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.
Saturday, May 31, 2008
What is lotus theraphy?
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.
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?
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
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
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
