Tag Archive for ‘Buddhism’ at Asian Window

« Older Entries

Tag Archive for 'Buddhism'

The Tantric sex in Avatar

Published

asianwindow

on March 8, 2010

in Movies

. 0 Comments

Asra Q. Nomani at The Daily Beast:

A precursor to Hinduism and Buddhism, the ancient philosophy of Tantra dates back some 6,000 years to the Dravidian culture that flourished in the Indus Valley cities of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro in modern-day Pakistan, seeping later into the religious traditions of India, Nepal, and other parts of the region. Its tenets of goddess worship, self-discovery, and spiritual liberation resonate in Avatar, from the Neytiri’s deity-like qualities to Jake’s journey of self-identity. Avatar’s climax is actually not the Tantric sex of their consummation, but a moment that comes later, when they do something modern-day Tantric sex experts call “soul gazing,” and racier sexperts call “sex gazing.”

The Tantric theme in Avatar follows a tradition of Eastern philosophy in popular culture. Consider Star Wars’ iconic line, “May the Force be with you.” Writing the script for that film, director George Lucas became influenced by 20th-century thinker Joseph Campbell, whose encounter with Hindu aesthetic Jiddu Krishnamurti years earlier sparked a lifelong passion for Hindu thought. More:

In light of Nalanda

Published

asianwindow

on March 4, 2010

in Culture, Education and Heritage

. 1 Comment

Modern-day Nalanda / Photo: Namit Arora

The ruins of one of Asia’s great centres of learning still inspire travellers. Namit Arora in Himal Southasian:

Nalanda University arose in the early fifth century, during the reign of Kumara Gupta, though references to precursor sites associated with teaching and learning go back another thousand years, to the time of the Buddha and Mahavira. Between Xuanzang and Yi Jing, we have a compelling portrait of the university’s curriculum, the life of the monks, the buildings and the general features of the community.

Nalanda was more like a school of higher learning than an undergraduate college. Prospective students had to be at least 20 years old, and submit to an oral exam for university entrance. They had to demonstrate deep familiarity with a host of subjects, and with old and new works in many fields. Only around a quarter of prospective students were admitted, and even they were promptly humbled by the calibre of their teachers and co-students. When Xuanzang visited Nalanda, there were 8500 students and 1500 teachers in 108 residential monasteries, which often had two or more floors. Excavations have revealed exquisitely carved temples and a row of ten monasteries of oblong red bricks directly across from a row of stupas in brick and plaster. Rooms typically had chairs, wood blocks, small mats and utensils stored in wall niches. Yi Jing approvingly wrote that each year before the monsoon, the best rooms were awarded to the eldest members in the community.

Some of the best teachers not only taught but also composed treatises and commentaries, much as Xuanzang himself did later in life. Many acquired great fame, and a Nalanda education held serious cachet among the public. Teachers lived among the students in the monasteries, common features of which included a podium for lectures, a communal brick oven, bathrooms and a water well (often in octagonal cross-section, supposedly inspired by the Eightfold Path, one of the Buddha’s central teachings). Water clocks guided daily routines, and gongs were used to signal the start and end of events, services and ceremonies. “There are more than ten great pools near the Nalanda monastery,” wrote Yi Jing. “Every morning a ghanti is sounded to remind the monks of the bathing-hour.” For their daily exercise, the monks went for walks in mid-mornings or late afternoons. Their dinner typically included bean soup with butter, rice and vegetables, perhaps also ghee, honey, sugar or a seasonal fruit such as mango. More:

Who killed Gautama Buddha?

Published

asianwindow

on February 28, 2010

in Books, Faith and Religion

. 0 Comments

New research reveals the dark truths on the life and times of Buddha. Sheela Reddy in Outlook:

Seven years ago, when Buddhist scholar and former monk Stephen Batchelor embarked on a search for the real Siddhartha Gautama, rooting through over 6,000 pages of the Pali Canon — the oldest set of texts on his teachings, which provide glimpses into his social and political world — perhaps he didn’t even dream of the Buddha that would emerge from his research. Far from the picture we have of Siddhartha as a prince who grew up in a palace, who renounced it all and became the Buddha, attracting the rich and powerful as well as hundreds of monks and nuns by his teachings, until one day he just lay down and died, Batchelor’s portrait of the Buddha “is not that simple”.

In his new book, Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist, to be out in the US early March, this author of eight other books on Buddhism claims the Buddha was a man whose teachings were regarded by his contemporaries as not only radical, but “queer” enough for him to be denounced by one of his own former disciples as a “fake”, who not only managed to win the patronage of the three most powerful political figures of his time, but was worldly enough to survive in the midst of court intrigues, murders and betrayals, effectively quelling a rebellion within his own flock before he was done in by the ambitions of his own family.

But it is Batchelor’s findings on the Buddha’s last days that are the most startling: in the last 10 months of his life, Batchelor says, the Buddha, old and ailing, saw his two main disciples die, one of them brutally murdered, and was forced to flee with a handful of loyalists from all the three political bases he had spent a lifetime building up, until he was possibly poisoned to death by one of his many rivals, leaving a pretender to take over the community after an intense power struggle. More:

The monk who sold his pictures

Published

asianwindow

on January 14, 2010

in Art and Faith

. 0 Comments

Monk memorizing under mango trees. Photo copyright: Nicholas Vreeland

Twenty-five years ago, Nicholas Vreeland, grandson of legendary fashion editor Diana Vreeland, left New York for the quaint Rato Dratsang monastery in Mundgod, Karnataka, to become a Buddhist monk. When he returned home, his brother gifted him a Nikon camera. Vreeland discovered a passion for photography at 15, when he assisted noted photographer Irving Penn and spent a summer working with another cameraman, Richard Avedon. At Rato Dratsang, Vreeland rarely used the camera, except to photograph his surroundings. “I did not want to be the monk who went around taking photographs,” says Vreeland, 55, as he chooses 20 pictures shot at Dratsang for an exhibition at Delhi’s India International Centre.

Photos for Rato are on exhibit (click here to see the photos) at the India International Centre Annex in New Delhi from 13-18 January.

More here, here, here, here. Click here for Rato Dratsang Foundation.

Richard Gere serves up a haven for vegetarians

Published

asianwindow

on January 10, 2010

in Faith, Food, Heritage, India and Religion

. 0 Comments

Actor and Buddhist activist backs campaign to make the Indian town of Bodhgaya a meat-free zone. Andrew Buncombe in The Independent:

View Larger Map

Richard Gere, the Hollywood actor who has spurned red meat for the past 30 years, has thrown his support behind a plan to transform the site of Buddha’s enlightenment into a vegetarian zone to spread the message of peace.

The activist, who is taking part in a five-day training session with the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan Buddhist leader, in the Indian town of Bodhgaya, took part in a candlelit march this week highlighting the campaign. “Bodhgaya is a pious place and I want to come here again,” the star of movies such as An Officer and a Gentleman and Pretty Woman told reporters, after joining around 500 monks and activists who took part in the march. “I am with the people who have launched this campaign.”

According to Buddhist tradition, Bodhgaya, in the state of Bihar, is where Gautama Buddha attained enlightenment around 500BC. Starting in the 19th century, the area gradually become a site of pilgrimage and is now visited by Buddhists from all over the world, whose presence gives it a very different character from the rest of north India’s impoverished “cow belt”. More:

Boston boy is Darjeeling rinpoche

Published

asianwindow

on October 30, 2009

in Faith and Religion

. 1 Comment

From the Telegraph, Calcutta:

Jigme Wangchuk, an 11-year-old boy based in Boston, was today enthroned near Darjeeling as the reincarnation of Gyalwa Lorepa, a monk who passed away in 1250 AD.

The boy has now become a rinpoche (high priest) of a Buddhist sub-sect called Drukpa that traces its lineage to Kagyu. Kagyu is one of the four schools of Tibetan Buddhism. The Dalai Lama belongs to another sect called Gelugpa but is revered by the entire Tibetan community as he is its spiritual and political leader.

Just as the Dalai Lama is known as the 14th incarnate, the boy will be revered as the Second Gyalwa Lorepa among the sect’s followers who number lakhs and spread over mostly Ladakh, Nepal and Bhutan. More:

The Abode of the Righteous

Published

asianwindow

on October 12, 2009

in India and Travel

. 0 Comments

Aditya Dev Sood at 3quarksdaily:

As we walk off the tarmac, the moon shines full and bright, lending the dark clouds of night a blue-black shimmer, a haunting presence. I hope this is an auspicious welcome to Bihar, the heart of that other India, which is not shining with the glow of liberalization and globalization of the past two decades. I’m here to set up fieldwork for a healthcare initiative in several rural districts of the state.

I get into the white Ambassador that has been assigned to me. The driver heats his engine for a bit, before coaxing it fully to life. kaun hotal chalaile? who hotel I get-go ya, he asks me, as we turn out of the airport parking lot. The language seems sweet, pleasing to my ears and easily disarms the gruff and combative khadi-boli attitude that I bring with me from Delhi. As we pull up to the ITDC hotel, my driver gestures to me to be careful in opening my door, lest I disturb the several women in their finery, who are even now getting out of a Maruti van and making their entrance into the hotel. The moment is striking for the sublime attunement that many Biharis seem to exhibit, towards one another’s consocial wellbeing. It is as if they have all known one another in generations past, which, in fact is true, given the long and continuous record of civilization in this region.

The word Bihar derives from vihara, monastery, truncated from brahmavihara, literally ‘an abode for the righteous, the benevolent, the kind.’ Bihar was the first monastic state, of which the Buddhist polities of Tibet, Sri Lanka and Thailand are contemporary, perhaps vestigial, examples. The region was once crosscut by a network of vihara-s, which provided religious, educational, health, and other social services to the laity around them. They served as an essential social and institutional infrastructure for the region’s ancient empires, the least of their functions having been the provision of hospitality for pilgrims, traders and visitors on official business to any local region. More:

Shoot for the legs

Published

asianwindow

on September 16, 2009

in Faith

. 0 Comments

In Guernica, Robert Thurman, the West’s first Tibetan Buddhist monk on his friend the Dalai Lama, the nuance of forceful resistance, and how Hitler could have been defeated without violence:

Robert Thurman’s journey toward his own inner peace-which he admits he hasn’t “fully mastered, of course” -began in 1961 when he lost his left eye in an accident. His becoming one of Time’s Twenty-Five Most Influential Americans also likely followed from this accident-as a result of which, Thurman dropped out of Harvard, divorced his wife-an heiress unsupportive of his new zeal-and wandered, quite literally, through India, Iran, and Turkey. While wandering in 1964, Thurman met the Dalai Lama (a.k.a. His Holiness), and thus began the remarkable friendship that thrives today. The Dalai Lama invited Thurman, who had become fluent in Tibetan in ten weeks, to Dharamsala, the seat of the Tibetan exile community, and arranged for him to study Buddhism with his own senior tutor. The following year, Thurman was ordained by His Holiness himself-taking 252 vows that focused on a philosophy of nonviolence, compassion, and selflessness-making him the first Tibetan Buddhist monk born in the West.

Eventually, Thurman became homesick and returned to the States. An outsider now with his shaved head and maroon robes, his desire to help others was thwarted by his skepticism over “the usefulness in American society of trying to help others as a monk (as opposed to a layperson in a university).”

Convinced he would be of more benefit as a teacher, he resigned his vows, returned to Harvard, earned three degrees, and embarked upon academic life, all without giving up his rigorous daily Buddhist practices. He married Nena von Schlebrugge, a model and Timothy Leary’s former wife; they had four children, one of whom starred in the ultra violent films Kill Bill: Vol. 1 and Kill Bill: Vol. 2, Uma. More:

Waiting for reincarnation at a spiritual birthplace

Published

asianwindow

on August 26, 2009

in Faith, India and Religion

. 0 Comments

Some speculate that the birthplace of an especially immortalized Dalai Lama of centuries past may be where the next Dalai Lama comes from. Edward Wong in the New York Times:

Urgelling Monastery, Arunachal Pradesh, India, the birthplace of the Sixth Dalai Lama

Urgelling, India – He drank wine, cavorted with women and wrote poetry that spoke of life’s earthly pleasures.

He was the Sixth Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of the Tibetans and reincarnation of Chenrezig, a deity embodying compassion.

He would sneak out of the Potala Palace in the heart of Lhasa, the Tibetan capital, for midnight trysts. He renounced his monastic vows in the middle of his stewardship of Tibet. He was later kidnapped by Mongolian warriors allied to the Manchu Chinese court and died in captivity about three centuries ago at the age of 33 – or so one story goes. Another tells of his winning his freedom and wandering the Tibetan lands as an ascetic.

So goes the legend of Tsangyang Gyamtso, one of the most popular historical figures among Tibetans and the most colorful of the long line of Dalai Lamas. His poetry is among the most iconic in Tibetan literature. More:

[Image: Map / NYT; Monastery: Brahmaputra Tours]

Buddha’s savage peace

Published

asianwindow

on August 20, 2009

in Conflict, Sri Lanka and Travel

. 0 Comments

Robert D. Kaplan in The Atlantic:

A relic containing a tooth of Buddha, Kandy, Sri Lanka. Photo Travir / cc

I had always wanted to go to Kandy, for no other reason than that I was in love with the name: so airy, fanciful, and obviously suggestive of sweet things. I first found Kandy on a map of what was then called Ceylon, decades ago as a young man. Little did I know that it would one day have urgent revelations for me, more dark and poignant than sweet.

My journey began at Colombo’s crumbling train station, with its white facade like a cake about to melt. The first-class ticket cost a little more than $3 for the three-hour journey from Sri Lanka’s steamy Indian Ocean capital, through deep forest, to an altitude of 1,650 feet. The rusted railway car rattled and groaned its way uphill. Soon banana leaves were slapping against the train as we entered a relentless tangle of greenery.

The forest thickened with the crazy chaos of dark hardwood foliage. Vines choked every tree. The torrential rain of the southwest monsoon invigorated the pageant, shrieking and beating against the leaves as sheets of mist moved across the jungle. Then came swollen brown rivers, with water buffalo half sunk in mud near the pottery-red banks. Here and there the forest would break to reveal a shiny, rectilinear carpet of paddy fields, only to close in again, denser than before. I saw scrap-iron hutments and tiled rooftops the color of autumn leaves, and smoky blue hillsides creased by waterfalls and half-eaten by gray monsoon clouds. Other breaks in the forest revealed the occasional bell-shaped Buddhist dagoba, or stupa, with its soaring-to-heaven whiteness against the otherwise fungal-green tableau. As we drew near to Kandy, we passed through several narrow tunnels. In the pitch black, the creak of the train reverberated against the rock walls. More:

Bhutan’s unique identity

Published

asianwindow

on July 8, 2009

in Bhutan and Travel

. 0 Comments

Paro Airport, Bhutan

John Julius Norwich in the Financial Times:

The first surprise was Paro airport – and no more beautiful airport building exists in the world. Here was our first sight of traditional Bhutanese architecture – long, and fairly low, surmounted by the traditional three flat wooden roofs laid one above the other, diminishing in size pagoda-style; the walls snow-white, but with all the windows and the entire central section a riot of astonishingly elaborate and brilliantly painted woodwork.

Outside the airport, Hishey was waiting – fortyish and full of charm, enviably sophisticated, his unaccented English as good as ours. He had arranged our trip, planned our itinerary and provided the minibus in which we were going to travel. A superb naturalist and ornithologist, one of the world’s leading authorities on cranes, he can instantly identify any animal or bird. The journey along the valley to our hotel was only 20 minutes but we broke it to watch an archery contest. Two teams of 11 were taking turns to shoot, one at each end of the range, 120m from each other. Their marksmanship was astonishing, the whole target being roughly the size of our normal black bull’s-eye.

The Gangtey Palace Hotel, the first of the six in which we were to stay, proved to be another show-stopper. Upstairs was a Buddhist prayer-hall, ablaze with every colour of the rainbow. (Never miss the Bhutanese prayer-halls.) The garden, looking out across the valley, offered a glorious view of the dzong immediately opposite. More:

[Image: Douglas J. McLaughlin /cc]

Slipping from Shangri-La

Published

asianwindow

on June 22, 2009

in India and Travel

. 0 Comments

Ted Conover at the Virginia Quarterly Review [via 3quarksdaily]:

The line of forty walkers moved quickly, which was good for keeping warm but bad for keeping my balance. Because we were walking on ice, a frozen river. The Zanskar, walled in on both sides by a towering gorge, is the only winter link between villages in that Himalayan valley and the outside world. And it’s only a link for a little while, in deepest winter, when its surface freezes enough to support human footsteps.

The mountain village of Reru

Zanskar is part of Ladakh-the eastern, Buddhist part of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. At more than 11,000 feet above sea level (with peaks as high as 23,000), the area has long been defined by remoteness. The valley has the feel of a cul-de-sac, because there is only one real road in and out-a dirt track from Kargil, an untouristed and predominantly Muslim town just a couple of miles from the disputed border (or “Line of Control”) with Pakistan, to Padum, the main town of Zanskar. Summers are short there, and the Kargil road is only reliably open four or five months a year, from the end of May to early October. After that, snow makes it impassable and the valley gets very, very quiet. But for a few weeks each winter, when the ice is strong enough, the river provides the Zanskaris another way out-an ice road, a forty-mile trail upon the frozen surface called the chaddar.

The walkers were teenagers, mainly. They had maxed out the educational opportunities in Reru, a village with the area’s largest boarding school, and were taking advantage of the cold to get out of Dodge-to make their way to larger boarding schools in Srinagar, the summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir, and in Leh, the capital of Ladakh, not far from the end of the chaddar at the confluence of the Zanskar and the Indus. They also were taking advantage of scholarships, offered by Europeans sympathetic to young Tibetan Buddhists in this poor part of the world. More:

Unmistaken Child

Published

asianwindow

on June 15, 2009

in Movies

. 0 Comments

From Salon:

No aspect of Tibetan Buddhism is as well-known, or seems quite as mythological to outsiders, as the faith’s apparently literalistic belief in reincarnation. Taken as a whole, Buddhism is such a diverse and wide-ranging religion that it very nearly lacks any central doctrines or dogmas. Many Buddhists could be called nontheistic or even atheistic, and the widespread Buddhist belief in reincarnation takes many different forms. To some Zen Buddhists, for example, reincarnation is primarily a metaphor or a folkloric remnant.

But within the Tibetan Buddhist world, as we saw in Martin Scorsese’s powerful drama about the young Dalai Lama, “Kundun” — and as we now see in Israeli filmmaker Nati Baratz’s remarkable, vérité-style documentary “Unmistaken Child” — reincarnation is unmistakably real. That is, belief in reincarnation is unmistakably real. What are we actually seeing in Baratz’s film, when we watch a group of middle-aged monks identify a 2-year-old from a Nepalese mountain village as the “unmistaken child,” a newly reborn version of Geshe Lama Konchog, a world-famous Tibetan teacher who died in 2001? Like most Western, non-Buddhist viewers, I’m not quite sure, although I definitely incline toward a cultural or psychological explanation. More:

A humble road to the noble truths in India and Nepal

Published

asianwindow

on May 24, 2009

in India, Nepal and Travel

. 0 Comments

The Buddhist Circuit in southern Nepal and northern India has drawn monarchs and monks, relic-hunters and curiosity seekers for centuries. From the New York Times:

WE arrived in time for dinner – rice soup, cabbage and potato curry, roasted wheat and cassia tora tea. Ladling our fill into stainless-steel bowls, we joined the other visitors scattered around the mess hall, careful to keep a respectful distance from our generous yet reclusive hosts: the monks and nuns of the Dae Sung Suk Ga Sa Korean Monastery in Nepal.

Heads shaved and clad in gray robes, they ate silently at their own small table near the kitchen. Then they vanished, only to reappear one-by-one in the upstairs shrine room, which we had entered earlier and where they took the meditation cushions closest to the three golden images of the Buddha, lighted by strings of electric lanterns overhead. We remained in the back.

When the head monk strode in, our worlds finally merged. As he beat time on a wooden instrument, we performed a Korean chant of the Heart Sutra, a traditional teaching on emptiness. Yet what filled the room was full and deep, the atonal harmonies of a Buddhist ensemble – at once jarring, beautiful and transportive. More:

‘I spent 12 years in a cave’

Published

asianwindow

on May 18, 2009

in Faith

. 0 Comments

At the age of 21, Tenzin Palmo swapped her job as a London librarian for life as a nun in a monastery in India – but even that wasn’t remote enough for her. From the Guardian:

Outside her cave

Eventually my guru, Khamtrul Rinpoche, told me to go and practise in the mountain region of Lahaul. It was a lovely monastery, but it wasn’t always quiet. I’d heard about a nearby cave and wanted to go there, but local people said it wasn’t safe. “Men from the army camp will come and rape you,” they warned. “By the time they get up here, they’d be too exhausted,” I said. “I’ll invite them in for tea.” They said there were ghosts, that I’d freeze to death. But I explained the situation to my guru, who said that if the cave faced south and was fairly dry it would be fine. From that point on, I didn’t worry. After all, for centuries, hundreds of thousands of hermits have done exactly the same.

I moved into the cave when I was 33 and was very happy. In most places in the world it would be impossible to feel so safe and confident in isolation. We built up a wall to insulate it in winter, and I had an altar and a store room for food. It was simple but pukka.

I grew potatoes and turnips in the little garden outside. The day was very structured: four times a day I would sit and meditate in a traditional meditation box for three hours, and that’s where I slept, sitting up. More:

[Photo: www.tenzinpalmo.com]

The hip-hop lama

Published

asianwindow

on March 13, 2009

in Politics, Religion and Tibet

. 0 Comments

Jeremy Page from Dharamsala on Karmapa Ugyen Trinley Dorje, the hip-hop lama who is ready to lead the Tibetan struggle. In The Times:

When I first met Ugyen Trinley Dorje, it was hard to imagine that he would one day be hailed as a future leader of the Tibetan freedom movement.

He was 7 years old, sitting on a throne at his monastery in Tibet, surrounded by devotees and incense, and looking a little bemused.

It was 1992 and, while travelling in Tibet, I attended his enthronement as the Karmapa, the third-highest-ranking lama in Tibetan Buddhism, at Tsurphu monastery near Lhasa.

China, Tibetans spar over Buddhist reincarnation

Published

asianwindow

on March 10, 2009

in Religion

. 0 Comments

On the eve of the 50th anniversary of a failed uprising against China that forced him to flee to India, Beijing’s rules on whom to recognize are a source of conflict with the Dalai Lama. Gordon Fairclough reports from Kangpu, China, in the Wall Street Journal:

China’s government and its officially atheist Communist Party are working to boost control over Tibetan religious and political life by taking on a mystical phenomenon at the heart of both: reincarnation.

Beijing’s moves are part of an intensifying effort to build a Tibetan Buddhist establishment more in step with its desires as it seeks to prevent unrest among Tibetans — which is flaring again ahead of the 50th anniversary Tuesday of a failed 1959 uprising against Chinese rule.

The government’s new approach to reincarnation was on display in an unusual recent ceremony at a hilltop monastery here in southwestern China. A senior provincial official, standing before the three-tiered prayer hall, proclaimed that a local monk was the reincarnation of a respected Tibetan lama.

Reuters has an overview of some of the key issues affecting the succession and some potential scenarios.

After the Dalai Lama

Published

asianwindow

on February 5, 2009

in Faith, India, Religion and Tibet

. 0 Comments

Saransh Sehgal in Asia Sentinel. Sehgal is based in Dharamsala, India:

But what happens after the Tibetan Diaspora’s most iconic figure departs the scene? In Tibetan Buddhism, reincarnation is not a life force that passes from body to body. It may lie dormant for an indeterminate period – perhaps years – before a complicated series of omens points to a reborn Dalai Lama. In the meantime, a remay reign. According to the faith, Tibetan religious leaders have been reborn again and again, for at least 750 years, when Kublai Khan, the Mongol warrior, recorded a visit to the isolated Buddhist kingdom. Certainly none of them has been a woman.

The Dalai Lama leads one of several sects, each considered to be a living Buddha, reincarnated in an endless series of new religious leaders. The Chinese have sought to end the practice, somewhat incongruously believing they can select their own reincarnated figures, an interesting belief for a nation that is officially atheist. In 1995, for example, after Tibetan leaders announced that the then-six year old Gedhun Choekyi Nyima had been named the 11th reincarnation of the Panchen Lama, Tibet’s second-highest ranking religious figure, Chinese authorities spirited him out of Tibet and named their own, Gyancain Norbu, in his place.

The other Lhasa

Published

asianwindow

on January 25, 2009

in Society, Tibet and Travel

. 0 Comments

The old Lhasa is gone. In its place is rapid development, new pubs and the latest mobile technology. Yet, Tibetans see themselves distinctly as Tibetans, not a part of a larger Chinese culture. Vijay Jung Thapa takes a trip [in the Hindustan Times].

In 1976 the Beat poet Allen Ginsberg, tripping on a strong dose of yajé, wrote about the ‘Tibet of his imagination’ — a psychedelic account of a secret, shadowy, white paradise up in the Himalayas. Like Ginsberg, the Tibet of my own imagination, spurred by writers from Hedin to Harrer to Hopkirk, had always conjured up a powerful image of Eastern mysticism set against the great brooding mass of the Potala — a place of pure spirit, unsullied by greed or personal ambition.

Five minutes into Lhasa, that illusion lay shattered.

As our van rolled onto a smooth-as-silk eight-lane-wide boulevard, my Chinese interpreter excitedly gushed: “This is our Lhasa.” Outside, glistening glass-and-chrome buildings, plush hotels and supermarkets with bright neon signage floated by. Bulky Prados purred down the uniform grid of roads that go off in all directions and chic women and strutting businessmen dotted the sidewalks and street corners. It was a new landscape where Lhasa meets Las Vegas — minus the buzz and with an unmistakable touch of Chinese kitsch.

Bhutanese take divorce in their stride

Published

asianwindow

on December 27, 2008

in Bhutan

. 0 Comments

From BBC:

“The divorce case is very, very common. If you go to the court, you will see most of the cases are all on divorce.”

It may sound like a comment from Scandinavia – but this is Bhutan and the speaker is a young artist, Barun Gurung. His own parents divorced 10 years ago, when he was 13 and his brother a little older.

“I think during their marriage they used to have small fights which, you know, used to have bad impact on us,” he told the BBC.

“They used to fight and you know my father used to put hands on my mother. So it was quite bad to see that.”

We meet in the studio where Barun works – a collective of artists in the Bhutanese capital, Thimphu, its walls plastered with brightly coloured pictures.

At least one of his colleagues joins in the conversation saying he, too, comes from a family affected by divorce. Marriage break-ups are common in this tiny kingdom. So, too, are love marriages, not arranged by one’s family.

The drama of Miss Tibet

Published

asianwindow

on November 26, 2008

in Tibet

. 0 Comments

In the long-standing conflict between China and Buddhists seeking a return to their homeland, the Miss Tibet pageant is a symbol of defiance. Emily Wax from Dharamsala, India, in the Washington Post:

Choekyapy, a monk, teaches English and Web-surfing skills to Sonam Choedon, 18, who won the crown this year.

The Miss Tibet pageants, seen by many as a showcase of feminine beauty, have been fraught with controversy and drama. Even though the contests take place in a drowsy Himalayan town in India — home to the Dalai Lama and other Tibetan exiles — the Chinese government and some Tibetan elders have pressured contestants to withdraw. It is probably one of the few things that the political rivals can agree on. “Heavy is the head that wears the tiara,” one Tibetan TV station reported.

Unsurprisingly, there are few runners-up in the Miss Tibet pageants. This year, only two entered the contest, which is in its seventh edition.

And the winner was Sonam Choedon, a shy 18-year-old with shiny waist-length black hair and high cheekbones. At 16, she fled her homeland on the Tibetan plateau to Dharmsala, headquarters of the Tibetan Government in Exile.

Lessons in Gross National Happiness

Published

asianwindow

on November 24, 2008

in Bhutan

. 0 Comments

A chat with Bhutan’s first elected prime minister. Emily Parker in the Wall Street Journal:

Jigmi Y. Thinley, Bhutan’s first democratically elected prime minister, describes his five-year term as “a period within which we will have to prove to the people that democracy itself is worthwhile.” That sounds like a lot of pressure. But when I meet Mr. Thinley at the Bhutan Mission in New York City, he seems quite calm. “I’m not losing sleep,” he admits. Mr. Thinley, born in 1950, is wearing a Western suit. He studied in the U.S., and his English is so articulate that it borders on poetic.

Bhutan’s road to democracy was paved by the fourth king, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, who decided that the country’s destiny should not be left to accidents of birth. Bhutan is now a constitutional monarchy, and its fifth king was coronated this month.

Many Bhutanese were initially squeamish about democracy. But the election, comprising of two parties with fairly similar agendas, was remarkably peaceful.

Tibetan exiles back Dalai Lama

Published

asianwindow

on November 23, 2008

in Tibet

. 0 Comments

From BBC:

[vodpod id=Groupvideo.1790142&w=425&h=350&fv=config%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fnews.bbc.co.uk%2Fplayer%2Femp%2Fconfig%2Fdefault.xml%3Fv11%26companionSize%3D300x30%26companionType%3Dadi%26preroll%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fad.doubleclick.net%2Fpfadx%2Fbbccom.live.site.news%2Fnews_asiapacific_content%3Bsectn%3Dnews%3Bctype%3Dcontent%3Bnews%3Dasiapacific%3Bslot%3Dcompanion%3Bsz%3D512x288%3Btile%3D6%26companionId%3Dbbccom_companion_7743840%26config_settings_autoPlay%3Dtrue%26config_settings_showPopoutButton%3Dfalse%26playlist%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fnews.bbc.co.uk%252Fmedia%252Femp%252F7740000%252F7743800%252F7743840.xml%26config_plugin_fmtjLiveStats_pageType%3Deav1%26embedReferer%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fnews.google.co.in%2Fnews%3Fhl%3Den%26tab%3Dwn%26ned%3Din%26q%3DDalai%2BLama%26btnG%3DSearch%2BNews%26config_plugin_fmtjLiveStats_edition%3DInternational%26embedPageUrl%3D%2F2%2Fhi%2Fasia-pacific%2F7743840.stm%26]

Tibetan exiles meeting in India have agreed to back the Dalai Lama’s policy of seeking autonomy, rather than full independence from China.The Tibetan spiritual leader’s approach to continue talks with Beijing received the majority vote at the meeting in Dharamsala, but delegates concluded that if China makes no effort to meet the demands, other options would be put forward.

Click here for another report.

A generation gap in Tibet’s royal family

Jyoti Thottam in TIME:

Khedroob Thondup nephew of the Dalai Lama. AP

“I was seven years old in 1959, and I was studying in Darjeeling,” recalls Khedroop Thondop. “One day my teachers told me that I was to go and receive someone at the train station. That’s when I realized that I was related to His Holiness and that I was Tibetan.”

As the Dalai Lama’s nephew, the eldest son of the Tibetan spiritual leader’s eldest brother, Thondop, now 56, has already led an extraordinary life. He was born in Calcutta, where his father, a political leader in the Tibetan government, had been posted. He went to the elite St. Stephen’s College in New Delhi, got an MBA in the United States, ran a family business for several years in New York City, and then returned to India in 1977 to serve as his uncle’s special assistant. Two years later, he went to Beijing for Tibet’s first negotiations with China, taking notes on the meetings between his father and Chinese supreme authority at the time, Deng Xiaoping. For the last 21 years, he has run a center for Tibetan refugees in Darjeeling and has served three terms in the Tibetan parliament-in-exile.

Born in exile: the young Tibetans of Dharamsala

In the streets of Dharamsala, Sébastien Daguerressar, special correspondent of France 24 channel, got firsthand testimonies from these young Indian-born Tibetans, who dream of winning back a country they have never seen.

Khendrab Palden

He sits on the pavement, facing the temple on Dharamsala’s main road. Teacup in hand and MP3 player in his ears, he takes in the sun. “I’m considering exile,’ he says, anticipating my question. His name is Khenrab Palden, 26, and exile for him is not just a personal goal – it’s a professional one. He is a filmmaker. His parents left Tibet before he was born, he explains. But thanks to the Tibetan community, his parents set up a business and managed to send their son to study in the US.

In Massachusetts, Khernrab studies anthropology, the history of religion, and film. “I feel 60% Tibetan, 20% Indian, and 20% American. My country will be where I make my living. Tibetans are like the Jews chased out of their countries by Hitler.”

Previously in AW: At exile meeting, Tibetans debate independence

The “Buddha” boy of Nepal

Published

asianwindow

on November 13, 2008

in Nepal

. 0 Comments

Ram Bahadur Bamjan looks on as devotees come to seek his blessings. AP

The "Buddha boy." AP

A young Nepalese boy who many believe is the reincarnation of Buddha has re-emerged from the jungle in southern Nepal, and thousands of people have flocked to Nijgadh town, about 100 miles (160 km) south of Kathmandu, to see the boy.

Dubbed the “Buddha boy,” Ram Bahadur Bomjam, 18, became famous in 2005 after his family claimed he could sit for months on end without sleep, food or water. He retreated into the jungle for more than a year, and re-emerged on Monday.

More here:

The Little Buddha of Bara

Keith D Leslie in Nepali Times:

At first, I was skeptical about going to receive darshan from Ram Bahadur Bomzon, ‘The Little Buddha of Bara’. I didn’t want to be part of a human circus. I felt this young man was showing us the way each of us should practice our own dharma in search of greater good, devotion or sanctity-not racing off to see someone else practice theirs. Still, I was intrigued.

So, with friends, we drove over the Tribhuban Rajpath amidst the spectacular backdrop of the Central Himalaya. We first passed an RNA check point in Palung then below Daman drove by young well-armed Maoists chopping down trees. A night-stop at the Avocado Motel in Hetauda, then early next morning we drove to Bara. As we woke, I recalled that exactly one year ago on 2 January I had watched the sun rise driving back to Bangkok after the cremation of our friend, Robin Needham, the former CARE Nepal Director. Now the sun was rising anew with the miracle of life full circle as we were off to see a young boy seeking inspiration and salvation in the jungles of Nepal.

[Keith D Leslie cultivates bamboo and live with his children Joshua, Ezra and Leah Prajna Rose outside Kathmandu.]

Buddhist art

Published

asianwindow

on October 31, 2008

in Art

. 0 Comments

From the Guardian’s series, 1000 artworks to see before you die:

One of Buddhism’s earliest artistic inventions was the stupa – a shrine in the form of a building that was not designed to be entered but to be beheld. The early Indian stupa evolved from Hindu burial mounds and took the form of a hemispheric dome surmounted by a column. The sculptures carved to decorate the great stupa at Amaravati between the first century BC and the third century AD are among Buddhist art’s earliest treasures; their proliferation of narrative scenes strongly resembles Roman and Hellenistic art from the same period. They depict scenes from the life of the Buddha in his incarnation as Siddharta Gautama, a scion of north India’s warrior class who rejected his comfortable life and became an ascetic for seven years, then a teacher who preached the ultimate goal of escaping the endless cycle of rebirth.

Among the key works:

• Sculptures from the Great Stupa of Amaravati, India, now in British Museum (1st century BC to 3rd century AD)
• Sculpture of Yakshi or river goddess from Begram, Afghanistan, now in Kabul Museum (circa 1st century)
• Parinirvana, reclining colossal figure in Cave 26 at Ajanta, India (late 5th century)

Also in the series:

All about Hindu sculpture

Shiva dances. He balances on his right leg, his left raised in a gesture that signifies Release. He gestures with his arms too — all four of them. Each arm is elegantly posed in mid-movement with the flattened palm in a different position, each of which has symbolic meaning — he is saying, “Have no fear.” In one hand Shiva holds the flame of destruction, in another the drum of creation. Around him is a great nimbus of fire, symbolising the cosmos.

Among the key works:

• Stone figure of mother and child from Tanesara in Rajasthan, now in LA County Museum of Art (6th century)
• Relief of Shiva holding a trident and a snake, Malegitti Shivalaya temple, Badami, India (7th century)
• Shiva with Nandi, open-air sandstone sculpture, Durga temple, Aihole, India (8th century)

Is the dream of independence for Tibet now a lost cause?

Published

asianwindow

on October 27, 2008

in Faith and Tibet

. 0 Comments

[Updated with the Dalai Lama's response: see link below]

Andrew Buncombe in The Independent:

Why are we asking this now?

Over the weekend, his Holiness the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibet’s Buddhists and the man who has been at the centre of efforts to highlight the Tibetan cause for decades, explained that he “had given up” his struggle. “I have been sincerely pursuing the middle-way approach in dealing with China for a long time now, but there hasn’t been any positive response from the Chinese side,” the 73-year-old told an audience at Dharamsala, the Indian Himalayan town that is the headquarters of the so-called Tibetan government-in-exile. “As far as I’m concerned, I have given up.”

Does that mean the Dalai Lama is retiring?

Karma Choephel, the speaker of the parliament in-exile, told reporters that the Dalai Lama used to say that he was semi-retired and that now he believed he was was almost completely retired. However, a senior aide to the Nobel laureate last night dismissed speculation that he would start taking a back seat in Tibet’s affairs. “Because of the lack of response from the Chinese we have to be realistic. There is no hope,” said Tenzin Taklha. “His holiness does not want to become a hindrance to the Tibetan issue, and therefore has sent a letter to the parliament regarding what options he has.”

An update from His Holiness on Andrew Buncombe’s blog Asian (con)Fusion:

“His Holiness the Dalai Lama said that Tibetans have long been pursuing a path to find a solution to the issue of Tibet that would be mutually acceptable to Tibetans and Chinese. This has received widespread appreciation from the international community, several governments included. More importantly, it has gained the support of many Chinese intellectuals. More:

A new generation of activists arises in Burma

Published

asianwindow

on July 21, 2008

in Books and Burma

. 0 Comments

Network strengthened by Junta’s crackdown and post-cyclone bungling. From The Washington Post:

Rangoon: They operate in the shadows, slipping by moonlight from safe house to safe house, changing their cellphones to hide their tracks and meeting under cover of monasteries or clinics to plot changes that have eluded their country for 46 years.

If one gets arrested, another steps forward.

“I feel like the last man standing. All the responsibility is on my shoulders. . . . There is no turning back. If I turn back, I betray all my comrades,” said a Burmese activist who heads a leading dissident group, the 88 Generation Students, named for a failed uprising in 1988. He took command after the arrest last August of its five most prominent leaders.

The road to ‘Animal Farm,’ through Burma

In The Washington Post, a review of Finding George Orwell in Burma by Emma Larkin:

Fresh out of Eton, George Orwell spent five years in Burma as a policeman in the colonial service. He left in 1927, fed up with “the dirty work of Empire,” but the country never quite left him. It provided the material for the novel “Burmese Days” and one of his most famous essays, “Shooting an Elephant.” In his final days, as he lay dying of tuberculosis, he sketched out a novella, “A Smoking Room Story,” about a young Englishman changed forever by his experiences in colonial Burma.

Science and the Buddha

Published

asianwindow

on July 11, 2008

in Science

. 0 Comments

From The Immanent Frame [via 3quarksdaily]

The first three postings in this series remind us how complex the individual topics of cognitive science, Buddhism, and religious experience can be. Certainly there are many interpretations of each-many more than an entire monograph could account for, let alone a column in the New York Times-and reminders of the density of such topics are valuable and need to be repeated. But the cultural phenomenon that David Brooks’s column describes is its own topic altogether. Just what this phenomenon is will probably take a while for historians to describe and for critical scholars to assess. My preliminary suggestion is that we are witnessing an aesthetic urge, in which scientists and Buddhists find common cause in their pursuit of a beautiful-albeit potentially dangerous- “theory of everything.”

On film, a monk’s passion and protest

Published

asianwindow

on July 6, 2008

in Movies

. 0 Comments

From The new York Times:

They seemed an unlikely pair – the Tibetan Buddhist monk who had spent 33 years in Chinese prisons and labor camps and the aspiring Japanese filmmaker.

The filmmaker, Makoto Sasa, said she first heard of the monk, Palden Gyatso, when she was in college in Japan. After she arrived in New York to study film, alone and speaking no English, she read his memoir, “The Autobiography of a Tibetan Monk” (Grove Press, 1997). “His story made me think my problem is nothing,” she said.

Ms. Sasa, 35, decided to make a documentary about him. She began raising money, with loans, donations and a grant from the New York State Council on the Arts. She shot the film, “Fire Under the Snow,” in Tibet, Italy and India, where Mr. Gyatso, 77, now lives.

[Photo: Palden Gyatso, 77, was a political prisoner in China for years. He is the subject of the documentary “Fire Under the Snow.” / NYTimes]

In search of Nepal’s living goddesses

Published

asianwindow

on June 26, 2008

in Nepal

. 0 Comments

A prepubescent deity of Hindu-Buddhist tradition is also a modern child of HBO and Barbie. From The Christian Science Monitor:

$Chanira Bajracharya (c.) is one of Kathmandu\'s kumaris – a living goddesses until she reaches puberty. Reuters$ Like any typical schoolgirl, 13-year-old Chanira Bajracharya struggles to finish hours of homework each day. That doesn’t stop her from stealing away to watch TV (she enjoys HBO; her younger brothers often change it to Nickelodeon) or use the computer. She even has Barbies, but now that she’s older, painting has replaced organizing tea parties as her favorite pastime.

The similarities end there. To start, no one – including her family – may scold her. Chanira eats whatever she desires, though she’s yet to abuse this power by demanding an endless supply of ice cream. And don’t even mention chores.

It may seem like she’s hit the jackpot, but in exchange for this life of relative luxury, she’s forbidden to leave her five-story home, save for religious holidays. She must also endure a constant stream of Hindu followers who come seeking her healing powers or to snap a photo of her.

[Photo: Chanira Bajracharya (c.), is one of Kathmandu's kumaris – a living goddesses until she reaches puberty. Reuters]