Lucky Buddha aided winners
261 words
21 September 2007
Weekend Courier
1
5
English
Copyright 2007 News Ltd. All Rights Reserved
Newsagent Scott Calvert sold winning ticket. Picture: Jane Vann d252931
A SOUTHERN suburbs family say the secret to their $2.2 million win from Saturday s $20 million Superdraw, was buying their ticket from Seahaven News in Warnbro and rubbing it on their own lucky Lotto Buddha.
The couple who are in their 30 s, have been playing Lotto for about 15 years and always buy from the Seahaven newsagency before rubbing their tickets on the belly of a special Buddha that lives in their lounge, and then put the tickets underneath it for luck.
I know people must think we are crackers about the Buddha, but it s worked! said the man.
My dad and my grandad both missed out on big wins by changing their Lotto routines; their numbers or where they bought their tickets. I wasn t going to let that happen to me.
The man who runs his own business, has been working 12-hour days, seven days a week to build the business.
The win certainly meant that his family would have a secure future, he said.
But we just want to live a normal life and look after our girls.
Not be extravagant.
The latest multi-millionaire Division One winners joined four other Perth winners, including a work syndicate from Mandurah, which also won $2.2 million in the same draw.
The newsagency owners, Scott and June Calvert, said it was the third and biggest division one prize the newsagency had sold in the past 15 years.
------------------------------------
MOTHER SCOOPS £1M BINGO PRIZE AFTER LOSING JOB
352 words
22 September 2007
01:02
Press Association National Newswire
English
(c)2007, The Press Association, All Rights Reserved
By Joe Quinn, Scottish Press Association
A mother-of-two became Britain's first bingo club millionaire today - weeks after losing her job.
Margaret Shearer, 46, scooped the £1 million jackpot at lunchtime at a Mecca club in Glasgow.
She was only playing because she had lost her job at a biscuit factory three weeks ago.
And with her as she played was her mother - whose name is Margaret Money.
The win came just weeks after the gaming laws were relaxed to allow such huge prizes in clubs.
Ms Shearer, from the Ruchazie area of Glasgow, had worked at the McVitie's factory in Glasgow until she was laid off last month.
She said she was stunned at her win today, at the Glasgow Forge branch of Mecca.
'It's not sunk in yet,'' she said.
'I just haven't a clue what I'm going to do with the money.
'It's such a enormous amount that it's difficult to grasp what it really means.''
She said she had experienced hot flushes before she started playing the lunchtime session.
'I just felt something was going to happen.''
A spokesman for Mecca said she had been a member for 30 years and her mother was her regular playing companion.
'She is superstitious, and always carries a miniature Buddha figure in her handbag,'' said the spokesman.
Grant Munro, manager at the club, said: 'Her face was a picture of stunned silence, but the rest of the club went absolutely wild and they were all so pleased for her.
'It was just bedlam but right now she's the calmest person in the club.''
Mecca said the millionaire game was introduced on September 1 with the relaxation of gaming laws.
The spokesman added: 'This is the first time someone has been able to win this huge sum of money at a bingo club.''
The gaming firm had previously estimated that a millionaire would be created every 45 days, but today's win came on the 21st day into the game.
Saturday, September 22, 2007
Mixing religion, politics - two commentaries
Mixing religion, politics
Michael Vatikiotis , Singapore
841 words
21 September 2007
The Jakarta Post
6
English
(c) 2007 The Jakarta Post
The sight of several hundred of saffron-robed Buddhist monks marching in protest through the streets of the Myanmar capital Yangon, their hands clasped in prayer, is a strong reminder of the significant role that religion plays in the politics of Asia.
It may be too early to tell whether the fledgling alliance of monks, many of them students in saffron robes, will prove strong enough to topple the country's military regime, but many observers recall that the popular revolt that forced Burmese strongman Ne Win to step down in 1988 was also spearheaded by the country's influential Budhhist clergy.
Religion in Asia is a powerful leveler in unequal societies. Few popular movements for freedom and democracy in the region have taken off without strong support, if not inspiration, from religious quarters. The earliest movements for independence in Burma (now Myanmar) as well as Indonesia, drew inspiration from religious organizations. In modern Indonesia, Islamic scholars and thinkers like Abdurrahman Wahid and Nurcholis Madjid spearheaded the fledgling democracy movement of the 1990s, and Wahid eventually became President.
Elsewhere in the region, the link between struggles for freedom and religion is less overt but present nonetheless. In the Philippines, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo rode to power in 2000 on the back of a mass movement that consciously tapped support from the Catholic Church. In Hong Kong, the pro-democracy movement that mobilized hundreds of thousands of people to march down the busy streets of the territory in 2002 and 2003 took inspiration from the Catholic Church, which is strong in the territory.
The religious tinting of popular protests against authoritarian rule has helped keep many of them non-violent and reduced levels of conflict. Political change in Asia has been accompanied by short bursts of violence, but all out civil war is rare.
Yet, to the Western mind, religion and politics should not be mixed. The dominant Catholic Church of Europe keeps a tight rein on its clergy and followers through the Vatican to maintain the strong division between church and state embedded in European political culture. The Western mind is also affected by a long history of conflict with the Muslim world, which makes it hard to imagine the Muslim faith as a liberating force.
Terrorist attacks by Islamic militants over the past decade or longer, have entrenched the view that the militants who carry out these attacks are bent on curbing freedom and undermining democracy. The irony of course is that it is precisely the quest for freedom in Muslim society that breeds Islamic militancy. Al Qaeda itself was a combined product of fierce opposition to a feudal Saudi regime and an active role in liberating Afghanistan from Soviet occupation.
But the reality in Asia is that mainstream religion and liberation politics form a highly combustible compound. Despite the focus on a few irrational extremists in Indonesia and understandable fear of violence, the majority of Muslim activists engage in politics in the name of populism.
Their agenda is usually based on the idealistic premise that an Islamic way of life promotes freedom and justice. In a country where politicians and officials are popularly perceived as selfish and corrupt, this is a powerful message and one that forces secular politicians to temper their behavior and adjust their programs or lose at the ballot box.
There is of course a limit to political movements mobilized by religious faith. East Asia has proved more resistant to theocracy than many parts of Western Asia like Iran and Pakistan. Despite the important role of Islam in Indonesian political life, the constitution guarantees freedom of religious faith and several attempts to nudge the country towards conservative Sharia Law have been voted down.
The Buddhist kingdoms of Thailand and Cambodia maintain a healthy balance between "church" and "state", and even in Myanmar today the Buddhist hierarchy has yet to declare its support for the protests spearheaded by younger monks, many of them students.
The role of religion in Asian politics will only be further marginalized once political pluralism is more firmly established in the region. This is why the agenda for political reform must go way beyond simply ensuring free elections.
For now, democratic politics in many countries of the region represents a marginal adjustment by vested interest groups who continue to trample on the rights of ordinary citizens and hide behind flimsy policies and manipulated mandates.
There is an urgent need in Indonesia's fledgling democracy, for instance to build on the progress of the past decade by encouraging political parties to develop equitable policy platforms and ideologies instead of dressing up old traditions of patronage in democratic garb. The same goes for the Philippines and Thailand, where democracy at street level seems an elusive dream and explains why ordinary people still place an inordinate amount of faith in stone amulets and pray for miracles. Many of them would surely support the marching monks of Myanmar.
The writer is Regional Director of the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue based in Singapore.
----------------------------------------------
Another angle:
Singapore paper views significance of monks' protest in Burma
487 words
21 September 2007
16:50
BBC Monitoring Asia Pacific
English
(c) 2007 The British Broadcasting Corporation. All Rights Reserved. No material may be reproduced except with the express permission of The British Broadcasting Corporation.
Text of report by Singapore newspaper The Straits Times website on 21 September
[Editorial headlined: "Monks take the high road"]
Myanmar's military autocrats are a hardy lot. Since they crushed the 1988 revolt and the ensuing rebellion following a civilian election victory which the generals overturned, they have prospered more or less unhindered. Through sanctions, ostracism, the rising tenor of its ASEAN allies' criticism and veiled threats from the United States, the junta has sailed through it all, serene and practically daring its adversaries to do their worst. But just how immune to power challenges the generals are is now being tested as never before. Buddhist monks have been taking to the streets in a campaign of non-violent protest for the past several weeks. A few of them were roughed up by security forces a fortnight ago, never a smart thing to do in a devoutly Buddhist nation. The monks' intervention is undoubtedly the most serious fissure to have opened up in Myanmar society since the days of the student-led rebellion and Aung San Suu Kyi's martyrdom. The Buddhist clergy is Myanmar's most organized institution, after the military apparatus itself. It has the power of moral righteousness on its side; the generals can summon up no more than a mailed fist. An illegitimate gesture, at that. With or without civilians joining in the marches, in what manner the military authorities respond to this mortal threat to their legitimacy could determine whether Myanmar sees light ahead or remains mired in the dark ages.
Yesterday's march by hundreds of monks through central Yangon and around the Shwedagon pagoda has been replicated in cities across the land -in Mandalay, Pakokku and Sittwe -locations where the monkhood is especially prominent by its numbers. The protest marches have been against the hefty increases in fuel prices imposed last month, but the object of the monks' anger is really the unelected government itself. The monks have been involved in political protest before, but the climate of censure against the junta has never been heavier than now. The generals are faced with a dilemma. If they run to type and use force on the monks, they could spark a spontaneous uprising by an oppressed if dispirited population. If they hold back, as the monkhood is such an enduring symbol of rectitude, the momentum will build until the pressure has to find an outlet.
It calls to mind the galvanising role played by protesting monks in Vietnam when the war was at its most brutalizing. A Myanmar of diverse ethnicities holding together is still to be preferred. But if the junta finds itself at the precipice, there can be no sympathy for a cabal that has consistently denied the people the decency that is theirs as of right.
Source: The Straits Times website, Singapore, in English 21 Sep 07
Michael Vatikiotis , Singapore
841 words
21 September 2007
The Jakarta Post
6
English
(c) 2007 The Jakarta Post
The sight of several hundred of saffron-robed Buddhist monks marching in protest through the streets of the Myanmar capital Yangon, their hands clasped in prayer, is a strong reminder of the significant role that religion plays in the politics of Asia.
It may be too early to tell whether the fledgling alliance of monks, many of them students in saffron robes, will prove strong enough to topple the country's military regime, but many observers recall that the popular revolt that forced Burmese strongman Ne Win to step down in 1988 was also spearheaded by the country's influential Budhhist clergy.
Religion in Asia is a powerful leveler in unequal societies. Few popular movements for freedom and democracy in the region have taken off without strong support, if not inspiration, from religious quarters. The earliest movements for independence in Burma (now Myanmar) as well as Indonesia, drew inspiration from religious organizations. In modern Indonesia, Islamic scholars and thinkers like Abdurrahman Wahid and Nurcholis Madjid spearheaded the fledgling democracy movement of the 1990s, and Wahid eventually became President.
Elsewhere in the region, the link between struggles for freedom and religion is less overt but present nonetheless. In the Philippines, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo rode to power in 2000 on the back of a mass movement that consciously tapped support from the Catholic Church. In Hong Kong, the pro-democracy movement that mobilized hundreds of thousands of people to march down the busy streets of the territory in 2002 and 2003 took inspiration from the Catholic Church, which is strong in the territory.
The religious tinting of popular protests against authoritarian rule has helped keep many of them non-violent and reduced levels of conflict. Political change in Asia has been accompanied by short bursts of violence, but all out civil war is rare.
Yet, to the Western mind, religion and politics should not be mixed. The dominant Catholic Church of Europe keeps a tight rein on its clergy and followers through the Vatican to maintain the strong division between church and state embedded in European political culture. The Western mind is also affected by a long history of conflict with the Muslim world, which makes it hard to imagine the Muslim faith as a liberating force.
Terrorist attacks by Islamic militants over the past decade or longer, have entrenched the view that the militants who carry out these attacks are bent on curbing freedom and undermining democracy. The irony of course is that it is precisely the quest for freedom in Muslim society that breeds Islamic militancy. Al Qaeda itself was a combined product of fierce opposition to a feudal Saudi regime and an active role in liberating Afghanistan from Soviet occupation.
But the reality in Asia is that mainstream religion and liberation politics form a highly combustible compound. Despite the focus on a few irrational extremists in Indonesia and understandable fear of violence, the majority of Muslim activists engage in politics in the name of populism.
Their agenda is usually based on the idealistic premise that an Islamic way of life promotes freedom and justice. In a country where politicians and officials are popularly perceived as selfish and corrupt, this is a powerful message and one that forces secular politicians to temper their behavior and adjust their programs or lose at the ballot box.
There is of course a limit to political movements mobilized by religious faith. East Asia has proved more resistant to theocracy than many parts of Western Asia like Iran and Pakistan. Despite the important role of Islam in Indonesian political life, the constitution guarantees freedom of religious faith and several attempts to nudge the country towards conservative Sharia Law have been voted down.
The Buddhist kingdoms of Thailand and Cambodia maintain a healthy balance between "church" and "state", and even in Myanmar today the Buddhist hierarchy has yet to declare its support for the protests spearheaded by younger monks, many of them students.
The role of religion in Asian politics will only be further marginalized once political pluralism is more firmly established in the region. This is why the agenda for political reform must go way beyond simply ensuring free elections.
For now, democratic politics in many countries of the region represents a marginal adjustment by vested interest groups who continue to trample on the rights of ordinary citizens and hide behind flimsy policies and manipulated mandates.
There is an urgent need in Indonesia's fledgling democracy, for instance to build on the progress of the past decade by encouraging political parties to develop equitable policy platforms and ideologies instead of dressing up old traditions of patronage in democratic garb. The same goes for the Philippines and Thailand, where democracy at street level seems an elusive dream and explains why ordinary people still place an inordinate amount of faith in stone amulets and pray for miracles. Many of them would surely support the marching monks of Myanmar.
The writer is Regional Director of the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue based in Singapore.
----------------------------------------------
Another angle:
Singapore paper views significance of monks' protest in Burma
487 words
21 September 2007
16:50
BBC Monitoring Asia Pacific
English
(c) 2007 The British Broadcasting Corporation. All Rights Reserved. No material may be reproduced except with the express permission of The British Broadcasting Corporation.
Text of report by Singapore newspaper The Straits Times website on 21 September
[Editorial headlined: "Monks take the high road"]
Myanmar's military autocrats are a hardy lot. Since they crushed the 1988 revolt and the ensuing rebellion following a civilian election victory which the generals overturned, they have prospered more or less unhindered. Through sanctions, ostracism, the rising tenor of its ASEAN allies' criticism and veiled threats from the United States, the junta has sailed through it all, serene and practically daring its adversaries to do their worst. But just how immune to power challenges the generals are is now being tested as never before. Buddhist monks have been taking to the streets in a campaign of non-violent protest for the past several weeks. A few of them were roughed up by security forces a fortnight ago, never a smart thing to do in a devoutly Buddhist nation. The monks' intervention is undoubtedly the most serious fissure to have opened up in Myanmar society since the days of the student-led rebellion and Aung San Suu Kyi's martyrdom. The Buddhist clergy is Myanmar's most organized institution, after the military apparatus itself. It has the power of moral righteousness on its side; the generals can summon up no more than a mailed fist. An illegitimate gesture, at that. With or without civilians joining in the marches, in what manner the military authorities respond to this mortal threat to their legitimacy could determine whether Myanmar sees light ahead or remains mired in the dark ages.
Yesterday's march by hundreds of monks through central Yangon and around the Shwedagon pagoda has been replicated in cities across the land -in Mandalay, Pakokku and Sittwe -locations where the monkhood is especially prominent by its numbers. The protest marches have been against the hefty increases in fuel prices imposed last month, but the object of the monks' anger is really the unelected government itself. The monks have been involved in political protest before, but the climate of censure against the junta has never been heavier than now. The generals are faced with a dilemma. If they run to type and use force on the monks, they could spark a spontaneous uprising by an oppressed if dispirited population. If they hold back, as the monkhood is such an enduring symbol of rectitude, the momentum will build until the pressure has to find an outlet.
It calls to mind the galvanising role played by protesting monks in Vietnam when the war was at its most brutalizing. A Myanmar of diverse ethnicities holding together is still to be preferred. But if the junta finds itself at the precipice, there can be no sympathy for a cabal that has consistently denied the people the decency that is theirs as of right.
Source: The Straits Times website, Singapore, in English 21 Sep 07
Friday, September 21, 2007
World ranking of quality of life vis-a-vis countries to live in
Thu Sep 20, 11:18 AM ET
PARIS (AFP) - Nordic countries take the greatest care of their environment and their people, according to a ranking published on Thursday by the publication Reader's Digest.
Finland comes top of the 141-nation list, followed by Iceland, Norway and Sweden, and then Austria, Switzerland, Ireland and Australia.
At the bottom of the list is Ethiopia, preceded by Niger, Sierra Leone, Burkina Faso and Chad.
The United States comes in 23rd, China 84th and India 104th.
The ranking combines environmental factors, such as air and water quality, respect for biodiversity and greenhouse-gas emissions, as well as social factors, such as gross domestic product, access to education, unemployment rate and life expectancy.
The statistical basis is the UN's Human Development Index and the Environmental Sustainability Index drawn up by Yale and Columbia universities and the World Economic Forum.
European countries -- again, led by Scandinavia -- also top the Reader's Digest assessment of 72 cities for their quality of life. The criteria for this include public transport, parks, air quality, rubbish recycling and the price of electricity.
The winner is Stockholm, followed by Oslo, Munich and Paris.
Asia's mega-cities fare the worst. At the bottom is Beijing, preceded by Shanghai, Mumbai, Guangzhou and Bangkok.
PARIS (AFP) - Nordic countries take the greatest care of their environment and their people, according to a ranking published on Thursday by the publication Reader's Digest.
Finland comes top of the 141-nation list, followed by Iceland, Norway and Sweden, and then Austria, Switzerland, Ireland and Australia.
At the bottom of the list is Ethiopia, preceded by Niger, Sierra Leone, Burkina Faso and Chad.
The United States comes in 23rd, China 84th and India 104th.
The ranking combines environmental factors, such as air and water quality, respect for biodiversity and greenhouse-gas emissions, as well as social factors, such as gross domestic product, access to education, unemployment rate and life expectancy.
The statistical basis is the UN's Human Development Index and the Environmental Sustainability Index drawn up by Yale and Columbia universities and the World Economic Forum.
European countries -- again, led by Scandinavia -- also top the Reader's Digest assessment of 72 cities for their quality of life. The criteria for this include public transport, parks, air quality, rubbish recycling and the price of electricity.
The winner is Stockholm, followed by Oslo, Munich and Paris.
Asia's mega-cities fare the worst. At the bottom is Beijing, preceded by Shanghai, Mumbai, Guangzhou and Bangkok.
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Travelling to Muktinath, the Mecca of Tibetan Buddhists
A burning desire to see the eternal flame of Muktinath
John Flinn
1037 words
16 September 2007
The San Francisco Chronicle
FINAL
G.3
English
© 2007 Hearst Communications Inc., Hearst Newspapers Division. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All Rights Reserved.
We're all pilgrims of a sort, and my own pilgrimage had pretty much been a disaster. I'd journeyed halfway around the world to climb a charismatic, pyramid-shaped Himalayan peak called Chulu, covering the last 100 miles on foot, and I'd failed badly.
Long, blistery days on the trail, suspect food, sweaty days down low, shivering nights up high, altitude sickness, that charming little malady called Delhi Belly, a year of planning, thousands of dollars spent, six weeks of vacation burned, and I'd barely made it halfway up the mountain.
It's not the destination that matters, say the enlightened folks, it's the journey. Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. I really wanted to reach the damn summit.
Now, as I limped on painful knees down from the 17,769-foot-high pass known as the Thorong La, one thing kept me going: the eternal flame of Muktinath.
Ever since I read about it as a schoolboy in one of those books of marvels, long before I'd ever heard of the Himalayas or knew what a Hindu or a Buddhist was, I'd been obsessed by the tale. It is said that the Hindu god Brahma lit the flame, and it has been burning ever since, with no intervention by humans - no oil, no wick, no flicked Bics.
In general, I'll admit, I've never had much of an appetite for mythology.Tales of defeated demons transforming into waterfalls, or demigods pulling islands out of the sea with fishhooks, or ravens playing practical jokes on coyotes make my eyes glaze over.
But the eternal flame of Muktinath is quite another thing: It's been burning in a little Himalayan grotto for more than 2,000 years, and you can see it with your own eyes.
By good fortune, my journey home from the mountain followed the Annapurna Circuit trekking route and took me through the village of Muktinath. (This story took place more than a decade ago, but nothing has changed there.)
Perched at an altitude of 12,300 feet, Muktinath commands one of the most dramatic locations on the planet. It stands above the Kali Gandaki River, which slices all the way through the mightiest mountain range of them all, with the 26,000-foot peaks of Annapurna and Dhaulagiri standing sentinel on either side.It's considered by some geographers to be the deepest gorge in the world.
In the river bed you can find black rocks that when cracked open reveal the spiral fossils of ammonites, deposited here 130 million years ago when the entire region was a sea bed. Hindus believe these fossils are a manifestation of their god Vishnu.
The trail to the village was crowded with pilgrims, both Hindus and Tibetan Buddhists. "Muktinath," wrote Nepalese author Hari Bansh Jha, "is to Hindus and Tibetan Buddhists what Mecca is to Muslims and Jerusalem is to Christians."
To Hindus, it is sacred as a place of salvation; to wash in the waters here guarantees deliverance after death. To Buddhists it is a place where the great sage Guru Rinpoche stopped while on his journey to Tibet, leaving a footprint in the rock. They also consider it one of the world's 24 tantric places and home to the goddesses known as dakinis, or sky dancers. Both religions make much of the fact that all the elements are present in Muktinath - earth, air, holy water and fire.
Trudging up the trail from Jomsom were Buddhist monks in burgundy robes; Hindu holy men with ash-smeared faces who'd walked all the way from New Delhi in sandals; and well-to-do Indian pilgrims slumped over ponies, looking rather queasy with altitude sickness. One trekking company even offers a pilgrimage-hike called "Muktinath and the Himalayan Flame of Faith," which sounds like a Harry Potter spin-off.
It's not just the eternal flame that they come for. There are important temples, both Hindu and Buddhist; 108 spouts with heads like either dragons or bulls, depending on who's describing them, spitting out sacred water; and at an altitude that's far above the normal timberline, a wondrous abundance of trees.
As I neared the village I was overwhelmed by the cloying bouquet of incense. It was literally the first thing I'd smelled after spending the previous week in the scentless world of ice and stone.
Other pilgrims were marveling at the temples, statues and artwork, but they didn't much interest me. I was impatient to see the eternal flame. I found my way to the pagoda-style temple dedicated to Jwala Mayi, the goddess of fire. At the entrance I was greeted by a Tibetan Buddhist nun who served as a caretaker.She was wearing a dark purple robe and a Marlboro Racing Team hat.
She led me into the darkened temple and over to a collection box into which I stuffed a fistful of rupees. At last it was time for the moment I'd been anticipating since childhood - I was finally going to set eyes on the eternal flame of Muktinath.
The nun took my hand and led me back into a little grotto with a curtain at the back. It was cold and dank in there; I'd expected to feel the warmth of the fire.
With considerable flourish she pulled back the curtain and gestured for me to kneel down and peer into a little recess. And there burned the eternal flame of Muktinath - a pitifully tiny nub of blue flame that looked exactly like the pilot light on my stove at home.
"That's it?" I asked.
She nodded yes. Apparently Hindu and Buddhist pilgrims are moved to tears by the site, but I gather a lot of Westerners react as I did.
I left the temple, blinking in the bright sunlight, and realized I had come an awful long way to learn one of the essential lessons of travel: It really is the journey that matters, not the destination.
John Flinn
1037 words
16 September 2007
The San Francisco Chronicle
FINAL
G.3
English
© 2007 Hearst Communications Inc., Hearst Newspapers Division. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All Rights Reserved.
We're all pilgrims of a sort, and my own pilgrimage had pretty much been a disaster. I'd journeyed halfway around the world to climb a charismatic, pyramid-shaped Himalayan peak called Chulu, covering the last 100 miles on foot, and I'd failed badly.
Long, blistery days on the trail, suspect food, sweaty days down low, shivering nights up high, altitude sickness, that charming little malady called Delhi Belly, a year of planning, thousands of dollars spent, six weeks of vacation burned, and I'd barely made it halfway up the mountain.
It's not the destination that matters, say the enlightened folks, it's the journey. Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. I really wanted to reach the damn summit.
Now, as I limped on painful knees down from the 17,769-foot-high pass known as the Thorong La, one thing kept me going: the eternal flame of Muktinath.
Ever since I read about it as a schoolboy in one of those books of marvels, long before I'd ever heard of the Himalayas or knew what a Hindu or a Buddhist was, I'd been obsessed by the tale. It is said that the Hindu god Brahma lit the flame, and it has been burning ever since, with no intervention by humans - no oil, no wick, no flicked Bics.
In general, I'll admit, I've never had much of an appetite for mythology.Tales of defeated demons transforming into waterfalls, or demigods pulling islands out of the sea with fishhooks, or ravens playing practical jokes on coyotes make my eyes glaze over.
But the eternal flame of Muktinath is quite another thing: It's been burning in a little Himalayan grotto for more than 2,000 years, and you can see it with your own eyes.
By good fortune, my journey home from the mountain followed the Annapurna Circuit trekking route and took me through the village of Muktinath. (This story took place more than a decade ago, but nothing has changed there.)
Perched at an altitude of 12,300 feet, Muktinath commands one of the most dramatic locations on the planet. It stands above the Kali Gandaki River, which slices all the way through the mightiest mountain range of them all, with the 26,000-foot peaks of Annapurna and Dhaulagiri standing sentinel on either side.It's considered by some geographers to be the deepest gorge in the world.
In the river bed you can find black rocks that when cracked open reveal the spiral fossils of ammonites, deposited here 130 million years ago when the entire region was a sea bed. Hindus believe these fossils are a manifestation of their god Vishnu.
The trail to the village was crowded with pilgrims, both Hindus and Tibetan Buddhists. "Muktinath," wrote Nepalese author Hari Bansh Jha, "is to Hindus and Tibetan Buddhists what Mecca is to Muslims and Jerusalem is to Christians."
To Hindus, it is sacred as a place of salvation; to wash in the waters here guarantees deliverance after death. To Buddhists it is a place where the great sage Guru Rinpoche stopped while on his journey to Tibet, leaving a footprint in the rock. They also consider it one of the world's 24 tantric places and home to the goddesses known as dakinis, or sky dancers. Both religions make much of the fact that all the elements are present in Muktinath - earth, air, holy water and fire.
Trudging up the trail from Jomsom were Buddhist monks in burgundy robes; Hindu holy men with ash-smeared faces who'd walked all the way from New Delhi in sandals; and well-to-do Indian pilgrims slumped over ponies, looking rather queasy with altitude sickness. One trekking company even offers a pilgrimage-hike called "Muktinath and the Himalayan Flame of Faith," which sounds like a Harry Potter spin-off.
It's not just the eternal flame that they come for. There are important temples, both Hindu and Buddhist; 108 spouts with heads like either dragons or bulls, depending on who's describing them, spitting out sacred water; and at an altitude that's far above the normal timberline, a wondrous abundance of trees.
As I neared the village I was overwhelmed by the cloying bouquet of incense. It was literally the first thing I'd smelled after spending the previous week in the scentless world of ice and stone.
Other pilgrims were marveling at the temples, statues and artwork, but they didn't much interest me. I was impatient to see the eternal flame. I found my way to the pagoda-style temple dedicated to Jwala Mayi, the goddess of fire. At the entrance I was greeted by a Tibetan Buddhist nun who served as a caretaker.She was wearing a dark purple robe and a Marlboro Racing Team hat.
She led me into the darkened temple and over to a collection box into which I stuffed a fistful of rupees. At last it was time for the moment I'd been anticipating since childhood - I was finally going to set eyes on the eternal flame of Muktinath.
The nun took my hand and led me back into a little grotto with a curtain at the back. It was cold and dank in there; I'd expected to feel the warmth of the fire.
With considerable flourish she pulled back the curtain and gestured for me to kneel down and peer into a little recess. And there burned the eternal flame of Muktinath - a pitifully tiny nub of blue flame that looked exactly like the pilot light on my stove at home.
"That's it?" I asked.
She nodded yes. Apparently Hindu and Buddhist pilgrims are moved to tears by the site, but I gather a lot of Westerners react as I did.
I left the temple, blinking in the bright sunlight, and realized I had come an awful long way to learn one of the essential lessons of travel: It really is the journey that matters, not the destination.
Things to do in Lhasa, Tibet
Escape
Holy city up on high
David May
551 words
16 September 2007
Sunday Mail, The
2 - State - Main Country
E21
English
Copyright 2007 News Ltd. All Rights Reserved
Lhasa
PERCHED at 3658m in a mountain-fringed valley on the north bank of the Kyichu River, Lhasa is the capital of China's Tibet Autonomous Region.
This mystical city had for centuries been locked in Central Asia on the edge of the Tibetan Plateau, an isolated, almost inaccessible Buddhist "Shangri-la" and seat of the Dalai Lama where devotees on pilgrimages were about the only visitors.
But Lhasa is remote no more. It's now a modern Chinese city of 474,500 people (87 per cent Tibetan) serviced by multimillion-dollar highways and the world's highest railway.
It's a city of wide boulevards, flashing neon, modern shops, restaurants, bars and discos. But towering over it all is the ancient, brooding Potala Palace, an enormous red and white fortress/palace/monastery from where the Dalai Lamas ruled for centuries before the Chinese invasion of Tibet in the 1950s. The city is World Heritage-listed. The present Dalai Lama lives in exile.
Morning
The most obvious starting point is the 7th century Potala Palace, begun in 608 and sitting atop Red Hill at 3700m above sea level.
It contains treasures of Buddhism's finest arts and crafts, temples, chapels, shrines and the gold-plated tombs of eight Dalai Lamas.
About 2km to the east is the ornate Jokhang Temple, the most revered site in Tibet. Outside, thousands of pilgrims arrive daily to prostrate themselves in obeisance and shuffle clockwise around the compound's spinning prayer wheels.
Lunch
Tibetan traditional foods include tsampa (roasted flour), yoghurt and dairy products, momo (spicy yak meat dumplings), beef, mutton and a salty tea made with yak butter.
Small cafes around Tromzikhang Market sell noodles for about four yuan (A65). There are more than 100 restaurants on Deji Lu, Beijing Lu and Barkhor Street, and Western, Indian, Nepalese and Chinese regional foods are easy to find and inexpensive. What you won't find (yet) are Starbucks and McDonald's.
The pizzas, Indian and Nepalese food at Snowlands Restaurant (4 Mentsikhang) are good value.
Try some Tibetan noodles and sweet tea at Guangming Sweet Tea House on Beijing Dong Lu, a dimly lit, atmospheric traditional teahouse.
Afternoon
Norbulingka was once the Dalai Lamas' Summer Palace, set amid 360,000sq m of parks and gardens, open to the public and listed by UNESCO as a World Cultural Heritage Site.
In the southeast corner, the Tibet Museum contains prehistoric Tibetan relics, Buddha statues, colourful "thangkas" (religious paintings and embroideries) and folk handicrafts while the Drepung Monastery contains Buddhist statuary, flowery murals and valuable religious relics.
Shop for thangkas, Tibetan costumes, carpets, antiques, jewellery and gold and silverware at the countless shops on Barkhor Square and its extension, Barkhor Street.
Day trips
Spend a day white-water rafting through dramatic scenery on the Brahmaputra River ( www.highasia .com) or take the 7am scenic bus trip from Jokhang Square to Ganden Monastery built in 1417 and an important pilgrimage site with breathtaking views of the Kyichu River Valley.
Nightlife
Not much really. Most of the bars and clubs are on Beijing Lu and Barkhor Street. Karaoke bars seem to be everywhere while Niuwei (Linkou Bei Lu 13) is a popular Tibetan nightclub.
Holy city up on high
David May
551 words
16 September 2007
Sunday Mail, The
2 - State - Main Country
E21
English
Copyright 2007 News Ltd. All Rights Reserved
Lhasa
PERCHED at 3658m in a mountain-fringed valley on the north bank of the Kyichu River, Lhasa is the capital of China's Tibet Autonomous Region.
This mystical city had for centuries been locked in Central Asia on the edge of the Tibetan Plateau, an isolated, almost inaccessible Buddhist "Shangri-la" and seat of the Dalai Lama where devotees on pilgrimages were about the only visitors.
But Lhasa is remote no more. It's now a modern Chinese city of 474,500 people (87 per cent Tibetan) serviced by multimillion-dollar highways and the world's highest railway.
It's a city of wide boulevards, flashing neon, modern shops, restaurants, bars and discos. But towering over it all is the ancient, brooding Potala Palace, an enormous red and white fortress/palace/monastery from where the Dalai Lamas ruled for centuries before the Chinese invasion of Tibet in the 1950s. The city is World Heritage-listed. The present Dalai Lama lives in exile.
Morning
The most obvious starting point is the 7th century Potala Palace, begun in 608 and sitting atop Red Hill at 3700m above sea level.
It contains treasures of Buddhism's finest arts and crafts, temples, chapels, shrines and the gold-plated tombs of eight Dalai Lamas.
About 2km to the east is the ornate Jokhang Temple, the most revered site in Tibet. Outside, thousands of pilgrims arrive daily to prostrate themselves in obeisance and shuffle clockwise around the compound's spinning prayer wheels.
Lunch
Tibetan traditional foods include tsampa (roasted flour), yoghurt and dairy products, momo (spicy yak meat dumplings), beef, mutton and a salty tea made with yak butter.
Small cafes around Tromzikhang Market sell noodles for about four yuan (A65). There are more than 100 restaurants on Deji Lu, Beijing Lu and Barkhor Street, and Western, Indian, Nepalese and Chinese regional foods are easy to find and inexpensive. What you won't find (yet) are Starbucks and McDonald's.
The pizzas, Indian and Nepalese food at Snowlands Restaurant (4 Mentsikhang) are good value.
Try some Tibetan noodles and sweet tea at Guangming Sweet Tea House on Beijing Dong Lu, a dimly lit, atmospheric traditional teahouse.
Afternoon
Norbulingka was once the Dalai Lamas' Summer Palace, set amid 360,000sq m of parks and gardens, open to the public and listed by UNESCO as a World Cultural Heritage Site.
In the southeast corner, the Tibet Museum contains prehistoric Tibetan relics, Buddha statues, colourful "thangkas" (religious paintings and embroideries) and folk handicrafts while the Drepung Monastery contains Buddhist statuary, flowery murals and valuable religious relics.
Shop for thangkas, Tibetan costumes, carpets, antiques, jewellery and gold and silverware at the countless shops on Barkhor Square and its extension, Barkhor Street.
Day trips
Spend a day white-water rafting through dramatic scenery on the Brahmaputra River ( www.highasia .com) or take the 7am scenic bus trip from Jokhang Square to Ganden Monastery built in 1417 and an important pilgrimage site with breathtaking views of the Kyichu River Valley.
Nightlife
Not much really. Most of the bars and clubs are on Beijing Lu and Barkhor Street. Karaoke bars seem to be everywhere while Niuwei (Linkou Bei Lu 13) is a popular Tibetan nightclub.
Saturday, September 15, 2007
Tibetan foremost female lama - a peek into her daily life
News and Features - News Review
A lesson on living the good life
Gabriella Coslovich
1993 words
15 September 2007
The Sydney Morning Herald
First
31
English
© 2007 Copyright John Fairfax Holdings Limited. www.smh.com.au
For Tibetan Buddhism's foremost woman lama, living well requires patience, discipline and time to shop, writes Gabriella Coslovich.
AROUND seven on a chilly early spring Sunday evening, people trickle into the Sakya Buddhist centre in Sydney's west. They leave their shoes on wooden shelves at the side entrance of the double-storey, cream brick, suburban mansion.
The palm trees lining the driveway give the home an air of California dreaming. But apart from the rustling fronds, there is little to distinguish the centre as anything other than a large residential abode, the sort built and beloved by hard-working immigrants who were making it good in the '70s and '80s.
Inside, people in jeans and casuals, Caucasian for the most part, mill about, waiting for the evening's ritual to begin. Jack Heath, the centre's president, and a former speech writer for Paul Keating and Gareth Evans, wanders about in his suit and tie, greeting people. He has the air of a man deep in thought.
The centre's monks are a more jovial lot: the tall and chatty Tenzin Phil, who drives cabs three times a week and is jokingly called "Lurch" for his resemblance to the deep-voiced butler in the '60s sitcom The Addams Family; and Lama Ngawang, whose youthful grin belies his seniority in the Buddhist tradition, and who goes by the nickname Lama Larrikin because of his mischievous bent.
The centre's beige-tiled foyer is filling with people, from seniors to teens. Tonight is special. The centre is being visited by the Tibetan Buddhist tradition's foremost woman lama, the 69-year-old Jetsun Kushola. She has flown from her home in Vancouver, Canada, for an intensive teaching program taking in Sydney, Adelaide, Whyalla, Melbourne and the Blue Mountains over the next two months.
This evening she will conduct the Green Tara Empowerment, which, despite its name, has nothing to do with bolstering the egos of type-A personalities needing an incentive drive. The Green Tara is the deity associated with active compassion - her outstretched leg symbolises that she is ready jump into action. As the hour of eight approaches, the crowd ambles upstairs.
At last, a little stooped lady in traditional robes emerges from a side door. She takes her place on the throne in front of the vast shrine. The empowerment begins. There is much Tibetan chanting, the recitation of mantras in Sanskrit, the throwing of rice, the swinging of incense, the crashing of cymbals, the beating of drums, the ringing of bells, the giving of offerings. To an outsider, the rituals are esoteric, yet strangely evocative, affecting in an osmotic, visceral sense.
After about an hour, the empowerment is over. Jetsun Kushola stands up, says "that's all, finish, goodbye". She waves, smiles and disappears through a side door. Her husband, Luding Sey Kusho, pokes his face around the door and it lights up, as if in awe of the crowd his wife has attracted.
Jetsun Kushola has lived an extraordinary life. Born in Tibet in 1938, into the noble Sakya lineage, one of the four schools of Buddhism, she was destined to become a nun.
According to the traditions and expectations of her lineage, she began studying the Buddha's teachings at age six. At 10, she made her first retreat, meditating and reportedly reciting a million short mantras and 100,000 long mantras. During retreats, she would rise at 3am and finish her practice at 11pm. As a noble Sakya woman, Jetsun was accorded the same teachings as her brother, Sakya Trizin, who is now the throne holder of the lineage and lives in Dehradun, in northern India.
In 1959, Jetsun and her brother fled Tibet as the Chinese Communist regime encroached. They escaped to India, where it became increasingly difficult for Jetsun to continue living as a nun. Her shaved head and robes attracted ire and ridicule. With the approval of the Dalai Lama and her brother, Jetsun gave back her robes and grew her hair. But she continued the inner life of a nun. She learnt English at a missionary school, where she met her future husband. Her aunt and other family members arranged a marriage between Luding Sey Kusho and Jetsun. Initially, Jetsun refused, but the couple eventually married in 1964.
They had five children - four sons and a daughter, who died in infancy. In 1971, they migrated to Canada. Only three of their sons went with them - the couple's four-year-old, Shabdrung Rinpoche, remained in India with his uncles, to become a monk.
In Canada, Jetsun had hoped to live a quiet life, continuing her Buddhist practice while working full-time as a weaver for fashion designer Zonda Nellis and part-time as a house cleaner.
She would rise at 4am, meditate until 7am, have breakfast, leave for work at 8am, return home at 5pm, tend to the family, and go to bed around 9pm or 10pm, or later if something on television caught her fancy.
It sounds like a gruelling routine, but Jetsun, in her calm way, says that it wasn't at all.
"Tiring is only in your mind. If you are thinking tired, you (are) always tired, if you are not thinking about that, it's OK."
After leaving Tibet, Jetsun had no desire to teach, but fate would intervene. During teachings in New York, her brother Sakya Trizin was asked by women why there were not more female teachers in the Buddhist tradition. He said there were, and that an important one lived in Canada.
And so Sakya Trizin told his sister that she should resume teaching and become a role model for women in the West. She could not refuse.
"His Holiness [Sakya Trizin] is my root guru, so I can't say no," she says. "Otherwise, I really, truly in my way didn't want to teach. I wanted to be quiet."
Jetsun's English is stilted, making it difficult to conduct a deep philosophical discussion about Buddhism. Her answers, too, can be frustratingly simple, in a peculiarly Buddhist way. And yet, respect is owed to a woman who is one of the religion's most highly realised female teachers.
"It makes a huge difference to Buddhist women that there is a woman teacher of high standing who is universally acknowledged," says Tibetan historian Di Cousens.
"It shows that there is not a hard and fast gender boundary. There is no reason why women, given the opportunity, cannot become important teachers."
Cousens adds, however, that "Buddhism is widely seen as a very patriarchal religion for good reason.
"The teaching structure is 99.9 per cent male, so it has been a bit of a battle for women to have any position in the hierarchy," she says. "There has only been a handful of famous women teachers and there must be thousands of famous male teachers, and it's not because women lack capability or interest. It's because the resources have never been made available on any sort of parity for nunneries compared to monasteries, or for women in other walks of life."
But feminism and its concerns are not part of Tibetan cultural tradition and Jetsun hasn't much to say on the topic.
She admits she does not really understand the concept of feminism, and cannot say whether it is a good or bad thing. Buddhists believe in karma, she says, and one's karma will influence the course of one's life.
Asked about her childhood and whether she ever resented the onerous demands of her studies, the early rises and late finishes, Jestsun replies, "No, no, never think that."
"Generally, Tibetan children or people don't have that kind of mind. They're always thinking of the parents or the teacher, whatever they teach is the best thing for us."
She sees a lack of discipline in the children of Western families as a major problem. Parents, mothers especially, she says, need to be more mindful of raising well-behaved children, of leading them onto the right path, rather than spoiling them.
"You need a little bit of discipline . . . not forcing children, but letting them understand which way is suitable," she says.
Jetsun has experienced dramatic changes in her life, going from living with servants in a Tibetan palace to a humble existence as a mother and working woman in Canada, and from nun to married woman. What was it like giving up the monastic life to become a wife? "Oh, it's OK," she says, laughing.
"Not too surprising, not too interesting, nothing. Life is life, you know, that's all."
Although not a "love" marriage, the union between Jetsun and Sey Kusho has been a good and fruitful one. On this Jetsun is clear. Without her husband's support, she would have been unable to return to teaching. So what is the secret to a good marriage?
"I think nothing too special, actually. I think you need to be patient. Patience is very important in regular life or religious life," she says. "Western society is a little bit impatient. Also they want everything the way they want it, then people have difficult lives."
In Australia, those identifying themselves as Buddhist in the census more than doubled, rising from 200,000 to 420,000 in the years from 1996 to 2006. Buddhism is the most widely practised non-Christian religion in Australia. Jetsun believes Buddhism's popularity in the West is a sign that people are searching for truth, meaning and a means of quietening their busy minds.
Like her brother, Jetsun believes all world religions can help to achieve peace. But what about fundamentalist Islam and its links to terrorism?
Dialogue is important, Jetsun says, because anger and retaliation surely begets more anger and retaliation.
"One says something, another says something, then there is a fire burning and you throw in more wood and there's more burning," she says.
But extremists don't want to talk. "Yes, I understand," she says. "Then in Buddhism we pray for them to change their minds into good thoughts."
Among the followers of Buddhism are scientific minds, such as 32-year-old paediatrician Lucas Speed, who works at Campbelltown Hospital. Speed turned to Buddhism when he was searching for a way to cope with the suffering and death that he faced in the hospital. He did not want to become emotionally rigid.
"Without the Buddhist teachings I definitely would have dropped out," he says.
Speed attended teachings at Jetsun's dharma centre in Vancouver in 2000, and went on a pilgrimage with her to India in 2002. He vividly recalls one particular evening in India, when having dinner with Jetsun and her husband.
"Some monks recognised her, they were from her tradition, and they basically came up on all fours holding their scarves above their heads because of what she meant to them. And there we were at the table just talking like normal people, so that showed me how much she'd tried to meet us at our level," he says.
"It was the lack of politics and status and institutional egotism, which are the exact problems that I'm encountering with my profession (that I was attracted to). She's the antithesis of that, she's the down-to-earth, everyday householder with a family."
In the 12 days since arriving in Australia, Jetsun has had just two days off, and she wants to go to Leichhardt for a cappuccino and shopping, one of her favourite pastimes. As she leaves the centre, walking stick in hand, people stand and bow, forming a guard of honour.
She disappears around the corner, as one of her minders asks, "Would you like to come back here for dinner, or go out?"
"Go out," comes the forthright reply.
A lesson on living the good life
Gabriella Coslovich
1993 words
15 September 2007
The Sydney Morning Herald
First
31
English
© 2007 Copyright John Fairfax Holdings Limited. www.smh.com.au
For Tibetan Buddhism's foremost woman lama, living well requires patience, discipline and time to shop, writes Gabriella Coslovich.
AROUND seven on a chilly early spring Sunday evening, people trickle into the Sakya Buddhist centre in Sydney's west. They leave their shoes on wooden shelves at the side entrance of the double-storey, cream brick, suburban mansion.
The palm trees lining the driveway give the home an air of California dreaming. But apart from the rustling fronds, there is little to distinguish the centre as anything other than a large residential abode, the sort built and beloved by hard-working immigrants who were making it good in the '70s and '80s.
Inside, people in jeans and casuals, Caucasian for the most part, mill about, waiting for the evening's ritual to begin. Jack Heath, the centre's president, and a former speech writer for Paul Keating and Gareth Evans, wanders about in his suit and tie, greeting people. He has the air of a man deep in thought.
The centre's monks are a more jovial lot: the tall and chatty Tenzin Phil, who drives cabs three times a week and is jokingly called "Lurch" for his resemblance to the deep-voiced butler in the '60s sitcom The Addams Family; and Lama Ngawang, whose youthful grin belies his seniority in the Buddhist tradition, and who goes by the nickname Lama Larrikin because of his mischievous bent.
The centre's beige-tiled foyer is filling with people, from seniors to teens. Tonight is special. The centre is being visited by the Tibetan Buddhist tradition's foremost woman lama, the 69-year-old Jetsun Kushola. She has flown from her home in Vancouver, Canada, for an intensive teaching program taking in Sydney, Adelaide, Whyalla, Melbourne and the Blue Mountains over the next two months.
This evening she will conduct the Green Tara Empowerment, which, despite its name, has nothing to do with bolstering the egos of type-A personalities needing an incentive drive. The Green Tara is the deity associated with active compassion - her outstretched leg symbolises that she is ready jump into action. As the hour of eight approaches, the crowd ambles upstairs.
At last, a little stooped lady in traditional robes emerges from a side door. She takes her place on the throne in front of the vast shrine. The empowerment begins. There is much Tibetan chanting, the recitation of mantras in Sanskrit, the throwing of rice, the swinging of incense, the crashing of cymbals, the beating of drums, the ringing of bells, the giving of offerings. To an outsider, the rituals are esoteric, yet strangely evocative, affecting in an osmotic, visceral sense.
After about an hour, the empowerment is over. Jetsun Kushola stands up, says "that's all, finish, goodbye". She waves, smiles and disappears through a side door. Her husband, Luding Sey Kusho, pokes his face around the door and it lights up, as if in awe of the crowd his wife has attracted.
Jetsun Kushola has lived an extraordinary life. Born in Tibet in 1938, into the noble Sakya lineage, one of the four schools of Buddhism, she was destined to become a nun.
According to the traditions and expectations of her lineage, she began studying the Buddha's teachings at age six. At 10, she made her first retreat, meditating and reportedly reciting a million short mantras and 100,000 long mantras. During retreats, she would rise at 3am and finish her practice at 11pm. As a noble Sakya woman, Jetsun was accorded the same teachings as her brother, Sakya Trizin, who is now the throne holder of the lineage and lives in Dehradun, in northern India.
In 1959, Jetsun and her brother fled Tibet as the Chinese Communist regime encroached. They escaped to India, where it became increasingly difficult for Jetsun to continue living as a nun. Her shaved head and robes attracted ire and ridicule. With the approval of the Dalai Lama and her brother, Jetsun gave back her robes and grew her hair. But she continued the inner life of a nun. She learnt English at a missionary school, where she met her future husband. Her aunt and other family members arranged a marriage between Luding Sey Kusho and Jetsun. Initially, Jetsun refused, but the couple eventually married in 1964.
They had five children - four sons and a daughter, who died in infancy. In 1971, they migrated to Canada. Only three of their sons went with them - the couple's four-year-old, Shabdrung Rinpoche, remained in India with his uncles, to become a monk.
In Canada, Jetsun had hoped to live a quiet life, continuing her Buddhist practice while working full-time as a weaver for fashion designer Zonda Nellis and part-time as a house cleaner.
She would rise at 4am, meditate until 7am, have breakfast, leave for work at 8am, return home at 5pm, tend to the family, and go to bed around 9pm or 10pm, or later if something on television caught her fancy.
It sounds like a gruelling routine, but Jetsun, in her calm way, says that it wasn't at all.
"Tiring is only in your mind. If you are thinking tired, you (are) always tired, if you are not thinking about that, it's OK."
After leaving Tibet, Jetsun had no desire to teach, but fate would intervene. During teachings in New York, her brother Sakya Trizin was asked by women why there were not more female teachers in the Buddhist tradition. He said there were, and that an important one lived in Canada.
And so Sakya Trizin told his sister that she should resume teaching and become a role model for women in the West. She could not refuse.
"His Holiness [Sakya Trizin] is my root guru, so I can't say no," she says. "Otherwise, I really, truly in my way didn't want to teach. I wanted to be quiet."
Jetsun's English is stilted, making it difficult to conduct a deep philosophical discussion about Buddhism. Her answers, too, can be frustratingly simple, in a peculiarly Buddhist way. And yet, respect is owed to a woman who is one of the religion's most highly realised female teachers.
"It makes a huge difference to Buddhist women that there is a woman teacher of high standing who is universally acknowledged," says Tibetan historian Di Cousens.
"It shows that there is not a hard and fast gender boundary. There is no reason why women, given the opportunity, cannot become important teachers."
Cousens adds, however, that "Buddhism is widely seen as a very patriarchal religion for good reason.
"The teaching structure is 99.9 per cent male, so it has been a bit of a battle for women to have any position in the hierarchy," she says. "There has only been a handful of famous women teachers and there must be thousands of famous male teachers, and it's not because women lack capability or interest. It's because the resources have never been made available on any sort of parity for nunneries compared to monasteries, or for women in other walks of life."
But feminism and its concerns are not part of Tibetan cultural tradition and Jetsun hasn't much to say on the topic.
She admits she does not really understand the concept of feminism, and cannot say whether it is a good or bad thing. Buddhists believe in karma, she says, and one's karma will influence the course of one's life.
Asked about her childhood and whether she ever resented the onerous demands of her studies, the early rises and late finishes, Jestsun replies, "No, no, never think that."
"Generally, Tibetan children or people don't have that kind of mind. They're always thinking of the parents or the teacher, whatever they teach is the best thing for us."
She sees a lack of discipline in the children of Western families as a major problem. Parents, mothers especially, she says, need to be more mindful of raising well-behaved children, of leading them onto the right path, rather than spoiling them.
"You need a little bit of discipline . . . not forcing children, but letting them understand which way is suitable," she says.
Jetsun has experienced dramatic changes in her life, going from living with servants in a Tibetan palace to a humble existence as a mother and working woman in Canada, and from nun to married woman. What was it like giving up the monastic life to become a wife? "Oh, it's OK," she says, laughing.
"Not too surprising, not too interesting, nothing. Life is life, you know, that's all."
Although not a "love" marriage, the union between Jetsun and Sey Kusho has been a good and fruitful one. On this Jetsun is clear. Without her husband's support, she would have been unable to return to teaching. So what is the secret to a good marriage?
"I think nothing too special, actually. I think you need to be patient. Patience is very important in regular life or religious life," she says. "Western society is a little bit impatient. Also they want everything the way they want it, then people have difficult lives."
In Australia, those identifying themselves as Buddhist in the census more than doubled, rising from 200,000 to 420,000 in the years from 1996 to 2006. Buddhism is the most widely practised non-Christian religion in Australia. Jetsun believes Buddhism's popularity in the West is a sign that people are searching for truth, meaning and a means of quietening their busy minds.
Like her brother, Jetsun believes all world religions can help to achieve peace. But what about fundamentalist Islam and its links to terrorism?
Dialogue is important, Jetsun says, because anger and retaliation surely begets more anger and retaliation.
"One says something, another says something, then there is a fire burning and you throw in more wood and there's more burning," she says.
But extremists don't want to talk. "Yes, I understand," she says. "Then in Buddhism we pray for them to change their minds into good thoughts."
Among the followers of Buddhism are scientific minds, such as 32-year-old paediatrician Lucas Speed, who works at Campbelltown Hospital. Speed turned to Buddhism when he was searching for a way to cope with the suffering and death that he faced in the hospital. He did not want to become emotionally rigid.
"Without the Buddhist teachings I definitely would have dropped out," he says.
Speed attended teachings at Jetsun's dharma centre in Vancouver in 2000, and went on a pilgrimage with her to India in 2002. He vividly recalls one particular evening in India, when having dinner with Jetsun and her husband.
"Some monks recognised her, they were from her tradition, and they basically came up on all fours holding their scarves above their heads because of what she meant to them. And there we were at the table just talking like normal people, so that showed me how much she'd tried to meet us at our level," he says.
"It was the lack of politics and status and institutional egotism, which are the exact problems that I'm encountering with my profession (that I was attracted to). She's the antithesis of that, she's the down-to-earth, everyday householder with a family."
In the 12 days since arriving in Australia, Jetsun has had just two days off, and she wants to go to Leichhardt for a cappuccino and shopping, one of her favourite pastimes. As she leaves the centre, walking stick in hand, people stand and bow, forming a guard of honour.
She disappears around the corner, as one of her minders asks, "Would you like to come back here for dinner, or go out?"
"Go out," comes the forthright reply.
Chopra on mind body
When East Meets West: A Chat With Chopra On Integration Of Mind, Body
By Susan Campbell, The Hartford Courant, Conn.
McClatchy-Tribune Regional News
623 words
11 September 2007
The Hartford Courant (MCT)
English
Distributed by McClatchy - Tribune Information Services.
Sep. 11--Deepak Chopra is coming to Hartford tonight.
Chopra is an internationally known author and medical doctor whose explorations of the connection between the mind and body in health and medicine have been chronicled in 50 books, including his most recent, a novel, "Buddha: A Story of Enlightenment" (HarperOne, $24.95).
Chopra, co-founder of the Chopra Center for Wellbeing based in Carlsbad, Calif., was born in New Delhi and educated in India and the United States. He became interested in integrating Eastern and Western health practice in the '80s in Boston, where he ran an endocrinology practice. He has since expanded his message to world peace, among other topics.
His presentation at the Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts, scheduled for three hours, does not include a question-and-answer period. We asked him questions in advance:
Q: Are there messages and ideas based in Eastern thought that are difficult to translate into Western thought?
A: I think one of the things that people in the West are very concerned about and don't really get is the idea of the absence of a separate self. They are very insecure that they're not individual souls. I am very careful when I talk about that. Everybody so identifies with their personality, their ego-self. To be told there's no such thing -- that it's a socially induced hallucination -- they think they're going to lose all identity. You expand your identity, and it's very exhilarating. There's a light-heartedness.
Q: Is this realization something that happens, and you can mark it as an event, or does it have to keep happening again and again?
A: It's both. It's like a fruit that takes a long time to ripen, and it falls, certainly.
Q: Did you expect the kind of renown you've achieved?
A: Not really. I was just enjoying my explorations into consciousness, and I thought other people would enjoy what I'm enjoying. I decided to share it, and it seems like it got a great response. I still am surprised.
Q: Do you still practice medicine?
A: I do. At the center I have a group of physicians who work with me and present me patients. We do a joint conference, and now that I have a radio show in New York once a week [Wellness Radio airs Saturdays at 10 a.m. on Sirius], I actually present all the latest advances in medicine, consciousness, the role of the mind and the body, what's the latest information on how genes express themselves, how the environment affects us. I keep up with the literature, and I teach once a year at Harvard Medical School.
Q: Do you think the average general practitioner learns about mind-body connections in medical school?
A: People are not learning much in med school about this. What people don't understand is that every patient comes to their GP or their physician with a story. If you don't listen to their story, you are never going to get to the root of the problem. Nobody listens to the story. What's happening in the story is a metaphor for what's happening in their consciousness.
By Susan Campbell, The Hartford Courant, Conn.
McClatchy-Tribune Regional News
623 words
11 September 2007
The Hartford Courant (MCT)
English
Distributed by McClatchy - Tribune Information Services.
Sep. 11--Deepak Chopra is coming to Hartford tonight.
Chopra is an internationally known author and medical doctor whose explorations of the connection between the mind and body in health and medicine have been chronicled in 50 books, including his most recent, a novel, "Buddha: A Story of Enlightenment" (HarperOne, $24.95).
Chopra, co-founder of the Chopra Center for Wellbeing based in Carlsbad, Calif., was born in New Delhi and educated in India and the United States. He became interested in integrating Eastern and Western health practice in the '80s in Boston, where he ran an endocrinology practice. He has since expanded his message to world peace, among other topics.
His presentation at the Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts, scheduled for three hours, does not include a question-and-answer period. We asked him questions in advance:
Q: Are there messages and ideas based in Eastern thought that are difficult to translate into Western thought?
A: I think one of the things that people in the West are very concerned about and don't really get is the idea of the absence of a separate self. They are very insecure that they're not individual souls. I am very careful when I talk about that. Everybody so identifies with their personality, their ego-self. To be told there's no such thing -- that it's a socially induced hallucination -- they think they're going to lose all identity. You expand your identity, and it's very exhilarating. There's a light-heartedness.
Q: Is this realization something that happens, and you can mark it as an event, or does it have to keep happening again and again?
A: It's both. It's like a fruit that takes a long time to ripen, and it falls, certainly.
Q: Did you expect the kind of renown you've achieved?
A: Not really. I was just enjoying my explorations into consciousness, and I thought other people would enjoy what I'm enjoying. I decided to share it, and it seems like it got a great response. I still am surprised.
Q: Do you still practice medicine?
A: I do. At the center I have a group of physicians who work with me and present me patients. We do a joint conference, and now that I have a radio show in New York once a week [Wellness Radio airs Saturdays at 10 a.m. on Sirius], I actually present all the latest advances in medicine, consciousness, the role of the mind and the body, what's the latest information on how genes express themselves, how the environment affects us. I keep up with the literature, and I teach once a year at Harvard Medical School.
Q: Do you think the average general practitioner learns about mind-body connections in medical school?
A: People are not learning much in med school about this. What people don't understand is that every patient comes to their GP or their physician with a story. If you don't listen to their story, you are never going to get to the root of the problem. Nobody listens to the story. What's happening in the story is a metaphor for what's happening in their consciousness.
Sunday, September 9, 2007
Bringing back a piece of Thai history back - robes
OUTLOOK
Robe revived; Will this piece of Thai history find its way back?
1366 words
8 September 2007
Bangkok Post
O1
English
(c) 2007
USNISA SUKHSVASTI
A robe of heavily embroidered gold threads lay in a state of suspended existence in Denmark. But like Sleeping Beauty waking up from a 100 year sleep, it has recently been roused from its bed of silver paper and, wrapped in white linen, hidden away in the hushed security of a bank vault.
And this is no ordinary robe. The heavily embroidered, loose open style with intricate hem and cuffs is typical of those of those worn by members of the royal Siamese court of old, reflected today in the simplified graduation gowns worn at Chulalongkorn University commencement ceremonies. The filigree gold and silver threads that still shimmer despite their antiquity have a story to tell if you look closely enough. The intricate floral and vine patterns are interspersed with marine motifs - anchors, ship's wheels - that provide a clue to its original owner: Vice Admiral Andreas du Plessis de Richelieu.
It was in April of 1875 that Lt Richelieu arrived in Bangkok, bearing a private letter from King Christian IX of Denmark. An officer in the Danish Navy, he had come to offer his services to King Chulalongkorn during the height of European colonial expansion into Southeast Asia, a crucial period in Siamese history.
He was appointed chief of the naval inspection ship, the Regent, which patrolled the Bay of Bengal. In 1877, he had become commander of HMS Siam Mongkut, and by the following year he had been titled Luang Cholayuth Yothin and appointed chief commander of HMS Vesatri.
In this same year, as chief of the Naval Arsenal, he was also put in charge of a new unit, the Marines, which had been created to handle the newly imported Gatling guns.
Within the next decade, Richelieu's status grew, and his title elevated from Luang to Phra and later Phraya.
He played an increasingly significant role in the Royal Thai Navy. Eighteen ninety-three was a year that is etched in every Thai history book. Known as the Gunboat Crisis of Rattanakosin Era 112, the French sent gunboats to block the Chao Phraya River estuary. In his book of 1895 titled The Peoples and Politics of the Far East, British MP and journalist Sir Henry Norman, who had travelled extensively in the region, noted that the Thai navy was at a significant disadvantage due to the lack of experience of its personnel and its smaller fleet. He noted the presence of two or three foreign officers, among whom was Phraya Cholayuth Yothin, or Richelieu. Henry noted that Richelieu had suggested using HMS Maha Chakri to attack the French fleet, since it was the Royal Thai Navy's most modern and fastest vessel, but this particular ship was berthed at the Grand Palace landing for the king's personal use only. It was equipped with state of the art guns which, unfortunately, none of the local officers knew how to use. Had the HMS Maha Chakri been deployed, suggests Norman, things might have been different. As it was, Siam had to cede its Lao territory to the French.
Richelieu was to go on to become the first and only foreign commander-in-chief of the Royal Thai Navy, from January 16, 1900 to January 29, 1901.
He also served the king in various other capacities, acting as the king's adjudant general. In 1883 he accompanied two royal princes to Europe for education in Denmark, during which trip he also negotiated the purchase of ships for the navy as well as ammunition. On this same trip he is said to have bought generators and lamps to be installed at the Royal Palace in Bangkok, the first time the palace was fitted with electric lighting. In 1897, during King Chulalongkorn's first visit to Europe, Queen Saovabha was installed as Regent, with Richelieu as one of her advisers.
In 1898, he accompanied Crown Prince Maha Vajiravudh on visits to the Russian tzar and tzarina (the Danish Princess Dagmar), to the king of Sweden and to the king of Denmark while attending the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, in England.
Richelieu was often in the entourage of Prince Damrong Rajanubhab and Prince Devawongse, who held the positions equivalent to the Minister of Interior and Minister of Foreign Affairs, respectively. With these two princes he developed a particularly strong and lifelong friendship. Prince Damrong subsequently visited Richelieu in Denmark several times, the last time in 1930, two years before Richelieu's death.
When Wat Benjamabopit was being built in 1901, he oversaw the shipment of the presiding Buddha image (copied from that in Phitsanulok) to be installed in the chapel. His name appears at the foot of the Buddha image together with that of King Chulalongkorn.
For his services to the king, and after he was elevated to the rank of vice admiral in 1902, he was awarded the Ratanaporn Medal Rama V, or the King Chulalongkorn Royal Cypher Medal (Rama V), prior to his return to Denmark at the end of a long and eventful time in the service of the king of Siam.
With this decoration came the gold robe which was to be worn on all formal ceremonial occasions as a full dress robe. According to the book Phra Phusa Song Nai Rajasamnak Siam (Royal Robes in the Court of Siam), written by historian Paothong Thongchua and published by BankThai, the tradition of the robe can be traced back to the Ayutthaya period as a ceremonial court costume adapted from the Persians and Indians.
The close friendship he retained with the king and members of the royal family can be seen in a description of the touching farewell given to Richelieu when he retired from the royal court in 1902, as recounted by his grandson, Allan Aage Hastrup, 76, who is now in possession of the robe.
"When my grandfather left Siam, the king, queen, Prince Damrong and a lot of other princes and royals followed him to Singapore. At the Governor's Palace dinner, grandfather sat next to the king, and the king said in his speech how much he appreciated him, how sorry he was to see him leave, and how he hoped he would soon come and visit. He also gave him a beautiful silver plate, covered with diamonds showing his coat of arms ... at the same time the king gave him the title of 'Admiral en Suite' and a pension. This was on February 24, on grandfather's 50th birthday!
"The next day, at 9am at the Maha Chakri, everybody was on deck when the king came out from his cabin. The king then asked my grandfather to appoint his successor as commander-in-chief of the Royal Thai Navy, and to give the Seal of the Navy to the one he found the most important after the king himself. Grandfather gave it to the only full-blooded brother of the king, Prince Bhanurangsi Savangwongse, who was also the minister of the War Cabinet."
When King Chulalongkorn undertook a second visit to Denmark in 1907, he made a point of visiting his old friend of 28 years, V Adm Andreas du Plessis de Richelieu. Photographs from the period show a mature vice admiral constantly in the presence of the King during his Denmark visit.
Richelieu married his half-cousin, Dagmar Lousie Lerche, in 1892 and had five children, three of whom were known to have been born in Siam in 1892, 1894 and 1897.
The youngest of these three - Agnes Ingeborg du Plessis de Richelieu, known as Abi - inherited the robe from her father, and she in turn passed it down to her only son, Allan Aage Hastrup.
Despite its sentimental value, Hastrup feels that the robe should be returned to its place of origin, Thailand, a sentiment that is echoed by the auction house, Bruun Rasmussen, in Denmark, which is planning to exhibit the robe in Bangkok at the end of the year. It is hoped that a Thai buyer will be found for this magnificent robe, and if possible, it will make its way back into the Royal Thai Court, its place of birth.
Robe revived; Will this piece of Thai history find its way back?
1366 words
8 September 2007
Bangkok Post
O1
English
(c) 2007
USNISA SUKHSVASTI
A robe of heavily embroidered gold threads lay in a state of suspended existence in Denmark. But like Sleeping Beauty waking up from a 100 year sleep, it has recently been roused from its bed of silver paper and, wrapped in white linen, hidden away in the hushed security of a bank vault.
And this is no ordinary robe. The heavily embroidered, loose open style with intricate hem and cuffs is typical of those of those worn by members of the royal Siamese court of old, reflected today in the simplified graduation gowns worn at Chulalongkorn University commencement ceremonies. The filigree gold and silver threads that still shimmer despite their antiquity have a story to tell if you look closely enough. The intricate floral and vine patterns are interspersed with marine motifs - anchors, ship's wheels - that provide a clue to its original owner: Vice Admiral Andreas du Plessis de Richelieu.
It was in April of 1875 that Lt Richelieu arrived in Bangkok, bearing a private letter from King Christian IX of Denmark. An officer in the Danish Navy, he had come to offer his services to King Chulalongkorn during the height of European colonial expansion into Southeast Asia, a crucial period in Siamese history.
He was appointed chief of the naval inspection ship, the Regent, which patrolled the Bay of Bengal. In 1877, he had become commander of HMS Siam Mongkut, and by the following year he had been titled Luang Cholayuth Yothin and appointed chief commander of HMS Vesatri.
In this same year, as chief of the Naval Arsenal, he was also put in charge of a new unit, the Marines, which had been created to handle the newly imported Gatling guns.
Within the next decade, Richelieu's status grew, and his title elevated from Luang to Phra and later Phraya.
He played an increasingly significant role in the Royal Thai Navy. Eighteen ninety-three was a year that is etched in every Thai history book. Known as the Gunboat Crisis of Rattanakosin Era 112, the French sent gunboats to block the Chao Phraya River estuary. In his book of 1895 titled The Peoples and Politics of the Far East, British MP and journalist Sir Henry Norman, who had travelled extensively in the region, noted that the Thai navy was at a significant disadvantage due to the lack of experience of its personnel and its smaller fleet. He noted the presence of two or three foreign officers, among whom was Phraya Cholayuth Yothin, or Richelieu. Henry noted that Richelieu had suggested using HMS Maha Chakri to attack the French fleet, since it was the Royal Thai Navy's most modern and fastest vessel, but this particular ship was berthed at the Grand Palace landing for the king's personal use only. It was equipped with state of the art guns which, unfortunately, none of the local officers knew how to use. Had the HMS Maha Chakri been deployed, suggests Norman, things might have been different. As it was, Siam had to cede its Lao territory to the French.
Richelieu was to go on to become the first and only foreign commander-in-chief of the Royal Thai Navy, from January 16, 1900 to January 29, 1901.
He also served the king in various other capacities, acting as the king's adjudant general. In 1883 he accompanied two royal princes to Europe for education in Denmark, during which trip he also negotiated the purchase of ships for the navy as well as ammunition. On this same trip he is said to have bought generators and lamps to be installed at the Royal Palace in Bangkok, the first time the palace was fitted with electric lighting. In 1897, during King Chulalongkorn's first visit to Europe, Queen Saovabha was installed as Regent, with Richelieu as one of her advisers.
In 1898, he accompanied Crown Prince Maha Vajiravudh on visits to the Russian tzar and tzarina (the Danish Princess Dagmar), to the king of Sweden and to the king of Denmark while attending the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, in England.
Richelieu was often in the entourage of Prince Damrong Rajanubhab and Prince Devawongse, who held the positions equivalent to the Minister of Interior and Minister of Foreign Affairs, respectively. With these two princes he developed a particularly strong and lifelong friendship. Prince Damrong subsequently visited Richelieu in Denmark several times, the last time in 1930, two years before Richelieu's death.
When Wat Benjamabopit was being built in 1901, he oversaw the shipment of the presiding Buddha image (copied from that in Phitsanulok) to be installed in the chapel. His name appears at the foot of the Buddha image together with that of King Chulalongkorn.
For his services to the king, and after he was elevated to the rank of vice admiral in 1902, he was awarded the Ratanaporn Medal Rama V, or the King Chulalongkorn Royal Cypher Medal (Rama V), prior to his return to Denmark at the end of a long and eventful time in the service of the king of Siam.
With this decoration came the gold robe which was to be worn on all formal ceremonial occasions as a full dress robe. According to the book Phra Phusa Song Nai Rajasamnak Siam (Royal Robes in the Court of Siam), written by historian Paothong Thongchua and published by BankThai, the tradition of the robe can be traced back to the Ayutthaya period as a ceremonial court costume adapted from the Persians and Indians.
The close friendship he retained with the king and members of the royal family can be seen in a description of the touching farewell given to Richelieu when he retired from the royal court in 1902, as recounted by his grandson, Allan Aage Hastrup, 76, who is now in possession of the robe.
"When my grandfather left Siam, the king, queen, Prince Damrong and a lot of other princes and royals followed him to Singapore. At the Governor's Palace dinner, grandfather sat next to the king, and the king said in his speech how much he appreciated him, how sorry he was to see him leave, and how he hoped he would soon come and visit. He also gave him a beautiful silver plate, covered with diamonds showing his coat of arms ... at the same time the king gave him the title of 'Admiral en Suite' and a pension. This was on February 24, on grandfather's 50th birthday!
"The next day, at 9am at the Maha Chakri, everybody was on deck when the king came out from his cabin. The king then asked my grandfather to appoint his successor as commander-in-chief of the Royal Thai Navy, and to give the Seal of the Navy to the one he found the most important after the king himself. Grandfather gave it to the only full-blooded brother of the king, Prince Bhanurangsi Savangwongse, who was also the minister of the War Cabinet."
When King Chulalongkorn undertook a second visit to Denmark in 1907, he made a point of visiting his old friend of 28 years, V Adm Andreas du Plessis de Richelieu. Photographs from the period show a mature vice admiral constantly in the presence of the King during his Denmark visit.
Richelieu married his half-cousin, Dagmar Lousie Lerche, in 1892 and had five children, three of whom were known to have been born in Siam in 1892, 1894 and 1897.
The youngest of these three - Agnes Ingeborg du Plessis de Richelieu, known as Abi - inherited the robe from her father, and she in turn passed it down to her only son, Allan Aage Hastrup.
Despite its sentimental value, Hastrup feels that the robe should be returned to its place of origin, Thailand, a sentiment that is echoed by the auction house, Bruun Rasmussen, in Denmark, which is planning to exhibit the robe in Bangkok at the end of the year. It is hoped that a Thai buyer will be found for this magnificent robe, and if possible, it will make its way back into the Royal Thai Court, its place of birth.
Saturday, September 1, 2007
Milestones in China's history
From the First Emperor to a modern superpower: China's turbulent history;China's colossus
Damian Whitworth
412 words
30 August 2007
The Times
Times2 4
English
(c) 2007 Times Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved
2200BC-1700BC Xia Dynasty.
1500BC-1050BC Shang Dynasty.
1050BC-221BC Zhou Dynasty. The early years are considered a golden age, bringing stability to the region.
551BC Confucius is born. Encourages traditional hierarchies and rituals to avert disorder.
221BC-207BC Qin Dynasty. Qin Shihuangdi unites the war-torn states of China into an empire. Introduces one system for money, writing, weights and measures.
210BC Qin Shihuangdi dies. Buried with the Terracotta Army.
207BC-AD220 Han Dynasty.
AD65 First records of Buddhism, which entered China via the Silk Road (trade route linking Xi'an in central China with the eastern Mediterranean).
221-589 Period of disunity.
589-618 Sui Dynasty.
618-906 Tang Dynasty.
906-960 Five Dynasties.
960-1279 Song Dynasty.
1215 Genghis Khan and the Mongol army invade Northern China, destroying 90 cities, including Beijing.
1227 Khan dies. Mongols rule from the Pacific Ocean to the Caspian Sea.
1279-1368 Yuan Dynasty. Kubilai Khan, Genghis's grandson, becomes emperor.
1368-1644 Ming Dynasty Mass. production of famous blue and white porcelain.
Chinese keep the method of making it secret; Europeans don't learn until 1708.
1644-1911 Qing Dynasty. Expand empire and establish Beijing as capital.
1842 Treaty of Nanking after the first Opium War cedes Hong Kong to the UK.
1908 The last Emperor Puyi inherits the throne at the age of 3.
1911-1949 Puyi forced to abdicate. Revolutionaries declare the Republic of China.
The provisional government is weak and China is essentially ruled by warlords.
1931 Japan invades.
1949 Mao Zedong, chairman of the Communist Party, declares the People's Republic of China. Civil war has been ongoing between the Nationalists and the Communists for some years.
1966-1976 Cultural Revolution. Officially announced as an attempt to rid China of its bourgeois values but seen as Mao's attempt to regain political control within his own party, using the Red Guards (youth militia) and the CR Authority. Throws China into turmoil.
1976 Mao dies. The Gang of Four (Mao supporters, including his wife Jiang Qing) arrested. Deng Xiaoping serves as de facto leader of the People's Republic until 1997.
1997 Hong Kong (right) celebrates becoming a special administrative region of China, following the Joint Declaration of 1984. Granted "high degree of autonomy" and retention of capitalist system for 50 years.
Sources: British Library; Times database
Damian Whitworth
412 words
30 August 2007
The Times
Times2 4
English
(c) 2007 Times Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved
2200BC-1700BC Xia Dynasty.
1500BC-1050BC Shang Dynasty.
1050BC-221BC Zhou Dynasty. The early years are considered a golden age, bringing stability to the region.
551BC Confucius is born. Encourages traditional hierarchies and rituals to avert disorder.
221BC-207BC Qin Dynasty. Qin Shihuangdi unites the war-torn states of China into an empire. Introduces one system for money, writing, weights and measures.
210BC Qin Shihuangdi dies. Buried with the Terracotta Army.
207BC-AD220 Han Dynasty.
AD65 First records of Buddhism, which entered China via the Silk Road (trade route linking Xi'an in central China with the eastern Mediterranean).
221-589 Period of disunity.
589-618 Sui Dynasty.
618-906 Tang Dynasty.
906-960 Five Dynasties.
960-1279 Song Dynasty.
1215 Genghis Khan and the Mongol army invade Northern China, destroying 90 cities, including Beijing.
1227 Khan dies. Mongols rule from the Pacific Ocean to the Caspian Sea.
1279-1368 Yuan Dynasty. Kubilai Khan, Genghis's grandson, becomes emperor.
1368-1644 Ming Dynasty Mass. production of famous blue and white porcelain.
Chinese keep the method of making it secret; Europeans don't learn until 1708.
1644-1911 Qing Dynasty. Expand empire and establish Beijing as capital.
1842 Treaty of Nanking after the first Opium War cedes Hong Kong to the UK.
1908 The last Emperor Puyi inherits the throne at the age of 3.
1911-1949 Puyi forced to abdicate. Revolutionaries declare the Republic of China.
The provisional government is weak and China is essentially ruled by warlords.
1931 Japan invades.
1949 Mao Zedong, chairman of the Communist Party, declares the People's Republic of China. Civil war has been ongoing between the Nationalists and the Communists for some years.
1966-1976 Cultural Revolution. Officially announced as an attempt to rid China of its bourgeois values but seen as Mao's attempt to regain political control within his own party, using the Red Guards (youth militia) and the CR Authority. Throws China into turmoil.
1976 Mao dies. The Gang of Four (Mao supporters, including his wife Jiang Qing) arrested. Deng Xiaoping serves as de facto leader of the People's Republic until 1997.
1997 Hong Kong (right) celebrates becoming a special administrative region of China, following the Joint Declaration of 1984. Granted "high degree of autonomy" and retention of capitalist system for 50 years.
Sources: British Library; Times database
12th century buddhist sculptures found in Indonesian cave
12th century Buddhist sculptures found in Indonesian cave
By ALI KOTARUMALOS
Associated Press Writer
287 words
30 August 2007
14:31
Associated Press Newswires
English
(c) 2007. The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) - An Indonesian cave used for meditation by Buddhist monks in the 12th century contains previously undiscovered sculptures depicting the spiritual journey of Buddha, a religious leader said.
The sprawling cave -- a reminder of the rich Buddhist past in the world's most populous Muslim nation -- was discovered more than two decades ago near Jireg village in East Java province.
But it had never been thoroughly explored because of its remote and difficult-to-reach location, said Dhamma Subho Mahathera of Shangha Theravada Indonesia, the country's largest Buddhist organization.
"As far as I know it is the only Buddhist cave in the world for meditation of Buddhist monks," said Mahathera, who visited the site on Aug. 12. "There are reliefs representing four levels of meditations, from Sutatana to Arahata."
The sculptures include depictions of an elephant, cow, monkey, and a lotus -- Buddhism's symbol of peace.
Indonesia also has the Borobudur temple complex in Central Java built more than 1,100 years ago -- three centuries before the arrival of Islam -- as a shrine to Buddha and a place for pilgrimages. It was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in the 1980s.
Mahathera said Buddhist caves have also been discovered in India and Sri Lanka, but those did not have reliefs depicting the stages of Buddhist meditation.
Siddhartha Gautama was born in southwestern Nepal around 500 B.C. and later became revered as the Buddha.
Buddhism teaches that right thinking and self-control through meditation can enable people to achieve nirvana -- a divine state of peace and release from desire. Buddhism has about 325 million followers, mostly in Asia.
By ALI KOTARUMALOS
Associated Press Writer
287 words
30 August 2007
14:31
Associated Press Newswires
English
(c) 2007. The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) - An Indonesian cave used for meditation by Buddhist monks in the 12th century contains previously undiscovered sculptures depicting the spiritual journey of Buddha, a religious leader said.
The sprawling cave -- a reminder of the rich Buddhist past in the world's most populous Muslim nation -- was discovered more than two decades ago near Jireg village in East Java province.
But it had never been thoroughly explored because of its remote and difficult-to-reach location, said Dhamma Subho Mahathera of Shangha Theravada Indonesia, the country's largest Buddhist organization.
"As far as I know it is the only Buddhist cave in the world for meditation of Buddhist monks," said Mahathera, who visited the site on Aug. 12. "There are reliefs representing four levels of meditations, from Sutatana to Arahata."
The sculptures include depictions of an elephant, cow, monkey, and a lotus -- Buddhism's symbol of peace.
Indonesia also has the Borobudur temple complex in Central Java built more than 1,100 years ago -- three centuries before the arrival of Islam -- as a shrine to Buddha and a place for pilgrimages. It was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in the 1980s.
Mahathera said Buddhist caves have also been discovered in India and Sri Lanka, but those did not have reliefs depicting the stages of Buddhist meditation.
Siddhartha Gautama was born in southwestern Nepal around 500 B.C. and later became revered as the Buddha.
Buddhism teaches that right thinking and self-control through meditation can enable people to achieve nirvana -- a divine state of peace and release from desire. Buddhism has about 325 million followers, mostly in Asia.
A new epic film on Buddha on the way
Benegal to direct epic on Buddha
238 words
27 August 2007
Indo-Asian News Service
English
© Copyright 2007. HT Media Limited. All rights reserved.
Indo-Asian News Service Mumbai, Aug. 27 -- Dadasaheb Phalke Award winning director Shyam Benegal is all set to direct a historic epic on Gautam Buddha.
Atul Tiwari, who scripted films like "Bose, the Forgotten Hero" and "Mission Kashmir", has been roped in to write the script and dialogues.
The film is expected to go on floors around mid-2008 and released a year later. It will be produced by Light of Asia Foundation and Beyond Dreams Entertainment Limited.
"This is a historic moment for South Asian Cinema. We are about to tell the story of a man who was born in the Indian subcontinent and redefined the way the world thinks. The Buddha's philosophy is more contemporary today than ever before," said Yash Patnaik, CEO of Beyond Dreams Entertainment Limited, at a press conference here Monday.
Nimal D'Silva, a well-known Buddhist scholar in South Asia, has been appointed to head the research for the film along with scholars from China, Japan and South Korea.
The film will be shot in Sri Lanka and Patnaik has already done the location study along with Benegal and Tiwari. The producers have acquired over 1,000 acres of land near Colombo where a massive set will be built to recreate the era for the filming of the epic.
238 words
27 August 2007
Indo-Asian News Service
English
© Copyright 2007. HT Media Limited. All rights reserved.
Indo-Asian News Service Mumbai, Aug. 27 -- Dadasaheb Phalke Award winning director Shyam Benegal is all set to direct a historic epic on Gautam Buddha.
Atul Tiwari, who scripted films like "Bose, the Forgotten Hero" and "Mission Kashmir", has been roped in to write the script and dialogues.
The film is expected to go on floors around mid-2008 and released a year later. It will be produced by Light of Asia Foundation and Beyond Dreams Entertainment Limited.
"This is a historic moment for South Asian Cinema. We are about to tell the story of a man who was born in the Indian subcontinent and redefined the way the world thinks. The Buddha's philosophy is more contemporary today than ever before," said Yash Patnaik, CEO of Beyond Dreams Entertainment Limited, at a press conference here Monday.
Nimal D'Silva, a well-known Buddhist scholar in South Asia, has been appointed to head the research for the film along with scholars from China, Japan and South Korea.
The film will be shot in Sri Lanka and Patnaik has already done the location study along with Benegal and Tiwari. The producers have acquired over 1,000 acres of land near Colombo where a massive set will be built to recreate the era for the filming of the epic.
Studies on Contentment and being a happy nation
MEASURING CONTENTMENT / Institutes are establishing methods of judging well-being, and governments are putting greater emphasis on promoting it / How happy are we?
ARTHUR MAX; TOBY STERLING
Associated Press
764 words
26 August 2007
Houston Chronicle
2 STAR ; 0
19
English
© 2007 Houston Chronicle. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All Rights Reserved.
AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS - The tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan long ago dispensed with the notion of Gross National Product as a gauge of well-being. The king decreed that his people would aspire to Gross National Happiness instead.
That kernel of Buddhist wisdom is increasingly finding an echo in international policy and development models, which seek to establish scientific methods for finding out what makes us happy and why.
New research institutes are being created at venerable universities like Oxford and Cambridge to establish methods of judging individual and national well-being. Governments are putting ever greater emphasis on promoting mental well-being - not just treating mental illness.
"In much the same way that research of consumer unions helps you to make the best buy, happiness research can help you make the best choices," said Ruut Veenhoven, who created the World Database of Happiness in 1999.
Self-reports lacking
When he started studying happiness in the 1960s, Veenhoven used data from social researchers who simply asked people how satisfied they were with their lives, on a scale of zero to 10. But as the discipline has matured and gained popularity in the past decade, self-reporting has been found lacking.
By their own estimate, "drug addicts would measure happy all the time," said Sabina Alkire, of the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Institute, which began work May 30.
New studies add more objective questions into a mix of feel-good factors: education, nutrition, freedom from fear and violence, gender equality, and perhaps most importantly, having choices.
"People's ability to be an agent, to act on behalf of what matters to them, is fundamental," said Alkire.
But if people say money can't buy happiness, they're only partially right.
Veenhoven's database, which lists 95 countries, is headed by Denmark with a rating of 8.2, a country with high per capita income. The United States just makes it into the top 15 with a 7.4 index rating.
While choice is abundant in America, nutrition and violence issues helped drag its rating down.
Wealth counts, but most studies of individuals show income disparities count more. Surprisingly, however, citizens are no happier in welfare states, which strive to mitigate the distortions of capitalism than in purer free-market economies.
"In the beginning, I didn't believe my eyes," said Veenhoven of his data. "Icelanders are just as happy as Swedes, yet their country spends half what Sweden does (per capita) on social welfare," he said.
Personal freedom
In emphasizing personal freedom as a root of happiness, Alkire cited her study of women in the southern Indian state of Kerala, which showed that poor women who make their own choices score highly, compared with women with strict fathers or husbands.
Adrian G. White, of the University of Leicester, included twice as many countries as Veenhoven in his Global Projection of Subjective Well-being, which also measures the correlation of happiness and wealth. He, too, led his list with Denmark.
Bhutan, where less than half the people can read or write and 90 percent are subsistence farmers, ranks No. 8 in his list of happy nations.
Its notion of GNH is based on equitable development, environmental conservation, cultural heritage and good governance.
U.S. researchers have found other underlying factors: Married people are more content than singles, but having children does not raise happiness levels; education and IQ seem to have little impact; attractive people are only slightly happier than the unattractive; the elderly - over 65 - are more satisfied with their lives than the young; friendships are crucial.
But the research also shows that many people are simply disposed to being either happy or disgruntled.
...
WHO IS - AND WHO ISN'T
At the top: A Dutch researcher found that people in Denmark were the happiest of 95 nations examined, followed by Switzerland, Austria, Iceland and Finland - all with high per capita incomes.
On the bottom: At the other end were much poorer countries: Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Moldova, Ukraine and Armenia.
ARTHUR MAX; TOBY STERLING
Associated Press
764 words
26 August 2007
Houston Chronicle
2 STAR ; 0
19
English
© 2007 Houston Chronicle. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All Rights Reserved.
AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS - The tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan long ago dispensed with the notion of Gross National Product as a gauge of well-being. The king decreed that his people would aspire to Gross National Happiness instead.
That kernel of Buddhist wisdom is increasingly finding an echo in international policy and development models, which seek to establish scientific methods for finding out what makes us happy and why.
New research institutes are being created at venerable universities like Oxford and Cambridge to establish methods of judging individual and national well-being. Governments are putting ever greater emphasis on promoting mental well-being - not just treating mental illness.
"In much the same way that research of consumer unions helps you to make the best buy, happiness research can help you make the best choices," said Ruut Veenhoven, who created the World Database of Happiness in 1999.
Self-reports lacking
When he started studying happiness in the 1960s, Veenhoven used data from social researchers who simply asked people how satisfied they were with their lives, on a scale of zero to 10. But as the discipline has matured and gained popularity in the past decade, self-reporting has been found lacking.
By their own estimate, "drug addicts would measure happy all the time," said Sabina Alkire, of the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Institute, which began work May 30.
New studies add more objective questions into a mix of feel-good factors: education, nutrition, freedom from fear and violence, gender equality, and perhaps most importantly, having choices.
"People's ability to be an agent, to act on behalf of what matters to them, is fundamental," said Alkire.
But if people say money can't buy happiness, they're only partially right.
Veenhoven's database, which lists 95 countries, is headed by Denmark with a rating of 8.2, a country with high per capita income. The United States just makes it into the top 15 with a 7.4 index rating.
While choice is abundant in America, nutrition and violence issues helped drag its rating down.
Wealth counts, but most studies of individuals show income disparities count more. Surprisingly, however, citizens are no happier in welfare states, which strive to mitigate the distortions of capitalism than in purer free-market economies.
"In the beginning, I didn't believe my eyes," said Veenhoven of his data. "Icelanders are just as happy as Swedes, yet their country spends half what Sweden does (per capita) on social welfare," he said.
Personal freedom
In emphasizing personal freedom as a root of happiness, Alkire cited her study of women in the southern Indian state of Kerala, which showed that poor women who make their own choices score highly, compared with women with strict fathers or husbands.
Adrian G. White, of the University of Leicester, included twice as many countries as Veenhoven in his Global Projection of Subjective Well-being, which also measures the correlation of happiness and wealth. He, too, led his list with Denmark.
Bhutan, where less than half the people can read or write and 90 percent are subsistence farmers, ranks No. 8 in his list of happy nations.
Its notion of GNH is based on equitable development, environmental conservation, cultural heritage and good governance.
U.S. researchers have found other underlying factors: Married people are more content than singles, but having children does not raise happiness levels; education and IQ seem to have little impact; attractive people are only slightly happier than the unattractive; the elderly - over 65 - are more satisfied with their lives than the young; friendships are crucial.
But the research also shows that many people are simply disposed to being either happy or disgruntled.
...
WHO IS - AND WHO ISN'T
At the top: A Dutch researcher found that people in Denmark were the happiest of 95 nations examined, followed by Switzerland, Austria, Iceland and Finland - all with high per capita incomes.
On the bottom: At the other end were much poorer countries: Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Moldova, Ukraine and Armenia.
Angkor - the World's Mega City
Discover
Angkor, the world's first mega-city; The famous Cambodian temple complex sat amid a vast settlement that flourished until the 15th century. Then it was mysteriously abandoned. And now archeologists are struggling to find out why.
Kathy Marks
The Independent, London
1783 words
25 August 2007
The Hamilton Spectator
Final
D14
English
Copyright (c) 2007 The Hamilton Spectator.
The huge sandstone temples of Angkor, built nearly 1,000 years ago and unearthed from the Cambodian jungle in the last century, are considered one of man's most outstanding architectural achievements. Last year, more than a million tourists wandered through the ruins and watched the sun rise over the main temple's distinctive towering spires.
But, magnificent though the temple complex may be, it tells only part of the story of Angkor: A thriving metropolis, the world's first mega-city mysteriously abandoned in the 15th century, and the former capital of the vast Khmer empire.
An international team of archeologists has ascertained that the temple environs were just the core of a sprawling urban settlement that covered 1,800 square kilometres, almost twice the size of New York City. They have spent 15 years mapping the area and putting together a picture of life in what is now established to have been the world's largest medieval city.
The "lost city of Angkor" was painstakingly uncovered by French archeologists who spent much of the last century rescuing it from the forest and restoring it. Not surprisingly, they concentrated their efforts on the massive temples, which were built between the ninth and 13th centuries as monuments to the power and wealth of the Khmer kings. The rest of the region remained carpeted with vegetation, with few remnants of the ancient civilization visible to the human eye at ground level.
A French, Cambodian and Australian team used aerial photographs, satellite imagery and high-resolution ground-sensing radar, provided by NASA, to investigate what lay beneath. What they found was the remains of 74 temples, as well as the sites of thousands of houses, roads, embankments, canals and ponds -- all believed to have been part of an extensive, interconnected residential complex that included a large system of waterways. The team has just published its findings, together with a detailed map, in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a U.S. journal.
Damian Evans, an Australian archeologist who is deputy director of the Greater Angkor Project, said: "People never really considered Angkor as being much more than a scattering of temples in the landscape. In fact, it would have been a huge and popular city, full of life."
He and his colleagues report in their paper that "even on a conservative estimate, greater Angkor at its peak was the world's most extensive pre-industrial low-density urban complex", far larger than the ancient Mayan cities of Central America, for instance. Evans, who is based at the University of Sydney's archeological computing library, said the Khmers of 1,000 years ago appear to have lived very similar lives to modern-day Cambodians. "They lived in clusters of houses on raised mounds to keep above the flood waters in the wet season," he said.
"The mounds were in clusters, and scattered through them were these small village ponds. Between the houses were rice fields. And the core of this system was the village temple, in much the same way that Buddhist temples are the core of contemporary Cambodian communities."
The Khmer people subsisted on rice agriculture, just as many Cambodians still do, and the water management system, designed to trap water coming down the hills in the north, was partly used for irrigation, it is believed. The village ponds, from seven to 20 metres long, were used for drinking and domestic purposes during the dry season, as well as for watering livestock.
Evans said the newly discovered temples were not grand, like those at the heart of Angkor. Most now consist only of a pile of brick rubble, plus the occasional sandstone door frame or pedestal, which once bore a statue. But while they hold little interest for tourists, they are valuable archeological finds, and members of the team believe there are nearly 100 others out there.
Evans said the temples not only had a religious function, but were centres of taxation, education and water control. "So they can tell us about the everyday life at Angkor," he said.
A succession of Khmer kings ruled the Angkor area from about 800 AD, producing the architectural masterpieces and sculpture now preserved as a World Heritage site. By the 13th century the civilization was in decline, and most of Angkor was abandoned by the early 15th century, apart from Angkor Wat, the main temple, which remained a Buddhist shrine. When the lost city -- swallowed by the jungle for centuries -- was rediscovered, archeologists were, understandably, absorbed by the need to rescue and conserve the dozen or so main temples and their bas-relief carvings. Few excavations were carried out outside the temple precinct.
"No one really thought to look beyond them and into the broader landscape, to see how people actually lived," Evans said.
By the 1960s, it was clear that rich archeological pickings lay beyond the walled city. A program was put in place to investigate the wider area, but never got off the ground because of civil war, followed by the advent of the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot's murderous regime. It was not until the 1990s that the security situation improved, enabling work to resume. But when the international mapping team started their project, they still needed an armed escort for protection in certain areas. And even now, Evans said he never steps off marked paths, because of the risk posed by unexploded landmines.
Until now, Angkor was never looked at as an extended urban area.
The city was thought to consist of the central walled precinct, covering more than 2 square kilometres, where tens of thousands of people lived. "No one really considered the fact that there might be an urban fabric that stretched between and beyond the temples of Angkor," Evans said.
The settlement mapped by the team existed from AD 500 to AD 1500, and could have supported a population of up to one million people. But some of the terrain may have been sparsely populated, particularly in outlying areas. "Now we have the map, we can quantify this residential space," Evans said.
"We can start to do proper demographic studies and work out how many people were living on these mounds. But we can say now, from a preliminary point of view, that it would have had a population of several hundred thousand, at least."
The city was criss-crossed by roadways and canals, and was similar to modern cities that suffer from urban sprawl. "It had the same sort of dense core and pattern of spreading out into rural areas," Evans said.
The team may also have found the key to Angkor's collapse, or confirmed an existing theory: That the city "built itself out of existence".
"The water management system, in particular, had the potential to create some very serious environmental problems and radically remodel the landscape. You can see the city pushing into forested areas, stripping vegetation and re-engineering the landscape into something that was completely artificial," said Evans.
"The city was certainly big enough, and the agricultural exploitation was intensive enough, to have impacted on the environment.
"Angkor would have suffered from the same problems as contemporary low-density cities, in terms of pressure on the infrastructure, and poor management of natural resources like water.
"But they had limited technology to deal with these problems and failed to, ultimately, perhaps."
The team also found evidence of embankments that had been breached, and of ad hoc repairs to bridges and dams, suggesting the water system had become unmanageable over time. Evans said overpopulation, deforestation, topsoil erosion and degradation, with subsequent sedimentation or flooding, could have been disastrous for medieval residents.
Excavations in the next few years will examine the theory in more detail, and try to gather more data, for instance, on sedimentation in the canals.
The radar images provided by NASA distinguished the contours of the landscape under the surface of the earth, identifying the location of roads and canals.
The radar also showed up different levels of soil moisture in the rice fields.
When excavations were carried out, they proved to have been the site of a canal or temple moat.
The new archeological evidence will pose a challenge for conservationists, as the current World Heritage site covers 390 sq. km, which are intensively managed and protected.
Cambodian authorities, meanwhile, are grappling with the problem of how to preserve the precious ruins within the temple precinct from increasing numbers of visitors. Just 7,600 people ventured to Angkor in 1993, when it was added to Unesco's World Heritage list.
Since then, with Cambodia becoming accepted as a "safe" destination, tourism has boomed.
The government is expecting three million visitors in 2010, and many of those will head to the temples.
Angkor Wat is now one of Southeast Asia's leading attractions.
Tourism, which brought impoverished Cambodia $325 million in revenue last year, is helping the country to rebuild after its long dark period. But Soeung Kong, deputy director-general of the Aspara Authority, which oversees Angkor's upkeep, told Agence France Press recently: "The harm to the temples is unavoidable when many people walk in and out of them. We are trying to keep that harm at a minimal level."
Teruo Jinnai, Unesco's senior official in Cambodia, said: "When you have such a huge mass of tourists visiting, then we are concerned about damage to the heritage site and the temples and the monuments. Many temples are very fragile."
The main problem lies in Siem Reap, the nearby town that has mushroomed in recent years to accommodate the growing numbers of world tourists. There are more than 250 guest houses and hotels, and they have been sucking up groundwater and destabilizing the earth beneath Angkor.
At least one monument, the Bayon temple, famous for the serene faces carved on its 54 towers, is collapsing into the sandy ground, a development confirmed by its sinking foundations, and widening cracks between its carefully carved stones.
Angkor, the world's first mega-city; The famous Cambodian temple complex sat amid a vast settlement that flourished until the 15th century. Then it was mysteriously abandoned. And now archeologists are struggling to find out why.
Kathy Marks
The Independent, London
1783 words
25 August 2007
The Hamilton Spectator
Final
D14
English
Copyright (c) 2007 The Hamilton Spectator.
The huge sandstone temples of Angkor, built nearly 1,000 years ago and unearthed from the Cambodian jungle in the last century, are considered one of man's most outstanding architectural achievements. Last year, more than a million tourists wandered through the ruins and watched the sun rise over the main temple's distinctive towering spires.
But, magnificent though the temple complex may be, it tells only part of the story of Angkor: A thriving metropolis, the world's first mega-city mysteriously abandoned in the 15th century, and the former capital of the vast Khmer empire.
An international team of archeologists has ascertained that the temple environs were just the core of a sprawling urban settlement that covered 1,800 square kilometres, almost twice the size of New York City. They have spent 15 years mapping the area and putting together a picture of life in what is now established to have been the world's largest medieval city.
The "lost city of Angkor" was painstakingly uncovered by French archeologists who spent much of the last century rescuing it from the forest and restoring it. Not surprisingly, they concentrated their efforts on the massive temples, which were built between the ninth and 13th centuries as monuments to the power and wealth of the Khmer kings. The rest of the region remained carpeted with vegetation, with few remnants of the ancient civilization visible to the human eye at ground level.
A French, Cambodian and Australian team used aerial photographs, satellite imagery and high-resolution ground-sensing radar, provided by NASA, to investigate what lay beneath. What they found was the remains of 74 temples, as well as the sites of thousands of houses, roads, embankments, canals and ponds -- all believed to have been part of an extensive, interconnected residential complex that included a large system of waterways. The team has just published its findings, together with a detailed map, in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a U.S. journal.
Damian Evans, an Australian archeologist who is deputy director of the Greater Angkor Project, said: "People never really considered Angkor as being much more than a scattering of temples in the landscape. In fact, it would have been a huge and popular city, full of life."
He and his colleagues report in their paper that "even on a conservative estimate, greater Angkor at its peak was the world's most extensive pre-industrial low-density urban complex", far larger than the ancient Mayan cities of Central America, for instance. Evans, who is based at the University of Sydney's archeological computing library, said the Khmers of 1,000 years ago appear to have lived very similar lives to modern-day Cambodians. "They lived in clusters of houses on raised mounds to keep above the flood waters in the wet season," he said.
"The mounds were in clusters, and scattered through them were these small village ponds. Between the houses were rice fields. And the core of this system was the village temple, in much the same way that Buddhist temples are the core of contemporary Cambodian communities."
The Khmer people subsisted on rice agriculture, just as many Cambodians still do, and the water management system, designed to trap water coming down the hills in the north, was partly used for irrigation, it is believed. The village ponds, from seven to 20 metres long, were used for drinking and domestic purposes during the dry season, as well as for watering livestock.
Evans said the newly discovered temples were not grand, like those at the heart of Angkor. Most now consist only of a pile of brick rubble, plus the occasional sandstone door frame or pedestal, which once bore a statue. But while they hold little interest for tourists, they are valuable archeological finds, and members of the team believe there are nearly 100 others out there.
Evans said the temples not only had a religious function, but were centres of taxation, education and water control. "So they can tell us about the everyday life at Angkor," he said.
A succession of Khmer kings ruled the Angkor area from about 800 AD, producing the architectural masterpieces and sculpture now preserved as a World Heritage site. By the 13th century the civilization was in decline, and most of Angkor was abandoned by the early 15th century, apart from Angkor Wat, the main temple, which remained a Buddhist shrine. When the lost city -- swallowed by the jungle for centuries -- was rediscovered, archeologists were, understandably, absorbed by the need to rescue and conserve the dozen or so main temples and their bas-relief carvings. Few excavations were carried out outside the temple precinct.
"No one really thought to look beyond them and into the broader landscape, to see how people actually lived," Evans said.
By the 1960s, it was clear that rich archeological pickings lay beyond the walled city. A program was put in place to investigate the wider area, but never got off the ground because of civil war, followed by the advent of the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot's murderous regime. It was not until the 1990s that the security situation improved, enabling work to resume. But when the international mapping team started their project, they still needed an armed escort for protection in certain areas. And even now, Evans said he never steps off marked paths, because of the risk posed by unexploded landmines.
Until now, Angkor was never looked at as an extended urban area.
The city was thought to consist of the central walled precinct, covering more than 2 square kilometres, where tens of thousands of people lived. "No one really considered the fact that there might be an urban fabric that stretched between and beyond the temples of Angkor," Evans said.
The settlement mapped by the team existed from AD 500 to AD 1500, and could have supported a population of up to one million people. But some of the terrain may have been sparsely populated, particularly in outlying areas. "Now we have the map, we can quantify this residential space," Evans said.
"We can start to do proper demographic studies and work out how many people were living on these mounds. But we can say now, from a preliminary point of view, that it would have had a population of several hundred thousand, at least."
The city was criss-crossed by roadways and canals, and was similar to modern cities that suffer from urban sprawl. "It had the same sort of dense core and pattern of spreading out into rural areas," Evans said.
The team may also have found the key to Angkor's collapse, or confirmed an existing theory: That the city "built itself out of existence".
"The water management system, in particular, had the potential to create some very serious environmental problems and radically remodel the landscape. You can see the city pushing into forested areas, stripping vegetation and re-engineering the landscape into something that was completely artificial," said Evans.
"The city was certainly big enough, and the agricultural exploitation was intensive enough, to have impacted on the environment.
"Angkor would have suffered from the same problems as contemporary low-density cities, in terms of pressure on the infrastructure, and poor management of natural resources like water.
"But they had limited technology to deal with these problems and failed to, ultimately, perhaps."
The team also found evidence of embankments that had been breached, and of ad hoc repairs to bridges and dams, suggesting the water system had become unmanageable over time. Evans said overpopulation, deforestation, topsoil erosion and degradation, with subsequent sedimentation or flooding, could have been disastrous for medieval residents.
Excavations in the next few years will examine the theory in more detail, and try to gather more data, for instance, on sedimentation in the canals.
The radar images provided by NASA distinguished the contours of the landscape under the surface of the earth, identifying the location of roads and canals.
The radar also showed up different levels of soil moisture in the rice fields.
When excavations were carried out, they proved to have been the site of a canal or temple moat.
The new archeological evidence will pose a challenge for conservationists, as the current World Heritage site covers 390 sq. km, which are intensively managed and protected.
Cambodian authorities, meanwhile, are grappling with the problem of how to preserve the precious ruins within the temple precinct from increasing numbers of visitors. Just 7,600 people ventured to Angkor in 1993, when it was added to Unesco's World Heritage list.
Since then, with Cambodia becoming accepted as a "safe" destination, tourism has boomed.
The government is expecting three million visitors in 2010, and many of those will head to the temples.
Angkor Wat is now one of Southeast Asia's leading attractions.
Tourism, which brought impoverished Cambodia $325 million in revenue last year, is helping the country to rebuild after its long dark period. But Soeung Kong, deputy director-general of the Aspara Authority, which oversees Angkor's upkeep, told Agence France Press recently: "The harm to the temples is unavoidable when many people walk in and out of them. We are trying to keep that harm at a minimal level."
Teruo Jinnai, Unesco's senior official in Cambodia, said: "When you have such a huge mass of tourists visiting, then we are concerned about damage to the heritage site and the temples and the monuments. Many temples are very fragile."
The main problem lies in Siem Reap, the nearby town that has mushroomed in recent years to accommodate the growing numbers of world tourists. There are more than 250 guest houses and hotels, and they have been sucking up groundwater and destabilizing the earth beneath Angkor.
At least one monument, the Bayon temple, famous for the serene faces carved on its 54 towers, is collapsing into the sandy ground, a development confirmed by its sinking foundations, and widening cracks between its carefully carved stones.
World's largest collection of Buddhist relics on tour
World's largest collection of Buddhist relics reaches Moscow.
143 words
1 September 2007
11:26
Organisation of Asia-Pacific News Agencies
English
© Copyright 2007. OANA. All rights reserved.
31/8 Tass 357 MOSCOW, August 31 (Itar-Tass) -- The world's largest collection of Buddhist relics was brought to Moscow on August 31, prior to City Day. The 36 relics will be exhibited at the International Roerich Center in Moscow on September 1-9, a source at the Buddhist cultural center said. The items are part of the Maitreya Project Heart Shrine Relic Tour.
The relics have been donated by temples and monasteries from India, Nepal, Thailand, China, Myanmar and other countries specially for placement in the Heart Shrine of the 152-meter Maitreya Buddha statue. The relics have been displayed in the United States, Canada, Singapore, Taiwan, Mongolia, New Zealand and a number of other countries, as well as in St. Petersburg. The next leg of the tour is Latvia.
143 words
1 September 2007
11:26
Organisation of Asia-Pacific News Agencies
English
© Copyright 2007. OANA. All rights reserved.
31/8 Tass 357 MOSCOW, August 31 (Itar-Tass) -- The world's largest collection of Buddhist relics was brought to Moscow on August 31, prior to City Day. The 36 relics will be exhibited at the International Roerich Center in Moscow on September 1-9, a source at the Buddhist cultural center said. The items are part of the Maitreya Project Heart Shrine Relic Tour.
The relics have been donated by temples and monasteries from India, Nepal, Thailand, China, Myanmar and other countries specially for placement in the Heart Shrine of the 152-meter Maitreya Buddha statue. The relics have been displayed in the United States, Canada, Singapore, Taiwan, Mongolia, New Zealand and a number of other countries, as well as in St. Petersburg. The next leg of the tour is Latvia.
The term "buddhism" may be a hindrance in universities
International Herald Tribune (Herald Asahi): KYOTO--Many university applicants are less than inspired when they see the word "Buddhism" attached to the name.
709 words
1 September 2007
The International Herald Tribune (Herald Asahi)
English
The Financial Times Limited. Asia Africa Intelligence Wire. All material subject to copyright. Asahi Shimbun © 2007 All rights reserved.
Applications to long-established Buddhist universities have been declining in recent years. In fact, some institutions are only meeting half their quotas
In response, universities are dropping the word "Buddhism" from their school and faculty names, as images of funerals and conservatism associated with Buddhism can turn off potential applicants
Even so, the underlying religious spirit will remain unchanged even if the Buddhist colors are toned down, the universities said
In April, Shuchiin University in Fushimi Ward here will change the name of its Faculty of Buddhism to the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
After that, only three four-year universities with a faculty of Buddhism will be left in Japan--Komazawa University and Rissho University, both in Tokyo, and Minobusan University in Minobu, Yamanashi Prefecture
"We feel sad as Buddhists, but (changing school and faculty names) is perhaps inevitable for private universities to survive," said Taikan Mochizuki, deputy chief of Minobusan University's business office
Shuchiin University is the only four-year university operating a faculty of Buddhism in western Japan
Its Faculty of Buddhism has two departments--the Department of Buddhism and the Department of Buddhist Welfare, which was created in 1999, but whose name was changed to the Department of Social Welfare in 2005
The number of students enrolling in the Department of Buddhism has fallen short of the 50-student quota by about 10 to 40 percent during the past several years
The Department of Social Welfare also suffers from poor enrollment. The number of students who entered this spring is only about half the quota of 100 students
The school concluded that the name of the faculty is a key cause. Its reasoning is that potential students seeking information at the university's Web site lose interest when they see the Faculty of Buddhism and leave the Web site before even reaching the Department of Social Welfare
The university's origin is Shugei Shuchiin, a school that Kukai, a noted Buddhist monk, opened during the Heian Period (794-1185)
"Shugei means various studies and Shuchi means the teaching of Buddha," said Fumiatsu Sugino, general secretary of the university's administration office. "Even after the faculty's name is changed, our school's founding spirit of fostering students with a broad knowledge will remain intact." International Buddhist University, based in Habikino, Osaka Prefecture, plans to change its name altogether. From April, it will be known as Shitennoji University
The school has its roots in Kyoden-in, a Buddhism training school that Prince Shotoku (574-622) opened 1,400 years ago within Shitennoji temple in Osaka
The number of applicants for the university's entrance exam has dropped over the past decade
This spring, 1,200 people applied, meaning that more than one in two applicants passed the entrance exam. It was far easier than 10 years ago, when less than one in five applicants was accepted
"The companies that employ our students highly appreciate them being grounded in Buddhism," said Shunro Morita, chief executive officer of the university. "But (the university's name) does not sit well with some people because of the image of funerals." Morita said the school decided to change its name because it does not want to spend energy in "clearing such misunderstandings." The school's curriculum will be reorganized to focus on employment after graduation. Students of all faculties will still be required to earn four credits in Buddhism
Kohei Yoshiume, a 20-year-old sophomore, welcomes the change
"(The name) will be more approachable. My friends from high school won't mistake it for Kyoto's Bukkyo University," he said
International Buddhist University is known in Japanese as Shitennoji Kokusai Bukkyo Daigaku. Bukkyo means Buddhism
Bukkyo University, meanwhile, combined its department of Buddhist studies with two others--history and Japanese language and literature--to create the Department of the Humanities in 2004
Tokyo's Taisho University changed its Faculty of Buddhism to the Faculty of Human Studies in 1993
"Many private colleges are facing tough business and are trying to improve their images among applicants," said an official at a cram school targeting universities.
709 words
1 September 2007
The International Herald Tribune (Herald Asahi)
English
The Financial Times Limited. Asia Africa Intelligence Wire. All material subject to copyright. Asahi Shimbun © 2007 All rights reserved.
Applications to long-established Buddhist universities have been declining in recent years. In fact, some institutions are only meeting half their quotas
In response, universities are dropping the word "Buddhism" from their school and faculty names, as images of funerals and conservatism associated with Buddhism can turn off potential applicants
Even so, the underlying religious spirit will remain unchanged even if the Buddhist colors are toned down, the universities said
In April, Shuchiin University in Fushimi Ward here will change the name of its Faculty of Buddhism to the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
After that, only three four-year universities with a faculty of Buddhism will be left in Japan--Komazawa University and Rissho University, both in Tokyo, and Minobusan University in Minobu, Yamanashi Prefecture
"We feel sad as Buddhists, but (changing school and faculty names) is perhaps inevitable for private universities to survive," said Taikan Mochizuki, deputy chief of Minobusan University's business office
Shuchiin University is the only four-year university operating a faculty of Buddhism in western Japan
Its Faculty of Buddhism has two departments--the Department of Buddhism and the Department of Buddhist Welfare, which was created in 1999, but whose name was changed to the Department of Social Welfare in 2005
The number of students enrolling in the Department of Buddhism has fallen short of the 50-student quota by about 10 to 40 percent during the past several years
The Department of Social Welfare also suffers from poor enrollment. The number of students who entered this spring is only about half the quota of 100 students
The school concluded that the name of the faculty is a key cause. Its reasoning is that potential students seeking information at the university's Web site lose interest when they see the Faculty of Buddhism and leave the Web site before even reaching the Department of Social Welfare
The university's origin is Shugei Shuchiin, a school that Kukai, a noted Buddhist monk, opened during the Heian Period (794-1185)
"Shugei means various studies and Shuchi means the teaching of Buddha," said Fumiatsu Sugino, general secretary of the university's administration office. "Even after the faculty's name is changed, our school's founding spirit of fostering students with a broad knowledge will remain intact." International Buddhist University, based in Habikino, Osaka Prefecture, plans to change its name altogether. From April, it will be known as Shitennoji University
The school has its roots in Kyoden-in, a Buddhism training school that Prince Shotoku (574-622) opened 1,400 years ago within Shitennoji temple in Osaka
The number of applicants for the university's entrance exam has dropped over the past decade
This spring, 1,200 people applied, meaning that more than one in two applicants passed the entrance exam. It was far easier than 10 years ago, when less than one in five applicants was accepted
"The companies that employ our students highly appreciate them being grounded in Buddhism," said Shunro Morita, chief executive officer of the university. "But (the university's name) does not sit well with some people because of the image of funerals." Morita said the school decided to change its name because it does not want to spend energy in "clearing such misunderstandings." The school's curriculum will be reorganized to focus on employment after graduation. Students of all faculties will still be required to earn four credits in Buddhism
Kohei Yoshiume, a 20-year-old sophomore, welcomes the change
"(The name) will be more approachable. My friends from high school won't mistake it for Kyoto's Bukkyo University," he said
International Buddhist University is known in Japanese as Shitennoji Kokusai Bukkyo Daigaku. Bukkyo means Buddhism
Bukkyo University, meanwhile, combined its department of Buddhist studies with two others--history and Japanese language and literature--to create the Department of the Humanities in 2004
Tokyo's Taisho University changed its Faculty of Buddhism to the Faculty of Human Studies in 1993
"Many private colleges are facing tough business and are trying to improve their images among applicants," said an official at a cram school targeting universities.
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