China and India use Buddha for regional Karma

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The two would-be superpowers are using their Buddhist prestige to exert influence in Nepal, Myanmar and Sri Lanka.

New Delhi, India -- As part of their growing competition for influence in Asia, China and India are using the Buddha as weapon: sponsoring conferences, financing religious sites, and displaying relics in countries where the religion is widely adhered to.

<< India donated a five-metre statue of the Buddha to the glittering Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon, Myanmar [Reuters]

In December, India and Myanmar co-sponsored a three-day conference of Buddhist scholars at the Sitagu International Buddhist Academy in Yangon. India's Foreign Minister Salman Khurshid joined Myanmar's vice-president U Sai Mauk to inaugurate the conference, which brought together people from across southeast Asia.

"As the international community watches Myanmar with renewed interest, it is only apt that this important meeting of scholars - designed to provide us with a better understanding of the depth and global spread of Buddhist influences - is being organised in this golden land, Suvarnabhumi," Khurshid said in his speech.

Khurshid also attended a ceremony to mark the unveiling of a five-metre statue of the Buddha in Yangon's glittering Shwedagon Pagoda, Myanmar's most revered Buddhist shrine. The statue had been announced by Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during his visit to Myanmar in May.

Myanmar melee

Using the Buddha to culturally engage Myanmar makes sense, as nearly 90 percent of its people practice the religion. But India's actions are also seen as a response to recent, similar Chinese moves.

In November 2011, China sent a Buddha tooth relic on a mobile display to several cities in Myanmar, including former capital Yangon and present capital Naypyidaw. This relic had been preserved in Beijing's Lingguang Si Temple and it drew huge crowds of prayerful worshippers. The event was widely reported in Chinese media, and was followed by an agreement between the Lingguang Si Temple and Shwedagon Pagoda to promote religious ties between the two nations.

Myanmar is a growing focus of China-India competition. New Delhi is seeking to build roads, modernise ports and build dams to counter China's already impressive array of infrastructure projects in the country.

India is trying to improve access to its remote northeastern region by modernising the Sittwe port in Myanmar's troubled Rakhine state and dredging the Kaladan River that forms part of the border between Myanmar and India. Meanwhile, China is constructing a deep port at Kyaukpyu, also in Myanmar's Rakhine state. It is also building an oil-gas pipeline from near the new port to China's Yunnan Province to transport fuel from the Middle East, while avoiding the Malacca Straits between Malaysia and Indonesia, which Chinese strategists see as a choke point. 

Diplomats say India can use its soft power in this jockeying for influence. "Buddhism in Asia is one of our greatest assets, a definite element in our soft power. And being home to the Dalai Lama, who is the acknowledged leader of a large section of the Buddhist community, gives us a major advantage," said former Indian foreign secretary Krishnan Srinivasan.

Srinivasan said China now accepts Buddhism along with other religions, and is promoting its civilisational traditions abroad. "But it has a long way to go to match India," he said, while conceding Beijing also "has far greater financial resources to deploy".

China has projected its culture through the ever-increasing number of "Confucius centres" worldwide, but has lately turned to using Buddhism.

"This is not just a defensive move by Beijing to counter global criticisms of its policy in Tibet, where more and monks are self-immolating in protest against persecution," international relations expert Sabyasachi Basu Roy Chaudhuri told Al Jazeera.

"It is also to play on religious and cultural feelings to connect to countries which are largely Buddhist. This is diplomatic pragmatism unexpected of a communist country but not unexpected of today's China."

Renovating Buddha's birthplace

In Nepal, China is financing a $3bn project to develop Lumbini, the birthplace of the Buddha, with a new airport, a connecting highway, hotels, convention centres, temples and a Buddhist university. In 2011, the Beijing-based Asia Pacific Exchange and Cooperation Foundation signed a memorandum of understanding with the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation to develop the project.

A few months after the China-financed Lumbini project was announced, India promptly organised a Global Buddhist Congregation through the Delhi-based Ashoka Mission. The congregation brought together top monks and nuns from across the world, and ended up endorsing the Dalai Lama, Beijing's bete noire, as Buddhists' global leader - emphasising India's central role in preserving Buddhism's ancient heritage.

The International Buddhist Confederation that emerged from this congregation, which envisaged a central role for the Dalai Lama, could act as a lever for India to counter China's moves in the Buddhist world.

In fact, Beijing raised objections to the Dalai Lama's participation in the Global Buddhist Congregation and was upset when Delhi refused to stop him from addressing its valedictory session. It angered Chinese officials enough that they delayed a round of border negotiations. The dialogue to settle the Sino-Indian border later resumed, but Beijing had made clear its displeasure.

Some see a long-term vision in the inception of the International Buddhist Confederation.

"This has been set up with much more strategic foresight than just a reaction to China's action on Lumbini," said China-watcher Binoda Mishra, head of the Calcutta-based Centre for Studies in International Relations and Development.

"It aims at nullifying Chinese future plans of securing the right to interfere in the selection of future Dalai Lamas, because Beijing wants to be the sole authority on the selection of [the] Dalai Lama in the future."

Nepal is an important buffer between India and China, and New Delhi is as uncomfortable with Beijing's growing influence there as in Myanmar.

'Strategic encirclement'

In August, India took the "Kapilavastu Relics" to Sri Lanka, which had been preserved in the National Museum in New Delhi. The relics were taken around the island nation, drawing large number of Buddhists who prayed before them.

Growing Chinese influence in Sri Lanka is also worrying India.

Indian planners worry about a "strategic encirclement" by China, which has steadily improved relations with almost all of India's neighbours: Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Myanmar, a set some have called the Chinese "string of pearls".

For its part, China is worried by India's growing ties with countries such as Japan, Vietnam, Australia and others. Its strategists are concerned that the US is seeking to bring India together with these countries in order to contain China.

Beijing has asked New Delhi to back off from hydrocarbon exploration in the hotly disputed South China Sea.

With no end to the tension in site, Buddhism could well continue to be an important element of soft power that both India and China are likely to use in the years ahead to win hearts and minds across the vast continent.

But some wish the two Asian giants would work together rather than compete. "It would be good to see India and China act co-operatively to protect Asian religious heritage," said former foreign secretary Srinivasan. "But that is still some way ahead for the future."

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Nepal’s kung fu nuns practise karma with a kick

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KATHMANDU, Nepal -- It is a hot, cloudless morning on a hillside on the outskirts of Kathmandu and dozens of nuns arrange themselves into lines around a golden Buddhist shrine.

<< The sisters of the Amitabha Drukpa Nunnery are the world’s first order of kung fu nuns.

In unison, each slams a clenched fist into their opposite palm, breathes deeply and waits, motionless in the rising heat.

But these devotees are not here to pray or to meditate, for they have gathered to undergo a rigorous and aggressive martial arts routine as the world’s first order of kung fu nuns.

The sisters of the Amitabha Drukpa Nunnery - aged from nine to 52 - come from across Nepal, India, Tibet and Bhutan to learn the ancient Chinese discipline of kung fu, which they believe will help them be better Buddhists.

Every day, they exchange their maroon robes and philosophical studies for an intense 90-minute session of hand chops, punches, shrieks and soaring high kicks.

“The main reason for practising kung fu is for fitness and for health, but it also helps with meditation and self-defence,” 14-year-old Jigme Wangchuk Lhamo, who was sent to the nunnery from Bhutan four years ago, told AFP.

“When we practise kung fu we are doing something which gives us not only strong bodies but also strong minds.”

Buddhist nuns in the Himalayas have traditionally been seen as inferior to monks, with the women kept away from physically demanding exercise and relegated to menial tasks like cooking and cleaning.

But the 800-year-old Drukpa - or dragon - sect is changing all that by mixing meditation with martial arts as a means of empowering its women.

The nuns, in contrast to most Buddhist groups, are also taught to lead prayers and given basic business skills, as well as running a guest house and coffee shop at the abbey and driving jeeps to Kathmandu to get supplies.

Kung fu came to the nunnery only four years ago when its spiritual leader, His Holiness the 12th Gyalwang Drukpa, visited Vietnam, where he saw nuns receiving combat training that was previously used by Viet Cong guerrillas.

He was so impressed that he brought four of the Vietnamese, all women in their 20s, to Nepal to add kung fu lessons to the nuns’ yoga classes and lessons in the nuances of good and bad karma.

“Our nuns... are very new to modernisation and are timid and lack self-confidence,” the Gyalwang Drukpa wrote in a recent blog post.

“I am not saying that I am a great teacher or a great leader but the path that I have decided to take in order to promote gender equality, so as to bring about the nuns’ improvement, gives me great encouragement to work harder and live longer.”

Jigme Konchok Lhamo, 18, who came to the order from India, says kung fu has quickly made the nuns more assured and has begun to address the power balance between men and women in Buddhism.

“His Holiness wants the nuns to be like the men, with the same rights in the world,” she said. “That is why we get the chance to do everything, not just kung fu.

“We also have the chance here to learn many things, like tennis and skating. And we have the chance also to learn English and Tibetan, and musical instruments.

“In the past only men could do some of the dances. Now we have the chance to take part. Before nuns could not do anything and now we have the chance to do anything the monks can do.”

The nunnery is enjoying a surge in popularity since introducing the kung fu lessons and now has some 300 nuns practising martial arts techniques.

They have given demonstrations of their skills to thousands of pilgrims in Nepal and have toured India and Britain.

The nuns say the repetitive nature of Shaolin kung fu, which comes from the Buddhist temple of Shaolin in China’s Henan province, helps them to learn control and focus.

The benefits are obvious for young women who are expected to meditate in the same position for up to six hours at a time and sometimes undertake retreats during which they must remain silent for months.

Jigme Migyur Palmo, a soft-spoken 21-year-old nun, who came to Kathmandu three years ago from her home in Ladakh, in northern India, said kung fu works in harmony with her spiritual life.

She watched Jackie Chan kung fu movies when she was younger and now wants to be as good as the Hong Kong film star.

“I came to Kathmandu to learn Buddhist philosophy and now I don’t want to go home, I want to stay here my whole life,” she said.

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Actor Richard Gere, Drawn by Karma To Borobudur, Planning Temple Movie

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Magelang, Central Java (Indonesia) -- Hollywood star Richard Gere arrived at the eighth century Borobudur Temple on Sunday ahead of a Buddhist ritual today — in a trip that officials said would make the actor Indonesia’s “informal tourism ambassador.”

<< US actor Richard Gere greets Indonesian performers after watching a traditional dance at the Borobudur temple in Magelang in Central Java province on June 26, 2011. (AFP Photo)

Gere, a Buddhist activist, comes to Indonesia fresh from a tour of South Korean temples and is set to take part in a procession and meditation at the Mahayana Buddhist monument.

“I’m happy and amazed to be here,” he said at a press conference at Magelang’s Manohara Hotel. “It’s not just an ordinary journey for me but also a spiritual journey.”

He said his arrival at Borobudur was “karma,” a term for the force generated by a person’s actions which affects future ones.

Gere said he was particularly interested in coming back to make a movie about the discovery of Borobudur in 1814 by Sir Stamford Raffles.

“I won’t make a film like the kind that Julia Roberts made in Bali,” he said, referring to the hit “Eat Pray Love”

“I want to make a film about the history of this temple. I really want to do this.”

Gere had been scheduled to visit the nearby Hindu temple complex of Prambanan, but the plan was scrapped after his flight to Yogyakarta’s Adisucipto Airport was delayed.

Joko Sutono, head of the Prambanan temple’s management, expressed disappointment at the unfortunate turn.

“We had prepared a welcome drink for him and his family,” he said. “We also planned to present them with flowers from Prambanan.”

Purnomo Siswo Prasetyo, Borobudur’s management director, said Gere’s visit was nonetheless expected to boost tourism in the area, home to several other Buddhist and Hindu temples and the ancestral seat of Javanese culture.

Before flying to Yogyakarta with his wife, Carey Lowell, and son, Homer James Jigme Gere, Gere was in Jakarta to meet with President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and Jero Wacik, the culture and tourism minister.

Gere will stay in Magelang and fly out on Tuesday for a family vacation in Bali.

Jero said his visit would be invaluable in raising the profile of the temple, after it had to be closed off for an extended period last year due to ash from the erupting Mount Merapi nearby.

“We were looking for an international figure who could relate closely to Borobudur, and that figure is Richard Gere,” he said, adding that the actor had previously expressed an interest in visiting the monument.

“He’s now become Indonesia’s informal tourism ambassador, for which he’s not being paid at all,” the official added.

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