Tricycle | Awake in the World

Monks in Burma are continuing to stir the pot. Now they're demanding an apology from the junta running the country for continued violence during the democratic protests, and demanding the release of political prisoners, including the most famous, Aung San Suu Kyi. The junta generally treads lightly around the monks in this very Buddhist country (despite violence against demonstrating monks last week, which lead to the monks' taking hostages for a day,) but have cut off phone service in their opposition's headquarters. Protests have been ongoing in Burma since August 19th and were initially triggered by rapidly rising fuel prices.

Tricycle blogger Martine Batchelor's recent book Let Go is reviewed by Amala on wildmind.org.

And of course how could we ignore the sad passing of 31-years-young Alex the Gray Parrot, interviewed here in Scientific American. Alex had a bigger vocabulary than most trained chimpanzees, but people debated whether he really knew what he was saying.

Here's a post from Atheist Hussy discusses Buddhism, theodicy, and the Christian God. Does meditation ease migraine pain? Go to Pittsburgh to find out. And finally here's a piece on the documentary "The Dhamma Brothers" about meditation in prison. We don't pay much attention to the treatment of prisoners, but when they are denied the right to freely practice their religion (i.e. their First Amendment rights) we ought to sit up and take notice. The film's website is here.

- Philip Ryan, Webmaster