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Buddhism

Imagine if you could leave behind in your cremation ashes a scattering of crystal pearls that embodied all your best elements; a sort of epitaph in the form of glass beads. This is what certain Buddhist masters are believed to be capable of: a crystallised manifestation of their compassion and wisdom spontaneously spills out of their bodies during the funeral rites.

A collection of these relics, known as ringsel in Tibetan, are coming to the Aula Maxima in UCC this weekend. Some are reputedly more than 2,500 years old and came from the supreme Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, who died in the fifth century BC. They have been donated to the tour by the Dalai Lama. Other ringsel have been rescued from monasteries destroyed by the Chinese or offered by former custodians of deceased masters.

As with any sacred relic, claims are made for their power and transformative ability, but unusually these assertions have actually been tested by a Stanford University physicist and a former Mayo Clinic doctor, who claim the relics rearrange the atoms and molecules in the space around them into a more coherent order (more of which later).

Some 2.3 million people in 68 countries have already come to see the relics on they tour the world. The relics will eventually be enshrined in a 45m bronze statue of Maitreya Buddha to be built in Bodh Gaya, northern India. The sense of serenity emanating from them is the prime attraction: as with visitors to the Virgin Mary in the tree stump in Rathkeale; or to Amma, the Hugging Nun, some people describe an exquisite energy in their presence. ...

http://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-styl ... -1.1992286
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The most powerful political force in Myanmar's election has no candidates and will win no seats. But when the monks of the Ma Ba Tha speak, politicians listen.

On Sunday the men in robes flexed their considerable political muscle.

Tens of thousands of Buddhist monks, nuns and supporters were at the biggest rally of the election campaign so far.

It had apparently taken an intervention by the president of Myanmar (also known as Burma) to secure the national indoor sports stadium in Yangon for the Ma Ba Tha. But it still wasn't big enough and thousands more watched on screens outside.

The rally in Yangon - also known as Rangoon - was the finale of a nationwide victory tour for the monks celebrating the passage of four bills through parliament.

The new laws were drafted and promoted by the Ma Ba Tha and place wide-ranging bureaucratic restrictions on family planning. Though the bills make no explicit mention of Islam, the monks have made no attempt to hide the intended target.

The laws are designed to stop Muslims having multiple wives, large families and marrying Buddhist women; to halt what a leading monk has called the Islamic "invasion" of Myanmar.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-34463455
 
China has published its first list of "authentic living buddhas", saying that growing numbers of fraudulent buddhas are using their status to swindle money from believers.

Beijing has taken the unusual step of concerning itself with matters of reincarnation by releasing the names, photographs and locations of 870 "verified" buddhas on the website of the State Administration for Religious Affairs, Xinhua news agency reports. It's a move that's been praised by one of the men who features on the list. "As a living buddha, I feel genuinely happy about it," Drukhang Thubten Khedrup tells the state-run news agency.

According to China's religious affairs agency, the system has been inaugurated to counter "fake" buddhas who are undermining Tibetan Buddhism by cheating believers out of cash.

http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-35342497
 
A Buddhist monk went on a bizarre tyre slashing rampage because he stood on an insect, a court heard.

Julian Glew, 45, became angry and upset after crushing the bug and decided to vent his frustration by piercing 162 tyres over a few days.

Glew, who used to live in a Buddhist monastery, has lived in a tent in woods for nearly a decade.

He was arrested several days after the incident last September in Pocklington, East Yorks., following a CCTV appeal by police.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukn...ng-rampage-because-he-stood-on-an-insect.html
 
ramonmercado said:
A Buddhist monk went on a bizarre tyre slashing rampage because he stood on an insect, a court heard.

Julian Glew, 45, became angry and upset after crushing the bug and decided to vent his frustration by piercing 162 tyres over a few days.

Glew, who used to live in a Buddhist monastery, has lived in a tent in woods for nearly a decade.

He was arrested several days after the incident last September in Pocklington, East Yorks., following a CCTV appeal by police.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukn...ng-rampage-because-he-stood-on-an-insect.html
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Must have been difficult for him, living in a tent and all that. Could have crushed one in his sleep.
 
A former Buddhist monk who claims he cannot meditate after being involved in a fatal car crash is seeking £250,000 compensation.

Sangthong Phensrisai, from Leith, was travelling back to Edinburgh from London on Christmas Eve 2012 when the car he was in lost control near Fala Dam in Midlothian.

Three other passengers died.

Driver, Anong Yukitan, has admitted liability but is contesting the amount of compensation. The hearing continues.

Mr Phensrisai, 50, told the Court of Session that he fell asleep and came round in hospital to be told that the accident had happened.

"I was unconscious. I just woke up in hospital. It was like the whole body fell apart," he said.

He was found to have suffered fractures to ribs, his sternum and back and had suffered head injuries.

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-35478057
 
That rather makes me think of that electric monk in the Dirk Gently novels, that does your praying for you.
 
The Russian Buddhists v the billionaire – a photo essay

A small group of Buddhists led by a veteran of the USSR’s Afghan war has spent 21 years establishing a monastery in the Ural mountains. It sits on land claimed by a company belonging to one of Russia’s most powerful oligarchs. After years of delays, a date has now been set for the complex’s removal. Photojournalist Amos Chapple visited the monastery for RFE/RL

Thursday 2 February 2017 08.00 GMT

A 7km forest trail leads up to the monastery on the summit of Mount Kachkanar, which rises 888 metres above sea level. After heavy snowfall, the hike can take up to seven hours.

Teams travel by sled down the mountain to collect supplies.

Inscribed on a large rock is a Sanskrit mantra, ‘Om mani padme hum’, indicating the monastery is close.

Mikhail Sannikov, a soldier turned Buddhist monk, founded the monastery in 1995. The 55-year-old abbot saw heavy action as a commander in the Soviet army during the 1979-89 occupation of Afghanistan.

Sannikov, who now goes by the title Lama Dokshit, says he left the army in 1987 a damaged man after being wounded in separate encounters by “two bullets, a knife, and a piece of shrapnel”.

The fighting haunted him for years afterwards. “Sometimes it would come up during the ordinary things in life: I’d be watching an action movie and start counting how many bullets the character has left. It was hard to sleep at night.”

After leaving the army, Sannikov took menial jobs and hunted for “some kind of purpose”. In 1989 he ended up in Russia’s Buryatia region, where he studied Buddhism for six years. At the time of his studies, Sannikov says, Buddhism was almost exclusively practised in the east of the country.

I thought it was strange; we have good people in central Russia, too. My teacher said: ‘Well, go there, then.’ After my teacher drew a silhouette of a mountain, my task was clear

What Sannikov failed to realise was the wealth of metal ore that lay beneath the wind-whipped mountaintop. ...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...-monastery-photo-essay?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
 
ramonmercado said:
Sannikov, who now goes by the title Lama Dokshit, says he left the army in 1987 a damaged man after being wounded in separate encounters by “two bullets, a knife, and a piece of shrapnel”.
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Did he pick that name?
 
Cultural Buddhism led to a huge ethnic cleansing, ignored or unknown in the west, as it tends not to fit our exotic image of 'Shangri-La'.

20% of the entire population of Bhutan had their citizenships, property and identity removed and were expelled. No outcry from the west whatsoever - Nepal, India and the UNHCR are still dealing with the stateless refugees 25 YEARS later.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/29/opinion/bhutan-is-no-shangri-la.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhutanese_refugees
 
Can buddhism be said to have been the cause of that though?
 
On Buddhism in general - I lived in SE Asia for around seven years. I was lucky enough to do quite a lot of training at various Buddhist temples.

My favourite though, undoubtedly was Suan Mokkh in Southern Thailand -

http://www.suanmokkh-idh.org/


Was established by a wonderful asectic philopsopher monk Buddhadasa Bhikku. A fascinating man and a beautiful, powerful thinker. Largely disowned by the Thai Buddhist establishment for his universalist ideas of religion, genuine anti-materialism and refusal to think or do what they told him...

bw032.jpg


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhadasa

http://www.suanmokkh.org/buddhadasa

http://www.buddhanet.net/budasa5.htm
 
A Buddhist monk has been arrested in Burma after authorities said they found more than four million methamphetamine pills in his car and his monastery.

The monk was stopped as he drove in northern Rakhine state, which borders Bangladesh, said police officer Maung Maung Yin.

Authorities had been tipped off that the monk was carrying an illegal haul. Maung Maung Yin said an anti-drug task force found 400,000 pills in the monk’s car.

A subsequent search of his monastery turned up 4.2 million pills along with a grenade and ammunition.



Read more: http://metro.co.uk/2017/02/07/buddh...-his-car-and-monastery-6432948/#ixzz4Y1T14eyZ
 
Considering that it's Burma, I feel more worried about the grenades and ammo.
 
How to live a perfect life, by a Buddhist monk turned millionaire Merrill Lynch chairman
India Sturgis
28 July 2017 • 9:00am

The week before Christmas 1972 heralded a moment that, for lesser men, would have marked the beginning of the end. But for Michael Dobbs-Higginson, who was 31 at the time, losing tens of millions of pounds, fearing for his life, being forced to uproot his young family and flee Japan, the country he had lived and worked in for five years, was another roll of the dice.
“I’m glad it happened,” he says with blasé matter-of-factness.

...

For those who know him, this response is as unsurprising as it is unusual. That's because Dobbs-Higginson has spent the better part of his life readjusting his response to good and bad situations to remove his ego and live a life that priorities inner balance over pride, greed and everything in between. If it sounds a peculiar philosophy, it was one forged in Japan's snow-capped mountains when he was ordained as a lay Buddhist monk age just 22 in 1963.

It was on Mount Koya, the world headquarters of Shingon Buddhism, where Dobbs-Higginson became the first Westerner to be accepted into the Shino-In monastery in its 1,200-year history. Even more astounding was that he would go on to become the chairman of Merrill Lynch Asia Pacific, dealing with heads of state and investment leaders to pioneer the spread of international markets throughout the seventies and eighties.

Now, age 75, Dobbs-Higginson has entered a more reflective phase and written a memoir, A Raindrop in the Ocean: The Life of a Global Adventurer, retracing his very singular life, the sort Walter Mitty could only dream of, in the hope it might inspire other to pick up his homespun philosophy. The diagnosis of a degenerative lung condition in recent months only hardened and speeded this decision to put pen to paper.

etc...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/the-...ddhist-monk-turned-millionaire-merrill-lynch/





 
Kondoru said:
Hard to say.

I always got the impression that behavior that would be regarded as OTT in the vast majority of Xtian and Islamic cultures was accepted as normal in Buddhist ones.
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What sort of OTT behavior are you referring to? Genuinely interested. Can't imagine it is worse than what Muslim fundamentalists and Christian fundamentalists get up to.
 
But is it safe to get a Buddha tattoo?

A woman who was deported from Sri Lanka for having a tattoo of the Buddha on her arm has won compensation.

Naomi Coleman, from Coventry, was detained for four days in April 2014.

The country's Supreme Court said her treatment - during which a prison guard made sexually-explicit remarks to her and she was forced to give police money - was "scandalous and horrifying".

It ruled her rights had been violated and granted her compensation of 800,000 Sri Lankan rupees - about £4,000.

Officers involved in her arrest were also ordered to pay her compensation. Ms Coleman, a mental health nurse, took legal action against the Sri Lankan authorities after her return to the UK.

The court ruled there was "no legal basis" for her arrest and said she had been subject to "degrading treatment" by some officers and a prison guard.

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-coventry-warwickshire-41995069
 
He ain't heavy, he's my Buddha.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Directorate of Archaeology And Museums Director Dr Abdul Samad said,"The 48-feet long 'sleeping Buddha' statue dates back to the third century, which makes it the world's oldest 'sleeping Buddha' statue."

He told DawnNews that archaeologists found the statue, with its head intact, during excavations near the Bhamala Stupa.

"We have discovered more than 500 Buddha-related objects during excavations, in addition to the 48-feet long 'sleeping Buddha',” he said.

Read more at https://archaeologynewsnetwork.blog...eeping-buddha-statue.html#zpxSkKZTzVZQRLCl.99
 
Belligerent Buddhists belabour Muslims.

The Sri Lankan government says more troops have been deployed to the central district of Kandy, to try to end days of violence against Muslims.

Police used tear gas to disperse Buddhist rioters who have attacked mosques and Muslim-owned businesses.

They are defying a curfew imposed after a Buddhist youth died during an altercation with a group of Muslims.

A state of emergency has been imposed and the curfew extended, and authorities are blocking social media.

The authorities had feared retaliation after a young Muslim man's body was found in a burnt-out building in Kandy on Tuesday.

Fresh clashes between mobs from the majority Sinhalese and minority Muslim communities erupted in several areas overnight, and a number of properties were set on fire.

On Wednesday, there were reports that a Sinhalese man had died when a hand grenade he was carrying went off in a Kandy district.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-43305453
 
I'm amazed at this kind of behaviour from Buddhists. I'm guessing their patience has worn thin.
 
Mythopoeika said:
I'm amazed at this kind of behaviour from Buddhists. I'm guessing their patience has worn thin.
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My understanding is that the Burmese patience had worn thin with the Rohingyas raping their children. I am surprised that the Rohingyas are getting such favorable press given that the current fiasco was largely organised by ISIS militants they have been sheltering. I am also VERY surprised that the Western Media has not been more honest in reporting how a good many Rohingyas burned their own villages in order to seek refugee status. Obviously not all the villages were burned by the Rohingyas, but a lot more than none. Won't it be great when they are hanging around your children? Note the lack of comment on the issue by Aung San Suu Kyi for the longest time too. She understands that the Burmese are fed up with the Rohingyas, but can't afford to lose Western support. The whole situation is utterly misrepresented.
 
AlchoPwn said:
My understanding is that the Burmese patience had worn thin with the Rohingyas raping their children. I am surprised that the Rohingyas are getting such favorable press given that the current fiasco was largely organised by ISIS militants they have been sheltering. I am also VERY surprised that the Western Media has not been more honest in reporting how a good many Rohingyas burned their own villages in order to seek refugee status. Obviously not all the villages were burned by the Rohingyas, but a lot more than none. Won't it be great when they are hanging around your children? Note the lack of comment on the issue by Aung San Suu Kyi for the longest time too. She understands that the Burmese are fed up with the Rohingyas, but can't afford to lose Western support. The whole situation is utterly misrepresented.
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I didn't know that. The Western mainstream media has really downplayed that background information.
 
AlchoPwn said:
My understanding is that the Burmese patience had worn thin with the Rohingyas raping their children.
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Have you any independent sources for that? Not doubting you, given your usual contributions but I haven't seen that allegation before.
 
ramonmercado said:
Have you any independent sources for that? Not doubting you, given your usual contributions but I haven't seen that allegation before.
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After a cursory search I found this entry:

2014 Mandalay riots[edit]
In July a Facebook post emerged of a Buddhist woman being raped, supposedly by a Muslim man. In retaliation an angry, vengeful mob of 300 people started throwing stones and bricks at a tea stall. The mob went on to attack Muslim shops and vehicles and shouted slogans in Muslim residential areas.[67] Two men — one Buddhist and one Muslim — were killed.[68][69] Roughly a dozen people were injured.[70] A curfew was imposed on 3 July.[68][69]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perse...#Rohingya_persecution_and_mass_exodus_of_2017

As with other rapes in Pakistan and India at the time, it was not an isolated incident, but represented an ongoing "cultural practice" among the Muslims who don't consider Buddhists to be "of the book", and therefore according to the Koran. This is a known practice among Muslim communities and dates back to the first Islamic occupations, wherein the Muslim soldiers would lay in wait at a village well and rape every woman who came for water unless they converted to Islam and attired themselves accordingly. The Koran is quite clear about the cruelty that one is allowed to inflict upon non-Believers, for example:

Koran 8:12 - I will cast horror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore shall you decapitate them and cut off even their fingertips.

Koran 8:39 - Slay them all until there is no more unbelief, and the only religion belongs to Allah.

And the ever popular:

Koran 8:67 - It is not for the Prophet that he should have prisoners of war until he has made a great slaughter in the land.

The Koran is also quite clear on this issue of owning non-Muslim women as slaves. This is referred to in the Qur'an as "ma malakat aymanukum" or "what your right hands possess". It is quite clear that Mohammed himself was quite an eager rapist, having sexually assaulted Juwairiya of the Bani Mustaliq, Saffiya of the Banu Nadir, and most cruelly Rayhanna of the Banu Quraisa, as well as his pedophilic relationship with is child bride Aisha. In short, Islam has historically always upheld the right of a Muslim man to rape a non-Muslim woman.

Now that rape culture was given free reign in India and beyond withe the Muslim Invasion of India in 1000 AD which is very conservatively estimated to have killed 80 million Hindus and enslaved many more. In fact demographic evidence suggests that the atrocity was ongoing for hundreds of years and many generations. The population of India went from 280 million in 1000AD to 200 million in 1500AD. All human populations grow by 3% per year, and it is normal for subsistence agricultural societies to aim for higher birthrates as more hands are needed to work the land and make the family rich. To see this society collapse by 80 million people over 500 years is demographic evidence of an atrocity that affected hundreds of millions of Hindu civilians over hundreds of years of completely ruthless and inhuman oppression, and probably over a billion dead. As further evidence consider that the name of the mountains the "Hindu Kush" literally means "The Slaughter of Hindus" because Muslims wanted to memorialize their efforts in stamping out Hinduism, and the mountains in question spelled death for the endless chain gangs of slaves being sent west to the slave markets.

The Rohingya Muslims were Bengali Muslims who come with all these cultural attitudes, and most were introduced into the area by the British in the 1920s and 30s. They were never welcome by the locals, and the reason given by the Burmese I have spoken to is that they had no respect for their women and children and attacked them when the opportunity presented itself. Given the behavior of Muslims elsewhere, I am strongly inclined to believe this, despite the whitewash of these issues that the Western Press seems to be engaging in for reasons that seem at odds with honest reportage. The Muslims are only ever portrayed as victims in the media, and I can't understand why a religion so at odds with Western Liberal attitudes and which is so outspoken in its contempt for our laws and way of life is being protected in this way. Buddhists seldom if ever attack people for no reason, history will attest to that, and it will also strongly attest to the fact that Islam was founded in blood and aggression and has never desisted.

As to the issue of terrorism in Rakhine state, here is a grab bag of writing on the issue:

This article details Al Quaeda operating in Myanmar:
http://www.straitstimes.com/asia/se-asia/isis-al-qaeda-drawn-to-crisis-in-rakhine-state

A bit more vague:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/09/india-rohingya-muslims-terror-ties-170918134840406.html

A bit more detailed:
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/new...ngya-crisis-to-recruit-malaysians-for-9226802

There are plenty of others, but this one is interesting for its links to Saudi Arabia:
https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/R...ts-in-Rohingya-crisis-put-Myanmar-in-hot-seat

As to the issue of who was burning the Rohingya villages, the entire campaign kicked off as the tensions were rising. Obviously the Myanmar troops and Rohingya militia were very eager for a fight. The Rohingya strategy was to stage a series of attacks against the Burmese troops, but in order to clear the area of Rohingya civilians they initially organised to have the Rohingya torch their villages. Of course the Myanmar troops and angry non-Rohingyas were all to happy to burn villages too. I am NOT suggesting the Burmese Buddhists are innocent of the burning, merely that the claim that the Rohingya didn't burn their own villages at all is also false as they had motive, means and opportunity to do just that. The motive was that burned villages would help them in their petition for refugee status, and provide them with effectively an opportunity for a mass migration to more prosperous countries, who could then fund the guerilla war in the area. Politically, given its authoritarian government, Myanmar's only friend is China, who also has its own Uigur Muslim issues, and Myanmar have no friends in the West, unlike the Muslims who have an increasing and partisan voice in the media, given the constant wars in the Middle East and the consequent proliferation of Muslim Journalists, and organizations such as Al Jazeera, which are pushing a very uncritical and one sided view of matters.

IMPORTANT CLARIFICATION: I am in no way suggesting that the Government and Forces of Myanmar are honest or innocent in this matter; they are a vicious authoritarian government and the current democratic reforms are shaky and largely unwelcome. What I strenuously object to is the notion that the Rohingya are innocent victims in all this, as is the portrayal in our media. There has been a solid effort to drown out all information to the contrary, but there is more to this story than Western media is letting on, and I urge people to remain skeptical of this snowstorm of the same one-sided stories being repeated ad nauseum.
 
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AlchoPwn said:
IMPORTANT CLARIFICATION: I am in no way suggesting that the Government and Forces of Myanmar are honest or innocent in this matter; they are a vicious authoritarian government and the current democratic reforms are shaky and largely unwelcome. What I strenuously object to is the notion that the Rohingya are innocent victims in all this, as is the portrayal in our media. There has been a solid effort to drown out all information to the contrary, but there is more to this story than Western media is letting on, and I urge people to remain skeptical of this snowstorm of the same one-sided stories being repeated ad nauseum.
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Thanks.

Seeing as I am quick to question the MSM on Syria I should also look at other perspectives regarding Burma.
 
ramonmercado said:
Thanks.

Seeing as I am quick to question the MSM on Syria I should also look at other perspectives regarding Burma.
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@AlchoPwn some more news of nastiness by Rohingya Muslim militants. You were right, there are two sides to this story.

Rohingya Muslim militants in Myanmar killed dozens of Hindu civilians during attacks last August, according to an investigation by Amnesty International.

The group called Arsa killed up to 99 Hindu civilians in one, or possibly two massacres, said the rights group. Arsa had denied involvement.

The killings came in the first days of an uprising against Burmese forces, who are also accused of atrocities.

Since August nearly 700,000 Rohingyas and others have fled the violence.

The conflict has also displaced members of the majority Buddhist population in Myanmar (also called Burma) as well as members of the Hindu minority.

Amnesty says interviews it conducted with refugees in Bangladesh and in Rakhine state confirmed that mass killings carried out by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (Arsa) took place in a cluster of villages in northern Maungdaw Township at the time of its attacks on police posts in late August.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-44206372
 
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