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    Building the Buddha's Birthplace Paid Member

    Posted by Sam Mowe on 19 May 2011
    People around the world are celebrating Vesak this month (the exact date of the holiday varies according to different calendars used in different countries and traditions), which honors the life of the Buddha. Even though the holiday encompasses the birth, enlightenment, and death of Siddhartha Gautama, many people celebrate it as the Buddha's birthday. More »
  • Tricycle Community 8 comments

    Creating Sacred Space: The Birthplace of the Buddha Paid Member

    Posted by Sam Mowe on 17 May 2011
    See also, from the current issue of Tricycle: An illustrated timeline of Lumbini, Nepal More »
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    "Eco-monastery" to open in the Buddha's birthplace Paid Member

    Posted by Sam Mowe on 11 Mar 2011
    An “eco-monastery” will open in April in Lumbini, Nepal—the birthplace of the Buddha. The Lumbini Udyana Mahachaitya World Center for Peace and Unity (LUM), a project headed by Trungram Gyaltrul Rinpoche, will be the largest temple in Lumbini, at 48,600-square-feet, and has incorporated various “green” elements into its design—such as extra insulation, and relying on large area solar panels to generate all of the building’s lighting needs. Though it will be the largest temple in town, it will be the most environmentally friendly of all the buildings in the monastic zone of Lumbini, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Dharmakaya, Rinpoche's organization, began construction on the project in 2006. More »
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    No more industry in the Buddha's birthplace Paid Member

    Posted by Sam Mowe on 25 Jan 2011
    The road to Lumbini, Nepal—the birthplace of the Buddha—is littered with industry. Cement companies, brick kilns, steel mills, and a paper mill all manufacture goods alongside the Bhairahawa-Lumbini highway, a stretch of land that falls within the Lumbini Protected Zone—an area of a 15km radius around the UNESCO World Heritage Site, meant to be industry-free. Though rules barring industry in the LPZ have not been enforced before now, Nepal's Prime Minister, Madhav Kumar Nepal, said Sunday that the government will not license new industries and will begin to crackdown on existing ones.      From Republica: More »
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    Wikileaks: Lumbini Edition Paid Member

    Posted by Sam Mowe on 08 Dec 2010
    At the request of Dr. Christoph Cueppers—German Tibetologist, director of the Lumbini International Research Institute, and friend—I went yesterday to the UN Archives and Records Management to sift through old documentation on the UN's role in the early days of Lumbini's development."It would be very very helpful indeed if you could get some documentation of the early days of the Lumbini," he wrote, "and the international commitment. Photos, exchange of notes, whatever is there is of interest. Also the assignment of the Master Plan to Kenzo Tange."Most of what I looked through wasn't very juicy—formal letters requesting financial support, thank you notes. etc.—but I loved it. For me, touching history is an electric, life-affirming activity. This is our collective heritage! Isn't it wild that this is our collective heritage?Here are a couple photographs of the correspondence I dug through. More »
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    Buddha Boy Back with a Vengeance Paid Member

    Posted by Sam Mowe on 27 Jul 2010
    Even Buddha boy gets angry.* Ram Bahadur Bamjan, popularly known as Buddha boy, is back in the news after capturing and beating 17 locals near Manaharwa village in the Bara district of Nepal. He reportedly held the victims for 24 hours and beat them with sticks. Why this happened is unclear. The Himalayan Times reports that it was because the locals were “trying to scuttle his meditation,” while they were collecting vegetables in the Ratanpuri forest. More »