Tricycle | Awake in the World

The Asian Classics Input Project is working hard to locate, catalog, digitally preserve, and rapidly disseminate Tibetan and Sanskrit manuscripts. Here's a pdf describing their work. The website is cool, too. They have a lot of stuff from the Bhagavad Gita and Rig Veda in addition to loads of Buddhist material for those of us with a scholarly bent. Climate change may be changing the course of rivers in Tibet and reducing their flow, according to the China Daily (a government-controlled newspaper.) So the government of China is marginally more aware to the reality of human-caused climate change than the U.S. government. More »

More on China and India's tug-of-war over Buddhism here. I don't know why I find China's rhetoric on this issue interesting / amusing. Am I alone on this? The article says China is trying to project a Buddhist-friendly image because of Tibet: "Having destroyed Tibetan Buddhism and put in its place a state-sanctioned version of Buddhism, Beijing is making grand gestures to shore up its Buddhist credentials. It wants to soften its image for East and Southeast Asia but, more importantly, Tibet," said the official. "Hence Beijing's bonding with Buddhism." The official mentioned is Indian, so the rhetoric goes both ways. More »

This from the Times of India: India and China are engaged in a competition for soft power supremacy in Asia - the battlefield is ownership of one of the world's oldest religions, Buddhism. Well, we all know China and India aren't really fighting over Buddhism. Neither country really cares about that. What's at stake is being Asia's economic top dog, and no religion is as pan-Asian as Buddhism. More »

Buddhism hits the mainstream this week, with the New York Times running an extensive piece about mindfulness as it is now being taught in public schools--mostly on the West Coast, unsurprisingly enough, although one program has taken root in Lancaster, PA. Asked to define mindfulness, one Oakland fifth grader replied: "Not hitting someone in the mouth." We couldn't have put it better ourselves. When embarking on multimillion dollar construction projects in Hong Kong, be careful--apparently, the Buddha has become incensed over the placement of a nearby cable car route, which, feng shui consultants warned, would disturb the tranquility of the infamous Big Buddha statue and the nearby Po Lime monastery. Thankfully, the car on which he vented his anger, tossing it 13 stories to the ground, was empty, so no precepts were broken. More »

The media's tittering over the Karmapa's MySpace page -- supposedly set up in anticipation of his visit to the West this summer. The attention is great, but all the interest over the page's existence seems to betrays a common Western notion that Buddhists all live in caves and have never heard of the internet, pop music, sports, or Lindsay Lohan. Some will argue the oddness of the cultural encounter is not the stupification on the Western end but rather a culture where designating young people as incarnations of dead people or saints is accepted as an everyday thing. Well, fair enough. Our understanding of monastic culture is very dim in any case. More »

The Thai political system, already confusing and chaotic in the aftermath of the 2006 military coup, took a dramatic turn Monday when the Constitution Drafting Committee rejected a proposal by Thai Buddhist monks to make Buddhism the official state religion. More »

What makes us happy? Misery, according to the BBC. Well, not really. But pay attention now: Pursuing unrealistic goals leads to suffering... has the BBC gone Buddhist? Maybe all of Britain? That's what years and years of a special relationship with the United States will do to you. Let go and go Buddhist. The article cites a study that recommends mindfulness and meditation as a way to cope with suffering. Hmm, interesting idea. The article is really about relationships, and is in the Health section. (Would that mean that this article pertains to my mental health, or the effect that suffering and unhappiness can have on my physical health? When you think about things that generally, every piece of news is essentially about Me and My Health. . . . More »

Buddhism took another step towards reintroducing itself to its birthplace last Sunday when Dalit leader and writer Laxman Mane led one of India’s famed “mass conversions.” These controversial events, in which thousands or even hundreds of thousands of low-caste or Dalit Indians take refuge formally in the Dharma, have been drawing more and more attention as they gradually spread through the low-caste population of the subcontintent. More »

Violence in northern Sri Lanka and southern Thailand continues. . . Isn't there any cheerful news in the Buddhist world? Well, this self-described "Unitarian Buddhist," reported about in Northwestern University's Medill Reports (from their Graduate School of Journalism) apparently gathered enough aluminum cans to start a real live retreat center. There's something to think about next time you polish off a can of your favorite fizzy. Also, Deepak Chopra, whose new novel was reviewed in the current Tricycle, writes about the Buddha's take on fear and anxiety for the Huffington Post. Read it before you judge it! I mean the HuffPo article, of course. More »