Because for Burmese Buddhists to do to Muslims what Muslims are doing to non-Muslims in Bangladesh, and Pakistan, and Nigeria, and half-a-dozen other nations — well, it’s just not right. Continue reading
Category Archives: Buddhism
Nepal: Woman beaten and abused for ‘witchcraft’
Nepal’s women’s commission has condemned an attack in the remote west of the country on an elderly woman accused of witchcraft. Continue reading
Canada: Now EVERYONE wants to get into the act!
105-year-old Zen master accused of sexually assaulting students. Continue reading
Australia: PM endorses religion’s right to bigotry
PRIME Minister Julia Gillard has assured religious groups they will have the ”freedom” under a new rights bill to discriminate against homosexuals and others they deem sinners, according to the head of the Australian Christian Lobby.
Under current law, faith-based organisations, including schools and hospitals, can refuse to hire those they view as sinners if they consider it ”is necessary to avoid injury to the religious sensitivities of adherents of that religion”.
Ms Gillard has met Australian Christian Lobby managing director Jim Wallace several times, and he says she assured him ”she has no intention of restricting freedom of religion” when it comes to religious groups’ legal rights to discriminate in hiring and firing.
As a devout atheist it ‘injures my religious sensitivities’ when people try to get away with this crap.
Australia: Arson suspected as Buddhist temple burns
Police suspect arson may be behind the blaze at Jamisontown, near Penrith, and Fairfax Media understands the building has been targeted by vandals several times in the past year.
The property, used as a Korean Buddhist temple for about two years, was well alight when emergency crews arrived about 2.30am on Sunday.
Burma: Buddhists burn Muslim villages — 64 dead
Human Rights Watch says more than 800 buildings and houseboats were torched in coastal Kyaukpyu, in western Rakhine state.
It claims non-Muslims targeted Muslim Rohingyas, in the first serious attack since June, when the rape and murder of a young Buddhist woman in Rakhine in May triggered a string of bloody religious clashes.
Burmese President Thein Sein’s spokesman acknowledged that whole villages had been wiped out, while officials say 64 people have died in recent unrest.
UK: Atheist schoolboy banned from Boy Scouts
Schoolboy George Pratt had attended his local Scout group for ten months, and was expecting to invest in the group along with his friends.
But, after being required to swear the traditional promise, he found himself unable to join as he does not believe in God.
George, 11, said he was “very disappointed” in the decision, calling it “very unfair” and claiming he feels left out from experiences and trips his friends are attending.
His father Nick Pratt, 45, has accused the Scout movement of being “narrow minded” and “intolerant”, saying his son is being “excluded because he doesn’t believe”.
To become a full member of the 1st Midsomer Norton Group in Somerset, which meets in a hall opposite his home, George must take the Scout Promise.
This reads: “On my honour, I promise that I will do my best, To do my duty to God and to the Queen, To help other people, And to keep the Scout Law.”
Different versions of the oath are available for different faiths, such as the use of ‘Allah’ to replace ‘God’ for Muslims.
So it doesn’t matter what Invisible Friend you think you have, as long as you have one? What about Harvey, the six-foot rabbit? I’m sure he could teach a twelve-year-old boy all sorts of things.
Bangladesh: Muslim protesters burn Buddhist temples
A reason? Who needs a reason? Oh, that’s right — they were ‘offended’.
Hundreds of Muslims in Bangladesh burned at least four Buddhist temples and 15 homes of Buddhists on Sunday after complaining that a Buddhist man had insulted Islam, police and residents said.
Members of the Buddhist minority in the Cox’s Bazar area in the southeast of the country said unidentified people were bent on upsetting peaceful relations between Muslims and Buddhists.
Muslims took to the streets in the area late on Saturday to protest against what they said was a photograph posted on Facebook that insulted Islam.
The protesters said the picture had been posted by a Buddhist and they marched to Buddhist villages and set fire to temples and houses.
Burma: what, those nice Buddhists?
Violence between Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims in Burma’s Rakhine region erupted in June after the alleged rape and murder of a Buddhist girl by Muslim men. The scale of violence has led to scores of deaths and the mass displacement of tens of thousands of people. After a state of emergency was declared in the province, the entry of Burma’s security forces lent another dimension to this conflict. Amnesty International said in early August that Rakhine Buddhists, together with security forces, purposefully meted out devastating violence against the Muslim minority.
This violence is only the latest chapter in a long history of state-sponsored repression against the Rohingya. It began when Burma began its project of “Burmanisation” in the 1950s, with its lofty aims for racial purity and the nationalisation of resources following the end of British rule. The minority was targeted in pogroms in 1978, stripped of their citizenship in 1982 and became the perfect foil for rampant human rights abuse, including slave labour and torture, that led to a second exodus into Bangladesh in 1991-1992.
Australia: Robbed woman threatened with ‘evil spirits’
A Sydney woman has been robbed after being told “evil spirits” would bring bad luck to her family if she did not hand over her money and jewellery, and police believe she is not the only victim.
Investigators have released CCTV footage of two women they believe conned the 60-year-old victim of her belongings at the intersection of John and Hill streets in Cabramatta about 12.30pm on Thursday.
The victim had withdrawn cash from a bank when the women approached her with the warning about evil spirits, police said….
The victim added that the items would be returned to her after they were “blessed”.
Funny, that’s what they told us about the Carbon Tax.
Thailand: Buddha? Try substituting margarine…
…and it doubles as a tent in wet weather.
A health study of Buddhist monks in Thailand has found that nearly half of them are obese.
A study of 246 monks from the Dhammayuttika Nikaya and Mahayana movements in 11 Thai provinces revealed that nearly half of them are clinically obese and suffering from lifestyle diseases such as high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes.
US: Buddhist cult expels member — to die in the desert
The rescuers had rappelled from a helicopter, swaying in the brisk April winds as they bore down on a cave 7,000 feet up in a rugged desert mountain on the edge of this rural hamlet. There had been a call for help. Inside, they found a jug with about an inch of water, browned by floating leaves and twigs. They found a woman, Christie McNally, thirsty and delirious. And they found her husband, Ian Thorson, dead.
The puzzle only deepened when the authorities realized that the couple had been expelled from a nearby Buddhist retreat in which dozens of adherents, living in rustic conditions, had pledged to meditate silently for three years, three months and three days. Their spiritual leader was a charismatic Princeton-educated monk whom some have accused of running the retreat as a cult.
“Don’t get us wrong — we’re just as loony as the other major religions.” a spokesperson for Buddhism said. “But we don’t get the chance to show it so often.”
US: The scariest thing in the world…
…is a confident woman
This post is extensively linked. It’s tragic that there are so many examples of misogyny, but it’s great to see them all exposed in one place.
Girls, these things happen because there are men with power who fear you and want to control you. I know that I have equated relatively benign baseball games with deadly, honor killings but, whereas one is a type of daily, seemingly harmless micro-aggression and the other is a lethal macro-aggression they share the same roots. The basis of both, and escalating actions in between, is the same: To teach you, and all girls subject to these men and their authority, a lesson: “Know your place.” I also know that there are places where girls are marginalized and hurt that are not religious. But all over the world these hypocritical, pious men, in their shamefully obvious wrongness, represent the sharp-edged tip of an iceberg, the visible surface of a deep and vast harm. They employ the full range of their earthly and divine influence to make sure, as early as possible, that you and the boys around you understand what they want your relative roles to be. Where there are patriarchal religions girls, in dramatically varying and extreme degrees, disproportionately suffer. Understand these men for what they are: bullies. Do not internalize what they would have you believe.
South Korea: Do ya feel lucky? Well, do ya, monk?
….Apparently not.
Six leading South Korean Buddhist monks have quit after being filmed smoking, drinking and gambling.
Next week on Monks Go Wild: how the Dominicans got their own Republic.
Global: What people believe in depends on where they’re born…
US: Christians not silly enough?
Dalai Lama wins Templeton Prize for a lifetime of spreading ineffective woo.
Templeton Prize – Current Winner
It’s kind of lucky for the Dalai Lama that he’s confined to a position of permanent impotence. If he ever gets to put his real views into practice he might not garner so much sympathy.
Tibet: Or you could just pop a Serepax…
Monk finds the secret of inner peace — bludge off a relative for nineteen years.
After China invaded Tibet in 1959, a young monk went into solitary confinement. He remained in a tiny dark room in the capital Lhasa for 19 years.
Choden Rinpoche’s confinement was self-imposed and he spent the two decades secretly meditating and reciting sacred texts he had memorised…
At 83, Rinpoche is a respected scholar, teacher and meditation master, and among the last generation of Tibetan-born lamas who studied before the invasion that destroyed much of their culture. He is in Sydney to teach.
To teach what? Escapism?
When he emerged in 1985, his mind felt calm…
Well it would, wouldn’t it?
Thailand: Love the King! …or else
They were going to hire doubles to protect the King, but it was cheaper to just buy waxworks
An American has been jailed for two-and-a-half years in Thailand after posting excerpts from a banned book about the country’s monarch online – while living in the U.S.
Joe Gordon, 55, who was born in the Southeast Asian kingdom but has lived in the U.S. for 30 years, translated pages from The King Never Smiles – a critical biography of Thailand’s King Bhumibol Adulyadej – while living in Colorado five years ago.
But when he visited the country of his birth in May to seek medical treatment for arthritis and high blood pressure, he was arrested and charged under Thailand’s strict lese majeste laws.
Thailand’s lese majeste laws are the harshest in the world. They mandate that people found guilty of defaming the monarchy – including the king, the queen and the heir to the throne – face up to 15 years behind bars. Last month, 61-year-old Amphon Tangnoppakul was sentenced to 20 years in jail for sending four text messages deemed offensive to the crown.
US: Buddhist monk accused of keeping ‘slave’
A housekeeper is accusing a Korean Buddhist monk and his family of forcing her to work as a “slave” in their US home.
The New York Times reports that the lawsuit alleges the family kept the woman prisoner in their Queens, New York home for 12 years under threat of death.
The suit was filed by Oak-Jin Oh last week in Brooklyn federal court.
US: Catholics take heart!…
…Buddhist priests rape children too.
A Tribune review of sexual abuse cases involving several Theravada Buddhist temples found minimal accountability and lax oversight of monks accused of preying on vulnerable targets.
Because they answer to no outside ecclesiastical authority, the temples respond to allegations as they see fit. And because the monks are viewed as free agents, temples claim to have no way of controlling what they do next. Those found guilty of wrongdoing can pack a bag and move to another temple — much to the dismay of victims, law enforcement and other monks.
“You’d think they’d want to make sure these guys are not out there trying to get into other temples,” said Rishi Agrawal, the attorney for a victim of a west suburban monk convicted of battery for sexual contact last fall. “What is the institutional approach here? It seems to be ignorance and inaction.”
Sound familiar…?
Australia: It takes one to know one — penitent death cults embrace AGW
SMH.
Monks and rabbis have stood alongside Catholics and Anglicans in Canberra to show support for the federal government’s plan to tackle climate change.
Leaders from the Australian Religious Response to Climate Change (ARRCC) met Prime Minister Julia Gillard in support of the carbon tax today.
Because, hey, what’s one more daft idea among so many?
Indonesia: Temple dispute disrupts ASEAN meeting
SMH.
The credibility of the Association of South-East Asian Nations and its aim of becoming a European Union-style security and economic community by 2015 was damaged this weekend as Thailand and Cambodia openly brawled over their deadly dispute over ownership of an 11th-century temple complex.
The sporadic military conflict in the border area where the temple is located has claimed 29 lives and displaced 85,000 people. Despite not being on the formal agenda, it dominated the ASEAN summit in Jakarta.
Peace, harmony, and improving the lives of millions? Sure, but first there’s this magic building we have to sort out..
Vietnam: Buddhists flock to see ‘termite Buddha’
Thousands of Vietnamese have converged on a rubber farm after the discovery of a termite’s nest resembling the image of Buddha, an official from the rubber company said on Friday.
I think it is a very good omen presented to us from above and that’s why many people have travelled a great distance to come here and worship the Buddha,” Dantri International quoted Hoang Thi Minh, a local resident, as saying.
So what would a bad omen be? A termite mound that looks like a termite mound? Because there are a hell of a lot more of those…
US: ‘I am a Marxist’ — Dalai Lama
SMH.
Enough said, really. Even nice old men go really silly when religion gets hold of them.
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