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Burma's Woeful Healthcare, Bhutan's 100,000 Refugees
400 children die every day in Burma from preventable diseases. The only country in Asia that ranks worse in terms of infant mortality is Afghanistan. In 2000 the World Health organization ranked Burma as having the second-worst healthcare system in the world after Sierra Leone. China, Burma's only friend, encourages the junta to let U.N. envoy Ibrahim Gambari back into the country, but also tells the world to back off:
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said China wanted to see stability, democracy and development in the country also known as Burma.
However, Jiang urged the international community to be "objective when viewing the Myanmar situation ...
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Non-Attachment
We like to publish Buddhist cartoons when we get the chance. Buddhism can be funny and we published a book, Buddha Laughing, to prove it! Here's one that's not in the book from longtime contributor P.B. Law:
"The beauty of it is that as long as I'm not attached to my things, I don't have to give any of them up."
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From Burma to Buxton to Bhutan
Things are going "downhill on all fronts" in Burma, says U.S.
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Al Qaeda in Thailand
The inevitable, vague connection: The Muslim insurgents in southern Thailand are in fact no other than -- dunh dunh dunh! -- AL QAEDA! Well, who can blame the Thai government official who uncovered this shocking news? If you told Uncle Sam that the leak in your kitchen faucet was caused by evildoers, they might write you a check for four hundred million dollars to fix it.
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The Quiet Heroes of Tibet
Pankaj Mishra writes a very interesting piece in the New York Review of Books, "The Quiet Heroes of Tibet," about a Han Chinese man married to a Tibetan woman, living together in Beijing and both writing about Tibet, primarily the effects of the railroad and the new air links (with more coming all the time.) Unfortunately the article is behind a paywall and costs $3 to read in full. The issue is out on the newsstands now and is dated January 17th, 2008.
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Books: Never Turn Away by Rigdzin Shikpo
Rigdzin Shikpo, a student of Shambhala-founder Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, has been practicing Buddhism since the 1950s. An heir to Trungpa’s lineage but independent of the Shambhala community, his book Never Turn Away: The Buddhist Path Beyond Hope and Fear (Wisdom Publications, 2007, $14.95 paper, 192 pp.) is an inspired look at the relationship between meditation and everyday life.
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Science is messy
This will make Scientologists happy: Prozac and Paxil may not work as well as we're led to believe.
Scientists are now saying we're "some momentary fluctuation in a field of matter and energy out in space... Your memories and the world you think you see around you are illusions." Is this a problem?
And is cloned beef, or lab-grown beef, that bad, given that much of the world continues to eat cows?
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Book Review: Haiku Haven
For northern city-dwellers, the grey months of January and February can feel like a kind of apocalyptic-aftermath, but duller: dirty slush on the subway steps and reality television. When seasonal melancholy threatens, it’s best to turn to poetry, which makes ennui seem more bearable—or, at the very least, more important. The most premium of all poetic medicines may be the haiku, being formally required to address time and loss, as well as beautiful enough to make up for the indignity of damp socks.
Turning the pages of Haiku Master Buson, you feel can feel your commonplace Seasonal Affective Disorder being transformed into something unique and delicate, more along the lines of
With the soundlessness of winter rain
on mosses, vanished days
are remembered
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Zen HoJo's
An interesting business article by Tarun Khanna considers the increasing connections between China and India (two huge and growing economies that are not yet great trading partners) and how Buddhism is part of their "common language".
Does anybody remember eating at HoJo's? The world has taken a few spins since those days and they're almost all gone. There was one in Times Square here in New York until very recently. Well, if you're in Houston, stop by the former Howard Johnson's that's going Zen thanks to the Texas Bodhi Society. Now it's a vegetarian restaurant with free books and meditation CDs, and a Zen garden coming soon.
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Dow Jones Dharma Global Index
More violence in southern Thailand, this time a Baghdad-style bomb in a crowded market.
British groups have called for tourists to boycott Burma.
India is big on family planning, and with good reason, but Buddhists in Ladakh, also known as Little Tibet, worry that if they follow this policy, they will die out.
A controversial facelift for Bodh Gaya, Buddhism's holiest town, is in the works.
There have been investment indices for Christians and Muslims for some time.
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Cloned Meat and Milk Heading Your Way!
The F.D.A. says milk and meat from cloned animals is safe to eat:
Tuesday’s decision means cloning technology could move into commercial use a mere decade after the world learned of the existence of Dolly the sheep, the first mammal cloned from an adult cell, in Scotland. To create Dolly, scientists took an unfertilized sheep egg and removed the genetic material. They then inserted the genetic material from an adult cell. Machinery within the egg somehow reset the clock on the adult genes, and the new cell, after implantation into a surrogate mother sheep, developed into Dolly.
This technique has since become routine in laboratories, with clones produced in numerous species — not including humans, so far as is known.
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Free Buddhist Audio and Buddhist Holidays 2008
Don't miss Free Buddhist Audio! What a great service this site is. It won Favorite Site from Going for Refuge's year-end, or rather year-beginning awards. And here's a list of Buddhist holidays for 2008 from Ecumenical Buddhism.
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The Golden Triangle, Burmese Oil, the Dalai Lama in Blood, and Chinese Tourists
The Burmese government is involved in multiple fights with rebel groups in areas all around the country. This is where the child soldiers come in, forced into fighting by both sides. Burma leads the world in the number of child soldiers active within its borders. And then there's the opium.
The Burmese government claims to be fighting opium production in the Golden Triangle. According to rebel leader Col. Yawd Ser, who battles government troops in that area, the Burmese government gets money from the U.S. for that purpose, pockets it, then turns around and grows more opium.
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8/8/08
Who's to blame for the bomb blasts in Burma? And here's an unfortunate numerological connection between China and Burma.
Thai soldiers in the south of the country were hit in a deadly ambush that killed eight of their number. Thailand's prime minister Surayud Chulanont downplayed the importance of the attack, saying it was nothing out of the ordinary. (Civil War?
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Accidental Dharma and the newbuddhist.com Boards
Check out Accidental Dharma (and post an entry on it!) It's a collaborative blog created by Peter Clothier of The Buddha Diaries. What a great idea.
Ad while you're at it, stop by the newbuddhist.com discussion boards. It's a great place for newbies and grizzled veterans alike.
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2007, another bad year for Thailand's south. And what is Zen, anyway?
The insurgency in Thailand's largely Muslim south is now four years old, and 2007 was the bloodiest yet. 792 people were killed last year. 2776 have been killed since the conflict began. The violence affects both Muslims and Buddhists:
On Monday, a Buddhist sweet vendor was taken to hospital in Yala after being shot three times in the torso by a gunman riding on a motorcycle, an attack typical of insurgents who have never identified themselves of made their aims public.
On Sunday, a 30-year-old Muslim teacher was shot dead while walking home from evening prayers, police said.
The Burmese junta has already repressed Buddhist monks.
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Treeleaf Zendo, More Media Stifling in Burma, and Violence in Mumbai
Buddhist Geeks speak with Jundo Cohen, abbot of the almost totally virtual Treeleaf Zendo. If you haven't dropped by the Treeleaf Zendo for their daily zazen retreat, you don't know what you're missing!
BURMA HEADLINES
Burma's Junta, Oblivious to International Pressure, Imposes Media Control
Independence Day: What is there to Celebrate in Burma?
And in Mumbai Sunday, a Buddhist monk apparently committed suicide to protest a development in the northeastern suburb of Deonar — or was he murdered because he stood in the developer's way? Some called the death suspicious and violence erupted among the Buddhist dalits in the city.
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Breaking Old Ground
Some old bits on His Holiness the Dalai Lama: The Newsweek / Washington Post blog On Faith discusses his visit to Washington this fall. And Dan Rather interviews the DL in the melodramatically titled "One Man vs. China".
Lama Surya Das talks about Burma on Beliefnet.
And another Happy New Year message, this one from James of the Buddhist Blog.
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New Year, Burma, Iowa
It's the new year and many of us have the great state of Iowa on the brain today. But the Voice of America is reporting on Burma and the incredible poverty there that guarantees the tensions between the people and the "government" will not go away anytime soon. And Claude Arpi wonders whether 2007 was an annus horribilis or an annus mirabilis for the Dalai Lama, and for Tibet.
But is there even anything new to the new year? Ethan Nichtern says the new year is a perfect opportunity to assess our path.
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