Buddhist festival helps keep culture alive

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New Plymouth, New Zealand -- New Plymouth's Sri Lankan community brought its culture alive on Saturday in celebration of religious and cultural festival Vesak.

<< TALKING TRADITION: Young performer Sethini Koralage, 3, at a Sri Lankan religious and cultural festival in Bell Block on Saturday.

The festival commemorates the birth, enlightenment and death of Buddha.

Organiser Ramitha Fernando said it was similar to what Diwali was to Hindus and what Ramadan was to Muslims.

"It is important to celebrate this on a large scale because once you've left your motherland you are isolated.

"There are no Buddhist temples in New Plymouth.

"It's particularly easy for the young children to forget their culture, their religion and their mother tongue."

More than 125 people attended the fifth celebration held in the province, as well as three monks who travelled from Auckland to take part in the ceremony.

The day began with an offerings ceremony, in which flowers, incense and beverages were passed around a circle to the monks who then placed them on a statue of Buddha.

"That's how we offer things to Buddha," Mr Fernando said.

Sermons followed, and the monks were then offered gifts from the people.

Buddhist songs were also performed by children and their parents.

Mr Fernando said many different cultures turned up to experience the Buddhist tradition and a good time was had by all participants.

"Some of those in our community work as engineers and they brought some workmates along so they were able to come and appreciate our culture and food," he said.

"Our plan is to continue this for many years."

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Smartphones, TVs hurting Buddhist culture in Bhutan

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THIMPHU, Bhutan -- Kencho Tshering, a red-robed Buddhist monk, takes a call from the King of Bhutan's office, then duly dashes off to start a ceremony praying for a break in the monsoon rains.

<< Bhutan - nestled in the Himalayas and flanked by both India and China - is renowned for its rich Buddhist culture, and villages are still steeped in its traditions. However, Buddhist devotion has waned since Bhutan allowed television in 1999

But while he may be on speed dial for royal requests, the clout of his fellow monks is on the wane in the remote kingdom as it absorbs the impact of technology and democracy as well as an abuse scandal.

 "Bhutan is changing. The monastic body is going down and down," Tshering told AFP at Dechen Phodrang, the monks' school where he is principal, which is perched with majestic views over the capital Thimphu.

"Even for senior monks, there's no respect in the city," he sighed.

Bhutan -- nestled in the Himalayas and flanked by both India and China -- is renowned for its rich Buddhist culture, and villages are still steeped in its traditions.

Fluttering prayer flags are a common sight, as are giant flying phalluses painted on walls to ward off evil -- a symbol of a national saint, the "Divine Madman", who is believed to have subjugated demonesses with his penis in the 15th and 16th centuries.

Protecting the Buddhist culture is a key pillar of Bhutan's unique "Gross National Happiness" development model, which aims to balance spiritual and mental well-being with economic growth.

Yet Tshering, who spent three years, three months and three days in silent meditation, believes Buddhist devotion has waned since Bhutan allowed television in 1999 -- the world's last country to do so.

"People are less god-fearing, less superstitious... The number of rituals they do has gone down," agreed Karma Phuntsho, author of "The History of Bhutan" and a former monk.

Phuntsho said the Bhutanese worldview has changed dramatically since secular education was widely introduced in the 1960s, weakening the dominance of monastic schools that for centuries were a powerful force.

Bhutan was unified in the 17th century by a Tibetan Buddhist teacher, and the old 'dzong' fortresses, part-monastery and part-government offices, are a reminder of the previous intertwining of religion and politics.

The decline in monastics' clout was clear with the onset of democracy five years ago. Bhutan's monks, nuns and a large community of lay priests are now barred from the process to ensure religion and politics are kept apart.

"They don't have a say at all, they don't have a franchise to vote. So political authority has really waned," said Phuntsho.

 In terms of spiritual influence, some say monastic materialism is partly to blame for a decline.

Although usually associated with a spartan existence, Bhutan's strand of Buddhism allows monks to own a range of possessions -- "there are even monks with big cars," said Damber K. Nirola, a psychiatrist in Thimphu.

But the monasteries still play a vital social role, providing homes to thousands of children whose parents may have died or feel unable to support them.

At Dechen Phodrang, young monks can be found busy learning the national 'dzongkha' script, making colourful cakes to offer the deities, or blowing the sound of the long 'dungchen' Buddhist trumpet over the valley.

With a government allowance per boy of less than a dollar a day, Tshering says it is a struggle to look after their 260 students, aged as young as six, who sleep in rows on classroom floors.

While just over 7,000 monks are registered with the central monastic body, on the ground about 9,000 to 11,000 exist at any one time, according to Karma Penjor, secretary at the Commission for the Monastic Affairs of Bhutan.

"They can't say no when people come with their children," he told AFP, saying the monasteries look after and educate "Bhutan's poorest of the poor".

They are also not without controversy.

A recent report by The Raven, a Bhutanese magazine, told the story of two young boys who said they escaped their monastery after being sexually abused by two of the older monks, who are supposed to be celibate.

The National Commission for Women and Children confirmed to AFP that the case had been dealt with internally by the monastic body, and one of the accused had been disrobed.

Between young monks, non-penetrative "thigh sex" is also "common", according to a UNICEF-supported report in 2012 on vulnerable Bhutanese adolescents.

Psychiatrist Nirola, a former district medical officer, said he found sexually transmitted diseases were quite regular among monks and possibly from heterosexual liaisons outside the monasteries.

He also came across youngsters suffering stress from the highly disciplined lifestyle, which was often not one of their own choice.

"They want to go to town, play on smartphones. That creates a lot of problems in their mind."

In May, the monastic commission opened a child protection office for the welfare of young monks and to raise awareness about their rights, but Penjor said better backing was crucial to its success.

"It's one thing to keep having awareness workshops, but if support for infrastructure is not there, after a while rights keep falling off, it's not very effective."

Some monks have embraced Bhutan's modernisation in a bid to get more support.

The Phajoding monastery, which is a three-hour uphill hike from the nearest road, is using social media to spread its news and raise funds, with regular updates on Twitter and Facebook.

Phuntsho thinks it will take more than PR to get Bhutan's monastic body on the rise again, and a key to that is modernising its education system.

"It's a big challenge for the monastics. I can see a very urgent need for them to reform and develop, but it's very unfair to expect that of them when they don't have the resources."

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Celebrating Buddhist culture

Home Asia Pacific South East Asia Vietnam

Hanoi, Vietnam -- Much of Viet Nam’s most famous, traditional and valued cultural heritage has been provided or inspired by Buddhism, a religion which has for centuries been deeply embedded in the national psyche.

<< Visitors contemplate Buddhist statues on display in the Ha Noi-based National Museum of History. The exhibition will last until August this year.

An extensive exhibition at the National Museum of History in Ha Noi is currently presenting and celebrating many varied examples of Buddhist culture which offer a reflection of the county’s development for over a thousand years.

Titled Vietnamese Buddhist Culture Heritage, the show introduces many valuable physical objects such as pagodas, towers, worshipping statues and paintings alongside examples of intangible heritage such as ceremonies, music and ethics.

With common cultural themes including humanity, humility and harmony, Buddhist heritage can be considered beautiful works of art, according to Nguyen Van Cuong, the museum’s director.

“Vietnamese Buddhism has left a rich and diverse history of material and spiritual cultural heritage throughout the country,” he said. “Through nearly 200 objects dating from the first to the 20th century, just a small selection in itself, we desire to introduce some general features and unique values of Buddhist heritage to the public and to contribute to efforts to preserve and raise awareness of Vietnamese culture.”

One of the most remarkable exhibits is a Canh Thinh bronze drum (dated from 1800), which was recently certified by the Prime Minister as one of Viet Nam’s National Treasures. It was discovered at Nanh Pagoda in the capital’s Ninh Hiep Commune before being moved to the museum for display.

The artefacts have been arranged according to the different time periods that they belong to. It is believed that Buddhism spread directly from India to Viet Nam via a sea route around 2,000 years ago. The Luy Lau region, which now belongs to Bac Ninh Province in the north, soon became a significant Buddhist centre. Many important vestiges of the religion have been found in the region, including notable discoveries at the pagodas of Phat Tich and Dau which are now being exhibited.

<< Still life: Gilded wooden statues dating from 17th-18th century are on display at the exhibition titled Vietnamese Buddhist Culture Heritage.

Items created in the first ten centuries of Vietnamese Buddhism soon formed part of the Cham and Oc Eo cultures in central and southern Viet Nam, with unique sculptures and statues carved from gold, stone, sandstone and wood inspired by Indian arts.

The most prosperous period for Buddhism in the country arrived during the Ly and Tran dynasties (11-14th century) when it became the national religion, and this is reflected in the cultural artefacts remaining from that time, which begin to merge religious meanings with a more unique national identity.

Although Confucianism became the official ideology under the Le and Mac dynasties in the 15th and 16th centuries, and so Buddhist relics from this period aren’t as varied as in others, visitors can still see objects from this era that have been collected by museum staff. These include statues, lamp stands and incense burners marked with clear inscriptions and dedications.

In the past, many wealthy men ordered artisans to make worshipping objects to be donated to pagodas. As a mark of thanks for the donation, the name of every benefactor would be emblazoned on stone steles at the places of worship. The exhibition has interested historians by displaying statues bearing the names of female donors, which is a unique discovery according to Cuong.

The exhibition will run until the end of August at the museum, which can be found at 25 Tong Dan Street in Ha Noi.

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Investigating the Integration of Buddhism into Western Culture

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Colombo, Sri Lanka -- As Asians, we sometimes forget that the teachings of the Buddha actually have nothing to do with Asia or Asian culture. We were born into Eastern cultures where images of the Buddha and Buddhist rituals and teachings are commonplace and, therefore, natural to us.

In the West, however, Buddhism is a relatively new teaching, brought there as late as the 1950’s and 1960’s by the early Western Zen teachers. From those early days it has gradually made its way into the mainstream culture, but not completely. We still have much more work to do in order to fully integrate it and make the Buddhist temple as familiar a sight as the Christian church or the Jewish synagogue.

With the arrival in the West of the so-called “Baggage Buddhists,” the immigrants who brought their religion with them from countries such as China, Vietnam, Tibet, Korea, Thailand, Cambodia, and Sri Lanka, for example, the New World became increasingly more exposed to Buddhism and Buddhist iconography. The monks from these countries soon followed the immigrants to establish temples that would cater primarily to the religious needs of these groups, with emphasis on the cultural traditions that accompanied them.

It took a while for the various ethnic Asian monks to learn English (if they ever did, and unfortunately many still haven’t), and Westerners were somewhat made to feel welcome, but their presence was – and still is – rare in many Asian temples. In the early days, those Americans and others that were brave enough to show up in the various Asian temples were not taught the difference between the Asian culture of the temple – and the teachings of the Buddha.

The two were intertwined and mixed together so that some American devotees thought they had to somehow “become Asian” in order to absorb Buddhism and become Buddhists. Many of the early monks who arrived in the West (some newcomers today, too) were unable to separate the Buddha’s teachings from their native culture. They made a point of teaching their country’s traditions (to wear shoes or remove shoes, for example) alongside the Buddha’s teachings, and the Americans were confused when they visited different ethnic temples and discovered they all had different “rules.”

I first came to America in 1976, and was one of the first to found a temple on the West Coast in 1979. From the very beginning I made it a point to reach out to American friends, but many of the temples, for one reason or another, disregarded our host population, usually using the language barrier as the reason. Over the years I discovered several ways to attract Americans to my temple. I am going to share some of these ways here, which represent proven methods of integrating the Buddha’s teachings into Western culture:

• The Buddha’s teachings are universal and for all places and all times. The first thing we have to do to integrate Buddhism into Western Culture is to make this fact known – loud and clear. We should try to keep the Asian cultural symbols and artifacts to a minimum in our temples, learn English, and learn our host Western cultures so we can adapt to them – instead of the other way around.

• Most Westerners first approached Buddhism though their attraction to meditation; this is still the primary draw. The monks in all temples should be fully-versed in this subject, and well-trained in the art of training others in the practice.

• The monks in the West should also teach the practical benefits of Buddhism, and not just meditation. The Buddha offered us countless ways to practically improve our lives, and these ways need to be taught to Western students.

• It is very difficult for a Westerner to become a Buddhist monk or nun. In my 36 years in America I have only ordained two American men as monks (it is interesting to note that I have ordained 15 women as nuns). Being a Buddhist monastic in America is a drastic and unfamiliar path for Westerners to take. Thirty-two years ago I instituted a three-step pathway for ordaining lay people as fully-certified Buddhist ministers (Bodhicari), which are comparable to Protestant or Jodo Shinshu ministers. This system has been very successful, and we now have many excellent, highly-qualified male and female lay ministers who can teach Dhamma classes, conduct weddings and funerals, give meditation instruction, and serve the Buddhist community in a host of useful ways. The three-step program is based on progressive levels of Buddhist education, commitment, teaching experience, and Precepts.

• An important reason this system has been effective, and has attracted dozens of initiates, is because we early-on recognized that Westerners are independent by nature, and do not like to depend on others. Asian Buddhist monks, however, because of our cultures, are dependent on our ethnic communities for support (e.g. food, donations, etc.). The lay ministers we have ordained have, for the most part, maintained full-time careers while they perform their ministerial duties on the side.

• Finally, Asian temples must learn to appreciate the female members of their congregations, and give them equal status with their male counterparts. At my temple I make a point of assigning key roles to females during ceremonies, such as having a young girl carry the relics on her head during a puja procession. I know that in Sri Lanka this is contrary to custom, but I feel that we must expand our acceptance of females in all facets of society, including temple society, which I’m certain is something the Buddha would have intended for citizens of the 21st Century world.

The above examples are just some of the ways we can begin to more fully integrate Buddhism into Western culture; I’m sure there are many more. I continually attempt to educate the Asian Buddhist clerics in America on this subject, and more and more I am able to sway them to an understanding of the realities I have expressed above. I invite you all to think of new ways we can reach out to our Western friends, and please let me know your ideas.

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Ven. Walpola Piyananda will be presenting this as a paper and speech in Taipei next week at a conference at Taiwan People's University.

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Preserve Tibetan culture, Karmapa tells Tibetans

"Your main duty is to guard and preserve Tibetan culture and religion," the Karmapa said while addressing over 8,000 Tibetans, who are in this Buddhist holy site, about 110 km from Patna, to participate in the Kalachakra initiation for world peace.

"It's also the duty of us Tibetans in India and other free countries to let the world know what is going on within Tibet," the Karmapa added.

Recounting the relationship that Tibet shared with India, the 26-year-old Buddhist monk said: "We received the Buddha 'dharma' directly from India. Now, many of us have settled here in exile. Therefore, I do not need to tell you how close and profound this relationship between Tibet and India is."

"The hardships you were willing to undertake to come here to this holy place shows very clearly the deep sense of devotion and affection that we Tibetans feel for India," said the Karmapa, who usually resides in a monastery near Dharamsala town in Himachal Pradesh.

The Karmapa, who fled Tibet and sought refuge in India in January 2000, is the spiritual head of the Karma Kagyu school, one of the four sects of Tibetan Buddhism. He is considered the third most important Tibetan religious head after the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama. (IANS)

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