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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Clover Park High grad returns as ordained Buddhist monk

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Tacoma, Washington (USA) -- \The Vietnamese Buddhist Meditation Center sits on 6 acres on the edge of Tacoma’s East Side and houses a temple, monastery and recreation room.

<< Jo Jo, a Buddhist monk, lives and works at the Vietnamese Buddhist Meditation Center in Tacoma. He was raised in Tacoma, graduating from Clover Park High. LARRY LARUE/STAFF WRITER

It’s also home to a rarity - a Buddhist monk born in the West.

That the venerable Jo Jo came to Tacoma is natural. He was raised here, under another name, in what seems like another life.

“I was born in San Diego, but when I was 6 months old, my father went to Vietnam,” Jo Jo said. “My mother came to Tacoma. It’s where I was raised. It’s my hometown.”

Now 45, Jo Jo studied Buddhism in America for more than a decade, then left his life in the West, going to South Korea to learn more. When he returned to Tacoma late last year, he was an ordained monk.

It was a strange, winding path, one that began years before he attended Clover Park High School. Along that path, he worked in a half-dozen Northwest casinos as a dealer and pit boss. For four years, he was married.

“If you want to know what Buddhism means to you, give it up,” he said. “When I began to study under different teachers - in Tacoma, Seattle, Los Angeles - it made me want to learn more.

“When I came home last year, I lived with my father. He didn’t understand my choice, but he didn’t reject it,” said Jo Jo, who declines to give or use his American name.

How did he come to the Vietnamese temple?

“There are other Buddhist temples in Tacoma. The Cambodians have their community. The Koreans have their own temple. The Japanese have a temple in downtown Tacoma. There is a Thai temple in Auburn.

“This is the only temple here with a monastery.”

The abbot, Thich Phuoc Toan, is a Vietnamese immigrant who came to the United States as a monk in 1980 - the same year Jo Jo, then 13, began researching Buddhism.

“I was fundraising for the Los Angeles temple and came to Tacoma,” Toan said. “There were about 30 to 35 families here who begged me to start a temple - the refugee community had nowhere to worship.”

Toan came to Tacoma in 1994 and opened a small temple with donations and loans from the Vietnamese community. In 2001, he sold that to put a down payment on land where the new one sits.

“This land was a chicken farm,” he said.

The center is more than a place to meditate. Volunteers teach Vietnamese children their native language and culture. Toan teaches Buddhism and conducts rituals for weddings and funerals.

When Jo Jo visited, Toan opened the monastery to him.

“I’m a member of the Taego order,” Jo Jo said. “I don’t know if other Westerners are surprised I’m a monk. The Asian community is often surprised that I’m a monk. Most Western monks go through it - we’re still not 100 percent accepted.

“I found a website that said there were only 40 Western-born monks in the United States. I know one of them.”

Jo Jo fits in with the Tacoma temple.

“My emphasis is on meditation, not ritual. There are Asian monks who do the rituals here already,” he said. “We are trying to reach out to the Western community.

“I’m going to teach a class this fall at the University of Puget Sound, and Pacific Lutheran University is interested, too.”

Spreading the message of Buddhism has come a long way since the first temple was built in the United States, in San Francisco in 1896. Today, Jo Jo has a website. And a blog - Jo Jo’s Two Cents Worth.

And he’s pursuing a master’s degree in Buddhist studies online through the University of Wales.

Like all monks, he lives on donations - as does the temple he is now part of. When he announced to the congregation one Sunday he was going to pursue his master’s degree, there was an outpouring of support, he said.

Toan sells paintings and calligraphy to help support the temple, and all monks fundraise to pay expenses.

“We live simply,” Jo Jo said, “so we don’t need a lot.”

Vietnamese Buddhist Meditation Center
2625 72nd Street E.
253-536-4996

MORE ONLINE
Website: www.venjojo.org.
Blog:http://jo2cents.wordpress.com

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Buddhism: A teaching of substance, not just forms

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A personal insight into a typical Malaysian Chinese who are Buddhist, how and what makes them to be what they are today

Petaling Jaya, Malaysia -- A Malaysian who is born into a Chinese family is most likely to follow the religion of his parents.  This does not necessary apply to all, but it is safe to say that to a certain extent  a large numbers of Chinese who live in Malaysia follows their parent’s faith. It is rather sad that when the baton is passed down there wasn’t really much knowledge being transferred except for traditional rituals.

<< A Malaysian Buddhist of Chinese ancestry praying at a Thai Temple (Wat)

Our parents and forefathers were born in the era of hardship. They were economic refugees facing difficulties due to China’s Culture Revolution and the battle with the Japanese army during the 2nd world war. They sought greener pasture by migrating to Nanyang (South East Asian countries). They came in big numbers and they have brought along with them their way of life, culture, food, language, beliefs and religion.

In time of such hardship, where much energy was spent rebuilding their lives, not much care were used to cultivate the teachings of their religion and culture.

Recently I heard this from a lady over dinner. She said, “It‘s just that my mother did that and so I followed along”. That’s how the younger generation adopted the way of life in Malaysia. This has been the norm and not much has changed. Many are still continuing what their forefathers have been doing for over half a century ago.

However, over the last 5 decades the economy in Malaysia improved and so have the people’s living standards. Agricultural advances and industrialization took place and people were elevated from poverty. The younger generation were getting proper education and soon their generation became more astute with regards to their sense of belonging.

Trends were changing and many young Chinese boys and girls took up Christian/Western names. It was cool to have a Christian name because many educated ones have already taken-up Christianity. By donning a Christian name one was perceived to have also been converted to be a Christian. Conversion was regarded as learned and cultured.

Those who did not speak English and do not have a Christian name were seen as “jinjang” (notorious) and not very smart. All this happened in the 60s, 70s and 80s.
Fast forward to today, this trend has lost its glamour. Not everyone clamours to have a Christian name, although many still converted to Christianity. To some extent this has been done with the price of bad mouthing Buddhism. This happens because there is a lack of understanding of the true teachings of Buddhism.

Confusing Buddhism with Taoism

There are a lot of things that caused such trends to be associated to Christianity. Let’s examine some of the causes.

Many locals confuse Chinese temples such as this one as Buddhist temples  >>

When we were young and first entered school, our parents needed to register us. The school system segregated us in terms or race and religion. We must get an identity and belonged to a certain group even though we were born in the same country. That’s how it worked before, and even now. Our parents had to register a religious label for the children even though many do not know much about their own religion.

It is easy to select a race grouping for your child because there is a box for each race Melayu (Malay), Cina (Chinese), India (Indian) and “dan lain-lain” (others). But when it comes to religion, most Chinese parents would tick “Buddhism”, because the choices were limited. You can only choose to be a Muslim, a Christian, a Hindu or a Buddhist. There weren't any other boxes to tick. So if you were a Taoist, you had to tick “Buddhist”.

Most Chinese Malaysian parents would tick “Buddhism” as a religion for their kids, not knowing that there was a world of difference between Buddhism and Taoism. For those who are not familiar, most Malaysian Chinese living here practices Taoism and lives by values as taught by Confucius.

Buddhism which originated from India is a lot different if we compare it to what is practiced by local Chinese families. Confusion came about when people misunderstood Buddhism for Taoism and Chinese culture. People on the streets then have no idea what Buddhism is.

Fears and confusion

During the Chinese New Year celebrations, people celebrate with joy to usher a brand new year. This is an auspicious occasion and such practice is acceptable to people from around the world. However, one part of the celebration where the Chinese light-up the fire crackers and make LOUD noise which disturbs the neighbourhood is something to look at.

Sometimes it is done in a “Chinese tokong” (temple). My Malay friend who lived next door asked me why Buddhists are noisy people. The Malay family need to endure the loud firecrackers once a year when it is a Chinese New Year.  I replied him, “Tuan (Sir) this has nothing to do with Buddhism.” It only took me only 5 minutes to explain and he understood.

There was a case I heard recently from a lady who was giving her testimony after converting to Christianity a few months ago. She is in her early 50s and said that she had a hard time living by the rules of Buddhism. In her story she related a tale about how she had suffered for 21 years. Her first child was a baby boy and he was born on a New Moon day.  The priest of a Chinese temple told her that due to the fact that her son was born on a New Moon day. She has to come to the temple and make offering of incense and pray to the God every time it is a New Moon day. So, she did that for years. Obviously she jumped on the chance to end this troublesome ritual when she was informed that she doesn't have to do that if she converts herself into a Christian.

Who could blame her for taking up Christianity at that instant? It is a pity that she has to religiously bring her son to the temple once a month for 21 years.
But this is not a Buddhist practice. Buddha did not instruct anyone to make offering at a temple if a baby is born on a New Moon or Full Moon day. You can never find this in any sutta. It is so unfortunate that this lady was misled and caused her so much trouble for so many years. What a pity.

These are just two examples of how Buddhism has been wrongly accused for unwise rituals. There are hundreds and perhaps thousands of stories to showcase how Buddhism has been wrongfully conjured.  But it brings better value to this article if I could share what Buddhism is.

Core teachings of the Buddha

For many years the Buddha walked the vast land in the North east of India, he taught people to be good. The Buddha’s teaching are revolved mostly around the Four Noble Truth. In the First Noble Truth, the Buddha declared that there is an existence of suffering. He also described the three evil roots that caused these suffering in great details in the Second Noble Truth. Off course he showed us the way to overcome greed, hatred and illusion.

In the Third Noble truth the Buddha stated that this suffering can be stopped. The Fourth Noble Truth described a formula designed by the Buddha to end suffering. This formula is called the Noble Eightfold Path. And if a person follows this path, he has a good chance of getting out of the cycle of death and rebirth.

In the Noble Eightfold Path, a practitioner starts-off by having the right view. By having the right understanding, it will be able to provide the right thoughts, right speech and right actions for himself. This helps the practitioner to train his mind to act mindfully. Other areas he should put into practice is for him to have a right livelihood, put in the right effort, right concentration and right meditation.

The ultimate goal of a Buddhist practitioner is for him to eradicate defilements in his mind. Stop the flow of craving in his mind, acquire knowledge of the nature and be free of any desire of wanting to be reborn again. Upon achieving this, he will cease to be re-born and thus attains Nibanna.

Buddhism also emphasises on the need to cultivate wholesome values in a person. The foundation is morality. Strong morality will give rise to wisdom. This will then give good concentration of the mind.

The Mind

Due to the fact that we have to find success by ourselves, then we have to go to where all things begin. And all things begin in our mind. Hence, a big portion of the Buddhist teaching is placed on the development of the mind.

In the Malay language, the word for human being is manusia. The word manusia is borrowed from the word manusa in Sanskrit, an ancient Indian language. The word Manusa is made up of two root words mano and usa. Mano means the mind. And usa means potential. When the words are put together, manusa means a human being that has a mind that could cultivate to its full potentials.

That’s what we are. A human being with a mind that has an unlimited potentials.

Developing the Mind

It’s like when you buy a lap top computer. It is made up of hardware and software. You have the Acer computer as the hardware and Microsoft Windows 8 as the operating software.

Likewise, in a human being we have the body as the hardware and the mind as the software. But we (human being) is far more superior than a lap top. We are loaded with four types of software instead of only one OS in a computer.

The four types of human software are, one “sense organs”. This is the driver that processes the information received from external and direct them into our mind. Two, we have the “perception” software. This driver is similar to the hard-drive in a computer. It stores the memories as well as processing the information when it’s called to recognize a voice, a sight, a smell, a taste and a touch. The microprocessor chip in the human mind is a thousand times faster than a super computer.

Three, we also have the “emotion” software. This driver allows us to express our feelings accordingly.  And lastly the fourth software that we have is called the “volition” software. This is a very powerful driver. It is the main software in a human being where all our intentions, volition, decision (whether it’s good or bad) are made here.

Buddhism teaches you to develop the thoughts that are generated from your mind. It teaches you how to manage your mind, how to process your thoughts and respond correctly so that any volitions and intentions that you have in your mind are manifested through wholesome speech and wholesome action.
This is the practice of a Buddhist, creating wholesome deeds.

Do not be confused

I hope people will do some research before jumping into a conclusion and drag certain foolish practices into Buddhism. The effect of misconception about the true teaching of Buddhism will adversely affect those who genuinely wish to embrace this way of life.

Buddhism is a teaching that has a lot of substance and not just form.

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Bugs Tan is a third generation Chinese living in Malaysia. A devout Buddhists, he gives Dharma talks around the Klang Valley. He is easily one of the most prolific inventors in Malaysia. He is an outstanding creator with 15 national innovation awards. In 2007 he won the most respected tribute for an inventor in the country. That is the National Innovation Award which was presented to him by the Prime Minister.

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New Hartford Buddhist Temple Celebrates 30 Years

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NEW HARTFORD, CT (USA) -- More than 100 people were on hand on Sunday afternoon to celebrate 30 years for the Dae Yen Sa International Buddhist Temple and Meditation Center and the ordination of two new monks.

<< Master Dae San Dasa leads a monastic ordination to welcome two new monks. This ordination took place at the Dae Yen Sa International Buddhist Temple in New Hartford as the temple celebrated its 30th anniversary. John Berry - Register Citizen

The temple, which was founded in Torrington in 1983, moved to its current location 20 years ago.

A Korean Buddhist temple, Dae Yen Sa welcomed Eduardo Barrios and Aaron Doyle as monks during an ordination ceremony that included prayer, food offerings, acceptance of the five Buddhist precepts and singing with the more than 100 guests inside the building located on Kinsey Road. A food reception followed the ceremony, to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the temple.

Doyle, who’s Buddhist name is Bo Kyung Sunim, said being ordained as a monk is a new beginning. Doyle is from New Hartford.

“I’m excited to be beginning again,” Doyle said. The ordination was the culmination of eight years of service to his temple, and he said he’s still realizing the reasons why he decide to become a monk. He called it a process.

He said his goals were, “to deepen my practice and increase my motivation,” and that he looks forward to practicing his religion with the community.

“The support is a wonderful feeling,” Doyle said, speaking about the many people who saw and enjoyed his ordination at the temple. “There’s a certain amount of nervousness in the air, but having that support really kind of made it even out.”

Simply translated, “Sunim” is Korean for “teacher” and title is bestowed upon monks once they are ordained.

“It was just 10 years ago today or so that I was here and ordained. It was a wonderful day,” said Ban Ya Sunim, a monk. “I look forward to seeing the new monks create more monks and spread Buddhism throughout Connecticut and the world. If there’s ever been a need for it, there’s a need now.

Ban Ya Sunim was one of several other monks who oversaw the ceremony, which lasted about three hours. The ordination ceremony was led by Master Dae San Dae Sa from South Korea.

“Don’t be like Buddha, but be Buddha,” Ban Ya Sunim said before receiving an applause from the audience.

Lorein Cipriano is a member of the temple and a volunteer, one of about 30 present during the celebration.

“Some of the (volunteers) are connected to a temple in upstate New York, so a lot of those members came,” Cipriano said.

Her Buddhist name is Kong Duk Hang, which she said means “one who takes care of everyone.” She helped sell t-shirts and welcome guests inside the temple. She is also a teacher at the temple. She teaches Qigong, a 13-part exercise that helps strengthen the body and mind, Cipriano said.

“A lot of these people, some of them are from Korea, came here for this anniversary and for the ordination,” Cipriano said.

A monastic ordination welcomed new members of the temple to complete the day’s celebrations inside the temple. A majority of the guests and members then walked outside to enjoy a vegetarian meal.

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Buddhism beyond the nation state

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London, UK -- Concern with the limitations imposed by presuming contemporary geo-political divisions as the organizing principle for scholarship is not new, nor is it limited to Buddhist studies. Jonathan Skaff opens his recent Sui-Tang China and Its Turko-Mongol Neighbors: Culture, Power, and Connections, 580–800 by quoting Marc Bloch’s 1928 address to the International Congress of Historical Sciences (1928): “It is high time to set about breaking down the outmoded topographical compartments within which we seek to confine social realities, for they are not large enough to hold the material we try to cram into them.”

Skaff is not alone in his intention to overcome “the normal practice of professional historians to take the nation-state as the primary unit of analysis.” At the recent Association for Asian Studies (ASA) conference, four scholars, each in their own way, spoke to the constraints imposed by privileging geo-political categories as the structures by which Buddhism is apprehended, raising issues directly relevant to the discussions made here regarding the rhetorical and lexical consequences of categorizing Buddhism according to the convenient artifice of the nation-state.

They propose instead to explore Buddhism in the broader context of Asian history as a civilization that introduced new social institutions and languages, established new agricultural technologies and trading relations, and transformed the environment beyond national borders and ethnic categories.

Reflecting on the problematic organizational hierarchy of contemporary Buddhist studies, which employs regional categories based on the ‘area studies’ model subdivided further into national categories, David Gray (University of Santa Clara) questions the category Tibetan Buddhism. In his essay “How Tibetan is Tibetan Buddhism? On the Applicability of a National Designation for a Transnational Tradition,” he points out that today there is no Tibet to which this label can refer.

Additionally, arguably the majority of practitioners of “Tibetan” Buddhism neither are ethnic Tibetans, nor do they speak or read Tibetan. More significantly, while Tibetans considered themselves Buddhists and had a sense of Tibet as a distinct geo-political category, “they simply did not conceive of their tradition in nationalistic terms.” Since there is no equivalent for “Tibetan Buddhism” in premodern Buddhist literature from Tibet, Gray suggests “Vajrayana.”

This is itself an emic category (rdo rje theg pa), and also identifies a form of Buddhism that stretches across many national boundaries. Thus, it allows for further designation as needed, but without precluding meaningful comparisons. For example Kukai and Tshong Khapa can be juxtaposed as Vajrayana teachers, rather than separated as Japanese and Tibetan respectively.

Anya Bernstein (University of Michigan) further examines the way in which Buddhist social identities can be both formed by and recognized in terms of lineage and reincarnation, rather than nationality or ethnicity. In her essay “Indigenous Cosmopolitans: Mobility, Authority and Cultural Politics in Buryat Buddhism,” she focuses on two ethnically Tibetan monks from the (new) Drepung Monastery, who are recognized by Buryat Mongolians as having Buryat “roots.” The first is a reincarnated Buryat lama who had gone to Tibet in the late 1920s and died while incarcerated by the Chinese. He reincarnated in a Tibetan expatriate family in Nepal, and is now a member of the Drepung monastery. The second was the disciple of a Buryat monk. Both lineage and reincarnation serve to establish connections with the Buryat Buddhist community on bases distinct from nationality or ethnicity.

That the convenient nation-state model is inadequate for an accurate in-depth understanding of Buddhism in the context of Asian history is also made obvious by Tansen Sen (Baruch College, City University of New York). Focusing on the works of several figures from the 1920s and 1930s, Sen shows that the idea of peaceful cooperation between India and China on the basis of Buddhism was invented by projecting back the contemporary nation-states into the ancient past. The consequence of constructing this imaginary history is that the contributions of all the other peoples - Sogdians, Tokharians, Uighurs, and so on - were left out. Instead we find “simplistic models and misperceptions that continue to have considerable impact on contemporary views about the pre-colonial interactions between South Asia and the region that is now within the borders of the People’s Republic of China.”

While the epistemological issue of contemporary intellectual concerns molding historiography is well-recognized, Sen reveals something more blatant. The political goals held by individuals in the early twentieth century created a pan-Asianist rhetoric, including a mythology of peaceful relations between two continuously existing unitary nations. The representation is false on both counts; not only were the relations not peaceful, but the contemporary nation-states also do not constitute continuous political entities stretching back to the second century CE. This representation was created to serve divergent political purposes. When the goal was resistance to the European colonial powers, Japan was included as part of the pan-Asianist rhetoric. When the goal was China requesting India’s help in resisting Japan’s invasion, the rhetoric was restructured to emphasize only the Buddhist connection between these two countries.

Johan Elverskog (Southern Methodist University) has addressed the ecological impact of Buddhism across the entire landscape of Asia in a paper entitled “The Buddhist Exchange: Irrigation, Crops and the Spread of the Dharma.” The term “exchange” here, borrowed from environmental studies, refers to the way expansion of human societies transforms the environment by transmitting new crops and agricultural technologies from one region to another.

Clearing the misconception of Buddhism as inherently environmentally friendly, a “green” religion, Elverskog then provides a panoramic overview of the impact of the expansion of Buddhism across the entirety of the Asian continent. The expansion of the monastic institution was not simply a “religious” event, but included introducing wet-rice agriculture, and irrigation technologies into new regions. This affected vast regions across Asia, simultaneously creating population growth and the conditions for urbanization. Seen thus, Buddhism is not only a collection of abstruse doctrines, but a complex social institution affecting people’s lives and transforming the environment in very concrete ways across national boundaries.

As organizing principles, lineage and reincarnation can work across ethnicity and nationality. “Tibetan Buddhism” is neither emic to premodern Tibet, nor does it identify a presently existing nation-state, nor were the forms of Buddhism called “Tibetan” ever delimited by either ethnic or national boundaries. The mythology of Buddhism as a peaceful bridge between India and China ignores the important roles played by other groups that were the links between the two.
The Buddhist civilization that spread across Asia brought new crops and new technologies. The categories that have long served to organize Buddhist studies have been largely based on nation-states, giving us such familiar categories as Chinese Buddhism, Thai Buddhism, Korean Buddhism, or Tibetan Buddhism. The recent work by these scholars and others reveal that such categories are problematic. While there may be particular research programs for which they are appropriate, they cannot simply be presumed and used by default.

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Richard K. Payne is the Dean of the Institute of Buddhist Studies at the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley; serves as Editor-in-Chief of the Institute’s annual journal, Pacific World; is chair of the Editorial Committee of the Pure Land Buddhist Studies Series; and is Editor-in-Chief of Oxford Bibliographies in Buddhism. He also sporadically maintains a blog entitled Critical Reflections on Buddhist Thought: Contemporary and Classical.

See more at: http://blog.oup.com/2013/08/buddhism-beyond-nation-state-geo-political-division/#sthash.x6d637f8.dpuf

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Letter: Sharing an interfaith experience

Sometimes when I feel particularly wicked, especially in an American context, I will casually mention that I have attended a celebration of the Prophet Mohamed's birthday at a Shiite mosque. This never fails to raise eyebrows even with some American monks.

If the truth be told, all the monks of our temple went as well, along with two monastics from the Tibetan tradition. I went because of an Iraqi imam whom I had met earlier - he reminded me of a Jewish grandfather, led a mosque of Iranians and Iraqis and thought that my name was Mr. Soto Zen.

I went to the mosque with three preconceptions that seem foolish in hindsight. I thought that no one would speak English, that the women would be suppressed and that people would be "touchy" ,as we say in Newfoundland. I found that we were shown around by young people who spoke excellent English, the women were very outspoken and fearless in their views and that we were made very welcome with baklava and coffee.

I have also participated in interfaith events with a Muslim woman who is a good friend and a Sufi. She is a professor of classical Arabic and chants the Koran at public events.

Therefore Islam to me is not an abstraction, it is these people whose presence in the world I cherish.

Imagine, if you will, an enormous mountain, so high that the top is wreathed in clouds. That is mount Carmel, Sumeru, Sinai, Ararat.

We come towards this mountain from many different directions with
our different maps of the journey - bibles, torahs, korans, sutras, suttas, that have led us to the foot of this mountain. The foolish ones circle around and around the base quarreling over who has the best map. The wise, on the other hand, just start to climb. The farther up the mountain they go the more they are simply grateful to encounter other people there.

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India, Thailand maps Buddhist historical sites

The map would not only contain Buddhist archaeological sites but also detailed information which tourists usually seek such as accessibility, visiting times, nearby accommodations, and relevant historical information.

In addition, the map would also enable users to discover lesser-known archaeological sites spread across South East Asia.

Some of the historical sites which will be included in the map are: Bodh Gaya, Sarnath, Sanchi, Ajanta in India, Lumbini in Nepal, Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa in Sri Lanka, Ayutthaya in Thailand, Ankor Thom in Cambodia, Borobudur in Indonesia, Nara in Japan and Lung-men caves in China.

According to Baisakhi Sarkar, Deputy Director at the National Atlas & Thematic Mapping Organisation in Kolkata, the agency has formally started working on the map a month ago after receiving approval from the office of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

With 11 nations contributing data to the joint initiative, Sarkar estimated that project to be completed within two years.

?While eight countries including Vietnam, Thailand and Myanmar have already joined the league, others would join in soon. The issue is being discussed at the government level with those countries,? Sarkar said.

To prepare the map, experts are taking the help of satellite images from Cartosat - an Indian earth observation satellite.

?Even though we are now including only the existing archaeological sites, in the future, new sites which are being excavated and discovered by archaeologists would be included in the map,? he said.

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