Monk fights UK university over inheritance

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Sedgwick, Maine (USA) -- A Zen Buddhist priest, longtime social justice advocate and author of a leading manual on prison chaplaincy, has come to legal blows with the University of Nottingham, claiming in a U.S. court that the U.K. institution wrongfully used duress to convince his father to bequeath the entirety of a $3 million estate to the school while leaving the priest and his two disabled children with $5,000.

The Rev. Kobutsu Malone, whose prison and death row chaplaincy has led him to numerous states, asserts in the action in the New Jersey court, that his father, Kevin B. Malone, a Roman Catholic who never attended The University of Nottingham, was moved to cut off his only child and grandchildren only after the priest wrote a letter detailing sexual, physical and emotional abuse he and his classmates suffered while enrolled as students at New Jersey's Bergen Catholic High School in the 1960's. 

"The Execution of the Holy Spirit" (which can be viewed at http://www.bergencatholicabuse.com) was published in 2002, and was later posted to a blog on the Internet.  Several dozen other former Bergen Catholic students, now men in their sixties, some prominent in the local community, have added their own first-person accounts of enduring sexual abuse at Bergen Catholic similar to that recounted by the Rev. Malone.

Unbenownst to the Rev. Malone until after his father's death in 2011, Kevin B. Malone removed the Rev. Malone and his two sons from his Will 32 days after "The Execution of the Holy Spirit" was published.

http://www.ethelandkevinmalone.com/

In documents filed with the court, the Rev. Malone has argued that his father disregarded his deceased wife, Ethel's, wishes that their estate should be divided between their son and two grandchildren. A pair of reciprocal wills made by the Rev. Malone’s parents in 1997, granted the remainder of their joint estate, now totaling over $2 million, to the Rev. Malone and his two minor children.

The documents charge that Kevin B. Malone changed his will six times following his wife's death, erratically changing both beneficiaries and executors.  For a time, Oxford University was to have been a beneficiary but was ultimately bested by the University of Nottingham, after a vigorous campaign by the institution.

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Female Buddhist monk walks a pioneering path

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Bangkok, Thailand -- I'm sitting in the back of a taxi on the way to a Buddhist monastery outside Bangkok. I will be living with the monks for the next seven days. This won't be a travel brochure kind of spiritual experience. I know the monastery is on a busy highway in a poor neighbourhood. There will be more car horns and exhaust than dolphin music and scented candles.

The other thing I know is that the leader of the female monks is a tough character. Before she was ordained, she was a high-profile academic with her own talk show on Thai television. Her nickname was 'Stone' because she was so hard. She was sharply dressed and had painted fingernails that would make a Kardashian look twice.

Now, all that has changed. The glamorous professor has become a Buddhist monk – frugal with her possessions but not her ideals.

I peel myself from the sweaty, sunken seat of the taxi as I arrive at the monastery. Several dogs greet me with half-hearted barks, the kind only contented dogs can give. They lazily zig-zag around my feet as I walk towards the entrance. I slip off my shoes and place them in a rack near a small gate. Ceiling fans hum in a large open-air dining room with a sharply pitched roof.
Wat Songkhammakalayani temple in Thailand

The female monks are all outfitted the same, with mustard coloured robes, bare feet and shaved heads. But it's easy to see who is in charge. Venerable Bhikkhuni Dhammananda walks towards me; she's tall for a Thai woman, her build is strong and straight.

"Welcome, welcome," she says.

I'm not quite sure how to greet a monk. I clumsily clasp my hands together, prayer-style in front of my face. She returns the gesture, gracefully. She's had plenty of practice dealing with people who don't quite know how to react.

"In the airport toilets, I hear the women saying, 'How dare she wear the robe?' I come out and smile and say, 'I am a female monk. In Buddha's time both male and female monks wore the same kind of robes.' I talk with them, it is an educational tool for me. They don't expect that I would answer. Luckily I have the height and I speak to their eyes. They are high-class women flying, it is always in the airport toilet that I have this kind of conversation."

It's only mid-morning but it’s almost time for lunch. Ven. Dhammananda explains the monks don't eat after midday because they don't wish to appear greedy. Much of their food is donated by families in the neighbourhood.

I've come prepared, in case I get hungry. Every time I move my backpack, I can hear the crinkle sound of the packets of biscuits I've got stashed inside. I feel like some kind of junk-food smuggler. The monastery dogs eagerly sniff my luggage. Venerable Dhammananda gives me a knowing look.

The deal for the next week is that I will live, eat, work and pray with the female monks. Every afternoon, Ven. Dhammananda will meet me in the library for an hour so I can interview her about her life. I'm given the rules for my stay - don't kill any living creature, don't speak falsely, don't take what is not given to you, don't commit sexual immorality or become intoxicated. Unless a Hollywood bad boy drops in for some rehab and a spiritual awakening, I'm guessing there won't be any temptation.

I've got the monastery guesthouse to myself. The ceiling fans rotate at helicopter speed. I lie flat on my back on the neatly made bed and doze, while the monks quietly study during the hottest part of the day.

By late afternoon, I join the monks working in the garden. I scrape up leaves from the lush trees, with a cheap plastic rake that bounces over the ground. My arms are glistening with a mix of sweat, mosquito spray and sunscreen. As I work, I hum my nanna's favourite song, Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man. I'm off in my own world. It's not until I stop raking that I realise the monks are working silently and dutifully. I'm a bit embarrassed.

After the gardening is finished, I follow Ven. Dhammananda to the library. As she talks, I can get a sense of her past and present blending together. Left to her own devices, she is naturally quick and even impatient. But her faith has tempered her. She explains that as a Buddhist she needs to keep her mind positive. Not just in theory but in reality, moment by moment.

"His Holiness, the Dalai Lama said, 'we don't know which one comes first - the next life or tomorrow.' Has it ever occurred to you? We don't know when we are going to die - it could be tonight.

"The minute before you pass away is very important in our Buddhist practice because that minute or that second when you are departing, if you are holding onto something good, good thoughts, then you go to the good place. Unless we practise on a daily basis, on an hour-to-hour basis, we cannot be sure that when that minute comes that we will go that direction.

"I don't know when I'm going so I have to be careful all the time, Sally. It is logic, isn't it?"

But keeping peaceful thoughts hasn't always been easy. Ven. Dhammananda was the first woman in Thailand to become an ordained Theraveda Buddhist monk. Theraveda means 'doctrine of the elders'; it’s one of the largest movements in Buddhism and is popular in countries including Sri Lanka, Cambodia and Thailand.

Ven. Dhammananda’s decision to seek ordination was hugely controversial. She was criticised by conservative Buddhist leaders, who said it was wrong for women to wear the robes. Ven. Dhammananda had to travel all the way to Sri Lanka for the ceremony, because no male monk in Thailand was willing to conduct it.

"I knew exactly what I was doing so I never wavered when people said something. There was not one single monk who would tell me in front of my face. So I said, anyone who speaks behind my back, that is considered unsaid. You have to come and speak to my face, then I will explain to you.

"The day that I ordained, I didn't see myself after they shaved my head. It was a very long day, I was very tired. I went to sleep. I had one of the deepest sleeps in my life. Then when I got up, I went into the washroom. I just happened to walk past the sink and above the sink was a mirror. I should have thought I looked strange with all my head shaved. But I thought, I have seen you before, it was that kind of feeling. It was not a shock."
Monks from the Wat Songkhammakalayani temple

Ven. Ven. Dhammananda's mother, pioneering educator Voramai Kabilsingh, established this temple in 1960. She was a strong, strident woman who followed her beliefs rather than convention. She rode her bicycle all the way to Singapore in the 1930s, as the only female member of the local Scout troop.

Voramai was educated by Catholic nuns. She was passionate about education and faith; she published a Buddhist newsletter from a homemade printing press and set up a makeshift school in her house for nuns and monks who were uneducated.

She shaped Ven. Dhammananda’s childhood more than anyone else.

"We slept together on a cotton mat. I would fall asleep watching her writing. That is my first picture of my mother, always a writer.

"My father, he was a politician. He did not stay with us; he belonged to the south, so most of the time he would be down south and he would come up only when the parliament was open.

"We lived in a small house in Bangkok. My father was well-to-do but when we moved in, we moved in on our own. He was not supporting us. My mother was the only breadwinner.

"I was eight years old. She would ask me to get up with her and the two of us would be meditating. I did very good, because they say that as young kids you don't have many worries, not like older people. I started very young. Maybe my mother might have seen that I would be the one who would have this."

Two years later, Ven. Dhammananda's mother took the first steps towards lower ordination, as far as a Thai Buddhist woman could go in the 1950s.

"She didn’t tell us anything. She was not the type to discuss anything with her kids. She was not the kind of mother who would talk with you and play with you. It was very strange but none of us spoke. We were inside the barber shop, we were waiting for her. There was no communication. I guess we were all stunned I think. I was feeling strange and I was conscious that people were looking at us because my mother was having her head shaved.

"She said, 'My duty as a mother does not stop with my ordination.' This is a very profound sentence because men, when they receive ordination, they always leave their families. But, if my mother had left us I would have been a street kid. So instead she turned the household into a temple. I was 10.

"There were white-robed women but the white-robed women were almost looked down on by the people. People thought maybe they had no place to go, maybe broken hearts. Mostly they were not educated, they had only four years of formal education."

My mother was not happy with the status of women at that time, she wanted to give education. She was looking for a piece of land outside Bangkok but close enough to go back to work. So, this is what we found and we have been here for 48 years."

    I like to be a feminist but I like to be a happy feminist. I cannot be an angry person.

It was the first temple in Thailand built by women, for women. As an adult, Ven. Dhammananda supported the project but was also establishing her own career. She taught religion and philosophy at Bangkok's most prestigious university for 32 years.

In 1983, Ven. Dhammananda was invited to speak about Buddhism at a women's conference at Harvard University in the United States. It was a turning point. She wanted to bring many aspects of feminism back to her homeland. But, she could see a big gap in culture. She could also see it was time to stop writing about Buddhism and start practising it.

"That conference was full of mostly feminists, very strong feminists, lots of anger and lots of crying and weeping. Some of the strong-headed feminists had been put in prison for many years. I agreed with the cause of what they were doing but I didn't want to be like them, I didn't want to be angry.

"I like to be a feminist but I like to be a happy feminist. I cannot be an angry person. If I am angry, what I am doing is to shoot out negativity from me and it's not healing you, it's not healing me.

"If we do the way the Western feminists do, we will never achieve anything in this culture. In Thai culture we do not confront. There is no win–lose. The other party may know they are wrong but they will not accept it because they lose face."
Thai Buddhist monk alongside busy road

That's the kind of battle Ven. Dhammananda has been fighting. She didn't read the local Thai newspapers for two years because the media campaign against her ordination was so strong. Instead, she decided to lead by example.

But that's a big challenge for a woman who is so determined and driven.

"I thought anybody who could not keep up with me was too slow, until I realised I had been moving all by myself - I needed to move with the group. If I am teaching my community to move with me, I need to be with them. That is the greatest training and that is the most difficult thing.

"You see, some people who work on social causes, they have breakdowns because they see so much injustice - there is a lot of injustice done to women.

"I see a lot of feminists who are unhappy; they are shouldering the suffering of the women of the whole world.

"If we hold so much on our shoulders, we will be suffering ourselves and by suffering ourselves we are not helping anyone. This balance is very crucial for all of us. Each day is the balance between how can I benefit the world and yet how can I nourish myself."

The monks start the day with meditation, before dawn. They sit in rows in a small room upstairs. Their backs are straight and their eyes focused forward. I'm given a cushion, because the floor is hard. I can hear the hum of early-morning traffic on the highway outside as the monks start chanting. The sound is gentle and rhythmic, it folds over itself syllable by syllable.

I'm not quite sure what I'm supposed to be thinking. My mind swirls and wanders. I'm hungry. Rather than going deep into meditation, I'm thinking about lamb chops. Ven. Dhammananda looks over at me as I change my sitting position on the floor, because my movement is distracting. Morning after morning and night after night, I do my best to chant along. But meditation eludes me completely; instead it's Eat, Pray, Chops.

That afternoon, I confess to Ven. Dhammananda, that I'm not really having a spiritual awakening during the chanting. She smiles and admits her mind wanders sometimes too, but when it all works well, it's worth the wait.

"It doesn’t happen every time but certain days are superb, really."
Monk holds an offering pot during procession to collect alms

It's Mother's Day. Local women are coming to the monastery to have lunch and receive blessings. Later in the afternoon, one of Ven. Dhammananda's adult sons pays a visit. He greets her warmly but respectfully – she is mother and monk to him, the mothering hasn't stopped.
Monks from the Wat Songkhammakalayani temple in Thailand

Later that afternoon, when we sit in the library, Ven. Dhammananda explains her decision to leave her husband and seek ordination.

"My husband was not angry but confused maybe. I think the time had come where I had to choose my life, what was meaningful for me.

"I felt a little bit of guilt, yes. We had been married more than 30 years. My husband is now settled with another woman, so I feel at ease. My youngest son was 24, so I didn't feel guilty for leaving them."

Ven. Dhammananda has told her story many times but she is patient with my questions. For all her strength and toughness, there is vulnerability. She says that before she was ordained, she was desperately lonely, even though she was surrounded by her family. Something was missing. Being a wife, mother and professor wasn't enough anymore.

"One night, I was waiting for my sons, they were all grown up. It was about six o'clock in the evening. I was living in this big house and I was stretching my neck, looking out the window, waiting for them and wondering when they would return. I thought, no, this is not going to be my life.

"In Buddhism we talk about renouncing the world. Suppose I waited until I was 60 and I didn't renounce. That is not renouncing. You have to be at the height of the material world and then you leave - that is renouncing.

"The most beautiful thing about it - I am happy. It has become such a natural part of me."

The sunrise on Saturday morning is rumbling red, the air is already hot and humid. The monks and nuns have freshly shaved their heads, ready for their weekly alms round, when they receive offerings from the community and give blessings in return. The monastery dogs howl as Ven. Dhammananda leads the monks out the gate.

It's an almost silent procession. The monks wear identical flip-flops on their feet and walk quietly in single file. One follows with a white cart to collect the offerings. They only stop when they are invited to. Even if someone is standing on the roadside, holding out a bowl of rice, they don't assume it's for them until it's offered. There's no preaching.
Thai woman holds teddy bear as she receives a blessing

"We have been walking like this for seven years. I should get tired of it. Every day we go out, there are always new faces. Something beautiful happens along the way. Our pushcart is full. In the beginning, we started with only one route and then the people in another direction heard about us."

People bow their heads as they offer containers of freshly cooked food. I can smell basil, chilli, coriander, lime and jasmine rice. A frail, sinewy woman in a wheelchair clutches a teddy bear as she receives a blessing from Ven. Dhammananda. Other family members form a human chain, holding hands as if the blessings will travel from one to another like electricity.

"There is one particular woman who literally has to touch me after putting an offering. I give blessing, she touches me just to make sure she could rub off something from me. It is very funny.

"Religion is never complete without the participation of women. We complement each other. Are you comfortable on a chair with only three legs, when it should be four? This is the kind of education we need for the local people for them to realise that one is missing. This is very important.

"I feel sorry for us women, that we have been framed. People who really frame us are so happy that they really keep us there. But there are many more wonderful things beyond these boxes."

Ven. Dhammananda leads the monks and nuns home. Some of the monastery dogs have escaped and join the procession. They trot with confidence and take on any of the street dogs along the way.

The monks cast elongated shadows on the walls and roads as daylight arrives. Their posture is straight, their hands are clasped. Without the donations from the community, the monks would have nothing to eat. It's a weekly exchange and demonstration of trust. The monks assist some of the most vulnerable in the neighbourhood and provide a sanctuary for those who seek faith. In return, they are nourished by the community.

Ven. Dhammananda has fought hard to get here. She likens strength to a rice plant that sways above the ground. If the plant is not supported by roots that run deep and wide, it will fall over when the wind blows. Ven. Dhammananda says if women feel trapped by their circumstances, they need the courage and determination to bring change.

"My message is this: number one, the way out is possible; number two, you have to start; number three, you have to start now because everyone is waiting for everyone else to start, so it never gets started. You can do it.

"I have never been bothered by what people said because I know they are speaking out of their unwholesome mind. People are negative about me but it will eat them up. Negative things never nourish a person so they cannot do it for a long time. You must be certain of this. Negative thoughts will never, ever last.

"People say all kinds of things but it is only their lips. That's it. If you are swayed by what people say then you can never, ever do anything."

Source: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-03-28/mama-asia-thailand/4599176

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Buddhist Monk returns to Hopkinsville Community College

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HOPKINSVILLE, KY. (USA) -- For the 4th year, Buddhist Monk Venerable Tsering Phuntsok will visit the campus of Hopkinsville Community College beginning the week of April 1. According to Dr. Ken Casey, Tsering will be reunited with the group of students and faculty who visited with him last summer at his home in Dharamsala, India as part of the Study Abroad group from the college.

Tsering Phuntsok has been a practicing Buddhist Monk since 1987. He has studied in the Nyingmapa tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, receiving training in Buddhist scripture and philosophy, meditation, ritual and lama dancing and music. Tsering has received teachings from His Holiness the Dalai Lama. While the Study Abroad group from HCC was in Dharamsala last summer, they were able to participate in the birthday celebration of His Holiness.

Tsering facilitates cultural exchange programs between the Tibetan community and U.S. college students to improve the lives of Tibetan refugees and Indian locals. The soft spoken man with quiet and engaging energy and humor works to explain Buddhist Dharma so as to enable alleviation of suffering and generation of compassion.

On April 3 at noon in the HCC Auditorium, the Religion and Philosophy Club of HCC will present a talk entitled Loving your enemies: Buddhist and Christian Perspectives, featuring Tsering and Dr. Ken Casey, local religion and philosophy professor. Dr. Casey received his Ph.D at Vanderbilt University in Philosophy and his M.Div from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

The men will compare and contrast practices within the two belief systems, and address two questions why should we love enemies and how we can love enemies when it seems to be contrary to human psychology. Tsering Phuntsok will use the teaching of Shantideva and the Dalai Lama to give the Buddhist perspective while Dr. Casey will use the teaching of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux to set forth the Christian perspective.

Dr. Pat Lake, interim president of HCC said, HCC welcomes the return of Tsering Phuntsok to campus. We celebrate the diversity of our campus and community by supporting his visit.

While in Kentucky, Tsering Phuntsok will visit with faculty and students at KCTCS institutions in Elizabethtown, Madisonville and Louisville.

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Fanatical Buddhist Monk Saydaw Wirathu Calling for Boycott of Myanmar Muslims

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Yangon, Myanmar -- Buddhist Monk Saydaw Wirathu, the self-styled "Burmese bin Laden", has called for a national boycott of Muslim businesses in Myanmar in a controversial video that emerged on YouTube.

Wirathu, who has led numerous vocal campaigns against Muslims in Burma and was arrested in 2003 for distributing anti-Muslim literature, urges Burmese people "to join the 969 Buddhist nationalist campaign" and "do business or interact with only our kind: same race and same faith".

"Your purchases spent in 'their' (Muslim) shops will benefit the Enemy," says Wirathu. "So, do business with only shops with 969 signs on their facets".

The numerology of 969 is derived from the Buddhist tradition in which 9 stands for the special attributes of Buddha; 6 for the special attributes of his teaching or Dhamma and 9 for the special attributes of the Sangha or Buddhist order.

In the footage filmed from Mandalay's Ma-soe-yein teaching monastery, Wirathu accuses Muslims of entertaining ties with the military junta that ruled Myanmar for five decades. The apartheid-like speech stirred shocked reaction on Twitter, with users calling the monk a "neo-Nazi" inciting anti-Muslim pogroms in Burma.

Wirathu played an active role in stirring tensions in a Rangoon suburb in February, by spreading unfounded rumours that a local school was being developed into a mosque, according to the Democratic voice of Burma. An angry mob of about 300 Buddhists assaulted the school and Muslim-owned businesses and shops in Rangoon. The monk said that his militancy "is vital to counter aggressive expansion by Muslims". He has also been implicated in religious clashes in Mandalay, where a dozen people died, in several local reports.

Sectarian clashes erupted this week in the central Myanmar city of Meikhtila, where mobs of Buddhists, some led by monks, have attacked a Muslim neighbourhood leaving at least 20 people dead.

"Buddhist monasteries have been distributing leaflets that were critical of Muslims on various things, and that has been going on for months" said Burma Campaign UK's director Mark Farmaner. He maintains there were individual reports, around 10, of monasteries around Rangoon and in the Rakhine state distributing anti-Muslim leaflets.

Muslims in Myanmar represent the 4 percent of a total population of 60 million, according  to government census. However, according to the U.S. State Department's 2006 international religious freedom report, the country's non-Buddhist populations were underestimated in the census. Muslim leaders estimate that as much as 20 percent of the population may be Muslim.

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Bhutan Makes Condoms Available To Buddhist Monks To Stop Spread Of STDs

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Timphu, Bhutan -- Health officials in the tiny Buddhist kingdom of Bhutan are making condoms available at all monastic schools in a bid to stem the spread of sexually transmitted diseases and HIV among young monks who are supposed to be celibate.

"We are making condoms freely available everywhere, even in monastic schools and colleges," Bhutan's minister of health, Zangley Drukpa, said in a phone interview. The ministry, he added, has formed a special action group to deal with STDs in monasteries.

Warning signs of risky behavior among monks first appeared in 2009, when a report on risks and vulnerabilities of adolescents revealed that monks were engaging in "thigh sex" (in which a man uses another man's clenched thighs for intercourse), according to the state-owned Kuensel daily.

The health ministry got concerned when a dozen monks -- including a 12-year-old -- were diagnosed with sexual transmitted diseases a year later, Kuensel reports. At least five monks are known to be HIV-positive, the youngest being 19.

The 2012 report of the U.N. agency focused on AIDS response and progress also noted cases of HIV among Bhutan's monks.

Bhutan's Commission for the Monastic Affairs says stricter discipline is a solution. While corporal punishment is banned, monks told Kuensel it is still practiced.

"It is believed the cane, the whip and the rosary represent the Bodhisattvas who personify wisdom, compassion and power, which are needed to discipline," the commission's health and religion coordinator, Tashi Galey, told the newspaper.

Psychiatrists suggest the spread of disease could be a result of mental stress. It is not uncommon for monks and nuns, mostly between the ages of 15 and 25, to visit psychiatrists. Even senior monks show symptoms of severe stress, especially when they are undergoing long periods of meditation, Dr. Damber Kumar Nirola told Kuensel.

"About 70 to 80 percent of (senior) monks are obese, hypertensive and also suffer from back ache because of their sitting posture and sedentary lifestyle," urologist Lotay Tshering told the paper.

Geography also plays a role. Most hilltop monastic schools lack recreational facilities. "Getting space for playgrounds is difficult, but we provide volley balls and badminton rackets," the commission's secretary, Karma Penjor, told Kuensel.

Bhutan, a landlocked nation of about 700,000 people sandwiched between India and China, is the world's only officially Buddhist country, and has about 388 monastic schools with 7,240 monks and 5,149 nuns.

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Bogus monks are rightly scorned and loathed by the Hong Kong community

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Hong Kong, China -- It is a familiar story to any resident in Hong Kong – the peculiar sight of a monk wandering around begging for alms, regardless of the time of day.

<< Bogus monks at Lam Kwai Fong

The only problem is that these monks probably changed into their so-called robes a few hours before the arrived in the city; they are mainland beggars and charlatans crossing the border to cheat potential donors of their money. They infest the high streets and harbors of Hong Kong, from Central to Tsim Sha Tsui. Their eyes fake friendliness, but cannot pretend to be filled with love and knowledge of the Dharma.
The cruel irony in the transaction between a victim and a bogus monk is that every rule of Buddhist dana (generosity) is turned on its head: the donor receives no karmic merit because the donor is not actually giving money to an ordained monastic. The entire traditional impetus for generosity is therefore nullified and violated.

Likewise, because the beggar does not belong to a real sangha, was not ordained by any qualified master, and indeed has lied about his loyalty to this 2550 year-old vocation, he will not only squander his donor's cash for non-Buddhist reasons, but suffer post-mortem retribution for such lies. Such natural law, declared the Buddha himself, is the price for deceiving not only laypeople, but the true Buddhist sangha.

Until that day of remorselessly inevitable karmic justice, the Hong Kong community's revulsion and disgust at these men is perfectly understandable. This scorn is shared by almost every sector of society regardless of religious affiliation. To be clear, they deserve to be looked upon with suspicion because they bring disrepute to the name of Chinese Buddhism, not because they are beggars. Indeed, it is a sorry situation that these professional beggars see no way to survive except through deceiving people. For their sake as well as the reputation of Chinese Buddhism, it is important that the local authorities and, ultimately, the Chinese Government, adopt policies that give these men economic opportunity and the chance to be genuinely productive, dignified members of society.

It is another tragic irony that in ancient Buddhism, monks were forbidden by the Buddha to work, in order to force them to interact with secular society by begging for alms and teaching the Dharma in return. The Blessed One thought that this was a fool-proof way to ensure a harmonious, give-and-take relationship within the Fourfold Community of monks, nuns, laymen, and laywomen. What a travesty that these beggars should take up Buddhist robes but not Buddhist principles and - just like the early sangha of the Buddha's days - end up begging.

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Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, Kicks Off World Tour In Chicago To Guide Conversations On Fostering Peace

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Honorary Co-Chairs Mayor Emanuel & President Preckwinkle With Youth & Community Leaders Combat Youth Violence Through Lens Of Peace During Featured Youth Congress on Peace

CHICAGO, USA -- The Sakyong Jamgon Mipham Rinpoche, a recognized global leader in peace initiatives and the highest leader of Shambhala, kicks off his four-city international speaking tour with a weekend-long conference in Chicago,Imagining Peace, hosted by The Shambhala Meditation Center of Chicago, focused on identifying ways to foster peace at individual, community and societal levels.

<< Sakyong Jamgon Mipham Rinpoche

The Imagining Peace Conference will be held from Friday, April 26th through Sunday, April 28th, 2013, and will open with a talk from the Sakyong at Rockefeller Chapel at the University of Chicago, followed by Saturday's featured program, a Youth Congress on Peace, at Malcolm X City College and conclude on Sunday with the Sakyong's discussion on Peace Practices at Malcolm X City College.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle will serve as Honorary Co-Chairs of the Imagining Peace Conference and Saturday's featured program, a Youth Congress on Peace, to engage a broad community of youth, community members, advocacy groups, civic and community leaders in dialogue to envision peace for our streets, schools, neighborhoods, communities, cities and regions.

"The goal of the Imagining Peace Conference and the Sakyong's world tour is to facilitate contemplation on the Shambhala belief in the inherent goodness of all beings and to use this principle to guide dialogue on how we, as individuals, communities and as a society, can create peaceful practices to address societal challenges, such as violence, and youth violence in particular," said Tom Adducci, Executive Director, Shambhala Meditation Center of Chicago.

"By applying this principle, we can impart a socially transformative culture and practice that can strengthen our communities and bring about the best in human society."

The Imagining Peace Conference is the Sakyong's first stop on his Creating an Enlightened Society world tour with programs sponsored by Shambhala centers in four cities including Chicago, London, New York and San Francisco.

The conference provides an opportunity for the Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, head of the Shambhala Buddhist lineage and spiritual director of Shambhala, to share his teachings on the principles of Shambhala and engage the community in dialogue about applying these principals in social action and cultural practices.

For more information, please visit: http://www.thinkincstrategy.com

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