Thoughts on the Buddhist idea of “Right Livelihood”

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Victoria, Canada -- Much of our lifetime is spent earning a living. Our economy depends upon the productivity of the workforce. Today I want to introduce the Buddhist concept of “right livelihood” and suggest that including meditation as part of the workplace would represent an overall improvement for all concerned.

Modern studies show that excelling in a variety of emotional competencies, not just a few, is a strong indicator of leadership success. The nine qualities shown to be most important are: Initiative, achievement drive, adaptability, influence, team leadership, political awareness, empathy, self-confidence and developing others.  First, here’s a basic primer on the Buddhist approach to livelihood.

Buddhist practice follows a template called the “8-fold path”. Altogether, the 8-fold path is called the “middle way” and satisfies the three conditions for a good life; wisdom, morality and meditation. “Right Livelihood” is one of the 8; (the others are; right view, right thought, right speech, right behaviour, right effort, right mindfulness, right contemplation). Livelihood is part of our moral life, according to classical Buddhism. What this means is that ‘right livelihood’ is tethered to “ahimsa”, a Sanskrit word meaning ‘harmlessness’. Buddhist morality can be summed up as ‘it is more important to be kind than to be right’.

This little essay is not intended to suggest that business owners convert to Buddhism. But it is undeniable that a good part of the social problems we experience today derive from a much weakened sense of morality associated with how we earn our living. Because there were few qualms about bankrupting and defrauding millions of homeowners and investors, a few made millions and our economy almost collapsed; and still might. A financial sector with a culture that discouraged doing harm would not have been so vulnerable. Zen meditation would be the heart of such a corporate culture.

It can be a complex undertaking. A company wishing to include ‘spiritual well being’ or ‘personal meaning’ or ‘emotional intelligence’ within its purview would need to consider carefully how to structure the new ideas so that they could be replicated, for example. It would also have to be sensitive to diversity and avoid offense or exclusion. However, approached with the appropriate respect, research and experience show that meditation can do all this and will reliably bring the following benefits:

    reduction in rates of absenteeism and sick leave
increases in measures of production
significant reductions in stress related anxieties
significant improvements in recruiting and retaining superior employees

So, for this alone, meditation is worth considering. But, more generally, our society needs to develop a better working vocabulary of right livelihood. This means not only the nature of the work itself, but also the skills and qualities each worker brings. Daniel Goleman in his book “Working With Emotional Intelligence” says, “Analysis done by dozens of different experts in close to five hundred corporations, government agencies, and nonprofit organizations worldwide have arrived independently at remarkably similar conclusions. Their conclusions all point to the paramount place of emotional intelligence in excellence on the job – virtually any job”. This is why meditation is so valuable; it is the way to cultivate and develop a workforce with high levels of emotional intelligence.

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Wayne Codling is a former Zen monastic and a lineage holder in the Soto Zen tradition. He teaches Zen-style meditation in various venues around Victoria.

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Unconventional Buddhist makes meditation relatable

Dressed in a suit and purple tie, atypical Buddhist practitioner and teacher Lodro Rinzler came to Winnick Chapel at Brown/RISD Hillel Thursday evening as part of a 24-city tour for his new book, "The Buddha Walks Into a Bar: A Guide to Life for a New Generation."

"I actually haven't read it myself, but I hear it's good," Rinzler joked. He received many laughs throughout the presentation, which was hosted by the Brown Meditation Community.

The 29-year-old Rinzler, who comes from the tradition of Shambhala Buddhism, began meditating at age 11 and lived in a monastery at age 17. In college, he created Wesleyan University's Buddhist House, a dorm for 18 students who practice meditation. He now writes and teaches two meditation classes a week in New York City.

Rinzler's book is about "how to integrate Buddhism into a college student's life" and life in general, said Noah Elbot '14, one of the nine BMC leaders. College is a time for "figuring out who you are," he said, and "meditation can give another perspective to that."

Rinzler may be more "relatable" to students than the "more traditional Zen master," Elbot said. He is also a living example of someone who has made a living through Buddhism — college students typically do not consider a career in religion, Elbot said.

BMC thought that Rinzler might appeal to younger people who are seeking to take up meditation without changing their whole lifestyle, said Evan Winget '12, another BMC leader.

Rinzler led a brief session of meditation, read aloud from his book and briefly spoke about himself and his thoughts on meditation. At one point, he asked the audience, "What do you guys want to talk about tonight?"

Audience members asked questions ranging from meditation technique to the relationship between meditation and drugs, drinking and sex. 

Rinzler said he believes it is the intention behind one's actions that is most important. Engaging in behaviors such as drinking, then looking to see if these acts are "escapes" or "ways to connect with others" allows one to see which to "cultivate" or "cut out" of one's life, he said.

"Any meditation is good meditation," he said.

Buddha was able to recognize the "potency of the moment" through meditation just as other people can do, Rinzler said. He said that one must interpret Buddhist teachings in a way that "meshes with our reality." For him, especially during college, Buddhism was a "gradual process" of finding a balance in engaging with the atmosphere around him, he said.

For those facing a difficult time meditating or suffering laziness, Rinzler recommended reminding oneself of the intention behind meditation. He urged students to consider practicing with a group and to "just sit" and practice discipline. Discipline is "often perceived in a negative way" but actually has a "sense of virtue," he said.

This generation has been raised to think in terms of being "whatever you want to be," yet this thinking pattern needs to be changed to "who," not "what" one wants to be, Rinzler said. Understanding the "who" part of the question is better than approaching life mindlessly, he said. "Mindfulness is bringing yourself fully to something," he said.

Rizler has learned about Buddhism and life from previous teachers and trial and error. "Mistakes are very valuable on this path," he said.

"It's great to have someone closer to our age" to address college students, said Halsey Niles '12.

But Winget, who comes from the more traditional Theravada school of Buddhism, wanted to raise his hand to disagree with Rinzler several times during the discussion, he told The Herald. "I don't think you can as mindfully take a shot as you can follow a breath," he said.

There are two "complementary movements" in America related to Buddhism, said Willoughby Britton, assistant professor of psychiatry and human behavior. One movement — which includes Rinzler — favors "popularizing" Buddhism, while the more "conservative" movement focuses on more traditional Buddhism, Britton said.

Britton does research on meditation and studies traditional Buddhist texts, she said. As someone heavily involved in contemplative studies at the University, Britton was "amazed" at the turnout of about 50 people, about 70 percent of whom she did not recognize, she said.

"I'm just here to learn something about something I know nothing about," said Sarah Parker '15.

Audience members, whom Rinzler addressed as "broke college students," were welcome to pay $10, not the normal $15, for the book.

BMC gathers Monday through Saturday in Manning Chapel to meditate. The nondenominational community is primarily made up of graduate and undergraduate students and sometimes staff and faculty. BMC also awards scholarships to students for meditation retreats, organizes potlucks, has worked once with the women's squash team on visualization and meditation and arranges for guests like Rinzler to come speak.

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Religion, state government should not be mixed

By: OANow Staff | Opelika-Auburn News
Published: March 18, 2012 Updated: March 18, 2012 - 6:00 AM »  Comments | Post a Comment This is not an argument against the Ten Commandments. But government’s intervention in regards to religion is a dangerous, slippery slope.

State Sen. Gerald Dial, R-Lineville, proposed an amendment in the State Legislature last week that would re-write Alabama’s Constitution and allow public schools or other public bodies the right to display the Ten Commandments. Basically, the amendment says the schools’, or bodies’, right to display the Ten Commandments would not be “restrained or abridged.”

Dial’s plan passed in committee last Tuesday. It was ruled in 2002 that a Ten Commandments monument installed in the Alabama state judicial building was unconstitutional as it “violated the U.S. Constitution’s ban of a state establishment of religion.”

Former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore, who won Tuesday’s Republican primary in an effort to re-gain his seat, was removed from his seat in 2006 over this issue. The timing of Moore’s election victory and this amendment’s passage in committee raises eyebrows.

Government needs to leave religion alone. Jesus instructed us to “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s.” We would do well to remember that.

History has shown us time and again what happens when government and religion begin to mix and none of those examples have gone well, for the governments nor for religion. The quickest, most certain way to erode religious and civil freedoms is to allow politicians too much time in the pulpit or allow preachers to dictate morality outside of their own congregations.

We are a country and a state made up of many religious traditions. Diversity is our strength. No one is being discriminated against by deciding not to add more religious symbolism to governmental buildings. However, when you start putting the Ten Commandments inside schools, what’s going to happen when Muslim students, parents or educators demand equal access?

What if there happens to be a principal at a school who just happens to be Buddhist and decides a statute of Buddha would be a good addition to the school’s administrative offices?

Do we really want the folks on Goat Hill deciding exactly which God the rest of us should recognize on public property?

Current Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Chuck Malone, who was beaten by Moore in Tuesday’s Republican primary and is a deacon at First Baptist Church of Tuscaloosa, recently told the Opelika-Auburn News that the Ten Commandments should not be on display in government buildings if that is what the federal government demands. He did say, however, that the Ten Commandments should instead be instilled in our hearts.

Last we checked, the federal government has no access to our personal thoughts or beliefs. Let’s keep it that way.

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Uproar over tourism plan for Buddha's birthplace

The Buddha evokes feelings of peace and harmony, but a plan to boost the profile of his birthplace as an international tourist site has outraged followers and prompted protests.

The reason? Buddhist organisations are questioning the involvement of a man mired in the politics of violence as the head of that initiative, contrary to their religion's path of peace and non-violence.

Lumbini in modern-day Nepal is revered as Buddha's birthplace, and was designated as a Unesco World Heritage Site in 1997.

But despite its religious and cultural importance, it has never been seriously developed as an independent tourist site. Hotels are few and road access limited. It is often the last hop for Buddhist tours coming from India via Sarnath and important sites such as Bodh Gaya and Kushinagar.

Nepalese tour operators complain that pilgrims on such tours are returned back to India after a brief visit to Lumbini.

Now high-profile people such as United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon and as many as four heads of states are apparently involved in an effort to push it into the international tourism spotlight.

But the initiative is being spearheaded by former Maoist leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal, better known as "Prachanda" or "The Fierce One'. From 1996 to 2006, he led a bloody insurgency against the state's monarchy that resulted in the deaths of more than 15,000.

A 2006 peace pact ended the civil war, and the Maoists won an election in 2008, paving the way for Dahal to take over as prime minister. But he resigned in 2009, and is now chairman of The Greater Lumbini National Development Committee, much to the concern of prominent Buddhist monks, including abbots of major monasteries in Nepal.

Dahal's project, however, is not the first one on Lumbini and neither is his interest in the holy site new.

Another initiative called the Lumbini Development Project is already being implemented as part of a vision shared by former UN secretary-general U Thant, a practising Buddhist, and the late King Birendra of Nepal. Noted Japanese architect Kenzo Tange was also involved in it.

But the pace of this project, which began in 1978, has been slow. Members of this project said they have no idea what Dahal's committee intends to do or implement. "We really don't know how the new project is going to add to the previous plan," a member, who asked to remain anonymous, told The Sunday Times.

In November last year, Dahal visited New York as chairman of the Lumbini National Development Committee to invite Ban to a conference on the holy site scheduled to be held late next month. According to Dahal, Ban readily accepted.

A spokesman for the office of the UN Secretary-General said it could not confirm the trip, and an announcement would be made much closer to the date if it happens.

Nevertheless, given Dahal's history and the concerns of Nepal's Buddhist community, Ban's alleged involvement in the initiative is already drawing controversy.

"It would be untimely and inauspicious for the Secretary-General to visit Lumbini under present circumstances," wrote Kul Chandra Gautam, a Nepali national who unsuccessfully contested for the chair of the UN General Assembly last year, a few years after he retired as assistant secretary-general of the world body.

"Nepal is at a critical juncture, struggling to overcome the legacy of a decade-long civil war that killed 15,000. Genuine peace has not yet dawned, the drafting of the new Constitution has been delayed by two years, and there is rampant lawlessness and impunity," he said in his blog, a posting that has since been carried by many Nepali papers.

Gautam wrote that the current government led by the Maoists has granted mass amnesty to Maoist cadres and leaders involved in cases like murders and abduction during the years of insurgency.

"Should Ban be chairing the international conference on Lumbini as the guest of Prachanda with that reputation?" he asked.

Ban had earlier planned to visit Nepal this month, some reports in the Nepalese press said, but cancelled that visit in the face of a series of protests by Buddhist organisations, with some of them submitting petitions to different embassies on how the development of Lumbini is being politicised, and how Buddhists - the real stakeholders - were being excluded from Dahal's initiatives.

This time, Ban is expected to be joined by the heads of Thailand, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and possibly Bhutan, foreign ministry officials said, on condition of anonymity as the plans have not yet been confirmed.

But Gautam said: "The Secretary-General co-chairing such a conference at a holy site would be a sacrilege, insulting not just peace-loving Nepalis but also millions of Buddhists around the world."

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Ashoka: The Search for India's Lost Emperor by Charles Allen – review

The top of the Ashoka pillar at Sarnath in India. Photograph: The Art Archive/Alamy

It is difficult to imagine a life as full of grandeur and drama as that of the Mauryan emperor Ashoka, but it is more difficult still to imagine how such a life could ever have been lost or forgotten. From 270BC to 233BC, Ashoka ruled every part of the subcontinent except for India's southernmost tip, an empire larger than that of any Indian ruler before or since; his influence spilled even further abroad, into Sri Lanka and past the furthest border of present-day Afghanistan. He shepherded the rise of one of the world's major religions, and in a remarkable U-turn, he transformed himself from a callous conqueror into an intelligent and pacific ruler. Yet, as Charles Allen's Ashoka shows, the details of his life had to be prised out from the crevices of the past, in a process that revealed as much about the emperor as about the caprices of Indian history.

The rediscovery of Ashoka began with the rediscovery of India's Buddhist past. In the late 18th century, scholars were working at synchronising India's calendar of history with Europe's; the philologist William Jones called the resolution of this chronological gulf "the grand desideratum of oriental literature". Around the same time, Buddhist figurines and inscriptions began to be unearthed across India's northern plains. These archaeological finds presented something of a puzzle: they pointed to the vigorous heyday of a religion that was, in the India of the 18th and 19th centuries, in near-terminal decline. Buddhism had left behind no majestic temples, and "there were certainly no Buddhists in India and no Buddhist literature", Allen points out. Under whose patronage, then, did the faith once flourish as mightily as its artifacts seemed to indicate?

Allen is adept, if on occasion ploddingly so, at putting back together this vast academic jigsaw for our benefit. He recounts what Jones would have learned from Greek narratives of Alexander's attempted conquest of India and from subsequent ambassadorial communiqués from the Maurya dynasty's court. He traces the painstaking decryption of the Brahmi script, dating to the third century BC, by James Prinsep, an energetic assay master in the Calcutta Mint. He describes the assiduous legwork of members of the Asiatic Society, which yielded metal-plate inscriptions, sculptures of heartbreaking beauty, remnants of the humped Buddhist reliquaries known as stupas, and elaborate edicts inscribed, on Ashoka's orders, on slabs of rock across the subcontinent. And as Prinsep and his colleagues did, Allen reconciles these threads of evidence with strands from other texts – in particular from the Mahavamsa, Sri Lanka's great Buddhist chronicle – and thus arrives at the story of Ashoka as we know it.

None of this is new material, especially for Allen, who along with John Keay has worn something of a groove in scholarship about the Raj-era resuscitation of Indian history. Anton Führer, the deceitful archaeologist in Allen's The Buddha and Dr Führer (2008), flickers in and out of Ashoka's pages, trafficking in forged Buddhist relics and lying about his discovery of Kapilavastu, the city where the Buddha grew up. More significantly, Ashoka reprises the choicest parts of The Buddha and the Sahibs, Allen's 2002 book about men such as Jones and Prinsep – orientalists in the original, sweet vein of being intellectually curious about Asia, rather than in the pejorative Saidian sense. Allen emphasises that the study of ancient India would have suffered without scholars of the sort derided by Edward Said as "dead white men in periwigs" – a point that is both valuable and arguable, but also a point that he has made before.

An abundance of clues about Ashoka began to emerge from the work of these Indologists. The Mahavamsa spoke in glowing terms of an Indian king who had ordained his own son and daughter and sent them to Sri Lanka to spread the Buddha's message. Stone reliefs dug up from the sites of Buddhist stupas depicted an unusually unidealised king, "short, paunchy and with a grossly pumpkin-like face," as Allen writes. (The Ashokavadana, an ancient text in Sanskrit, called Ashoka's skin "rough and unpleasant to the touch".) Most intriguing were the rock edicts, scattered across an enormous area, all proclaiming a ruler's commitment to non-violence, to righteousness, and to a sophisticated notion of secularism.

By the final years of the 19th century, the contours of Ashoka's life had been established: his adroit power-grab that denied his elder brother the throne; his rampaging invasion of the eastern province of Kalinga, in which his army slew more than 100,000 men; his abrupt but long-lasting conversion to Buddhism; and his support of his new faith, so munificent that he is said to have built 84,000 stupas and donated millions of pieces of gold to the monastic order. But the physical legacy of this zenith of Buddhism was destroyed twice over: first by Hindu Brahmins, who were furious at Ashoka's sponsorship of Buddhism, and who would in subsequent centuries cannily co-opt the Buddha as one of the 10 avatars of Vishnu; and then by Islamist invaders, who razed stupas as well as the illustrious Buddhist university of Nalanda, in present-day Bihar.

Allen might usefully have devoted more space to this calculated domination of Buddhism by Hinduism, which so effectively wiped out traces of Ashoka's reign, and which contradicts descriptions of Hinduism as tolerant and ever-benign. (In 1905, during a lecture in Johannesburg, Mahatma Gandhi stoutly denied any decline of Buddhism in India, claiming: "No Hindu bore the Buddhist any ill will.") Allen is perhaps also too cursory in examining the effect of the rediscovery of Ashoka on the India of the late 19th century, although he briefly mentions the emperor's influence on a particular group of Indians: the new freedom-fighters.

To a burgeoning independence movement, Ashoka proved to be a touchstone on several levels. Gandhi praised Ashoka's non-violence and his latter-day lack of imperial ambition. Jawaharlal Nehru admired Ashoka's secularism and his efficient administration. For nationalists of all stripes, Ashoka was, along with the Mughal emperor Akbar, the soundest rebuttal to the colonial assertion that India's diverse territories had never been united as thoroughly as they were under the British. Ashoka inspired hope that, if India had once been whole and serene under the wisdom of a native ruler, it might well be similarly whole and serene again.

Samanth Subramanian's Following Fish: Travels Around the Indian Coast, will be published by Atlantic later this year.

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03/16/2012 12:28 MYANMAR - THAILAND PIME missionary in Thailand: Buddhists have helped me better understand Christianity

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» 03/16/2012 12:28
MYANMAR - THAILAND
PIME missionary in Thailand: Buddhists have helped me better understand Christianity
by Piero Gheddo
With the book "Thanks to my Buddhist friends," Fr. Angelo Campagnoli (PIME) speaks of 52 years of priesthood among Buddhists of Myanmar and Thailand. Interreligious dialogue is not a comparison of religious beliefs and the truth of what to believe, but a mutual understanding and the story of shared experiences.

Milan (AsiaNews) - My confrere Fr. Angelo Campagnoli has published a book "Thanks to my Buddhist friends" with the subtitle: "Living with the Buddhists I have better understood Christianity" (Pimedit, Milan 2012, p. 82, Euro 5), in which he does not talk of Buddhism from the theoretical point of view, but shares his life experience with Buddhists, throughout 52 years of priesthood and his missionary life. First in Burma (1960-1966) he was expelled with more than 200 young missionaries (18 Protestants, the rest Catholics) by the military-socialist dictatorship that still regins, and then, after 1972, in Thailand, where Campagnoli was sent with three other brothers to start a PIME missionary presence in the North of the country. From the outset he devoted himself to inter-religious dialogue, attending Buddhist monasteries and universities and then also giving lectures on Christianity at a Buddhist University.

Then the bishop of Chiang Mai, to whom PIME had given their full availability, sent him to the parish of Phrae, the capital town of the province in northern Thailand, where he founded a large school with more than two thousand students for the most part Buddhist and where he has made friends with Buddhist people and monks.

I ask him what this little book means. "In Italy - he says - many feel that all religions are more or less equal, but there are profound differences between Christianity and Buddhism. For example, we are rightly scandalized by the division of the Christian churches, but Buddhism is much less united. In Japan alone there are 18 different schools of Buddhism, each of which says that the others are wrong, and no-one bats an eye-lid".

"Between Christianity and Buddhism, there are many things that appear similar but are fundamentally different. For example, in Buddhism the distinction between good and evil is mechanical, fatalistic, karma; in Christianity man's life is a relationship with God. So although our commandments from the fifth onward are also relevant to Buddhists, you realize however that it's different. Christians know that the commandment comes from God, our merciful father who created us and loves us and that His law is for our own good; Buddhists must not do evil out of fear, because otherwise they will pay for their disobedience to the law of karma in their next reincarnation. That's the difference. Christianity is a relationship with God, it is responding to a love that loved us first, while in Buddhism there is no relationship like this: there is a rule that is karma, the law that has no forgiveness. "

In Phrae Father Angelo was invited by the Buddhist monks to give them courses in Christianity. The abbot said to him: "There are more and more foreign tourists who come to visit our monastery and ask us to teach them about Buddhism. I invite you, you're a Catholic priest well inculturated in Thailand, to explain Christianity, so that we can talk to these visitors appropriately. Campagnoli gave lectures on Christianity to these monks, becoming their friend. And then he adds: "In explaining Christianity, they said that I make a leap. My reasoning is not logical, because I say things I do not explain. I responded that this is faith in God, which means to trust God who loves me. And they said, but we do only what we understand. "

Dialogue with Buddhists, this is the experience Father Angel.  It is a progressive experience and not a confrontation between the religious faiths and truths to be believed, but a gradual and mutual understanding and the story of their shared experiences. They are interested in life not theology. He says: "A belligerent attitude that expresses a determined and aggressive idea is the safest way to remove the other person. If you silence him or her with your argument, you will never see the other person again, they will avoid you: they care deeply for their inner serenity. Never try to prove that your religion is better than theirs: You can speak all you want about the goodness of your faith, never make a comparison. " He tells the story of a Catholic catechist. A Buddhist friend insisted that he tell him what the best religion was: Christianity or Buddhism? The catechist intelligently responded: "And you tell me, which is the better wife yours or mine?". And the conversation ended there. Woe betide him if he had said that it is Christianity, he might have broken the bond of friendship.

"I discovered these things by getting to know Buddhists, says Father Angelo. Inter-religious dialogue is a difficult and delicate one, we are just beginning this journey." He concludes by describing the image that the great guru Buddhadasa used: "The peak that we want and need to reach is one in the same, the paths of ascent are different and each thinks he is climbing the right one". But, I say, Angelo concludes, if He who is on the summit shouts down to me: "Look, this is the main road, the direct route, the guaranteed on," I can only turn back to the friend who is climbing up by another way and transmit to him the cry from above. And if he continues undeterred in his arduous climb, I can only raise my head and cry out to Him who is on the top: "Lord, shout even more clearly down the other path". And with my voice, maybe a little 'strangled, I entrust to the wind of the Spirit, a "See you on top, Buddhist friend." And this is not relativism, but the hope that we will all meet at the end of our journey since we know that Christ's salvation comes to all, even those who do not know Him. "

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COMMENTARY: Tolerance essential for success of economic integration

Bangkok (The Nation/ANN) - A tolerant attitude towards different cultures or beliefs is essential for the success of economic integration in Asia, says a revered Buddhist monk.

As the 10 members of the Southeast Asian bloc enter the Asean Economic Community in 2015, Thais will have to be careful when it comes to their attitude towards people in neighbouring countries, Pramaha Wuttichai Vajiramedhi said at a seminar hosted by the Thailand-China Business Council.

"Some Thais may think that we're superior to our neighbours, such as those in Laos and Burma," he said on Thursday.

He suggested that new movies aimed at stirring nationalism, which might lead to a resurfacing of conflict, should be reduced in number. In recent years, Thai moviemakers have launched many historically based films such as "King Naresuan" that focusing on ancient conflicts between the Kingdom of Siam and Burma.

Pramaha Wuttichai said the rioting in England last year was partly caused by racial prejudice among police officers towards blacks or immigrants.

"When the European Union was formed as a single market, people could move freely from one country to another, which led to a clash of cultures, since people have not yet changed their mindsets," he said.

He said reconciliation between Burma's military rulers and opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi had resulted in great changes in that country.

He noted that a monk friend in Burma had once said men there could become either monks or soldiers - there were no other viable choices. But after the national reconciliation, people have more choices on what they can do with their lives, he said.

Many believe that the current period is the Asian century because of the rise of economic power led by China and India. Pramaha Wuttichai said that some say it may be the century of spirituality. The new religion may not have a brand name like Buddhism, Christianity or Islam, but it would be a philosophy of life as people choose the best things from many religions.

Westerners have show interest in Buddhism in recent years; some governments in Europe such as Norway's even provide funding for Buddhist temples. "They have experienced excessive materialism; now they want to take a spiritual path," Pramaha Wuttichai said.

Suu Kyi, who expressed her sincere forgiveness for the generals who imposed house arrest on her for many years, has contributed to political and social improvements in Burma recently, said the monk. In the same way, if conflicting parties in Thailand could reach reconciliation, it would be beneficial for everybody.

Suthichai Yoon, Nation Group editor-in-chief, said the Buddhist religion had contributed greatly to the reconciliation in Burma.

"Everybody - the army, dissidents and the people - goes to pray at the same place, Chavedakong Pagoda," said Suthichai, referring to a famous Golden Pagoda in Rangoon also known as Great Dagon Pagoda.

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Pattaya Mail

Vesak day generally commemorates the birth, enlightenment and passing of the Lord Buddha. However, Vesak 2012, which falls on June 4, holds a special significance as it will also mark the 2,600th anniversary of Buddha’s Enlightenment.

On this occasion, the Sangha Supreme Council and the Office of National Buddhism of Thailand will hold celebrations across Thailand to commemorate the birth of the Buddhist religion under the theme of “Buddha Jayanti: 2,600 years of Buddhist Enlightenment”.

“Jayanti” is derived from the Sanskrit term “Jaya”, which means victory. This refers to the triumph of Prince Siddhartha over the Maras (demons) and Kleshas (temptations), which led to the birth of Buddha and the Buddhist religion. Nowadays, the term “Buddha Jayanti” has also been interpreted as the victory of the Buddhist religion and its followers as well.

The Buddha Jayanti celebration in Thailand was officially launched on the recent Magha Puja day, which fell on March 7. The celebrations, which were hosted by the Thai government, included activities to allow Buddhist followers to worship the Lord Buddha as well as dedicate the fruit of their merit-making to His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej on the occasion of his 84th anniversary.

Major celebrations to mark the Buddha Jayanti will take place on the three most important days of the Buddhist religion: Magha Puja, Vesak and Asalha Puja. Academic seminars and other activities to promote Buddhist teachings, or Dharma, to families and community members will also be held at various venues, including the Phutthamonthon grounds, the Queen Sirikit National Convention Center, Muangthong Thani, Siam Paragorn and temples nationwide.

The Buddha Jayanti celebration flag consists of a green sacred bo leaf decorated with traditional kanok motifs, which encircles the Dharmachakra resting in the center of the Thai national flag. The flags will be distributed to people so they can be flown or hung in their homes; they will also serve as a token to remind them of the significance of this celebration.

Apart from rejoicing in the 2,600th anniversary of Buddha’s Enlightenment, the objective of the Buddha Jayanti celebrations is to remind Buddhist devotees to “do good deeds, avoid evil actions and purify the mind”, which is one of the core teachings of the Buddhist religion.

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China's Tibetan areas experience fresh turmoil

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ABA, China -- Armed police in full riot gear stand guard along the main street in Aba, a small Chinese town where a young monk burned himself to death last March, setting off a series of self-immolations.

<< China's Tibetan areas experience fresh turmoil 
This photo taken on Sunday, March 11 shows a police roadblock into Aba county town in Sichuan province. Armed police in full riot gear are standing guard along the main street in Aba, a small Chinese town where a young monk burned himself to death last March, setting off a series of self-immolations. (AFP)

Four years after deadly unrest shook China's Tibetan areas in March 2008, beginning in the Tibetan capital Lhasa before spreading to other areas, the region is once again in turmoil.

In the last 12 months, at least 26 Tibetans, many of them young Buddhist monks and nuns, have set themselves on fire to protest against Beijing's rule and call for the return of their spiritual leader the Dalai Lama.

Many of the gruesome protests have happened in Aba in the southwestern province of Sichuan, home to the sprawling Kirti monastery, one of the most revered institutions in Tibetan Buddhism.

AFP reporters who briefly gained access to the town before being expelled on Sunday saw hundreds of police in full riot gear lining the streets, some armed with guns, metal bars and fire extinguishers.

A day earlier, rights groups say, an 18-year-old Kirti monk self-immolated in Aba to mark the anniversary of a 1959 uprising in Tibet that led to the Dalai Lama's flight into exile.

But the grim form of protest has become almost commonplace. By Sunday, shops were open and people walked freely around, although the main street was blocked to vehicles and two armored personnel carriers sat outside a small theatre.

“The situation here is very, very serious. March is a very sensitive period in Tibetan-inhabited areas,” a policeman surnamed Jiang told an AFP reporter.

“You are not allowed to be here, and must return to Chengdu as soon as you can,” he said referring to the provincial capital.

Rights groups say the situation is at its worst since the March 2008 unrest, in which Tibet's government-in-exile said more than 200 people died. China denies that account, saying there were 21 deaths and that “rioters” were responsible.

Many of China's ethnic Tibetans accuse the authorities of religious repression, and say their culture is being eroded by an influx of Han Chinese, the country's main ethnic group.

Beijing insists that Tibetans enjoy freedom of religious belief and says their lives have been made better by huge ongoing investment into Tibetan-inhabited areas.

China's reaction to the immolations has been to crack down even further, deploying huge numbers of military police and stationing government officials in religious institutions to organize “political reeducation.”

Interviewing anyone in Aba is now virtually impossible, but monks at the Kumbum monastery — known in Chinese as Taersi — in the neighboring province of Qinghai said they were being forced by authorities to undergo “patriotic education.”

“Basically, we must vow to love the Communist Party,” one shaven-headed monk who declined to give his name told AFP at the monastery, which is set against the backdrop of the snow-capped Himalayas.

“This is absurd. We are monks, our love is devoted to Buddha and our spiritual leader the Dalai Lama,” he said, refusing to be identified out of obvious fears of reprisals.

Up to 1,000 of the 3,000 monks in Kumbum have been placed under differing sorts of restrictions due to their failure to meet political requirements, a local Tibetan resident with close links to the monastery told AFP.

Such restrictions range from curbing privileges such as travel to further enforced indoctrination sessions, he said, adding that “there are a lot of officials in the monastery.”

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Adaptive Buddhist viewpoint relevant to modern world

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There are some lessons to be learned from a former Buddhist monk about nudging religion into the modern world, writes Ian Harris.

Otago, New Zealand -- Understanding religion from a secular viewpoint, without assuming any hotline to heaven, is the approach which many cutting-edge Christian thinkers take today. They are not abandoning their 2000-year heritage, but trying to give it substance in a vastly changed world.

And they are not alone. Some adherents of an even older tradition are on a parallel track, as became clear during the visit to New Zealand last month of a former Buddhist monk, Scottish-born Stephen Batchelor.

Author of seven books on Buddhism, Mr Batchelor has steeped himself in the diverse Buddhist traditions of Tibet, Korea and South-east Asia. Each of those cultures adapted the Buddha's teaching to fit their own times and circumstances, but Mr Batchelor does not identify with any of them.

Instead, he is bent on nudging Buddhism into the modern secular world. In this he has been strongly influenced by liberal Protestant thinkers of the past 70 years who have been pioneering a new path for Christianity.

"I found in them both the inspiration for a living transformation of religious tradition, and an example of it," he says.

For example, where scholars of the Jesus Seminar in the United States set most store on texts from the earliest years of the Christian era, Mr Batchelor goes back to Pali texts (a variety of Sanskrit) closest to Siddhartha Gautama, who lived some 450 years before Jesus. When the texts are studied in their ancient Jewish or Indian settings they reveal more clearly the original teachings of the founders of their faiths.

There are other parallels. Jesus the Christ (or anointed one) and Gautama the Buddha (or one who has awoken) are worshipped as God by millions of their followers. Secular-oriented scholars say they were never divine beings, but entirely human.

That frees both Jesus and Gautama to be re-imagined for our own time and place. Released from the elaborate theological and institutional structures built upon their memory, they emerge as men of extraordinary vision and insight.

Over centuries the teachings of Gautama and Jesus about a new way of life morphed into belief systems, but today their original emphasis is being increasingly affirmed.

There is obviously a tension here between loyalty to the tradition and responsibility to the future. Mr Batchelor fears the attempt to preserve the tradition intact is condemning it to irrelevance.

"The difference between modernity and the traditional Asian forms of Buddhism is now so great that in a secular world it is necessary to leave behind the belief system and move towards a way of living," he says.

"Belief-based religion is basically about consolation. It not only explains everything, but also shows how to achieve some sort of salvation - nirvana in Buddhism, heaven in Christianity. Putting the emphasis on pursuing a way of life in the here and now changes the dynamics completely."

Which explains why Buddhists seeking a credible modern faith are rejecting belief in reincarnation, while among Christians the classic creeds and rituals are losing their potency.

Meditation is so closely associated with Buddhism that in the West it has cornered the meditation market. Mr Batchelor sees a danger in that: it could reduce the ideal of cultivating the whole personality to a self-improvement technique. A religious culture cuts deeper than that.

The goals of Christianity and Buddhism - freedom grounded in love, integrity, mindfulness of the whole of life, and the courage to be fully the people we can be - also overlap.

And for secular Buddhists like Mr Batchelor, the gold is not the goal but the path they are on. Traditionally, the nirvana of bliss and inner peace is achieved through release from the cycle of death and rebirth. His modern expression of this is the stopping of deep habits of mind to cultivate another way of living, releasing people from being determined by their instinctual drives.

"That stopping is nirvana, even when it occurs only momentarily. It is an inner awakening, the resonance of the Buddha within."

Christians will see a parallel here with the apostle Paul's concept of the Christ within, a life-centred symbol of love, grace and transformation.

Mr Batchelor thinks an evolving Buddhism can learn from Christianity - and an evolving Christianity can learn from Buddhism, especially by recovering the contemplative tradition that was once so prominent in the churches.

The imaginative adaptation of both religions offers a philosophy, ethic, psychology and way of life that embraces all aspects of existence without the need to appeal to any supernatural order of being.

That will be a step too far for many, but for others a refreshing new prospect.

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Pilgrimage - 600 kilometers, 150 chanted sutras, and 20,000 written sutras

Home Asia Pacific North Asia Japan

TOKYO, Japan -- Renjo Miura, a Buddhist priest of the Nichiren sect, made a 600-kilometer pilgrimage on foot, starting on June 18 last year, and finishing on August 1.

His purpose was to comfort the souls of those who died in last year’s earthquake and tsunami, where nearly 16,000 people perished, and more than 3,700 are still missing. He also helped to bring peace to the traumatized survivors as he made his way through the disaster zones.

“I walked north for 44 days along the Pacific coastline 100 days after the earthquake, through the devastated areas, and skirting the no-entry zone around the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Thirteen other Buddhist priests joined me at different sections on my route,” he said, speaking recently about his experiences.

Although Miura’s own home in the city of Sendai, Miyagi prefecture, was partially damaged by the earthquake, he decided to make the pilgrimage to help bring peace to the victims, and to learn first-hand about the disaster.

“By listening to the survivors’ experiences, we discovered just how horrific the tsunami had been,” Miura said. “Many people put their hands together when they saw us, and wept as they told us of their experiences.”

The priests conducted memorial services as they walked through the devastated areas in the Tohoku region, scattering papers with the phrase, “I take refuge in the Lotus” and throwing them into the ocean. In the course of his pilgrimage, Miura chanted 150 times, and wrote sutras on 20,000 pieces of paper.

“The first time we did this, it rained heavily,” Miura said. “But we didn’t stop praying and we kept chanting the sutra. When we finished praying and chanting, the rain suddenly stopped. We felt an invisible power and heard wishes and messages from the many people who had died in the area.”

On his journey, Miura picked up a piece of wood from the debris washed ashore near the Takata Matsubara Pine Forest, where 700,000 pine trees were destroyed by the tsunami. He wrote a passage from a Buddhist sutra on the wood and chanted for the souls buried under the debris while beating a drum.

Miura, who became a priest when he was 20, volunteered to listen to the victims at an evacuation center in city of Sendai, Miyagi prefecture, after the earthquake, as they said he was unknown to them. His pilgrimage was an attempt to remedy this situation by gaining a deeper understanding of the disaster and the losses associated with it.

Japan’s Yomiuri newspaper tells of Yoko Abe, who used to run a supermarket in Minami-Sanrikucho, Miyagi prefecture, and is one of the survivors for whom Miura chanted.

“I don’t think much progress has been made on restoration, but Miura’s chant encouraged me,” she told the Yomiuri. “It made me think that I’d like to help to people again. The next morning she presented rice balls to the priest, as a token of her gratitude.

At the end of his talk in Tokyo, Miura ended by stating his belief that the natural crisis and the nuclear problems in Japan provide us with opportunities to become better human beings and demonstrate our humanity and compassion toward others.

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Separating religion from politics

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Seoul, South Korea -- Seven out of ten people are against religious people participating in political affairs

According to the polls regarding Church and State separation by the Religious Freedom Policy Research Center, 7 out of 10 South Korean citizens were against Religious People participating in political affairs.

The Religious Freedom Policy Research Center announced the results of their poll at the Manhae NGO education center during the 2012 Manhae festival symposium entitled “Can the Church and State be separated?” on March 6th, 2012.

The Research Center published an abridged version of their results on March 5th.

According to the polls, 67.2% agreed that the church and state should be separated, 12.9% disagreed, and 20% answered “doesn’t matter.”

The polls were taken on February 27th 2012, from 1,000 randomly picked males and females through the ARS system. The reliance level was 95%.

The Religious Freedom Policy Research Center stated, “Most of our people would like to have the church and state to be separated so these results should serve as an caution to the recent religious people who stated that they will participate in Politics, or to the politicians who use religion as their campaign tactics.”

The Religious Freedom Policy Research Center commented that “religious people gain the most trust in their religion when and only when they are committed to their religious duties.”

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Can meditation make you a better parent?

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Melissa McClements found it hard to cope with her daughter's tantrums - until she joined a parent and toddler meditation class. How do you stay calm when your child misbehaves?

London, UK -- My toddler and I recently started a meditation class. I know what you're thinking. What kind of idiot parent would attempt silent mind control in the presence of someone whose idea of quiet time involves sticking pencils up their nostrils and shouting 'Hickory Dickory Dock'?

<< Toddler throwing a tantrum
In the face of this, would any parent remain calm? Photograph: Chris Collins/Corbis

But now I am that idiot parent. And – despite a cringeworthy moment when my two-year-old pointed to a Buddhist monk and asked, "Why is that man wearing a dress like a lady?" – the meditation is going well. Really well. It's provided me with practical tools for day-to-day life with a toddler. For, let's face it, as adorable as their company can be, relaxing it is not.

Most of the time my daughter, Phoebe, is utterly beguiling – full of songs, giggles and spontaneous dances. But, occasionally, she experiences outbreaks of unmitigated rage. They involve floor-writhing, head-butting and a howling that would make any self-respecting banshee glow with pride. I find them hard to cope with, especially in public. There was an incident over a tuna sandwich in a cafe that I still can't think of without a shudder.

It was my husband who first came up with the idea of meditation. He started a course in it to help him deal with work stress. It all seemed a bit new agey to me: the sort of thing beloved by people who read auras and stick crystals on their kids' heads when they're sick. But then I witnessed the difference in him. He could shrug off incidences of workplace ineptitude that would previously have had him grinding his teeth in fury-induced insomnia at 4am.

I wondered if it could help me keep similarly calm during Phoebe's tantrums, and took her along to a parent and toddler meditation group at the local Buddhist centre. Believe me, this was not done without trepidation. I was brought up as an atheist to see organised religion as the source of all humanity's woes. I also think, however, that it's ignorant arrogance to write off ancient wisdom in its entirety.

We were ushered into a large room. Cushions and a basket of toys were laid out, as well as little tables, on which sat pencils and drawings of Buddha to colour in. I should point out that it is only the parents who meditate. The drooling ones are just there for a play. Two helpers keep an eye on them while the mummies and daddies zone out (when this was explained at the outset, I did wonder if they knew how to deal with attempts at swallowing a non-food item several times wider than the throat it's being forced into).

An orange-robed, shaven-headed man came in and sat, cross-legged, on a podium. I felt uneasy, until he made a self-deprecating joke about a monk telling a bunch of mothers how to cope with their kids. He spoke in a cockney accent and laughed frequently. Later, he teased some of the kids about their smelly feet.

We grownups closed our eyes so he could guide us through the meditation – initially instructing us to focus on our breathing and then asking us to dwell on a positive aspect of someone we experience, erm, 'difficulty' with in our lives.

It sounds terribly cheesy, but the children went strangely quiet at first – although they may well just have been over-awed by the unfamiliar setting. I really was able to try (and largely fail – come on, Tibetan masters spend a lifetime trying to do this!) to calm the swirling miasma of my mind.

And then I became aware that Phoebe had placed one of the drawings of Buddha on the carpet. She was punching through it with a pencil. Repeatedly. Irritated by the noise, I squinted down crossly at her through one eye.

"Close your eyes again Mummy," she laughed. I raised my eyebrows … and then remembered something the monk had said about being able to perceive the world more positively if I could change my reactions to other people's behaviour. I looked round the room. Other kids were now running about, throwing toys and mock wrestling on the carpet. A baby was screaming. All of this was far more disruptive than my daughter's behaviour. But none of it bothered me, because I wasn't responsible for them.

I decided that if I could ignore the paper hole-punching, I might really have learnt something. And, as we were leaving, I felt – truly unexpectedly – like I had (until Phoebe drew attention to the monk's outfit and showed we have much work on gender stereotyping to do).

We now attend weekly. Despite times when - mid-attempted meditation - my little one overturns the odd table or sits on my knee to try and prise my eyes open, I still feel it gives both of us a moment of calm during our busy week.

I'm not claiming that I've become a patiently smiling saint overnight. But I do think that if you can glimpse a moment of peaceful calm in the presence of your baby or toddler, you're really on to something – both as a parent and a human being.

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Emory's Carlos Museum finds its center with 'Mandala: Sacred Circle in Tibetan Buddhism'

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Atlanta, GA (USA) -- Emory University's Michael C. Carlos Museum, an often-overlooked gem for local art and culture, is exhibiting Mandala: Sacred Circle in Tibetan Buddhism through April 15. Mandala brings to Atlanta many rare and beautiful Buddhist thangkas, or paintings, along with other objects intended for initiation and meditation.

<< Kimbell Art Museum
Four Mandalas of the Vajravali Series, c. 1429—56, Central Tibet, Tsang (Ngor Monastery), Sakya order, Thangka, gouache on cotton, KKimbell Art Museumimbell Art Museum

Mandalas are a kind of technology for meditation, meant to work with personal practice to achieve spiritual insight and liberation. The most common mandalas in Tibetan Buddhist art place a deity at the center of a palace filled with other deities and iconography. This palace is an individual and a cosmological map that lines up with a highly proscribed set of meditational practices so that an individual may see him or herself as the central deity. In fact, Buddhist philosophy describes individual and deity as one and the same.

Mandalas act as visual tools for meditators. The basics of mandala practice are fairly easy to imagine - think about a golfer on the green visualizing Arnold Palmer putting in order to perfect his own stroke.

Although intended for monks, religious art in Tibet touched nearly every aspect of society. For many centuries, Tibet was at the center of a vast Empire, trading with Nepal, India, Persia, China, and Central Asia. In addition to bringing technology and high-level artisans, this trade delivered to Tibet a fantastic range of artistic styles. The painted mandalas on display at the Carlos Museum are fantastically detailed, including myriad deities, monks, and symbols. Their arrangement in circular forms adheres to iconographic conventions, from the colors used to the placement of elements.

A mandala from Dallas' Kimbell Museum is so meticulously painted that even on closest inspection it’s difficult to discern irregularities; It looks as thought it was printed using modern technology, rather than being created by hand 600 years ago.

The exhibit features rare forms of the mandala: The 18th-century Mahakala (Tibet’s protector diety) is unusual for its large central triangle and absence of central deity. Instead, objects symbolic of deities and practice are present, placed with unusual, lotus-shaped palaces. The mandala’s minimalistic design includes some gruesome imagery: flayed human skin, skulls, and intestines, all designed to remind the viewer how transient and unsustainable human life is.

A mandala beautifully decorated with flowers also elides deities, showing instead empty thrones to connote the “thus gone” aspect of the historical Buddha Shakyamuni and his 16 Arhats (acolytes). Tucked away amid the blossoms are wish-fulfilling jewels and ducks in ponds, while deer, traditional symbols for Shakyamuni adorn the four gates.

In addition to painted mandalas, the exhibition includes cosmological paintings, sculptures, and a fantastic, one-of-a-kind three-dimensional wooden carved model of the Guhyasamaja Mandala.

In association with this exhibition, Oglethorpe's Museum of Art has another kind of mandala on display: images created by patients of the psychoanalyst C.G. Jung. Jung used art as therapy, instructing his patients to create images as a means of expressing the conscious and unconscious, and clarifying mental obstacles.

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Mandala: Sacred Circle in Tibetan Buddhism runs through April 15 at Emory's the Carlos Museum. The Sacred Round: Mandalas by the Patients of C.G. Jung runs through May 6 at Oglethorpe.

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Transcendental Billionaire

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Subhash Chandra built the world's largest structure dedicated to the meditation style he credits with his success.

Mumbai, India -- Every day busloads of tourists arrive in Gorai, a seafront suburb of Mumbai, and head to Esselworld and Water Kingdom, two popular theme parks built by Indian billionaire Subhash Chandra’s Essel Group.

Since 2008 the traffic to Gorai has jumped several-fold. Around 10,000 of those people are seeking something other than a ride down a water slide. They are going to the giant golden pagoda. You can see it from miles around rising from the trees in a sharp fingerlike spire aimed at the clouds. The people are going to the pagoda to sit in Vipassana, an ancient Buddhist meditation style seeing a revival in India.

His name is not anywhere on the pagoda, but the landmark’s great ­patron is none other than Chandra, who made a $1.8 billion fortune off television network Zee TV, watched by 500 million viewers a day. He largely credits meditation for his business success. His teacher for going on two decades is Satya Narayan Goenka, the 86-year-old guru who spearheads the Vipassana movement. In 1997 Chandra gifted the 13-acre plot on which the temple stands. It was worth an estimated $5 million when he parted with it and is probably worth twice as much today.

The Global Vipassana Pagoda took 11 years to build. It is 325 feet tall and painted bright gold, a replica of Myanmar’s 2,000-year-old Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon. It has the distinction of being the world’s largest hollow stone dome constructed without any supporting pillars. It was made using traditional techniques, with interlocking blocks of red sandstone, each weighing up to 1,540 pounds and bonded together with lime ­mortar. Around 2.5 million tons of sandstone was hauled 620 miles from Rajasthan, the desert state in northern India that is famous for this ­particular variety.

“This is a unique structure. It’s been built to last 2,000 years,” says Chandra, a youthful-looking 61 years old, in his office at Essel’s headquarters in Mumbai. He appears as serene as the Buddha in the painting that hangs behind his desk. “I had benefited so much from Vipassana, I felt it was important for many more people to be able to share the experience.”

Chandra personally supervised every aspect of the pagoda’s construction, insisting on daily reports and making the two-hour drive in traffic from his headquarters twice a week to review the site. When there was a money crunch Chandra would dip into his pocket to ensure that work didn’t stop. While Chandra won’t disclose exactly how much he personally contributed, he acknowledges that the project cost ten times as much as the initial estimate of $2 million.

When the monument finally opened four years ago, Chandra played a central role in the enshrinement ceremony, carrying a jade stone container with original bone relics of the Buddha on his head and placing it near the top of the first dome. “Vipassana taught me how to maintain equanimity in all situations of life. This has helped me tremendously in business, more so in the tough times,” he says.

Chandra is well acquainted with how perilous financial problems can be. He was born into a trading family and grew up in a small village in northern India. As he relates it, the ­extended family, which numbered as many as 86 people, slipped into debt and split up. He had to drop out of college and start working. With less than a dollar in his pocket he moved to Delhi to find a way to pay off the family’s debt. He eventually made decent money in rice trading and moved to Mumbai, where he set up a packaging unit making laminated tubes. Today his Essel Propack claims to be the world’s largest ­producer of such tubes.

Inspired by CNN’s coverage of the Gulf war, Chandra took a gamble and started Zee TV, India’s first satellite television channel, in 1992. His family fretted that he would lose the modest pile he’d made. Ashok Kurien, his pal and Zee’s cofounder, says it was like walking into the valley of death. There was no private Indian broadcaster, since regulations didn’t permit it then. So he set up in Hong Kong. The Indian government questioned him several times, and he was told to shut the channel down; he refused. At the outset he burned through cash at the rate of $6 million a month.

Around the same time, he was introduced by an acquaintance to the guru Goenka, who persuaded Chandra to do his first meditation course. Chandra’s wife of 38 years, Sushila, encouraged her husband to try Vipassana as an antidote to his current stress. “Even today, whenever he’s troubled, I remind him that it’s time to go back.”

As it was, the first course proved to be more than a mere stress-buster. When Chandra returned to work after a ten-day retreat, his colleagues commented that his mind had become “sharp like a knife.” When asked to ­describe the experience, he demurs, adding, “It can’t be truly explained. Suffice to say, the return on the time I invested in doing the course was enormous. Immeasurable.”
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As things got more stressful for Chandra, he continued going on retreats frequently. Over the years Chandra has done 17 Vipassana courses in durations varying from 3 to 25 days. While there are always business compulsions to dissuade him from taking time off, he’s learned to ­ignore them. “Very often there are forces that try to prevent you, but I just go,” he says.

Ashok Kurien, who still sits on the board and retains a minority stake, says that in the early years of Zee Chandra’s frequent disappearances were disconcerting. “We used to have 40 different problems hitting us at the same time. Subhash would disappear from the scene right in the middle of a raging gun battle. But he would return reenergized and recharged,” he recalls.

Chandra’s efforts to get his family into Vipassana have been less than successful. While Sushila and son Punit have attended a couple of courses, they don’t practice as diligently as he does. His younger son Amit enrolled in a course but left halfway through. Staff at Zee are given paid leave to do the course, but less than 15% have enrolled. Chandra is ­sanguine: “It isn’t in their destiny.”

Vipassana, which means “to see things as they really are,” differs from other forms of meditation in that it involves no chanting and focuses not on the breath but on observing sensations throughout the body. It’s claimed that this practice of self-observation eventually purifies the mind. “I found this meditation method to be very ­scientific,” says Chandra. “I felt it was the right path for me.”

The technique has its roots in India, where it was taught and practiced by the Buddha himself 2,500 years ago. It spread to neighboring countries such as Myanmar and Sri Lanka and eventually disappeared from India. It resurfaced in 1969 when Goenka, who was living in Myanmar, returned home to reintroduce it to its country of origin. The nonprofit Vipassana Research Institute, set up by Goenka, now has more than 1,200 volunteers who conduct courses in 163 centers in 90 countries.

The courses are free and funded solely by donations from past students. Mastering this art of meditation begins with a ten-day residential course that is like boot camp. Students meditate for ten hours daily, starting at 4 a.m., and are required to adhere to a strict moral code, including abstaining from lying, stealing and sex. They take a vow of ­silence. There’s no reading, writing, watching TV or chatting on phones. Students sleep in small rooms furnished with only a single bed and get two ­vegetarian meals a day.

Chandra, who in 2008 handed down operations to older son Punit, recently announced an additional $250 million investment in Veria Living, the health-and-wellness channel in the U.S. he launched in 2007. It has not yet made money, but he insists it eventually will. “A lot of money may go down the drain, but this is close to my heart,” he says. “It’s my passion.”

Chandra also stepped down as chairman of the Global Vipassana Foundation in 2009 once the pagoda was completed. He remains a trustee and continues to practice daily. Says Chandra: “I can meditate anywhere, anytime, even whilst talking to you.”

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Japan Finds Story of Hope in Undertaker Who Offered Calm Amid Disaster

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KAMAISHI, Japan -- Amid the grief of finding her mother’s body at a makeshift morgue in this tsunami-ravaged city last March, Fumie Arai took comfort in a small but surprising discovery. Unlike the rest of the muddied body, her mother’s face had been carefully wiped clean.

<< A memorial in Koriyama, Japan, on Saturday was one of many to mark the March 11, 2011, quake and tsunami. More Photos »
Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times

Atsushi Chiba used Buddhist rituals in caring for nearly 1,000 bodies in Kamaishi. “It's a way to comfort the living,” he said. More Photos »

Mrs. Arai did not know at the time, but the act was the work of a retired undertaker well-versed in the ancient Buddhist rituals of preparing the dead for cremation and burial. The undertaker, Atsushi Chiba, a father of five who cared for almost 1,000 bodies in Kamaishi, has now become an unlikely hero in a community trying to heal its wounds a year after the massive earthquake and tsunami that ravaged much of Japan’s northeastern coast a year ago Sunday.

“I dreaded finding my mother’s body, lying alone on the cold ground among strangers,” Mrs. Arai, 36, said. “When I saw her peaceful, clean face, I knew someone had taken care of her until I arrived. That saved me.”

As Japan marks one year since the quake and tsunami that claimed almost 20,000 lives in the northeastern region of Tohoku, stories like these are being told and retold as mementos of hope even as Japan struggles through what is expected to be an effort lasting decades to rebuild the region.

Mr. Chiba’s story has been immortalized in a best-selling book in Japan, which has sold over 40,000 copies and is in its eleventh printing.

“The dead bodies are the most disturbing aspect of any disaster, and some people might not want to remember,” said the book’s author, Kota Ishii, who spent three months in Kamaishi and its environs in the wake of the disaster, chronicling Mr. Chiba’s work. “But this story is ultimately about how small acts of kindness can bring a little humanity, even in a tragedy that defies all imagination.”

The 30-foot waves that struck Kamaishi shortly after the magnitude 9.0 quake on March 11 spared the white statue of Kannon, the Buddhist goddess of mercy, which looks out to sea from the hills above the city. But the waves destroyed the liveliest parts of the city, the bars and restaurants frequented by the area’s fishermen.

As the black water receded, rescuers entered the city’s devastated streets and started pulling the dead from the rubble, carrying them on trucks to a vacant middle school that had escaped damage. The rundown gymnasium quickly became a large morgue.

Mr. Chiba, in his early 70s, whose home was also spared, raced to the gym on the day after the tsunami to look for friends and family, but was struck by the state of the mounting number of bodies there. Most were still clad in muddy clothes and wrapped in plastic, their rigid limbs jutting out and faces bruised by debris and contorted in agony.

“I thought that if the bodies were left this way, the families who came to claim them wouldn’t be able to bear it,” Mr. Chiba said Thursday in an interview. “Yes, they are dead. But in Japan, we treat the dead with respect, as if they are still alive. It’s a way to comfort the living.”

Mr. Chiba set to work. He became a fixture at the morgue, speaking to the bodies as he prepared them for viewing and then cremation. “You must be so cold and lonely, but your family is going to come for you soon so you’d better think of what you’re going to say to them when they arrive,” he recalled saying.

He also taught city workers at the morgue how to soothe limbs tense with rigor mortis, getting down on his knees and gently massaging them so the bodies looked less contorted. When the relatives of a middle-aged victim sobbed that her corpse looked gaunt, Mr. Chiba asked for some makeup and applied rouge and blush.

Mr. Chiba’s attempts to honor the dead quickly caught on. City workers put together old school desks to make a Buddhist altar. They lay the bodies of couples and of family members together. Each time a body was carried out, workers lined up with heads bowed to pay their last respects.

And at Mr. Chiba’s urging, Kamaishi became one of the only hard-hit communities to cremate all of its dead as called for by Japanese custom, enlisting the help of crematoriums as far as Akita, over 100 miles away.

In all, 888 of Kamaishi’s approximately 40,000 residents are known to have died; 158 more are listed as missing and presumed dead.

The disaster has been a major blow to the already declining fortunes of the city, whose steel industry thrived during the 1960s and 1970s but has been shrinking ever since. The tsunami laid waste to half the city, and a year later, streets in the worst-hit neighborhoods are still lined with the shells of buildings and empty plots.

As the city prepared this weekend for memorials to mark the disaster’s first anniversary, a Buddhist priest paid tribute to Mr. Chiba’s contribution to the city’s emotional recovery.

The priest, Enou Shibasaki, from the Senjuin Temple in the hills overlooking Kamaishi, remembers the change that came over the makeshift morgue as Mr. Chiba and city workers tended to the bodies.

“Whether you are religious or not, mourning for the dead is a fundamental need,” Mr. Shibasaki said. “Mourning starts by taking care of the body. It’s the last you see of your loved one, and you want to remember them as beautiful as they were in life.”

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What I Saw Outside the Dalai Lama’s House

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Speakeasy reporter Barbara Chai is traveling to Dharamsala, India, this week for a private audience with His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

Dhramsala, India -- After a marathon flight, we finally arrive in Dharamsala, home of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. I won’t lie: the first few hours are a bit of a blur because I am mentally and physically exhausted.

<< The view of the Dhauladhar Himalayas from just outside the Dalai Lama’s residence.

Add to that my attempts to heed the advice given by everyone I spoke to about traveling to India: It’s a lovely country but don’t drink the water, don’t take ice, don’t order salads, don’t eat from street stalls. Then when we take a walk, there are enormous cows and honking minivans and beeping scooters to contend with on a narrow dirt road. It’s charming and jarring in the best way - I’m just saying, it’s a lot to take in at first.

But after the most glorious night’s sleep in the peace of Kashmir Cottage - a guesthouse owned and run by the brother and sister-in-law of His Holiness the Dalai Lama - I’m more than good to go. We venture out after breakfast to find the Dalai Lama’s residence up a steep, rocky path behind the cottage.

There are monks and pilgrims circumnavigating his residence on the kora, or walking meditation path, which includes a breathtaking stupa, miles of prayer wheels, and mani stones - rocks that are inscribed with the mantra, “Om mani padme hum,” which means “Praise to the Jewel in the Lotus.” This is the mantra of Chenrezig (Sanskrit name: Avalokiteshvara), the bodhisattva, or Buddhist deity, of compassion. Tibetan Buddhists believe His Holiness the Dalai Lama is the earthly manifestation of Chenrezig. A man who is the reincarnation of a deity of compassion.

When we practice Chan Buddhism at home, my family and I pray to the same bodhisattva (we envisage her as female, even though this bodhisattva’s gender can vary with different schools). In Chinese her name is Guanshiyin Pusa and she is our goddess of compassion. I chant her name and turn the beads. I pray to her for protection and mercy. To me, Guanshiyin is Buddhism.

So, to encounter Tibetan Buddhists’ fervent devotion to the same bodhisattva, and to learn that they regard their spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, as its earthly manifestation, seems entirely fitting. At the same time, even though we’re talking about the same religion, Tibetan Buddhism is still very different from Chan Buddhism in practice, and so an immediate connection to such an important Buddhist deity for both of us also seems coincidental.

As if I needed another reason, I am now even more excited about meeting His Holiness the Dalai Lama in person. How to regard him as just that, a person? Because he is human too. His face is on photographs all over Dharamsala, and I see His Holiness as a young man arriving to India in 1959. I see His Holiness petting cute dogs. I see His Holiness wearing a visor to protect his eyes from the sun. He likes to give hugs. He doesn’t suffer fools. Above all, he is kind. Maybe all of this is what is meant by being human, by being earthly.

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Japanese monk guards remains of tsunami unknown

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YAMAMOTO, Japan -- Hundreds of the 19,000 people killed by Japan's horrific quake-tsunami remain unmourned, their bodies never claimed because there is no one left to notice they have gone.

<< Buddhist monk Ryushin Miyabe offering prayers in front of urns with ashes and bones of tsunami victims at the Myokoin Temple in Yamamoto. Photo courtesy: AFP

But one Buddhist monk has lovingly stored the ashes and bones of some of those whose names no one knows in the hope that one day they can be reunited with their families.

Every day for the last year, Ryushin Miyabe has offered prayers and lit incense for the souls in his care at the Myokoin temple in Yamamoto, a small town on Japan's tsunami-wrecked coast.

In late January he was finally able to hand over the remains of a five-year-old boy, known until then only as "No. 906", when the child's grandmother was identified through DNA tests.

The young corpse had been cremated in June after coastguards found it floating in the Pacific without any belongings, washed out to sea by the tsunami of March 11 that tore into the coast.

The grandmother told Miyabe that the boy's mother had also been killed in the catastrophe and she had been searching for her grandson's body for nearly a year.

With the boy's remains back with a family member, his spirit can pass into the next world, says Miyabe.

"I guess the boy has met his mother in heaven by now," he said. "She must have told him: 'Hey, you are late!'"

Buddhist tradition dictates that a body is cremated and the ashes are placed in an urn, along with the bones that remain.

The urn is put in a family grave, which Japanese traditionally believe to be the gateway to the next world, one through which souls can return every year during the summer festival of Obon.

The grave must be cared for by surviving family, who in return, expect spiritual protection from their deceased relatives.

Nationwide, 500 bodies recovered after the huge waves swept ashore have still not been identified, and more than 3,000 of those who died have never been found.

At one point Miyabe was looking after the ashes of 30 people, their remains entrusted to him by authorities overwhelmed by the number of people who perished.

After the five-year-old was reunited with his family, Miyabe's temple has only one small jar left.

"I will continue holding vigil, praying for the earliest return of the ashes to the victim's family who must be desperately trying to find the body," Miyabe said.

The majority of those who died in the tsunami were identified before being cremated and their families wanted full funeral rites.

Mortician Ruiko Sasahara prepared more than 300 often badly damaged bodies at makeshift morgues in tsunami-hit coastal towns, to allow relatives to bid their farewells.

As well as making funeral arrangements, morticians in Japan clean, dress and apply cosmetics to bodies in an effort to make them look as much like they did when they were alive as possible.

"My job is to help prepare the dead for their departure to heaven," Sasahara said at her office in Kitakami, 60 kilometres (35 miles) from the tsunami coast.

The practice, which is fading in bigger cities but remains fairly common in rural areas, came to worldwide attention in 2009 when "Departures" won an Oscar for its depiction of an out of work cellist who becomes a mortician in small town Japan.

Many of the bodies that Sasahara was called upon to patch up were in bad condition.

"I'd never seen bodies in such a state -- many of them smelled of decay, there was a lot of maggot damage and some of them were partial skeletons," she said.

But she knew that families desperately needed to be able to say their goodbyes and even resorted to using clippings from her own hair to remake eyelashes and eyebrows.

Sasahara said the process of repair is vital to protect the dignity of the dead and to ease the pain of those left behind.

"Many of the bereaved blame themselves for failing to save their loved ones," she said.

"When they once again see the smile of the person they lost, I think many people can feel they have been forgiven."

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International Buddhist Film Festival (IBFF) 2012 sold out in Hong Kong

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Hong Kong, China -- The opening night at the International Buddhist Film Festival (IBFF) 2012 was sold out at the new Asia Society Hong Kong Center. This is the inaugural event at the Asia Society's Miller Theater.

Director Edward Burger flew in from his home in Hanoi to present the Asia premiere of his "Amongst White Clouds", a feature documentary about Chinese hermit monks, filmed on location in China.

A dozen more programs are scheduled over the next week, all either Asia or Hong Kong premieres, several of which are already sold out.

This year marks the 10th the tenth anniversary season of the International Buddhist Film Festival, and new film festivals are set for Hong Kong, London, and Bangkok in 2012.

“We’ve screened several hundred films from submissions, archival research and invitations. These include dramas, comedies, documentaries and animated works from over a dozen countries,” said Gaetano Kazuo Maida, IBFF Executive Director.

“In each city we will be presenting compelling new selections of the best Buddhist cinema together with some wonderful guests—it’s world cinema with a Buddhist touch.”

IBFF 2012 HONG KONG is one of several inaugural year events at the brand-new Asia Society Hong Kong Center, including a major art exhibition, "Transforming Minds: Buddhism in Art", February 10-May 20, 2012, curated by Dr. Melissa Chiu with co-curators Dr. Adriana Proser and Dr. Miwako Tezuka.

Encore screenings of all the films will be presented through May 12, with a special Vesak Day weekend presentation of David Grubin’s The Buddha, April 28/29 and May 3.

For a list of movies premiering at IBFF Hong Kong, please visit:
http://www.buddhistfilmfoundation.org/events/ibff-begins-10th-anniversary-season-in-hong-kong/

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German scholars to visit major Buddhist sites

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HYDERABAD, India -- A group of scholars from Wurzburg varsity, Germany are keen to do some project work on development of Buddhist sites and monuments in the state.

The group headed by Ingo Strauch, chair of Indology, and comprising Casen Dreyer, Britta Schneider and Anke Sanger, visited the office of the director of archaeology and museums and helddiscussions with director P Chenna Reddy on the matter.

Chenna Reddy said the scholars, who had been teaching Buddhism at the German university for several years, were interested in visiting the Buddhist sites at Thotlakonda, Bavikonda, Pavuralakonda, Salihundam, Sankaram in north Andhra, and Phanigiri in Nelakondapalli in Telangana.

They will also visit Chandavaram in Prakasam district and Nagarjunakonda in Guntur district to study the distribution of Buddhist settlements across the state and their development from Theravada School of Philosophy to Vajrayana School of Philosophy up to the medieval times as noticed at Salihundam in north Andhra and Dhanyakataka (Amaravati) in Guntur district.

Chenna Reddy explained the steps taken by the state government to develop Buddhist sites and monuments as major tourist destinations.

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Buddhist-influenced waka poems are focus of lecture

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KALAMAZOO, MI (USA) --The waka poets of medieval Japan and their work will be examined later this month when a Japanese scholar visits Western Michigan University.

Dr. Stephen Miller, assistant professor of Japanese language and literature at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, will speak about the poets and the intersection of their work with Buddhism at 5 p.m. Thursday, March 22, in Room 3025 of Brown Hall. His presentation, titled "The Wind from Vulture Peak: Japanese Buddhist Poetry and the Heian Aesthetic," is free and open to the public.

Miller is regarded as an expert on medieval waka poetry, a genre of classical Japanese verse and one of the major genres of Japanese literature during the Heian period from 794 to 1185. In his presentation, he will explain how and why the Japanese poets of the Heian period utilized the 31-syllable form of waka poems to speak about the topic of Buddhism, as well as the problems of compiling and translating these poems into English.

Miller's book, "The Wind from Vulture Peak: The Buddhification of Japanese Waka in the Heian Period," is forthcoming from the Cornell East Asia Series in 2012. He has also published translations and edited a collection of Japanese literature about same-sex love and eroticism called "Partings at Dawn."

Miller's visit is sponsored by the WMU Soga Japan Center, the foreign languages and comparative religion departments and the Haenicke Institute for Global Education.

For more information, contact Dr. Jeffrey Angles, associate professor of foreign languages, at jeffrey.angles@wmich.edu or (269) 387-3044.

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Buddhist values more relevant today

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Timphu, Bhutan -- Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse, a prominent tulku associated with Dzongsar Monastery in Derge, Eastern Tibet and also a renowned filmmaker and writer, shares his wisdom on issues that relates to our daily world.

Where do you see our central monastic body heading towards 30-50 years from now?

This is something that we have to really think about.  You need vision. It’s a very big gamble. I have seen monasteries in India, China and Bhutan and I tell them to really think about admitting girls and changing the curriculum. I am not a big fan of the education system that exists today in this world. Do you know that some of the most successful people in the world and Bhutan are all school dropouts?

I have been sort of saying that we should really think dramatically and change it drastically. But you are talking to devotees, to people who are stuck with morality and values. It’s really tough. Yes, I will tell bravely, that I can see, our dratshangs, judging from what’s happening, 50 years from now on, there will probably be only 50 monks.

Having said that, there is a lot of encouraging signs also, like young people I have met who say they want to become a monk but feel guilty because their parents have spent so much. How encouraging for the spiritual world. This is what we should bank on.

Should we allocate more resources towards spreading teachings than proliferating Buddhist infrastructure?

I don’t know whether, “we”, this democratic Bhutan, systematically develop the infrastructure of Buddha dharma. But I would strongly say that Buddhist values, wisdom and message are certainly very relevant today more than ever. It is something I don’t think we should lose because this can happen. I see sometimes, many of the younger Bhutanese are beginning to have some interest in Buddhism because all these chilips are beginning to have some interest. That’s not so good. I always say this, that Mahatma Gandhi who is known for non-violence got the idea from foreigners who got the same idea from Indians. So this could happen to you.  You could be learning Buddhism from some John.

Will anarchy alleviate all sufferings because it seems the foundation of all sufferings is a result of a society, its rules and perceptions.

I have always said that the biggest contribution to the world from the west is not science or technology. It’s anarchism. But this I say half jokingly. The thing is, we human beings are such a sucker to rules. We love rules. I don’t think we have the courage and wisdom to live with anarchism. So it’s not going to work. I think its good to, since we will not know how to live with lawlessness, might as well live with some law, even though it’s really not good.

If trulkus are reincarnations of former masters, why do they have to be subjected through exhaustive re-education process?

That is if only they go through all these exhausting training these days. They don’t even do that now. Trulkus are just pretending that they have to go through all these.  After all they are trulku, trulba, which means show magic, drama, exhibition.

Rinpoche’s comments on religion divides people.

It doesn’t take much to divide human beings. Religion just happens to be a very good device. This religion has created lot of chaos and havoc but I have to say that religion has also answered lot of personal quests. When we say religion, are we talking about some kind of a systematic religion or a spiritual path?

Spiritual path is different. It’s necessary, like songs, romance and poetry. Romance from the mathematic, scientific point of view, is just so ridiculous. But it gives some kind of a solace and religion is or especially the spiritual path has so many profound answers to many of the budding questions that we have.

Gomchens say its korzey when they perform prayers and also receive payment. Aren’t they paid for their work like any one of us?

When this gomchen says its korzey, is he being humble? There is a little bit of negative connotation when you say korzey. I really wish these gomchens and gelongs know wholeheartedly that devotees offering money or gifts or service, even a short bow, is kor, which basically is karmic debt. And if you don’t perform your job well, it will haunt you, rather go through the consequences.

I don’t know whether it should be considered like a normal wage, probably not. Although, I am sure within 20 years, if the religious aspect of Buddhism is still thriving in Bhutan, I can already see sort of hotlines for rimdos and gomchens. Like dial 8888 for rimdo.

Is there anything as black magic or nyen in Buddhism?

In Buddhism the most important is the wisdom of non-duality. Rest, methods, anything is fine. Mahayana Buddhism has infinite methods of dealing with people. Generally you’ll never find black magic in the sutras and sastras. There’s none. Actually there are only three that Mahayana Buddhists are not supposed to have – covetousness, harmful thinking, and wrong view. Other than that, anything can be the path.

Why is it that sometimes the more we practice dharma the more pain one goes through, where as the more negative act one commits, the more successful they become?

There is a prayer where Jigme Lingpa says, “Buddhists and Bodhisattvas, please make sure that what ever I want never happens.” Buddhist blessings, he said is when 100 things that you wish never come true but 1,000 things that you dare not wish come true. That’s Buddha’s blessing. So I would say, if you are a serious dharma practitioner, you are fulfilling your wish when things are going wrong. You are seeing the truth, actualising it and when that is happening, you should see it as a blessing. Next time when things are going wrong, go home and throw a big party.

How do wangs, prayers and mantras work?

Wang actually is like lets say, you had amnesia, forgot your name and whereabouts. Then somebody says, you are from Paro and your name is Dorji. You wake up because we have all forgotten our true identity, which is the Buddha.

On the more relative level, if you are a Buddhist, this is something you must know. Buddha dharma is probably the only system, only path that wholeheartedly and completely embraces the system of cause, condition and effect. So in this way, Buddhism is very scientific. Everything depends on cause, condition and effect. And cause and condition are endless.

Some ask me how Buddhist karma works because some do lots of prayers and are not successful while some kill and steal and are still successful. You know this unpredictability of karma. I can tell you karma is basically a science of cause and condition. These advanced scientists today can’t predict tomorrow’s or this afternoon’s weather, how can we ignorant, limited beings predict the complex situation of cause, condition and effect. But one thing we know is that nothing emerges out of the blue. And as Buddhists, we don’t believe that things are created by god, so prayers, blessings, are or could be part of those intricate, complex of cause, condition and effect.

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