Current news on Buddhism

Meatless at Seattle

2008-06-30T18:35:00.001+08:00

Meatless in Seattle ; Vegetarian and vegan movements are taken to heart here
Karen Gaudette
Karen Gaudette. Seattle Times staff reporter
1269 words
25 June 2008
The Seattle Times
Fourth
E1
English
© 2008 Seattle Times. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights reserved.

Seattle is famed for its natural beauty, technological savvy and sometimes paralyzing addiction to consensus. It's also increasingly known as a burgeoning paradise for those who steer clear of meat (vegetarians) and those who avoid meat, eggs, milk and other animal products (vegans).

Had Oprah spent the 21 days of her recent vegan cleanse diet around these parts, she'd have found weeks of options at her fingertips.

There's a vegan doughnut shop (Mighty-O), vegan bakery (Flying Apron), vegan grocery (Sidecar for Pigs Peace), vegan-friendly bar and ice-cream parlor (Georgetown Liquor, Molly Moon's), a vegan deli (Hillside Quickie) and nearly a dozen vegan restaurants. And that's just in Seattle proper.

Restaurants that cater to vegetarians and vegans keep sprouting around Puget Sound, particularly in Seattle, the Eastside and Olympia. Many others offer vegetarian or vegan options. Most of those that don't are willing to omit or add a few ingredients, or at the very least, have a working knowledge of common no-nos. VegFest, an annual festival of vegetarian cuisine and lifestyle organized by the advocacy group Vegetarians of Washington, drew 15,000 this year.

"It's definitely one of the top five vegetarian cities, and maybe even higher," said Joseph Connelly, a big Mighty-O fan and publisher of San Francisco-based VegNews, a magazine devoted to all things vegetarian and vegan.

How is it that Seattle became such a ground zero for folks who eat to the beat of a different drummer?

The region's liberal-leaning politics play a major role, says Michael Hughes, owner of vegetarian eatery Carmelita in Seattle's Greenwood neighborhood. He and his wife, Kathryn Neumann, moved here from Chicago in the early 1990s in part for the political climate.

"It almost seems like Seattle and its environment are a magnet for people who are thinking more environmentally conscious and health conscious," Hughes said. "Seattle's a progressive town, and people can feel comfortable and safe and make a lot more choices and find a lot more choices to make here."

That open-mindedness prompted Jennifer Katzinger and her father, Bill Dowd, to open Flying Apron vegan bakery six years ago. Seattle and the West Coast in general are more open to alternatives of all sorts, and that includes eating habits and cuisines, she said.

Stewart Rose points to the region's immigration patterns and religions. The vice president of Vegetarians of Washington and longtime vegan notes that newcomers from Buddhist and Hindu nations brought their traditional meat-free or low-meat diets, including engineers who came in droves from Asia to work for Microsoft, Amazon.com and other tech hubs. The Northwest also is home to a large population of Seventh Day Adventists, many of whom are vegetarian. These groups opened stores and restaurants to cater to their tastes and needs, Rose said.

"You had the immigration of different ethnic groups, you have homegrown groups that took on everything from yoga to health food," said Rose. "And then you have something else that has been growing in interest and that is the animal-rights movement, which has a very strong presence in the Northwest."

That's what drew Maria Johnson to vegetarianism and, for the past 12 years, veganism. The webmaster for seattlevegan.com says it's amazing how few people think about what they're eating, how it was raised and where it was raised.

Some local vegans are against killing animals at all; others oppose the way conventional livestock is raised. Both groups keep finding more and more places to sit down together over dinner, Johnson said.

"When I started doing the site, there weren't many options. Now it seems like there's a new option almost all the time," she said. "I think at one time it was kind of believed [veganism] was extremist. Now people are choosing it for different reasons."

Health is a big reason, said Dani Little, a registered dietitian at University of Washington Medical Center. Vegetarians and vegans who follow a proper diet have a lower-than-average risk for obesity, cardiovascular disease, high cholesterol, hypertension, Type 2 diabetes, cancer and diverticular disease. And when they do contract such ailments, she said, they have a lower risk of dying from them. She's noticed a steep increase in plant-based diets over the past two decades, across all ages and ethnic groups. Embracing healthy options is easier here than elsewhere, she says.

"What I notice when I leave Seattle and head east is that the food quality is not as appealing. I feel like we're very fortunate for the produce that comes through here. The quality is nowhere near parallel," Little said.

Nat Stratton-Clarke of Seattle's Cafe Flora agrees that access to fresh ingredients and artisanal breads, cheeses, tofu and other products enabled the movements to easily catch hold. The vegetarian restaurant has held court in Madison Valley for 17 years and was among the first to receive fresh produce deliveries from Carnation's Full Circle Farm.

With so much infrastructure in place, Seattle's communities were ripe for growth as interest in veganism and vegetarianism blossomed across the country.

Alternative diets have gone mainstream as food allergies and intolerances, high blood pressure, obesity and diabetes grow more prevalent. The National Restaurant Association reports that 8 of every 10 restaurants now offer vegetarian options. Books that promote veganism as a path to wellness, including "Quantum Wellness" and "Skinny Bitch," rank high on best-seller lists. Celebrities from Clint Eastwood to Natalie Portman advocate the benefits of a vegetarian diet. The American Dietetic Association has created a vegetarian food pyramid and offers vegetarianism and veganism as heart-healthy options.

And increasingly, folks interested in the globe's changing environment are seizing on their eating habits as yet another way to effect change. A 2006 United Nations report on global warming named cattle rearing as a top source of air, land and water pollution.

Connelly of VegNews pegs the recent boom in local options to the Northwest's prominence as an epicenter for green, or environmentally conscious, living. Many folks going green tend to eat less or no meat, due to the vast amounts of land and energy it takes to feed and raise livestock, he said.

"People are definitely becoming more educated. They are getting an understanding of these issues. And as the people become more aware, businesses respond to that," he said.

Longtime vegetarians and vegans, like Maria Johnson, say it's nice not having to explain themselves as often anymore when they order, and to have more places where friends and family can gather and all find something to eat.

"I remember there was a time when you'd ask, `Can you tell me what's in this salad?' or something pretty basic, and it's amazing how people didn't know. And it's like, `But aren't you making it?' " she said.

"Now, a lot of restaurants actually want to let people know that they have something that's vegan. I've had more people contacting me. Before they just didn't think about it. Now there's competition."

Oasis of calm at Lumbini

2008-05-31T13:30:00.000+08:00

Stupa at the sacred pool
948 words
28 May 2008
Hindustan Times
English
(c) 2008 HT Media Limited. All rights reserved.

piya bose Hindustan Times

NEW DELHI, India, May 28 -- Nestled in the foothills of the Himalayas in Nepalis a stretch of lush gardens, in the tiny town of Lumbini, the birthplace of Gautam Buddha. Till 1896, the town that is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site was neglected and lost for centuries.

The only references to it were found in ancient texts that called it heaven on earth, and described a beautiful garden studded with stupas and monasteries, with views of snow capped peaks in the distance. The general area was known, but it was German archaeologist Dr Alois Anton Fuhrer who identified the exact location of Lumbini after he chanced upon a stone pillar erected by Emperor Ashoka.

An ancient script inscribed on the pillar confirmed beyond doubt that

this was indeed the place where Buddha was born. Further excavations revealed the remains of a brick temple and a sandstone nativity sculpture that confirmed Fuhrer's claim. Before long, Lumbini began attracting tourists from around the world.

Located a short distance from the India-Nepal border at Sonauli, Lumbini is easily accessible from India by road, train or air from India. The rickety bus that took me to Lumbini, was a time machine that transported me back to an age when the entire town was a beautiful garden, shaded by Sal trees. This tranquil environ was owned by the Shakya and the Kolia clans, and it was here that Maya Devi, wife of King Suddhodhana, gave birth to Prince Siddhartha, (later known as Buddha) under the shade of a Sal tree.

With efforts by local and international communities, the Lumbini gardens and its excavated ruins have been preserved well enough to showcase their archaeological and historical value.

Sacred bathing pool

I hired a cycle rickshaw through the gardens, the monasteries and the excavation sites. It was a pleasant journey and along the way I caught sight of Nilgai and deer. The gardens are also home to rare birds like the Black Ibis, Asian Magpie Robin and the Blue Tailed Bee Eater.

My first stop was at the temple of Maya Devi, the most important place in the gardens. It is believed to have been built over the foundations of more than one Ashokan stupa. A bas relief depicts Maya Devi with her right hand holding on to a Sal tree with a newborn child standing upright on a lotus petal, an oval halo around his head. Currently, due to ongoing excavations, this nativity scene has been moved to a separate shrine.

On the south of the temple is Puskarni, the sacred bathing pool where Maya Devi is believed to have taken a bath before giving birth to the prince. It is also where the newborn had his first bath. Architecturally, the pool has amazing brick masonry with projecting terraces.

The most important place in Lumbini is the sanctum sanctorum, a stone slab foundation containing a set of foot imprints that pinpoints the Buddha's exact place of birth, and draws thousands of pilgrims from around the world.

A leisurely walk through the gardens took me to the bazaar area which sell colourful thangkas (Buddhist paintings), prayer wheels, singing bowls and funky junk jewellery. Pause for chai and a snack before proceeding further.

I visited the beautiful monasteries built by Buddhist nations like Korea, Japan and Burma. Each monastery reflected a unique architectural style through intricate carvings and statues of the Buddha. The stark white Thai monastery commands particular attention, with its pristine interiors and attention to detail.

The Chinese monastery has a large statue of Buddha and is built like a forbidden city. The Myanmar pagoda is built in the style of the Shwedagon temple in Yangon (Rangoon).

Living quarters

For those interested in archaeology, the museums within the gardens are a must visit. The Lumbini Museum located in the Cultural Zone was funded by the Indian government and contains Mauryan and Kushana coins, religious manuscripts, terracotta fragments, and stone and metal sculptures. It also possesses an extensive collection of stamps from various countries depicting Lumbini and the Buddha.

Opposite the museum, the Lumbini International Research Institute provides research facilities for the study of Buddhism and religion. It contains some 12,000 books on religion, philosophy, art and architecture.

To study the ruins further, a visit to Kapilavastu, 27 km away, is recommended. The museum there has a rich collection of pottery, coins and other artefacts.

Scattered across the gardens are excavation sites, mostly kiln brick-and-mortar foundations of groups of stupas and viharas built in the Mauryan, Kushana and Gupta period (between the third and second centuries BC), which probably indicates that devotees of the time wanted to lived close to the Buddha's birth place.

For those who come here for religious reasons, the ideal time to visit is April or May, when Buddha Jayanti, or the birth anniversary of the Buddha, is celebrated. This is also the time, on full moon nights, when Hindus flock to worship Maya Devi as Rupa Devi, the Goddess of Lumbini.

The area outside the garden has several small villages, where the local life of the Terai region can be sampled at close quarters. There are several archaeological sites in this area, as well as a few lakes that are a bird watcher's paradise. Visit the Crane Sanctuary, home to sarus cranes, the tallest flying birds in the world.

As my bus trundled back to the Nepal border, I was overcome with a profound calm that can only come from a visit to the birthplace of the Buddha.

What is lotus theraphy?

2008-05-31T13:24:00.000+08:00

So, What Is 'Lotus Therapy,' Anyway?
1398 words
29 May 2008
NPR: The Bryant Park Project
English
Copyright 2008 National Public Radio, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

(Soundbite of people meditating)

MIKE PESCA, host:

Mindfulness meditation, closing your eyes, clearing your head of all thoughts, and only noticing how you feel as you breathe in and out. It's become a popular psychology tool. Talk therapists of all varieties are encouraging patients to try meditation to help them manage flash floods of emotions during a therapeutic process. The National Institutes of Health is financing about 50 studies to learn whether meditation techniques do, in fact, help things like stress, addiction, depression, hot flashes, and the propensity to buy Bowflex systems off the TV at night. I made that last one up.

So we learned all this stuff this week from a New York Times story we ripped from the headlines. It's a little easier than doing the work ourselves. We - I guess we outsourced it to New York Times reporter Ben Carey, who joins us now to talk about his story, "Lotus Therapy." Hey, Ben.

Mr. BEN CAREY (Reporter, New York Times): Hello.

PESCA: So, you know, was I practicing therapy there without a license there when I was describing how mindfulness meditation works? Just clearing your head and only noticing your breath? Is that about it?

Mr. CAREY: It's pretty bare-bones stuff, and I think that, of course, has been around a lot longer than therapy and pretty accessible to anyone. So I think it could be allowed to describe it in that way. It's pretty close.

PESCA: And how does it work as a therapeutic tool?

Mr. CAREY: Well, I mean, it's used in a whole different bunch of ways, like, for example, one of the most promising ways is to prevent relapse in depression for serious depression. And so what they try to do there is get the person to essentially practice, you know, the pretty basic meditative technique, and once they feel they've sort of mastered the basics then they encourage them to, in effect, sort of let themselves feel, you know, sort of troubling emotions or sort of look at a sort of a soured relationship. And the idea is when you're in this meditative state you kind of just observe this effect on you kind of without fighting it, without trying to, you know, rationalize it or change it or whatever, and you kind of let the feeling pass.

PESCA: Well, that's the idea. So what's the evidence that it works?

Mr. CAREY: Well, there's not a lot of evidence yet. There are a couple studies that have come out of a group that's centered in Toronto that show that, you know, if you incorporate this into some therapy for relapse prevention with people with depression, if they've had three or more, it does seem to cut the risk that they'll relapse again. However, for people who have only had one or two relapses, it's not clear that it's helping them. It might even be making them a little worse than what's happening there. But anyway - so that's still - but it's still early. You know, they're looking at this, and like you say, you know, the NIH is interested in this for a whole bunch of different things.

PESCA: Why would it be harmful? Why would it make it worse? Just that it's not - the underlying problem's not being treated in another way?

Mr. CAREY: Well, no. I mean, that's possible, because you're sitting there, you know, meditating and you're not getting any other kind of therapy, but you know, I mean, it's not always a good idea for people who, you know, have mental issues to have them sort of sit with their mental issues.

RACHEL MARTIN, host:

Sit with their thoughts.

PESCA: Yeah. Simmer.

Mr. CAREY: Yeah. So you simmer, or they call it rumination, you know, whatever. I mean, so, this might work for some people. You and I might be able to sit there sort of guru-like and watch, you know, our troubles pass before our eyes, but someone else, essentially, if they're in the middle of an acute problem, might just make it worse and they get nothing out of it.

PESCA: To try to understand what mindful meditation was I went to Wikipedia. First, I tried Googling it and other ways, but I guess my non Zen-like brain couldn't understand tons of these descriptions on these Zen sites and these meditation sites. It kind of seemed like gobbledygook to me. So I went to Wikipedia, not Buddhapedia (ph), and there's a description there, but tell me how well this nails it.

Mr. CAREY: OK.

PESCA: Quote, "One is free to release a thought, let it go. When one realizes that the thought may not be concrete reality or absolute truth, thus one is free to observe life without getting caught in the commentary." Is that about right?

Mr. CAREY: You know, you could...

PESCA: And that's the non-gobbledygook version.

Mr. CAREY: You know, you're just being so western about this, basically.

PESCA: Yeah, I know.

Mr. CAREY: It's pretty close. I mean, so...

MARTIN: Non-attachment. It's about non-attachment.

Mr. CAREY: I'm looking at this from the - it's pretty close. I mean, you really - that's it. They want you to sort of be in the moment. Now, just excuse that phrase and, you know, that's a phrase like "inner child," where people just sort of snort when they hear it.

PESCA: I snorted. I just snorted. I don't know if you could hear that. Sorry.

Mr. CAREY: Well, you did, anyways. So the idea is to, you know, relax, you know, sort of really concentrate on your sensations, your breathing, be in the moment, just sort of - and if you try this and you practice this, you do kind of get into a different kind of state, which I did, by the way, when I was doing this story.

PESCA: That's good reporting. And was that the first time you tried it?

Mr. CAREY: Oh, yeah. No. This is not - I have no cultural connection with this kind of stuff, but it was the first time I tried it. So you get into this, and then you're supposed to sort of just watch without judgment sort of what happens as you're sitting there, and so that's just it, really. There's not a lot more to say about it.

MARTIN: But the danger's that when you start thinking about nothing, and especially if you're a reporter, and then you're analyzing your non-thinking-ness.

PESCA: And the danger is you're paying a therapist how much money to do that?

Mr. CAREY: Well, you know, keep in mind a couple things. Number one, yes, thinking about not thinking, as a reporter, you're definitely wasting deadline time on something like this, but you know, usually it's incorporated into other therapy. Well, like, you know, therapies like cognitive therapies, for example, which is a very common sort of answer for depression, where they try to reshape people's assumptions and thoughts...

MARTIN: It can augment therapies. It's not a therapy in and of itself.

Mr. CAREY: No. It's usually part of - that's part of a therapy. Yeah. And so they would teach it to you as a technique, and in some cases, in some people who work with very troubled people, you know, I mean, they're just kicked around by, you know, their anxieties and their memories so much that - I mean, they can't sit still practically. And so, you need to figure out a way of getting them just to tolerate, you know, sort of what their internal psychology is turning.

PESCA: Yes.

Mr. CAREY: And so that just makes it a supplement to usually a broader approach to, you know, solving a problem.

PESCA: Got it. Ben Carey of the New York Times, thank you and thanks for that article.

Mr. CAREY: Sure.

MARTIN: Stay with us. Coming up, San Francisco dump, the artist in residence. Curious? Stay with us. We'll talk about it. This is the BPP from NPR News.

Hindu karma not the same as buddhist karma?

2008-05-31T13:16:00.000+08:00

Guardian Saturday Comment Pages
Questions, questions: What is karma and how does it work?
361 words
31 May 2008
The Guardian
42
English
© Copyright 2008. The Guardian. All rights reserved.

The actor Sharon Stone is not the first public figure to have invoked the concept of karma. Radiohead, Boy George and John Lennon have all trodden the same path, yet her ill-advised usage of the word has had a far greater impact.

Stone's suggestion that the devastating Chinese earthquake was brought about by Beijing's nastiness to her "very good friend" the Dalai Lama infuriated a top fashion and cosmetics firm - Dior reacted by dropping her from its Chinese advertising - and an economic superpower in one fell swoop.

Karma is a complex idea that is important to Buddhists, Hindus and Sikhs. The word means simply "action", but its meaning is connected with the causes and effects of the choices we make. Our minds are like a blank piece of paper and every action we perform makes a stamp on that piece of paper. The marks become impressions and these grow and develop into experiences. Tibetan Buddhists believe that actions lead to effects and that all our experiences are the effects of previous actions.

Kama Tobgyal, from the Tibetan Buddhist centre Kagyu Samye Dzong London, says: "If you watch a violent movie before you go to bed, you may have nightmares. If you have a warm, intimate conversation with your partner before you sleep you may have a pleasant dream. But these experiences may happen in another life. The idea is to avoid negative actions. From the Buddhist point of view, everything is karma."

Stone is not the first person to fall foul of a skewed interpretation of karma. The former footballer Glenn Hoddle lost his job as England manager for saying that disabled people were being punished for sins in a previous life. "The karma is working from another lifetime. It is not only people with disabilities. What you sow, you have to reap."

Stone and Hoddle may have thinking of Hindu karma, which is different to the Buddhist one. In the Hindu tradition, broadly speaking, beneficial effects are the result of beneficial actions and negative effects are the fruit of negative actions. Riazat Butt

A hippie to a buddhist monk

2008-04-08T15:45:00.001+08:00

An American monk in Charleston Buddhist went from hippie life to spiritual awakening
Bill Lynch
1045 words
4 April 2008
Charleston Gazette
P1D
English
(Copyright 2008)

lynch@wvgazette.com

Over the telephone, Buddhist monk Bhante Yogavacara Rahula sounds a little like a stranger in a strange land. There's a faint accent that suggests he learned English later in life and, of course, there's his name.

Bhante means "venerable sir," and is the polite way to address a Theravedan Buddhist monk. Rahula is a common name in India and Nepal and refers to the historical Buddha's only son. He is not, however, a stranger in a strange land.

Bhante Rahula was born Scott Joseph Duprez in 1948. He grew up in California, attending a Methodist church with his parents. His first Buddha statue decorated the top of an old television set. He used to hang a hat on it.

He went to junior college, smoked marijuana, then joined the military. After his tour in Vietnam, he wore his hair long, grew a beard, chased girls and did just about any drug he could get his hands on.

"Sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll," said the monk, who visits Charleston today through Sunday to give several public presentations.

Bhante Rahula's story of how he went from typical hippie to clear-headed Buddhist monk is chronicled in his book, "One Night's Shelter: Autobiography of an American Monk." Two versions of the book exist. There's the "green" version, which catalogs his extensive drug use and sexual escapades. It details his time as a drug dealer, mentions his time in the Army stockade for being AWOL, as well as his arrest and detainment in an Afghan prison after trying to smuggle drugs into India.

"That's the toned-down version," said the 59 year-old monk, laughing. "The other version is much juicier. More sex, more drugs, more rock 'n' roll."

Bhante Rahula doesn't celebrate who he was in the 1960s, but he's not afraid of it. He's at peace with it. If not for the constant craving for chemically induced experiences, he might not have found his way to the dharma, the teachings of the Buddha. Wishing now to have been different then is pointless.

"It's all just grist for the mill," he said. "Taking all of those drugs. I didn't know any alternative."

He acknowledges that he got off pretty easy. He made it out alive.

Becoming a Buddhist, then a monk started with his craving. He was always on the lookout for the next high, the next profound experience. While he was traveling in the mountains of Asia, he heard about a meditation course in Katmandu. He went looking for another experience, but stayed for the enlightenment.

"That was the turnaround for me," he said. "I had this very deep insight, and I just wanted to pursue meditation and the dharma."

It didn't happen overnight, but in 1975, he was ordained as a monk in Sri Lanka. He lived in caves and huts, avoiding wild animals and poisonous snakes. He meditated to train his mind to shed fears and to focus his attention.

In 1985, Bhante Rahula heard about another monk's plans to build a Therevadan Buddhist monastery in the hills of West Virginia. He saw it as an opportunity to come back to the United States and bring some of what he'd learned.

He wrote to the monk, an internationally known meditation teacher named Bhante Gunaratana, who told him he should come. Rahula began to help build the monastery in 1987 on a plot of land in the Hampshire County backwoods.

Life at the Bhavana Society Forest Monastery near Wardensville is not entirely different from the simple life he lived in Sri Lanka. He continues to live in a small hut - called a 'kuti' - without electricity or running water (the main hall does have both).

He meditates, studies the Buddhist Sutras and books related to Buddhist thought and helps lead meditation retreats to people who come from around the world to Bhavana.

"We study and read some of the contemporary readings," Bhante Rahula said. "How science is relating to dharma teachings and Buddhism. We could read other things, I suppose, but I do not. We don't want to fill our minds with anything not on the dharma."

Occasionally, he does read a little about hiking in the Himalayas. He's been to Mount Everest several times with friends and gotten as far as the Everest base camp. "I do it mainly for the exercise, but also to push the envelope of discomfort."

He hikes some in the United States and usually takes a camping trip to Dolly Sods about once a year.

Bhante Rahula isn't the only American-born Buddhist monk. He wasn't even the first. Although he stops short of calling the vocation rare in this country, he agrees there aren't many.

"There are perhaps several hundred," he said. "Some stay with it, as I have. Others dabble with it for a few years."

Living in the United States again, Bhante Rahula is better able to keep in contact with his family and a few old friends. He visits his mother in California, where he also sees his brother and sister. His sister is a fundamentalist Christian, he says, and visits with her used to be tense.

"She's mellowed out, and I think she accepts what I am and what I do."

Living at the monastery affords him more opportunities to travel. Groups from different parts of the country and around the world sometimes invite him to visit with them and lead retreats.

The Meditation Circle of Charleston has been host for Bhante Rahula's visits in Charleston a few times, including a visit this weekend at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship Building. The visit will include talks about meditation, Buddhism and a slideshow of his spiritual trekking in the Himalayans.

He believes meditation is helpful for anyone, regardless of their particular spiritual path. Meditation helps people draw on resources they aren't even aware they have.

"It's a way to develop the mind," he said. "It can help you develop acceptance, patience, loving kindness toward others and deal with life on a more even keel."

Deepak on spiritual healing

2008-04-08T15:36:00.002+08:00

Religion
Deepak Chopra provides different take on Jesus ; Best-selling author looks at Jesus as a spiritual guide whose teachings embraces all humanity
Tania Fuentez / The Associated Press
803 words
5 April 2008
The Grand Rapids Press
All Editions
C6
English
© 2008 Grand Rapids Press. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights reserved.

NEW YORK -- Before he became known for promoting holistic health and spirituality, Deepak Chopra adhered to traditional Western medicine as an endocrinologist in Boston. He eventually questioned this approach, returning to the centuries-old Indian system of Ayurveda to find a balance between faith and science.

"I wanted to extend my idea of healing," Chopra said in a recent interview. "If you don't understand spiritual experience, you'll never understand healing."

Now, at 61, the physician and best-selling author hopes to extend conventional thought again -- even more controversially -- in "The Third Jesus: The Christ We Cannot Ignore" (Harmony Books). Chopra challenges Christian doctrine while presenting an alternative: Jesus as a state of mind, rather than the historical rabbi of Nazareth or son of God.

The third perspective -- which Chopra calls "a cosmic Christ" -- looks at Jesus as a spiritual guide whose teaching embraces all humanity, not just the church built in his name. Chopra argues that Christ speaks to the individual who wants to find God as a personal experience.

"I said to myself, 'Why not write a book that takes Jesus' teachings -- and it doesn't matter if you're Christian or not -- and learn from this and improve your life,"' he said at the Chopra Center and Spa in midtown Manhattan.

Fascinated with Jesus' life

Considered a pioneer of mind-body alternative medicine, Chopra is president of the Alliance for a New Humanity and he has been listed among Time magazine's top 100 heroes and icons of the 20th century. His books have been translated into dozens of languages, with topics that range from aging and sexuality to golf and Buddha's path to enlightenment. In 1995, he co-founded the Chopra Center for Wellbeing with Dr. David Simon, which officially opened the following year.

Fascination with Jesus' life began during his lessons while attending a Roman Catholic school in India, Chopra said. Though his parents were from Hindu and Sikh families, "if you were relatively affluent, education was always in the Christian school because of the missionaries."

He moved to the United States in 1970 after graduating from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences. Chopra did his internship in New Jersey, and residency and fellowship at various institutions including Boston, Tufts and Harvard universities. He also was chief of staff at Boston Regional Medical Center for two years.

His interest in Hinduism and medicine evolved while observing a mind-body connection in his research, and an encounter in 1985 with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi at a conference in Washington, D.C.

"I first leaned toward Ayurveda medicine and then actually went on to study other wisdom traditions of the world ... this happened during my training in neuro endocrinology where I saw what happened in consciousness in biology," Chopra explained.

"I was just extending my understanding of healing from physical to mental to social to environmental," he said. "That's what the 'Alliance' is all about ... healing the body politic, healing the world."

Chopra devotes substantial time to his own spiritual development. He meditates and exercises daily, though he occasionally enjoys a triple hazelnut latte.

25 years in the making

During the interview, Chopra switches his Blackberry, covered in an orange case, to vibrate as he speaks on faith, politics and a list of projects like a new comic book launched with his son and Sir Richard Branson. The in-demand speaker is at ease quoting Scripture or talking quantum physics. He has studied the Bible closely, reading it hundreds of times.

Though "The Third Jesus" was on his mind for 25 years, it took him six months to complete once he began writing. The next book will be a fictional account of Jesus' missing years.

"Where else do you read a story of the Son of God being executed by their own?" he said. "It is dramatic. It's three years of his teaching and it has shaped the world for 2000 years."

In a review, Harvey Cox, Hollis professor of divinity at Harvard, said "The Third Christ" is "bound to provoke both admiration and condemnation." Chopra references the New Testament and Gnostic Gospels to deconstruct church doctrine and conservative Christianity on issues such as war, abortion and homophobia.

"I see blogs every day that are negative and very nasty because this is not a literalist interpretation of Jesus," Chopra said. "My book is about Jesus as a state of consciousness. If I can aspire -- maybe not achieve -- but aspire to be in that state of mind and if a lot of people were aspiring to be in that state of mind this would be a better world."

The next Dalai Lama?

2008-04-08T15:14:00.000+08:00

Opinion
Tibetan Buddhism's next leader? After the Dalai Lama
By Barbara Crossette
The New York Times Media Group
776 words
8 April 2008
International Herald Tribune
1
6
English
© 2008 The New York Times Company. All Rights Reserved.

The recent outburst of Tibetan rage against the Chinese government not only demonstrated once again the fear and anger among Himalayan Buddhists living under the cultural insensitivity of Beijing, it also illuminated the crucial role of the Dalai Lama, navigating skillfully between restive Tibetan exiles and an Indian government under Chinese pressures to stifle their protests. What will happen when he is gone?

The West is about to get its first glimpse of that possible future.

In mid-May, a serious young man of 22 who is revered as the 17th Karmapa - now the second-most-important figure in Tibetan Buddhism - will make his first visit to the United States. The trip comes eight years after his dramatic flight to India from a monastery near Lhasa at the end of 1999, when he was just 14 years old. This is the first time that a skittish India has allowed him permission to travel abroad. His flight from Tibet was a considerable embarrassment to China.

The Karmapa Lama, spiritual head of the Kagyu order of Tibetan Buddhism, is now the only major Tibetan lama recognized as a reincarnation of his lineage by both the Dalai Lama and the Chinese government since it overran Tibet in the 1950s. The Panchen Lama, the third of a triumvirate and previously the second-highest ranking among the three lamas, vanished into Chinese custody as a boy in 1995 and has been replaced by Beijing's own political appointee.

In a thriller that is already a legend among Buddhists, the Karmapa and two fellow monks drove in secret from Tsurphu Monastery, north of Lhasa, to the remote and rugged border of Mustang, a former Buddhist kingdom now part of Nepal. From there he and his companions made a dash by horseback to the nearest Nepali airport, from which they were able to fly unnoticed via Katmandu to Delhi. The Karmapa, born Ogyen Trinley Dorji, arrived unannounced in Dharamsala, the Dalai Lama's base, in January 2000, and has remained under the watchful eye of the Tibetan leader since.

Because of fears in the United States that India, bowing to Chinese pressure, will prevent this trip abroad at the last moment, the Karmapa's visit is expected to be low-keyed and not political. His comment on a pre-trip video that ''The United States is one of the world's most powerful countries'' has been excised from an online transcription of his remarks, which dwell instead on his hope of meeting ''many American friends.'' The trip was planned before the protests in Tibet.

This is a significant milestone for Tibetan Buddhists and a momentous one for Western practitioners. The young lama's predecessor, the 16th Karmapa, visited the United States on numerous occasions and had established in the 1980s a part-time American seat in Woodstock, New York, at the Karma Triyana Dharmachakra center. After the young Karmapa's flight from Tibet, the Woodstock monastery immediately geared up to welcome him, even designing furniture to match his sturdy frame. Then they waited, and waited and waited. He will now finally get to see their work. The Karmapa's American followers would like to have him establish his base in the United States, making him the first Asian religious leader of that magnitude to live in the West.

The Karmapa could serve as a possible unofficial, transitional successor to the Dalai Lama, who is now in his 70s. Because the Karmapa leads a different order of Tibetan Buddhism - the Dalai Lama is a Gelugpa monk - the young Karmapa cannot inherit his title. A future reincarnate to that position has yet to be born after the Dalai Lama's death.

The young Karmapa, who is described by those who have met him as a serious, even stern, young man, is also recognized as a compelling religious teacher and budding literary scholar, even without the Dalai Lama's magnetic charm and sense of humor. The Karmapa could well be the stopgap spiritual leader Tibetan exiles will someday need to hold together their fragmented diaspora, while at the same time assuming a larger role as a religious teacher for Buddhists of all nationalities and schools.

For the moment, these two Tibetan leaders are a complementary pair, the wise older man and the vigorous young lama who now has the chance to show the wider world if he can muster a universal appeal.

Barbara Crossette, a former New York Times correspondent in Asia, is the author of ''So Close to Heaven: The Vanishing Buddhist Kingdoms of the Himalayas.''

Outstanding women buddhist awards

2008-03-05T15:15:00.000+08:00

OUTLOOK
Outstanding Women in Buddhism awards; Twenty women from around the world will be recognised on Thursday for their achievements
1446 words
4 March 2008
Bangkok Post
O3
English
(c) 2008

Celebrity forensic expert Khunying Dr Porntip Rojanasunan, human rights activist Tuenjai Deetes and writer Orasom Sutisakorn are among eight Thai women to be honoured with Outstanding Women in Buddhism Awards.

The other Thai awardees are Bhikkhuni Silananda, Sikkhamat Phussadi, Maechee Pimjai Maneerat, Maechee Waree Chuethasanaprasit and nurse Angoon Wongcharoen.

They are among 20 awardees from various countries who will be honoured at the award presentation ceremony on Thursday.

Among them are: Bhikkhuni Mudita and Sylvia Wetzel from Germany; Nobuko Ono from Japan; Bhikkhuni Dr Myung Sung Sunim from Korea; Bhikkhuni Sik Jian Yin, Bhikkhuni Sik Wei Chun and Dr Li Hua Yang from Taiwan; Bhiksuni Pema Chodron, Jacqueline Kramer, Reverend Beth Kanji Goldring and Reverend Patricia Dai-En Bennage from the US; and Ajahn Anandabodhi from the UK.

Organised by the Outstanding Women in Buddhism Award Committee, the ceremony will take place at the Association for the Promotion of the Status of Women in Don Muang, from 8am to 4pm.

Here is the full list of awardees:

- Ajahn Anandabodhi, from the UK

Born in Wales, in 1968, she worked in environmental conservation before taking a Siladhara ordination in 1995 at Amaravati Buddhist Monastery in Hemel Hempstead. Ajahn Anandabodhi is establishing a women's monastic centre in California.

- Angoon Wongcharoen, from Thailand

Inspired by the Bhodhisattva ethics as a Thai-Chinese, nurse Angoon Wongcharoen of the Thai Red Cross has dedicated herself for 16 years in disaster management and in assisting victims of natural disasters, including the Thai Red Cross response to the tsunami disaster of 2004. Her compassion has touched many hearts.

- Bhikkhuni Mudita, from Germany

Bhikkhuni Mudita worked as a school teacher for blind and deaf children and as a counsellor for troubled boys and sexually abused girls before being ordained. She has co-founded an interfaith community of social engagement. Focusing on spiritual healing, she has led three meditation retreats at the memorial of the World War Two Women's Concentration Camp Ravenbruck in Germany. She founded the Anenja Vihara Monastery for women in 2006.

- Bhikkhuni Silananda, from Thailand

Born in Bangkok, in 1972, she had many years of spiritual practice with various meditation teachers. Despite the strong resistance of the Thai clergy to female ordination, she decided to ordain as Bhikkhuni in 2006. She is currently studying for a master's degree at the International Buddhist College in Songkla.

- Venerable Dr Myung Sung, from Korea

Dedicated to the education of women, Ven Dr Myung Sung is Dean of Unmun Sangha College and Unmun Sangha Graduate School Cheongdo, South Korea. As an inspiration to Korean nuns and lay women Buddhists, she is currently president of the National Bhikkhuni Association of Korean Buddhism Jogye Order. She also contributed to the succession of the Bhikkhuni lineage by serving as a preceptor at ordination ceremonies in Korea.

- Bhikkhuni Pema Chodron, from the US

Born Deirdre Blomfield-Brown in New York, in 1936, she became a novice nun in Tibetan Buddhism in 1974. She received the full Bhikkhuni ordination in the Chinese lineage of Buddhism in 1981 in Hong Kong.

She was director of Karma Dzong in Boulder, Colorado, before serving as director of Gampo Abbey. Currently teaching in the US and Canada, her books include The Wisdom of No Escape; Start Where You Are; When Things Fall Apart; The Places That Scare You; No Time to Lose; and Practicing Peace in Times of War.

- Bhikkhuni Sik Jian Yin, from Taiwan

Born in 1960, she holds the post of abbess at the Zhi Cheng Monastery in Ping Tung. She offers dharma outreach, various social services while supporting cultural activities and the arts. Her dharma teachings and services have won her many awards in Taiwan.

- Bhiksuni Sik Wei Chun, from Taiwan

She founded the Daksinavana Bhiksuni Sangha Ashram (Yuchih), the Dakinava Temple (Kuoshing), the Dakinava Buddhist Cultural Society (Canada) and the the Daksinavana Institute of Buddhist Studies (1993) to provide places for nuns and upasikas to learn, practice and to be ordained. She is also active in social welfare, education and disaster relief.

- Dr Khunying Porntip Rojanasunan, from Thailand

Dr Khunying Porntip Rojanasunan is the acting director of the Ministry of Justice's Department of Forensic Science. She is highly respected for her courage in pursuing truth and justice in the face of a corrupt police system. She was also among the key figures in Thailand's relief efforts during the 2004 tsunami disaster.

- Dr Li Hua Yang, from Taiwan

As a dharma teacher, psychiatrist and acupuncturist Dr Li Hua Yang's dedication to community service has earned her the title Humanistic Bodhisattva. In addition to focusing on children, youth and people deeply locked in suffering such as prisoners, she is also active in palliative care.

- Jacqueline Kramer, from the US

Jacqueline Kramer has been studying and practicing Theravada Buddhism for 30 years. She is the author of Buddha Mum: The Path of Mindful Mothering and 10 Spiritual Practices for Busy Parents.

She has also developed online lay Buddhist practice classes on subjects ranging from relationships, illnesses, death and dying. The Hearth Foundation was created to house these classes and to create a spiritual community for mothers interested in developing a Buddhist family lifestyle in the West.

- Maechee Pimjai Maneerat, from Thailand

She is director of a residential educational project that assists poor ethnic children in Kanchanaburi province. Many of them are stateless. Despite obstacles and a lack of resources, she is determined to give the children dharma and proper education.

- Maechee Waree Chuethasanaprasit, from Thailand

As a leader of the nuns' movement in Thailand, Maechee Waree Chuethasanaprasit has empowered countless women to become dharma teachers, social workers, and to stand on their own financially through self-initiated projects. She has established a national network of laywomen, and began empowering ordained women leaders one-by-one. Her personal dharma teachings have met the needs of women, at-risk youths, young people in prison, people living with HIV/Aids and drug addicts.

- Nobuko Ono, from Japan

As head of the Amagase Community Centre, she has been active in deep-listening counselling and other community services. She is a living example of a life of service a lay person can live through deep-listening counselling.

- Orasom Sutisakorn, from Thailand

Orason Sutisakorn has written more than 30 books on social issues related to children, women and family violence. Her writing bears witness to suffering, gives a voice to those silenced, and offers a reflection in hope for a better tomorrow. Her books include Rust Flowers: The True Lives of Women in the Dark Corners of Thai Society, Child Criminal? and Youth of the X Generation.

- Reverend Beth Kanji Goldring, from the US

She founded the Brahmavihara/Cambodia Aids Project in 2000 to meet the spiritual and emotional needs of destitute Aids patients in Cambodia. Since then the project has grown to include not only spiritual and emotional support, but also social services and some material needs. The staff of nine, including her, work with some 200 patients in their homes, in hospices and in hospitals. Its web site is http://www.brahmavihara . cambodiaaidsproject.org/.

- Reverend Patricia Dai-En Bennage, from the US

Trained in Zen Buddhism, she is Abbess of Mt Equity Zendo, Jihoji in Pennsdale, Pennsylvania. Apart from teaching meditation to women in prisons and colleges, Rev Patricia also translated female meditation master Roshi Aoyama's book Zen Seeds into English.

- Senator Tuenjai Kunchon na Ayutthaya Deetes, from Thailand

A former teacher of hill-tribe children, Tuenjai is a strong advocate of environmental conservation, human rights and the community's right to manage its own natural resources. As a senator, she has had a hand in many laws benefiting women and the needy. She draws inner strength in the face of obstacles from meditation.

- Sikkhamat Phussadi, from Thailand

Highly respected as a meditation master, she is the first 10 precept nun of the Santi Asoke community. At the age of 83, she still teaches dharma and gives counselling three days a week. She has written three books, The Principles of Practicing Oneself for Purity, The Path for Life, and Blessings and Errors That Can Be Seen in This Life.

- Sylvia Wetzel, from Germany

Sylvia Wetzel is at the forefront of Buddhism in Europe and offers reflections on gender issues and cultural conditioning. She is also one of the key figures in setting up the Women Dharma Teacher's Peer Group, the network of Buddhist centres in Berlin and Brandenburg and the Buddhist Academy in Berlin. She has also contributed to the introduction of Buddhism to the curriculums of schools in Berlin.

Tribute to Dalai Lama by a music band a big hit in Youtube

2008-03-05T15:11:00.001+08:00

Dalai Lama tribute big hit on You Tube
284 words
3 March 2008
Morpeth Herald
English
© 2008 Johnston Publishing Limited

A NORTHUMBRIAN rock band's tribute song has become a huge hit on the video sharing site 'You Tube'.

The film for the song 'Dalai Lama' by The Age ? a tribute to the man who has lived in exile following his flight from Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1949 ? was filmed in India at Dharamsala where he now resides.

It has attracted huge interest across the world from Buddhists and non-Buddhists alike and it is about to chalk up its 50,000th viewing.

The Age's film-maker and song-writer Carl Cape, from Hadston, said the Dalai Lama had thanked him for his "most thoughtful gesture" and for a copy of his album featuring spoken word extracts by the former Tibetan government minister TC Tethong.

He added: "We're not a Buddhist band but the teachings of the Dalai Lama make a lot of sense to The Age and we think a safer, more peaceful world can be achieved right now.

"We also wanted to highlight the destructive stance of some multi-national corporations on green issues like pollution, waste and the incessant use of scarce resources."

The song 'Dalai Lama' was released in 2007 on Chevstar Records as part of a remix of the band's first rock album A Peak Experience which features cult writer Colin Wilson (The Outsider).

Part of the video was footage of Tibetan opera at the Tibetan Institute of the Performing Arts and The Age were grateful to the Tibetan government-in-exile for the use of stock video footage of the Dalai Lama.

For more information about The Age and other Northumberland bands, visit www.chevstar.com .

Trauma and mindfulness

2008-02-11T19:39:00.000+08:00

Trauma and mindfulness
Freelance Writer
766 words
10 February 2008
Winnipeg Free Press
b7
English
All material copyright Winnipeg Free Press, a division of FP Canadian Newspapers Limited Partnership. All rights reserved.

Gerry Kopelow "In this fathom-long body, subject though it is to death and decay, I will show you the beginning and end of the universe." With these words the Buddha introduced "The Four Foundations of Mindfulness," a contemplative method for the investigation of reality that has flourished for some 3,000 years. Seekers rely on the Buddha's techniques to probe the spiritual world in the same way that physicists use electron microscopes to investigate the physical world.

Mindfulness is "non-judgmental awareness of the present moment." Trauma is "a serious injury or wound to the body and/or mind." To most people, the conjoining of these two conditions would be extremely unpleasant, something to avoid or repress.

Some months back I was hit by a car near Steinbach and suffered extreme damage to both lower legs. I was not at all clear if my legs could be saved, but several sessions of skilful surgery put me back together, and 14 weeks after the accident I walked out of the hospital on crutches, two months ahead of schedule, according to my doctors.

I attribute my rapid comeback to the compassionate care of an army of health-care professionals and to the involvement of family and friends, but also to a mental attitude that promoted healing. This attitude was sustained by maintaining "mindfulness," as best I could, from the moment I was struck down, right through all the surgeries and subsequent medical procedures.

If mindfulness is attention to the present moment, then logically there are only two alternate modes of experience: One is reflection on the past, and the other is speculation about the future.

Typically, reflection on the past is fraught with regret, especially if this reflection is triggered by physical injury. Thoughts of "if only" and "why me?" and the constant replay of the traumatic events are natural. Similarly, speculation about the future is often unpleasant: We fear a multitude of possible negative outcomes.

I am a teacher of Buddhist meditation and have been learning how to be "mindful" for 35 years. This work allows me a measure of control of my mental processes, and so I decided to "mindfully" compare the three experiential modes with a view to determining which felt better.

Clearly, lying in a hospital bed in pain and unable to move was, to say the least, unpleasant. But, due to the modern approach to pain management, I had access to narcotics that moderated the physical discomfort. I also had the company of a caring family and supportive friends, and I was the focus of intense medical attention as well. All this existed in the present.

If I allowed my mind to slip into reflection on the past, I relived the accident and the events that led up to it over and over. I experienced continuous grief -- metaphorically speaking -- the non-stop wringing of hands and the gnashing of teeth. These thoughts and feelings triggered a river of scary speculations: anxiety about future physical suffering, the possibility of infection and the loss of my legs, worry about work and money and my family's security, etc.

I quickly abandoned the experiment because the present moment, however difficult it might be, was less unpleasant than the multitude of griefs and anxieties my own mind was capable of generating.

How does all this facilitate healing? The answer lies in the nature of mind. We humans are born helpless. Our great evolutionary advantage is not strength or speed, but adaptability. We are creative entities. This creativity requires a sophisticated brain. Because a complex brain is a big consumer of energy, the fabrication of past and future alternate universes -- populated with life-like people, landscapes, buildings, even weather -- is a resource-intensive endeavour. Rather than engaging in fruitless imaginings, it is better to hold the mind in the present and free up its creative power for more productive activities. In the case of the trauma victim, the most obvious use for this energy is healing.

The body is the repository of four billion years of accumulated biological wisdom, all of which is dedicated to maintaining life as long as possible. Unburdened by the energy drain associated with worry, the body spontaneously sets to work repairing itself. So mindfulness is not just the least unpleasant way to experience trauma, but also the most efficient. And because healing is beautiful to witness, mindfulness practice increases joy at the same time as it diminishes anxiety.

Our fragility is sobering to contemplate, but the intelligence of the body is exhilarating to experience directly.

Monks' wish came true: mosquito-proof robes

2008-02-05T12:03:00.000+08:00

BANGKOK - A THAI fabric designer has unveiled a new line of saffron-coloured robes infused with bug repellent to keep mosquitoes from biting Buddhist monks, a company announced on Wednesday.

The robes, which have been soaked with a herbal bug repellent, will eventually be sold for export to other Buddhist countries around Asia, said Wisan Wanasaksrisakul, managing director of Thai Covenant Co Ltd, which manufactures the garments.

'We have experimented with four kinds of mosquitoes, and when monks wear our robes, the mosquitoes can't detect that their food (human blood) is near,' he said.

The robes cost about 10 per cent more than normal ones, he said, adding that his company hopes to sell them to countries like Myanmar, Sri Lanka and India.

The market for robes for Buddhist monks in Thailand is worth about two billion baht (S$85 million) a year.

Thailand has between 350,000 to 400,000 Buddhist monks at any given time.

Most Thai men are expected to enter the monkhood at least once in their lives. -- AFP

Dharma and sub-prime crisis

2008-01-31T16:25:00.000+08:00

Crisis of faith looms as Dharma goes on a red-tag sale
R Vaidyanathan
1221 words
29 January 2008
DNA - Daily News & Analysis
English
Copyright 2008. Diligent Media Corporation Ltd.

There's something unholy about the bid to get people to invest on religious lines

After investments in stock market based on Islamic values, investors would now be able to park money in stocks of companies that operate in accordance with the principles of religions like Hinduism and Buddhism, said a recent news item. "Dow Jones Indexes, a leading global index provider, and Dharma Investments, a leading private investment firm, pioneering the development of faith-based investment, have announced the launch of the Dow Jones Dharma Indexes," it said.

The new indexes measure the performance of companies selected according to the value systems and principles of Dharmic religions, especially Hinduism and Buddhism. The Dow Jones Dharma Index series includes the Dow Jones Dharma Global Index, as well as four country indexes for the US, the UK, Japan and India. The indexes are designed to underlie financial products such as exchange-traded funds and other investible products that enable investors to participate in the performance of companies which are compliant with Dharmic religious traditions.

"The Dow Jones Dharma Indexes are the first faith-based indexes created to measure Dharma compliant equities. As faith-based and socially responsible investing continues to grow worldwide, our goal is to provide the investment community with the most comprehensive benchmarks that comply with these principles," said Michael A Petronella, president of Dow Jones Indexes. "The launch of the new Dow Jones Dharma Indexes marks a major step in our effort to further expand our range of faith-based indexes."

"We are honoured to be serving a demand for faith-based investing," said Nitesh Gor, CEO of Dharma Investments. "India and Asia have made remarkable advances economically over the last few years and in parallel we believe that bringing our religious values onto the global stage offers sustainable solutions to the problems facing the world today. The principle of Dharma contains precepts relevant to good conduct, but also the implicit requirement of mindfulness about the sources of wealth - and therefore responsible investing," he added.

The index universe for the Dow Jones Dharma Indexes is defined as the top 5,000 components of the Dow Jones Wilshire Global Total Market Index as measured by float adjusted market capitalisation, and all components in the Dow Jones Wilshire India Index. To be included in the Dow Jones Dharma Indexes, stocks must pass a set of industry, environmental, corporate governance and qualitative screens for Dharmic compliance. Industry screens include unacceptable sectors and business practices.

Environmental screens take account of a company's impact or policies with respect to emissions, climate change and carbon footprint analysis, oil and chemical spills and waste management and recycling. Corporate governance screens comprise the handling of labour relations/ disputes/ discrimination allegations, human rights violations, working conditions/wages. Excluded from the index are companies from sectors that are deemed unacceptable due to the nature of their business activities and operations. Excluded are also companies that have exposure to unacceptable business practices. Some examples of unacceptable sectors are aerospace and defence, brewers, casinos and gaming, pharmaceuticals, tobacco. Some examples for unacceptable business practices are alcohol, adult entertainment, animal testing and genetic modification of agricultural products.

To ensure the quality of the indexes and the integrity of the underlying index methodology, three boards were established to define, build and implement the screening criteria: the Dow Jones Dharma Academic Advisory Committee, the Dow Jones Dharma Supervisory Board and the Dow Jones Dharma Religious Council.

The whole idea looks like a propaganda efforts for the first world in the new world order and it tells what should be appropriate for emerging markets like India. Why Dow Jones never thought of a "Christian" or Jewish index is a puzzle that does not require deep thinking. In the world of Dow, what is good for Christians is automatically good for the world. And of course, Christian sects are not "faith-based "but "rationality-based." Actually Dow should construct a Catholic index and then a Mormon index and a Pentecostal index and then a Baptist index and then a Seventh Day Adventist index and then an Assemble of God index and then a Methodist index and then think of Hindu Dharma.

For Wall Street - which represents the anti-thesis of Dharma - to be talking about a Dharma index is a bit surprising. But, the idea is to tell Hindus how to behave in the financial markets as per the white man's decision. It is in a sense semitising Hinduism.

The fact that non-Dharmic bodies such as Dow Jones in the US and a private profit-oriented company in the UK, both unconnected with lived experience in Dharma, are expected to control the technical aspects such as selection of categories for Index construction, assignment of weights to different categories and constructing the index for industries and enterprises on a proprietory basis is also a cause for great concern

Hinduism has several sampradayas and it talks about Yuga Dharma. It also talks about different stages of a man's existence namely Brahamacharya, Grihastha, Vanaprastha and Sanyas and dharmic behavior is related to the stage of life. The index is a subtle mechanism to deny Hindus and India their rightful place in the emerging economic order. It is atrocious that the entire pharmaceutical industry is excluded as adharma. In that case, the index should exclude Hollywood, with its level of obscenity and for that matter all consumer industries, since Hindu Dharma is not for consumerism as practised in the West.

It is simply an appropriation of the Hindu concepts to put down the growth momentum of India. Already, we find that the white world has appropriated yoga - to the extent I am told I should give $5 if I inhale in California since it has been copyrighted and branded. For exhaling, of course, the fees would go to another agency. The entire Hindu soft power is getting appropriated by the white world - helped by some brown sepoys from India who know not what is happening. Whether it is yoga or meditation or vaastu or ayuerveda or vegetarianism or even reincarnation -everything is appropriated, given a price tag, branded and sold back to gullible Indians. If a white man says that smoking is bad, then it is scientific and if it is told by my grandfather, it's superstitious or irrational.

This colonial mindset is reinforced by this index, which has the audacity to suggest that aero-space and defence are excluded since they are not dharmic activities. If India is hit by a missile, will these Dow Jones peddlers of half truth come and help us? Have they heard about the Bhagavad Gita and Krishna's advice to Arjuna? Why can't they advice Pentagon that Defence is against the Bible?

It looks to me a tool to subordinate Hindu interests to that of preconceived notions of development and growth. It will a dangerous tool in the long term since Wall Street vultures are going to decide about what is dharmic for Hindus. It is a façade to impose WTO and other such agenda on the gullible Indians. Hence India and Hindus should categorically and unambigously and unequivocally reject such efforts to misuse Hinduism by Wall Street business interests.

Phra Kru Ba Neua Chai - a monk who packs a punch

2008-01-27T14:13:00.001+08:00

Lifestyle - Hot
The monk who packs a punch
Wong Kim Hoh, IN CHIANG RAI
1541 words
27 January 2008
Straits Times
English
(c) 2008 Singapore Press Holdings Limited

In the seventh instalment of New Asian Heroes, an eight-part series on Asians who lead inspiring lives, meet Phra Kru Ba Neua Chai, a monk who rescues abandoned orphans and teaches them muay thai

HE CUTS an arresting figure: handsome despite his shaved head and eyebrows, sturdily built, heavily tattooed body cloaked in the heavy burgundy folds of a monk's robe.

A string of giant black prayer beads hang from his neck to his knees, while an ancient ankus (a hook used to handle elephants) and a Chinese horsewhip peep from a satchel he slings around his shoulders.

Before he became a monk, Phra Kru Ba Neua Chai, 45, was a lethal muay thai fighter who lost only three fights in a 15-year professional boxing career. He also studied law at Ramkhamkheng University in Bangkok, and was married to a petty trader who bore him two children.

But in 1980, he gave everything up, got ordained as a monk and founded the Monastery of The Golden Horse, nestled in the mist-shrouded hills north of Chiang Rai near the Thai-Myanmar border.

For the last 17 years, the charismatic man has devoted his life to spreading the Dharma. He's turned what was once dry, uninhabited forest land into a conservation with paddocks and pens for scores of Thai horses and magnificent fighting cocks.

It has also become a home for many young boys from various hill tribes who have been orphaned, abandoned or made homeless by ruthless drug guerillas who traffic heroin, opium and methamphetamines in the area, known to the outside world as The Golden Triangle.

In the monastery, these boys are ordained as novice monks and learn how to read and write. The abbott also teaches them Buddhist scriptures, horse-riding and muay thai.

In person, Phra Kru Ba Neua Chai exudes a beatific calm. Visitors and little monks nod respectfully as he walks the grounds of the temple; even mongrels trot obediently next to him, patiently sitting each time he stops walking.

On a big boulder where he once meditated for 15 days, he sits in the lotus position, fielding questions about his life through an interpreter.

His farmer parents had five children, none of whom survived, before he was born. Named Samer Jaipinta, he was a difficult baby in his first three months.

'Apparently, I wouldn't stop crying. My parents consulted an astrologer who said I was not a normal baby and that I needed an elephant and a horse to be my guardians,' he says.

They were too poor to buy the animals so his father drew them on the wall above the front door of their home. The baby - who was also given an ankus and a horsewhip he still carries today - stopped crying.

His folks later ran a business slaughtering chickens for the village, something that distressed the young boy.

'I would release them until my father sat me down and told me that he needed to do it. If not, the villagers would go hungry,' he says.

He was given a respite from the slaughtering when his father started breeding fighting cocks and he was tasked with entering them in fights.

'They always won, so I could make money, and not have to slaughter.'

He smiles when asked if cock fighting is a cruel sport. 'They're born warriors. They were born to fight and will fight regardless.

'Like these creatures, we all have to fight - for freedom, independence, to be who we want to be. They are the best boxing masters one could have. They have no tools, you learn a lot just by observing how they move.'

He took up muay thai when he was 13 and became very good at it. From age 14 till 29, he was known as Samerjai and took part in hundreds of muay thai matches at temple fairs and stadiums.

During this time, he also studied law at Ramkhamkheng University in Bangkok, got married and fathered two children who still come to see him occasionally.

His son, 21, is a soldier and national boxer. His daughter, 19, also a muay thai exponent, is an undergraduate at an agricultural university in Chiang Rai.

Although there were no major upheavals in his life, he was dogged by questions on human suffering.

'Maybe it's predestined that I study law so that I can compare the laws of man and the laws of karma,' he says.

A visit to the university's forensic department made him reflect on his life.

'If I had 40 years left, I'd spend 20 years sleeping and another 10 working, eating and socialising. If I'm lucky, I'd live out the rest of my life right. If not, my life would have been a total waste.'

At 29, he told his wife of eight years that he wanted to get ordained. He left for Chiang Rai, where he sat on a rock in the forest and meditated for 15 days. Bees came and covered his body.

'It's as though they were my teachers. Each time I couldn't focus, they would sting me.'

To show he had been reborn to devote his life to the Buddha, several monks spent four days and nights tattooing his body with scripture signifying that he'll never give up his vows.

He told his wife that he has found peace and detachment from earthly desires, and that both of them should start life anew.

Soon, news about him spread, and people came to listen to his teachings and seek solutions to their problems.

People who benefited from his advice came back with offerings. One gave him a horse, which he used to travel to neighbouring villages to build more temples and to visit the sick.

There are now more than 100 horses in the temple. He teaches his novice monks how to care for the animals and, in the process, imparts values such as responsibility and loyalty.

Yet other devotees offered money to build big temples.

'Monks have no need for money, we also cannot have debt,' he says.

He offered them alternatives: 'Why not support orphans and help them stand on their feet? Why not give to build schools so that they can have an education? Why not use it for salaries for teachers to teach these children?'

His work earned him the backing of the Thai army. It also won the approval of a revered chief monk in Bangkok who encouraged him to help the hill tribes. The war between various drug lords has left in its wake a host of problems such as drug addiction, kidnapping and prostitution.

On his horse, Kru Ba would - among other things - tell villagers to plant vegetables instead of drug crops and haul addicts back to his monastery to help them recover.

He has become an enemy of drug barons who have tried to kill him. He has defended himself against attackers with his muay thai skills and survived a serious poisoning attempt through meditation.

He believes he has been spared death because his work is not done yet. He shows me two bullet holes in the hut where he sleeps.

'They put the nozzles of their guns through the holes, but when they tried to pull the triggers, the guns jammed.'

Nowadays, he has the protection of the Thai army. 'They get very jittery when I meditate because I sometimes do it for six hours at a stretch,' he says with a laugh.

He's happiest when meditating. 'That's when I'm detached from everything and give energy back to nature. Nothing belongs to us, not even our bodies.'

He's been known to wake up his 20 or so charges - aged between four and 17 - before the crack of dawn, teaching them how to find peace and stillness within their psyches.

Asked whether he expects his charges to be fully ordained monks, the abbott says: 'It's their own karma. This temple is their university of life. I try to teach them to understand life, because if they do not understand it, they will experience suffering.'

Although he left the ring many years ago, Kru Ba still practises Thai boxing every day.

'Boxing for me is meditating. It helps me find peace and stillness. It's food for my mind, and when my mind is full, I feel free.

'If you feed your mind food, you get peace. But if you only feed your body food, you'll just get fat,' he says, letting out a loud chortle.

Many of the people who come to see him want to seek peace and happiness.

He smiles and says gently: 'Everybody wants to look for peace and happiness. Maybe they should first try to achieve some understanding.

'It's impossible for the whole world to understand one person. Why don't we try to understand the whole world instead, starting with ourselves?'

A Masterpiece - Angkor Wat

2008-01-27T14:08:00.000+08:00

Leisure & Arts
Masterpiece: The Glory That Is Angkor Wat - Cambodia's most famous temple is a symbol of enduring power
By Leslie Hook
1221 words
26 January 2008
The Wall Street Journal
W14
English
(Copyright (c) 2008, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.)

[Anatomy of a classic]

Siem Reap, Cambodia -- This country's most famous temple may be 900 years old, but the message it sets out to convey is timeless: Angkor Wat is all about glory. The temple is one of hundreds built by Khmer kings to commemorate themselves and their empire, as well as to worship their gods. But Angkor Wat stands out from the rest -- in artistry, in scale and in popular imagery.

One of the largest religious structures in the world, and the only religious monument to appear on a national flag, Angkor Wat has become synonymous with Cambodia at its most powerful -- when it was the seat of the Khmer Empire, stretching from the South China Sea to the Bay of Bengal. The monumental scale of the temple has the same effect on visitors today as when it was first built. Angkor Wat has but a single approach: a wide stone causeway more than a third of a mile long. The entry walkway crosses a moat 600 feet wide (my guide assures me it used to be filled with crocodiles) and ends at a wall and gates leading into the center of the compound. The central compound covers about 400 acres and once supported a town of about 100,000 people.

With one tower more than 130 feet high surrounded by four shorter towers, the center of the temple imitates the five peaks of Mount Mehru, the mythical mountain at the center of the Hindu universe. The temple walls (three concentric rectangles that demarcate the progressively higher levels of the temple), garden grounds and moat represent the soil and seas of the earth.

Reaching Mount Mehru is no easy chore: The temple's stone steps are dizzyingly steep -- more like a ladder than a staircase -- as a reminder of the effort it takes for humans to get closer to heaven. And, as if to drive home the point, the inner sanctuaries of the central tower were accessible only to the king and a select handful of priests.

When Angkor Wat was built, Cambodia was primarily Hindu and Khmer culture drew much of its inspiration from India. Most of the inscriptions at Angkor are in Sanskrit, and the nymph-like apsaras, or celestial dancers, that grace the walls derive from Hindu mythology. Later, however, the Khmer kings became interested in Buddhism, and Angkor Wat was converted into a Buddhist monastery between the 12th and 15th centuries. The central statue of the innermost sanctuary was removed and a Buddhist image erected in its place. For several centuries, the Khmer Empire practiced a syncretic faith that combined Buddhism and Hinduism.

In many ways Angkor Wat is so much larger than life that the details of the temple get overlooked amid the legends that surround it. It's easy to forget that it contains nearly 2,000 feet of the finest Khmer bas reliefs in the world. Its nearly 2,000 celestial apsaras represent the apogee of Cambodia's apsara-carving tradition and provide a detailed account of court dress and female fashions during the period of its creation. Traditional Cambodian dance to this day imitates the apsaras' poses and costumes.

One of the most intricate reliefs in the temple's first gallery depicts the Churning of the Sea of Milk, a key event in Hindu cosmology in which the world was created by an epic tug-of-war between gods and demons. Each side pulled on a giant five-headed snake wrapped around Mount Mehru, and the subsequent twisting of the mountain and churning of the seas gave birth to the apsaras that grace the walls of Angkor Wat, as well as an elixir of immortality over which the gods and demons later dueled. In this story, Mount Mehru is not only the center of the universe, but also the birthplace of the known world.

The Khmer Empire included modern-day Burma, Thailand and Vietnam, and it laid the foundations for Cambodian culture and art for centuries to come. In a sign of the temple's importance, the king's palace was most likely on its grounds, although nothing of it remains today. About one million men, women and children populated the Angkor area, according to an estimate by French archaeologist Bernard-Philippe Groslier, making it the largest settlement in the preindustrial world.

All this manpower was necessary to build the temples, which were painstakingly erected from giant sandstone monoliths hewed out of a quarry more than 37 miles away. Rather than having foundations that sink into the ground, most Angkorean temples are built on huge mounds of earth that give them their pyramid shape, the soil excavated from a moat or from one of the lakes. Some historians theorize that the blitz of building during the Khmer Empire could have been accomplished only through a labor requirement mandated for all citizens, or perhaps even through slavery.

The grandeur that marked the empire was not to last, however. The royal city of Angkor was repeatedly sacked by the Thai army during the 14th century, and in 1431 the capital was relocated farther away from Thailand. Angkor Wat itself -- by then a Buddhist temple -- continued to function, and for centuries it was home to a flourishing monastery that attracted pilgrims from as far away as Japan, even while the former capital city nearby was gradually overtaken by the jungle. Although the Buddhists removed most of the temple's original Hindu art, Angkor Wat's habitation and continuous maintenance helped it remain relatively intact while many other Angkorean temples now lie in ruins.

But Angkor Wat did not entirely escape the turbulence of Cambodia's recent history. The Western part of Cambodia in which Angkor Wat is located was a Khmer Rouge stronghold through the 1990s. Restoration work on the temples took a forced, decades-long hiatus during the wars that wracked Cambodia through the later half of the 20th century. The area was unsafe for tourists until about 10 years ago, when the Khmer Rouge signed a peace treaty that formally ended Cambodia's civil war. There was relatively little physical damage to the temple as a result of the wars, but they did irreparable damage by destroying almost all of the remaining written records pertaining to the Angkorean period. Khmer archaeology scholar Christophe Pottier of the French Research School of the Far East estimates that 95% of the relevant documents have been destroyed in the past three decades, an irreplaceable loss.

In the years since peace has come to Cambodia the opportunities for looting have also increased, and many of the finest sculptures have been spirited out of the country and sold to buyers abroad. Tourism also poses its own set of dangers, with some temples suffering from overexposure to footsteps or curious hands. But despite this -- even as the physical structures of the temples inevitably decay -- Angkor will continue to symbolize something greater than itself. The memory of the Khmer Empire, and with it Cambodia's full potential, is unlikely to fade anytime soon.

Ajahn Brahms in Bangkok on 28 January 2008

2008-01-23T16:34:00.000+08:00

OUTLOOK
Ajahn Brahm: On bliss and cooling the heart; Ajahn Brahm, author of the book Opening the Door of Your Heart (translated into Thai under the title Chuan Muan Chuen), is returning to Bangkok to give two English-language talks. He will speak on two topics: Bliss Upon Bliss Upon Bliss, on January 28; and Cooling the Heart to Stop Global Warming, on January 30.
217 words
23 January 2008
Bangkok Post
O2
English
(c) 2008

Currently the abbot of the Bodhinyana Monastery in Australia, Ajahn Brahm is a disciple of Ajahn Chah. He was ordained in 1974, and spent nine years training in Thailand. His teachings have resonated with people from all walks of life.

The talk on January 28 will be held from 7 to 8pm, with a meditation session beforehand from 6 to 6:30pm. The venue is the auditorium of the World Fellowship of Buddhists HQ, at the rear of Benjasiri Park, between Sukhumvit Road Soi 22 and 24 (there's a map at http://www.wfb-hq.org/ ). Call Kirana on 02-661-1289, or Soranan on 08-9788-9062 (after 5pm) for more information. The talk on January 30 will be held from 5 to 7pm at the Issara Place (next to Charn Issara Tower II), on the corner of Ekamai and New Phetchaburi Road. Call 02-308-2020 for more details.

China's first Buddhist temple

2008-01-17T18:01:00.000+08:00

China's first Buddhist temple to have an Indian structure
335 words
12 January 2008
Asian News International
English
© Copyright 2008. HT Media Limited. All rights reserved.

Report from Asian News International brought to you by HT Syndication.

New Delhi, Jan. 12 -- Abbot Shi Yinle, head of China's first Buddhist temple, is expecting completion of an Indian hall in April inside the 1,900-year-old temple.

The exotic structure in the White Horse Temple in Luoyang, same style as the Great Sanchi Stupa in India, is being financed by the Indian Government as part of a religious and cultural exchange agreement endorsed by the Prime Ministers of the two countries in 2005.

Abbot Yinle is proud that his temple was chosen to house the Indian hall, almost 20 centuries after the introduction of Buddhism to China from India.

"Our temple stands as testimony to the time-honoured friendship between China and India," he said.

The Indian hall covers 3,450 sq m and contains facilities for Buddhist lectures, prayers, exhibitions and conferences. All of the stone used to build the hall has been shipped from India.

A senior Indian engineer has been supervising the interior decoration, which started last September, the China Daily reported.

Two other Indian master craftsmen will soon come to supervise the final exquisite wall carvings, said Hu Xuanyan, an official with Luoyang's religious affairs bureau.

A 3.6-m high Buddha statue from India weighing 22 tons was placed in the hall last September, the largest Buddha statue the Indian government has given to China, local officials said.

The White Horse Temple is named after an ancient tale about a white horse that carried Buddhist scripture between India and Luoyang, then China's capital city.

In exchange for the Indian hall, the Chinese government financed the building of a Xuanzang Memorial Hall in Nalanda in Bihar in 2006.

Xuanzang was a Buddhist monk, a translator and an envoy of peace and Buddhism between China and India some 1,300 years ago.

Published by HT Syndication with permission from Asian News International.

Thai king celebrations in December 2007

2007-12-02T12:26:00.000+08:00

Kingdom ready to celebrate; Bangkok will play host to some grand events to mark His Majesty the King's 80th birthday.
454 words
2 December 2007
Bangkok Post
2
English
(c) 2007

DECEMBER 2

4pm: His Majesty the King inspects the Royal Guards in an annual parade at the Royal Plaza.

DECEMBER 3

8am: The prime minister leads groups of civil servants to swear an oath of allegiance at Government House. Across the country provincial governors preside over oath-taking ceremonies for government officials at provincial halls.

4.19-4.49pm: The prime minister, the president of the National Legislative Assembly and the Supreme Court president preside over a ceremony to make lustral water at Wat Phra Chetuphon Wimon Mangkhalaram.

5.30-6.30pm: A religious ceremony is held to mark His Majesty's birthday at the Temple of the Emerald Buddha.

DECEMBER 4

9am-5pm: Members of the public sign a book offering their best wishes to the King in the compound of the Grand Palace.

4pm: Members of the cabinet, high-ranking state officials and groups of individuals are granted an audience with the King at Dusitalai Pavilion in Chitralada Palace.

9pm: A fireworks display at the Royal Turf Club (Nang Lerng Race Course), which will be viewed after the royal audience.

DECEMBER 5

7am: "Do Good Deeds for the Father" event at the statue of the Earth Goddess.

7.30am: A procession of lustral water from Wat Phra Chetuphon Wimon Mangkhalaram to Chakri Maha Prasart Throne Hall.

10.30am: His Majesty meets a congregation of people at Chakri Maha Prasart Throne Hall.

1-5pm: Members of the public sign a book offering their best wishes to the King in the compound of the Grand Palace.

5.45pm: The King attends a state ceremony at Amarin Vinijchai Throne Hall.

5.30pm: A procession of royal offerings takes place at Sanam Luang.

7.19pm: The prime minister presides over a candlelight ceremony at Sanam Luang to mark the King's birthday.

8pm onwards: A fireworks display on the Chao Phraya river, from the Rama IX bridge to the Industrial Ring Road bridge.

DECEMBER 6

9am-5pm: Members of the public sign a book offering their best wishes to the King in the compound of the Grand Palace.

10.30am: His Majesty makes offerings to monks at the Amarin Vinijchai Throne Hall.

8.30pm: A fireworks display at the Royal Bangkok Sports Club (Pathumwan Race Course).

DECEMBER 7

7pm: Her Royal Highness Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn presides over a grand reception attended by diplomats and dignitaries at Government House.

DECEMBER 8

5.30pm: Foreign diplomats are granted an audience with the King at the Dusitalai Pavilion in Chitralada Palace.

8.30pm: A fireworks display at Suan Benjakitti near the Queen Sirikit National Convention Centre.

Buddhist temples sprouting in US

2007-11-17T13:02:00.001+08:00

Buddhist temples rising all over Western Pennsylvania
Arthur L. Clark
846 words
15 November 2007
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
English
Copyright 2007, Tribune-Review Publishing Co., All Rights Reserved.

John Ott faithfully attended St. Ferdinand's Roman Catholic Church until 2002, when he left Warrendale to attend graduate school.

When he came back home, Ott did not return to his parish. He joined the Zen Center of Pittsburgh Deep Spring Temple in Bell Acres, one of a growing number of Buddhist temples in Western Pennsylvania.

"Once I showed up (at the Zen Center), I pretty much didn't leave," said Ott, 38. "I felt like I had come home."

The number of U.S. Buddhists has doubled to more than 2 million since 1990.

"Every country (Buddhism's) gone into, it's ended up being a major religion," said the Rev. Kyoki Roberts, head priest at the Zen Center, which has 33 active members.

At least seven other temples and sitting groups -- representing a variety of traditions -- including a Theravada temple that started up last year, have opened near Pittsburgh.

"I think the community here is quite different than the community in China," said Shaun Yuan, a graduate student studying at Carnegie Mellon University who practices at the Zen Center. "In China, the temples are very big. Here, it's more like a community than a temple."

Local Buddhists say the growth has been gradual.

"It's growing, but I wouldn't say it's exploding," said Doug Gouge, 62, a retired business owner who practices at the Zen Center.

People come to Buddhism in a number of different ways, said Don Orr, president of the Stillpoint Zen Community in Lawrenceville, which has 24 members.

"Some come to it because they feel they need to fill a hole somewhere," Orr said. "Someone dies, someone gets very sick. A relationship just falls apart. They get a dumb slap of life. And they look at themselves and they go, 'You know what, I don't want to keep doing what I'm doing.' So they have a drive to get those answers."

Ott said practicing Buddhism helped him deal with depression. Now he's considering whether to give up teaching violin to become a Soto Zen priest.

"I was a very angry person when I first showed up here," he said. "That has certainly changed quite a bit."

Part of the greatest intrigue for newcomers includes the amount of spiritual responsibility placed on the practitioner, Orr said. Though some might teach, every individual is responsible for his or her own spiritual practice.

Some groups do not even have a formal leader. The Stillpoint Zen Community doesn't have a formal teacher, Orr said.

"We're like the equivalent to Quakers in Christianity," Orr said. "We're a lay group, so there's no authority based on formal hierarchy, which is not to say that Zen Buddhism is full of hierarchy, but we're a group that has steered clear there."

Even at a place such as the Zen Center, which has formal teachers, individual students are responsible for themselves, members said.

"A lot of people are really misguided in that, 'Oh, a teacher is going to make my life work,' " Gouge said. "You really are responsible in a bigger way than you ever thought."

Personal responsibility for one's own happiness is one of the main reasons that people are so attracted to Buddhism, Roberts said.

"Kyoki has a way of putting the practice in terms where it is applicable, where you can apply it to your daily life," Ott said. "She has understanding of practice that comes from a very deep place, in that she's been sitting for many years."

Although Ott stopped attending his Catholic parish, practicing Zen Buddhism does not have to mean giving up one's Christian faith, said Wendy Merrill, a psychologist who practices at Stillpoint.

She pointed to "Zen Catholics" such as the Rev. Robert E. Kennedy, a Jesuit who is an American Catholic priest and an ordained Zen Roshi. Kennedy is nationally known for his books, such as "Zen Gifts to Christians" and "Zen Spirit, Christian Sprit."

"I don't think there's anything inherently contradictory about Christianity and Buddhism," Gouge said. "You certainly could be a Christian and Buddhist. Speaking from the Buddhist side, we've got no problem with it."

Ott became Buddhist, saying he no longer connected with his church.

"Just taking the chance to look at what I was doing with my life, and where things were going, it helped so much," Ott said. "Just having a sense of clarity, a sense of purpose in what I was doing has helped so much."

Ott will stay at the Zen Center, probably for at least a year, and undertake a rigorous practice, including meditation, bowing and introducing new students to the practice.

"When you take up ordaining, then you're saying this practice is very important, and that you want to transmit it to other people," Ott said. "There doesn't seem to be many people stepping up to do that. And if I'm needed to be helpful in that way, I want to be."

At home: finding your mind

2007-11-03T11:57:00.000+08:00

AT HOME; Finding your mind
1941 words
2 November 2007
Bangkok Post
R11
English
(c) 2007

People search for happiness all their lives and yet it often eludes them. The Lord Buddha laid down a simple path to happiness - the practice of mindfulness - that each of us can easily follow if we put our minds to it. PATCHARAWALAI SANYANUSIN points out some of the first few steps based on her own experiences

'Why was I born? What am I living for? When will my life end?" I believe everybody finds these questions floating in their minds from time to time. The first question is too complicated to discuss and the last is too scary to think about. It might take us a while to find the real purpose of our life, but whatever it is, I'm sure the conclusion will be that it's for one thing only: happiness.

And the next question, why do we want to be happy? That's easy to answer, too. It's because we love ourselves, isn't it? And yet, ironically, while we may love ourselves the most, we're not aware that we're continually neglecting ourselves, too.

All through life we tend to pay more attention to the people and objects around us rather than to ourselves. We are always curious to know about everything but ourselves. And whenever our attention is fixed on others, we forget about ourselves.

"Hardly any of the people in this world are awake," said Phra Pramote Pamotecho, or Luang Phor Pramote, of Suan Santidham in Chon Buri. "We all get lost in the world of delusions all the time."

His remarks caught me by surprise, and at first I told myself I wasn't one of those people. But as I listened further, I couldn't help nodding in agreement.

"Even when we're alone, we are trapped in the world of our own thoughts," the monk continued. "Sometimes we know our thoughts, but often we aren't even aware of what we're thinking about."

Luang Phor Pramote is respected by a large number of dhamma practitioners for his easy-to-understand teaching about the practice of mindfulness. He insists that only mindfulness can pull us out to the real world to discover the truth about ourselves and bring us real happiness. And the more we develop mindfulness, the less suffering we will have.

But what is mindfulness? Most of us think we are mindful people because we know what we're doing, and in the worldly sense, that may be the case. But in terms of Buddhism, this word refers to the right mindfulness, or samma sati, which focusses on the awareness of two things only: the body and the mind.

According to Luang Phor Pramote, being mindful of the body means knowing all the postures and movements the body makes, such as standing, walking, sitting, lying, bending, stretching and the like. Similarly, being aware of the mind means knowing the behaviour, or characteristics of the mind, and any feelings or emotions that arise in the mind in the present moment.

"In short, whenever we are aware of our body and mind at the present moment, it means we have mindfulness," he said.

The monk's words left me totally stunned. I made a quick search back to the past in the hope that there might be times during my three decades of life that I was really mindful, but now I wasn't so sure if there were any.

And I'm certain that I'm not alone; most people in this world are like me. We have lived our lives far from being mindful. We hardly notice our own bodies. Whenever we are walking, our minds are somewhere else. While we're eating, drinking, going to the toilet, taking a bath, our minds are far away from us. Sometimes it seems as if we know the actions our body is performing, but that lasts only a few seconds before our attention moves on to something else.

If we are confident that we know our minds best, we should take a closer look at it. We will probably see that it hardly ever stays with us; most of the time it is wandering. And instead of looking at what our minds are doing, we aimlessly follow our thoughts and get carried away.

You may think you know your own feelings quite well, but are you sure you know them correctly? Remember the last time you were angry with someone? Could you describe your anger? Was it actually the face of the enemy that absorbed all your attention while you were fuming? If so, that means you didn't know your anger at all.

To know it correctly is to see it in your mind, to notice how it feels to get angry. If it's just a mild irritation, you might detect some discomfort in your chest; but if it's rage, you might feel an active volcano inside you.

Here's another example to test how well you know your feelings. I'm sure everyone's had a crush once in a while. But have you ever noticed how it feels to be desperately in love? Of course, you might feel your limbs trembling, your heart racing, your face burning, or you might even feel like swooning when you're near the object of your interest.

But admit it, you didn't really observe those feelings. Either you were struggling to suppress them, or else all your attention was fixed on the object of your love. This is true for everyone.

Even when we're worried, suspicious, fearful, sad, lonely, jealous, bored, lazy, indifferent or happy, we never fully realise those feelings. So what should we do to be really mindful? Concentrate our attention only on our bodies' movements all the time? Stop our minds from wandering away? Or "stare" at our minds in order to detect every feeling that arises?

No, no, no! They're all wrong and impossible to do. Luang Phor Pramote always insists that when practising mindfulness, we have to stick to the number one rule - take the role of "knower" or "watcher" without interfering in any way. That means we don't need to do anything except constantly observe our bodies and minds as they truly are.

The monk also points out two big mistakes that practitioners habitually make. "The first is we tend to forget about ourselves because we become absent-minded and our minds just wander away. The second is that we intentionally concentrate on our body and mind, and this is unnatural."

The first problem is because absent-mindedness is a natural characteristic of the mind. "Our duty is not to prevent it from slipping away. That would be impossible anyway, because the mind is uncontrollable. What we have to do is to detect the activity as often as possible," he explained.

As beginners, we might find it hard to detect this absent-mindedness because all our lives we've been accustomed to losing ourselves in the world of our thoughts. But whenever we can detect them, we will find that our minds stop thinking immediately, and those thoughts in our minds at that moment will disappear. Of course, they'll stop for only a second or two before our untamed mind starts to wander again. But that's no problem; just be aware of it every time it happens.

It's just as easy to solve the second problem. Instead of forcing ourselves to be on high alert to any physical and mental activities in or around us, we should be comfortably aware of them as if we're playing with them.

Luang Phor Pramote also suggests an important method of helping mindfulness to grow in us. "Observe every kind of bodily sensation and mental state as often as possible so that your mind can remember those conditions precisely," he says. In other words, if we can keep detecting these feelings until our minds can remember them, we'll be aware of them automatically when they occur again.

Mindfulness can be practised anywhere and any time, from the moment we wake up in the morning until we go to asleep at night, but it must be practised constantly in everyday life. This might sound impossible to do, and many of us might feel it would be boring and a waste of time. The fact is, though, that mindfulness is the most powerful protection we have to prevent the two enemies that cause all the suffering in life - kiles (defilements) and tanha (craving) - from taking control of us.

Luang Phor Pramote explained that the more we observe the body and mind, the more we will notice their "working process". We will see that our minds have feelings and thoughts all the time, and when we're unaware of them, they will develop into kiles and tanha.

But once we are aware of them, they cannot emerge and take hold of us. Instead, we will feel calm and concentrated and will be able to exercise our reasoning to make careful decisions or to deal with problems with a neutral mind.

This is only one of the initial benefits of mindfulness for those who wish to live happily in this world. It will bring them insight into understanding where their suffering comes from, and show them how to avoid it.

Luang Phor Pramote said that the real objective of mindfulness practice is to make us see the truth that everything that happens in our life is temporal. Happiness and suffering and all kinds of feelings, whether positive or negative, all rise and fall.

"Our bodies and minds don't actually belong to us, or even exist," he said. "We will discover that our body is simply a movable object with substances moving in and out all the time, while our mind can work independently on its own and is not part of the body at all. Both are just things being felt and observed, and are impermanent and uncontrollable.

"At this stage we must observe ourselves constantly until 'our' mind rectifies itself and finally detaches itself from clinging to the body and mind. And this is the end of all suffering."

This might sound a bit too difficult to understand, but I can probably summarise it by saying that the more we watch our bodies and minds, constantly, at each moment, the nearer we shall be to real happiness.

I have no idea how long it will take me to reach that ultimate goal. It may be seven years or seven lifetimes, but this will not discourage me as I'm confident that at least I'm on the right track. Life is uncertain; suffering may knock on the door at any moment. But I strongly believe that whoever practises mindfulness as part of his or her life will be able to survive perfectly in every situation. They will know how to free themselves from the cycle of birth and death, and will know no fear in the last moments of their lives.

Mindfulness practice is about studying the body and mind in the present moment as they truly are, until we have the wisdom to truly understand the real truth about ourselves. It takes patience and perseverance, but it is the most valuable investment in life for everyone, of whatever age, gender, career, nationality or religious belief.

It is guaranteed by the Lord Buddha as the only path to enlightenment. The pity is that so few people in this world can see its value and are willing to follow it - the road less travelled.

The way of tea

2007-10-19T19:57:00.000+08:00

The way of tea
By Fanny Dassie, CONTRIBUTOR
738 words
18 October 2007
The Oakland Tribune
English
(c) Copyright 2007 ANG Newspapers. All rights reserved.

SHOZO SATO, dressed in a kimono, kneels in front of a kettle and buries his hand into his thin black and gray suit, pulling out a purple, napkin-size silk cloth. He delicately uses the fukusa to methodically clean a tea scoop and container.

"It's a purification of utensils and minds," says Sato, a teacher of tea gathering ceremonies who demonstrates the "way of tea" at museums and tea houses across the United States and Europe.

The Japanese tea ceremony, as presented at the Asian Art Museum and in homes and tea houses around the Bay Area, is an artistic discipline that expresses cultural aspects such as creating an atmosphere of respect and sincerity between guests and hosts. It's also seen as a way to link meditation and spiritual training with sustenance.

The tea ritual was imported from China to Japan in 1200 AD and introduced through Buddhism before being integrated into Japanese society.

Sato's lessons illustrate that traditional tea preparation and serving must follow specific and stringent rules that are usually unknown to the average tea consumer.

For many tea drinkers, the simple act of pouring water over a tea bag has no artistic or spiritual value.

"I use tea bags when I am thirsty, but when I want a spiritual

awakening, I go through the tea ceremony," Sato says.

In Japan, the tea ceremony is a ritualized event that demands constant attention, patience, precision and a natural calmness and softness in the gestures.

Christi Soei Bartlett, director of the San Francisco Urasenke Foundation, says tea practitioners seek "a sense of community and an understanding of everyday life." The tea ritual, associated with Zen, encourages people to take time to relax and enjoy their tea.

Hosting a traditional tea ceremony is an art. The host has to create an appropriate atmosphere by choosing complementary fresh flowers and paintings, depending on the season and the mood of the moment.

The Asian Art Museum offers public tea ceremonies five times a year.

At a recent ceremony, each guest removes his shoes before trampling the tatami. They then tiptoe toward an alcove, kneel, cross their feet, bow and meditate before heading to an area decorated with flowers and paintings chosen by the host.

The host for the day, Sato, appears through a white sliding door, offering tea sweets. One by one, to create drama, the tea utensils are cleaned with the silk cloth — purple for men and orange or red for women. There's a transparent blue bowl full of cold water that is covered by a leaf, usually from the host's garden, as well as a tea scoop, a transparent white glass bowl and a bamboo whisk.

"We don't talk too much in the tea room," Sato explains. "If we talk, it's only about tea."

The host uses the tea scoop to place a small amount of green powdery tea into the white bowl. Hot water is delicately poured over the powder, which will be mixed with the whisk.

Only after a meticulous inspection is the tea consumed. Sato explains that the taste can be better sustained if the host breathes and makes a sound

while drinking the beverage because the oxygen acts to boost the taste.

At the completion of the ceremony, the scoop and containers are cleaned by the host and examined by the guests. The host then removes, again one by one, all of the utensils.

Yuko Matsumoto, an Oakland resident who participated in the ceremony at the Asian, drinks six or seven cups a day.

She used to participate in such ceremonies while growing up in Japan.

"I associate tea with tranquility," she says.

Buddhist Conference in Malaysia - November 2007

2007-10-06T12:56:00.000+08:00

CONFERENCE / BUDDHISM; Malaysia hosts Buddhist event of the year
470 words
5 October 2007
Bangkok Post
R11
English
(c) 2007

Three leading Buddhist organisations, the Buddhist Missionary Society, Buddhist Gem Fellowship and the Young Buddhist Association of Malaysia, will be organising an international Buddhist conference in Malaysia from November 17-18 at the Sunway Convention Centre, Petaling Jaya.

It will be the fifth in this series of conferences which began in 2000, and the second time that Malaysia will be playing host. More than 1,000 people, some from Australia, Indonesia, Singapore and Thailand, have so far registered for the conference, which has been billed as the "Buddhist Event of the Year."

The theme of the conference is "Transforming the Mind -- How to Create Happiness in Our Lives." During the event, 10 well-known Buddhist scholars, including monks and nuns from Western countries, will present 16 papers discussing how they, as Buddhists, benefit from the Buddha's teachings that are directed towards training the mind in order to develop happiness in our everyday lives.

The conference has been structured so that not only scholars of Buddhism will benefit from the insights of the speakers as they explore the more profound aspects of Buddhist philosophy. Buddhists of all kinds will find practical advice on what steps they can take in order to be happy and lead peaceful, stress-free lives.

The speakers will include Malaysia's Venerable Mahinda from Malacca and Venerable Aggacitta from Penang. Venerable Ming Yi, known as "Asia's CEO monk" for opening the first Buddhist hospital in Singapore and remaining as its chief executive, will deliver a talk on the second day.

Western speakers at the conference include Venerable Dr Heng Sure and Venerable Robina Courtin from the USA, and Venerable Acharn Brahmavamso from Australia. Heng Sure is a disciple of the late master Hsuan Hua and an accomplished musician. His recordings of American Buddhist folk music will be featured during the conference.

Robina Courtin, a nun from the Tibetan Buddhist tradition who was the subject of the recent documentary, Chasing Buddha, will talk about her experiences teaching meditation to the inmates of US prisons.

From the Zen tradition, Dr Jan Chozen Bays, a paediatrician and Zen master, will speak on her work in helping abused children to find happiness.

The versatile and very popular Theravada monk from Perth, Acharn Brahm, has also confirmed his attendance at the conference.

Lay speakers will include Dr Tan Eng Kong, a well-known Sydney-based psychotherapist, Dr Thupten Jinpa, the official translator of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and Danai Chanchaochai, CEO of Thailand's top media company in Bangkok, who will share his thoughts on meditation for stressed, busy executives in the corporate sector.

For more details of the conference, please visit www.bodhivision.net/gcb2007 , email ybam@streamyx.com or call 603-7804-9154/603-7804-9157.

Conference on Happiness

2007-10-06T10:24:00.000+08:00

Wellbeing: The Search for Happiness
2550 words
1 October 2007
The Australian Women's Weekly
English
The Australian Women's Weekly © 2007 ACP Publishing Pty Ltd. All rights reserved. www.ninemsn.com.au/aww

What does it mean to be happy - and where do we find it? The Weekly's David Leser goes in search of glee at an international conference on happiness, to discover there's no single path to a life of contentment.

"Up the escalators for Happiness," said the man with the beatific smile.

"Then turn right." It sounded so simple. An escalator ride and a quick stroll past the gongs and chanting monks, and I'd be there. In Happy Land.

Yet, of course, it was never going to be that painless. One could find the door to a Happiness Conference easily enough; it was quite another matter finding the tools and techniques for a happier life. For Happiness itself.

That, I figured, was going to take a few lifetimes, or at the very least, a two-day conference in Sydney, where I could fast-track myself to a state of unalloyed delight merely by listening to experts expounding on the subject.

What did it mean to be happy and how did one find it? Did we discover it by looking, or by, paradoxically enough, ceasing to look? Did we come into the world with a sunny disposition, a felicitous gene, and if not, could we train ourselves to be happy?

Was it an individual quest or did one's community and government contribute to happiness? And why was it that some people dealt with crisis or misadventure better than others?

These were just some of the questions I'd begun asking myself in the lead-up to the Second International Conference on Happiness and its Causes in Sydney recently. And, yes, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "What a monumental act of self-indulgence is this! Three thousand narcissists gathered for a convention at Darling (where else?) Harbour to explore happiness and its twin sisters, joy and exuberance. What a doddle. What a tilt at New Age windmills. What about writing on real issues, the drought, for example, or the war in Iraq?"

It's true. I could have done either of those things, but I doubt whether they would have added to your happiness quotient or mine, or indeed, to the sum total of human happiness. Quite the contrary. Reading a depressing story would actually have weakened your immune system and prevented you from fighting illness. And I didn't want to do that, certainly not after listening to Howard Cutler, co-author (with the Dalai Lama) of the international bestselling book, The Art of Happiness.

Howard told the conference about a study that had shown how people watching acts of kindness, in this case a film of Mother Teresa performing good deeds, experienced increased levels of disease-fighting antibodies in their saliva compared to those who hadn't watched the film.

He also talked about an experiment in which subjects were chosen one day a week to perform five random acts of kindness - anything from opening a door for a stranger to anonymously putting money in an expired parking metre. "After five weeks, people who were doing this were found to have a marked increase in their personal happiness," he said.

Yet even if that weren't the case, surely an investigation of the individual and collective causes of happiness was a worthwhile pursuit, given the extent to which depression and mental illness afflicted the people of the western world.

Why was it, for example, that a country like Australia could be in the midst of such a prosperity boom, such material comfort, and yet be experiencing a pandemic of sickness and unhappiness - 20 per cent of Australian teenagers suffering from mental health problems; suicide rates quadrupling among 15- to 19-year-olds since the 1970s; homeless youth on the rise ...

Little wonder, then, that several of the people attending the conference were counsellors, therapists, social workers, doctors, mental health experts - people regularly in touch with the misery and heartache of people's lives.

And so the answer to these and many other questions depended, of course, on who you talked to, or, in this case, listened to. No one could be happy all the time, said Professor Graham Burrows, chairman of the Mental Health Foundation of Australia. "And if they (were), they might be bipolar."

"Or at great risk of being up themselves," agreed Professor Gordon Parker, executive director of Black Dog Institute, an educational, research, clinical and community-oriented facility offering specialist expertise in mood disorders, based in New South Wales.

Happiness was a complex, intriguing phenomenon. You could seek it desperately, but never find it, or you could stumble upon it and then come to see later that, yes, this was a moment of serendipity, of sheer bliss, a family meal perhaps, or the touch of a loved one, or a moment of rhapsody in nature.

For Magda Szubanski, a surprise replacement at the conference for the surprise inclusion of Federal Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull, happiness came from the simple things in life, but also, surprisingly enough, from performance. "I feel performing is a very communal act," she said, "and as someone who doesn't have a faith, it sometimes feels that there is only the communal space."

Mind you, after sitting next to the Dalai Lama for a panel discussion chaired by the ABC's Geraldine Doogue, it seemed that Magda Szubanski had, by conference end, become totally open to the idea of altruism and faith.

"I want to try to be nicer," she said when asked by Geraldine Doogue how she might, over the coming years, try to enhance her own happiness. "I know that sounds really sucky, but I want to feel like I err on the side of doing good things rather than selfish things. I might even look at engaging more in Buddhist activities."

"Now that's sucking up," quipped Geraldine, to widespread hilarity from an audience already enchanted by the presence of the Nobel Peace Prize winner sharing the stage with one of Australia's most loved comedians. When asked how he might enhance his own happiness, the Tibetan spiritual and political leader responded with a boyish shrug and a typically enlightened, if not cryptic, response: "I will carry on continuously. That's all."

What else might one expect from a man who has regularly expressed love and forgiveness for the Chinese conquerors of his country. "Genuine compassion can also reach your enemy," he reminded us all. "They have the same rights, the same desire for happiness."

That was a far cry from Clive Hamilton's response. When the executive director of The Australia Institute and author of Affluenza was asked what lever he would pull to secure his own happiness, he replied, "Quite frankly, quite bluntly, there is one event which could make me extremely happy and that would be a crushing defeat for the Howard Government (at the coming election)."

And who said happiness wasn't a political matter?

Three days before going in search of glee, I received an unsolicited email about a 92-year-old man, whose wife of 70 years had recently passed away. Because of her death, the man had been forced to move into a nursing home, where he was bound to see out his days.

On the day of his departure, his care-giver began describing to him the room that he was about to move into. "It's tiny," she said, "and it has these eyelet sheets hanging over the windows ..."

"I love it," he said with relish.

"But Mr Jones," the caregiver said, "you haven't even seen the room. Just wait."

"That doesn't have anything to do with it," the old man replied. "Happiness is something you decide on ahead of time. Whether I like my room or not doesn't depend on how the furniture is arranged. It's how I arrange my mind and I've already decided to love it."

The subject of the mind and how we might train it was a recurring theme throughout the two-day Happiness conference. When the Venerable Robina Courtin, the Tibetan Buddhist nun and director of Liberation Prison Project, in San Francisco, told the audience it was possible to train the mind to be "happier, braver, wiser, kinder, less fearful and less depressed", she was doing so not just as someone caring for the spiritual needs of thousands of prisoners in America - many of them on death row - but also as someone making a distinction between the mind and the brain.

"Mind is consciousness," she said, "and it encompasses the entire spectrum of our inner experiences: thoughts, feelings, emotions, unconscious, subconscious, intuition, instinct."

Robina cited the case of an innocent woman who had spent 17 years on death row before being released. During that time, she had learnt, despite her circumstances, to be happy. "The only thing she could change was her mind," Robina said. "She said to herself, 'I am not in a cell, I am in a cave. I am not a prisoner, I am a monk'."

Petrea King, founding director of the Quest for Life Centre and a nominee for Australian of the Year since 2003, knows something of this power of the mind, after being diagnosed nearly 25 years ago with myeloid leukaemia. Although she didn't get an opportunity to tell the conference the details of her extraordinary story, it would have been salutary to hear it. (And a note of disclosure here - I was once secretary of Petrea's Quest for Life Foundation.)

After being told she had three months to live, Petrea took herself off to a cave outside Assisi in Italy, where she meditated for 18 hours a day. Her cancer went into remission. Since the late 1980s, Petrea has counselled more than 60,000 Australians diagnosed with life-threatening illnesses, presenting to them myriad benefits of meditation, good nutrition and positive thinking.

"A daily practice of meditation, reflection or contemplation greatly enhances our ability to make appropriate responses rather than helplessly reacting to experiences," she said. "When we know ourselves, we understand how to care for ourselves ... and that's the greatest gift we can give our children, our families, our communities and the planet - the gift of our own physical, mental, emotional and spiritual wellbeing. Then we bring a calm and serene presence to the chaos, the disaster, the trauma, the tragedy."

This was a different, but not unrelated, slant to the one taken by Amanda Gordon, president of the Australian Psychological Society, who told the conference that the happiest people were those with a life of meaning and sense of purpose. These people were in loving relationships, they acted altruistically and they gave up the more immediate pleasures for something deeper, less transient.

Also, they looked for the best in people, listened well, gave kind feedback. What they didn't do was spend their lives comparing themselves to others or "noticing the bits that were missing".

Ian Gawler, founder of the first lifestyle-based cancer self-help group in Australia, and a long-term cancer survivor himself, didn't disagree, but wondered whether there wasn't sometimes too much emphasis placed on relationships. "Many are looking for happiness outside themselves, whereas the real answer is inside ourselves," he said. "If you're looking to gain a sense of enduring, ongoing happiness from other people, it will always be tenuous."

"I think relationships are everything," countered Julian Short, a psychiatrist and expert on low self-esteem and relationship problems. "I'm not sure how to find happiness inside myself, because I find my happiness from outside, from relationships. Treating another person with kindness and dignity will help you love yourself and help you love another person. You become twice blessed."

Not to be deterred, Ian Gawler replied, "The important principle that comes from spiritual practice is if you have a really strong connection with your inner self, then there is a sense that that is inviolate, that there's a part of you that can't be hurt. Then life generally becomes easier - easier to become more open and more intimate."

They are both right, of course, and, once again, we could have heard much more on this subject, particularly from Ian Gawler, whose recovery from cancer 30 years ago was to become - like Petrea King - the stuff of medical legend and, indeed, a source of inspiration to this writer.

Like Petrea, Ian has helped alleviate the suffering of thousands of people with cancer, AIDS and leukaemia at his Gawler Foundation in Victoria. His view is that - tumultuous though the diagnosis and sickness is - it can also give a person the opportunity to change his or her lifestyle and, most crucially, to confront major unresolved issues in their lives.

"To me, the point is to reach the end of your life with inner peace, and to do that, you need to look back on your life and feel you were satisfied," he once told me. "It is quite possible to do that at an early age and quite possible to not do that at an old age."

For me, that meant - as Amanda Gordon and others stressed - the search for meaning, as opposed to some glib quest for happiness: meaning at work, meaningful relationships, a meaningful contribution to society and to the life of others.

When I returned home, I found my wife in the garden, my daughters at their desks and a book left open in the kitchen that my wife happened to be reading.

The book, The Interpretation of Murder by the American writer, Jed Rubenfeld, began, curiously enough, with these words: "There is no mystery to happiness. Unhappy men (and women) are all alike. Some wound they suffered long ago, some wish denied, some blow to pride, some kindling spark of love put out by scorn - or worse, indifference - cleaves to them, or they to it, and so they live each day within a shroud of yesterdays. The happy man (and woman) does not look back. He doesn't look ahead. He lives in the present."

Yet therein lay the rub, according to the writer. The present could never deliver meaning, because the ways of happiness and meaning were never the same. To find happiness, Rubenfeld said, a man needed to only live in the moment; he needed to only live for the moment.

"But if he wants meaning - the meaning of his dreams, his secrets, his life - a man must reinhabit his past, however dark, and live for the future, however uncertain. Thus nature dangles happiness and meaning before us all, insisting only that we choose between them."

I closed the book and imbibed the safe, salty harbour of this family and home of mine - the soup bubbling on the stove, the music coming from my younger daughter's bedroom. For one brief, exquisite moment, I felt no such choice needed to be made, that in this very moment I was experiencing both happiness and meaning and that the former derived, however mysteriously, from the latter.

But then, just as quickly, the moment passed and I was back on those escalators wondering whether to turn right or left for Happy Land.

For further information, contact www.happinessanditscauses.com.au .

Lucky winners: lucky buddha charms

2007-09-22T12:02:00.000+08:00

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.

Mixing religion, politics - two commentaries

2007-09-22T11:59:00.000+08:00

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

World ranking of quality of life vis-a-vis countries to live in

2007-09-21T20:30:00.000+08:00

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.

Travelling to Muktinath, the Mecca of Tibetan Buddhists

2007-09-18T19:28:00.001+08:00

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.

Things to do in Lhasa, Tibet

2007-09-18T19:15:00.000+08:00

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.

Tibetan foremost female lama - a peek into her daily life

2007-09-15T11:59:00.000+08:00

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.

Chopra on mind body

2007-09-15T11:39:00.000+08:00

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.

Bringing back a piece of Thai history back - robes

2007-09-09T13:23:00.000+08:00

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.

Milestones in China's history

2007-09-01T11:56:00.000+08:00

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

12th century buddhist sculptures found in Indonesian cave

2007-09-01T11:52:00.000+08:00

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.

A new epic film on Buddha on the way

2007-09-01T11:43:00.000+08:00

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.

Studies on Contentment and being a happy nation

2007-09-01T11:36:00.000+08:00

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.

Angkor - the World's Mega City

2007-09-01T11:31:00.000+08:00

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.

World's largest collection of Buddhist relics on tour

2007-09-01T11:29:00.000+08:00

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.

The term "buddhism" may be a hindrance in universities

2007-09-01T11:25:00.000+08:00

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.