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    Who Said What on Burma Paid Member

    Posted by Philip Ryan on 15 Oct 2007
    Danny Fisher points us to the Buddhist Peace Fellowship's collection of statements on Burma, and also what Buddhist leaders Thich Nhat Hanh and Jack Kornfield said recently. And for all the coffee fiends out there pouring their hard-earned money into the crowded coffers of Starbucks, Urban Monk shows the way to CoffeeTao, a blog on coffee and the politics thereof. Peter of the Buddha Diaries spoke with Thanissaro Bhikkhu recently on pacifism and whether it was ever ok f More »
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    Islamists Deface Another Buddha Paid Member

    Posted by Philip Ryan on 11 Oct 2007
    Literally defaced. Great. More of this here The Zennist discusses the term "aryan" in its Buddhist context. And no, he doesn't discuss the swastika. UPDATE: Donald Lopez discussed the term "aryan" in Tricycle's Winter 2006 issue. We'll put this article online later so everyone can read it. More »
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    Blood, Robes, and Tears Paid Member

    Posted by Philip Ryan on 11 Oct 2007
    TIME has a piece on the Burmese protests from which comes the title of this post. When in our recent past have Buddhist monks other than the Dalai Lama been so prominent in the American consciousness? Maybe not since Vietnam. Apparently Mandalay didn't suffer the same treatment the rest of the country did. Read about it in "Buddha's Peace Prevailed." ASEAN issues a statement condemning violence to Buddhist monks in Burma. From the article by George Yao, foreign minister of Singapore: When Western countries cheered us for speaking out, it worried us. Strident calls to bring down the regime showed a lack of understanding of the problem. More »
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    Does China Have Religion? Paid Member

    Posted by Philip Ryan on 11 Oct 2007
    Slavoj Zizek, author of The Parallax View, writes on "How China Got Religion" in the New York Times. He discusses Communism avowed atheism as it relates to Falun Gong, the ukase regulating reincarnation, Burmese monks, and the commodification of Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism: In recent years, the Chinese have changed their strategy in Tibet: in addition to military coercion, they increasingly rely on ethnic and economic colonization. Lhasa is transforming into a Chinese version of the capitalist Wild West, with karaoke bars and Disney-like Buddhist theme parks. The Dalai Lama spoke at Ithaca College. More »
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    Germans Love Buddhism. Christopher Hitchens Hates It. Paid Member

    Posted by Philip Ryan on 10 Oct 2007
    Interesting article on how hard Cubans must work in order to blog. They have to pretend to be foreign and sneak into the big hotels that have unfiltered -- or at least more open than elsewhere on the island -- internet pipelines to the rest of the world. (The blog mentioned, in Spanish of course, is here.) This is a small part of what our fellow humans living under totalitarianism must do to have their voices heard. More »
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    Burmese Days Continued Paid Member

    Posted by Philip Ryan on 10 Oct 2007
    The situation in Burma has exposed links with the dictatorship all over the world. Obviously, most of Burma's trading partners will be neighbors, just as the U.S.'s largest trading partner is Canada. This has put southeast Asia -- already a troubled area with two Communist countries (Vietnam and Laos) and two other military dictatorships (Burma and Thailand, which has a virulent Muslim insurgency in its south) -- in a tight spot. As a result, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations opposes sanctions on Burma, and Singapore is said to be "a crucial ally" of the junta. The Western Powers (The U.S., France, and Britain) have issued a "softened" UN statement decrying the crackdown in Burma. More »