gruesome and telling attack occurred late last year. From the Bangkok Post (via The Buddhist Channel, October 17, 2005):

Local southern leaders yesterday appealed for calm and urged authorities not to take rash action after a monk was hacked to death and two temple boys were killed and their bodies burned yesterday in a raid on a Buddhist temple in Pattani. Elsewhere in the ravaged region, five more people, including two soldiers, were also killed.

A Thai monk, center, looks at the ruins of a temple burnt by suspected Muslim separatists in Pattani Province, south of Bangkok, Sunday, Oct. 16, 2005. About 20 suspected Muslim separatists stormed a monastery, hacked an elderly Buddhist monk to death and fatally shot two temple boys Sunday in southern Thailand, police said. Six other people were killed in separate incidents across Thailand's three southernmost provinces, where more than 1,000 people have died in an insurgency that flared early last year. (AP Photo)

Early yesterday, about 15 armed men stormed Wat Phromprasit temple at tambon Ban Nok of Panare district. They attacked four spots in the temple ground. The first was at a single-storey monk's living quarters made of wood.

Two charred bodies belonging to temple boys Harnnarong Kham-on, 17, and Sathaporn Suwanrat, 15, were found inside. Spent shells of automatic rifles were scattered near the bodies.

Police believed the attackers broke into the living quarters and shot the teenagers before setting fire to the bodies. The fire consumed the place.

The second spot was another monk's living quarters where the partially burned body of Phra Phisu Kaew Phanjaphet, 76, was found in a pool of blood.

He had been beaten over the head with a hard object and hacked at with such force that it almost severed his neck.

For the religious significance of the attempted beheading, see below. The article continues:

The monk was a native of Panare district.

The fires took an hour to put out.

The third spot was the chapel. Parts of the door panels were torched by the attackers who also vandalised the altar. A statue guarding the entrance was ravaged.

The description doesn't mention which parts of the door panels were torched, but I suspect, based on the desecrated altar and damaged statue (likely of the genius of the temple), that the door had probably been decorated with images of gods or other religious iconography.

Earlier this year, the terrorists were targeting schoolteachers and students. From AsiaNews (July 25):

At least two men dressed as students yesterday entered a school in southern Thailand and killed a teacher in front of his students. This was revealed by police today. Suspicion has fallen on separatist Islamic militants: police believe the bloody murder of Prasarn Makchu was in revenge for the arrest of four suspected insurgents in Ban Salo on 20 July.

The 46-year-old teacher was shot in the head and in the back while he was teaching at Ban Buerang school in Rueso-Narathiwat road, where he had worked for the past 20 years. [...]

Teachers are among the main targets because they are held to be vehicles of transmission of Buddhist culture. [...]

Besides attacking unarmed monks and shooting teachers in the back in front of their classes, what else have the terrorists been doing to maximize the amount of fear they cause?

For one, they haven't just been targeting the teachers — they're also after their relatives. Again from AsiaNews (May 23):

Islamic militants in southern Thailand have apparently started to target relatives of Buddhist teachers. Police in the province of Narathiwat said Somboon Ratchsuwan, 69, the father of the director of a local school, was killed while driving his motorcycle with his wife riding pillion. The woman was injured. Both were Buddhists. The police said they believed the "murder was the work of Islamic militants".

Meanwhile, yesterday, more than 100 schools in the three Muslim-majority southern provinces closed because of poor security in the zone. On 19 May, still in Narathiwat, masked men kept two teachers hostage for three hours. The kidnappers demanded the release of two Muslims arrested in connection with the killing of two soldiers at the beginning of the year. The authorities did not give in to their request and the women were beaten. One of the two, Juling Ponggunmul, is in a coma.

Tawat Sae-ham, head of a teachers’ union, said there is a drive under way to "do everything possible to eliminate the Buddhist minority" from the provinces in the south. Tawat said "schools will remain closed all week because teachers don't believe they have any security".

Another thing the terrorists have been doing is planting bombs in busy marketplaces. From AsiaNews (May 10):

A bomb hidden in a motorcycle exploded in a busy market in Thailand's restive Muslim south on Wednesday, killing two Buddhist women and a soldier and wounding 13 shoppers, police said.

Both women were teachers and one was three months pregnant, police said. They said the soldier, also Buddhist, died on the way to the hospital.

"The bomb was hidden in a motorcycle that was parked next to a truck bringing soldiers to the market to buy their daily stuff," police Colonel Somporn Meesuk said from the scene in the province of Pattani.

The truck was parked in front of a small restaurant where people were queuing up to buy food, he said.

While the terrorists are specifically targeting monks and teachers, they've also been inflicting indiscriminant damage upon random civilians by planting bombs in places such as markets, banks (August 31), karaoke bars (November 6), and car and motorcycle showrooms (November 9).

The campaign of terror is apparently working. Buddhists are leaving the southern provinces in droves. From AKI (November 10):

The entire Buddhist community in two villages in the majority Muslim province of Yala in southern Thailand have abandoned their homes and have no intention of returning for fear of attacks. According to reports in the local media, 122 people, or 52 families, have taken refuge in a nearby Buddhist temple of Nirotsangkha-ram over the past two days. Many have brought only the bare necessities with them, relying on the generosity of the local population for food. [...]

According to the latest census information gathered in 2000, Muslims represent 69 percent of the 415,000 residents in Yala, while some 88 percent of the 600,000 residents of Pattani are Muslim and in Narathiwat, 82 percent of the 662,000 residents follow the Muslim faith.

At the national level however, Muslims count for only 4.6 percent of the 65 million people living in Thailand.

The families who have fled the Muslim majority areas are from the districts of Than To and Bannang Sata, which are located in Yala. Despite recent overtures by the new Thai prime minister Surayud Chulanont to the Muslims in the south, the number of attacks carried out by pro-Muslim rebels groups in the area have increased. [...]

It's hardly accurate to call the terrorists "pro-Muslim", since Muslims who happen not to share their worldview have also been victims of their violence. But Buddhists, who make up only about one fifth of the population in those provinces, have suffered the majority of the casualties.

From the International Herald Tribune (November 12):

Suspected Muslim insurgents opened fire early Sunday at a tea shop in restive southern Thailand, killing one person, as attackers elsewhere burned down a Buddhist villager's home, police said.

Two hooded gunmen fired from motorcycles at the tea shop in Narathiwat province's Rue So district shortly after midnight, killing a 30-year-old male customer seated at a table with his brother, who was injured, said police Lt. Kuma-aen Sanya. [...]

Many Buddhists have moved out of the troubled area, while those who have remained often live in fear.

Over 120 Buddhist villagers in Yala province have sought refuge since Thursday at a Buddhist temple after some of their family members were killed and their houses were burned down by suspected insurgents.

Arsonists destroyed the home of a Buddhist man Saturday night in the Muang district of Yala province, while he was out guarding a nearby Buddhist temple, police said.

The caretaker government, which was installed following a military coup on September 19, has promised to take a conciliatory approach towards the terrorists. From Yahoo News (November 8):

Thailand's army-installed premier visited the troubled Muslim-majority south, saying he supported the Islamic way of life but ruling out separation from the mainly Buddhist kingdom.

[...]

The premier [Surayud Chulanont], who was appointed after a bloodless September 19 coup, told foreign correspondents late Tuesday that the only condition for peace talks with insurgent leaders in the three restive southern provinces was that they drop any demands for independence.

"There is only one condition. No separation," he said, making it clear that a ceasefire was not a prerequisite for negotiations.

"That is the only condition we have ... we cannot accept separation of our land anywhere, this is the rule of the land, we are not going to be divided."

Surayud however added that granting a certain degree of autonomy could be discussed and stressed that he respected the Muslim way of life.

"They should have the Islamic law in practice, Sharia, because of the way they are dealing with normal practice in their life is completely different from us," he said.

The offer on the table seems to be that Muslims in southern Thailand can be governed by Islamic law in personal matters such as marriage and inheritance, similar to the system in India, if they drop demands for political independence. But these conciliatory gestures by the government seem to have had no effect.

From The Nation (via The Buddhist Channel, November 10):

Violence in the three southernmost provinces have displaced a number of Buddhist residents over the past three years but the Wednesday exodus was the first of its kind in which an entire community packed its belongings and fled.

In September 2005, at least 131 Muslim families from Narathiwat had also fled to northern Malaysia where they are currently residing in a government compound. The incident led to a diplomatic fallout between Thailand and Malaysia, especially after the latter permitted the UN refugee agency to interview the displaced villagers.

Local residents said the violence has restricted their travel and activities, and taken a tremendous toll on their livelihood.

Wednesday night's exodus marks a setback for the government's policy of reconciliation as none of Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont's goodwill gestures have been reciprocated by the militants who have been accused by authorities of being behind the daily violence in the three Malay-speaking southernmost provinces.

Attacks on soldiers, as well as civilian targets, continue unabated and the government is hard pressed to come up with a quick solution for a problem that many analysts say could take a generation to resolve.

As the above article indicates, the government is not without fault in this conflict. They have been indiscriminantly heavy-handed in some instances in the past. They have also not done enough to convince the common Thai Muslims that the terrorists are as much of a threat to them as they are to Buddhists or to the Thai state — if not more so.

However, whatever real grievances the Muslims in southern Thailand may have, the terrorists have essentially lost the sympathies of everyone else in the rest of Thailand. Attacks on police officers, soldiers, government officials, and other symbols of the state are not unexpected in an insurgency. But by murdering monks, teachers, women, children, and other civilians, the terrorists have shown that they consider the conflict to be primarily ethnic or religious, rather than political, in nature.

Whenever Muslims commit acts of terrorism, there are always commentators who point out that it is the work of only a few "extremists" or "radicals" and that their actions should not reflect on all Muslims. Of course, no one should be held accountable for events over which they have no influence or control. The problem is that there is an attitude that is very prevalent in Muslim societies that Muslims should always take the side of Muslims rather than non-Muslims in any conflict, regardless of right or wrong. Any actions that the victims of Islamist terrorism undertake to retaliate, or to prevent further acts of terrorism against themselves, are portrayed as a persecution of Muslims or an attack on Islam. This portrayal is used by the Islamists to inflame other Muslims to draw them into the conflict.

We read, for example, that the killing of a teacher, while he was teaching in front of his students, is "in revenge for the arrest of four suspected insurgents". How does killing a teacher and traumatising children in any way avenge any kind of wrong? Or we read that the terrorists take two female teachers hostage to secure "the release of two Muslims arrested in connection with the killing of two soldiers". When the authorities refused, the women were beaten, one of them into a coma. How were the authorities wrong to arrest suspects wanted in connection with the killing of soldiers, and even if they were, how does kidnapping and beating up women right that wrong?

By behaving in this manner, the Islamists are ensuring that the situation snowballs out of control. Muslims are polarised so that those who had been co-existing peacefully with their non-Muslim neighbours are either forced to side with the Islamists, or be driven out or killed. This pattern has repeated itself throughout history in every place where Muslims have been a sizeable minority in a society. In the past, this behaviour has resulted in the seizure of a considerable amount of territory for Islam, at the expense of impoverishing or destroying the pre-existing societies.

So this pattern of behaviour is nothing new. The Islamic invaders of Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent also targeted monks and teachers and razed non-Muslim places of worship to the ground. Pakistan, Bangladesh, and many of the countries of Central Asia used to be predominantly Buddhist or Hindu. And while Hindus could at least claim to worship "one God", albeit under different names, it was considerably more difficult to reconcile Buddhism with monotheism, when the Buddha specifically rejected the belief in a personal creator God. Buddhists were classified as idolators and were given the choice of conversion, departure, or death. The looting and destruction of important Buddhist monasteries and universities by the invaders also precipitated the decline of Buddhism in India.

The violent and heedless behaviour of the Islamists, and the departure of the Buddhists, will only result in the impoverishment and debilitation of the southern Thai provinces and their inhabitants. This has been the outcome in every place where Muslims have driven out Buddhists by force. Furthermore, the terrorists claim to be fighting for their sovereignty, but they are in fact unwittingly acting as the agents of Islamic imperialism. Muslims – not only in Thailand, but worldwide – are trapped in a vicious cycle, labouring under the delusional belief that acting like a bunch of 7th Arab warriors (but armed with modern technology) is the path to spiritual and material prosperity, while carrying out actions that harm others as well as themselves. There is a word for this cycle in Buddhism: it is called "samsara".

In order to defeat the terrorists, the Thais must break the cycle by learning the right lessons from the Islamic invasion of India.

The Bangkok Pundit blog, which is an excellent place to learn about the political landscape in Thailand, is running a series of posts on the changing nature of the insurgency in the southern provinces. From the first part of the series (the emphases are from the original post):

Prior to January 2004, the main target of attacks were police and military officials in rural areas [...] However, since January 2004, there has been a noticed shift to also include attacking Buddhist monks/symbols, teachers, and civilians (Buddhists and Muslims) in urban areas (The Nation). [...]

It is not just that the insurgents have changed their target of attacks to urban areas, but that the nature of the attacks has also changed. Beheadings, as the story above illustrates, are becoming a more regular occurrence since the upsurge in violence in January 2004. Coordinated bombings have also become more frequent. These tactics, particularly beheadings, appear to be copied directly from Iraq.

This violence instills fear amongst the population and I believe why the activities of the insurgents can be described as terrorism - most of the acts would fit within the definition of a terrorist act in the Criminal Code.

The changing nature of the insurgency shows a shift from an ethno-nationalist insurgency towards jihad.

The second post of the series examines the targeting of Buddhists by the Islamist terrorists:

Buddhist temples have also been attacked and bombed (The Nation). In one violent incident in October 2005, newspapers report that 20 gunmen entered a Buddhist temple, hacked an elderly monk to death then opened fire on the monk's dwelling killing two temple boys before setting the temple on fire (The Nation).

Just after this attack monks became more vocal in their protest - not in favour of a softening of the government's approach either [...] It is not just Buddhist temples, but Buddhist monks have also come under attack. In 2004, a number of Buddhist monks were 'hacked to death' (The Nation). Buddhist monks have also been attacked when they collect alms and many state that they are fearful and no longer willing to travel freely through southern communities to collect alms (US State Department). [...]

Buddhists make up a majority of the victims of the violence in the 3 southern border provinces [...] Buddhists are also dying in increasing numbers. For the first 6 months of 2005, 111 Buddhists were killed, this rose to 141 for the first 6 months of 2006. However, for Muslims the opposite occurred, the death toll decreased from 208-183 (Deep South Watch).

It is not just the number of Buddhists who have been attacked, but also the way they have been killed. In May 2004, one Buddhist was beheaded and a note left on his body warning of sectarian violence (Strait Times). In a 5 week period in June-July 2005, a further 9 Buddhists were beheaded (Washington Times). Killing by beheading is new phenomenon for the 3 southern border provinces. A government minister has stated that intelligence suggests the beheadings were copied from Iraq (Washington Times). [...]

This, of course, just raises the question of where the jihadists in Iraq got the idea of beheading their victims from. The Islamist terrorists in both Iraq and Thailand are, in fact, just imitating the examples set by the first Muslims and carrying out the rulings of the classical Islamic jurists (see, for example, these articles from Slate, FrontPage, and The Middle East Quarterly).

The post from Bangkok Pundit continues:

It is widely believed by Thai government officials (The Nation) and foreign analysts (The Nation) that Buddhists are deliberately targeted to raise sectarian tensions. One senior Thai government official has described the situation as 'ethnic cleansing' as Buddhists have been told to leave the 3 southern border provinces under the threat of violence (The Independent). For example, Amnesty International report citing a message which stated: "Thai Buddhists if you are still on our land we will kill you all. Get out from our land. Otherwise you will eat bullets again." (Amnesty International ) It is estimated that up to 10% of Buddhists living in the 3 southern border provinces have left the southern border provinces (Zachary Abuza).

The Islamist terrorists are, by their own admission, embarking on a campaign of genocide against the Buddhists.

Some other relevant posts from Bangkok Pundit:

For more background on the Muslim secessionist movements in southern Thailand, see this report by the Jamestown Foundation: "A Breakdown of Southern Thailand's Insurgent Groups".

南無阿彌陀佛

B.C. Buddhist Convention hosted by female minister

2006-11-13T13:10:00.000-05:00

The British Columbia Buddhist Convention, a gathering in Canada of Buddhists belonging to the Jodo Shinshu school, will be hosted by a woman for the first time. From The Richmond Review (via The Buddhist Channel):

As a minister, Masumi Kikuchi is breaking new ground.

The 35-year-old is the first female minister in the 100-year history of Jodo Shinshu Buddhism in Canada, and this weekend is the host minister for the B.C. Buddhist Convention.

The Jodo Shinshu [浄土真宗] school is a Japanese branch of Pure Land Buddhism based on the teachings of Shinran Shonin [親鸞聖人]. One feature that sets this school of Buddhism apart from others is that it has ministers who can marry and have a family, instead of celibate monastics.

Furthermore, due to persecution of people of Japanese ancestry in North America in the decades around World War II, North American Jodo Shinshu Buddhists purposely adapted Christian-style terminology to better blend in with the Christian population. For example, Jodo Shinshu temples are called "churches" and hold weekly Sunday services and Sunday school for children.

Many Christian denominations are also struggling with the question of female ordination, and some have begun to accept women in roles traditionally reserved for men. I hope that Rev. Masumi Kikuchi's assignment is part of a larger trend towards female leadership in religion.

南無阿彌陀佛

Dalai Lama seeks China democracy

2006-11-13T12:54:00.000-05:00

No surprise there. From Yahoo News:

TOKYO - Tibet's spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, told a Japanese opposition party politician that democratization would make China a more predictable neighbor, a news report said Saturday.

The Dalai Lama, ending a 14-day visit to Japan, said surrounding countries have difficulty knowing what actions "the big dragon" — referring to China — will take, Kyodo News agency said.

According to the Japanese lawmaker, Yukio Edano of the Democratic Party of Japan, the Dalai Lama said China would become predictable if it democratized and "the dragon will become calm," Kyodo reported.

Yeah, what the big dragon really needs is a little sitting meditation.

The Japanese government allowed the Dalai Lama to enter Japan on the condition that he not engage in any political activities.

The man is a political activity.

I'd actually like the Dalai Lama to be more political. I would like to hear what he has to say, as a spiritual leader, on important global political topics. But aside from the issue of Tibet, he has tended to shy away from controversy.

南無阿彌陀佛

Buddhist Dalit family murdered in India

2006-11-12T05:52:00.000-05:00

A horrific story from Kherlanji, India (from an editorial in The Buddhist Channel):

Like many Indians, their hopes of a good life were basic: a decent education, a life that was lived with self respect and a livelihood which disturbed no one. But in India, Surekha and her family were tortured for many years because they chose to live the "basic life". The reason – because they were Dalits, untouchables in the eyes of Hindu purists whose status are merely better than animals.

On September 29, 2006, in the town of Kherlanji, near Nagpur - a new center of Buddhist movement in India - Buddhists Surekha and her daughter Priyanka were beaten, paraded naked and gang-raped in full public view for an hour before they fell dead.

[...]

We would like to appeal to the international Buddhist community to please use your connections and networks and forward this information to all Human Rights Organizations and Government and Non-Government Agencies.

It is time that the suffering endured by the multitude of Dalits - the so called untouchable caste of India - be highlighted to the international community so that the voice of reason can be pressed upon the Government of India to put a "practical" stop to such inhumane act once and for all.

For more information on how you can help, or to enquire about the Dalit situation, please contact the following:

The Jambudvipa Trust
www.jambudvipa.org
'Manuski', Deccan College Rd
Tel/Fax +91-20-2669 6812 / +91-98506 66479
Yerwada, Pune
411 006, India

The Ambedkar movement
www.ambedkar.org

The incident described is extremely sickening. What is there to say?

The village where this incident occurred is variously spelled Kherlanji and Khairlanji. In wonder if it's the same Khairlanji mentioned in this post?

Here is a smattering of news articles and blog posts about the crime and the protests sparked by it:

And this map from Atrocity News showing the attacks on Dalits and Buddhists in India is simply chilling:

There are 231 rapes and 51 murdered last year. The families are helpless, only hope is help from world community !
Every hour two Dalits are assaulted,
Every day three Dalit women are raped,
Every day two Dalits are murdered & two Dalit houses are burnt in India….”
(Report of the Ministry of Welfare of the Government of India, 1992-1993)

The government of India must be held accountable for these crimes, which are being committed by its own citizens against its own citizens.

南無阿彌陀佛

Sleepless in Kapilavastu

2006-11-12T05:01:00.001-05:00

An update to these posts, from The Buddhist Channel:

David S. Ward, Oscar-winning scripter of "The Sting," "Milagro Beanfield War" and "Sleepless in Seattle," has signed up to pen "Buddha," the big-budget family production that will mark the filmmaking debut of Beverly Hills-based Indian billionaire Dr. B.K. Modi.

Meh.

南無阿彌陀佛

Buddhism gaining strength in India, maybe

2006-11-12T04:12:00.000-05:00

A follow-up to some previous posts, from The Times of India (via The Buddhist Channel):

Around 30 lakh Dalits are estimated to have converted to Buddhism as part of 50th year celebrations of Ambedkar's deeksha, in what has again underscored a fact that Indian Buddhism has a distinct Dalit hue to it.

Reports from organisations involved in deeksha programmes around the country have come up with figures which point to a resurgent conversion activity.

Twenty lakh people are estimated to have congregated at Nagpur, Deekshabhoomi which is at the forefront of Dhammakranti, while another six lakh people attended the second biggest ceremony at Chandrapur on October 15-16.

Maharashtra, owing to Ambedkar's linkages, as also the original Dalit movement, was ahead of all other states in these conversions. Andhra Pradesh, Punjab, MP, UP and Chhattisgarh, too, conducted conversions on a largescale.

According to Y Chinna Rao, who teaches at the Centre for Dalit and Minorities Studies in Jamia Millia Islamia and has compiled a report on the nationwide activities, "The conversion ceremonies were the largest ever to be seen till now after independence. It could give a massive boost to similar activities in future."

The programmes, which started in the run-up to Dussehra through Ambedkar's birth anniversary in October, saw massive activity in Andhra Pradesh.

Since a lâkh [लाख] is one hundred thousand, 30 lâkh makes 3 million. If this estimate is true, that is quite a number of people. However, it is probable that most of the people who showed up were already Buddhists, rather than people who converted to Buddhism as part of the 50th anniversary event.

According to the Hindustan Times, Buddhists might hold the swing vote in the upcoming Assembly elections in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh:

It is believed that there are 40-45 constituencies where Buddhists are numerically strong enough to make a difference. In fact, there are constituencies in the State where Buddhist vote is as high as 45% as in Khairlanji (Balaghat), currently represented by RPI. The other constituencies with large Buddhist population includes Amla (over 40%), Katangi 30%, Lanji 25%, Barasivni and Kirnapur (30%), Saunsar, Pandurna, Multai, Betul, Parasia, Gohad, Bhander, Mhow, Paraswada and Naryavali (20%). Besides, there are two-dozen more constituencies where the community has more than 10% of the electorate, claims Dr Gajbhiye.

Though the data might appear exaggerated to some, experts feel that feeling slighted by the Congress, the community might choose Mayawati and vote for her party en masse. And the statistics are frightening enough for Congress.

[...]

The Buddhist population in the State could be much higher than suggested by the census records as the Dalit converts did not register themselves as Buddhists under the category of religion because of a past law, which stopped the facilities including reservation meant for Scheduled Castes to the neo-Buddhists.

The Buddhist converts were not deemed as Scheduled Castes until the Centre amended the law in 1990 following which the Madhya Pradesh government issued a notification in March 1994 stating that all neo-Buddhists would continue to get the privileges of their caste even after conversion. In fact, it is surmised that the Buddhist population could be well be 40-50 lakh. "Dr Ambedkar was born in Madhya Pradesh and his caste Mahar alone has a population of 38 lakh almost all of whom are Buddhists besides the other castes", said a high official in the government.

Dr. Ambedkar's belief that Dalits can become empowered through conversion to Buddhism seems to be becoming a reality.

南無阿彌陀佛

"Reformation of Islam" aberrant?

2006-11-12T01:56:00.000-05:00

Someone (based on the context, a Muslim) calling himself (or herself) "God's Servant" left a comment yesterday on this post from October:

There is no reformation of Islam, it's impossible. Actually Islam is declining, modern time of Islam existed 14 centuries ago while other civilizations and religions were in darkness, that's why the expression "reformation of Islam" is aberrant.

Nowadays, even muslims don't know nothing about their religion and they are the first victims of fanatism and terrorism existed in muslim countried before existing in the west.

Islam is like money, you got to work hard to find the truth.

I didn't want to reply just in that post, since it's over a month old, so I'll reply here in this new post. I specifically want to address this claim:

modern time of Islam existed 14 centuries ago while other civilizations and religions were in darkness

This is a myth perpetuated by apologists for Islam, and it is simply not true. Persia (Iran), India, and China were all enjoying relatively high degrees of civilization at the time of the advent of Islam. Buddhism had been transmitted from India to China over the previous several centuries and was fomenting an intellectual revolution along its routes of transmission. The disintegration of many of these highly developed societies was in fact caused by the relentless waves of Muslim invasions.

One of the major reasons for the initial successes of Islam was that the early Muslim conquerors assimilated the civilizations of the peoples it conquered. The first Arab-Islamic conquests were facilitated by the fact that the Byzantines and the Sassanians had exhausted themselves fighting against each other. When the Muslims conquered Persia, they essentially adapted the pre-existing structures of governance and methods of statecraft of the Persians. They recruited Persian scholars to their cause and employed many Persian administrators to run the Islamic empire. They similarly assimilated the knowledge of various smaller communities living under Islamic rule by the appointment of their scholars to court and through the conversion of their members to Islam. (Try looking into the ethnic backgrounds of the most influential philosophers, scientists, and other scholars in the Islamic world at this time.)

If it had not been for Persian administrative practices and experience, Greek medicine and philosophy, Indian mathematics and metallurgy, Chinese papermaking technology, and a host of other sciences and technologies captured or learned from others — not to mention Jewish, Christian, and Zoroastrian religious beliefs and practices — there would have been no Islamic civilization. The Islamic empires were built upon ideas copied from neighbouring civilizations and with the wealth obtained through their conquest and plunder.

Yes, the Muslims were at one time leaders in civilization, but it wasn't quite 14 centuries ago. It was several centuries afterward, after Islam had established itself more or less securely in Persia and Central Asia and was making its way across India. But as the Islamic empires expanded and dhimmi populations were converted to Islam, the policy of continual military expansion pursued by Islamic rulers started to become uneconomical. At the same time, influential Muslim theologians popularized the idea that Islam represented the height of civilization and that other societies were in darkness, and Muslims began to cease learning from other cultures. These internal developments, coupled with external events such as the irruption of the Mongol hordes, marked the beginning of the decline of Islamic power.

The myth that the first generation of Muslims had attained the pinnacle of civilization seems to explain the success of the Islamic empires relative to their competitors at this time, as well as their subsequent decline. I suppose that's why it's popular among Muslims. But an examination of the historical evidence shows that this myth is false. Belief in this myth – which can only be described as hubris – is precisely what led to the downfall of Islamic societies to begin with, and is one of the major factors preventing Islamic societies from adapting or developing modern concepts of individual rights.

Islam is indeed in decline, and has been for centuries. Most of the Islamic countries in the world cannot support themselves and would collapse if not for oil (Saudi Arabia, Iran), massive amounts of foreign aid (Egypt, Pakistan), or a sizeable non-Muslim population that is wealthy and industrious (Indonesia, Malaysia). This state of affairs will not be sustainable for very much longer. You wrote that 'the expression "reformation of Islam" is aberrant', but the way things are going, the alternative to reformation is destruction.

You seem to be suggesting that the only real Islam was practised 14 centuries ago and that what is needed is not a reformation but a return to some pristine ideal. The problem is that this ideal exists only as a myth, invented centuries after the fact. To base one's actions on such a false view of the world is to act under the influence of ignorance (or delusion), one of the "three poisons" in Buddhist philosophy. What is needed among Muslims is not more blind adherence to religious dogma and mythology, but a genuine understanding of real history.

(By the way, I skimmed through your blog. It seems to consist of nothing more than parroting other people's poorly reasoned Islamic apologetics. For a critic's view of these arguments for Islam, I recommend a visit to Freethought Mecca.)

南無阿彌陀佛

Blogger in Beta

2006-11-11T15:14:00.000-05:00

I converted this blog to Blogger in Beta this afternoon. Things went mostly smoothly, but there may be a few broken links where a post links to a previous post.

南無阿彌陀佛

Remembrance Day

2006-11-11T09:00:00.000-05:00

Today is Remembrance Day in Canada:

Every year on November 11, Canadians pause in a silent moment of remembrance for the men and women who have served, and continue to serve our country during times of war, conflict and peace. We honour those who fought for Canada in the First World War (1914-1918), the Second World War (1939-1945), and the Korean War (1950-1953), as well as those who have served since then. More than 1,500,000 Canadians have served our country in this way, and more than 100,000 have died. They gave their lives and their futures so that we may live in peace.

Lest we forget.

南無阿彌陀佛

What Would Buddha Advise You To Do?

2006-11-06T20:46:00.000-05:00

Someone recently showed me a book called "What Would Buddha Do?" (which I will call WWBD for short):

What Would Buddha Do? After all, he was a person just like us. He struggled with life just as we do and eventually discovered life's deepest secrets. The author explores how Buddha would handle the many trials of contemporary life, showing how 2500 years of Buddhist teaching can guide us in our modern society. Questions of materialism, relationships, stress, love, personal identity and values are dealt with in a straightforward manner, following the wisdom of a great teacher.

The concept behind this book is borrowed from the "What Would Jesus Do?" (or WWJD) phenomenon that was quite popular among American Christians in the 1990s.

I've always had a problem with the WWJD concept, and I object to WWBD for the same reason. In Christian religious belief, Jesus is the Son of God and can do things that no ordinary person can do. Here are a few examples of why WWJD wouldn't work:

You run out of wine at a wedding. What do you do? WWJD? It's simple, really – just turn water into wine.

You want to feed a crowd of five thousand, but have only five loaves of bread and two fish. What do you do? WWJD? Why, just multiply the food.

You're on a boat that's caught in a fierce storm. It's in danger of being capsized. What do you do? WWJD? How about order the sea to calm down.

... I can come up with dozens more examples, but you get the idea.

Exactly the same problem applies to the Buddha. While the Buddha dismissed supposed miracles as having nothing to do with spiritual progress, he is attributed with all sorts of miraculous powers in Buddhist lore. He can, among other things, shoot light and fire out of his body, change his form, levitate, teleport himself to other realms, and generally do the sorts of things that only comic book superheroes are able to do. What a person with such powers would do is sure to be different from what an ordinary person would do, in many situations.

Of course, the book actually just gives rather down-to-earth advice based on Buddhist sources. So it should really be called "What Would Buddha Advise You To Do?", but I suppose that results in an overly long title and an ugly abbreviation.

南無阿彌陀佛

Australian Muslim preacher compares women to meat, condemns Christians and polytheists to Hell

2006-10-28T14:36:00.000-05:00

In this previous post, I mentioned Sheikh Taj al-Din al-Hilali [شیخ تاج الدین الهلالی] (parts of his name are variously written as Tajeddin or al-Hilaly), the leader of the Lakemba Mosque in Sydney, in connection with his reprimand of another Muslim leader, Dr. Ameer Ali, for allegedly criticising Muslims for taking a close-minded approach to religion. So the Sheikh is, shall we say, a bit of a religious hardliner.

Now Sheikh al-Hilali is in trouble for making derogatory remarks comparing women to meat during his Ramadan sermon. This weekend's edition of The Australian has a number of articles discussing various aspects of the incident.

First, the transcript of the actual sermon may be found here. In the part of the sermon that the media has focused on, the Sheikh compares unveiled women to uncovered meat left in the open, which is snatched up by wandering cats:

But the whole disaster, who started it? The Al-Rafihi scholar says in one of his literary works, he says: If I come across a crime of rape - kidnap and violation of honour - I would discipline the man and teach him a lesson in morals, and I would order the woman be arrested and jailed for life.

Why, Rafihi? He says, because if she hadn't left the meat uncovered, the cat wouldn't have snatched it. If you take a kilo of meat, and you don't put it in the fridge, or in the pot, or in the kitchen, but you put in on a plate and placed it outside in the yard. Then you have a fight with the neighbour because his cats ate the meat. Then (inaudible). Right or not?

If one puts uncovered meat out in the street, or on the footpath, or in the garden, or in the park, or in the backyard without a cover, then the cats come and eat it, is it the fault of the cat or the uncovered meat? The uncovered meat is the problem! If it was covered the cat wouldn't have. It would have circled around it and circled around it, then given up and gone.

If she was in her room, in her house, wearing her hijab, being chaste, the disasters wouldn't have happened. The woman possesses the weapon of seduction and temptation. That's why Satan says about the woman, "You are half a soldier. You are my messenger to achieve my needs. You are the last weapon I would use to smash the head of the finest of men. There are a few men that I use a lot of things with, but they never heed me. But you? Oh, you are my best weapon."

For some reason that is unknown to me, the Sheikh seems to really have it in for Canadian women in particular:

On the issue of stealing, when the man is responsible for earning. He's responsible for the expenses, for the food and water. He is the one who has to pay the rent, he is responsible for the alimony, he is responsible for feeding his children. Maybe circumstances forced him and Satan tempted him, and there is a woman like hell behind him; she never has enough. She wants to change the furniture, change the lounge every year. And behind every man who is a thief, a greedy woman. She is pushing him. Not our women in Australia, the women of Canada. The hall up there is full. They are the women of Canada and Mexico, the ones who encourage their men - to do what? Go! Get me! And no matter how much he brings her, she wants more. She wants to change the car, and change ... Of course, the woman keeps demanding from her husband more than his ability. Either she will tell him to go and deal in drugs, or to go and steal. What's more than that? Spend as much as you have! You know your husband, upside down! If you demand from your husband more than his ability, then what does that mean? Who is the one who would have to become a mafia? A gangster? And steal cars? And smash banks? And deal in the "blue disease" (drugs)? Who is the one who commits these crimes of stealing? Who? The man or the woman? It's the man.

So, according to the Sheikh, Canadian women are responsible for gangsters and bank robbers. Got it.

Most articles and commentaries have focused on the Sheikh's reprehensible comments about women. However, he also attacks Christians and polytheists, whom he lumps together into one group:

Why wasn't the verse ended with forgiveness and mercy? Because there is a crime of polytheism. God does not forgive polytheism, and forgives everything else. These people said that God took a son, these people said that divinity united with man, and the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and they will see mercy? They will never see it, not him or his father. Not dad or mum. No one will see mercy, of those who believe in polytheism. Our Master Jesus knows that the crime is big. And there is no appeal for it. No way the judgment can be appealed. And they will never have intercession on the Day of Judgment, because polytheism is a great injustice. If it was a simple matter, the verse would have ended with "For God is forgiving, merciful". But it ended with "If You punish them, they surely are Your servants. And if You forgive them." They'll never see it. You will be wise, You will rule, then they'll cop it.

Those who disbelieve amongst the people of the Book and the polytheists, where will they go? Surfers Paradise? Gold Coast? Where? To the fire of hell. And not part-time, they'll be in it for eternity. What are these people? The most evil of God's creation on the face of earth. The issue is clear. So, the verse should be ended with what? "For God is mighty, wise." Not "For God is forgiving, merciful".

What kind of god is so pathetically weak that he has to resort to threats of violence to keep his believers in line? It is said that a man creates his god in his own image, and by al-Hilali's description of God, we know just what kind of man he is.

The idea that blasphemy should be treated as a crime, or that any crime against an omnipotent being is even possible, is patently absurd. As some atheists say, "blasphemy is a victimless crime." Or, as Mark Twain quipped:

Blasphemy? No, it is not blasphemy. If God is as vast as that, he is above blasphemy; if He is as little as that, He is beneath it.

The absoluteness and arbitrariness of God is one of the major philosophical problems that Buddhism has with monotheism. In Buddhist philosophy, all beings are subject to the same laws of the universe, even the highest gods. This means that the gods, no matter how powerful they might seem, still suffer from decay and even death. Furthermore, their actions produce karma, and it would be impossible for a god to burn sentient beings in a fire (for eternity, no less!), without incurring tremendous negative consequences for himself.

That is why no Buddhist can take seriously the idea that moral conduct should be motivated by "the fear of God" (i.e., really, the fear of punishment). To a Buddhist, placing beliefs above actual conduct seems like a case of misplaced priorities. How can not believing in God, or believing in multiple gods, be a "worse crime" than actually hurting other living beings, by murder, theft, sexual misconduct, lying, etc.?

Sheikh al-Hilali is seriously out of step with the times, as is a segment of the Muslim community who hold views similar to those of the Sheikh.

Also from The Australian:

南無阿彌陀佛

Madonna adopts Malawi orphan

2006-10-22T01:29:00.000-05:00

So, pop star Madonna has adopted a Malawi orphan. I wonder if she will be asked to remove any crucifixes from her home?

From MSNBC:

The singer, who plans to visit Africa in October, credits her faith in Kabbalah with shifting her priorities.

“One of the main precepts of Kabbalah is that we’re put on this Earth to help people,” she says. “And your job is to figure out how you can help, and what it is that you can do.”

An orphan care center, being built with a goal of feeding and educating about 1,000 children a day, will have programs based on Spirituality for Kids, Kabbalah’s children’s program, according to the magazine.

Meanwhile, religious leaders in Italy have criticized Madonna for wearing a crown of thorns and singing while hanging from a mirrored cross during her “Confessions” world tour concerts. She is scheduled to perform Sunday in Rome.

It seems that adopting a Third World orphan is the latest fad among celebrities. Not everyone is thrilled with this trend. From The Sydney Morning Herald:

Madonna was pilloried with accusations of fast-tracking the adoption by donating money to a Malawian orphanage, though reports suggested the Ritchies had been planning the addition to their family for some months.

Prospective parents in Australia said that while the adoption process was long in this country, the system of comprehensive checks was generally welcome and was in the interests of the children.

They also said incidences of queue jumping by financial means were unfair on those waiting to adopt who were following due process.

For Trevor and Melanie Rees, Madonna has joined Angelina Jolie as persona non grata in their Cessnock home.

"They are two celebrities we don't have in our house," said Mrs Rees, a teacher. She and her husband have been waiting to adopt an African baby for more than five years.

Mr Rees, 31, a boilermaker, said: "We've boycotted their music and movies because they are throwing our struggles in our faces. It's an absolute joke.

"I think it's terrific that celebrities are taking the same avenues that we're taking and drawing attention to the plight of these kids.

"It's just not fair that they can take shortcuts or pay extra money or say they're going to build this or do that."

The attention that celebrities bring to a cause is often a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it's important for the plight of orphans in the Third World to receive media attention. On the other hand, celebrities often have their own agendas and the issues often get distorted when they are involved.

南無阿彌陀佛

Shaolin Temple to become Buddhist Disneyland

2006-10-21T18:51:00.000-05:00

I wrote about the commercialization of Buddhism in China in this previous post.

One of the central characters in this drama is the Venerable Shi Yongxin [釋永信], the charismatic abbot of the Shaolin Temple [少林寺]. From China Daily (via The Buddhist Channel):

The Shaolin Temple, widely considered the birthplace of Chinese Kungfu, has frequently been in the spotlight following some headline-grabbing events, such as the super-girl-style Kungfu Competition, a luxury sports car awarded to the temple, and the latest Wushu festival, with Shi Yongxin, the abbot, at the core of it.

"Super Girl" [超女] is China's version of pop idol singing contests such as American Idol. In the Shaolin version, called "Star of Chinese Kung-Fu" [中國功夫之星], the competitors don't sing, but rather demonstrate their martial arts skills. The winner receives a contract to star in a television show about the Shaolin Temple.

A picture of the luxury sports car mentioned above accompanied this previous article at China Daily about the abbot:

Anyway, the article continues:

Shi was admitted to the Shaolin Temple in 1981, when the temple was in a stark recession with only a dozen monks living on 28 mu (about 1.86 hectares) of farmland. He began to act as abbot in 1987 at 22, five years after the internationally acclaimed martial arts movie 'Shaolin Temple', starring Hong Kong movie king Jet Li, which put Shaolin Kungfu as well as the temple in the international spotlight.

So, he was admitted to the temple at age 16, and 6 years later, he had become the abbot. He seems like quite the ambitious fellow!

Ever since his inauguration, Shi has stressed the importance of cultural exchange with foreign countries, and has carried out a series of reforms to expand the influence of the temple, securing international renown for the temple and making it a pillar of the tourism industry in Dengfeng where it is located.

In spite of his success in gaining unprecedented attention for the Shaolin Temple, people are questioning whether the temple remains a holy place of Zen Buddhism or has become a commercialized tourist site, and whether the abbot is hero for his reforms or a temple CEO stinking with money. [...]

When Shi took over the temple as abbot 20 years ago, it was a little-known ancient temple. Today, the temple has under its flag a special liaison office, a temple affairs office, a website, and two commercially-run companies, and the abbot is often hailed as the 'CEO' of Shaolin Temple. [...]

I would hardly call Shaolin "a little-known ancient temple". It was certainly well-known 20 years ago among people of East Asian cultural background, as well as martial arts aficionados. And long before Jet Li's movie "Shaolin Temple", it was made famous in the West by the television series starring David Carradine.

Back in 1993, Shi Yongxin took a ham manufacturer to court for promoting the ham under the brand "Shaolin," which he claimed constituted a trademark infringement. It was the first case on brand rights in China's religious circles. [...]

Hmmm... ham. (Homer-Simpson-drool.)

Many suspect such commercial aspirations will disturb the tranquility of the temple. Shi, however, believed such establishment is a result of the interplay between business and brand, likening Shaolin Temple to the American Disneyland, which is a brand as well as a business.

But should the Shaolin Temple be likened to Disneyland, rather than, for example, St. Peter's Basilica? In other words, is it primarily a tourist attraction, or a religious site?

南無阿彌陀佛

Police recover stolen Buddha statue

2006-10-21T18:45:00.000-05:00

One of the Buddha statues stolen from the Patna museum (see this post) has been recovered. From BBC news:

Police in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh say they have recovered one of 18 priceless antique idols stolen from the Patna Museum in nearby Bihar state.

Police have arrested five suspects who were allegedly trying to sell the idol in the city of Benares.

One down, seventeen to go.

南無阿彌陀佛

Police task force to investigate smuggling of Buddhist relics

2006-10-21T18:23:00.000-05:00

The theft of Buddhist relics from India is becoming quite a problem. From Reuters:

More than 3,600 Buddhist antiques have been smuggled out of the eastern Indian state of Bihar in the past one year, forcing police to set up a special force to tackle the menace, officials said on Tuesday.

"We are deeply concerned about the situation and stopping smugglers is a major challenge," Arun Chandra Verma, a top police official told Reuters from the state capital, Patna.

Rare and priceless Buddhist idols and other relics have also gone missing from the neighbouring states of Jharkhand and Orissa in the past year, police and archaeologists said.

Verma said a special force -- led by 25 specially trained officers -- has been set up to bust smuggling rackets in the region.

Buddhist relics are in great demand in Japan, China and Thailand where Buddhism is deeply rooted, as well as in Europe where a single idol can easily fetch tens of thousands of dollars.

What part of the second precept taught by the Buddha don't the buyers of these relics understand? If Buddhism were really deeply rooted in those countries, there wouldn't be a demand in them for stolen goods.

南無阿彌陀佛

United States population tops 300 million

2006-10-17T20:37:00.000-05:00

From CNN:

The population of the United States surpassed the 300 million mark on Tuesday, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The U.S. is the only industrialized nation in the world whose population is rising substantially.

This news reminds me of a clip excerpted from a video called "Immigration by the Numbers" that I saw some months ago:

The speaker featured in the main part of the video clip is Roy Beck, the Executive Director of NumbersUSA. The population charts presented in the video, along with relevant data and background explanations, may be found on that organization's website. (Another excerpt of this video may be seen here.)

I am an immigrant myself, so some people find it strange that I support tighter restrictions on immigration. But as Roy Beck so powerfully demonstrates in the video, it isn't about the people but the numbers.

Buddhism teaches that compassion must be balanced with wisdom. We welcome immigrants from many places all over the world because we feel compassion for those who come from backgrounds less fortunate than our own. However, it would be foolish to take in so many immigrants that we end up harming ourselves, and in turn, reducing our ability to help those who are in need.

南無阿彌陀佛

Not quite a hundred thousand

2006-10-16T20:27:00.000-05:00

From the Ambedkar 2006 blog:

The much hyped Hyderabad conversions have proved a damp squib. The ceremony I attended today where the organisers had claimed 100,000 would convert attracted perhaps one percent of that number.

The BBC reports that:

Udit Raj, a Dalit leader, told the BBC that around 2,500 people converted to Christianity and Buddhism.

According to The Hindu:

Hundreds of Dalits on Saturday embraced Buddhism and Christianity at a programme here, where copies of the Gujarat Government's anti-conversion Bill were burnt.

The Ambedkar 2006 blog has a round-up of the media coverage in this post.

南無阿彌陀佛

Indians turn to Buddhism on the 50th anniversary of Dr. B. R. Ambedkar's conversion

2006-10-09T23:37:00.000-05:00

From the Ambedkar 2006 blog:

A hundred thousand people will become Buddhists in Hydrabad on 14th October in a huge meeting in the East Indian state of Andhra Pradesh [ఆంధ్ర ప్రదేశ, आंध्र प्रदेश], that will include up to 400,000 people. The chief organizer is KSR Murthy, a former member of India’s parliament, the Lok Sabha.

The event will take place at Dr. Ambedkar Statue on the Tank Bund: the spiritual center for Hydrabad’s Ambedkarites. Every year a very large gathering marks the anniversary of Dr Ambedkar’s conversion on 14 October; this year Murthi expects 3-400,000 to attend with 100,000 converting for the first time. Many similar ceremonies will take place around India on the same date, but this will probably be the largest conversion ceremony. The wave of conversions will culminate in a much larger ceremony in Bombay on 16 December.

Presiding over the ceremony will be Ven. Hsing Yun [星雲大師], President of the Buddha's Light organization, which is based in Taiwan and has 120 centers around the world. The presence of a senior figure in Chinese Buddhism is a significant development for the conversion movement, which has mainly made connections with the Theravadin Buddhism of South East Asia and Sri Lanka. Ven. Hsing Yun will administer the Buddhist refuges in Chinese (the ceremony through which one becomes a Buddhist) and the Ven. Vinayarakkhitha will translate them into Telugu, the local language. [...]

Similar events are also taking place in other states. The following article from The Hindu describes a similar event taking place in Karnataka [ಕನಾ೯ಟಕ, कर्नाटक]:

Nearly three lakh people are likely to embrace Buddhism at the "Dhamma Diksha" programme to be held in Gulbarga on October 14, International Buddhist Youth Organisation founder and president Bhante Bodhidhamma has said.

He told presspersons here on Monday that people from all faiths and from districts of north Karnataka would participate in the programme, where "diksha" would be provided to them. The "Dhamma Diksha" programme was being held at the MSK Mill Grounds in the city. [...]

He said he had taken up awareness programme on Buddhism in the State and south India since the last five years. "So far, nearly 30,000 people have embraced Buddhism in the State, and the one being held on October 14, would be the biggest," he claimed.

He said in these last five years, Hindus, Dalits and Christians had embraced Buddhism, but it was mostly the Dalits as they were the "most harassed". Moreover, some members of the Muslim community in Tamil Nadu had also expressed their desire to embrace Buddhism, he added.

He said, at present, there were nearly two crore Buddhists in the country, and of them nearly six lakh were in the State.

Note that a lâkh [लाख] is one hundred thousand, while a crore [करोड़] is ten million.

See also: "An Overview of India’s Buddhist Movement" from the Ambedkar 2006 blog.

南無阿彌陀佛

In Uttar Pradesh, Dalits turn from Brahmin priests to DIY Buddhism

2006-10-09T22:28:00.003-05:00

In the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh [उत्तर प्रदेश], Dalits are turning away from Brahmin priests to a do-it-yourself form of Buddhism inspired by Dr. B. R. Ambedkar. From Hindustan Times:

Deep in the heartland of Uttar Pradesh, the underclass is doing away with centuries of dependence on Brahmins. And priests are getting sacked.

In dozens of villages across the state, Dalits have stopped depending on Brahmin priests for weddings, funerals and other ceremonies. Instead, they have turned to a Buddhism-inspired book which has rituals that can be performed by any literate person. The wide use of the Bhim Patra, named after Bhimrao Ambedkar, is part of a quiet rebellion against upper-caste domination.

"We have nothing to do with the Brahmin pandits," said Chhabi Lal of Ghunghter village, 45 km from Lucknow. "They tell us, 'Your parents died; so to make their souls happy, give us a bed and a cow as gifts.' As if it is all going to reach them." [...]

I like Chhabi Lal's attitude.

Buddhism also teaches that one can obtain merit for one's departed ancestors by making offerings to the Sangha. The rationale, however, is quite different. The Sangha does not receive these gifts on behalf of the deceased. Instead, the act of giving accrues merit to the giver, which he or she then dedicates to his or her deceased relatives.

However, in many nominally Buddhist countries, popular religious belief and practice is probably not all that different from what Chhabi Lal described above.

So, weddings are now being performed before a statue of Ambedkar. The ceremony is inexpensive and takes only a couple of hours. The bride and the groom light candles, take wedding vows and garland each other.

The Bhim Patra also has instructions on funerals and other ceremonies.

Aside from any religious justifications, inexpensive weddings and funerals are always a good idea.

The following quote is quite interesting, consider the row stirred up in Gujarat when the government declared Buddhism to be a sect of Hinduism, which I wrote about in this post.

"We are all Hindus; we have not converted," said Mohan Lal Gautam, who sells books at a traffic intersection at Hazratgunj in Lucknow. "But we have stopped following the old rituals. We follow the Bhim Patra. There is no pandit, no worship of gods and goddesses, no dowry and no auspicious time for any wedding."

Amar Pal Bharti of Jyotiba Phule Nagar district said: "This is the result of our anger against the system. What do we have to do with the gods? Why worship someone we have not seen?"

Priests are feeling the heat. "Dalits have mostly stopped coming to us. They conduct their own ceremonies," said Jagdamba Prasad Bajpai, a priest at Deora village, Lucknow.

Anger at one religion is definitely not a good reason to convert to another. On the other hand, it's a classic case of capitalism at work — if you don't like one product, switch to another.

南無阿彌陀佛

Dalai Lama warns against stigmatising Muslims

2006-10-08T23:38:00.000-05:00

From The Bangkok Post:

The Dalai Lama called Sunday for the harmonious co-existence of religions and warned against the stigmatising of Muslims against a backdrop of increasing inter-religious tension.

It was wrong to brand all Muslims as militant because of the activities of individual radical Islamic terrorists, the Tibetan spiritual leader told the foreign press in New Delhi.

It was dangerous to give the impression that there was a culture clash between the West and Islam, the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate said, adding that there were also wicked people among Christians, Hindus and Buddhists.

There may very well be wicked people among the followers of other religions, but it is Islam that is currently going through a particularly bloody phase, and it doesn't do anyone any good to ignore that.

In any case, the Dalai Lama's message is especially timely in Thailand, where an insurgency in the predominantly Muslim south has killed around 1700 people since the beginning of 2004.

Just yesterday, two Buddhist civilians were murdered in cold blood by the insurgents. From The Times of India:

A Buddhist man and his son were shot dead on Saturday by suspected Islamic militants in Thailand's troubled south, police said.

A 52-year-old rubber plantation worker and his 20-year-old son were gunned down by insurgents on a motorcycle in the southern province of Songkhla, which is next to three restive provinces bordering Malaysia.

The latest attack came as Thailand's coup leader, General Sonthi Boonyaratglin, said he had agreed to hold talks with separatist insurgents in the Muslim-majority south.

The insurgents are not targetting just Buddhists. Muslims who are considered too sympathetic to the government have also been the victims of their violence. From Khaleej Times online:

Three Muslims and a Buddhist have been killed in separate shootings by suspected Islamic militants in Thailand’s troubled south, police said on Sunday.

A Muslim rubber plantation tapper was shot dead Sunday morning in Pattani, one of three southern provinces bordering Malaysia that has been plagued by separatist violence and other unrest. His death followed three killings late Saturday.

In Pattani, a Muslim policeman was shot dead as he travelled to work, while in Yala province a Muslim villager who worked as an informant for the military was shot dead in front of his house.

In Narathiwat province, a 65-year-old Buddhist villager was shot four times by two men on a motorcycle as he walked home. He died instantly.

While I agree that all Muslims should not be stigmatised because of the actions of a few, I also believe that only Muslims can put a stop to the violence perpetrated by their co-religionists.

南無阿彌陀佛

Buddha fetches record price at auction

2006-10-08T23:10:00.000-05:00

From the Xinhua news agency:

A gilt-bronze Buddha of the Ming Dynasty Saturday set a record high auction price of Chinese artworks in the world at Sotheby's Hong Kong Autumn Sales 2006.

The company said the Yongle Shakyamuni bought for 116.6 million HK dollars (14.99 million U.S. dollars) by an Asian art collector set a record high of auction price for Chinese works of arts in the world. [...]

The article is entitled "Chinese artwork sets record high auction price", and the article refers to the buyer as an "Asian art collector". (Does that mean an art collector who is Asian, or a collector of Asian art?)

But the Buddha statue isn't merely a work of art — it is also an object of religious devotion.

I suppose I've just answered the question I asked in this post about why someone would want to buy a Buddhist relic unless one were an admirer of the Buddha. It's because, to such a person, a Buddha statue is just "artwork".

南無阿彌陀佛

The Buddha's ash is scared

2006-10-08T22:46:00.000-05:00

Two topics about which I've posted previously, Buddhist tourism and the theft of Buddhist reclics from a Bihar musuem, converge in this post.

From The Times of India:

The Nitish government's move to put the scared [sic] ash of Lord Buddha on display has sparked a political row. RJD leader and Union rural development minister Raghuvansh Prasad Singh wants the holy urn to be moved to his constituency. "The urn was excavated from Vaishali," he averred. [...]

And why is the Lord Buddha's ash so scared? Because someone almost stole the urn recently.

Though Lord Buddha's "asthi kalash" has been kept under lock and keys for over three decades in Patna Museum, it has been displayed to foreign dignitaries time and again. Foreign tourists have to shell out $100 for a glimpse of the holy urn.

If I'm shelling out $100, I'd better get more than just a glimpse.

In recent times, a social organisation has taken up the cause to put the sacred urn on display at some public place. The chief minister has accepted the demand, sources said. The state government is even considering the demand of keeping the holy urn near the Patna Junction under tight security, they added. [...]

Hopefully, it'll be some place with tighter security than the Patna Museum.

南無阿彌陀佛

More on Bihar museum thefts

2006-10-08T22:16:00.000-05:00

More information on the thefts of Buddhist relics from a Bihar museum, which I've posted about previously. From ZeeNews:

A total of 18 Buddha statues and figurines of the 8th-9th century 'Pala Period' were on Tuesday found stolen from the Patna Museum, a treasure-trove of metal and stone sculptures of the Mauryan period.

However, the urn containing the relics of the Buddha are safe.

The heist came to light this morning when the museum staff opened the 'bronze gallery' housing 'Ashtdhatu' (alloy of eight metals) artefacts after it had closed on Sunday evening, Director of Museums of Bihar Sahdev Kumar said. [...]

Also from Tribune India:

In a daring late-night robbery on Monday in Patna Museum, located in the heart of the city, unidentified miscreants stole 18 statues of Buddhist and Jain eras worth crores of rupees.

The police said that the miscreants had broken the backside grill of the museum to steal these relics of immense historical importance.

[...]

The authorities of Patna Museum informed that the building was being guarded by four security personnel in the night which was much less than the required strength to man the precious exhibits within the museum.

The holy urn of Lord Buddha was also being kept inside the museum.

Sources in the police said the Chief Minister, Mr Nitish Kumar, already asked the higher-ups of the law enforcing authority to alert the administration in all the border districts with Nepal and Bangladesh in particular, as well as with West Bengal, UP and Jharkhand, to prevent any possible attempt to smuggle out these historical relics outside Bihar.

I can't fathom the mentality of buyers of stolen Buddhist relics. It's easy enough to understand the motive of the thieves — money. But presumably, one wouldn't buy a Buddhist relic unless one were, in some way, an admirer of the Buddha. And one who admires the Buddha should realize that the Buddha disapproves of theft.

南無阿彌陀佛

Chinese border guards fire on Tibetan refugees escaping to Nepal

2006-10-08T21:57:00.000-05:00

From AsiaNews:

Chinese guards stationed at the border between China and Nepal killed seven – not two as initially reported – people on 30 September when they opened fire on refugees fleeing to the mountains. A Buddhist nun and a child were among the victims.

Lama Tsering, a Buddhist monk from Kushinagar monastery in northern India, confirmed this to AsiaNews. He said: "In the monastery, we observed a day of prayer and fasting yesterday after it was confirmed that seven refugees were killed, including our sister and a child. According to initial reports, two people were killed but now we are certain that the death toll has risen."

The lama said: "The genocide by the Chinese Han soldiers against Tibetans is beyond description. They persecute us and have no scruples about killing us like flies just because of our Buddhist faith and deep reverence for the Dalai Lama."

The massacre was perpetrated when a group of about 70 refugees stumbled upon Chinese soldiers near Nangpa La pass, close to Mount Everest. As soon as the guards saw them, they opened fire and only 40 refugees managed to escape. [...]

The international community needs hold China accountable for its rampant abuses of human rights.

See also: 7名藏人中尼边境被中国边防人员打死 from The Epoch Times, and reports from BBC News and The Independent.

南無阿彌陀佛

Bihar's Buddhist sites draw tourists to India

2006-10-06T18:27:00.000-05:00

In this previous post, I commented on what a shame it was that Bihar [बिहार], the state in India with the most number of sites associated with early Buddhism, is also one of the poorest. This story from CNN says that the government is trying to change that, with help from Buddhist tourism:

While the state doesn't track religious tourists, officials say the Buddhist trail is increasingly hot. Since 2002, when the Mahabodhi Temple was named a World Heritage site, Bodh Gaya has seen a steady rise in visitors. As India's torrid summer gives way to the monsoon rains and cooler weather in October, they come flocking.

"In the fast-paced lives that people lead, increasingly — perhaps instinctively — there is a trend to discover our inner selves. And most of the tourists who come here are doing so in search of that inner peace," said Rama Shankar Tewari, Bihar's top tourism official.

Tourism authorities are trying to cash in with an ambitious tourist campaign, "Come to India: Walk with the Buddha." As part of that, roads are being re-paved, museums are being refurbished and public restrooms being built or repaired.

I love that slogan: "Come to India: Walk with the Buddha."

Along the Eightfold Path, of course.

南無阿彌陀佛

Buddha: the Movie (re-visited)

2006-10-06T17:20:00.000-05:00

An update on this previous post.

From India eNews:

Producer Bhupendra Kumar Modi organised a special luncheon party in Los Angeles to seek the blessings of the Dalai Lama before launching his $120 million epic feature film ‘Buddha’ to be directed by Shekhar Kapur. [...]

Hollywood luminaries Sharon Stone, Goldie Hawn, Laurence Fishburne, Robert Downey Jr, Chris McGurk, and Carol Mendelsohn also graced the occasion at the Peninsula Hotel, Beverley Hills.

I cringe every time Hollywood celebrities are mentioned in connection with Buddhism.

The English film, which will be made under the banner of Modi’s M Films, is a screen adaptation of Vietnamese Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh’s book ‘Old Path White Clouds’. It is to focus on the life and teachings of the Buddha.

Hanh, who was present at the luncheon, said his book was a ‘manual for the practice of peace’.

The writer of the article seems to have mistaken the last character of the name Thích Nhất Hạnh [釋一行] for the monk's surname. In East Asia, however, surnames are traditionally placed before the given name. Furthermore, Thích Nhất Hạnh is not the name he was given at birth, but is rather his Dharma name. In the case of Buddhist monastics in the Vietnamese tradition, the first character of the Dharma name is always Thích [釋], which comes from (the Sinicized form of) the Buddha's clan name Śâkya [釋迦, शाक्य]. This signifies that Buddhist monks and nuns are members of the Buddha's family.

To add further to the confusion, when East Asian names are Anglicized, the order of the components is not consistently preserved, i.e., it depends on the whims of the particular writer or editor. This has led to diplomatic faux-pas, but is also sometimes deliberately done for humour (such as referring to a certain unpopular dictator as Mr. Il).

Said Modi: ‘We intend ‘Buddha’ to be a major film across the globe. We’re confident this will be every bit the exciting epic Hollywood film we envisioned from the start.’

Just about the last thing a movie based on the life of the Buddha needs to be is an "exciting epic Hollywood film".

‘Buddha’ will be shot in the US, Japan, China, Thailand and India.

I'm curious to know why scenes are going to be shot in the US, Japan, and China. Will parts of the movie be taking place in these countries (i.e., Little Buddha style), or will these countries be standing in for parts of India? (I suppose the jungles of Thailand are similar enough to the jungles of India to serve as a substitute.)

‘It will make history as the most expensive film ever to be shot in India. Casting for the film will begin immediately and the producers are currently considering A-List stars for the lead roles. Principal photography is slated to begin in 2007 and the film should be ready for worldwide release in 2008,’ said Modi.

M Films has also roped in Hollywood Producer Michel Shane, executive producer of Hollywood blockbusters like ‘I Robot’ and ‘Catch Me If You Can’ for the film.

The fact that it will be "the most expensive film ever to be shot in India" doesn't seem to quite mesh with its "focus on the the life and teachings of the Buddha", who after all was a prince who gave up his wealth to become a beggar. But of course, the followers of the Buddha are famous for their lavish projects.

南無阿彌陀佛

China uses modern technology to protect Buddhist grottoes

2006-10-06T16:44:00.000-05:00

From Xinhua comes a story about China's efforts to protect its archeological and cultural heritage, in this case the Kizil Buddhist Grottoes:

China will invest 17 million yuan (about 2.12 million U.S. dollars) to install an electronic monitor system in Kizil Thousand-Buddha Grottoes in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

The system, which will cover every grotto with infrared detectors and cameras to protect the relics, will start to be built at the end of this year, according to experts with a grotto research institution in Xinjiang.

The Kizil grottoes, one of China's most valuable ones with 10,000-square meters of frescoes and colorful sculptures, were first built in the third century. They depict life in the region where Buddhism thrived after the third century.

The frescoes of the Kizil Grottoes have been seriously damaged by nature and people during the 20th century.

In 1961, the grottoes were listed by the Chinese government as a cultural relic [and] put under the state protection.

Important Buddhist heritage sites in China have suffered an enormous amount of damage at the hands of humans over the centuries, having been the victims of thieves, looters, treasure hunters, Muslim iconoclasts, European adventurer-archeologists, Japanese imperialists, and most recently, Chinese Communists. The Cultural Revolution, which saw a spree of destruction of the symbols of Buddhism in China, was only 40 years ago. So it's heartening to see that the Chinese government seems to have realized the importance of protecting the cultural heritage, that belongs to all humanity, which lies within its borders.

南無阿彌陀佛

Ameer Ali: Islam's prophet had character flaws

2006-10-05T22:09:00.000-05:00

Update: Ameer Ali has now denied making the comments attributed to him below. From The Australian:

Dr Ali has denied a report in The Australian newspaper last week which quoted him as saying that Muslims should not blindly follow the Koran and that Mohammed was not the perfect model and had human flaws.

But Dr Ali said the comments and a caption underneath a photograph saying "Muslim minds closed" were deeply offensive to all Muslims.

Federal parliamentary secretary for multicultural affairs, Andrew Robb, said Dr Ali should be congratulated for the comments.

But Dr Ali has been inundated with complaints from angry Muslims since the story appeared and Australia's most senior Islamic cleric called for him to be ostracised.

"I have received a number of emails from my fellow Muslims who have taken this opportunity to ridicule me and I do not deny their right to do so," Dr Ali said.

"The description projected by the article in The Australian totally misrepresents the noble character of the Holy Prophet who was sent as a model to humanity.

"Any part that I may have unwittingly played in this depiction is deeply regretted."

So, did the original article misquote him, or is he now backpedalling because of backlash from certain segments of the Muslim community?

In Australia, Ameer Ali, the chairman of Prime Minister John Howard's Muslim advisory board, says some things which sound like just plain old regular common sense to non-Muslims, but which could be dangerous for someone to say who is in a position of authority in the Muslim community. From The Australian:

A leading adviser on Islam, Ameer Ali, has attacked Muslims who "blindly" follow their faith and fail to question the veracity of the Koran, saying that even Mohammed had "flaws".

[...]

"The jihadists are interpreting the Koran literally and that's the problem ... Popular Muslims, because of their lack of knowledge about religion, are vulnerable to these sort of teachings."

This is a problem with all religions that are based on an allegedly holy text. The literalists always have the advantage over the non-literalists, in the sense that the onus falls on the latter, rather than the former, to justify their position.

Dr Ali, who is writing an academic paper entitled "Closing of the Muslim Mind", said even Mohammed was not the "perfect model" as most Muslims believed. Asked if the prophet had character flaws, he said: "Of course - you must look at him as a human being also."

[...]

I wonder if the title of his paper is a play on "The Closing of the American Mind" by Allan Bloom or "The Closing of the Islamic Mind" by David Brooks? And one mustn't forget "The Closing of the Western Mind by Charles Freeman.

(Maybe I should write "The Closing of the Buddhist Mind".)

His comments came as a French philosophy teacher was forced into hiding after describing the Mohammed as a ruthless warlord and mass murderer. Robert Redeker has been under police protection, moving between secret addresses, since threats against him appeared on Islamist websites last week. His home address was published with calls to murder.

Dr Ali criticised community members for playing victim when Muslims reacted violently against criticism, as after the publication of the Danish cartoons and the recent comments by the Pope.

He said it was time for Muslims to "confront this challenge head-on and look critically at their behaviour and mode of response to alleged blasphemy".

The Muslim world needs leaders like Dr. Ali to spread a radical idea which is commonly taken for granted in the West, namely, that the proper response to words – whether it's criticism or even (perceived) insult – is not violence or threats, but words in rebuttal.

Dr Ali called for Hezbollah to be removed from the Government's terror organisations list two months ago, saying they were freedom fighters defending their country against Israeli invasion.

I think most non-Muslims would disagree with this idea, but it needs to be discussed rather than dismissed.

The former president of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils said there were sections of the Koran that were relevant to "everybody at every time".

But he said people needed to read into the scripture and not merely accept it as the final word.

This will be a difficult mental shift to effect in the Muslim world, as it will require a moving away from the literal meaning of the text as well as going against centuries of tradition.

Dr Ali - who heads the Muslim Community Reference Group set up last year following the London bombings to improve communication channels between the federal Government and Australia's 300,000 Muslims - labelled the idea of going to hell for questioning the Koran a "load of rubbish". [...]

No sooner had Dr. Ali spoken the above words than he was roundly criticized by Sheik Taj al-Din al-Hilaly, leader of the Lakemba Mosque in Sydney and, according to this article, Australia's most senior Islamic cleric:

Sheik Taj al-Din al-Hilaly yesterday accused the chairman of John Howard's Islamic reference board, Ameer Ali, of selling out his religion to gain the support and financial backing of Muslim critics.

Dr Ali said in The Australian yesterday that Mohammed had flaws, and criticised Muslims who blindly follow the faith and failed to question the veracity of the Koran.

Sheik Hilaly, the head of Lakemba Mosque in Sydney's southwest, said Dr Ali's "defamatory" remarks were akin to those that in 1989 earned Rushdie a fatwa from Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini.

Is Sheik Hilaly calling for Ameer Ali to be killed? It looks that way to me.

While Sheik Hilaly backed Dr Ali's call for a reinterpretation of the Koran to fit modern times, he condemned his "dangerous" and "ignorant" comments about the prophet.

"We forbid such statements, from both Ameer Ali and anyone who has encouraged him to say what he said," Sheik Hilaly said in an interview conducted in Arabic.

"We refuse to have him stand with us at any religious ceremony from now on, unless he revokes what he said about the faith and the prophet."

If the matter weren't so serious, this threat would be humourous. What is this, elementary school? "If you don't do as we say, you can't sit at the lunch table with us!"

But the Howard Government yesterday strongly backed Dr Ali's comments, with Parliamentary Secretary for Immigration Andrew Robb saying Dr Ali should be congratulated.

"I do think that Ameer Ali seems to be encouraging the teaching and the practice of Islam in an Australian context, and I think that's to be warmly applauded," Mr Robb said.

"I think it's critical that Islam is presented to Australian Muslims in an Australian context."

Of all the Western nations (yes, I know Australia is in Asia), Australia seems to be the most unabashedly unashamed of Western culture and civilization. I think the other Western nations have a lot to learn from that.

Naturally, The Australian applauds Ameer Ali in its editorial:

Islamic scholar Ameer Ali has shown great courage and done Australia a big favour in opening debate on how best to interpret Muslim faith in the modern world. The immediate reaction of Australia's Islamic leaders to Dr Ali's controversial comments is as predictable as it is disappointing.

[...]

Australia's Mufti, Taj Din al-Hilali, immediately criticised Dr Ali for daring to speak out, suggesting that he find another occupation. Sheik Hilali said anyone who said the prophet was human and had flaws could be renounced from the faith. He challenged Dr Ali to withdraw his remarks or be barred from standing at any religious ceremony. Sheik Hilali said Dr Ali's comments were worse than those by the Pope in his Regensburg lecture - in which Benedict XVI quoted a medieval text to discuss violence, religious conversion and reason - because they were his own. Other Muslim leaders have gone further. Muslim Youth leader Moustapha Kara-Ali argued that the scriptures should be translated literally and that Dr Ali's comments were like the publication of the Danish cartoons depicting Mohammed, and the Pope's Regensburg comments.

[...]

Dr Ali can expect to pay a price for his courage. Hardliners will attempt to undermine his credibility, accusing him of selling out his religious conviction to curry favour with the Government. Far from it, Dr Ali is to be congratulated for his courage in promoting honest discussion that is in the interests of Islam, its followers and the Australian community.

Amen to that.

南無阿彌陀佛

Naser Khader: there are now those with a vested interest in making matters worse

2006-10-05T22:04:00.000-05:00

Naser Khader, a Syrian-born member of the Parliament of Denmark and a founder of Demokratiske Muslimer, points out that Muslims are being deliberately provoked and manipulated into causing trouble for the West, in this article from the National Review Online (via Tao of Defiance):

As for Khader, the cartoons hadn’t bothered him too much (“if you don’t like them, don’t buy the newspaper”). There had been “such cartoons before,” and there hadn’t been any trouble. The real significance of Jyllands-Posten’s impious portfolio was that it had appeared “at the right time, and in the right place” to be exploited by people who wanted to foment “confrontation,” which could be milked for “money and support.”

To grasp exactly why Khader thinks that “money and support” might be required, and by whom, is to glimpse a far darker future than conventional pessismism about Europe would have it. Given profound cultural differences, made even more difficult by continued mass immigration, integrating the continent’s new Muslims minorities was never going to be easy, but as Khader sees it there are now those with a vested interest in making matters worse. He’s not a believer in the much-advertised clash of civilizations, an idea with something of a bleak, tectonic inevitability to it, but in a different sort of conflict altogether: something more controlled, planned, and directed.

It’s a conflict being promoted, Khader believes, by Islamists (“well organized,” he argues, and established worldwide) set on “controlling Muslim society in the West.” After that, the next objective will be to establish regimes more to their liking in the Muslim heartland. And then? “A global jihad. That’s why we have to stop them now.” [...]

I had made the same observation in a previous post about the reaction to the Pope's lecture at the University of Regensburg:

But I suspect that is precisely what these provocateur Muslim clerics want. [...] The political clout and personal prestige of many Muslim clerics depend precisely on maintaining the ignorance of their followers and limiting their followers' exposure to ways of thought not sanctioned by them. If the common Muslims could examine their situation dispassionately, they would realize that they are being manipulated into acting in a way that is beneficial to their leaders but harmful to themselves. Thus the Muslim clerics use every opportunity and find any excuse that they can to inflame the masses.

It is very clear that the protests against the Pope, as well as earlier protests against Danish cartoons and anything else that offends Islamic sensibilities (which seems to be pretty much everything), are staged. The theatrics are carefully managed to create the impression that the clerics are more powerful and influential than they really are. [...]

As more and more people, Muslim and non-Muslim, realize this, it will become increasingly difficult for the provocateur clerics to maintain their grip on power.

南無阿彌陀佛

Wafa Sultan: "first cracks in the walls of our prison"

2006-10-05T21:48:00.000-05:00

Dr. Wafa Sultan [وفاء سلطان], an ex-Muslim who now proclaims herself a humanist, was interviewed on Danish television recently (via Little Green Footballs):

Dr. Sultan became notorious in the West earlier this year when she appeared on Al-Jazeera and debated Dr. Ibrahim al-Khouli, a lecturer at Al-Azhar University in Cairo (for background, see here).

Her message in the above interview was directed at non-Muslims rather than at Muslims, and it urged non-Muslims not to be afraid to question or to challenge Islam. She strongly emphasized that constant and vehement criticism by non-Muslims will pressure Muslims into examining their religion, and is needed to help Muslims improve and transform it.

One of the main problems that an ex-Muslim faces when trying to explain her rejection of Islam to Muslims is that she is often immediately dismissed as a lackey of the West, someone who has sold out her own religion and culture and is playing right into the hands of Western imperialists. This is one of the major differences between Islam today and Christianity at the time of the Protestant Reformation. Protestants – and later, atheists, secularists, and humanists – may have been accused of many things, but generally they did not also carry the stigma of being associated with an outside political enemy who is perceived to have the intention of weakening Christianity in order to facilitate foreign imperialism over Christian countries. (The exception, and it is a major one, is Communism. For example, American Christians reacted to this atheistic ideology by having the words "under God" added to the Pledge of Allegiance.) So an ex-Muslim like Wafa Sultan will have an extremely hard time reaching the typical Muslim in the Islamic world with her message.

(For a discussion of the same problem facing reformist Muslims, see this post "The Reformist Dilemma & Neo-Imperialism" at Eteraz [اعتراض]; see also this post at Winds of Change.)

南無阿彌陀佛

Reformist Muslims and ex-Muslim transformers of Islam

2006-10-05T21:27:00.000-05:00

In my very first post, I stated that the purpose of this journal was as a place to express my thoughts on religion and society. Before becoming a Buddhist, I had studied the major world religions intensively (and I continue to do so), and so my perspective on these religions is neither like that of the believer nor like that of the typical outsider.

In particular, I had studied Islam as a "prospective convert" long before this religion became a hot-button issue in modern international politics. Of course, nowadays there is no shortage of commentators on Islam. But they fall mostly into a few major camps, none of which I fall into. So I hope that I can contribute something to the discourse. Unfortunately, I am very busy and often don't have the time to write the essays that I want to write at the pace that I want.

Today I saw three items that are related by a common theme, and I thought that I should at least post about them, so that I can comment on them later. And that theme is (as the title of this post says) "reformist Muslims and ex-Muslim transformers of Islam". It is an undeniable fact that the interaction between modernity and Islam has caused massive social upheavals throughout the Muslim world. Some Muslims have reacted to the intrusion of modernity by retreating into religious fanaticism and obscurantism, while others aspire to reform Islam and reconcile it to modern standards of rationalism and norms of human rights, while yet others have rejected the religion entirely.

It was only several hundred years ago that factions within Christianity underwent a similar struggle, resulting in the loss of political power for the religious fanatics and a flowering of both reformist Christian movements and skeptical thought. As someone who is the product of these historical currents, I naturally wish that the reformist Muslims and ex-Muslims would succeed in the end against their fanatical adversaries. However, there are many differences between Islam and Christianity, as well as between the situation of today's Muslims compared with yesteryear's Christians, so that one cannot draw on the Christian template for a "Reformation" of Islam. The outcome of the struggle for "the soul of Islam" is as yet unclear.

The posts:

南無阿彌陀佛

Atrocious "Animal Olympics" in China

2006-10-05T01:11:00.000-05:00

From UK's Daily Mail:

A black bear perches precariously on a scooter and is forced to drive a circus performer across a tightrope.

This shocking image is just the latest picture to emerge from the barbaric Animal Olympic Games in China, a country with a shameful animal rights record.

The event has provoked outrage and serious concerns among animal rights groups around the world including The Captive Animals' Protection Society.

Craig Redmond, UK-based campaigns manager, said: "The things these animals are being made to do are not natural acts, and there will no doubt be cruelty involved in making them perform these tricks."

Shirley Galligan from the Born Free foundation added: "This is degrading for the animals, insulting to our intelligence and a disaster for any possible chance of increasing respect for the wild animals we share the world with. The Shanghai Animal Olympics is about domination and manipulation."

Previous pictures from the 'games' have included kangaroos being forced to take part in boxing matches with their supposed keepers and a monkey cycling while tied by the collar to the children's bike.

Other events have included a sea lion high jump and a tug of war between an elephant and members of the audience, with more than 300 animals taking part.

[...]

The protests from animal rights groups has been felt by the Chinese Government, which is keen to improve its reputation among the international community in terms of both animal and human rights. This year's Olympics could therefore be the last.

The article links to a picture gallery and to other articles about animal abuse for entertainment in China. If decency and compassion don't move the Chinese government to outlaw these "games", or keep the Chinese people from patronising them, perhaps shame before the international community will cause them to reconsider.

南無阿彌陀佛

Nepalese Hindus and Buddhists protest animal sacrifice

2006-10-03T20:37:00.000-05:00

From Asia News:

A reform-minded group of Hindus and Buddhists has called on the Nepali government and their respective religious leaders to ban the annual animal sacrifice in honour of the goddess Durga, which can entail the butchering of up to two million animals in three days.

Dasai celebrations to honour the goddess, one of the most loved divinities in the Hindu pantheon, takes place every year for ten days. In the last three days, about two million animals — chickens, pigeons, geese and even buffaloes — are sacrificed. Both Hindus and followers of Tantric Buddhism practice this age-old ritual.

Until last April’s popular revolts against King Gyanendra, which turned the hitherto ‘Hindu’ kingdom into a secular state, the ritual was untouchable. Now the presence of a democratic government has encouraged many reform-oriented Hindu and even Buddhist groups to call for a ban on the ritual, which they see as “diabolic”. [...]

“Some Nepalese Buddhist practice this sacrifice,” added Bhante Satyabrata, a Buddhist monk from Lumbini (Buddha’s birthplace). “This is horrible. Lord Buddha would never have allowed such a monstrous act.”

Anyone with the slightest knowledge of the Buddha's teachings would know that animal sacrifice is completely contrary to the Dharma. (For example, see this essay by Professor Mahinda Palihawadana, President of the Sri Lanka Vegetarian Society.) Ritual slaughter on this grand scale is quite simply a massive violation of the first precept given by the Buddha.

Whenever I read or hear about a large-scale ceremonial animal sacrifice, I am reminded of the following passage from Sir Edwin Arnold's poem The Light of Asia:

     The King stood in his hall of offering.
On either hand, the white-robed Brahmans ranged
Muttered their mantras, feeding still the fire
Which roared upon the midmost altar.  There
From scented woods flickered bright tongues of flame,
Hissing and curling as they licked the gifts
Of ghee and spices and the soma juice,
The joy of Iudra.  Round about the pile
A slow, thick, scarlet streamlet smoked and ran,
Sucked by the sand, but ever rolling down,
The blood of bleating victims.  One such lay,
A spotted goat, long-horned, its head bound back
With munja grass; at its stretched throat the knife
Pressed by a priest, who murmured: "This, dread gods,
Of many yajnas cometh as the crown
From Bimbasara: take ye joy to see
The spirted blood, and pleasure in the scent
Of rich flesh roasting 'mid the fragrant flames;
Let the King's sins be laid upon this goat,
And let the fire consume them burning it,
For now I strike."

                      But Buddha softly said,
"Let him not strike, great King!" and therewith loosed
The victim's bonds, none staying him, so great
His presence was.  [...]

The Nepalese Buddhists who practise animal sacrifice need to be educated about their religious heritage, which rejects precisely this kind of ritual.

南無阿彌陀佛

Meditation a popular way to improve health

2006-10-03T19:18:00.000-05:00

From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch comes a story about how meditation is catching on among people who want to focus their minds and improve their health:

Meditation, the practice of controlling your focus to feel better, has been a mystic art since before recorded history. Every culture in the world has practiced some form of meditation and still does.

But in the past 40 years, meditation has inched its way into Western mainstream health care, and for good reason.

Research shows that it counteracts chronic stress, a condition many scientists believe underlies most illnesses. Federally supported studies are looking into meditation as a means to improve heart health, relieve symptoms of diseases and improve the brain's long- and short-term health. [...]

The article focuses primarily on the mental and physical effects of meditation, while ignoring its spiritual or religious aspects, which is understandable given the audience. However, in the Buddhist tradition, one of the foundations of meditative training is morality, from which it cannot be separated. Buddhist teachings maintain that one does not get the full benefit of meditation without also engaging in moral training, such as upholding a set of precepts.

The article describes meditation as "the practice of controlling your focus to feel better", which is certainly not the goal of meditation in Buddhism at all, although it is one of its universally recognized side-effects.

The most telling research comes from the Keck Laboratory for Functional Brain Imaging and Behavior in Wisconsin. A team led by neuroscientist Richard Davidson performed brain scans on a master meditator and found that his brain activity surpassed that of a professional athlete during intense competition.

While scientists still don't know exactly how meditation works, the research shows that it does work and can change the brain for the better.

For one thing, meditation appears to generate a biochemical anti-stress reaction that counteracts the biochemical stress reaction.

During meditation, the body produces nitric oxide, the chemical used by pharmaceutical companies to lower blood pressure. (That's not to be confused with nitrous oxide, which dentists use as an anesthetic or revelers use to liven up parties.) Nitric oxide lowers blood pressure by dilating blood vessels to take pressure off the heart.

"That's been shown... that when you meditate, or do yoga or tai chi or other methods, they actually reduce the blood pressure," says Jeffrey Dusek, a psychobiologist who teaches at Harvard Medical School and an associate research director at the Mind/Body Institute in Chestnut Hill, Mass.

It would be great if Buddhist meditative practice can be distilled into a secular form that helps a large number of people. But meditation is by its very nature introspective, so I'm skeptical that it can be turned into something like a dieting plan that a doctor can prescribe for a patient.

南無阿彌陀佛

Buddhist orphanage asked to remove Buddha statues from dorms

2006-10-03T17:31:00.001-05:00

From Ecumenical News International via The Buddhist Channel:

Malawi's Human Rights Commission has ordered a Taiwanese-funded orphanage to remove statues of Buddha from all dormitories, saying their presence amounts to brainwashing children into joining Buddhism against their will.

The Amitofo Care Centre near Blantyre opened three years ago and was touted as the biggest orphanage in southern Africa operated by followers of Buddhism. The centre has statues of Buddha, the founder of Buddhism, in all the dormitories and an elaborate temple situated within the orphanage. [...]

Someone who isn't familiar with the ubiquity of statuary in Chinese Buddhist culture might get the mistaken impression that this was unusual, but in fact it's quite common in a "Buddhist building" to find Buddha statues outside of the main temple or shrine, such as in the library or in the dining hall. Many Chinese restaurants, for example, have a Buddha statue near the entrance even if their proprietors aren't religious. (One would not expect, for example, a prominently displayed crucifix in most Italian restaurants.) On the other hand, how these statues are interpreted by the local Malawi culture must be taken into account by the orphanage.

Commissioner John Kapito said the body acted on research at the centre stemming from concerns expressed by relatives of orphans about the statues in the dormitories and that the children may be forced to become followers of Buddhism. Relatives, he said, had also complained that children there are not allowed to eat meat and were only occasionally allowed to visit their relatives.

"This contravenes Section 23 of the Malawi Constitution, which stipulates on how best children and orphans ought to be treated," said Kapito during the orphanage's open day. "This exposure to statues can easily influence them into joining the religion unwillingly since they cannot decide their future on their own."

At the same function Malawi's deputy information minister, John Bande, hailed the Buddhist community for constructing an imposing and beautiful orphanage but asked officials at the orphanage to consider allowing children to eat meat.

I wonder if Catholic orphanages in Malawi, for example, are allowed to display crucifixes or statues of the Virgin Mary? Are Christian orphanages allowed to teach from the Bible? As long as the laws are fair and are designed with the protection of the orphans (rather than political intentions) in mind, there should be no problem for the Buddhist orphanage to follow them.

The orphanage would probably be less willing to compromise on the meat-eating though, since the Buddhist monastics who run it are neither allowed to eat meat nor to prepare meals containing meat for others. I suppose there's no comparison with the other major religions in this case, since they only require abstinence from certain kinds of meat or on certain days.

Responding to concerns raised by the two government officials, the centre's director, Master Hui Li, said that while the centre was a Buddhist organization, no child was ever forced into becoming a follower of Buddhism. He said, however, that the centre emphasises to children the importance of respecting the religion which he said, preaches peace. He also called for the understanding of the government regarding the statues in the dormitories saying they were icons of peace and children should be guided and learn from them.

"We will introduce the orphans to Buddhism but they will make their own choices on which religion they want to join when they grow up," Li had said during the opening ceremony of the orphanage two years ago, stressing that matters of religion, race and culture are trivial for those doing charity work. He said his foundation was ready to help any human being.

Children raised by an orphanage that is run by members of a religious organization will likely gravitate towards that religion, out of gratitude if not anything else. It is, of course, extremely difficult to separate charity work from what might be perceived as proselytization, a problem which Christian groups have had to deal with for some time.

南無阿彌陀佛

Congressional Gold Medal for the Dalai Lama

2006-10-01T23:21:00.000-05:00

From The Sydney Morning Herald:

President George W. Bush signed into law Wednesday a bill to present to the Dalai Lama a Congressional Gold Medal, the highest honour bestowed by the U.S. Congress.

The decision to honour the leader of Tibetan Buddhism, who is still widely revered in the mountainous region ruled by China, caused outrage in Beijing when the House of Representatives passed the measure two weeks ago.

At the time, Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang denounced the decision, which he said "seriously interferes with China's internal affairs and damages China-U.S. relations." [...]

Other non-Americans who have been awarded the Congressional medal include Britain's World War II prime minister, Winston Churchill; Albanian-born humanitarian Mother Teresa; and Nelson Mandela, the first president of post-apartheid South Africa.

When the Dalai Lama is presented with the medal, he and Nelson Mandela will be the only two people who are both Congressional Gold Medal recipients and honourary Canadian citizens.

南無阿彌陀佛

Buddha statues stolen from Bihar museum

2006-10-01T22:33:00.000-05:00

From BBC news:

India has alerted Interpol after 18 priceless antique Buddha statues were stolen from a Bihar museum, police say.

Police say robbers broke in through a first-floor window and stole the 9th and 10th century works [on] the weekend.

The museum director called the theft of the bronze statues, insured for millions of dollars, "a major loss". [...]

Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar convened an emergency meeting of police and security officials on Tuesday night.

Major domestic and international airports have been put on alert across India.

Forensic experts are examining fingerprints at the gallery and police say they suspect the involvement of a major international criminal gang.

Bihar has a reputation [as] India's poorest and most lawless state.

Unfortunately, the theft means that the items will probably be sold to a private collector and never be displayed in public again.

By the way, Bihar [बिहार] comes from the Sanskrit vihara [विहार] meaning "dwelling". The word is used to denote the dwelling places of Buddhist monastics, which used to dot the landscape. It was a major centre of Buddhism in ancient times and contains both Bodhgayâ [बोधगया] and Nâlandâ [नालन्दा] within its borders. It is a shame that it is one of India's poorest states today.

南無阿彌陀佛

The Buddha in Hinduism and Hindu gods in Buddhism

2006-09-23T12:41:00.000-05:00

In a previous post, I wrote about how lawmakers in Gujarat have defined Buddhism into a sect of Hinduism. This is not an unusual view among Hindus, many of whom see the Buddha as a Hindu reformer rather than as the founder of a distinct creed. The religions and philosophies indigenous to India have traditionally been classified into two categories: those that accept the authority of the Vedas (called âstik [आस्तिक]), and those that reject it (called nâstik [नास्तिक]). According to this scheme, Buddhism is a nâstik — but nevertheless Hindu — philosophy.

Naturally, many Buddhists disagree with the classification of Buddhism as a sect of Hinduism and consider Buddhism to be a separate religion. A part of the problem stems from the rather ambiguous definition of the word "Hindu". The religious beliefs and practices that were prevalent in India in the Buddha's time are not quite the same as those of Hindus today. There are certainly many continuities, but Hinduism has also been shaped since the Buddha's time by interactions with, and responses to challenges posed by, first Buddhism itself, and later, Islam, Christianity, Communism, and many other religions and philosophies. To draw an analogy, Jesus Christ was a Jew, but no modern form of Judaism resembles the Hellenized Judaism practised in the Roman Empire during Jesus' time. Both Judaism and Christianity have evolved since then, and though Christianity had its beginnings as a Jewish sect, it would be strange today to call Christianity a branch of Judaism or to say that Christians are Jews. Similarly, it is jarring to Buddhists to hear Buddhism being referred to as "a part of Hinduism".

However, the analogy cannot be taken too far. Whereas Judaism has ignored Jesus (or rejected him, if one takes the Christian point of view), Hinduism has assimilated the Buddha into its pantheon by identifying him an avatar of the god Vishnu. This identification was probably done at a relatively late date, since some lists of Vishnu's avatars have Balarama instead of the Buddha. It seems that the Buddha was added to the list of Vishnu's avatars in northern India, where Buddhism was popular, but this did not take place in the south. (I have met Hindus from south India who did not include the Buddha in the list of Vishnu avatars.)

The inclusion of the Buddha as one of Vishnu's avatars is something of a backhanded compliment. According to certain Hindu texts, Vishnu incarnated himself as the Buddha in order to mislead demons and miscreants into rejecting the Vedas, thereby damning themselves. Furthermore, Kalki [कल्कि], the future avatar of Vishnu, is supposed to vanquish the Buddhists when he appears. These stories were probably composed at a time when the Hindu clerics felt threatened by the popularity of Buddhism and sought to undermine it. Needless to say, Buddhists do not accept their authenticity. (I had alluded to the Hindu belief that the Buddha is an avatar of Vishnu in this previous post about plans to make a movie based on the life of the Buddha.)

Buddhism, like Hinduism, is assimilative when it comes to other religions. Whenever Buddhism was introduced into a region, it typically did not eliminate the local gods but rather absorbed them into its pantheon. Thus, Buddhist temples in India and in South East Asian countries heavily influenced by Indian culture typically have shrines dedicated to the Hindu gods. However, these gods have been subjugated to Buddhism. In Buddhist mythology, it is Vishnu who is subservient to the Buddha, rather than the other way around. In the Himalayas and in East Asia, the staggering complexity of the Mahayana pantheon is due to Buddhism's absorption of the mythologies of the cultures it encountered as it traversed the Silk Road from India to China (and on to Korean and Japan). Many of these cultures no longer exist, and the only testament that they once existed is the inclusion of their names or those of their deities in the long lists of beings who paid homage to the Buddha in some sutra or the other.

An example of a Buddhist story about a Hindu god which Hindus would probably find insulting is this tale, from "The Iconography of Nepalese Buddhism" by Min Bahadur Shakya, explaining the origin of the "Hariharihariharivahan Lokeshvara" image:

One day while [Takshaka] was leisurely sun basking in a nearby river, a hungry Garuda saw him there. He alighted down and tried to devour Takshaka. Since Takshaka was the king of Nagas, he had great strength. They began to engage in a ferocious battle. He soon began to drag Garuda into river and intended to kill him. Garuda, finding himself about to be killed, invoked his protector Vishnu who came there immediately to save him. As Vishnu was about to cut off the head of Takshaka with his Sudarsanacakra, i.e., whirling disc, Takshaka, realizing his upcoming defeat, prayed for Avalokiteshvara for his protection. Avalokiteshvara arrived there instantly flying over his lion vehicle. Vishnu was ashamed to find Avalokiteshvara, Lord of compassion in front of him and instantly bowed before him throwing away his Sudrashan Chakra and paid homage.

Thereafter Takshaka and Garuda too retreated from the battle and joined to the worship of Avalokiteshvara. After that Vishnu offered himself to Avalokiteshvara to be his vehicle. In the mean time, the lion also offered himself to be the vehicle of Garuda, in turn. Nagaraja Takshaka also offered to be the vehicle of the lion. Thus this composite image of Avalokiteshvara on Vishnu, and on Garuda, then on the lion, all then on Takshaka. The original image of this unique Lokeshvara is at Changu Narayan, a hill above Sodhani Tirtha, near Bhaktapur.

Religious competition must have been especially fierce in Nepal!

In all fairness, Hindus and Buddhists typically respect each others' deities and religious figures. When religions interact, a certain amount of syncretism naturally occurs, as each side tries to interpret the other's beliefs within its own framework. Over time, this may result in the assimilation and absorption of some aspects of one religion by the other. Occasionally, however, people try to play games of religious one-upsmanship, resulting in the Buddha becoming an avatar of Vishnu and Vishnu becoming the mount of Avalokiteśvara Bodhisattva.

南無阿彌陀佛

Pope follows my advice, gets himself into trouble

2006-09-19T17:31:00.000-05:00

I had actually written this previous post on interfaith dialogue before Pope Benedict XVI gave his lecture at the University of Regensburg. By now, everyone who has access to television and the internet is aware of the reaction around the Muslim world.

(Some blog round-ups: here and here. The transcript of the Pope's lecture may be found in a number of places: here, here, here, here, and here.)

I don't want to quote the controversial passage out of context, which is part of a much longer argument about the roles of faith and reason and their relationship to one another in Christianity. The Pope's controversial comment occurs in the context of his speaking about the place of theological studies in a university – and a society – dominated by skepticism and atheism:

That even in the face of such radical scepticism it is still necessary and reasonable to raise the question of God through the use of reason, and to do so in the context of the tradition of the Christian faith: this, within the university as a whole, was accepted without question.

I was reminded of all this recently, when I read the edition by Professor Theodore Khoury (Münster) of part of the dialogue carried on - perhaps in 1391 in the winter barracks near Ankara - by the erudite Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an educated Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam, and the truth of both. It was probably the emperor himself who set down this dialogue, during the siege of Constantinople between 1394 and 1402; and this would explain why his arguments are given in greater detail than the responses of the learned Persian. The dialogue ranges widely over the structures of faith contained in the Bible and in the Qur'an, and deals especially with the image of God and of man, while necessarily returning repeatedly to the relationship of the three Laws: the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Qur'an. In this lecture I would like to discuss only one point - itself rather marginal to the dialogue itself - which, in the context of the issue of faith and reason, I found interesting and which can serve as the starting-point for my reflections on this issue.

In the seventh conversation (διάλεξις [diálesis] - controversy) edited by Professor Khoury, the emperor touches on the theme of the jihad (holy war). The emperor must have known that surah 2, 256 reads: There is no compulsion in religion. It is one of the suras of the early period, when Mohammed was still powerless and under threat. But naturally the emperor also knew the instructions, developed later and recorded in the Qur’an, concerning holy war. Without decending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the “Book” and the “infidels”, he turns to his interlocutor somewhat brusquely with the central question on the relationship between religion and violence in general, in these words: "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." The emperor goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. God is not pleased by blood, and not acting reasonably (σὺν λόγω [syn logo]) is contrary to God's nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats... To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death....

The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature. The editor, Theodore Khoury, observes: For the emperor, as a Byzantine shaped by Greek philosophy, this statement is self-evident. But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality. Here Khoury quotes a work of the noted French Islamist R. Arnaldez, who points out that Ibn Hazm went so far as to state that God is not bound even by his own word, and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us. Were it God's will, we would even have to practise idolatry.

By citing Ibn Hazm [ابن حزم] through Arnaldez through Khoury, the Pope's statement here makes it appear as if the Islamic doctrine that Allah is "not bound even by his own word" were some kind of doctrinal development or innovation on the part of Ibn Hazm. But by Ibn Hazm's time, the exegetical concept of al-nâsikh wa al-mansûkh [الناسخ و المنسوخ] or "abrogation", that Allah can annul his revelations or replace them at a later time, had already been established. Support for this belief can be found in the Qur'an (e.g., verses 2:106; 13:39; 16:101; 17:86; 87:6-7). It remains a mainstream Islamic belief today, even if it is debated or even repudiated among some Muslims.

Similarly, there is nothing surprising from the point of view of Islamic doctrine about the statement that "Were it God's will, we would even have to practise idolatry." The Qur'an asserts in a number of places that it is by Allah's will that unbelievers do not believe (e.g., verses 2:253; 4:88; 7:100-102,186; 6:25,110-111; 10:99; 11:34; 17:46,97).

The Pope continues:

As far as understanding of God and thus the concrete practice of religion is concerned, we find ourselves faced with a dilemma which nowadays challenges us directly. Is the conviction that acting unreasonably contradicts God's nature merely a Greek idea, or is it always and intrinsically true? I believe that here we can see the profound harmony between what is Greek in the best sense of the word and the biblical understanding of faith in God. Modifying the first verse of the Book of Genesis, John began the prologue of his Gospel with the words: In the beginning was the λόγoς [logos]. This is the very word used by the emperor: God acts, σὺν λόγω [syn logo], with logos. Logos means both reason and word - a reason which is creative and capable of self-communication, precisely as reason. John thus spoke the final word on the biblical concept of God, and in this word all the often toilsome and tortuous threads of biblical faith find their culmination and synthesis. In the beginning was the logos, and the logos is God, says the Evangelist.

[...]

Of course, a non-Christian would object at this point that this very definition of reason, which identifies reason itself with the Christian God, is itself unreasonable. The Pope claims that Christianity is based on reason because the Bible identifies the logos with God, but he has provided no justification for accepting the Bible as an authority on reason in the first place. (Granted, the lecture may have been directed to an implicitly Christian audience.) Furthermore, it's clear that he recognizes that the source of rationalist thought in Catholicism stems not from the Bible, but from Greek philosophy. In that case, why should a rational person base his life on Catholic teachings, rather than directly on Greek rationalist philosophy or indeed on any philosophy that holds reason in high esteem?

The lecture concludes with a criticism of what the Pope perceives to be the exclusion of faith from rational inquiry in the universities. I find the following to be particularly pertinent:

In the Western world it is widely held that only positivistic reason and the forms of philosophy based on it are universally valid. Yet the world's profoundly religious cultures see this exclusion of the divine from the universality of reason as an attack on their most profound convictions. A reason which is deaf to the divine and which relegates religion into the realm of subcultures is incapable of entering into the dialogue of cultures.

I suspect that the far majority of the Muslims who have been calling for the Pope to apologize have not actually read a transcript of his lecture. If would they just do that, they would probably find much to agree with in his criticism of the skeptical and atheistic attitudes found in many universities in the Western world.

I don't believe that universities in the West are unreasonably or deliberately exclusionary towards faith or belief in God. The purpose of a university is the pursuit of truth, but many of the truth-claims of religions can neither be verified nor falsified, and so cannot be investigated scientifically in the same way that one can investigate, for example, hypotheses about physics or biology. Of course, religious truth-claims can and should be taught and discussed within the appropriate contexts, such as in classes on philosophy or religious studies. Also, not all religious claims are equally (in)scrutable by science: one can study certain limited aspects of religious claims about the effects of meditation on human consciousness in a rigorously scientific manner, but it's difficult to see how one can do the same with topics which even Catholics have labeled mysteries.

Furthermore, if scientists and scholars should make discoveries that contradict Christianity or cast Catholic doctrines into doubt, would the Pope be willing to give up his beliefs? In other words, is his attitude towards the relationship between faith and reason like that of the Dalai Lama, who wrote the following in "The Universe in a Single Atom"?

My confidence in venturing into science lies in my basic belief that as in science so in Buddhism, understanding the nature of reality is pursued by means of critical investigation: if scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims.

Despite disagreeing with the Pope on some of the points he raised in his lecture, I applaud him for his honesty and frankness in stating his beliefs. I don't see anything in his lecture that would warrant an apology. He stated that religious violence is unreasonable, and asserted that Christianity synthesized reason and faith in a way that (Ibn Hazm's) Islam did not, and he also took some jabs at Protestantism and atheism. In other words, the Pope was saying that Catholicism is better than other religions. But of course the Pope believes that Catholicism is better than other religions — he's the Pope, for Pete's sake!

The controversial statement was a quote from a Byzantine Emperor whose lands were under attack by Ottoman Turks, and whose view the Pope has said he does not endorse. But even if the Pope personally believes and had asserted in his speech that the Prophet of Islam had brought nothing new to the world except for "things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached", does he owe Muslims an apology? I don't think so, unless Muslims are willing to apologize for any beliefs they have which may be offensive to anyone else. The Islamic doctrine that the Jews and Christians had corrupted their holy books is offensive to the believers of those religions, and the Qur'anic verses pertaining to unbelievers [کفّار] are offensive to atheists, polytheists, Buddhists, and just about everyone else. If people were obligated to apologize for holding beliefs that offend others, humans would have to do nothing but apologize all day.

Muslim leaders worldwide routinely insult other religions and deliberately incite their followers to hurt the feelings of other people. (Most Americans don't exactly appreciate people chanting "Death to America!" [مرگ بر آمریکا] at rallies, having their country referred to as "The Great Satan" [شیطان بزرگ], or having their flag burned and stepped on.) For these same Muslim leaders to be demanding an apology from the Pope for a perceived insult is just hypocritical. If they think the idea that "Muhammad brought nothing new except things evil and inhuman" is wrong and offensive, the proper response is not to throw a temper tantrum, but to produce examples of things introduced by Muhammad that are not evil and inhuman, or show why the evil and inhuman things attributed to Muhammad (e.g., by the Byzantine Emperor) did not originate with him or were a distortion of his teachings. Rioting, making threats, and killing Christians simply reinforces the perception that Muslims are violent.

But I suspect that is precisely what these provocateur Muslim clerics want. The problem with the Islamic world is that, while the rest of the world modernized and secularized, institutional religion in the Islamic world has basically remained mentally stuck in the Middle Ages. It would be virtually impossible in a Western country for a religious leader to gather up a mob or to incite a riot. Any Christian (or Buddhist, etc.) religious leader who behaved the way that Muslim leaders do throughout the Islamic world would likely be ignored or ridiculed, and probably reported to the police and arrested. In much of the Islamic world, however, the common person hasn't yet learned to be skeptical of religious authority. The political clout and personal prestige of many Muslim clerics depend precisely on maintaining the ignorance of their followers and limiting their followers' exposure to ways of thought not sanctioned by them. If the common Muslims could examine their situation dispassionately, they would realize that they are being manipulated into acting in a way that is beneficial to their leaders but harmful to themselves. Thus the Muslim clerics use every opportunity and find any excuse that they can to inflame the masses.

It is very clear that the protests against the Pope, as well as earlier protests against Danish cartoons and anything else that offends Islamic sensibilities (which seems to be pretty much everything), are staged. The theatrics are carefully managed to create the impression that the clerics are more powerful and influential than they really are. (I have friends from the Middle East who have marched in demonstrations the purpose of which they knew nothing about, because they were pressured or told to do so by their governments or their neighbours.) In reality, a small number of what are essentially thugs control the impression of the Islamic world presented to the West, as well as the impression of the West presented to the Islamic world. Their dedicated followers form only a fraction of their societies, but a fanatical and violent minority can dictate the direction of an entire society. What these Muslim leaders want is not genuine dialogue, which would make them appear weak and expose their followers to doubt, but submission. For example, this story is most telling:

In Iran about 500 theological school students protested in the holy city of Qom on Sunday and influential cleric Ahmad Khatami warned that if the Pope did not apologise, "Muslims' outcry will continue until he fully regrets his remarks".

"The Pope should fall on his knees in front of a senior Muslim cleric and try to understand Islam," said Khatami.

The strategy of these Muslim clerics is to create a no-win situation for the non-Muslim who is interested in reaching out to the common Muslim in dialogue. The clerics tells their followers that non-Muslims are prejudiced against Islam and desire to persecute Muslims, and whenever a non-Muslim expresses a view on religion (and Islam in particular) that is not in keeping with theirs, they scream persecution and insult. Naturally, this silences many a non-Muslim who is interested in dialogue with Muslims, as he refrains from speaking his opinion out of politeness and the desire to avoid unintentional offense. (I've had the same experience at interfaith dialogue meetings, as I wrote in my previous post.) I think that the Pope has very cleverly exposed the insincerity of many Muslim leaders who claim to want a dialogue between cultures and religions, but are in fact interested only in asserting and expanding their power and influence by bullying their counterparts and critics in dialogue. By citing a quote that directly links Islam with violence, in a lecture about the unreasonableness of religious violence, the Pope has put these Muslim clerics in the position of having to demonstrate by their reaction whether or not they are reasonable. And they have demonstrated to the world through their actions, better than anyone else's words, that they are not.

Update: The final official Vatican translation clarifies the context of the controversial passage:

Without descending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the "Book" and the "infidels", he addresses his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness, a brusqueness which leaves us astounded, on the central question about the relationship between religion and violence in general, saying: "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached". The emperor, after having expressed himself so forcefully, goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable.

南無阿彌陀佛

In Gujarat, Buddhism is now officially a sect of Hinduism

2006-09-19T15:53:00.000-05:00

An amendment to the (Orwellianly named) "Freedom of Religion Act" in the Indian state of Gujarat has upset some Buddhists:

The Narendra Modi government has amended Gujarat's Freedom of Religion Act, which made forced religious conversions illegal in 2003.

The bill, a copy of which is with NDTV, now says there's nothing illegal about converting from one denomination to another within a religion. It also claims that Buddhism and Jainism are part of Hinduism.

The bill seems to be primarily aimed at dissuading Hindus (especially poor Dalits) from converting to "foreign" religions, mainly Christianity, but is also targeted at Buddhism. Ever since Dr. B. R. Ambedkar took refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha in 1956, Buddhism has been a popular choice of identity for low-caste Hindus, such as Dalits, seeking to assert their independence from Hinduism and its caste system. In fact, when Dr. Ambedkar converted to Buddhism, he specifically took 22 vows many of which repudiate the beliefs of Hinduism.

The purpose of the amendment seems to be to ensure that the number of people counted as "Hindus" for governmental purposes do not drop even if some of them convert to Buddhism. Naturally, many Buddhists are not pleased with being co-opted for political purposes.

To my knowledge, there have been no actual documented incidents of forced conversion, which is what the bill claims to be against. Many Christian organizations, however, provide access to education and health care, which some critics feel is a way of bribing the recipients of these services into conversion. But if Hindu leaders feel that Christians are luring away their followers with schools and hospitals, the proper response is not to outlaw conversions, but to compete against them by building better schools and hospitals. But alas, the politicians have chosen to take the easier path.

The conclusions that one may draw from the bill along with its amendment are also rather odd. Forced religious conversions are illegal -- except within a religion, and Buddhism is a part of Hinduism. This seems to mean that Buddhists are now legally entitled to convert (other) Hindus to Buddhism by force! (I'm not suggesting that any Buddhist would or should do this, I'm just pointing out the silliness of outlawing forced conversions while allowing for exceptions.)

Since 1992, the BJP has been actively wooing the Dalits, who in many areas now make up their new vote bank.

And this amendment ensures that Dalits will now be placated. If, for instance, they convert to Buddhism and thousands have done so over the years, they will now not be breaking the law.

[...]

The Buddhists of course aren't pleased with the government's cavalier attitude.

"The Hindu religion centres around Gods and Goddesses and the human beings are not given an important position. In Buddhism the religion centres around the human being," said Ramesh Banker, Bouddh citizen.

("Bouddh" is the Hindi word for "Buddhist".)

Constitutional experts say that it’s debatable whether Jainism is part of Hinduism or not. But there's no way Buddhism can be clubbed with Hinduism. They suspect a political agenda behind the move.

According to "the letter of the law" in Gujarat, a Japanese Zen monk, for example, would be classified as a Hindu. This is of course very silly.

"The basic purpose of the bill is to prohibit conversion, but the amendment results in Buddhism being converted into Hinduism. This is not right," said Girish Patel, activist and lawyer.

The opposition of course is only too happy to expound on this theory.

"The BJP and RSS always tried to exploit religion for political benefits. The bill in its original form was aimed at that and now with the amendments and subsequent definitions of religion provided in the bill, the attempt is again to extract political benefit," said Arjun Modhwadia, leader of opposition.

Over the past few years the BJP has improved its tally both in terms of number of seats and vote percentage in Dalit and tribal dominated areas like Panchmahals and the Dangs.

The amended act will now ensure that these political gains are consolidated.

Unfortunately, all sorts of bad things have a tendency to happen whenever religion is mixed together with politics. This has been true throughout the world and throughout history. One would think that humans would have learned better by now.

南無阿彌陀佛

Demographics of American Buddhism

2006-09-18T19:38:00.000-05:00

The Christian Science Monitor ran an article recently noting that Buddhists compose the fourth largest religious group in the USA:

Buddhism is growing apace in the United States, and an identifiably American Buddhism is emerging. Teaching centers and sanghas (communities of people who practice together) are spreading here as American-born leaders reframe ancient principles in contemporary Western terms.

Though the religion born in India has been in the US since the 19th century, the number of adherents rose by 170 percent between 1990 and 2000, according to the American Religious Identity Survey. An ARIS estimate puts the total in 2004 at 1.5 million, while others have estimated twice that. "The 1.5 million is a low reasonable number," says Richard Seager, author of "Buddhism in America."

That makes Buddhism the country's fourth-largest religion, after Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Immigrants from Asia probably account for two-thirds of the total, and converts about one-third, says Dr. Seager, a professor of religious studies at Hamilton College, in Clinton, N.Y.

The numbers are from the American Religious Identification Survey of 2001. (The actual report, in Adobe Acrobat format, may be found here. )

There are a number of interesting demographic facts about American Buddhists. In 1990, there were 401 000 (self-identified) Buddhists in the USA, and by 2001 that number had gone up to 1 082 000 (or approximately 0.5% of the country's total population). This is an increase of approximately 170%, as the article mentions.

Buddhism has a high rate of turnover. In 2001, 340 523 people (33%) who self-identified as Buddhists had switched in from another group, while 221 035 people (23%) had switched out from Buddhism to another group, with a net gain for Buddhism of 12%.

The report also distinguishes between identification and affiliation by examining household membership in a place of worship. Only 28% of Buddhists reported affiliation with a temple. The numbers range from a high of 83% for Evangelical/Born Again Christians to a low of 19% for "no religion", the only group with a lower percentage than Buddhists. (So about one fifth of Americans who claim to have "no religion" either belong to a secular organization that substitutes for a church, or attend the place of worship of a religion that they don't believe in.) I suspect that the percentage of Buddhists who participate in activities at a "place of worship" is being undercounted because Buddhist activities are not usually centred around a "place". Buddhists can get together to meditation, chant, or listen to a dharma talk not only at a temple or dharma centre, but at people's homes, rec centres, rented classrooms at a college or university, and so on. Many converts to Buddhism also tend to have multiple loose affiliations in that they may participate in the activities of various groups while not feeling strongly associated with any one of them.

In 2001, the marital status of American Buddhists are: 47% single, 7% single/co-habiting, 35% married, 8% divorced/separated, and 3% widowed. Buddhists have the highest percentage of people who are single. They also have the third lowest percentage of people who are married, after non-denominational Christians at 27% and those professing "no religion" at 19%.

A large number of Buddhists have family members belonging to another religion, with 39% of Buddhist adults living in mixed religion families. This is the second highest percentage after Episcopalians at 42%.

The ethnic make-up of American Buddhists is: 35% white, 4% black, 61% Asian, 2% Hispanic, and 1% other. Politically, American Buddhists vote: 9% Republican, 31% Democrat, 48% Independent, and 12% none/other.

In 2001, the age and sex distribution among adult American Buddhists was: 56% aged 18-29, 3% aged 65 and above, and 39% female. (For comparison, in 1990, the distribution was: 35% aged 18-29, 8% aged 65 and above, and 35% female.) Buddhists have the second highest percentage of people aged 18-29, after Muslims at 58%. Buddhists have the second lowest proportion of females, after Muslims at 38%. (This is unsurprising, since immigrants tend to be young and male, and most Buddhists and Muslims are immigrants.)

That's a lot of data and much can be said about it, but perhaps at another time.

南無阿彌陀佛

Thoughts on Interfaith Dialogue

2006-09-14T21:09:00.000-05:00

Before I became a Buddhist, I made a systematic attempt to thoroughly investigate the major world religions (and a host of minor ones), to the degree that my time and abilities allowed. I read many religious scriptures, and the books and essays of both religious believers and skeptics throughout history. I also had many discussions about religion and other interesting topics with many people of different backgrounds and differing degrees of commitment to and training in their religion, as well as those who are not religious and those who are hostile to religion. The view of religion which I have developed as a result of my investigation is quite different from most of the views of the people whose writings I read or with whom I had discussions, and I was very much enriched by the experience.

I think that everyone would benefit greatly from having serious discussions about religion with others who hold a variety of views, especially those which are diametrically opposed to one's own. I think that anyone who did this would very likely end up with very different opinions and religious beliefs than the ones that they started with, which is why many religions forbid or try to prevent their followers from learning about other religions or discussing religion with people who have different views and beliefs. Many religions teach that it is a sin to question that religion's dogma, with dire punishments in the afterlife (or even in this life).

I learned from my experience many things about how people approach questions about religion. The first is that most people begin with their beliefs (or at least a vague idea about what their beliefs ought to be), and then try to find evidence to justify them, in the process ignoring or dismissing facts that do not fit their preconceived notions. When a nominal Christian, for example, becomes religious, he does not typically ask, "Now, why should I believe that Christianity is true?", a question that ought to lead him to consider both the arguments for Christianity and the arguments against it. Instead, he will read books written by Christian apologists and discuss Christianity only with other Christians. In other words, the question that he has asked himself is, "How can I justify my belief in Christianity?", and he finds his answer in the purported evidence of the apologists. In all likelihood he is not even aware that there are well-considered counterarguments against his beliefs.

This leads me to the second thing that I learned, which is that most religious believers are overly confident that their own religious beliefs are based on reason and evidence while religious beliefs that differ from theirs are irrational and baseless. Monotheists are unable to see how anyone can disbelieve in God or believe in multiple gods. Christians cannot imagine how anyone can think that Jesus isn't the greatest human being who has ever lived. Muslims criticize the Christian concept of Trinity for being illogical, but fail to recognize the illogic of belief in an omnipotent deity who requires his followers to wage war on his behalf against unbelievers. One could go on and on with examples. The majority of people have the religious beliefs that they have only because they were taught these beliefs at a young age, and have never thought to question them.

In societies without a high degree of mobility and decent level of education (which describes pretty much every society in human history up until relatively recently), the majority of people simply adopted the beliefs of their parents and the community around them. Throughout most of history, literacy was limited to the elite (although a larger fraction of the populace may have been literate in a restricted sense, for example when it came to terminology needed for their professions or the recitation and memorization of religious or culturally important texts). Of the elite, only a fraction would have been trained in philosophy and possess the kind of reasoning skills needed to distinguish good arguments from bad ones. It follows that most of the religious conversions in history were not due to a carefully considered evaluation of the evidence. Instead, the majority would have been due to social, political, and economic incentives. People converted to the religions of their rulers and conquerors, or of mighty foreign powers, because doing so brought material benefits: advancement in social status, access to education, acquisition of superior technology. This is largely true even today, outside of the most developed (i.e., "First World") countries.

Thus, upon a little contemplation, anyone can see that the religious beliefs that he is brought up with have no necessary correlation with reality. If anything, they are likely to be false, since there are many more ways to be wrong than there are to be right (and hence false beliefs must surely greatly outnumber true ones). The thoughtful and conscientious person must, therefore, come to the conclusion that, far from being a sin, it is a virtue and a moral obligation to question one's religious beliefs as well as those of one's society. If a person maintains his religious beliefs without critically examining them, he will surely be in error. But if he makes a deliberate effort to distinguish between claims which are not substantiated by the evidence or which are based on faulty reasoning and those which are supported by the evidence and sound reasoning, he will move closer and closer towards the truth. Or as Sir Francis Bacon, one of the foremost pioneers of the scientific method, put it:

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties.

I am very interested in interfaith dialogue (also known as multifaith dialogue or interreligious dialogue) for the above reason. I'm curious to know what people believe and why, and how it affects their behaviour and choices in life. However, while I have learned much from personal discussions with individuals, I have also found "official" interfaith occasions very disappointing. What I've observed is that, while many individual participants are genuinely interested in learning and sharing, people often end up hiding their true convictions for a variety of reasons. A large part of it is innocuous, a desire to be cordial and polite and to avoid possible misunderstanding or offense. But this cordiality has been exploited and subverted by religious organizations who wish to shield their followers from exposure to what might be legitimate criticisms of their religion, which could plant the seed of doubt in their minds and thus loosen their leaders' control over them. These leaders incite their followers to cry "bigotry" and accuse their critics of ignorance or malice whenever anyone says anything not to their liking about their religion.

But while falsehood must be offensive to those whose beliefs actually correspond to the truth, the truth is also offensive to those whose beliefs are false. We cannot judge the veracity of a statement by its (perceived) offensiveness. If a party is genuinely interested in dialogue, it must expect to encounter statements with which it disagrees from other parties. Otherwise – if everyone already agreed in everything – there would be no point to having a dialogue.

In the book "Land of No Buddha" by Richard P. Hayes, there is an essay titled "Christianity and Buddhism: Dialogue or Debate?" in which he asks why today's Christians and Buddhists engage in interfaith dialogue when they did not do so at any other time in history. He answers the question as follows:

At the risk of offending anyone's intelligence with an oversimplified answer, I would suggest that dialogue has become possible because both Christians and Buddhists have almost entirely lost their way in the epistemological wilderness and the moral wasteland of modern life. Christians and Buddhists alike have long since lost the courage to take a firm stand against the silliness and shallowness of the childish populism that has come to replace civilization. We no longer have the stomach to be elitist, to preach the obligation of wisdom to provide firm leadership for the morally feeble and intellectually immature. Christians and Buddhists have both lost the heart to take the unfashionable stand that there is a vast difference between truth and falsity, and between moral right and moral wrong.

I very much like the essay, which points out that in a genuine dialogue, each party must be honest and open about its beliefs as well as its opinions, however critical, of the other's beliefs. Just because two parties disagree does not mean that there need be any animosity between them, if they come together in a true spirit of wanting to learn from and share with each other. I hope that those who are engaged in interfaith dialogue would act more courageously and take a stand for what they truly believe in, at the same time that they learn to become more receptive to what the other side has to say.

南無阿彌陀佛

9/11 Conspiracy Theories

2006-09-13T10:34:00.000-05:00

I had originally wanted to post something on September 11, on September 11, but when I sat down there was so much that I wanted to write that I ended up not writing anything.

The Buddha placed tremendous emphasis on seeing things as they really are. The first component of the Buddha's Eightfold Path (八正道) is Right View (正見). When I read or hear about 9/11 conspiracy theories, I am simply amazed at the convoluted theories that people will come up with to explain things for which there are much simpler and better explanations.

I saw a comic strip from Filibuster Cartoons recently that perfectly captures the absurdity that results from this kind of convoluted thinking:

I think that one of the main reasons that these conspiracy theories are so popular is because people feel frustrated and angry over their lack of control over the chaotic events in the world around them. Believing in conspiracy theories gives a person a sense of control. In the view of the believer in a conspiracy, those he perceives to be ignorant of the conspiracy are under the control of the masterminds behind the conspiracy, while he himself is (at least partially) immune from their influence. A worldview based on conspiracy theories is a way to impose a sense of order onto a chaotic world.

From a Buddhist perspective, beliefs which are not supported by evidence, and especially beliefs which are actually contradicted by evidence, are forms of delusion. It is extremely important for the Buddhist practitioner to distinguish right views from wrong ones. I think that many of the believers in 9/11 conspiracy theories have actually been misled by a lifetime of exposure to bad physics in television and movies. For example, much is made of the fact that witnesses reported hearing multiple explosions inside the lower floors of the WTC towers. This is taken as evidence that the towers were brought down by explosives inside the building. But there's a simple explanation for why people heard what appeared to be multiple explosions on the lower floors, namely, sound travels at different speeds through different media, and there are multiple paths from the top floors down to the bottom ones. Also, the typical office building is full of materials that are flammable and which can explode under certain circumstances. All of this is much better explained at the numerous 9/11 conspiracy debunking web sites, some of which I will link below.

The belief that the American government somehow planned the 9/11 attacks reminds me of a saying known as Hanlon's razor:

Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

And now, the web sites. On the one side, the conspiracy believers:

And on the other, the conspiracy debunkers:

南無阿彌陀佛

Buddha: the Movie

2006-09-12T11:45:00.000-05:00

From The Hollywood Reporter:

What's the next Hollywood epic? If the producers at M Films have their way, it will be a biopic on the life of Buddha. In an effort to promote the project, the production company hosted a luncheon at the Peninsula Hotel on Beverly Hills Monday featuring the Dalai Lama, who offered his endorsement of the project. "From Buddha's life story, maybe you'll get inspiration," the Dalai Lama said, with some help from a translator. "Our intention is not the propagation of Buddhism but helping the world." Hollywood has the power.

It's not clear from the above article whether this is the same film planned by Indian industrialist B. K. Modi (IMDb entry here) and announced at the Cannes film festival earlier this year, which is going to be based on the book "Old Path White Clouds" by Ven. Thich Nhat Hanh. Modi had previously proposed a film based on the life of the Buddha, but that project failed for a variety of reasons, one of which was the objection of Buddhists to the filmmakers' alleged intention to portray the Buddha as an avatar of the Hindu god Vishnu.

Personally, I don't think that a single movie can possibly do justice to the amount of material that's in the Buddhist canon on the life of the Buddha. A series may do the trick (the Hindu epic Mahabharata comes to mind), but I doubt that any movie or television studio is up to the task. The "basics" of the story of the Buddha have been done on film before (for example, in Bernardo Bertolucci's "Little Buddha" and the animated "The Legend of Buddha"), and there's no real need to go through the same material again, unless it's part of something much grander.

On the other hand, just because it's been done before doesn't mean that it can't be done again. Other religious figures have inspired multiple films, so why not the Buddha? Films about Jesus Christ have been evangelical, banal, controversial, epic, as well as sadistic. And despite Islam's prohibition against depictions of its founder, a movie has been made about the life of Muhammad, filmed in such a way that neither he nor his closest relatives appeared on screen. The movie starred Anthony Quinn in the role of Muhammad's uncle Hamza, and became notorious before it was even completed. More recently, the story was told in a Disneyfied form.

I don't have very high hopes that Hollywood (or Bollywood) will get it right, but I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

南無阿彌陀佛

Biggest. Mantra. Ever.

2006-09-12T09:55:00.000-05:00

Throughout history, Buddhists have loved to build really big things. Here are but a few examples:

The Buddhas of Bamiyan
The Stupa of Borobudur
Tian Tan Buddha (天壇大佛)
The Daibutsu (大仏 or 大佛) of Japan
The Giant Buddha of Leshan (樂山大佛)
India's plan to build the world's biggest Buddha statue
and China's bid to outdo them

And now, we have the world's Biggest. Mantra. Ever. From Siberian News Online:

Gyudmed Tantric Monastery monks, who are on a visit in Tuva, have finished their work at the world's biggest Buddhist mantra. In the opinion of all the participants of the unique project, the mantra is to hasten the visit of His Holiness Dalai Lama to the republic. The mantra of Chenrezig, the Buddha of Compassion, "Om mani padme hum" is made of huge stones on the side of Dogee Mountain, known as Lenin Peak. One can have a picturesque view on Kyzyl, the capital of Tuva, from the top of this mountain, IA Tuva-Online reports.

The length of the holy mantra is 120 m. It took 500 kilos of white paint to paint the stones. 'Tibetan Buddhists usually engrave holy mantras on the stones. A great many of them can be seen on the mountainous slopes and passes, as Tupten Shakia, the monk group leader, explained. However, there is hardly such a huge mantra made of big stones even in Tibet, he noted.
[...]

The mantra construction of the Buddha of Compassion, whose embodiment on the Earth is His Holiness Dalai Lama, started when the spiritual leader of the Buddhists visited Mongolia, the neighboring country. The mantra capable of accumulation and spreading of the tremendous positive energy was built with a wish of longevity to Dalai Lama and prayers for spiritual merits of Tuvan people to help to remove the obstacles preventing the meeting of Buddhist Tuva with its spiritual teacher.

This mantra hasn't shown up on Google Maps yet, but a similar previous offering may be found here:

Map loading...

南無阿彌陀佛

Burma's military regime ruins Buddhist ruins

2006-09-08T19:21:00.000-05:00

The military junta in control of Burma (also known as Myanmar) is basically destroying the country's historical Buddhist sites in an attempt to attract tourists:

The bricklayers are paid $1.35 a day to rebuild the ancient ruin: a small, 13th century temple reduced by time to little more than its foundation.

But they have no training in repairing aged monuments, and their work has nothing to do with actually restoring one of the world's most important Buddhist sites. Instead, using modern red bricks and mortar, they are building a new temple on top of the old.

They work from a single page of drawings supplied by the government. Three simple sketches provide the design for a generic brick structure and a fanciful archway. No one knows, or seems to care, what the original temple looked like. Nearby are two piles of 700-year-old bricks that were pulled from the ruin. The bricklayers use them to fill holes in the temple. ...

The late Myanmar historian Than Tun called the restoration "blitzkrieg archeology."

"They are carrying out reconstruction based on complete fantasy," said an American archeologist who asked not to be identified for fear of being banned from the country. "It completely obliterates any historical record of what was there." ...

Untrained workers began covering old walls with plaster, obliterating the original contour of the brick. Statues were removed and replaced with no attempt to make accurate copies. The damage has been greatest to the medium-sized temples, many of which were neglected after the earthquake and then damaged by subsequent restoration work, said French architect Pierre Pichard, one of the foremost experts on Bagan.

"The monuments have lost a great part of their authenticity and individuality," said Pichard, who worked extensively at Bagan after the 1975 quake and wrote an eight-volume catalog of the monuments published by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. "Their missing parts, especially their upper superstructures, have been rebuilt without evidence of their former shape." ...

The actions of the Burmese military regime are wrong, in regards to both the archeological treasures and the people of Burma, and must be condemned.

Here is another article on the topic of the destruction of Burma's archeological heritage:

The delicate beauty of Bagan, unfortunately, is under dire threat because it lacks something Angkor Wat, for instance, has — a World Heritage Site designation from UNESCO, whose decades-long efforts on Bagan came to a halt in recent years. The unwillingness of Myanmar's ruling junta of generals to turn over preservation and restoration work to the international body, which had created a detailed plan to conserve and protect one of the world's great cultural heritages, proved too great a barrier to surpass. Now many Asian art conservationists and art lovers around the world fear for Bagan's future.

There are no signs the generals plan to open their relations with the wider world. Indeed, there have been clear signs that unskilled work has been carried out at the Bagan archaeological site that could jeopardize its integrity and also open the door to commercialization that could further threaten its future.

Over recent years, restoration experts have lamented misguided efforts of the Myanmar authorities, who lack the knowledge and the skilled experts to undertake sound conservation and restoration efforts. ...

The outside world must be made aware of the harm that Burma's military junta is doing to the culture and people of Burma.

南無阿彌陀佛

The Leaning Tower of Yingxian

2006-09-08T18:56:00.000-05:00

From Xinhua news comes a story about a leaning tower:

Sakyamuni Pagoda, believed to be the world's tallest wooden structure, celebrated its 950th anniversary on Tuesday amid concerns from architects that it is tilting. ...

There is an obvious tilt between the first and second floors and cracking of the interior wooden columns, and there are also 300 places in the pagoda that are in need of repair, said Chai Zejun, former director of the Shanxi Provincial Ancient Architecture Institute.

"The overall situation is dangerous and we are not optimistic. It is hard to tell whether the pagoda can survive more strong winds and earthquakes," said 82-year-old Luo Zhewen, head of the Experts Panel on Ancient Architecture with the State Bureau of Cultural Relics, who has visited the pagoda dozens of times since 1952.

Standing 67.31 meters tall, the octagonal pagoda in Yingxian County, Shanxi Province, is not only the tallest but the oldest existing wooden pagoda in China. The pagoda is 115 years older and 11.36 meters taller than the renowned Leaning Tower of Pisa in Italy.

But will it ever become as famous?

南無阿彌陀佛

The Dalai Lama visits Vancouver

2006-09-08T17:19:00.000-05:00

The Dalai Lama, who is an honourary Canadian citizen, is currently visiting Vancouver:

The Dalai Lama made his fourth visit to Vancouver on Thursday to inaugurate the Dalai Lama Center for Peace and Education, the world's first learning facility established in his name.

The 71-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner will also lead a series of public dialogues on the topics of peace, compassion and happiness -- the vision reflected in the non-religious, non-political institution.

The government of China is, of course, quite displeased:

"The Dalai Lama is not a religious leader. He's a political activist and also a secessionist," [senior Chinese embassy official Zhang Weidong] said.

"We hope that any country that is friendly to China should not provide him with a venue or podium for his political activities."

Besides his political stature among Tibetans which is causing problems with the government of China, the Dalai Lama is also embroiled in a number of controversies which complicates his status among Buddhists, something which usually doesn't come across in the often simplistic portrayals of the man presented in the media. However, most Buddhists respect the Dalai Lama as a spiritual leader, even if they disagree with him on certain political or philosophical issues.

南無阿彌陀佛

Religion should not be above criticism

2006-08-31T01:34:00.000-05:00

On the topic of not automatically respecting all religions (see the previous post), The Australian ran a piece two weeks ago by Pamela Bone on why religion should not be protected from criticism:

Despite the general view that religious belief is on the rise everywhere, the picture around the world is that in nearly all prosperous liberal democracies, atheism is strong.

In Britain, about 44 per cent claim no religion; in France it is 48 per cent; in Canada, 30 per cent; in Sweden, surveys have put the proportion of those who describe themselves as agnostic or atheist at between 46 per cent and 85 per cent. Even in the most religious of Western countries, the US, a 2004 Pew Forum survey found 16 per cent of Americans had no religious affiliation.

Japan also falls into the above category, despite most of its citizens professing to follow Shintoism and Buddhism, often together.

One reason the trend to non-belief can be welcomed is that those countries with high rates of voluntary non-belief (that is, where atheism is not forced by the regime) are also the healthiest and wealthiest countries in the world, as judged by the annual UN Human Development Reports. Cause and effect should not be confused here: it may be that people who are comfortable and secure have less need for religion, rather than that an absence of religion leads to greater happiness; but it does show that an absence of religion doesn't cause societies to break down. I don't think the Swedes are notable for their criminality.

The other reason is that the briefest study of world history will show that religion has been directly responsible for countless world conflicts, resulting in the loss of millions of human lives, whether it was Christians killing Jews in Europe, Muslims and Hindus killing each other in Kashmir, Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland or Muslims and Christians in Sudan. Meanwhile, a look at the nightly television news will show the extent to which religion is still tearing up the world.

At this point religious people will jump in to point out that more people have been killed by communism than religion. Leaving aside the fact that communist ideology is similar to a religious ideology, this is like saying there is no point in curing tuberculosis because malaria kills more people.

Also, comparing the raw numbers obscures the fact that most of the killings by the Communists took place in recent history, and thus they had access to more efficient means of killing, and dealt with larger populations, than existed during the times of the historical wars of religion. If the Christians and Muslims of a thousand years ago had access to modern weapons and technology, and a population numbering over a billion on each side, they would undoubtedly have killed many more people than the Communists have. Unfortunately, there is still a segment of the world's Muslim population whose minds are stuck in the mentality of a thousand years ago, and who are intent precisely on waging religious war on the rest of the word using today's weapons and technology.

The truth is that it is now too dangerous for religion to be given the special status it has always had. When large numbers of people, some of them living among us, want to kill us and our innocent children (surely "innocent children" is a tautology) for no other reason than that we do not believe in their God, we can no longer afford to tiptoe around religious sensitivities. It is time to get rid of the taboo that says religious beliefs have to be quarantined from criticism. It is time to hold some religious beliefs up to ridicule.

God may or may not exist; I don't presume to know. But I am fairly certain that a god does not exist who wants everyone killed who does not believe in a certain book; or a god who takes an obsessive interest in what women wear; or a god who cares about whether we eat pork rather than lamb (though if I were god I'd be pretty annoyed at human beings eating any other animals); or a god who wants little bits of babies' genitals cut off.

The holy books on which Jews, Christians and Muslims rely were written at a time when ideas about human rights and the scope of scientific knowledge were very different from today. We are expected to respect religious texts that contain invitations to genocide, rape and slavery. We are supposed to respect all religions when the central tenet of every religion is that its holy book is the right one and all others are in error or at best incomplete. Unbelievers are those who declare, "God is the Messiah, the son of Mary," says the Koran. "Believers, do not make friends with any but your own people." We are supposed to respect beliefs that if they were held by one person, rather than millions of people, the person holding them would be judged insane. Catholics are enjoined to believe that during the mass a piece of wafer is transformed not into a symbol of the body of Christ, but into the actual body of Christ.

Millions of people also once believed that witches cause crops to fail, or that thunder is the noise made by the gods fighting. They stopped believing in such things either because scientific knowledge proved them wrong, or because they discovered that sensible and reasonable people found the beliefs ridiculous.

In Victoria, politicians are tying themselves in knots over whether to support or reject the state's racial and religious tolerance laws. Once I would have written in support of these laws; but as we have been reminded yet again in recent days, the world has changed. Millions of kindly Christians may be able to ignore the nasty bits in their holy books but, though most Muslims are not extremists, too many are unable to ignore what's in theirs.

Yes, let's have laws against racial vilification, because people don't have a choice about their race and in any case racial slurs are based on assumptions that are unfair and scientifically wrong. But unless we accept there is no such thing as free will, religious belief is a matter of choice.

As the existence of God cannot be proved or disproved, it is no more moral to believe than not to believe. The best hope for a less religious and thus safer world is for religion - all religion - to be open to rational and stringent examination and criticism, and yes, to ridicule.

I could not agree more. A view of the world that is in accord with reality has nothing to fear from criticism or ridicule.

南無阿彌陀佛

Hollywood cluelessness about Buddhism

2006-08-30T23:23:00.000-05:00

Buddhism is rumoured to be popular in Hollywood, but the people in Hollywood often seem to be quite ignorant of it. Two stories today on that theme.

Actress Sharon Stone is missing the Venice Film Festival, ostensibly so that she can meet with the Dalai Lama:

The 'Basic Instinct' actress has reportedly pulled out of the prestigious event this weekend, where she was supposed to be promoting her latest film 'Bobby'.

Stone's representatives have so far been vague about the reason behind the star's absence and only revealed she will be meeting the Buddhist spiritual leader in Los Angeles.

Her representative, Cindi Berger, said the 'Casino' star "never committed" to the festival and is "doing something with the Dalai Lama in Los Angeles" instead.

However, rumours are rife the Stone decided to pull out of the festival because organisers' refused to accommodate her diva-like demands.

I wonder if the Dalai Lama will accommodate her diva-like (or should that be "deva"-like) demands?

Meanwhile, another Hollywood actress, Penelope Cruz, defends Tom Cruise's adherence to Scientology by comparing it with Buddhism:

"Tom and I are good friends and in many ways he's shown me to have a kind heart.

"Scientology is positive. When you read a book of Buddhism, you could apply it to your life in any way you need to, so with a book of Scientology it's the same thing.

"I think we should respect all religions."

For respect to be meaningful, it must be earned. To respect everything equally is to respect nothing at all. It is well-documented that Scientology was created by science fiction author L. Ron Hubbard to make money. Scientology treats Hubbard's science fiction as fact and teaches, among other things, that humans are biologically descended from clams and are possessed by alien entities. The website Operation Clambake exposes Scientology in detail. While I believe in respecting a person's right to believe in Scientology if he so chooses, I cannot see why Scientology itself should be respected.

L. Ron Hubbard also claimed that the Buddha had attained only a low level of enlightenment and that he himself was, naturally, much more enlightened than the Buddha (see here, here, and here for some examples). Scientology is itself disrespectful of Buddhism. All religions make claims to truth, claims that are often mutually exclusive between religions. So how is one to "respect all religions" when most religions don't respect each other, and couldn't do so without compromising their core truth claims?

Instead of respecting all religions, which is both silly and impossible, we should instead respect and uphold each person's right to choose his religion (including the choice not to have a religion).

南無阿彌陀佛

Buddhism goes hi-tech in China

2006-08-26T10:00:00.003-05:00

Buddhism is big business in China:

PIETY and a knowledge of Buddhist scriptures used to be just about the only qualifications needed to become a Chinese monk. Now computer skills, foreign language ability and a degree in financial management are also desirable.

Three decades after temples were destroyed and scriptures burned during the Cultural Revolution, Buddhism is making a comeback in China. And, like most things in the super-competitive, rapidly developing country, it has become both big business and a field in which people are eager to get ahead.

That's creating a new breed of multi-tasking, tech-savvy, upwardly mobile monks.

"Our recruiting process is highly competitive," said Hui Jue, the deputy general manager of the 120-year-old Jade Buddha Temple in central Shanghai, who recently completed a master of business administration degree at Jiaotong University.

Fifteen monks from his temple have been on foreign language courses at the Shanghai International Studies University, and another batch have started MBA studies in Jiaotong's business school.

Such skills are necessary, Mr Hui believes, for the temple to spread Buddhist teachings in the modern world and to manage its growing business interests. As well as its grounds, Jade Buddha owns a vegetarian restaurant, a four-star hotel, a seven-floor office building and a food factory.

The restaurant and the food factory I can understand, since the monks are vegetarian and have special dietary requirements, but why would they need a four-star hotel?

It goes without saying that one cannot mention Buddhism in China without referring to the famous Shaolin Temple:

The ancient Shaolin Temple in Henan province has capitalised on its reputation as a birthplace of the martial arts to host international guests and stage kung fu displays around the world.

It owns a martial arts training school and Shaolin Development, a company producing vegetarian snacks and Zen tea. It also co-operates with entertainment companies in film-making and online game production.

Guangxiao Temple in Guangdong province has launched online worshipping, so users can offer virtual incense, fruit and flowers to electronic Buddhas.

This picture, which accompanied the article, shows what appears to be a common computer desk as one might find in any workplace. What's unusual is that the picture is taken in Shaolin Temple, and person sitting at the desk is a monk, who is just about to go online:

A monk at China's Shaolin Temple, which helps produce computer games, logs on to the internet.

Picture: Cancan Chu/Getty Images

南無阿彌陀佛

University of Toronto Receives Gift for Buddhist Studies

2006-08-26T09:20:00.000-05:00

The non-profit Buddhist organization Tung Lin Kok Yuen (東蓮覺苑), headed by philanthropist billionaire Robert Hung-Ngai Ho (何鴻毅), has just donated $4 million to the University of Toronto at Scarborough for their Buddhist studies program. From The Toronto Star:

Born into a Buddhist family, Ho, 74, said he did not enjoy going to temples or Sunday religious school until he turned 40 and began seeking spiritual growth. After studying various religions, he felt Buddhism suited him best because of its principle of self-salvation.

"It teaches you to do everything on your own, to rely on yourself instead of any supernatural powers or gods," explained Ho, who retired in Canada in 1989 after retiring as publisher of Hong Kong's Kung Sheung Daily Press. (A master's graduate of Columbia University's journalism school, he had worked at the Pittsburgh Press and National Geographic, for a time as White House correspondent, before returning to Hong Kong.)

"Unfortunately, people mix up their superstitions with Buddhism, turning it into a mythical chop suey, so others think that Buddhists are a bunch of voodoos."

That's why Ho has put his energy and resources into building a strong global network of Buddhist studies programs at academic institutions, which can help debunk misconceptions about this ancient religion.

The gift will support a visiting professorship and lectureship program in Buddhist studies, as well as conferences, public lecture series and scholarships.

There's more on the gift from U of T Magazine, which says that the money will go towards establishing an endowed visiting professorship and a series of conferences and public lectures at U of T's Scarborough campus. And News@UofT says that the gift will be the largest in the history of U of T Scarborough.

This follows a similar gift made to the University of British Columbia earlier this year.

For some reason, I just can't get enough of the phrases "a mythical chop suey" and "a bunch of voodoos."

南無阿彌陀佛

The purpose of this online journal, if it had a purpose

2006-08-26T07:13:00.001-05:00

I have started this online journal to document my thoughts on a number of topics mostly having to do with religion and society.

I have had a deep interest in religion ever since I was very young, and embarked on a serious study of the subject as a teenager which continues to this day. I converted to Buddhism in university, and have taken refuge with teachers of both the Theravada and Mahayana traditions.

When I began to study religion, I was told that it was not a useful subject since the world was moving inexorably towards secularism and irreligiosity. Whether or not that will be the case in the long run, in this last decade, at least, religion has been a preponderant force in global politics. The world seems to be moving towards a massive conflict, and the contenders on one side are very explicit in proclaiming that they are motivated by a religious ideology.

So religion is big news nowadays, and I intend this to be a place to comment, from a Buddhist perspective, on issues having to do with religion and society.

南無阿彌陀佛