Cambodian Visions & Paradigm Shifts

China vs. India: the battle for Buddha

2012-01-20T16:17:00.000-07:00

China and India seek to leverage their ties to Buddhism for soft power in the region.
Jason OverdorfJanuary 19, 2012 06:32

A Nepalese woman lights prayer candles at the stupa Boudhanath for the Buddha's birthday in Kathmandu. (Paula Bronstein/Getty Images)

LUMBINI, Nepal — For a few short hours, as dancers imported from Kathmandu leapt and twirled for the bemused president of this tiny Himalayan republic, the sleepy, provincial town of Lumbini, in western Nepal, became the focus of the great chess game underway between India and China.

After a sudden, unannounced, and brief visit from Chinese premier Wen Jiabao in Kathmandu, Nepalese President Ram Baran Yadav had flown in to take the stage here — at the birthplace of Buddha — to inaugurate “Visit Lumbini Year 2012” on behalf of Nepal tourism.

But as he set fire to a symbolic, Olympic-style “peace flame,” more than a few observers were wondering about the fortuitous timing of the event, which coincided, like the flourish of a magician's cape, with the preventive detention of hundreds of Nepalese Tibetans in the capital.

The detention of Tibetans is nothing new, of course. And Nepal is always rife with rumors and conspiracy theories. But for the past several months a curious mystery has unfolded around Lumbini — the latest beachhead in the quiet battle for Buddha underway between China and India.

With competing conferences, organizations, and cultural tours, both China and India have sought to leverage their historical ties with Buddhism for so-called soft power in the region.

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India seeks to use its common cultural heritage to overcome China's ethnic ties to the overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia, and China seeks to limit the damage from its repression of religious freedom in Tibet and its incessant sparring with the Dalai Lama.

“This is part of China's effort to use Buddhism to gain an entry into Nepal, [and] to show to their Buddhists that they're showing equal attention to Buddhism outside the country,” Jayaveda Ranade, formerly additional secretary for East Asia with the Indian government, said of a Chinese proposal for the development of Lumbini.

Yadav, Nepal's president, made no mention of China before the crowd gathered at Buddha's birthplace, though in Kathmandu Wen pledged more than $140 million in aid for the building of infrastructure and other projects. Wen also agreed to consider Nepal's request to extend the 1,200 mile Qinghai-Tibet railway onward to Kathmandu and Lumbini.

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“Both sides started worrying about this once the Dalai Lama started giving intimations of mortality, shall we say,” said Jabin Jacob, assistant director of the New Delhi-based Institute of Chinese Studies, an independent think tank.

“If the Dalai Lama is disappearing from the scene or he is going to be stepping back from the political scene, as he already has, then there is this huge resource lying out there untapped,” he said.

India and China: their claims to Buddhism

Born Prince Gautama Siddhartha in what is today Nepal, the Buddha achieved enlightenment, gained his spiritual following, and died (or achieved final nirvana) in India. As a result, Bodhgaya, Sarnath and Kushinagar, located in the north Indian state of Bihar, remain major pilgrimage centers for believers from around the world.

But in India Buddhism was subsumed by Hinduism, and New Delhi has done little to spread the wealth from tourism to Lumbini — which most view as less significant than the three pilgrimage sites in India. So as Nepal's tourism ministry seeks to lure 500,000 visitors to Lumbini in 2012, expectations of Indian support are not too high — though India claims to be “more than happy” to contribute.

“Most of the inter-governmental bodies are dysfunctional,” said Aditya Baral, director of the publicity department of the Nepal Tourism Board.

At the same time, even though China is notorious for its suppression of Tibetan Buddhism, and India is home to the exiled Dalai Lama, in its other forms Buddhism is reportedly the fastest-growing religion in China and accounts for only a tiny, neglected minority in the land where it originated.

And China's largesse, at least on paper, or in rumor, appears to know no bounds.

“Nearly 40 percent of Chinese believe in Buddhism. Several of the Chinese leaders themselves are practicing Buddhists, despite being members of the Communist Party,” said Shrikanth Kondapalli, a professor of Chinese studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University.

“So from that point of view it's quite natural for China to be interested in Buddhist projects,” he said.

According to Ranade, China held its first World Buddhist Forum in 2006 in an effort to project its handpicked candidate, Gyaltsen Norbu, as the legitimate Panchen Lama, after secret police allegedly kidnapped and spirited away the boy chosen by the Tibetans in 1995.

A second conference in 2009, for which the concluding ceremony was held in Taiwan, was aimed at convincing neighboring Buddhist nations that China had embraced the religion, despite its continued opposition to the Dalai Lama.

Similarly, Beijing has undertaken other cultural intiatives, such as the displaying of tooth and hair relics of the Buddha in a traveling exhibition in Myanmar.

“All of this is to keep the Dalai Lama in his place,” said Jacob. “It's to ensure that they have a handle on his succession, an influence on his succession, and that they will be seen as legitimately intervening in that succession.”

At the same time, India has sought to build on the goodwill it receives naturally as home to the exiled leader of Tibetan Buddhism and reach out to other sects.

In 2007, for instance, the loan of an extensive collection of Buddhist art and artifacts from India's National Museum subtly reinforced the message that the religion traveled from India to China and beyond in conjunction with an East Asia Summit where Beijing had sought to shoulder out New Delhi.

Together with representatives from Singapore, China, Japan and Thailand, India has undertaken a $1 billion project to develop a modern university in the ancient Buddhist learning center of Nalanda, in modern day Bihar, under the leadership of Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen.

Beginning this summer, however, the struggle for soft power has begun to seem as though it were scripted by John Le Carré.

The plot thickens in Lumbini

For Lumbini, the story begins in July, when China's state-run People's Daily reported that a peculiar Hong Kong-based outfit called the Asia Pacific Exchange & Cooperation Foundation (APECF) had signed a memorandum of understanding with the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) to create a “special cultural zone” in Lumbini.

Touting a planned investment of $3 billion, APECF claimed to have the full support of the Nepal government for its scheme to build roads, telecommunications networks and tourist facilities in the area.

The dusty, one-horse town of Lumbini could certainly use the money. But at nearly one-tenth of Nepal's entire gross domestic product, $3 billion was a stupendous sum — and, some suspect, a wholly fictional one: a carnival barker's cry, crude propaganda, or a “trial balloon” to gauge how Nepal might react.

The answer was swift.

Soon afterward UNIDO and Nepal, by turns, disavowed the project. It surfaced that both Pushpa Kamal Dahal, the Maoist leader popularly known by his nomme de guerre Prachanda, or “Fearless,” and the controversial Paras Bir Bikram Shah Dev, Nepal's former crown prince, held positions on APECF's board of directors.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) blasted APECF's scheme as a threat to Lumbini's status as a World Heritage site. And Culture Secretary Modraj Dotel resigned in protest over alleged pressure to approve the project.

“What to me was worrying was the wheeling and dealing through which they had managed to get both Prince Paras and Prachanda, an unholy alliance from opposite ends of the spectrum,” said Kul Chandra Gautam, a former assistant secretary general of the UN who has publicly criticized the project.

“All kinds of shady deals happen in Nepal, and for our most influential political leader to be made part of this venture to me sounded very fishy.” (Prince Paras is no longer listed as a board member by APECF's website).

For Indian foreign policy think tanks, APECF — nominally a non-governmental organization (NGO) — was an obvious clandestine arm of the Chinese government.

Its Lumbini project was a transparent attempt to leverage Buddhism to station platoons of People's Liberation Army engineers within a stone's throw of the Indian border. And the bizarre snafu of the fake agreement with UNIDO was simply another example, apparently, of the inscrutability of Chinese espionage.

So, too, it goes in New Delhi.

This week, Beijing's special representative Dai Bingguo is in New Delhi hoping to flag off a “golden period” for India-China relations. But it's lucky he made it at all, in the wake of the latest Indian salvo in the battle for Buddha.

In November, Beijing scrapped Dai's planned visit to discuss an outstanding dispute over China's borders with Arunachal Pradesh and Kashmir in protest over an Indian rival to its own World Buddhism Conference. Organized by the Asoka Mission, another NGO that receives government funding, the meeting brought Buddhist leaders from around the world together with the Dalai Lama the same week that Dai was to arrive for talks.

“Clubbed with the South China Sea dispute, clubbed with the Yellow Sea incident where the Chinese opposed the USS George Washington into that region and a host of other problems that China had with the US and their neighbors, including even with India, it did cost [Beijing] some soft power,” said professor Kondapalli.

“The convention decided to set up an international Buddhist institution somewhere in India, to codify the Buddhist scriptures and so forth,” he said.

Coincidence? Representatives of the Indian government say so. But just as in Lumbini, there are plenty of people ready to concoct a master plan behind the chaos.

A peaceful life of prayer

2012-01-14T23:10:00.000-07:00

A peaceful life of prayer

(Photo: Amanda Keenan)

January 13, 2012
AMANDA KEENAN
The West Australian

Their garish orange robes are undoubtedly loud but the Buddhist monks of Cambodia roam the streets silently, gliding gracefully along the footpath toting umbrellas to shield their shaved heads from the sun.

The monks are something of an enigma and during a whirlwind visit to Siem Reap, I join a travel buddy on a trip to Polangka Wat to catch up with a couple of friendly monks he met at Angkor Wat. As we push our way through the crowds, make our way past the shanties teetering precariously over Siem Reap River, dodging kittens, mopeds and unbelievably low-hanging powerlines, I wonder what I'll find at the temple. I've worn long pants and a long sleeve shirt out of respect but still, will I even be permitted inside this most sacred place?

Polangka is not an ancient temple like the breathtaking buildings at Angkor, but a modern-ish cluster of donga-style rooms. A reasonably busy road seems to run through the middle of Polangka Wat but it's very quiet.

Amid the hubbub we spy a lone monk with a warm grin. No, he doesn't know the monks we are seeking but would we like to come to his room? How could we say no?

San Van's tiny room has a single bed and a shrine for meditation. His walls are adorned with religious paraphernalia and a noisy, dangerously wired fan clacks overhead. "Sit," he beckons, and we join him cross-legged on a rug covering the otherwise bare floor.

He immediately begins chanting; it is intensely beautiful and deeply soothing. The 21-year-old monk performs an enchanting ceremony to give us a safe journey back to Australia, lighting incense and stirring strands of red wool in holy water before plaiting them into bracelets he blesses, and ties around our wrists.

San Van is eager to practise his English and tells these rare visitors of his life as a monk. He explains how he grew up in a big family of rice farmers in a village called Bak Angrot, about 100km away. One of nine children, San Van says he has been interested in being a monk his whole life.

"When I was a young boy, I saw a monk walking in my village with a bowl. I offered food to him," he recalls. "I left my family to live in the temple. I became a novice young monk then I grew up and became a complete monk, (though) I still study."

San Van says he occasionally speaks with his family on the phone but they do not have email in his village. He knows they are proud of his decision to devote his life to his faith.

"My family is very happy."

While we chat, an elderly local woman arrives with bags of dried noodles, a gift for the monk who is forbidden to have money or actively beg. She is blessed by the young man who appears to have made quite an impression on her.

Once the villager leaves, San Van explains how he has been living in the temple for a year, and gives an insight in to the regimented lifestyle. He practises Theravada Buddhism, which has become popular in Australia.

"We get up at 4 o'clock, go to the temple to pray and for meditation," he says.

"Then after the sun rises the monks go outside to walk around the temple with a bowl. The people offer food to eat, all sorts of people.

"In the morning we go to study Buddhism then in the middle of the day we eat. In the afternoon we go to the temple to pray again."

When I ask him why he seems so relaxed on this day, he says with a smile: "No class today - it is Saturday." Even monks get a day off.

San Van says they pray in the day from 6am until 10am and are in bed by 9pm. During the wet season, they are temple- bound for three months. He intends to remain a monk for the rest of his life, sacrificing marriage and children and other so-called rites of passage for religion and study. But he has loftier goals.

He would like to visit other countries - Australia, even. "I want to continue to study at university," he says earnestly, before asking for our email address so we might stay in touch. I place a $US10 note in his donation bowl and get up to leave.

"How much does university cost in Australia," he asks.

Much more than in Cambodia, we explain. "Will you help me pay my university," he inquires. We politely decline and make our goodbyes. It is a memorable experience, and at least I learn that monks aren't unapproachable, nor are they shy.

Amanda Keenan travelled to Cambodia courtesy of AirAsia.

The cycle of sufferings and tears are within us, breakthrough this cycle if we want stop sufferings and tears

2012-01-08T13:51:00.001-07:00

Source: Venerable Luon Sovath Blog

Cambodian proverb says "ចុះទឹកក្រពើ ឡើងលើខ្លា Choh Tirk Kropeur, Lerng Leur Klaa or means step down into the water face alligator, climb up to the ground face tiger". This proverb teaches us the "reality" that all Cambodian people especially Cambodian Buddhists must be mindful to accept this truth and search for alternative solutions to eliminate this unfavorable truth. While the 7 Makara Day has been approaching and it is a dividing day for Cambodian politicians and general people, the violence in Borei Keila has been remarkably occurring before this remarkable arrival day. If we do a Dhamma analogy with the Khmer proverb saying above, we can see that the Pol Pot regime is a deadly situation that Cambodian people were drown into the water full of alligator; 7 Makara Day is a deadly situation that Cambodian people were preyed by the tiger. As the matter of fact, the violation on the residential rights in Borei Keila as well as other places entire Cambodia are evidently witnessing the suffering and tears perpetuated by the tiger on the ground? It seems we were drown into the water, Cambodian people were died faster than Cambodian people who are preyed by the ground tiger. 3 years, 8 months and 20 days in the water might not be able to compare the suffering and tears of 33 years facing with the lingering ground tiger. If Cambodian people cannot escape from these two beasts, the suffering and tears are still pending on them.

Buddha taught that "the cycle of suffering is within us, if we cannot break through this cycle, we still experience sufferings and tears".

លោកមេធាវីជួង ជួងីកោសក់បួសជាតាបស់បដិបតិ្តសមាធិភាវនា Lawyer Choung Choungy shaved head and ordained to practice meditation

2012-01-05T13:39:00.000-07:00

Source: Venerable Luon Sovath Blog

លោក ជួង ជូងី មេធាវីការពារក្តីល្បីល្បាញឲ្យប្រជាជនស្លូតត្រង់និង សមាជិកគណបក្ស សម រង្ស៊ីបានកោសក់បួសជាតាបស់ធ្វើសមាធិធម៌-ភាវនាដើម្បី ស្វែងរកយុត្តិធម៌ រក្សាធម៌ និងរក្សាសេចក្តីល្អ ដែលជាគ្រឹះសំខាន់ឈាន ទៅរកការបដិបត្តិពិតប្រាកដ។

ធម៌មានន័យថាសភាវៈទ្រទ្រង់។ ព្រះពុទ្ធជាម្ចាស់សំដែងថា ធម្មោ ហវេ រក្ខតិ ធម្មចារី មានន័យថា ធម៌នឹងរក្សាបុគ្គលណាដែលប្រព្រឹត្តនិងបដិបតិ្តធម៌។ លោកមេធាវីជួង ជួងីពិតជាមានធម្មសងេ្វកយ៉ាងខ្លាំងចំពោះការវិវឌ្ឍន៏ចុង ក្រោយនែប្រព័ន្ធយុត្តិធម៌នៅកម្ពុជា ហើយការកោសក់បួសជាតាបស់ ធ្វើសមាធិភាវនានៅពេលនេះ ពិតជាជួយឱយចិត្តរបស់លោកស្ងប់ មានបញ្ញា និងអាចទាក់ទាញពុទ្ធបរិស័យ ខ្មែរទាំងអស់ឱយធ្វើដំណើរពី ក្រោយលោកទាំងអស់គ្នា។

កម្មដ្ឋានមានន័យថាទីតាំងនែការបដិបតិ្តធម៌រួមមានកាយ ចិត្ត និងទីកន្លែង ស្ងប់ញ៉ាំងអត្តភាពឱយឈានទៅរកការសំរេចធម៌ជាន់ខ្ពស់។ សមាធិភាវនា មានន័យថាបរិកម្មធម៌ណាមួយជាពុទ្ធគុណក្តី ជាធម្មគុណក្តី ជាសង្ឍគុណក្តី ដើម្បីលើកកំរិតចិត្តឱយឈានដល់ការសំរេចធម៌ជាន់ខ្ពស់។

លោកមហាត្មគន្ធី បានបដិបតិ្តសត្យកម្មនិងអវិហឹង្សា ដែលធ្វើឱយចិត្តលោក ស្ងប់សំរេចធម៌ជាន់ ខ្ពស់បណ្តាលឱយអង់គ្លេសប្រគល់ឯករាជ្យឱយឥណ្ឌា។

បច្ចុប្បន្នលោកAnna Hazareបានកំពុងបដិបតិ្តសមាធិភាវនាវដើម្បីធ្វើចិត្តឱយ ស្ងប់ដែលកើតពីសង្វេគធម៌នែអំពើពុករលួយដ៏អាក្រក់នៅប្រទេសឥណ្ឌា។

សូមចូលរួមអនុមោទនាលោកមេធាវីជួង ជួងី ក្នុងការកោសក់បួសជាតាបស់ ដើម្បីធ្វើសមាធិភាវនាវនៅពេលនេះ។ សង្ឍឹមថាពុទ្ធបរិស័ទខ្មែរនឹងចូលរួម បដិបត្តិជាមួយលោកដើម្បីសន្សំកុសលផលបុណ្យជាមួយគ្នាតែរៀងៗខ្លួន។

Mr. Choung Choungny is a well-known lawyer who has assisted many poor Cambodian plaintiffs and defendants including many opposition party members. Now he has shaved his head and ordained to practice meditation for self-purity, protection the justice system and protection the Dhamma or righteousness.
Dhamma means substantial element for guarding and supporting our world. Lord Buddha taught that "Dhammo Have Rakkati Dhammacari means Dhamma or righteousness will protect and guard those who have practiced the Dhamma". Mr. Choung Chougny was badly affected by the latest development of Cambodian judicial system. He decided to shave his head and ordain as hermit to practice meditation to raise up his mind and spirit, and it is a good example for all Buddhists to follow his pathway.
Kammathana means place of body, mind and environs which are helpful for searching higher level of spirituality, truth and goodness. Samadhi-bhavana means to recite and chant any mantra from the virtue of Lord Buddha, Dhamma mantra and virtue of Sangha to develop peacefulness, wisdom, and compassion.
Mahatma Ghandhi practiced meditation of Satya (truth) and Avihangsa (non-violence) to develop his mind, spirit, peace and wisdom until England accepted to return full independence back to India.
At the present, Mr. Anna Hazare, who has deeply been affected by the rampant corruption in India, he has practiced meditation to raise up his mind, spirit, peace and wisdom until the government of India began to table this issue at the government administration.
We would like to share sympathy and reconciliation with Lawyer Choung Chougny for his ordination to search for truth and righteousness. We wish all Cambodian Buddhists take their time to join with Mr. Choung Chougny.
Unofficial translation by SV

Vinaya or the rule of laws are important but they must be rightly articulated

2011-12-23T13:18:00.002-07:00

Source: Venerable Luon Sovath

Buddha taught his disciples that Vinaya or the rule of law is crucial for justice, peace, unity and advancement. However, Buddha stressed on right view and right understanding to duly implement their duty and obligation of this Vinaya. Whenever, the rule of law or Vinaya was created by a wrong view and wrong understanding, the greedy and the delusive will exploit this rule of law at the expenses of the bottom line people and the society will be inevitably apocalyptic.

Civil society or NGOs are the key player of social development. Civil society is the key actor in social, political and economic development in Cambodia. Civil society is the broker of this nation. In democratic countries, the government and civil society is inseparable and they are legally entitled to collectively work for the nation. They are guaranteed by the national constitution. In communist countries, civil society is strictly prohibited.

In Cambodia, many laws such as fishery laws, deforestion laws and corruption laws have become a tool for political supremacy. With this reality, how could one trust the upcoming civil society laws? This is the emergent question embedded in Cambodian mind and government must ensure that they have built trust for its citizens. If those laws are amended but never implemented or implemented for the greedy and the delusive, it is just a tool for modern political manipulation. We need right Vinaya and right practitioners in Cambodia.

Villagers petition via krama

Chhay Channyda

Wednesday, 21 December 2011

Photo by: Pha Lina

Villagers hold aloft a 230-metre krama yesterday during their protest in front of the National Assembly.

More than 10,000 thumbprints of villagers from communities throughout 24 provinces and cities secured to a 230-metre blue krama was submitted to the National Assembly yesterday as a petition against the passage of three worrying laws.

Before submitting the petition, which weighed 50 kilograms, about 100 villagers from land-dispute communities and villages dependent on fishing and forestry stood alongside civil society representatives while holding the scarf and chanting.

“The citizens wanted the National Assembly to know that they are very concerned over draft laws which restrict their freedom,” Yeng Virak, president of Community Legal Education Center said.

The thumbprints, which were collected on International

Human Rights Day on December 12, are in protest over the passage of the draft law on associations and NGOs, the draft union law and the draft agricultural cooperative law.

A large and vocal portion of civil society views these draft laws as violating the constitutional and international rights of Cambodians, specifically freedom of expression and association guarantees.

Heng Sam Orn, general secretary of the Independent Democratic of Informal Economic Association, said the three laws were not really needed and, if passed, the rights and freedom of expression of citizens and civil society organisations alike would be narrower.

“Law dictating what activities local communities can do in their residences is a restriction on freedom, and it will be contrary to our constitution,” he said.

Villager Nhel Pheap said that submitting the petition to the National Assembly is “a beforehand caution” for the National Assembly, which has the ultimate right to consider and approve laws.

Sar Bora, president of the Cambodian Food and Service Workers’ Federation, said Cambodian civil society intended to continue advocacy protests against the laws, even if the National Assembly passed them.

Japan's monks turn to wife matchmaking parties

2011-10-29T12:20:00.001-06:00

Japan's monks turn to wife matchmaking parties

[ 2011-10-28 11:49 ]

Rows of shaven-haired monks in suits are sitting at tables and being formally introduced to suitable young women.

Japan's Buddhist monks are taking action in their mission to find successors to their temples – by attending matchmaking parties to find a wife.

A number of matchmaking events involving Buddhist monks, who are permitted to marry and have families in Japan, have taken place in the capital.

The daughters of temple owners without clear male successors have also been drawn to these events in order to meet potential monk husbands.

Ageing populations and shrinking birthrates combined with the often solitary life of a monk have resulted in growing concerns surrounding the hereditary succession of temples.

As a result, one such matchmaking event was recently organised by a consultation office at the headquarters of the Buddhist order Nichiren Shu.

"We would like to give people the opportunity to find a good marriage match," a spokesman for Nichiren Shu told The Telegraph.

"This is for the second or third male children of temple owners, monks from lay families and temple daughters who need to meet monks to take care of the temple for future generations. Followers who want to marry with monks can also attend." Their most recent event took place on the 30th floor of a skyscraper in the Odaiba area of Tokyo and involved rows of shaven-haired monks in suits sitting at tables and being formally introduced to suitable young women.

Among the 51 participants was a 27-year-old monk from Kurashiki, Okayama prefecture, who told the Asahi Shimbun: "It's very hard to find a young woman who wants to marry a monk unless we take very proactive approaches in meeting such women." It was not just the monks who were concerned about the future of the family temples: another guest was a 24-year-old woman from Ichinomiya, Aichi Prefecture, who told the paper: "My father is a temple mater and I have three elder sisters. I want to find someone who will take over my father's temple." Meanwhile, another 37-year-old woman who attended without any temple connections in her family described the practical and financial appeal of potentially partnering a monk.

"If you marry a monk who owns a temple, as opposed to marrying a businessman, you do not need to worry about your husband being laid off as a result of his company's restructuring," she said.

Buddhism, the nation's second major faith after Shinto, has suffered a steep decline in popularity in recent years, with many temples facing financial difficulties as a result.

A growing number of innovative projects have been developed by Buddhist temples in Japan in order to revive interest and income – from opening jazz lounges and beauty salons to catwalk shows and hip hop concerts.

Source: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/language_tips/news/2011-10/28/content_13996077.htm

Study suggests chances of landing a job better if your name is Smith, not Singh

2011-10-19T10:59:00.001-06:00

By Steve Mertl | Daily Brew – Mon, 17 Oct, 2011

Over 50 people stand up to take the Oath of Citizenship in Ottawa..

Canada's officially a multicultural society and visible minorities are increasingly present in politics, academia, big business and the media.

So a survey that suggests your chances of landing a job are better if you have an English-sounding name comes as something of a surprise.

A study for federally funded Metropolis B.C., which researches immigration and diversity issues, found that resumes with English-sounding names received 35 per cent more callbacks than those whose applicants had Chinese or South Asian names, despite having identical qualifications.

Researchers sent out several thousand resumes of job applicants with identical experience to online job sites to gauge the response of would-be employers. Only the names were changed.

They found employers in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal, cities with fairly diverse populations "significantly discriminate" against applicants with non-English names, the Toronto Star reported.

Recruiters in Toronto and Montreal were 45 per cent more likely to call Alison Johnson over Min Liu, while the number in Vancouver was 20 per cent.

"The name draws unconditional stereotypes, no matter what else is on the resumé," researcher Philip Oreopoulos, a University of Toronto professor, told the Star.

The study concluded employers were prompted by fears applicants with non-English names would have language troubles.

Oreopoulos said applicants with Greek-sounding names were also less likely to receive callbacks.

The study was probing why highly qualified immigrants still have trouble moving past the low-paying, entry-level work many must settle for after winning landed-immigrant status.

"A lot of our immigrants are let in based on a desire for them to assimilate into the high-skill labour market, but it's just not happening," Oreopoulos said.

The research team sent out resumes in response to ads for office jobs requiring a bachelor's degree and four to six years of work experience.

The study found employers likely to overlook those with non-English names even if the applicants stated their language skills and noted their experience was with Canadian universities and jobs.

Oreopoulos said researchers did followup interviews with recruiters - at least the few willing to participate - and found that language and social skills were the main concerns.

Oreopoulos said it appears the discrimination seems to be subconscious rather than active. With little time to sift through applications, recruiters tend to pigeon-hole those with non-English names even if the resume includes information that would remove any questions about language or social skills.

One solution, he said, would be for employers to blank out the names of applicants to ensure the best-qualified prospects are interviewed.

"It's an easy thing to try out to see if hires actually improve from doing so," he said.

(CBC Photo)

Source: http://ca.news.yahoo.com/blogs/dailybrew/study-suggests-chances-landing-job-better-name-smith-195927633.html

Cambodia’s activist monk fights abuses

2011-09-04T23:31:00.002-06:00

‘THE MOST OUTSPOKEN’

Cambodia’s activist monk fights abuses

‘THE MOST OUTSPOKEN’

Sun, 04 September 2011
By Michelle Fitzpatrick
AFP

HIS saffron robe a rare beacon among protesters, Cambodia’s most outspoken monk has been banned from temples and risked arrest for challenging rights abuses — but he vows not to be silenced. “The more they threaten me, the more I stand up for our rights,” said the Venerable Loun Sovath, also known as the “multimedia monk” for filming forced evictions and distributing the footage.

In a country where Buddhist monks are hugely respected but rarely seen standing shoulder to shoulder with those fighting abuses, his peaceful activism has attracted praise from rights groups — and condemnation from authorities. “Seeing a monk amongst the crowd lifts the spirits of people defending their human rights,” the bespectacled holy man said during a recent interview in the capital, where he joined a rally against deforestation.

“Only one of me can make one hundred, 200, 300 people feel strong.” But his tireless campaigning has made the Buddhist hierarchy and the authorities nervous, say observers, who fear for his safety. Police have interrupted his meetings, followed him and cursed at him. He has also been warned that he faces arrest for inciting people to protest.

Religious officials have repeatedly ordered him to stop activities or risk being disrobed for disobeying Buddhist discipline, while senior monks have tried to make him sign a pledge promising to cease his activism, Sovath said. Phil Robertson, Deputy Asia Director with the international campaign group Human Rights Watch (HRW), said the monk’s championing of villagers who have lost land to “rich and well-connected persons” makes him a high-profile target.

HRW is “extremely concerned” that Sovath, 30, could “face reprisals, and perhaps violence, because what he’s doing is really a challenge to the core of Cambodia’s lawless, might-makes-right political culture”, he said. Sovath, who entered the monkhood at the age of 13, became an activist after witnessing a land grab in his own village in March 2009, when police fired at unarmed villagers protesting against the confiscation of their fields.

He captured much of the confrontation on camera and successfully resisted police attempts to confiscate it.

Since then, he has broadened his work to speak up for all victims of social injustice, becoming one of the impoverished nation’s leading human rights defenders — and the only one in orange robes.

Pressure on Sovath has increased in recent months amid what rights groups say is a growing crackdown on freedom of expression.

International rights groups, including Amnesty International, Witness and HRW, recently asked key donor nations to urge the government to stop the threats and intimidation against the monk.

“The ongoing government harassment of Venerable Sovath constitutes a veiled attempt by the Cambodian authorities to silence those who speak out on issues that they deem controversial,” they wrote in a letter.

Happiness, Philosophy and Science

2011-08-31T23:38:00.001-06:00

August 31, 2011, 6:05 pm

By GARY GUTTING

The Stone is featuring occasional posts by Gary Gutting, a professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, that apply critical thinking to information and events that have appeared in the news.

Philosophy was the origin of most scientific disciplines. Aristotle was in some sense an astronomer, a physicist, a biologist, a psychologist and a political scientist. As various philosophical subdiscplines found ways of treating their topics with full empirical rigor, they gradually separated themselves from philosophy, which increasingly became a purely armchair enterprise, working not from controlled experiments but from common-sense experiences and conceptual analysis.

In recent years, however, the sciences — in particular, psychology and the social sciences — have begun to return to their origin, combining data and hypotheses with conceptual and normative considerations that are essentially philosophical. An excellent example of this return is the new psychological science of happiness, represented, for example, by the fundamental work of Edward Diener.

The empirical basis of this discipline is a vast amount of data suggesting correlations (or lack thereof) between happiness and various genetic, social, economic, and personal factors. Some of the results are old news: wealth, beauty, and pleasure, for example, have little effect on happiness. But there are some surprises: serious illness typically does not make us much less happy, marriage in the long run is not a major source of either happiness or unhappiness.

The new research has both raised hopes and provoked skepticism. Psychologists such as Sonja Lyubomirsky have developed a new genre of self-help books, purporting to replace the intuitions and anecdotes of traditional advisors with scientific programs for making people happy. At the same time, there are serious methodological challenges, questioning, for example, the use of individuals’ self-reports of how happy they are and the effort to objectify and even quantify so subjective and elusive a quality as happiness.

But the most powerful challenge concerns the meaning and value of happiness. Researchers emphasize that when we ask people if they are happy the answers tell us nothing if we don’t know what our respondents mean by “happy.” One person might mean, “I’m not currently feeling any serious pain”; another, “My life is pretty horrible but I’m reconciled to it”; another, “I’m feeling a lot better than I did yesterday.” Happiness research requires a clear understanding of the possible meanings of the term. For example, most researchers distinguish between happiness as a psychological state (for example, feeling overall more pleasure than pain) and happiness as a positive evaluation of your life, even if it has involved more pain than pleasure. Above all, there is the fundamental question: In which sense, if any, is happiness a proper goal of a human life?

These issues inevitably lead to philosophical reflection. Empirical surveys can give us a list of the different ideas people have of happiness. But research has shown that when people achieve their ideas of happiness (marriage, children, wealth, fame), they often are still not happy. There’s no reason to think that the ideas of happiness we discover by empirical surveys are sufficiently well thought out to lead us to genuine happiness. For richer and more sensitive conceptions of happiness, we need to turn to philosophers, who, from Plato and Aristotle, through Hume and Mill, to Hegel and Nietzsche, have provided some of the deepest insight into the possible meanings of happiness.

Even if empirical investigation could discover the full range of possible conceptions of happiness, there would still remain the question of which conception we ought to try to achieve. Here we have a question of values that empirical inquiry alone is unable to decide without appeal to philosophical thinking.

This is not to say that, as Plato thought, we can simply appeal to expert philosophical opinion to tells us how we ought to live. We all need to answer this question for ourselves. But if philosophy does not have the answers, it does provide tools we need to arrive at answers. If, for example, we are inclined to think that pleasure is the key to happiness, John Stuart Mill shows us how to distinguish between the more sensory and the more intellectual pleasures. Robert Nozick asks us to consider whether we would choose to attach ourselves to a device that would produce a constant state of intense pleasure, even if we never achieved anything in our lives other than experiencing this pleasure.

On another level, Immanuel Kant asks whether happiness should even be a goal of a good human life, which, he suggests, is rather directed toward choosing to do the right thing even if it destroys our happiness. Nietzsche and Sartre help us consider whether even morality itself is a worthy goal of human existence. These essential questions are not empirical.

Still, psychologists understandably want to address such questions, and their scientific data can make an important contribution to the discussion. But to the extent that psychology takes on questions about basic human values, it is taking on a humanistic dimension that needs to engage with philosophy and the other disciplines — history, art, literature, even theology — that are essential for grappling with the question of happiness. (For a good discussion of philosophical views of happiness and their connection to psychological work, see Dan Haybron’s Stanford Encyclopedia article.) Psychologist should recognize this and give up the pretension that empirical investigations alone can answer the big questions about happiness. Philosophers and other humanists, in turn, should be happy to welcome psychologists into their world.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/31/happiness-philosophy-and-science/?hp

Ian Harris: a Buddhist scholar on Cambodia

2011-08-24T14:31:00.000-06:00

2011-12 Visiting Professor

Ian Harris will be the TLKY Distinguished Visiting Professor in Buddhist Studies at the University of Toronto, Scarborough, in 2011-12. He will teach undergraduate courses at UTSC, lead an undergraduate/graduate workshop at UTSG, give two public talks and organize a conference during his stay in Toronto. Professor Harris lives in a rural area near the border between England and Scotland. He is a keen gardener and hill walker. Initially a student of Buddhist philosophy, his current academic interests focus on the modern and contemporary history of Cambodia, Buddhism and politics in Southeast Asia, Buddhist environmentalism, and landscape aesthetics. His most recent books are Cambodian Buddhism: History and Practice (2005), Buddhism Under Pol Pot (2007), and an edited volume entitled Buddhism, Power and Politics in Southeast Asia (2007). A new work, Buddhism in a Dark Age: Cambodian Monks under the Khmer Rouge, will appear in early 2012. He is Professor Emeritus at the University of Cumbria and has held previous visiting positions at the University of Oxford, the University of British Columbia, the National University of Singapore, and the Documentary Center of Cambodia in Phnom Penh. He is currently engaged in research on Buddhism and political conflict in Cambodia, 1940-75.

Buddhism Under Pol Pot

A lecture by Ian Harris

This illustrated talk will examine the increasingly adverse conditions in which the Buddhist monastic order was forced to operate as Cambodia unravelled through the 1970s. Specific matters covered include regional variations in the Khmer Rouge treatment of religion, analysis of the number of monks who perished, and in what circumstances, and the role of monastic survivors in the re-establishment of Cambodian Buddhism following the fall of Pol Pot. The manner in which Buddhism may have been a factor in the development of Cambodia’s uniquely violent communist movement will also be considered.

Date: November 4, 2011, 7:30 pm

Location: UTSC (exact location TBA)

Student shares art with the world

2011-08-16T19:43:00.004-06:00

Tuesday, 16 August 2011 15:00
Chan Cheata

Phoeun Srey Pov, the 20-year-old student who is taking traditional Buddhist prayer chanting to the world. Photo by: CHAN CHEATA

Buddhist prayer chanting is an ancient art that dates back to the Chatomok period (1437 – 1525AD). It is also one of the most difficult arts to study, let alone master. However, one 20-year-old woman has, in recent years, been doing just that.

Phoeun Srey Pov, one of five children, is the daughter of farmers from Tror Peag Po village, Korg Pisey district in Kampong Spew province, and says that her childhood spent working the land left little time to dedicate to her love of Buddhist prayer chanting.

“Being a child of farmers, life was not easy because of the hard work we had to do on the farm. Moreover, sometimes, I had to walk through my village to sell some cakes that my mother made,” she says. “But I never complained about my life because my parents made sure I always had the opportunity to study like other children.”

In 2004, Phoeun Srey Pov began her studies into Buddhist prayer chanting via Cambodian Living Arts (CLA), a program that, among other initiatives, aims to revive traditional Khmer performing arts.

“Before joining this chant class in my village I had to do a voice test,” says Phoeun Srey Pov. “After I passed the test and studied for one year with my teachers Keot Ran and Prom Out, I could sing many of the chant songs, but I was not very good. However, I was always invited by older persons to chant Buddhism prayer songs at pagodas in the village.”

And while Phoeun Srey Pov says she was always excited to be asked to perform and that the elders in her village admired her skill level for someone so young, she knew she had a ways to go before she got to the level of older generation chanters.

Buddhist prayer chanting is extremely complicated due to the use of the Pali language and the fluctuation required in the performer’s voice, let alone the widely expected levels of pitch and tone associated with any voice-based art.

In 2006 and 2007, Phoeun Srey Pov performed in festivals in Battambang province as part of Cambodian Living Arts and says that since then, foreigners as well as

Khmers have begun appreciating her performances. This success then led to CLA awarding her a full scholarship in 2008, including accommodation and living expenses, to study at Pannasastra University of Cambodia (PUC) in Phnom Penh. Phoeun Srey Pov certainly hasn’t turned her back on her chanting studies, though.

“I have continued my Buddhism chanting with [a teacher named] Yan Borin in Phnom Penh. This is a good experience to learn with both the ancient countryside teachers [Keot Ran and Prom Out] as well as a certificated teacher because I get different knowledge from each of them,” she explains.

And it’s not just here in the Kingdom that Phoeun Srey Pov has found success with her chanting. To date, she has performed internationally twice, an opportunity she never thought this area of study would afford her.

“The first time was in April 2010 in the USA and was to help promote a book written by a monk which is about Cambodians moving to other countries during Pol Pot regime,” she says, adding that the trip was a CLA funded project.

Then, after being back in Cambodia for just a few months, Phoeun Srey Pov set off for the States yet again to take with her and share with audiences a CD and DVD she had produced herself.

“I had to spend much money for my own project,” she said. “However, what I have spent has been granted back from the people I met there. I was very successful indeed during my second trip, and they all want me to go back a third time.”

Today, Phoeun Srey Pov is not only a second-year student of international relations at PUC, but also a student at the Australian Centre for Education. And if her schedule wasn’t full enough after that, she also teaches Buddhist prayer chant studies through the Cambodian Volunteers Community Development organisation and was recently invited to be a presenter of a religious program on the television channel CTN.

“I am very lucky that I can have many good opportunities. In the future, I am keen on taking care of ancient art and want to be an example of Khmer artisans to others around the world,” she says, adding that she’s hoping to craft a Buddhist chant of her own in the near future.

Next month, Phoeun Srey Pov plans to travel for the third time to the USA, taking with her the new volumes of her CD and DVD which contain five songs predominantly relating to the relationship between parents and their children. And Phoeun Srey Pov’s own parents couldn’t be more proud of their fourth-born’s achievements.

“Srey Pov is a good daughter who always has overcome struggles and is very committed,” her mother says. “And she obeys whatever her parents say. Being the mother of Srey Pov, I am really proud of this daughter.”

Lok Ey-pok My Father

2011-08-15T20:05:00.000-06:00

The politic of Khmer Rouge Tribunal and Education for Youths

2011-08-15T11:47:00.001-06:00

For foreigners' point of view: Cambodia is the country of bright and dark, civilized and genocide but the puzzling questions for many young Cambodians to answer is the transitional momentum...how these young people can galvanize this puzzling integration?

Cambodia's bustling tourism by Eat Play and Stay

2011-08-15T11:39:00.002-06:00

Wat Damnak Focus

2011-08-09T00:09:00.001-06:00

Damnak development

Friday, 05 August 2011 15:00

Thik Kaliyan

Chhon Chhern, the chief aide to Wat Damnak’s head monk. Photo by: THIK KALIYANN

A new Buddhist institute opening inside Wat Damnak next year will cement the pagoda’s reputation as one of the most beautiful and tranquil places to study in Siem Reap, according to Chhon Chhern, the chief aide to Wat Damnak’s head monk.

Once a Khmer Rouge military depot, Wat Damnak is now home to the largest public library in Siem Reap, and with the opening of the $30,000 Kossamak Nearyroath Institute of Buddhist Studies in early 2012, the pagoda will continue to provide education to both monks and the public, Chhon Chhern told 7Days.

“The new institute will open next year and has space available for 50 students,” said Chhon Chhern. “We are spending $30,000 to fix an old building in Wat Damnak and buy supplies for the students. We didn’t change the building, it’s still the same style, but it is nearly 80 years old and needed to be fixed.”

Other buildings inside Wat Damnak, over the bridge from the Old Market, are over 100 years old according to Chhon Chhern. They include a central gold pagoda containing a statue of Buddha, and several smaller meeting and prayer rooms arranged in a square formation around the central pagoda.

The meditative surrounds of the wat are reinforced by a large ornamental pond containing fish and turtles and an idyllic garden next to traditional Buddhist stupas containing the cremated remains of pious citizens.

As well as the new Buddhist institute, Wat Damnak also boasts a public library established by the Centre for Khmer Studies in 2001. It holds more than 10,000 books. Chief librarian Oum Daraneth told 7Days that the Centre for Khmer Studies decided to establish its library inside the pagoda because of its quiet natural beauty.

“This is the only big public library in Siem Reap which can keep more than 10,000 books, and we have a lot of important documents here, including books that can reveal more about Khmer traditions, such as making musical instruments. We regularly have more than 60 students, researchers, tour guides and Buddhist monks that come to read or study in silence with us each day.”

The library, open from Monday to Saturday with no charge to visitors, is the largest public academic library in Cambodia outside of Phnom Penh, and the second most important for the social sciences and humanities in the Kingdom.

It has recently doubled in size, at a cost of $300,000, following the construction of a new research building which was officially opened by King Norodom Sihamoni in January of last year.

Rebuilding Cambodia

2011-06-30T11:48:00.000-06:00

Doubt impairs Cambodia struggle

2011-06-28T16:55:00.003-06:00

PACIFIC DAILY NEWS
Jun. 29, 2011
A. Gaffar Peang-Meth

Said Buddha, "There is no fire like passion, there is no shark like hatred, there is no snare like folly, there is no torrent like greed." And, "Each morning we are born again. What we do today is what matters most."

And he said: "One thought leads to heaven, one thought leads to hell."

Two thousand, five hundred years ago, Lord Gautama Buddha taught: "Doubt separates people. It is a poison that disintegrates friendships and breaks up pleasant relations. It is a thorn that irritates and hurts; it is a sword that kills."

He said, "There is nothing more dreadful than the habit of doubt."

Indeed, it remains so, and it will continue to be a destructive emotion.

Doubt raises the question of trust, the fundamental foundation of human relationships. Raise the level of doubt, increase the level of mistrust. Respect is diminished. As the great Chinese teacher Confucius asserted, "Without feelings of respect, what is there to distinguish men from beasts?"

This brings to mind English philosopher Thomas Hobbes' "poor, nasty, and brutish" kind of world: A state of nature. French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau thought that in such a state of nature, humans are mere wild beasts driven by unbridled instinct.

Fourth-century B.C. Indian brahman Chanakya Kautilya advised his emperor that in order to protect his and India's interests, he must amass power, the beginning of realpolitik. Later, Italian Renaissance thinker Niccolo Machiavelli, known as the father of the science of politics, presented the concept of power as a natural survival behavior.

But Confucius, who said, "It's easy to hate and difficult to love," preached: "The more man meditates upon good thoughts, the better will be his world and the world at large." He warned, "To see and listen to the wicked is already the beginning of wickedness."

The younger Buddha, who said, "Nothing is permanent," called on mankind to "Fill your mind with compassion," and to accept and live up to what "agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all."

Buddha taught: "There has to be evil, so that good can prove its purity above it."

Raising doubt. Today, some individuals make it a business to detract, defame, disinform and misinform, dig dirt, engage in character assassination -- with the purpose of diminishing human trust and undermining a person's credibility. But Buddha assured: "Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth."

The truth likely is that those who are most hateful in their characterizations of others are those who have the most to hide from public scrutiny. They put forth "straw men" to draw attention from their own corruption.

As responsible citizens, we have an obligation not to be swayed by hateful rhetoric, but to inform ourselves and make our own decisions based on the most objective information we can acquire.

Buddha's teaching of the "Four Reliances" that represent the foundational elements of life includes: rely on the spirit and meaning of the teachings, not on the words; rely on the teachings, not on the personality of the teacher; rely on real wisdom, not superficial interpretation; rely on the essence of your pure wisdom mind, not on judgmental perceptions.

I write often in this space about people who are entrenched in destructive intolerance, characterized by a lack of civility. A couple of years ago I wrote about psychology professor Jonathan Haidt's "The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom."

Haidt posited that we don't live in a world of rocks, trees, and physical creations, but a world of our own creations -- "a world of insults, opportunities, status symbols, betrayals" created by humans who "believe in them." He sees human beings in all cultures possessing an "excessive and self-righteous tendency to see the world in terms of good versus evil," or "moralism" that "blinds people" into believing "We're good, they are evil."

On his website,CivilPolitics.org, Haidt observes that over the past 20 years, political leaders, political parties and mass media outlets have become "more polarized, strident and moralistic."

He says: "When political opponents are demonized rather than debated, compromise, and cooperation become moral failings and people begin to believe that their righteous ends justify the use of any means."

And so, here we are coming full circle: believing in one's "excessive and self-righteous" ends allows one to inject into relationships and into civil debate what Buddha called "poison," "thorn" and "sword that kills" by sowing doubt.

Haidt cited "The Perfect Way," a poem by eighth-century Chinese Zen master Sen-ts'an, who brands an individual's "judgmentalism" as "the mind's worst disease (as) it leads to anger, torment, and conflict."

"The perfect way is only difficult for those who pick and choose" -- between like and dislike, "for" and "against." The Zen master taught "nonjudgmentalism."

And Buddha taught mankind to meditate to calm down and not to be agitated by the "petty provocations of life."

Some readers may be wondering how I will tie this column to the contemporary political context in Cambodia, as I usually do. As Hun Sen and members of his ruling party assuage their greed, they suck into their orbit the "willing executioners" who do their bidding, hoping for a small share of the ill-gotten largesse. Meanwhile, those who assert their opposition to autocracy are riven with doubt that is a byproduct of the rumors and accusations initiated by Hun Sen and his followers or, worse, insinuated by political colleagues who perpetuate the fractures in the opposition by adhering to a single charismatic individual rather than to a set of principles.

Said Buddha, "There is no fire like passion, there is no shark like hatred, there is no snare like folly, there is no torrent like greed." And, "Each morning we are born again. What we do today is what matters most."

And he said: "One thought leads to heaven, one thought leads to hell."

A. Gaffar Peang-Meth, Ph.D., is retired from the University of Guam. Write him
at peangmeth@yahoo.com.

http://www.guampdn.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/201106290300/OPINION02/106290321

Debate on the decline of Khmer Empire

2011-05-28T13:25:00.001-06:00

Hello Everone::

Attached, please find the numerous articles of Jayavarman VII and the decline of Angkor.

I think the following questions should be addressed to those Cambodian scholars:

What role did Jayavarman VII play in the decline of Angkor Empire?

The follow-up question is;

What role, if J7, did the frantic and immense pace of building program (roads, bridges, road rest houses, reservoirs, temples) by Jayavarman VII play in the decline of the Khmer Empire?

Another follow up question is;

What do they think of all those who said that it was the huge building and wars undertaken by Jayavarman VII that exhausted the Khmer people, that finally brought down the Khmer empire?

These questions are extremely important ones for the survival of our people, as a culture and society.

We have to know who did what in our history. More precisely who were the good or bad leaders.

Best regards.
Perum Uch

Jayavarman VII and the decline of Angkor Civilization

“Under Jayavarman VII, the Khmer civilization reached a new peak after the collapse caused by the Cham invasion. At the dawn of the thirteenth century, Angkor experienced an extraordinary renaissance attested by the creation of a new art style and the founding of a magnificent capital. Only a short time later, the Khmer kingdom was struck down by sudden death. The population weakened by the work on the countless building sites of Jayavarman VII, was no longer strong enough to hold out against new attack s of new invaders.”

Source: Henri Sterlin: The Cultural History of Angkor; (Editions Aurum Press Ltd. United Kingdom, 1984)

______________________________________________________________

“A number of factors led to the decline of the Khmers, among them Jayavarman VII's building projects that laid a heavy burden on the kingdom; economy. It is estimated that during his time the Khmer state built and supported 102 hospitals, 101 rest houses for pilgrims, and 20,000 shrines. He constructed roads linking the capital with the principal provincial centers where temples were built and furnished with images.

There were nearly 300,000 priests and monks supported by the state treasury. The burden of monument-building on the population was too severe to bear. Thousands of villages, tens of thousands of officials, and an army of laborers and artisans were assigned to the uneconomic tasks of building monuments to glorify the royalty.

Jayavarman's punitive wars against Champa and recalcitrant vassal kingdoms further drained the empire. As in the past, the Chams continued to pose a threat on the northeast frontier. Even more serious was the progressive movement southward of the Thai people who carved out new states in the territory formerly ruled by the Khmers. Thus, Sukhotai in the upper Menam declared its independence of the Khmer rule in 1219, the year of Jayavarman VII's death. Later, in the thirteenth century, the Mongol rulers of China helped weaken the Khmer power by encouraging the Thais to move farther into Southeast Asia.

A religious factor that undermined the Khmer authority was the spread of Hinayana Buddhism in the empire. This version of Buddhism did not permit belief in bodhisattvas or in the divine basis of kingship. It came to Burma from Sri Lanka in the eleventh century, and through the Mons and Thais it spread in the Khmer empire, where the masses seem to have appreciated its egalitarian character. No more would they regard the kings as divine. The great extension of the god-king cult under Jayavarman VII might have been a response to this threat.
Such forces continued to act against the Khmer power throughout the period after Jayavarman's death. The Chams in the east and the Thais in the west took large chunks of the Khmer empire; in 1431, Angkor itself was captured by the Thais. The Khmers regained their former capital for a brief period, but in 1434 they abandoned it and established a new capital near Phnom Penh.”

D.R. Sardesai: Southeast Asia Past & Present, (Westview, Boulder, Colorado, 1989)

_____________________________________________________________________

Other factors contributing to the fall of Angkor

“Nevertheless, Angkor was abandoned quite abruptly. Why? Some archaeologists presume that a dyke broke, causing calamitous flooding. In some places, diggings have revealed a layer of alluvial deposits. All of these factors doubtless helped bring about the country's downfall. However, we believe there was yet another determining cause.

During the Siamese invasions, the irrigation system was certainly badly damaged. The precarious balance man had created artificially by means of canals and barays was disturbed. The water flow changed. In the canals clear river water replaced the muddy water, which had kept the fields fertile for such a long time.

The flow was no longer strong enough to carry along sediment torn from the banks. As soon as the water cleared up, malaria became a problem. Anopheles mosquitoes do not lay eggs in muddy water. Both the adults and the larvae show a marked preference for clear water. The population of Angkor was probable decimated by fevers and malaria before the enormous city was abandoned.

An ecological catastrophe brought the incredible irrigation system to a standstill. As a result, the Khmers lost their wealth prosperity and power. Rice production ceased as if it had been under a curse. The survivors went back to the sites where their ancestors had lived before the rise of Khmer civilization and the creation of the rice factory which had been the main cause of their splendour and glory.”

Source: Henri Stierlin; The Culture and History of Angkor; (Aurum Press LTD. London, 1984)
_______________________________________________________________________

On Jayavarman VII implied cause for the fall of Angkor, Coedes wrote this short but significant sentence:

"Such, in short, was the work of Jayavarman VII, a very heavy program for a people who were already exhausted by the wars and the and the constructions of Suryavarman II and henceforth would find themselves helpless against the attacks of the neighbors."

Georges Coedes; The Indianized States of Southeast Asia; (University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, 1968) p. 77

_________________________________________________________________________

View from the US Congress on Cambodia’s decline
Jayavarman VII's wars and public works exacted a heavy toll on the finances and the human labor force of the Angkorian empire. The drain of resources coincided with the gradual intrusion of Theravada Buddhism, with its egalitarian focus, at the expense of the Indianized cults that stressed a hierarchical, stratified society (see Buddhism , ch. 2).
Whether it was this development or the inability of the Khmer monarchs to command the fealty of their subjects that led to a societal breakdown remains open to conjecture.
Also coupled with these internal developments was the accelerated southward migration of the Thai, who, dislodged from their state in southwestern China by the Mongols in the mid-1200s, flooded into the Menam Chao Phraya Valley. Subject to internal and external pressures, the Khmer state became unable to defend itself at the very time its enemies were growing stronger.
Thai attacks were stepped up around 1350, and they continued until Angkor itself was captured and sacked in 1430-31. The fall of Angkor ended the dominant period of the Khmer state.
Thereafter, its borders shrank, and it controlled little more than the area around the Tonle Sap, the alluvial plain to the southeast, and some territory west of the Mekong River. To the east, the collapse of the kingdom of Champa in 1471 opened the Khmer lands of the Mekong Delta to the steady Vietnamese expansion southward.
Library of the Congress, Countries Studies, Cambodia, Washington DC, 1986
_____________________________________________________________________
c. 1181 In order to appease the people who are increasingly adopting Buddhism, Jayavarman becomes a Buddhist himself.

Once he stabilizes his enlarged empire, Jayavarman starts a massive building program. This includes the reconstruction of Angkor Thom with the Bayon as the central temple and the building of Ta Prohm and Preah Khan temples.

Banteai Kdei, Sra Srang (a large public bathing pool), Banteai Chmar, Neak Pean, and Ta Som temples are also built. Along the main roads leading to Angkor he builds 102 hospitals and 121 pilgrim hostels. The vast amount of building results in Jayavarman overtaxing and overworking his subjects. Land is lost from the empire and Champa breaks away from the Khmer Kingdom again.
A Web site named Angkor; www.angkorwat.org/html/history.html

Discussion on the decline of Khmer Empire

2011-05-28T12:48:00.002-06:00

Dear Chanreoun and all CAN members,

subject: Jayavarman VII

Accoding to historical evidence, Cambodia reached its peak of her civilization under Jayavarman VII period, while China fell to Genghis Khan of Ancient Mongolia; India to Persia and Turkish Moslems.

In 1295-96, the Khan emperor in Beijing sent Zhou Da-guan to visit Angkor. He wrote the well known book entitled" A Record on Cambodia ". The Khan invaded and destroyed Bagan in Burman in 1287. Cambodia escaped the Khan invasion thanks to the change of dynasty in China from Mongolian to Ming Dynasty a few years fater Zhou Da-Guan returned from Cambodia to China. Under Ming Dynasty, China regained her power in the country, but did not invade other countries. Good relations continued with Cambodia.

After the fall of India to Persia, cultural relations between Cambodia and India discontinued because Muslim kings ruled that empire. Buddhism and Buddhsit universities were destroyed. Cambodia under Jayavarman VII established relations with Sri Lanka, Mon and Burma instead.

Therefore, it was wrong to assume that Jayavarman VII was responsible for the fall of the Khmer Empire. On the contrary, he was able to liberate Cambodia from Champa and paved the foundation for a strong Cambodia for the next 200 years, while China and India failed to do so during the same period. Cambodian territory during his time was five times larger than the present Cambodia, stretching from East Sea (Pacific Ocean) to West Sea (Indian Ocean).

Cambodia was the richest and most civilized country in Asia under his reign, together with Hindu-Buddhist Java. Singapura was his westernmost town (now in Kanchanaburi province, 200 km west of Bangkok) bordering Mon Kingdom to the West. He ruled Champa in the East as well, after defeating it.

For me, we should honour him as Jayavarman VII the Great. I have visited most of his monuments, roads, bridges and temples in present day Thailand, Laos and Cambodia.

Corruption and weak military system of the first half of the 15th Century, were the main factors contributing to the fall of Angkor in 1432. The same reasons why Cambodia fell to the Khmer Rouge in 1975 and to Vietnam in 1979.

Let us learn from the past to rebuild a stronger and cleaner Cambodia. Since Israel can rebuild a strong country after 2000 years of extermination from its homeland, we can too.

Supote Prasertsiri

Appeal from Cambodian Buddhist Sangha to the World

2011-02-10T10:45:00.001-07:00

Dear Sir/Madam,

The Cambodian Buddhist Sangha with H.H. Tep Vong, a co-President of WCRP, as its Great Supreme Patriarch, wishes to humbly ask for your assistance to kindly spread as widely as possible the Statement of the Cambodian Buddhist Sangha with regard to the fighting between Thai-Cambodian armed forces, and the damages and destruction of the Temple of Preah Vihear and the Cambodian Keo Kiri Svara Buddhist Temple by artillery shellings indiscriminately fired by the Thai armed forces. The Statement is attached herewith.

I heartily thank you for your kind and prompt assistance in this extremely urgent matter.

Yours in peace,

Ven. Prof. Khy Sovanratana (MA;LLM),

Personal Advisor to H.H. Tep Vong

CAMBODIA: Buddhist thought for the New Year

2011-01-16T18:36:00.000-07:00

FOR PUBLICATION
AHRC-ETC-002-2011
January 14, 2011

An article by Dr. Gaffar Peang-Meth published by the Asian Human Rights Commission

As we enter the fifteenth day of the New Year 2011, I would like begin this first article of the year for the Asian Human Rights Commission, with the words of Lord Gautama Buddha (563 B.C.-483 B.C.): "Everything changes, nothing remains without change".

Change is a constant. We can expect change in our lives and in our environment. Some changes will make us smile while others we wish never happened. But change there will be. Facing this inevitability, it behooves us to seek how to influence the change that we would like to see, because "yes, we can." Doing nothing increases the likelihood that we will not like the change that affects us.

"A New Soul"

We, humans, are creatures of habit, of reproductive thinking, of self-piloted, fossilized responses; and yet some wonder why they don't get different results. We are reminded, "When you do what you've always done, you will get what you've always got."

Yet, as many of us like to think of the New Year as new beginnings, an opportunity for a fresh new start, so English writer Gilbert K. Chesterton (1874-1936) wrote, with a new year "we should have a new soul."

Is a new soul possible if we continue patterned thoughts while the world changes?

"What we think, we become"

Buddha teaches, "We are what we think"; "What we think, we become"; "The mind is everything."

If indeed "We are formed and molded by our thoughts," as Buddha says, then what becomes of individuals who engage endlessly in negative thoughts of others, gossiping, and throwing venomous words? What kind of a hostile, angry world are they making?

Buddha refers to those activities as "evil of the tongue," and counsels their avoidance. Buddhists know it but there's the usual disconnect between rhetoric and action.

Buddha teaches: "If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him. If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness follows him, like a shadow that never leaves him." Buddha reminds, what good will all the holy words you read and speak do, "if you do not act upon them?"

Contemporary Cambodians' struggle against oppression, in pursuit of universally recognized individual rights and freedom, may be explained through Buddha's precept, "We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think."

Our thoughts and behaviors are conditioned by what we learn and by what is expected of us in a society that promotes class, status, rank, role relationships, backed by a culture of asymmetric leader-follower, superior-inferior, master-servant, patron-client practices. Khmer teaching, to "korup, kaowd, klach, smoh trawng" -- respect, admire, fear, be loyal -- has been inculcated in the Cambodian persona for centuries.

In a perfect world, society's teaching, our cultural heritage can actually improve society. But our world is imperfect. It's easy to see, if we are objective analysts, how the culture and the teaching have reinforced the status quo of asymmetry in Cambodia and have promoted the Leviathan's oppression.

Thus, followers follow their particular leader -- rather than a set of rules, high principles, and good thinking -- even if the leader leads them toward the abyss; and those recognized as belonging to society's lower social, political, economic strata are expected to respect, admire, fear, and be loyal to those personalities in positions above them.

Creativity, criticality, innovation threaten the status quo; deviators are nonconformists; those who deviate from the "party line" are challengers, who eventually are denounced as traitors.

Thus, it is easier and safer to conform.

Thoughts that make the world

Buddha says, "All that we are, arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world."

Recall Pol Pot. He believed there was "no gain in keeping, no loss in eliminating" those with "incorrect thinking" -- "incorrect" because it did not conform to his. His solution was "tbaung chawb" -- a hoe blade to strike at the neck of "incorrect" individuals.

And Buddha teaches, "In a controversy, the instant we feel anger we have already ceased striving for truth, and we have begun striving for ourselves." Buddha tells us, "I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act; but I believe in a fate that falls on them unless they act."

In other words, one's fate follows one's inaction.

It's not unusual to hear from time to time some individuals assert, not unreasonably, that one person cannot bring about change; millions are needed. I question if such assertion is meant to excuse them for their inaction.

A Khmer saying goes: "Samboeurm tae peark, trokieark slab s'dok," or "Awesome are the words, (but) the hip joints lie dead".

"Work of a Single Man"

Recall Robert F. Kennedy, mortally shot by Sirhan Sirhan at The Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles in June 1968. He made famous a quotation of Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw's: "Some men see things as they are and say, 'Why'? I dream of things that never were and say, 'Why not'?"

Kennedy declared in a speech: "Some believe there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world's ills. Yet many of the world's great movements, of thought and action, have flowed from the work of a single man. A young monk began the Protestant reformation, a young general extended an empire from Macedonia to the borders of the earth, and a young woman reclaimed the territory of France. It was a young Italian explorer who discovered the New World, and the thirty-two-year-old Thomas Jefferson who proclaimed that all men are created equal."

The young monk was German professor of theology Martin Luther (1483-1546). At age 34, Luther who led the Protestant Revolt, argued that people could have a direct relationship with God. He nailed his famous 95 theses to the door of a Catholic church in Wittenberg; he translated the Bible from Latin so that non-Latin-speaking people the world over can read the words of God. The Revolt unleashed the Thirty Years War between the Protestant and Catholic leagues.

The young general was Ghengis Khan (1162-1227), who started to unite nomadic tribes at a young age, and when he was 44, founded the Mongol Empire, that spread and covered 22 percent of the Earth's total land area, stretching from Central Asia to Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East.

The young woman was Jeanne d'Arc -- Joan of Arc (1412-1431) -- a French peasant girl who claimed divine guidance for her to liberate her homeland from English domination late in the Hundred Years War. While veteran commanders were dismissive of her, she rallied France's flagging troops against the English and lifted the Orleans siege in only 9 days in 1429, when she was only 17, and had Charles VII crowned King of France. She was later captured, put on trial by an ecclesiastical court, found guilty, and was burned at the stake for heresy in Rouen, France, in 1431, at age 19.

And we have read about the young Italian explorer, Christopher Columbus, who claimed he said he had first gone to sea when he was 10, who docked in England when he was 25, landed at the Americas when he was 41. We also studied the influential American forefather Thomas Jefferson, principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence, at age 32, and promoter of the ideals of republicanism in the U.S.

Of course, it took many people to help Luther in the Protestant Reformation; many to help Ghengis Khan build and spread the Mongol Empire; many to fight alongside Joan of Arc. Columbus didn't sail alone; nor did Jefferson work on the Declaration, alone.

As Kennedy said, "many of the world's great movements, of thought and action, have flowed from the work of a single man."

New Year, New Thoughts?

The often-quoted words of India's pre-eminent Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) say, "You must be the change you wish to see in the world."

He also says, "As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world . . . as in being able to remake ourselves."

For years, I have devoted my columns to discussing how we can "remake ourselves" before we can remake anything else. This holiday season, as I wandered through a store, I stumbled on a piece of wood carved with a Chinese saying: If you want product in a year, grow grain; in 10 years, grow trees; in 100 years, grow people.

If Cambodians want to maintain their nation's survival, they should be busy with growing people – starting with growing themselves. Learning and unlearning does not yield instant results, and I have no illusion that I will see this change in my lifetime, but my children's children will. The time to learn and unlearn should have started years ago. Still, it's better late than never. This New Year is a good time start. And we should begin with Confucius' (551 B.C.-479 B.C.) teaching: "Do not do to others that which we do not want them to do to us."

A "yes can do" attitude makes our tasks easier. It uplifts our spirit, assures that we are less likely to fail. A "no can do" attitude makes a simple task difficult, like a dark cloud hovering over us, and assures us we will not succeed.

There's a true story worth retelling. It's about Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919), who migrated to America with his parents from Scotland in 1848 and resettled in Pennsylvania's Allegheny region. At age 13, he began his life's first job as a bobbin boy, changing spools of thread 12 hours a day, six days a week, in a local cotton factory. He earned .20 per week.

Five years later, at 18, young Andrew took a job at the Pennsylvania Railroad. He learned about the railroad industry and about business in general.

When he was in his late 30s, Carnegie founded the Carnegie Steel Company. The company grew and became the world's largest steel manufacturer in the 1890s -- when he was 55. Carnegie, the refugee boy, became a businessman, an industrialist, and later, the world's richest man, a classic rags to riches story.

Between the ages 66 and 84, when he died, Carnegie donated most of his money to build libraries, schools, universities in the United States, England, and other countries. He famously said something that inspired me: "You cannot push anyone up a ladder unless he is willing to climb it himself."

You Choose

Like the saying, "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink," you can choose to maintain your habitual reproductive thinking and reproductive behavior with predictable results, or you can choose productive, critical (which probes to understand, compares to determine options, and selects which is the best) and creative (which generates something new from nothing) thinking and behavior, to reach your vision of the future you want.

Not unlike people in other cultures who have their own myths, Cambodians have theirs. Some wish for the mythical Preah Bat Thoam-moek to emerge to lead them to a better future, and to protect and provide them with safety.

Yet, there are many leaders all around us, in families, at work places, in schools, in non-governmental institutions and groups. As I have written before, there are Cambodian theorists, catalysts, improvisers, and stabilizers, of Linda V. Berens's model; Cambodian peacemakers, organizers, revolutionaries, and steamrollers, of Katharine Giacalone's model; and you can read "Primal Leadership" (2002) and identify Cambodian visionaries, coaches, affiliates, democrats, pacesetters, and commanders, of Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee's model; amongst others.

There doesn't seem to be a shortage of leaders -- we learned we don't have to have a charismatic leader like Mahatma Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr., to fight oppression.

But there is this huge lack of willingness to humble ourselves to reach out to Cambodians for a common goal of liberation, conforming to the Khmers' "A vieach york mok thveu kang; A trang york mok thveu kamm; A sam ro-nham york mok thveu oss dot" -- "Curved wood makes wheel; straight wood makes spoke; twisted-crooked wood makes firewood."

And there is a shortage of understanding that productive and creative thoughts will have a positive impact on our collective future.

To end this article, a Buddhist proverb is in order: "When the student is ready, the master appears."

Happy New Year 2011!

.....................

The views shared in this article do not necessarily reflect those of the AHRC, and the AHRC takes no responsibility for them.

About the Author:

Dr. Gaffar Peang-Meth is retired from the University of Guam, where he taught political science for 13 years. He currently lives in the United States. He can be contacted at gmeth@gmail.com. pean

# # #

About AHRC: The Asian Human Rights Commission is a regional non-governmental organisation that monitors human rights in Asia, documents violations and advocates for justice and institutional reform to ensure the protection and promotion of these rights. The Hong Kong-based group was founded in 1984.

Failed State Mirrored by the Buddha's Applied Teachings

2011-01-08T22:49:00.006-07:00

Dear Koun Khmer et al;

I am grateful for your knowledge sharing in this blog forum. Lord Buddha said "knowledge contribution (dana) will surpass all other contributions" or "Sabba Danam Dhamma Danam Jinati" in Pali. I have read all your articles for public discussion in here with attention and prestige.

Failed state theory has been broadly defined by scholars in the enlightenment era and this post cold-war transition. The attributions rest upon the affect of two rival ideologies: democracy and communism. This approach might be best described on the external observation of the failed states researchers. However, I totally agree with the definition of failed state that falls upon its failed leadership and people liberation.

I am fully affected by the teaching of "liberation" particularly "individual liberation" to reach "Enlightenment" by the Buddha, and this teaching has been well applied to the modern enlightening world. This is not different from failed state index 2010 posted by The Foreign Policy. In general, Cambodia is better than Burma and Lao in its 42 range, but Cambodia has been categorized by high scores in its documentation of demographic pressures, delegitimization of the state, and public service.

Demographically speaking, Cambodia is facing with youth bulk in recent statistic revelation by NGOs. More than half of Cambodian population is under age of 20 years old (pactcambodia). They are struggling to seek a better life by hunting for career opportunities; they are very different from their elders in both critical thinking and belief. They can be boon for government to heighten their strength as well as they can be the powerful agent to undermine the government. In other word, demographic pressures can define in the context of people exploitation to legitimate the power of the powerful. In this circumstance, the past genocide of Cambodia has become a main tool for politicians to legitimize their power. They have continuously gained power at the expense of their peoples past suffering and trauma. Their elders were directly affected by their traumatic experiences and their younger generations are indirectly affected by this inalienable trauma heritage. With the powerful delivery of controlled media and laid-down policy of the patron-clientele system have surely exacerbated the situation.

Delegitimization of the state is explained as to invalidate the status of a recognizable sovereign state by inclining to live under other state by either brotherliness, ideologies or economic dependency. In this matter, we cannot come up with concrete explanation of Cambodia unless we have some back up references. And I think your next topic of Elitism or Indochina would light up this story.

Third is the public service. Frankly speaking, the public service basing on patron-clientele relationship will not produce any progressive. Some paper has found that patron-clientele relationship in most developing countries are becoming a base for social and political reforming and yes it has taken longer time and sometime it has significantly failed to reform for the a betterment. Cambodia has carried out the culture of patron-clientele since the era of Angkor Wat. It was effective in that time, but it is not effective in this time. The rule of law and law enforcement can surely replace the culture of patronage, patron-clientele bureaucracy, favoritism and cronyism.

All those three high scores of failed state of Cambodia implies well to the teaching of "liberation" by Buddha. Lord Buddha said liberty and self-realization is the ultimate goal for all beings. In contrast, Cambodian people has not yet been projected to release themselves from bondage of pressure, exploitation, abusing of power by the powerful, and poor public services.

For instance, Cambodian people have been exploited by their past traumatic memory of Khmer Rouge; Cambodian people have been counterfeited by the generosity (dana) donated by the elitists and powerful people; Cambodian people have been brainwashed to pay gratitude to others without having chance to balance their gratefulness and truthfulness; and Cambodian people have been poorly treated by the public services, and they have perpetually gone through the same track of political conundrum.

Only one way to wake up our country to embrace the Enlightenment Era and update themselves to grab the current globalization is to "liberate" them from post-war trauma by handing them the space for free speech, allocating them by inventing neutral mass media, teaching the younger generations by the school of analytical thinking (not a parroting classroom), and all Buddhist monks have to learn on how to apply the Buddha's teachings with the current context of social changes and they should not memorize those teachings and parroting to the congregations only etc.

I must end my thought now and I am delightful to your articles and all comments here.

Sincere Regards,
Sophan

Survey on Impacts of Koh Pich Tragedy

2010-12-11T11:37:00.002-07:00

Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey, the world's leading questionnaire tool.

Responsibility According to Buddha's Teachings

2010-12-10T23:16:00.004-07:00

After reading online article of "Neatee Koun Khmer" posted in ki-media.blogpsot.com, I would like to write something about how Buddha's teachings should be applied to the term "responsibility" as the discussion moderator, Koun Khmer, has focused on this week. Further more, the responsibility being discussed in the forum linked to the disaster occurred on Koh Pich during the Water Festival of Cambodia on the 22th of November, 2010.

Buddhism has been well-known for its rational explanation of all phenomena. And the core teaching of Lord Buddha substantially rests on the Four Noble Truth ie:

- the truth of the problems,
- the truth of the causes of those problem,
- the truth of those causes have its end, and
- the truth of methods using to end those causes

This Noble Truth has exactly interlinked with one another, and the extending explanation of this Noble Truth is the Law of Original Interdependence or Padicca-Samuppada.

Repeatedly, Buddha articulated the responsibility of individuals in caring oneself and caring others. By nature, people have shared this common caring with one another by family line, associations or duties.

Dhamma literally means "responsibility". Buddha explained that whenever each of us take responsible for what we are assigned for or doing for, the people and society will be peaceful and experiencing justice. It is joyful to see a mother take care her son with responsibility; it is joyful to see a policeman patrolling the zone he is assigned to prevent crimes with responsibility; it is joyful to see a judge fairly hands a verdict to the accused with responsibility; and it is joyful to see Water Festival organizers be more rigid and responsible for what was happening on Koh Pich etc. In the law of Kamma stresses on both individual actions and associative responsible persons.

Cambodian people and their society have deeply been embedded by the culture of impunity, and this impunity has distorted their self-esteem and confidence. It has also prolonged their trauma or PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder" to a long term unhealable syndromes.

Below is the collection of some video clips of the Koh Pich tragedy for our CONDOLENCE and REMEMBRANCE

Angelina Jolie on Religion & the Meaning of Life

2010-12-10T13:21:00.000-07:00

Angelina Jolie regards Buddhism as an important part of her son's Cambodian heritage and considers him a Buddhist. She has said, "We spend a lot of time [at our house in Cambodia]. And I’m learning about Buddhism and I’m teaching him what I can. He spent a lot of time in temples with monks and he's learning." {7}

Angelina Jolie (b. 1975) is an American actress known for her exotic beauty, wild-child image, award-winning acting, and more recently, her globe-trotting humanitarian work with refugees, her growing international family, and her high-profile relationship with Brad Pitt. Angelina Jolie was born Angelina Jolie Voight on June 4, 1975 in Los Angeles, California.

Angelina Jolie does not identify herself with any single religion, nor has she declared herself an atheist (contrary to the claims of some atheist websites {5}). The subject of religion has not often come up in her interviews, so her beliefs about such things as God and the afterlife are not well documented.

The most direct statement Jolie is known to have made on the subject was reported by the website A.V. Club (associated with the online magazine The Onion), which asked a number of celebrities the question, "Is there a God?" and published the answers from 52 of them in a September 2000 feature story. Angelina Jolie gave the following answer:

Hmm... For some people. I hope so, for them. For the people who believe in it, I hope so. There doesn't need to be a God for me. There's something in people that's spiritual, that's godlike. I don't feel like doing things just because people say things, but I also don't really know if it's better to just not believe in anything, either. {6}

So at least in 2000, Angelina Jolie had no specific religious beliefs, didn't personally feel the need for a God and disliked authority-based religion, but was not willing to go so far as atheism and expressed hope that there might be a God for the sake of those who dedicate their lives to religious belief.

Angelina Jolie regards Buddhism as an important part of her son's Cambodian heritage and considers him a Buddhist. She has said, "We spend a lot of time [at our house in Cambodia]. And I’m learning about Buddhism and I’m teaching him what I can. He spent a lot of time in temples with monks and he's learning." {7}

Shortly after adopting Maddox, Angelina tattooed a prayer for protection for him on her upper back in Khmer script (left). She said, "I asked for it to be done in Buddhist Sanskrit, which is part of (Maddox's) history." {8}

Jolie with earthquake survivors in Pakistan, November 2005.

Some have speculated that Angelina Jolie is now a Buddhist (rumor also has it that Angelina and Brad had a Buddhist marriage ceremony), but she has not indicated a commitment to Buddhism more than any other faith. In fact, she seems to take a United-Nations inspired approach to her family, and perhaps, to her religion. She is reported as saying,

"I have a Buddhist son and I'd like a Christian and a Muslim child, too." {9}

Aside from any particular religion, Angelina Jolie has given a great deal of thought to the meaning of life, something she has been searching for with great intensity since childhood, as well as considerations of morality.

Having first found happiness in acting, and then in her marriage to Billy Bob, Angelina Jolie now finds meaning and contentment in her children and her ongoing work with refugees.

Question: Have you learned any important lessons since you became an ambassador, and if so what are they?
Angelina: I've become a better human being. I've learned the strength of the human spirit. I see different aid workers in camps helping each other from everywhere - people who have come together from all over the world to help people in Africa. It's changed my view of what is important. I'm not so concerned with things I used to be so concerned with. I care now that my son is healthy. I feel that I'm of some use to other people in the world. {10}

I've been traveling for the last three years and the last two I've been goodwill ambassador. I initially set out because I wanted to learn about what’s going on in the world and wanted to become a better person and simply educate myself. When I found I could be useful in communicating what I had learned and maybe inspire other people to educate themselves and do some good, it made me so happy and gave me a sense of purpose.

Angelina Jolie in a refugees camp in Tanzania on behalf of the UNHCR.

I’ve learned more about life from refugees and people that are the survivors from around the world than anywhere else. I admire them. I’ve learned about family and just respect them so much and have seen so many horrible things and seen so much survival and so much beauty in these people. So they’ve changed my life and I hope to keep working with them and do what I can to raise awareness. {12}

I want to fill my mind with valid issues in the world. I'd like there to be less refugees. I'd like all girls to go to school. That's what we need to be thinking about, and working on making our own families good and strong and our own kids happy. Not to cloud our minds with things that don't matter." {13}

"I've been crazy in my life, and I've been wild in my life, I've never been a bad person. I've never intentionally hurt other people just to hurt them. And I'm trying to do a lot of good things with my life." {14}

I love films, but I'm more aware of being a parent now and I'm more aware of the world now. I spend as much time as I can in a day trying to educate myself and travel whenever I possibly can. I'm grateful to be able to live in both. It's increasingly harder to come back into a world that is focused on material possessions...when you've just spent time doing something you feel is much more important. {15}

To read full article, please go to this link: http://www.religionfacts.com/celebrities/angelina_jolie.htm

On Diamond Bridge, a Full Family Lost

2010-12-06T23:06:00.000-07:00

Monday, 06 December 2010
Photo: by Heng Reaksmey

“Every day, I dream my wife and son have come to visit me. My tears always fall when I'm reminded of my family.”

Chan Serey was supposed to meet his wife, Chhim Srey Touch, and his three children on Diamond Island for the last night of the Water Festival. But in the crowded holiday traffic, he only made it as far as the Sorya shopping center near Central Market. It was impossible to reach the island with so many revelers packed along the roads.

The traffic saved his life, but the same overcrowding that stopped him from reaching his family also took them away from him. The 37-year-old soldier lost all four of his family that night: his wife and his daughters Yos Som Srey Neang and Yos Som Channara, and his 6-year-old son, Yos Som Lina.

All of them had been trapped on Diamond Bridge, where thousands of people panicked and stampeded on the night of Nov. 22, leaving now 352 dead and nearly 90 still in the hospital. The government has said it was an unforeseeable accident with no one to blame. For the families of the dead, it remains an unforgettable tragedy.

“I'll never forget what happened at Diamond Island,” he said Monday. “Every day, I dream my wife and son have come to visit me. My tears always fall when I'm reminded of my family.”

In the days following the tragedy, Chan Serey has received more than $40,000, or $10,000 for each of the lost members of his family, as donations from the public, government, royal family and Diamond Island developers has come.

He says he has no idea what to do with the money, but he is waiting until the 100-day ceremony for his family to decide.

“The amount of money is too much for me,” he said. “I've never had money like this. But it doesn't compare to the lives of my wife and children.”

Neighbors near Chan Serey's house in Long Vek commune, in Kampong Chhnang's Kampong Tralach district, say their thoughts are with him.

Meas Sokhorn, a 25-year-old neighbor of the family in Long Vek, and a policeman in the commune, said all the neighbors care for Chan Serey “very much.” “He's a gentle man, a good and kind man, and he's so friendly,” he said. “We the neighbors have deep condolences for him.”

With the family gone, Chan Serey's house has been closed up for the past two weeks, with Chan Serey working in Kampong Speu, at the Tmart Pong military base. Neighbors keep an eye on the empty house, Meas Sokhorn said.

Meanwhile, Chan Serey says he will carry on.

“Now I've lost everything,” he said. “But I'm not weak. I'll fight for my life. When I lost my family, my wife, my children, rumors said I was suicidal. But I think it's not true. I'm still alive.”

វិបត្តិផ្លូវចិត្តជាបញ្ហាធ្ងន់ធ្ងរដែលកំពុងវាយលុកដោយស្ងាត់ស្ងៀមលើសង្គមខ្មែរ

2010-12-01T12:29:00.002-07:00

ដោយ ប៉ែន បូណា

I do agree with the analyst about the worse trauma of Cambodian people. The past brutality and civil war have clearly exacerbated this trauma. Recent tradegy of Koh Pich has been certainly worsened this trauma. How could we heal this trauma? I would like to hear more from all of you.

Click to listen:

បទវិភាគរបស់ប៉ែន បូណាពីទីក្រុងភ្នំពេញ

(04:07)

សំណុំរឿង ស្ពានពេជ្រត្រូវបានអាជ្ញាធរប្រកាសបិទបញ្ចប់ទាំងស្រុងហើយ នៅដើមសប្តាហ៍នេះ។ ប៉ុន្តែវិបត្តិផ្លូវចិត្តរបស់អ្នករងរបួស នៅក្នុងហេតុការណ៍ ជាពិសេសរបស់ក្រុមគ្រួសារអ្នកស្លាប់មិនបានបិទបញ្ចប់ជាមួយសំណុំរឿង នេះទេ។ ពួកគេនឹងរស់នៅជាមួយសម្ពាធផ្លូវចិត្តដ៏ធ្ងន់ធ្ងរមួយ ដែលមិនដឹងថ្ងៃណា បានរសាយឡើយ។ នេះជាសម្ពាធផ្លូវចិត្ត ថ្មីមួយទៀត បន្ថែមពីលើរបួសផ្លូវចិត្តដ៏ធ្ងន់ធ្ងរ ដែលគ្រួសារខ្មែរទទួលរងក្នុងសម័យសង្គ្រាម និងជាពិសេសក្នុងរបបខ្មែរក្រហម។ តើពលរដ្ឋខ្មែរបានទទួលរងវិបត្តិផ្លូវចិត្តអ្វីខ្លះ? តើវិបត្តិទាំងនោះបង្កផលវិបាកបែបណាដល់សង្គម?

ឧបទ្ទវហេតុនៅលើស្ពានពេជ្រ កាលពីរាត្រី២២វិច្ឆិកាដែលបានឆក់យកជីវិតមនុស្ស ៣៥១នាក់ គឺជាមហាសោកនាដកម្មដ៏គួរឲ្យតក់ស្លុតថ្មីមួយទៀត ដែលធ្វើឲ្យអារម្មណ៍គ្រួសារខ្មែរជាច្រើន ដិតដាមដោយក្តីរន្ធត់ញាប់ញ័រ។

មហាសោកនាដកម្មមួយនេះបានបន្សល់ទុកនូវវិបត្តិផ្លូវចិត្តដ៏ធ្ងន់ធ្ងរ ជាពិសេសសម្រាប់អ្នកដែលស្ថិតនៅក្នុងហេតុការណ៍ និងគ្រួសារអ្នកដែលបានស្លាប់យ៉ាងអាណោចអាធម័ ក្នុងព្រឹត្តិការណ៍ដែលមិនគួរនឹងកើតមានទាល់តែសោះនេះ។ អ្វីដែលធ្ងន់ធ្ងរបំផុត គឺមានគ្រួសារខ្លះបានបាត់បង់សមាជិកដល់ទៅ៣ ឬ៤នាក់ ក្នុងពេលដំណាលគ្នា។ តើពួកគេទទួលការប៉ះទង្គិចអារម្មណ៍បែបណាពីមហាសោកនាដកម្មនេះ? នេះគឺជាសំណួរដែលអាចបញ្ជាក់បានអំពីទំហំវិបត្តិផ្លូវចិត្តដែល គ្រួសារខ្មែរទាំងនោះកំពុងទទួលរង។

កុមារក្នុងប្រទេសកម្ពុជា

©រក្សាសិទ្ធិ

វិបត្តិ ផ្លូវចិត្ត គឺជាបញ្ហាដ៏ធ្ងន់ធ្ងរមួយសម្រាប់សង្គមខ្មែរ ដែលបានហែលឆ្លងកាត់ភ្លើងសង្គ្រាមវិនាសកម្ម ជាងពីរទសវត្សរ៍ ដែលក្នុងអំឡុងពេលនោះ មហាសោកនាដកម្មជាច្រើនបានកើតឡើងក្រោមក្រសែភ្នែករបស់ប្រជាពលរដ្ឋ។ ការសងសឹក ការកាប់សម្លាប់គ្នាដោយគ្មានច្បាប់ទម្លាប់ វិនាសកម្មសង្រ្គាម និងជាពិសេសការរស់នៅបែបទាសករ ក្នុងរបបខ្មែរក្រហមដែលពលរដ្ឋខ្មែរគ្រប់រូបបានឃើញការសម្លាប់កូនចៅ សាច់ញាតិ ជាទីស្រឡាញ់របស់ខ្លួននៅនឹងភ្នែក សុទ្ធសឹងជាឈុតឆាកដ៏មហារន្ធត់ដែលដក់ជាប់ក្នុងអារម្មណ៍របស់ពួកគេ គ្រប់រូបមិនអាចរសាយបានឡើយ។

ក្តីរន្ធត់តក់ស្លុតទាំងនេះហើយដែលបង្កើតជាវិបត្តិផ្លូវចិត្ត ដ៏ធ្ងន់ធ្ងរសម្រាប់គ្រួសារខ្មែរគ្រប់គ្នា ដែលគ្មានអ្នកណាគេចផុត។ ទិដ្ឋភាពនេះ បានតាមលងអារម្មណ៍ខ្មែរគ្រប់ពេល និងបានធ្វើឲ្យខ្មែរជាច្រើនរស់ ក្នុងសភាពបាក់ស្បាតជាប្រចាំ។

បច្ចុប្បន្ន ពលរដ្ឋខ្មែរបានរកឃើញស្នាមញញឹមឡើងវិញហើយ ក្រោយពីប្រទេសជាតិមានសន្តិភាព។ ប៉ុន្តែ បញ្ហាជាច្រើននៅតែបន្តបង្កើតជាសម្ពាធផ្លូវចិត្តដល់ពលរដ្ឋដ៏ អភ័ព្វនេះ។ បញ្ហានៅក្នុងសម័យថ្មីនេះមានដូចជា អំពើហិង្សាក្នុងគ្រួសារ អយុត្តិធម៌សង្គម និងភាពក្រីក្រ។ល។និង។ល។ បានបន្តដាក់សម្ពាធផ្លូវចិត្តថែមមួយកម្រិតទៀតទៅលើរបួសផ្លូវចិត្ត ដែលកំពុងមានស្រាប់ទៅហើយនោះ។

នៅមិនទាន់មានការសិក្សាណាមួយឲ្យបានស៊ីជម្រៅ ទៅលើទំហំនៃវិបត្តិផ្លូវចិត្ត នៅក្នុងសង្គមខ្មែរនៅឡើយទេ ប៉ុន្តែ បើយោងតាមក្រុមគ្រូពេទ្យឯកទេស ជំងឺផ្លូវចិត្តមានសភាពន់ធ្ងរណាស់សម្រាប់សង្គមកម្ពុជា។ ថ្វីត្បិតតែវិបត្តិនេះហាក់ដូចជាមិនសូវមើលឃើញ ប៉ុន្តែ វាបាន និងកំពុងរាត្បាត និងស៊ីរូងសង្គមខ្មែរដោយស្ងៀមស្ងាត់បំផុត។

ជាផលវិបាកជាក់ស្តែង មនុស្សខ្មែរជាច្រើនរស់នៅក្នុងសភាពខ្ទេចខ្ទាំខាងស្មារតី និងបាក់ស្បាតដែលធ្វើឲ្យពួកគេងាយនឹងតក់ស្លុត នៅចំពោះមុខស្ថានភាពភយន្តរាយណាមួយ។ ការឆាប់ជឿលើអបិយជំនឿផ្តេសផ្តាសទាក់ទងនឹងសេចក្តីស្លាប់ដែលជា ចរន្តកំពុងកើតឡើងពាសពេញផ្ទៃប្រទេស ដូចជាពេលបច្ចុប្បន្ននេះ គឺជាឧទាហរណ៍ជាក់ស្តែងមួយ។ អំពើហិង្សា ឧក្រិដ្ឋកម្ម ឃាតកម្ម និងអាកប្បកិរិយាមិនគោរពច្បាប់ ជាដើម ក៏អាចមានប្ញសគល់ចេញពីស្ថានភាពខ្ទេចខ្ទាំខាងស្មារតីរបស់ពលរដ្ឋ នេះដែរ។

ធ្ងន់ធ្ងរជាងនេះទៅទៀត ពលរដ្ឋខ្មែរជាច្រើនរស់ក្នុងសភាពវិលវល់ ដូចជាមនុស្សគ្មានព្រលឹងព្រលះក្នុងខ្លួន ដែលមិនអនុញ្ញាតឲ្យពួកគេកសាងសង្គមគ្រួសារឲ្យបានល្អបានឡើយ។ នេះក៏ជាមូលហេតុមួយនៃភាពក្រីក្រក្នុងសង្គមផងដែរ។
សរុបមកវិញ ពលរដ្ឋខ្មែរទទួលរងការប៉ះទង្គិចផ្លូវចិត្តយ៉ាងដំណំ ពីរបបសង្គមដែលខ្លួនរស់នៅ។ ទោះបីជាបច្ចុប្បន្ន សង្គមកម្ពុជាបានស្គាល់សន្តិភាពក៏មែនពិត ប៉ុន្តែ មានបញ្ហាជាច្រើន នៅតែបង្កជាបន្ទុកបន្ថែមទៅលើរបួសផ្លូវចិត្តដែលមានស្រាប់។ សង្គមមួយដែលមានកោសិកាជាពលរដ្ឋទទួលរងរបួសផ្លូវចិត្តដ៏ធ្ងន់ធ្ងរ បែបនេះពិតជាមិនងាយនឹងស្តារឡើយ។

ដូច្នេះ ការព្យាបាលរបួសផ្លូវចិត្តនៃពលរដ្ឋរបស់ខ្លួន គឺជាបេសកកម្មចម្បងរបស់រដ្ឋាភិបាល។ យ៉ាងហោចណាស់ ការទប់ស្កាត់មិនឲ្យមានការប៉ះទង្គិចអារម្មណ៍ថ្មីទៀត ក៏អាចចាត់ទុកជាការចូលរួមចំណែកដ៏ធំធេងក្នុងការព្យាបាលរបួស ផ្លូវចិត្តនេះដែរ៕

Video Clips from Watt Khmer Calgary

2010-11-18T12:29:00.001-07:00

Bon Pchum Ben or Ancestors Festival at Watt Khmer Samakii on Saterday, October 2, 2010

Tipitaka Ceremony at Watt Khmer Samakii on November 5, 2010

Kathina Saffron Robe Offering Ceremony at Watt Khmer Samakii on Sunday, October 24, 2010

The Cambodian Experience

2010-07-18T11:26:00.000-06:00

July 17, 2010
By CECILIA S. ANGELES Manila Bulletin Publ. Corp.

Despite applying sun block cream on my uncovered skin, I still got a good, lasting souvenir from my Cambodian trip when I went there together with a friend from Sta. Barbara, California, Maria Macabio, who is also a photographer. And that was sunburned face, arms, and legs. We were among the thousands of tourists around the world, falling in line and waiting under direct sunlight for our turn to climb the Angkor Wat temple in Siem Reap City, Cambodia. The Khmers were prosperous from the ninth to the thirteenth century, but deserted the place in 1443 because of the constant attacks of the Thai armies in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The ruins of Angkor remained buried in the jungle until French archeologists started restoring the heritage ruins at the end of the nineteenth century. Until now, Angkor Wat has not been restored completely, for time destroyer seems faster than human restorer.

According to our tour guide, some two million tourists around the world visit this heritage place yearly. Every segment of the man-made structure dedicated to Hindu god Vishnu amazed me, including its long entrance lined with heroic busts of gods and the two mile water-filled moat around Angkor Wat. I could simply imagine that this ditch was an effective defense from Thai invaders. To climb the 130-feet-high main tower was the obsession of tourists like us, so we waited for our turn under the sun. At the tower, people below looked like ants in size. That was how high the main tower was. There were four other smaller towers on each corner of the ancient structure.

Solid walls displayed carved pictures of Hindu epics. Our tour guide had fluently mastered the scenes, settings, characters and plots of the tale, much, much better than my English major students of Asian Literature. All areas of the huge walls of the temple displayed sculptured scenes to picture Hindu dancing gods in their worship hours.

Visiting even the smaller towers on the four corners of the temple gave me an imaginary experience to live in the past. There was a room, the only room that echoed every word we said and noise we created.

Tourists who did not trust their knees or grip remained on the ground, yet Angkor Wat has never denied them a sensational Cambodian experience of its historical world heritage.

(Cecilia S. Angeles is a college professor in Fine Arts and a regular lecturer in the FPPF Basic Photography Workshop at Fort Santiago, Intramuros, Manila. Email: csa_palay@yahoo.com)

Global index finds world has become less peaceful

2010-06-15T08:50:00.001-06:00

Tuesday 8 June 2010 12.59 BST

The Global Peace Index records less armed conflict, but increasing rates of homicide and violent crime across the world

The world has become less peaceful over the last year, despite a drop in the number of armed conflicts, according to this year's Global Peace Index (GPI).

Figures published today show homicide rates and violent crime had increased around the world, particularly in Latin America, where levels of peacefulness showed the biggest slip over the past 12 months.

The GPI has been published annually for the last four years by the Institute for Economics and Peace, a global thinktank that researches the relationship between economics, business and peace. The rankings, compiled by the Economist Intelligence Unit, are calculated using 23 indicators, such as violent crime, political stability and military expenditure, correlated against a number of social development indicators such as corruption, freedom of the press, respect for human rights and school enrolment rates.
Figures show that Africa has become the most improved region of the world for peacefulness over the last four years. The continent has experienced fewer conflicts, less military spending and improved cross-border relations. However, sub-Saharan Africa still remains one of the planet's least peaceful areas, with nine states featuring in the bottom 20 countries listed.

The Middle East has also shown improvements in its levels of peacefulness since 2006, largely through decreasing military spending and improved relations between states.
However, South Asia has become the most volatile area over the last four years, mainly due to increased involvement in conflicts and human rights abuses. This year, Pakistan was ranked 145 out of the 149 states listed and India ranked 129, evidence, says Steve Killelea, founder of the GPI [and an International Trustee of Religions for Peace] , of the impact of the war on terror.

Levels of peace

For the second year running, New Zealand is rated the most peaceful country in the world, with Iceland climbing back up to second place, after dropping from the top slot in 2008 to fourth place last year. Japan ranked third. Fifteen of the top 20 countries are western or central European states and all Scandinavian countries are listed in the top 10, suggesting that small, stable, democratic countries are the most peaceful. The UK was ranked 31, one of the few countries to improve positions, while the US dropped two places to 85, largely due to its military expenditure, high prison population and increasing rates of violent crime and homicide.

For the fourth year running, Iraq was found to be the least peaceful country, followed by Somalia, Afghanistan and Sudan. Russia ranked 143.

This year, five extra countries were added to the index Armenia, Gambia, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Swaziland, which ranked 113, 63, 99, 53 and 73 respectively.

In a sense, the GPI make a case for peace putting a monetary value on peace in terms of business growth and economic development. The index authors estimate that the total economic impact of an end to violence could have been US$28.2tr between 2006 and 2009. A 25% reduction in global violence would add an annual $1.85tr to the global economy. Killelea said these amounts could pay off Greece's debts, meet the yearly requirements needed to hit the Millennium Development Goals and pay for the EU's carbon reduction programme, and still leave change.

Aid thoughts

The rankings could provide useful backing to donor governments rethinking their aid strategies. The UK government is currently reviewing the countries to which it gives aid and has set up a National Security Council to pull together plans for development and defence. In a speech last week, the international development secretary, Andrew Mitchell, spoke of the importance of building "peaceful and stable societies abroad", with particular reference to Afghanistan.

"It's highly appropriate to look at the index and review how we go about giving aid. In the past, a lot of it was giving on a political whim, to prop up some government," said Killelea. "You need the right resources and approaches to build a well functioning government and make sure resources are spread around the people." A government would also save "hundreds of billions of dollars" in military expenditure.

Africa, he added, had experienced significant economic growth over the last decade, which had resulted in improved GDP across the continent, a drop in armed conflict and improvements in child mortality and education rates. But Killelea the continent still had a long way to go. "We don't want to lose sight that Africa is the most violent region in the world", he said.

The highest ranked country in Africa is Botswana, at 33. Uganda ranked 100 this year, an improvement on last year. However, Killelea noted that while the country had clearly improved in a number of areas, particularly in terms of economic growth, political instability, a worsening respect for human rights and an increasing number of deaths from organised crime remained major problems.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/katine/2010/jun/08/global-peace-index

Technological and Political Progressivism in Historical Buddhist Thought

2010-06-01T18:16:00.002-06:00

Technological and Political Progressivism in Historical Buddhist Thought

Kris Notaro

Kris Notaro
Historical Buddhism

Posted: May 28, 2010

An overview of the history of progressive politics and Buddhism written by Andrej Cvercko and edited by Kris Notaro.

Buddhism is one of the largest and oldest religions in the world, having been founded in approximately 500 BCE and currently possessing the third largest number of adherents of any world belief system. Over time, the fields of quantum mechanics, existentialism, phenomenology, and physics have all found parallels between their own theories and the theories of Buddhist thinkers throughout history. In addition, many concepts in the field of therapy such as a focus on the present moment and the belief that much of the turmoil human beings face originates not from external stimuli but from our own anxieties and psychological baggage were written about again and again by both Siddhartha Gautama, the historical founder of Buddhism, and those who followed in his footsteps.

In addition to finding common grounds with transhumanists, scientists, philosophers, and therapists, Buddhism has long been engaged in the world of social activism. Many of those engaged in activities pertaining to environmentalism, human rights, antiwar activism, and similar activities consider themselves Buddhist or ally themselves with its philosophy. Many organizations, such as the Zen Peacemakers, the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, and Buddhist Global Relief are founded as both sanghas (Buddhist congregations) and politically and socially active groups . But this was not always the case. In fact, at various points in its history, Buddhism was not only unconcerned with improving the world, but actively discouraged working to improve living conditions on this planet. However as James Hughes points out in an interview by Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, future technology, in this case that of pills to help one understand and feel what it is like to be enlightened will radically change the frontier of Buddhist meditation. James Hughes believes in improving the world and our minds with state of the art technology. “I sometimes describe the Buddhist Transhumanist project as a “Pure Land effort.” We want to build an environment that maximizes our capacity for spiritual growth and understanding, or, to use a more secular term, for more flourishing. Our effort would have a purpose different from simple self-gratification.”

Buddhism was founded in ancient India by Siddhartha Gautama, a young prince who traditionally left his family at the age of 28 to live the life of a traveling ascetic. After years of studying Hinduism, the story goes, he meditated under a tree and achieved enlightenment. As it would take several pages to even begin to define the term enlightenment, and as its definition is not the purpose of this paper, it is enough at this juncture to say that enlightenment in this context involves and certain understanding in to the way the universe works, and humanity’s ultimate place in it. At first Siddhartha feared that no one would understand what he had just become aware of, and decided not to teach it at all. However, he ultimately came to the conclusion that others were bound to comprehend what he had learned, and that even if only a few understood it, he still had an obligation to teach. As we will see, both the feeling that other human beings will not understand and are therefore not worth the time, and that if there is a possibility for others to be helped by Buddhism that it is necessary for those following it to at least make an attempt to help, permeate Buddhist thought throughout history.

Early Buddhism was revolutionary due to the equality it believed that all human beings possessed. We will see this same way of thinking about equality amongst the posthuman as well. The Hinduism that Buddhism derived from believed in a caste system, in which a person is born in to a social stratum and that this stratum is their lot in life. There was no hope of raising one’s position in society, as one’s class was decided by how they had acted in previous lifetimes, and was ultimately ordained by the gods. If a person wanted to move upwards in Hindu society, their best chance was to obey those of the castes above theirs in the hierarchy, and especially to obey the dictates of the Brahmins, the Hindu priest caste. Buddhism held that every human being was equally capable of achieving the enlightenment that Siddhartha had, and that they did not require the Hindu caste of priests, or even the Hindu pantheon of deities, as intermediaries, to the point that his last words were “Be lamps unto yourselves. Work out your own salvation with diligence.”

Siddhartha’s philosophy was concerned on relieving suffering for humans and other forms of life, with metaphysics and beliefs in the spiritual being considered unimportant. Famously, Siddhartha once said that someone who would not follow Buddhism until they were told what happens after death, whether deities exist, etc. was similar to “a man shot with an arrow who refuses to have the arrow removed until he is told who shot the arrow, what caste the archer came from, whether they were tall or short, old or young… Such a man would surely die before the arrow was removed.” Because of its derivation from Hinduism, early Buddhism took for granted the existence of reincarnation and the Hindu pantheon, though neither is ever supported by the oldest records of what Siddhartha actually taught.

Though everyone was equally capable of enlightenment, women were not given equal footing time with men. Though the way they were treated by early Buddhism was superior to their treatment in Hinduism, they were still second class members of the religion. Traditionally, Siddhartha would not even allow women to ordain and become monks until convinced by one of his students.

After Siddhartha died, Buddhism evolved in to a set of schools that were later given the pejorative term “Hinayana” or “Lesser Vehicle” by their opponents, the “Mahayana” or “Greater Vehicle” schools. The only one that still exists is Theravada, or “The Teaching of the Elders”, Buddhism. The aforementioned Buddhist Global Relief, which is primarily concerned with helping victims of natural disasters, and the Mind Body Awareness Project, a California group which attempts to use Buddhist meditation techniques and modern therapy to help recovering drug addicts, are affiliated with Theravada, and as a school it is predominantly present in Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Malaysia.

The early, pre-Mahayana, schools kept Siddhartha’s focus on the here and now, without worrying about metaphysics. They also followed a philosophy of compassion for all living things and strict sense of pacifism (Buddhism has a much shorter history of religious crusades than most every other organized religion as violence was (and is) never considered justified, even to “spread” or “defend” the faith; an idea which will surely be present with onset of human cognitive enhancement.)

Additionally, the early schools were very concerned with renunciation of the world and of its ways. The world as it appears was considered transitory and illusory, and the primary concern was to achieve enlightenment or a good situation in an adherent’s next life. This created a general view being concerned with social injustice or improving the condition of living on Earth was considered at best a waste of time and at worst a distraction from tasks that actually mattered.

Though the early schools kept the focus away from metaphysical theorizing, they moved from the individualism and equality of “be lamps unto yourselves” to a sense that only ordained monks could attain enlightenment, and that the laity’s role was to support them and in doing this be reborn in their next life as someone with the type of mindset to be ordained. Monks went through the streets every day begging, and in return ran schools and gave lectures on Buddhism. In many southeastern Asian nations, Buddhist monks are still the primary teachers of young children.

The early schools of Buddhism, while engaged in social services such as education and in generally peaceful and progressive beliefs, was in general too renunciatory to on any large scale engage in social activism on the part of the monks, and relegated the laity to the position of simply praying and giving monks donations, as these were viewed as the practices most beneficial to a layperson. Some Buddhists recognized this and, taking matters in to their own hands, created the foundations of the Mahayana schools.

The Mahayana schools of Buddhism appeared sometime around the first century BCE. They include every form of Buddhism that is not Theravada (such as Zen, Nichiren, Pure Land, Shin, and Tantric Buddhism to give a small set of examples) and are currently predominantly present in central Asia. The Mahayana schools began when new scriptures purporting to be the words of Siddhartha began circulating. These works are today recognized as not being spoken by Siddhartha, but by later Buddhists. Despite this, Mahayana Buddhists around the world hold that since what these scriptures, or Sutras, say rings true, it does not matter who originally wrote or said them and continue to study, recite and follow what they contain.

The major difference between the Sutras and the earlier Suttas, is the concept of the Bodhisattva. The Sutras hold that, out of compassion, some who are on the verge of enlightenment hold off on becoming full-fledged Buddhas because the rest of the life on Earth is still suffering. These people, who are known as Bodhisattvas, vow to not become enlightened until every sentient being can become enlightened with them. The Bodhisattvas are treated as spiritually powerful entities, who constantly reincarnate and guide their fellow humans towards enlightenment. The Sutras also describe Buddhas other than Siddhartha. These other Buddhas are enlightened men and women from the Earth’s past, or from other planes of existence or other planets. These new Buddhas, and Siddhartha himself, are also elevated to a god-like status and held up as beings to pray to and worship.

The addition of Bodhisattvas to Buddhist thought gave power back to the laity. Though many Bodhisattvas were monks in their previous lives, others reached their state while still being “house-holders”, men and women who lived normal lives and had families. Enlightenment was once again open to everyone. Furthermore, the ideal of holding off full enlightenment until the rest of life was ready to enter that state with you invigorated practitioners into a sense of compassion that the earlier schools only wrote of as a nice thing to try to do. The pre-Mahayana schools were given their “lesser” status and some of the Sutras had Siddhartha disparaging the Hinayana schools as being for the “weak minded” and the “selfish”.

Mahayana brought a good deal of changes to Buddhism, some good and some less so. The new, god-like Bodhisattvas and Buddhas caused many to decide that this world was not worth worrying about at all since if they prayed hard enough, they would be reborn in paradises. In particular, Pure Land Buddhism, historically and currently one of the most popular Buddhist sects throughout Asia, focused on the Buddha Amitabha, a Buddha from the Larger Sutra of Immeasurable Life who created a heavenly dimension known as the Pure Land which a practitioner is guaranteed entry in to in their next lifetime, so long as they have faith in Amitabha. This had the two effects: it allowed members of society who previously could not be Buddhists in good standing, such as soldiers, prostitutes, and butchers a sect which they could belong to, and at the same time caused many to decide that it didn’t matter how they acted when they were alive since Amitabha was going to save them regardless (famously, a group of Pure Land Buddhists became assassins in medieval China, setting out to prove the greatness of Amitabha by making their livings as killers and still hoping to enter the Pure Land).

This focus on the supernatural moved Buddhism away from its roots and, over time, lay people once again began for the most part to simply pray and to give donations to wandering monks. Some sects, such as Zen Buddhism, tried to move back to a more phenomenological ground.

Zen was founded around 520 CE by Bodhidharma, a monk who traveled from India to China to teach a stripped down version of Buddhism. To Bodhidharma, praying to Bodhisattvas and giving donations to monks did not result in enlightenment. Meditating and living a good life were the paths he preached. Helping the poor was not something to be done so that one would be reborn in a rich family, it was something one should do because then the poor were helped and this made the world a little better.

Hui-Neng, the sixth patriarch of Zen (638-713 CE), came from a less-than-ideal background. He was ethnically Lao, a minority in ancient China that was considered intellectually inferior to the predominant Han ethnicity. In addition, his father had been banished from the Imperial court, and Hui-Neng was raised in a rural mountain town, cutting firewood for a living and never learning how to read or write. In the one document based on his teachings (and the one Sutra that was never claimed to have been spoken by Siddhartha), Hui-Neng tells an audience this, and how despite being an illiterate from an ethnicity that most Chinese citizens looked down on, he achieved enlightenment because “Men know North and South, but the Dharma (teachings) does not.” He also explains that, if people want, this world can be the Pure Land and, if it was, would be a more reachable one than that promised by Amitabha (“Ordinary, ignorant people, not realizing their own essential nature, do not recognize the Pure Land in their own bodies.”). Despite all this, Zen was primarily practiced by monastics historically, and was once again more concerned with renouncing the world rather than attempting to improve it.

It is not until the beginning of the 20th century that sects of Buddhism become chiefly concerned with social activism. An early step in this direction was the work of a Zen monk in China named Taixu or “Great Emptiness” (birth name: L? Pèilín ) Taixu wrote about what he called “Humanistic Buddhism”, which he contrasted with Buddhism that was primarily concerned with ghosts, reincarnation, and the supernatural. One of his students, Hsing Yun (“Nebula”) has written many pamphlets on Humanistic Buddhism and still teaches about it to this day.

As Buddhism moved in to the 20th century, it adapted fairly well to the advances that history brought. Though Japanese Buddhists supported the Axis powers in World War II, they have since apologized publicly whenever the issue is brought up and have made few attempts to hide what happened. Buddhist leaders such as the Dalai Lama and Gudo Nishijima (the head of the largest Zen monastery in Japan) fully support advances in physics and biology, admitting when these sciences contradict their scriptures that the scientists are in all likelihood right, and writing extensively on the connections between science and Buddhism. Socially conscious Buddhism, or “Engaged Buddhism” is a byproduct of this modernism and the Humanistic Buddhism of Taixu.

Engaged Buddhism, also known as Socially Engaged Buddhism, works to apply the pacifism, equity, compassion, and focus on community that Buddhism is clasically associated with on a global scale. Some argue that it is Buddhism mixed with the Protestant Christian work ethic, though others feel that it is simply the natural evolution of what Siddhartha Gautama taught 2,500 years ago.

Thich Nhat Hanh (“Being in Touch With Here and Now”), a Zen Monk from Viet Nam, has spent most of his life working towards teaching pacifism throughout the world, and was nominated by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1967. He founded a separate sect of Buddhism, the Order of Interbeing, in the 1960s which is devoted to social equity, environmental protection, and helping the victims of war. He even rewrote the Buddhist Precepts, the closest Buddhists have to a “Ten Commandments”, to be more in touch with the issues we are presented with in the modern world.

Noah Levine is another modern Buddhist who has worked in the general school of Engaged Buddhism. He is a former crack addict and juvenile delinquent who now is the primary spiritual teacher of the “Dharma Punx” sangha. Levine, through his books Dharma Punx and Against the Stream: A Buddhist Manual for Spiritual Revolutionaries and through his work traveling to prisons, juvenile halls, and Buddhist temples, has tried to introduce a form of Buddhism that he hopes can reach at-risk youth, a position that someday should play a part in technoprogressivist philosophy. His friend, and another recovering addict, Vinnie Ferarro, heads the Mind Body Awareness Project which the two founded together.

Many other Buddhist teachers, such as Bernie Glassman, Bhikkhu Bodhi, Jack Kornfield, Sheng Yen, and James Ford work in the purview of Engaged Buddhism. In many ways, it is similar to the Bodhisattva ideal of the early Mahayana sutras, men and women working to bring the world closer to enlightenment with each passing day. The idea of “transcending” what it is to be human is at the forefront transhumanist philosophy. As George Dvorsky also points out:

[Buddhism] is an epistemological philosophy and an intrapersonal approach to perception, self-awareness and self-regulation. It’s an aesthetic. It’s a non-anthropocentric ethical viewpoint that places an emphasis on meaningful, compassionate and genuine relationships. It’s a type of Humanism. It encourages meditation and a mindful approach to living. It’s a worldview and methodology that promotes skepticism, rationality, empiricism and even non-conformity. It is the practical acknowledgment of the unavoidable perceptual subjectivity that is part of the human condition. It is the recognition that the mind matters and that conscious awareness can and should be optimized.

Since its inception Buddhism has changed a great deal. However, throughout its history, it has always been concerned with improving the lives of those it encounters. Much of the time, it did not even require one to convert to Buddhism for Buddhists to attempt to help, and its strong lack of dogmatism has helped it adapt to the needs of modern society. Whether the coming years will see Buddhists work more towards establishing a Pure Land here and now, or whether they will see a retreat once again to monasteries and to attempting to avoid the world’s problems, it is clear that the history of social activism in Buddhism is a long and checkered one, and a history which will have new chapters added to it, for example its impact on transhumanism as the “religion” continues to influence sentient beings whether they are human or cyborg.

Kris Notaro works with the Bertrand Russell A/V Project at Central Connecticut State University, producing DVDs to be used in the classroom. His major passions are in the technological advances in the areas of neuroscience, consciousness, brain, and mind.

Source: Institute for Emerging Ethics and Technologies

Deciphering the Four Noble Truths

2010-05-08T20:30:00.002-06:00

By Kate Fechter

Washburn Review

Published: Friday, May 7, 2010

Updated: Friday, May 7, 2010

Photo courtesy of http://media.dailyonigiri.com/2010/01/amida-buddha-daibutsu-kamakura-japan.jpg

Amitaba Buddha: This figure, located in Japan, is Amitaba Buddha, the Buddha of infinite light. Buddhism is the fourth largest religion in the world and is widely practiced in China, Japan and other parts of southeast Asia.

Nirvana was a grunge band in the 90s. It is also the name for when a Buddhist reaches Enlightenment. The fourth largest religion in the world, Buddhism, originated in India but is now mostly practiced in China, Japan and other parts of southeast Asia.

Professor Barry Crawford, a professor of religion and philosophy, explained the story of Buddhism’s founder Siddhartha Gautama, who was an Indian prince of the Sakya Clan, lived from 563-483 B.C. His father kept him locked in the palace because he wanted his son to be a great political leader, not a great religious leader. It had been prophesized that he could be either. Siddhartha escaped and witnessed the four passing sights: an elderly person, a sick person, a corpse and a monk meditating.

“How much of this story is true we don’t know,” said Crawford.

Disturbed by this, Siddhartha ran away to find inner peace. He practiced every technique he could think of to find peace. He became the Buddha and became enlightened.
He also discovered the four noble truths. The first noble truth is that all of life is suffering. Next, we suffer because we thirst to have things we cannot get. The next noble truth is that we can stop this suffering. The fourth is that by following the eight fold path you can stop this suffering. The eight fold path includes right thinking, right attitude, right effort and right livelihood, for example.

“In Buddhism, you have to know and internalize the four noble truths,” said Crawford. “You have to realize everything is impermanent and nothing lasts. For example, you want to be young forever and that can’t be.”

Crawford explained that in Buddhism thirsting for yourself causes the most suffering. The belief is there is no self, there is no soul.

“This is a hard concept for Westerners and non-Buddhists to understand,” said Crawford. “Think of it like a mirage. You are conscious of it and perceive it, but it’s not there. The same idea applies to the self. You want continuity but it’s not there.”

The goal in Buddhism is to reach enlightenment or Nirvana. Nirvana translates to “no wind,” like blowing out a candle explained Crawford.

“When you retain enlightenment your consciousness of yourself disappears,” said Crawford. “It’s an ultimate no-thingness.”

According to religioustolerance.org there are three main types of Buddhism. These are: Theravada, Mahayana and Vrjiana Buddhism. Crawford explained the differences between the three main types.

Theravada is “the way of the monk” and they hold closest to the teachings of Buddha. Mahayana Buddhism focuses on the model of love and compassion exhibited by Buddha the person. Finally Vrjiana Buddhism is also known as Tibetan Buddhism. This is the Buddhism practiced by the Dali Lama.

“Vrjiana is a mixture of Buddhist beliefs and a Tibetan religion called Bon,” said Crawford. “Bon has to do with strategies for survival in a hostile environment by placating hostile spirits. It also involves chants, mantras and charms.”

Mahayana Buddhism is very popular in Japan, where they have a 40-foot statue of the Amitaba Buddha, or the Amida as they call him. The Amida is the Buddha of infinite light.

“Amida reigns over paradise in the west,” said Crawford. “He is a cosmic Buddha and people pray so that he will have pity and share his grace and merit. The hope is that after they die the Amida will admit them into paradise.”

The Amitaba Buddha is often sold in stores as a figurine. Another figure that many would recognize is the laughing Buddha, or Ho Thai. He is a fat and happy Buddha. He is a Chinese folklore figure and his name Ho Thai means “cloth sack.”

Buddhists believe in reincarnation. According to Crawford, it is called Samsara which means rebirth.

“If you don’t reach enlightenment in this life, you will be reborn until you see the truth and see what Siddhartha himself saw,” said Crawford.

Although Buddhism began in India, it is not a popular religion there today. A large portion of India practices Hinduism. Crawford explained the connection between Buddhism and Hinduism.

“Like Christianity began as a movement within Judaism, Buddhism started within the bosom of Hinduism,” said Crawford. “Buddhism became so different that eventually it became its own religion.”

Religioustolerance.org addresses the debate about whether or not Buddhism is actually a religion or a philosophy. It is said that Buddhism is a philosophy, not a religion because there is no talk of a god or deity. Mahayana Buddhism treats its many Buddha figures as cosmic figures like gods. However Siddhartha never addressed any god.

“Buddha didn’t pay attention to gods,” said Crawford. “Still, it’s not quite accurate to say he was an atheist.”

Collaboration among groups from different faiths may hold the key to true and just national development

2010-04-30T14:48:00.000-06:00

Friday, 30 April 2010 08:32 Lance Woodruff

Photo by: Lance Woodruff

Khmer Krom monks assert their religious and cultural heritage in Saigon in 1996. Many see collaboration between groups from a variety of faiths as a key component to national reconciliation and development in Cambodia.

While Buddhist, Christian and Muslim NGOs have been active across virtually the entire spectrum of Cambodia’s rebuilding and development, the unique role of spiritually oriented groups is to infuse development, and the reconciliation needed for development, with the ideology and understanding to build or rebuild communities in the face of a legacy of hatred and fear.

When Cambodian Buddhist leader Samdech Preah Maha Ghosananda died three years ago, condolences were offered by religious and secular organisations around the world. In 1992, in the first year of the United Nations-sponsored peace agreement, Maha Ghosananda led the first nationwide Dhamma Yatra, a peace march or pilgrimage, across the Kingdom in an effort to begin restoring the hope and spirit of the Cambodian people.

The 16-day, 200-kilometre peace walk passed through territory still controlled by the Khmer Rouge. Buddhists and non-Buddhists alike joined this and successive peace walks across Cambodia, accompanied by as many as 200 people each year.

Buddhism for Development (BFD) is a domestic NGO founded in 1990 in Site 2 Refugee Camp on the Cambodian-Thai border by a group of Buddhist monks who saw the value of Buddhism as a tool for peace restoration, reconciliation and socio-economic development in Cambodia.

BFD’s “Put down the gun, take up the Dharma” launched in 1996 drew in political groups agreeing that weapons could not solve any problem, while discussion and negotiation were the options. A follow-up campaign, Volunteering for Peace and Development, is now in place, planted by village Peace and Development Volunteers in over 1,200 villages and communes, with related prevention and management of human rights violations in 24 districts of seven northwestern provinces.

Former Site 2 monk Heng Monychenda, BFD’s executive director, represents in some ways the bridge between traditional culture and religion and the Cambodia of the future.

In the decades to come, the Buddhist organisation sees itself working towards a so-called “Dharmacratic Society”, Cambodian with tradition-infused democratic culture in which people learn to live together in harmony, respect human rights, uphold social justice, foster and submit to the rule of law, and help foster the building of generous human communities and respect for the natural environment.

Im Sophea of the Centre for Justice and Reconciliation believes that traditional religion and values can thrive in conjunction with contemporary international ideals of democracy, justice and human dignity.

Christian organisations, some teaching religion, others leading broad-spectrum development efforts, such as World Vision, a Christian relief and development group helping empower children and their communities by tackling the causes of poverty, serve the world’s poor regardless of a person’s religion, race, ethnicity or gender. The Heifer Project, an animal husbandry-focussed agency, currently runs a programme called Life after Peace in Anlong Reap commune, a forested highland area some 120 kilometres from Pursat in the northeast, a former Khmer Rouge town during the civil war in the 1990s, only rejoining the rest of the country in 1996, after KR troops reintegrated with the national army.

Rejoining, rebuilding, renewing, forgiving, reconciling are all terms where religions overlap with development. And while religious ideals don’t in themselves lead to development, they may be the base from which true national development follows.

Source: Phnom Penh Post

Why meditation has a place in business

2010-04-25T23:30:00.000-06:00

Mindfulness is being championed by a growing number of high-powered firms, including Google.

By Jordan Timm

Chances are that you’ll be interrupted before you finish reading this story, especially if you’re at work. It might be a phone call or a text message, a tweet or an e-mail. It might even be a real, live co-worker tugging at your sleeve. (Has it happened already? It’s OK. I’ll wait.) Studies suggest the average worker is interrupted once every 11 minutes; it takes on average about 25 minutes for that worker to get back on task. It’s just one of the everyday strains on the modern worker, and just one reason why some companies are incorporating meditation practices into the workplace, in a bid to preserve their employees’ productivity, never mind their mental health.

Increasingly applied in western psychology, the practice of mindfulness comes out of the Buddhist tradition of meditation, and is championed by a growing number of celebrities, athletes and executives. A report funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research defines mindfulness as “a kind of nonelabrative, nonjudgmental, present-centered awareness in which each thought, feeling, or sensation that arises in the attentional ﬁeld is acknowledged and accepted as it is.”

If that sounds far out, its proponents insist it produces very tangible workplace benefits. “When we’re mindful, we’re able to work from a presence of mind that enables us to be effective and efficient,” says Maria Gonzalez, co-author of the new book The Mindful Investor. Her Toronto-based Argonauta Consulting trains executives in mindfulness techniques. She says the practice creates a greater calm, helping workers better manage stress (and with U.S. companies losing an estimated $200 billion annually on stress-related workforce issues like absenteeism and subpar performance, that can make a big difference to the bottom line). What’s more, it improves workers’ ability to concentrate and focus. “The workplace benefits are enormous,” says Gonzalez, whose clients include BMO Financial Group, Ontario’s Hydro One and the Conference Board of Canada. “There’s personal resilience, and the ability to sustain performance. You’re able to prioritize better, your time management is better. You have an enhanced ability to undestand client needs. You’re also much more creative, and come up with better solutions.”

The highest-profile example of a company investing in workplace mindfulness remains Google. One of the search giants’ original employees, a software engineer named Chade-Meng Tan, has invested a portion of the loot he garnered from Google’s IPO to research the scientific basis of meditation’s benefits. “The short story was, I wanted to create the conditions for world peace in my lifetime,” Tan says of his efforts. In 2007, he created the Search Inside Yourself program under the sponsorship of Google University, the company’s in-house employee education apparatus. That program, which Tan estimates has served as many as 500 Googlers, led to his current role as Google’s head of personal growth.

Search Inside Yourself focused on developing workers’ emotional intelligence, and educating them about the scientific underpinnings of material that can seem a touch New Agey. It incorporated instruction on mindful breathing and listening techniques that would offer personal benefits for its students, but with an eye on improving the company’s bottom line.

“We do not just teach empathyand compassion practices,” says Tan, “we also relate them to the skillful exercise of team leadership and also use those practices as a foundation for developing business-relevant skills like conducting difficult conversations and developing trust in teams. The idea is to make the business and employees far more effective (and hopefully, more profitable) by developing emotional intelligence company-wide. ‘Spiritual wellness’ and happiness are just the unavoidable side-effects.”

Google has since created meditation spaces around its campuses, and employees have organized classes. Of course, most of the business world still needs convincing of the merits of mindfulness, but Tan is optimistic it will gain traction. He cites the example of HP, which years ago was considered an oddball company for its notion that treating employees very well could increase profitability. “Today, it’s taken for granted by everyone, at least in Silicon Valley,” Tan says. “Similarly, one day, there will be a company that will demonstrate that having employees practise deep mindfulness and compassion is very good for business, and eventually, it will be taken for granted everywhere. I hope that company is Google.”

Source: http://www.canadianbusiness.com/after_hours/lifestyle_activities/article.jsp?content=20100426_10027_10027&utm_source=business&utm_medium=rss

OH, WAT A WONDER ! Nothing beats Cambodia's iconic temple, especially when you're given a sneaky peek of the hidden Buddha

2010-04-25T21:51:00.003-06:00

Byline: by MARK PALMER

THERE were no photocopy machines in Cambodia until about 1990. In those days, not even fearless entrepreneurs with Xerox contracts in their suitcases would dare venture to this beleaguered, war-torn part of Indo-China.

So, change has come fast. Cambodia is now firmly established in the tourist firmament, and offers far more than a popular diversion for backpackers looking for thrills and spills (and cheap beer) on their gap year.

Even so, I could not get the bloody image of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge out of my mind as our guide, Vin (not his real name, for reasons that will become apparent) introduced by us to the 21stcentury charms of Siem Reap, in the north-west of the country.

Public meeting on 'legal highs'
Proud to be bad
Why the bathtime boys could easily sink their differences
The Queen demonstrates the art of staying ahead
Lamont discovers the glamour in financeThose scenes in the 1984 film The Killing Fields, in which men, women and children are photographed by their captors before being executed and their bodies dumped in mass shallow graves, were no Hollywood exaggeration. They happened -- and not so very long ago.

Vin seemed to pick up on my unease. 'Terrible things have gone on in my country and we are sorry for that,' he said, totally unprompted. 'But now we are a peaceful people and the situation is different. I wish you a pleasant stay in Cambodia.'

It turned out to be very pleasant indeed. And Vin was right about the people: wherever we went, they were indeed peaceful and unfailingly courteous.

SIEM Reap is enjoying its second coming. Following the 'rediscovery' of the temples of Angkor by French archaeologists in the 1860s, the town became a beacon for wealthy travellers.

It continued that way until the late Sixties, when the likes of Charlie Chaplin and Jackie Kennedy came to call. Then war, famine and fear kept outsiders well away right up until 1999.

Everyone says you have to see Angkor Wat at sunrise to capture its full glory, but we felt relieved when Vin said we would start our tour at 10am. We were then amazed to find we practically had the place to ourselves.

'Where are all the people?' I asked as we drove around the massive moat.

'On the other side,' he replied.

He meant we had approached via the East Gate, a grand ruin of a lodge leading to a gravel drive that takes you up to the main temple. With dappled sunlight foraging through the swaying trees and a crumbling building in the distance, we could almost have been visiting a stately home past its best in Gloucestershire.

What took me by surprise was the perfect symmetry, the motifs, the detail on the bas-reliefs -- and we hadn't even set foot inside yet.

Vin ushered us into the shade and asked us to sit on giant pieces of sandstone. We didn't move for the next 40 minutes as he went about his lecture, producing maps and plans and dealing patiently with interruptions from us that tended to start with: 'But how ...?' or 'So, why ...?'

Our questions were all trying to make sense of such an extraordinary feat, one that took 37 years to complete and involved stone either being dragged from a quarry 50 miles by elephant or on bamboo rafts 100 miles by river. No wonder King Suryavarman II is such a hero.

As we moved from one level to the next, getting closer to the central shrine, Vin pointed at some scaffolding and explained that tourists had not been allowed access to the highest point for two years. He said the reclining Buddha was a sight to behold -- but sadly one that would elude us.

'Do people ever just climb up when no one's looking?' I asked, adding: 'There doesn't seem to be too much security.'

'You want to go up?' he said. Vin made a call from his mobile. Ten minutes later, a man with a walkie-talkie and bad teeth appeared. 'Come,' he said. We made a dash for the scaffolding, ducking under some tarpaulin and climbing the steep steps. And then we climbed some more.

My new guide had two lookout men posted near the top. 'We have five minutes,' he said. 'Come.' We rushed here and there and, yes, I got to see the reclining Buddha looking majestically calm and serene.

It was almost 2pm by the time we got back to our hotel in the centre of town. La Residence d'Angkor, part of the Orient-Express group, is the place to stay. Lush and luxurious, it's recently benefited from a brand new spa, and the swimming pool is a decent size.

But Vin didn't give us much downtime.

On our first day, he wanted u s t o s e e Ta Prohm (the jungle temple where Tomb Raider was filmed) and the mysterious Bayon, where the shapes of gigantic faces are etched into stone towers, before taking our positions high above the plain to watch the sunset. Discover life-cultural travel mail.

We ate spectacularly well at La Residence, but we also came up trumps at a new restaurant called Rina Rino on Pub Street. The most expensive item on the menu was [pounds sterling]2.

We then spent an hour in the night market, where I resisted the chance to try a 'fish massage', which involves dangling your legs over the side of a plastic swimming pool while fish nibble dead skin from your feet.

Next morning, we did watch the sun rise over Angkor Wat -- along with a few thousand other spectators.

The earth didn't move for me, but I liked the camaraderie of the experience: the standing and waiting at 5.30am with visitors from all over the world, the offer of cheap coffee from locals, the scent of expectation.

Later that day, we drove 45 minutes out of town to Tonle Sap, the largest freshwater lake in South-East Asia and home to entire villages built on stilts.

Houses are erected on rafts that can be towed to different areas depending on water levels.

Families can move ten times a year. We hired a dragon boat and explored some of the channels leading to the main lake. It was utterly enthralling -- and shocking. Men fish at night and spend most of the day beating the whitebait from their nets before selling it for next to nothing.

Life is hard. Average income is [pounds sterling]300 per year and a 46 per cent literacy rate is well below the national average. At least 12 per cent of the children die before they reach the age of five.

We stopped at a floating shop where crocodiles are kept in captivity while being fattened and sold to the highest bidder. We also came across naked Vietnamese children floating in washing-up bowls with pet snakes wrapped around their necks. They were fishing for money.

On the way back to the airport, we passed some of the hotels that have sprung up in the past five years.

If relative stability persists in Cambodia. Siem Reap will expand still further and struggle to retain its charms. Which means if Angkor Wat is on your list of places to see before your final boarding card is issued, then you might want to do it sooner rather than later.

TRAVEL FACTS

THE Ultimate Travel Company (020 7386 4646, theultimate travelcompany.co.uk) can arrange a tailor-made nine-day stay in Cambodia from [pounds sterling]1,895 pp. This itinerary includes three nights at La Residence D'Angkor, two at Raffles Le Royal Phnom Penh and three on the beach at Knai Bang Chat, plus private guided sightseeing at the temples of Angkor and breakfast, Thai Airways flights from Heathrow, flights in Cambodia and private transfers.

With Bold Determination and Strong Convictions, A Monk Develops Cambodia

2010-04-13T08:53:00.000-06:00

February 19, 2010

The sun has just risen at Wat Nokorbachey, a Buddhist temple in rural northeastern Cambodia. I’m standing near the ruins of a temple building and the early morning mist creeps over the tumbled stones and statues creating a mystical sensation. I’ve come here today to meet with the Venerable Thorn Vandong, a monk who runs the faith inspired organization Buddhism and Society Development Association (BSDA).

Throughout Cambodia’s history, Buddhist temples were a central fixture of daily life. Temples were more than just places to make offerings, gather at holidays, and to seek the guidance of monks. They offered a range of services to the community including classes for children, shelter to the poor, and basic medical services. But owing to Cambodia’s recent history – the takeover of the country by the Communist Khmer Rouge Regime in the mid 1970s and the regime’s subsequent banning of religious institutions – many temples were either destroyed or fell into disrepair.

Today, according to government statistics, Cambodia is home to just over 4,000 temples. Unclear, though, is the extent to which the monks at these temples are engaging with the surrounding communities. While historically, temples worked within their communities with little outside assistance, the BSDA model of basing an NGO at the temple, or pagoda, suggests this method of community engagement may be creating a new trend.

Our organization, the World Faiths Development Dialogue, is interested in not only what the monks at temples are doing, but also what their motivations are, where they get support (material and financial), what their knowledge is on certain topics like health and education, what they see as the critical development challenges facing Cambodia, and their openness to engaging in projects with the support of local or international organizations. The quest to get answers to at least some of these questions is what brings me here to my meeting with the Venerable Vandong, who I have heard through his NGO, is thinking about some of these questions. For now though, my immediate goal is to try to get a better sense of what BSDA’s operations entail, and more importantly, to learn what motivates and inspires Vandong’s work.

BSDA was established here in Kampong Cham Province in 2005 by a group of seven monks, including Vandong. Vandong serves as Executive Director and his staff comprises a mix of monks and laypersons totaling roughly 46 individuals.

“I am from a poor family,” explains Vandong. “I was lucky enough to become a monk and learn some English and it’s then that I thought back on my life and realized I am a citizen, I have to help the community.” The picture that has begun to emerge during the WFDD’s research and one that comes into sharper focus during my conversation with Vandong is that the success of local faith inspired organizations – measured here by the degree of engagement with communities and strength of programming – is directly correlated to the leadership’s vision. Vandong’s persistent energy and enthusiasm, his knack for addressing creative issues, and his ability to attract and retain valued staff have made BSDA into one of the leading Buddhist NGOs in the country.

Indeed, Vandong’s vision to address the needs of the poorest in society is reflected in the diversity of the organization’s programming. BSDA is one of only a few Buddhist NGOs in the country to offer such a variety of programs: staff talk to communities about the dangers of using drugs and help develop the capacity of community members to staff special centers where current and recovering drug addicts can seek help. The organization also educates local communities about prevention of and stigmas associated with HIV/AIDS. Formal education programs put monks and layperson volunteers in the public schools where they talk with classes about HIV/AIDS, violence prevention, drug abuse, traffic laws, and immigration. Vandong has placed particular emphasis on teaching students practical life skills like farming and fishing, a practice he says encourages parents to send their children to school. “Because people in the rural areas are poor, they think sending their children to school to learn conventional topics like reading and writing is not practical when they could be home supporting the family,” says Vandong. “But when they see we are also teaching them livelihood skills, then they are happy to let their children go and study.”

Informal educational programs are based around the operation of a vocational training center where students learn computer skills (the computers were donated by the Church of Latter Day Saints), study foreign languages like English, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, and learn to sew.

“The chance for any child to get a basic level of education will have a positive impact on society,” says Vandong. “Many bad things can happen when people are not educated. If we look to the Pol Pot regime, we killed together because of lack of education.”

Some five miles from where our conversation is taking place, orphans and former street children are putting their hospitality training to the test, preparing for the lunch hour at BSDA’s latest project, Café Smile, a restaurant serving up a mix of Khmer and Western dishes.

I ask Vandong what he sees as the biggest challenge facing Buddhist NGOs in Cambodia. “Leadership,” he replies. “Leaders need to work hard to fundraise and motivate the society to be involved. It’s very important that a leader be able to motivate the society. Donors give us money because they say they trust us.” He notes three other Buddhist NGOs were at one point operating in the province, but blames their demise on the lack of good leadership and strong vision exerted by the heads of the organizations.

I also find quite interesting Vandong’s assertion that one of the more unconventional challenges to BSDA’s operational capacity is getting the volunteer monks to the project sites. “Monks cannot drive a motorbike or a car, so there needs to be someone to take the monk and drop them off.”

Interestingly, although there have been many opportunities to address the subject during our wide ranging discussion, mention of how faith inspires and motivates Vandong’s work does not occur until nearly the end of our conversation.

“Our society needs to change. We are now in the era of the computer. Things are not like they were in the past when people came to the temple to listen to the Dhamma. People don’t go to the temple because things there are not important in their lives. That realization that we have to change attitudes, that we have to preserve our culture but still keep up with the developed world, was part of the reason I helped found this organization. I want to connect modern society and Buddhist culture to make them closer than before. If people make Buddhist culture part of their lives, then the modern society will be free of violence, free of killing, free of stealing, free of sexual misconduct, and free of lying. That’s my goal and my vision for the future.”

Source: http://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/wfdd/blogs/post/with-bold-determination-and-strong-convictions-a-monk-develops-cambodia

Tiger Woods and Buddhism

2010-04-08T14:37:00.001-06:00

Golfer Acknowledges He Had Strayed From Teachings, and Promised to Return to Tenets as Part of Path to Recovery

(CBS/AP) In his statement today about his recovery from the failings that have impacted his family and career, golfer Tiger Woods vowed a return to the teachings of Buddhism which had guided him since childhood.

Part of his therapeutic quest, Woods said, would be Buddhism, "which my mother taught me at a young age. People probably don't realize it, but I was raised a Buddhist, and I actively practiced my faith from childhood until I drifted away from it in recent years.

"Buddhism teaches that a creation of things outside ourselves causes an unhappy and pointless search for security. It teaches me to stop following every impulse and to learn restraint. Obviously, I lost track of what I was taught."

Woods said that while he will continue to pursue therapy, one thing he has learned is "the importance of looking at my spiritual life and keeping [it] in balance with my professional life. I need to regain my balance and be centered, so I can see the things that are most important to me: My marriage and my children."

According to Reuters and Times of London interviews in March 2008, when asked if he were a practicing Buddhist, Woods said he practices meditation, and has attended temple with his mother, but stressed the tenets of Buddhism about internal growth: "In the Buddhist religion you have to work for it yourself, internally, in order to achieve anything in life and set up the next life."

He said his mother has preached to him that "you have to work for everything in life, and you get out of it what you put into it. So you’re going to have to work your butt off in every aspect of your life. That's one of the things people see in what I do on the golf course, but that's just one small facet of my life."

"I believe in Buddhism. Not every aspect, but most of it," Woods told Sports Illustrated in 1996. “So I take bits and pieces. I don't believe that human beings can achieve ultimate enlightenment, because humans have flaws.”

The foundation of Buddhist philosophy is ethics, James Shaheen, editor and publisher of the Buddhist magazine Tricycle, told the Associated Press: "An ethical life leads to a life of less suffering."

Buddhists are taught that redemption for unethical actions is sought not through an omnipotent figure but through oneself.

Fox News commentator Brit Hume raised a stir last month when he suggested that the only way for avowed Buddhist Woods to achieve forgiveness and redemption was to "turn to the Christian faith and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world."

That stirred the ire of many Buddhists, including Robert Thurman, a professor of Tibetan studies at Columbia University, who called Hume's assertion that the Buddhist faith does not provide for forgiveness or redemption "ridiculous."

"It is insulting to Buddhism to indicate that Buddhism doesn’t take care of its own believers and followers. But I think he will discover that Buddhists are very forgiving about his stupid statements," Thurman told the Associated Press.

Secretary General's Message on Islamic-Christian Celebration to Honor the Virgin Mary

2010-03-24T15:44:00.000-06:00

24 March 2010

Dear SOPHAN SENG:

You would, I thought, appreciate knowing of the leadership of two of your remarkable colleagues from Lebanon, Dr. Mohammad Al-Sammak and Emir Hares Chehab. Dr. Sammak is a Co-President of the Religions for Peace World Council and Emir Chehab helped in the establishment of the Religions for Peace Middle East/North African Council.

They, together with others in Lebanon, have worked to establish a joint Christian-Muslim celebration of Mary.

This is being undertaken with full respect for the genuine theological differences that exist between the Islamic and Christian traditions, and among their diverse respective communities.

Both traditions—each in their own ways—see in Mary an expression of the radiance of God's Holy Peace.

Please join me in extending heartfelt appreciation to our respected Religions for Peace colleagues in Lebanon.

With gratitude for our partnership, I remain

Respectfully yours,

Dr. William F. Vendley
Secretary General

Islamic-Christian celebration to honor the Virgin Mary, symbol of national unity
On the occasion of the Feast of the Annunciation, Lebanon’s government launches a joint Christian-Muslim celebration in honor of Mary who is venerated in both communities. In the square in front of Lebanon’s National Museum a statue of Our Lady will be erected surrounded by a crescent. The initiative might be extended to other countries.

Beirut (AsiaNews) – Tomorrow 25 March will be the first “Islamic-Christian Day” in honour of the Virgin Mary, L’Orient-Le Jour reports today in an article signed by Fady Noun, who notes that the new festivity will fall on the Feast of the Annunciation of Mary according to the Christian liturgical calendar.

“Together around Mary, Our Lady,” is the title chosen for the celebration, which will be more of a national event than a religious one. At present it is not a statutory holiday but it could become one in “the near future, in addition to traditional celebrations of the Annunciation.”

“It will make the Virgin Mary, who is revered by Muslims and Christians alike, a factor of unity among Lebanese of every faith,” the French-language daily wrote.

The final decision, which was three years in the making, came on 13 March in a meeting of the Lebanese cabinet.

The idea of making the Virgin Mary a symbol of a joint Christian-Muslim celebration came to Sheikh Mohammad Nokkari, general secretary of Dar el-Fatwa, or ‘House of Decree”, during Annunciation celebrations at Jamhour College.

Emir Harès Chehab and Mohammad Sammak, who co-chair the Islamic-Christian National Dialogue Committee, welcomed the initiative as did Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora.

Beirut Mayor Abdel-Monhem Ariss responded positively to a demand by the initiative’s promoters to erect a statue of Mary in front of Lebanon’s National Museum. The square where the statue will be located is actually a major intersection and might be renamed in honor of the Virgin Mary. The statue itself would “reproduce a stylised Virgin Mary surrounded by a crescent moon,” Islam’s symbol par excellence.

A religious ceremony is scheduled for tomorrow in the chapel of Our Lady College in Jamhour, during which “Christians and Muslims will be able to pray together to the Virgin Mary.”

In addition to prayers, there will be songs, psalms, sacred music, testimonials, readings, as well as audio and video tapes.

Sheikh Amr Khaled, one of the Arab world’s most important preachers, will attend the ceremony. Mgr Salim Ghazal, chairman of the Commission for Islamic-Christian dialogue of the Assembly of Maronite Patriarchs and Bishops, will also be there.

Organisers, according to the Lebanese paper, hope that their “initiative will lead to more.

Contacts have already been made so that next year “similar ceremonies could be held in six other countries, namely Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, Poland, Italy and France.”

Obama world tepee (tea p. - Tea Party) and The Little Red Riding Hood

2010-03-20T18:45:00.000-06:00

Obama world tepee (tea p. - Tea Party) and The Little Red Riding Hood

Volume 8 Issue 3 March 2010
http://globalcommunitywebnet.com/GIMProceedings/GNewsMarch2010.htm
Politics and Justice without borders
Global Community
Global Movement to Help
Theme this month:

( see enlargement )
Obama’s world tepee (tea p.)and
The Little Red Riding Hood
Artwork by Germain Dufour
February 14, 2009

Addendum to the paper published in our January 2010 Newsletter and titled:

The worst kind of planarchists are NATO nations
by Germain Dufour
Spiritual Leader of the Global Community
President
Global Parliament
December 20, 2009

The above image titled "Obama’s world tepee (tea p.) and The Little Red Riding Hood" is part of the addendum to the paper published in January 2010. The paper itself gives a more detailed description of the imagery work. Let us define further the different components of the imagery.

The Obama figure standing up

Obama is truly a representation of America today and NATO friends wanting to defend an old way of doing things, 20th century thinking, but knowing this will not get them anywhere. The people of those nations have the stomach of a 'black hole' where everything on Earth is absorbed anb consumed without rules but those of the gun and fear. Obama is pointing out his own public face, a truly friendly face, a person able to make believe 'change' is possible that would make everything right in the world. But that was shown to be a lie during the Copenhagen Summit on Climat Change. Humanity itself was part of the lie. Humanity has lost track of what is the most practical thing to do to save life on our planet. Several decades ago, similar self-destructive activities on the part of humanity gave rise to the Global Community, the Earth revolutionaries.

Obama wearing a NATO uniform

NATO wants to be the gun for the corporate wealthy but eventually will absorbe itself and died out in its own 'wasteland'.

The Little Red Riding Hood

People of most nations no longer trust America for anything. America is doomed to nothingness and will be absorbed by its own 'black hole', its 'wasteland'.

United Nations diplomatic suite

The United Nations (UN) is the global suite with no justice where everyone can go unpunished and get a Nobel Peace Prize. The more destruction you do the bigger the prize. America and its NATO friends got the biggest prize of all. The UN should never be promoting war as a solution to world problems. That alone is against global sustainability. Sustainability means no war. War is the greatest act of destruction. There is no worst action than war. The UN is promoting a culture of violence and war, and certainly that goes against global sustainability and Global Peace. That is the worst thing the UN could ever do to humanity. It is totally opposite to the Vision that the Global Community is promoting. And it is totally insane! The leadership of the UN has failed to enforce disarmement. All weapons of mass destruction should have been phased out a long time ago. Why are the USA still holding the world hostage with its 40,000 nuclear war heads, and biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction? What has the UN ever done to help the phasing out of WMDs? Now several nations, including North Korea and Iran feel threatened just like everyone else and will refuse to be invaded. They would rather take on the US. Russia and China will also refuse to be invaded.

The Global Community is very concerned about the state of the world today and the causes that brought up so much frictions and wars between nations. Ever since WWII, the world has seen the rise of an invading world power, the USA. The United Nations has never done anything to stop the invasion. The UN leadership has been one of a 'watcher', an observer. The UN watch the world go by, on the brink of self-destruction and of being invaded, environmentally and militarily, and do nothing. The United Nations, US Administration, World Bank and IMF are corrupted organizations and never to be trusted of anything. The Global Community will never go along with these organizations.

The entire planet is in a state of low intensity civil war. The ruling elite profit off the exploitation of the rest of the world. Over several decades now, and in several press releases, the Global Community has made everyone aware of this critical situation, and how dangerous the US military and NATO allies were actually bringing the social fabric of the world to a complete breakdown. The October Press Release made that very clear and has caused a domino effect that started with NATO not wanting to take the blame for the global financial crisis and forced the collapse of the financial bubbles in the stock market, the Wall Street financial crisis. Americans are too proud of their military to throw away the blame of their bankrupted economy, in large part onto their astronomically high military expenditures, which truly bankrupted America long before the financial crisis. The financial crisis reflected fundamentally bad financial principles.

Germain Dufour
Spiritual Leader of the Global Community
President
Global Parliament
Federation of Global Governments

Religions for Peace

2010-03-20T09:17:00.001-06:00

Religions for Peace Advances Partnerships
Between Governments and Religious Communities

at the Non-Aligned Movement Dialogue in Manila

—Secretary General Dr. William F. Vendley gives keynote
to more than 100 Foreign Ministers —

(NEW YORK, 19 March 2010)—Dr. William F. Vendley, Secretary General of Religions for Peace, the largest and most representative global multi-religious coalition, called for partnerships between governments and religious bodies to stop war, fight poverty, and protect the earth.

Dr. Vendley spoke at the first Special Non-Aligned Movement Ministerial (NAM) Meeting on Interfaith Dialogue and Cooperation for Peace and Development held on 16–18 March 2010 in Manila, the Philippines. There are 118 NAM member countries. More than 100 Foreign Ministers attended the three-day inter-faith dialogue hosted by the Philippine government.

“Religious communities and governments have different and quite distinct identities, mandates, and capacities,” Dr. Vendley said in his remarks. “Cooperation between them should respect these differences, even as it helps us all to build the peace for which our hearts hunger.”

The meeting was opened by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, who spoke by video; Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo; United Nations General Assembly President Mr. Ali Abdussalam Treki; and Religions for Peace Secretary General Dr. William F. Vendley.

“The promotion of intercultural and interfaith dialogue and cooperation…is also a primary strategy to achieve peace,” said President Arroyo, adding her expressed hope that the Manila Declaration from the NAM meeting might include “an action plan of practical, action-oriented policies culled from numerous local, regional, and multilateral interfaith and intercultural dialogues.”

Dr. Vendley noted that nation states need to develop strategies for building broader partnerships with religious bodies. He said: “Each government’s main agencies need to become better equipped to enter into principled partnerships.”

The Nordic States, The Netherlands, and other governments have already built partnerships with religious and multi-religious bodies, including Religions for Peace, for concrete projects on conflict transformation, the HIV/AIDS pandemic, and development. In addition, the Inter-religious Cooperation Task Force for U.S. President Barack Obama, on which Dr. Vendley serves, recently made recommendations designed to strengthen the U.S. Government’s capacity to partner with religious groups. Dr. Vendley said: “The Ministers in the NAM meeting can add critical momentum to the growth of partnerships between governments and religious bodies for the common good.”

Dr. Vendley was the only non-governmental official invited to address NAM’s meeting in Manila.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:
Ms. Andrea Louie, Religions for Peace
New York, USA
Tel: (+1) 212-687-2163
alouie@religionsforpeace.org

Monk Honored in Second-Year Funeral Rite

2010-03-11T22:40:00.000-07:00

By Nuch Sarita, VOA Khmer
Original report from Washington
09 March 2009

Venerable Maha Ghosananda

During the dark period of civil war, a Cambodian monk led a campaign for peace in his nation. For years, the venerable Maha Ghosananda contributed to the cause of peace, and he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize four times. He died on March 12, 2007, and his passing will be marked in an upcoming second anniversary.

Monks and laymen alike will honor the life of Maha Ghosananda across the United States, with an official second-year funeral ceremony to be held at Trai Ratanaram, a community center for Cambodian monks in North Chelmsford, Mass., March 12 through March 15.

“They changed a new robe for him, and bought a new golden coffin to permanently store his body,” said venerable monk Sao Khon, chairman of the Ratanaram pagoda. Laypeople are busy in their communities preparing to honor him, he said.

In years past, Sao Khon said, he traveled with Maha Ghosananda to the World Peace Council, for the cause of peace in Israel, Palestine, the West Bank, Saudi Arabia and other countries. At the UN, they distributed a book advocating peace.

“The honorable Ghosananda was a Cambodian hero monk when our Cambodia was at war,” Sao Khon said. “Using Buddhist dharma, he brought Khmer suffering the world’s attention.”

Maha Ghosananda was born in a very poor family in Daun Keo village, Takeo province, in 1929. He entered the monkhood in 1943 and was one of supreme patriarch Chuon Nath’s students and a member of delegation led by supreme patriarch Chuon Nath to participate in the 6th International Buddhist Monk Congress to celebrate the 2, 500th anniversary of Lord Buddha's Parinibanna, in 1956 in Rangoon, Burma’s capital.

He studied at Nalanda University in India and received a doctorate in philosophy in Buddhism in 1969. In 1980, he established an inter-religious organization called Mission for Peace. In 1981 he led the Khmer community to build Buddhist pagodas in Cambodia, the United States, Canada, Europe, and Australia. He led 16 Dhamayatras, walks for peace, in Cambodia, advocating nonviolence within society and human rights.

His fellow monks remember him well.

Venerable monk Treung Ky Chantha, a representative of the Kampuchea Krom monks in the US, told VOA Khmer Maha Ghosananda had preached “truthfulness, forbearance and gratitude” in his efforts to bring peace to Cambodia.

“He always paid attention to helping Cambodian society, within and outside the country,” Treung Ky Chantha said. “He devoted his whole life to his nation and religion. In particular, he always led Dhamayatra [peace marches] in Cambodia, as well as in other places in the world to pray for peace, happiness and prosperity. Although he passed away, his name and reputation are still alive to be a good role model for all Cambodian people.”

Maha Ghosananda contributed to social development through Buddhism. He led the first Dhamayatra in the northern part of Cambodia in 1992, as UNTAC helped prepare the first democratic election in Cambodian history.

Venerable monk Nhem Kim Teng, abbot of Prey Thlork pagaoda, in Svay Rieng province, is currently doing his doctoral studies in Buddhism at Delhi University in India.

“Honorable Maha Ghosananda participated in Dhamayatras in India, Thailand, Sri Lanka and other countries at war,” Nhem Kim Teng said. “He was recognized throughout the world as a person dedicated to the quest of peace not only in Cambodia, but across the world. People knew his name as a Cambodian hero monk who actively advocated peace through Buddhism.”

Venerable monk Chhuon Chhoeun, of Damnak pagoda, Siem Reap province, said that in 1993 and 1998 Maha Ghosananda led Dhamayatra from his pagoda, with 2,000 Buddhist novices, monks, and nuns throughout Siem Reap town.

“The Dhamayatra led by honorable Maha Ghosananda from Damnak pagoda in 1993 was not in the fighting areas because conflicting factions in our country were already united,” he said. “Before, his Dhamayatra went to fighting areas, such as Samlot, where the Khmer Rouge were positioned.”

Men Maya, a Buddhist follower at Dhamikaram pagoda in Rhode Island, met with Maha Ghosananda in 1983. She, like many others, was devoted to him, seeing him again in 2006 and staying with him until the end.

“I served him for five months and a half until his last day,” she said.

Buddhist chaplain prepares for deployment

2009-10-15T01:38:00.000-06:00

The Seven Plagues of Siem Reap

2009-10-09T17:54:00.000-06:00

Friday, 09 October 2009 15:02 Shannon Dunlap

This week our intrepid columnist offers some advice for surviving the seven plagues of the apocalypse

The past week in Siem Reap was perhaps the most Old Testament-like experience I have had. I’m not certain there was a wrathful god behind the flooding that befell us, and if there was, he skipped the locusts and hail mixed with fire that he visited upon ancient Egypt. But there were plagues, nonetheless.

First, of course, came the Plague of Water. That one has already been well-documented in the pages of the Post, though the photos do not quite capture the unique aroma of the brown river that was once my street, nor the alarm you feel when, submerged to the waist, you feel something (vegetable? mineral? animal?) adhere to your left ankle.

The floodwaters were followed closely by the Plague of Clogged Toilets, during which a battalion of battle-weary septic systems waved the white flag of surrender. No nearby restaurant with a working toilet was safe from me and my pressing needs. My household reached a point of near-crisis by day three, but thankfully the upstairs toilet managed one brave swan-song of a flush and we were spared.

I‘m not certain there was a wrathful god behind the flooding that befell us, and if there was, he skipped the locusts and hail mixed with fire that he visited upon ancient Egypt”

Though the cholera that I suspect is lurking on every fork has not yet reared its ugly head, no one is safe from the Plague of Strange Rashes. There is no telling what kind of pathogens are swimming in the pestilential tide pool that once was my next door neighbour’s house, but whatever they are, they turned my landlord’s legs into scabby, inflamed specimens, the likes of which one usually only sees on frightening television medical dramas. He seemed to be taking the rash in his stride, but now the thought of it is constantly on my mind, and whenever I dip a toe into the floodwaters, my entire body itches for hours.

I’m not sure how many people experienced the Plague of Broken Fuses, but our electrical system, too, succumbed to the flood. Weirdly, the sockets on the upper floor were working, so we managed to devise an elaborate web of extension cords to keep the refrigerator chugging away in the dark. Preparing dinner with a flashlight clenched in your teeth is no easy task, but it can be managed if you are hungry enough.

Humans were not the only ones enduring the flood, which led inevitably to the Plague of Cranky Animals. The frogs do not seem as destructive as those that rained upon Egypt, though they do enjoy curling up in my shoes at inopportune times and keeping me awake with their mournful, bellowing croaking. The Post’s Siem Reap bureau chief claims that any time there is flooding of any sort, he receives panicked reports of irritable crocodiles on the loose. Though these claims are mostly unsubstantiated, I urge continued vigilance on the part of our readers and advise the development of personal crocodile combat strategies.

The Plague of Mosquitoes, which had been incubating in our flooded street, arrived on Day Three. The nasty bloodsuckers have always had a passionate lust for me, clashing unpleasantly with my hypochondrial fear of dengue fever. My boyfriend, Jason, waded to the waterlogged Psar Chaa to purchase a bug-zapping racket for me, called (I am not making this up) the Black Killer. In the evenings, I stand on our porch and wield it like a samurai sword, taking out scores of mosquitoes with every swipe and thrust, each demise accompanied by a pleasing little sizzle.

It might have been overlooked by people experiencing more dire problems, but a Plague of Boredom arrived as well. I am a writer and thus used to periods of solitude, but even I was driven to stir-craziness by isolation and lack of electricity. Jason and I resorted to creating synchronised dance moves in our living room, including one in which we leapt through the air like superheroes. We plan to publicly debut these routines at Zone One in the very near future.

Whenever I felt defeated by the Seven Plagues, I had only to look to my fellow Siem Reapers. Throughout the ordeal, I was impressed with the characteristic resilience and panache with which they dealt with hardship. If there’s an angry deity out there listening, you can cancel the locusts: this is one tough town to beat.

Flooding spares the temples Angkor spared from floods

2009-10-09T17:52:00.000-06:00

Friday, 09 October 2009 15:01 Dave Perkes

Photo by: Dave Perkes

Flooded reflecting pool at Angkor Wat.

I abandoned the waterlogged tourist Mecca of Siem Reap this weekend to visit the temples and see how flooding had affected Angkor Park. Surprisingly, the water had little effect on the temples. All the main routes were, and are, open and with the reduction in water levels, the situation should ease further in a few more days.

There were some areas of localised flooding, most notably around Ta Prohm. The level of the Angkor Wat moat was the highest I’d ever seen, and was flowing over the road at the south-west corner. Both reflecting pools at Angkor Wat were high and reflecting well, as you can see from the photo. The northern pool has almost doubled in size.

But visitors wanting to take a close look at the Elephants’ Terrace and many other sights are going to get damp feet.

As usual at this time of year, the paths can get muddy and waterlogged. Planks help, but I do see visitors with inappropriate footwear. I prefer to use trekking sandals with grippy soles in wet weather, as leather shoes and trainers become soggy immediately.

Cambodia tourism starts its slow recovery

2009-10-09T17:47:00.000-06:00

Cambodia's Tourism Industry

Image via eplerwood.com

By Luc Citrinot, eTN Staff Writer | Oct 08, 2009

Cambodia tourism has been confronted with the economic crisis to the slump of a dramatic decline from Northeast Asia, especially Japan and South Korea. Political skirmish with Thailand also contributed to a sharp drop from neighboring tourists.

After six years of uninterrupted growth –and mostly in double-digit figures-, Cambodia tourism has seen a decline in total arrivals for the first half of 2009. Albeit modest at -1.1 percent, it sent a worrying signal as tourism is one of the biggest revenues earning for the government and a major source of employment with over 300,000 Khmers working in the hotel and tourism business.

According to a survey, South Korean travelers, among Cambodia’s top incoming markets, drop by a third during the first semester 2009. Markets such as Australia, China, Thailand or Japan declined also in double-digit numbers. Growth was however recorded in Vietnam –now Cambodia’s largest incoming market-, France, the UK and the USA.

The city of Siem Reap, where Angkor Wat fabled temples are located, has been more affected by the drop. According to data from the airports authority, the number of passengers at Siem Reap declined from January to May by 25.5 percent, from 778,000 to 580,000.

During the same period, Phnom Penh saw passengers’ traffic declining by a more modest 12.9 percent from 767,000 to 667,000 passengers. Numbers have since substantially improved at Phnom Penh International Airport. Passengers’ traffic was only down by 10.2 percent at the end of August.

The disaffection for Angkor Wat is also reflected into the revenues from Apsara Authorities, which manages the temples. For the first half of the year, revenues from ticket sales were down by almost 20 percent. It would be the second consecutive year of decline for the authority as revenues from ticket sales already dropped from US$ 32 to 30 million between 2007 and 2008. Bun Narith, director general of the Apsara Authority, blamed the economic crisis, political uncertainties in neighboring Thailand and bad weather for the overall drop.

Meanwhile, tourism in Cambodia seems to have reached the bottom line. In July, the kingdom recorded an increase of 10 percent in total arrivals. Numerous price reductions and discounts in hotels and tourist attractions, the opening of new border crossings, more flights to Cambodia thanks to the new national carrier Cambodia Angkor Air (CAA) should contribute to put back tourism on the right track. The government has already promised to start again a TV campaign on channels in China, Japan and Korea and predict that tourism will grow again from September. With a bit of luck, it could even erase completely its decline and show a modest growth in total arrivals by year-end.

A treasure of Buddha

2009-08-16T15:43:00.001-06:00

Buddhist Monk Moeng Sang looked over the Relic presentation temple early Friday morning, at the Watt Munisotaram in Hampton that is taking place this weekend to celebrate the arrival of relics of Buddha that will be enshrined there. Monks from Sri Lanka have delivered the relics, and this weekend's "flower festival" at the temple also includes a groundbreaking for a new building on the property in rural Dakota County. (Photo: Tom Wallace, Star Tribune)

A festival this weekend celebrates the arrival of a Buddhist relic at a temple in rural Dakota County.

August 14, 2009
By KATIE HUMPHREY
Star Tribune (Minnesota, USA)

After a trip to India in February, Cambodian Buddhist monk Sang Moeng returned to Watt Munisotaram, his home temple near Hampton, Minn., practically bubbling over with excitement.

The Maha Bodhi Society of India, a group that oversees many Buddhist shrines, including the Tree of Enlightenment, offered to help find a relic of Buddha -- remains believed to be perfect proof of enlightenment, and symbols of wisdom, love and compassion -- for the rural Dakota County temple.

This weekend, Watt Munisotaram hosts a festival to celebrate the arrival of the relic from another temple in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

"We were fortunate to find a temple willing to share a relic with us," Yanat Chhith, a leader of Minnesota's Cambodian Buddhist community, said. "It's a very small piece, but that's good enough."

As many as 2,000 people from around the country and world, including monks from as far away as Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, are expected to participate in ceremonies this weekend as the relic of Buddha is enshrined in the temple, located among nondescript farm fields a few miles east of Farmington.

They will also be celebrating the 21st anniversary of the Minnesota Cambodian Buddhist Society, the groundbreaking for a building called a stupa that will eventually house the relic, and a flower festival to raise funds for construction. The celebrations runs through Sunday and the general public, Buddhist and otherwise, is invited to participate.

"Our world is so divided, but here we're all working together," Chanda Sour, a temple board member, said.

Trying to convey the spiritual significance of the relic, Sour and the others said words failed them. "A lot of this is too deep for words," Sour said.

Just preparing for the festival has drawn dozens of volunteers to clean, cut grass, prepare food and decorate the temple. There are between 7,000 and 8,000 Cambodian Buddhist in Minnesota.

Self-Healing, Empowerment & Enlightenment

2009-07-31T14:47:00.001-06:00

May 27, 2009 - August 30, 2009
Manoa Campus, Various locations - see attached flyer for details

This workshop focuses on the most powerful and effective methods of healing by Dr. and Master Zhi Gang Sha, internationally renowned healer and spiritual leader. The session will share his profound knowledge of healing, empowerment and enlightenment. It will also teach powerful healing practices, techniques and secrets to:

• Relieve pain
• Improve chronic illness
• Reduce stress
• Transform emotions: grief, sadness & anxiety
• Improve relationships with your family members, loved ones, friends & co-workers
• Improve finances
• Increase vitality, stamina & immunity
• Prolong life & rejuvenate

Please bring your loved ones – family members and friends. This is a perfect way to fulfill your new year resolutions. Take some time to de-stress, refresh, transform and celebrate your life!

Certified Soul Healing Teachers & Healers will offer free healing blessings to all participants. Participants can enter a gift raffle (one free soul healing session, or a book by Master Sha on soul healing and enlightenment, from the best seller list of the New York Times, Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble).

Workshop Dates:

Wednesday - Healing: Power of the Soul - Soul Song & Soul Dance May 27; Jun 3, 10, 17, 24; Jul 1, 8, 15, 22; Aug 5, 12, 19, 26 UH-Manoa: Kuykendall Hall 209, 6 p.m. – 8 p.m.

Thursday - Teaching & Healing June 11 & 25, July 9 & 23, August 13 and 27 McKinley High School – Library, 5 p.m. – 8 p.m. Sunday - Teaching & Healing May 31, June 14 & 28, July 12 & 26, August 16 & 30 UH Manoa: College of Business, A102, 9 a.m. – 12 Noon

Parking Information: UH-Manoa: Street or metered parking around UH, or $3 for on-campus parking after 4 p.m. McKinley High School: Free To Register: The workshop is free. Please contact Delcie (295-4797) or Pam (988-8090, blessings@hawaii.rr.com

Ticket Information
FREE

Event Sponsor
Educational Foundation, UHM College of Education, Manoa Campus, Manoa Campus

More Information
Dr. Xu Di, 956-0480, xudi@hawaii.edu

Under the gaze of the Divine Eye

2009-07-13T02:29:00.001-06:00

Monday, 13 July 2009 14:03 SEBASTIAN STRANGIO and sam rith

The Phnom Penh Post

Phnom Penh's small Caodai temple, the Cambodian outpost of a curious southern Vietnamese religious sect, continues to attract local converts, attracted by its all-inclusive religious doctrine.

Photo by: SEBASTIAN STRANGIO

Caodai adherents pray at Phnom Penh’s Caodai temple during its fortnightly service in April this year.

AGONG rings out over the city, swallowed by the noise of the morning traffic, as the devotees arrive in their Sunday best - flowing white robes and small black caps for the men - and gather in the main prayer hall.

Incense chokes the air as three priests, clad in gold and red, lead the congregation in chants under the unblinking gaze of the Divine Eye, suspended in a sky-blue frame above the altar.

For adherents of Caodaism, a religious sect native to southern Vietnam, the ceremony is a fortnightly ritual that emphasises universal peace and the oneness of man, God and the universe.

"Since I started participating in Caodaism, my family is happier because I stopped using violence against my wife, stopped drinking wine and stopped having a mistress," says Phan Van Quang, 64, who started going to the temple when he was 25 to "understand the dharma" and gain good fortune.

Phnom Penh's Caodai temple, a shaded citadel down an alley off Mao Tse-Tung Boulevard, has been the Cambodian home of Caodaism since 1934; and temple elders say that before the Khmer Rouge, it boasted a congregation of over 10,000.

Though that number has dwindled to around 2,000 today, the temple continues to find eager converts among the city's Vietnamese community.

"Day after day, more and more people are respecting Caodai," said Tran Van Ngoan, the head of temple security.

"We do not force people to participate in this religion. People respect it by themselves voluntarily."

Today, he said, there are over 1,300 Caodai temples in southern Vietnam, and over 5 million adherents, spread as widely as Japan, North America, Europe and Australia.

East meets West
Caodaism - more properly known as Cao Dai Dam Ky Pho Do, or the "Third Great Universal Religious Amnesty" - was born in southern Vietnam in the early 1920s, when Vietnamese civil servant Ngo Van Chieu claimed to have made contact with spirits who communicated to him a symbol - the "all-seeing eye" - and a new creed reconciling the great religious philosophies of East and West.

In an attempt to create the ultimate religious synthesis, Chieu poured everything but the kitchen sink into Caodaism, which counts Sun Yat-sen and French author Victor Hugo among its saints.

Although the doctrine itself is a melange of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism, it also incorporates arcane aspects of 19th-century French spiritism, including seances, Ouija-boards, and the bizarre practice of pneumotographie, in which pieces of paper are placed in envelopes and suspended above the altar, where they are supposedly inscribed with messages from God.

Caodai architecture is the same synthetic brew as its doctrine, combining Buddhist sculpture and European baroque into what British author Graham Greene once described as a "Walt Disney fantasia of the East".

Though a more modest affair than its elder brother, the Caodai Holy See in Vietnam's Tay Ninh province, Phnom Penh's temple is the same technicolour feast, with menageries of dragons, lotus flowers and coloured flags covering every available surface.

Tran Van Ngoan said that in order to participate in the religion, adherents have to adopt a vegetarian diet, starting with six days a month during the first six months, and then 10 days a month thereafter.

But attendance at the temple is only required for the main fortnightly services, and the religion - unlike Christianity or Islam - does not demand strict loyalty from its adherents.

"I follow both the Caodai and Buddhist religions - they are not so different from each other," says Yin Chhay, a 56-year-old Khmer from the city's Meanchey district who attends four Caodai services a month but goes to the pagoda for Buddhist festivals.

Photo by: SEBASTIAN STRANGIO

A painting at Phnom Penh’s Caodai temple depicts Victor Hugo and Sun Yat-sen, two of the religion’s saints.

A holy exile
Phnom Penh's Caodai temple also has a peculiar claim to fame as the resting place, from 1959 to 2006, of Pham Cong Tac, one of the religion's founders and first known "mediums".

Known to adherents as the Ho Phap, or "Defender of the Faith", Tac also brought Caodaism to Cambodia in 1927, when he was posted to Phnom Penh as a junior official in the French colonial administration.

Hum Dac Bui, a spokesman for Caodai.org, a California-based nonprofit organisation, said Tac was sent to Cambodia to prevent him spreading the religion further in Vietnam, but that he quickly went about establishing it in Phnom Penh.

Upon his return to Vietnam, the religion continued to grow at a remarkable pace under Tac's leadership. By the 1950s, an estimated one in eight South Vietnamese was a Caodai, and the religion ran most of Tay Ninh province as a feudal theocracy, collecting its own taxes and maintaining a standing militia of tens of thousands of men.

Tac had achieved such stature within Vietnam that in May 1954 he attended the Geneva Conference, where he tried in vain to prevent the partition of the country.

But when South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem, a staunch Catholic, came to power in 1955, the domestic political calculus began to turn against the Caodai.

In 1956, Diem forcibly disbanded the Caodai militias and other nationalist rivals. Tac and a close circle of followers sought political asylum in Cambodia, where he died in 1959.

"Pham Cong Tac moved to Cambodia because he did not want to see our Vietnamese people fighting with each other. He asked for his body to be taken back only when Vietnam was again at peace," said temple manager Vo Quang Minh, referring to Tac's deathbed request to Prince Norodom Sihanouk.

In November 2006, his remains were finally sent to be interred at Tay Ninh, bringing to an end nearly a half century of exile in Phnom Penh.

Vietnamese restrictions
But whether Vietnam remains a truly "peaceful" place for Caodaists remains unclear. Although the Caodai militias initially fought alongside the communist Viet Minh against the French authorities during the 1940s and 1950s, they turned against them once the colonists were expelled in 1954.

Following the fall of Saigon in 1975, the communists took their revenge, confiscating Caodai property and arresting or exiling many of its leaders.

Vo Quang Minh said that relations between the Cambodian Caodai and the Vietnamese government were difficult during the occupation of the 1980s, but have since improved.

But despite some positive changes, rights groups and exiles say the Vietnamese government continues to ban participation in independent Caodai factions and oversees all internal Caodai affairs.

"Undercover government agents have infiltrated the administration of Caodai, and the religion has to function according to the government's [rules] without respecting the current religious constitution," said Hum Dac Bui.

"The Tay Ninh Holy See has become more or less a place of tourist interest for the profit of the government and is totally paralysed from a religious point of view."

Brad Adams, Asia director of Human Rights Watch, said that only the government-approved Caodai sect is legally recognised, and that those who belong to splinter groups are subject to "harassment, arbitrary detention, and imprisonment".

In September 2004, he said, 12 Caodaists from Vietnam were arrested in Phnom Penh when they attempted to deliver a petition to delegates attending an ASEAN meeting.

After being deported to Vietnam, nine members of the group were sentenced to prison terms of up to 13 years on charges of undermining Vietnam's national security.

Adams added: "Cambodia is generally much more free with regard to freedom of religion than Vietnam, whose government sees unregistered church groups ... as a threat to the authority of the Communist Party."

But Tong Dinh Duong, 30, a member of the Saigon Caodai temple on Tran Hung Dao Boulevard in Ho Chi Minh City, told the Post last year that whatever the political situation, Caodaism's unique blend of Western mysticism and Eastern philosophy would prevail.

"When religion combines these together, people living together in the future won't fight together," he said. "In the future, we will have peace."

Temple Watch: The hole truth

2009-07-10T03:16:00.001-06:00

Thursday, 09 July 2009 14:01 Dave Perkes

Photo by: ....

There has been controversy surrounding damage supposedly caused by the installation of the fixed lighting at Angkor Wat for the Angkor Light Show. I had no objections about the lighting, provided it was installed in a non-damaging way, and I visited Angkor on the weekend to see what visual impact the lighting had. I looked closely above the cornices opposite the bas-reliefs. The lights have recently been taken down, revealing regular oblong holes about 10 cm long above each pillar. Some holes had rough patches of concrete surrounding them. Tour guide Ta Elit said that many rectangular holes had been cut for support beams during French restorations last century. I looked at photos I had taken of these areas within the last five years, and I could see old areas of poor repairs above these cornices in some of my images. But no rectangular holes. It's possible the lighting contractors removed the rough cement repairs to expose the older holes when they installed the wood to attach the lights. I cannot say for certain whether any additional holes had been cut, but I can see how people could get the impression that serious damage had been done.

Duty marks advent of Chol Vosa

2009-07-10T02:47:00.000-06:00

Wednesday, 08 July 2009 14:04 mom kunthear

The Phnom Penh Post

Buddhists in Cambodia mark the three-month-long festival with gifts of candles and other offerings to monks to ease the burden of collecting alms during the difficult rainy season.

Photo by: HENG CHIVOAN

A monk sits inside Wat Lanka on Tuesday in Phnom Penh, ahead of the beginning of the three-month-long Chol Vosa festival.

TODAY marks the beginning of the traditional Khmer festival Chol Vosa, a three-month period during which monks do not leave their pagoda to collect alms.

The holiday is associated with the Vosa, a large candle that is supposed to last the duration of the festival, Tip Sao, a 27-year-old monk, said on Tuesday.

"People buy the Vosa candle and offer it to the monks so they will have light when they pray to the Buddha, he said.

Im Borin, a researcher for the National Committee of Khmer Customs and Horoscopes at the Ministry of Cults and Religions, said that the Buddhist holiday has been celebrated for many years and that it is meant to show respect to the monks and make their lives easier.

Most of the year, monks collect money and food from their community, but during these three months when it rains the hardest, they stay in their pagoda.

Im Borin said the festival's origins reflect Buddhists' compassion for their local monks.

"One day, the people saw the monks walking everywhere to collect alms, and they saw how difficult it was for them to do," he explained.

"When the people saw their difficulty, they had the idea to stop the monks from walking around and collecting alms during the rainy season," he said.

"For three months, all monks have to stay in the pagoda to wait for food to be offered to them," he said.

An adviser to the Mores and Customs Commission, Miech Ponn, said that the tradition of handing out Vosa candles is a way to honour not just the monks but also one's religion.

"Vosa candles have a good meaning for Buddhists because it shows real respect to their religion. We have to do it every year," he said.

Good luck
Miech Ponn said that the longer the candles burn, the greater the fortunes for the pagoda housing it and the community that supports it.

"If the candle burns for a whole festival - three months - it means there will be good fortune for that pagoda and the Buddhists because they can take care of the candle fire for a long time," he said.

Tip Sao, however, admitted that most pagodas need more than a single candle to last through the festival.

"Each pagoda has at least two Vosa candles for the Chol Vosa festival," he said.

Solemn duty
San Leng, 65, who bought four candles at the Russian Market as well as noodles and cakes, said she buys supplies for the monks every year and that it is something all Buddhists should do.

"It is my duty and the duty of others who respect Buddhism," she said.

Tip Sao, however, said that not all pagodas receive Vosa candles because some areas are very poor.

"At the isolated pagodas, monks don't have Vosa candles to burn because the Buddhists don't have enough money to buy them for the monks," he said, adding that it was not necessary for all pagodas.

Researcher Im Borin said that in the past, Buddhists in Cambodia had to get creative to obtain candles for the festival.

"Before we could buy candles to use [for the festival], Cambodian people had to make their own. They did not own many candles themselves, and did not have the money to purchase them," he said.

Masterton woman flowers in Cambodian parade

2009-07-07T23:24:00.000-06:00

6th July 2009

Former Wairarapa College pupil Lucy King during a two-hour Buddhist ordination parade she was invited to lead.

A former florist and Wairarapa College pupil has won the rare honour of leading a Buddhist procession in Cambodia, dressed in traditional Khmer clothing as flower of the parade.

Lucy King, 27, daughter of Masterton couple Janet and Miles King, said from Cambodia she took part in the parade at the end of June.

She said the experience came through her work at The Happy Ranch, where she takes tourists on horseback treks to neighbouring pagodas and ancient stone temples.

Monks at Wat Chouk pagoda, which is on her tourist trail, invited Ms King to take part in the parade after hiring horses to carry two of their novices.

The pagoda is an almost 17km processional walk "in the sun" from the township of Siem Reap, located in the Cambodian northwestern province of the same name.

"It was pretty amazing to be part of this and I received a lot of attention as I was the only foreigner and it's not often they would see one dressed in full traditional clothing," she said.

Ms King said the monk ordination ceremony is held once a year at all Cambodian pagodas and usually involves three days of ceremony and celebration.

"There were 10 new monks ordained in the ceremony I attended. All the female guests wear traditional white tops and long skirts while the men, it seems, just rock up in any old clothes.

"The parade is like a grand finale to their previous life before they settle into the monastery for some serious meditation. We walked for two hours from the pagoda towards town and then back in a huge loop, leading the horses on which the new monks sat praying the whole way and holding incense.

"They believe the gods rode horses so this is symbolic," she said.

"I was the only foreigner there so there was a lot of pointing and staring, obviously not often they would see a barang (a white foreigner) dressed up in their fancy gear."

Janet King, who with her husband runs Kingsmeade Cheese producing sheep milk cheeses, said her youngest of three daughters has worked at the Cambodian ranch for almost 18 months.

She said Lucy had chanced upon the opportunity for a career change during a trip through Asia from her then home of Sydney, where she had trained as a florist and was working contracts for mainly state occasions.

"She had a pony when she was 11 and she just loves her job even though they only earn a pittance.

"She has met people from all over the world and has totally immersed herself in the culture - learning the language and teaching English to the stable hands."

A Cambodian temple you've never heard of, and won't forget

2009-07-04T02:53:00.000-06:00

Banteay Chhmar (Photo: http://www.peaceofangkorweb.com/BanteayChhmar.htm)

Banteay Chhmar is still in ruins and it isn't easy to get to, but the lucky few who make the journey find serenity and solitude.

July 1, 2009
By JOHN BURGESS
Special to the Washington Post

It's early on a Sunday morning in Cambodia, and I'm standing at a 12th-century moat. Traces of mist hover above the lotus leaves that dapple the water. Across a causeway, through a tumbled-down gate, lies Banteay Chhmar, one of the largest temples ever built by the ancient Khmer Empire. My friends and I are going to have the place all to ourselves.

We walk in. It turns out that we do end up sharing it, with a local man who brings his cows onto the grounds to graze. And with an affable mason who leads us across acres of fallen stone to see a message from the past, an inscription chiseled into the doorjamb of a holy tower. This kind of company we welcome.

Cambodia's great temples of Angkor, 65 miles away, have long since been rediscovered after a quarter-century of being closed by war. They now draw more than a million foreign visitors a year, not a few of whom regret that so many other people had the same idea. At peak hours, human traffic jams can form at temple steps once reserved for kings and priests.

But go beyond Angkor and you can find places that serve up the old solitude and sense of discovery. You can explore at your own pace, to the sounds of birds and the breeze that stirs the leaves overhead. In postcards and e-mails home, you will search for words worthy of your sentiments of wonder.

Banteay Chhmar is among the most spectacular of these places. Getting to it entails hours on bumpy and dusty dirt roads.

Staying the night means making do with primitive accommodations: candlelit rooms in local homes, bath water drawn from that same moat.

I stayed the night, and it turned out to really make the visit. The next morning I rose early, as everyone here does, and took a walk in clean country air. I passed mother hens foraging with their chicks, boys tending to a mud oven in which charcoal was being made. I was seeing not only a temple but a way of life.

Today several thousand people -- rice farmers, cattle herders, market vendors -- make their homes on all four sides of the temple. They grow vegetables on the banks of a series of moats; they pile straw within the walls of lesser ancient buildings that dot their settlement. The ancient and present day coexist.

Spending time here also means doing a good turn, spreading a bit of wealth in a part of a war-recovering country that has largely missed out on the tourist dollars that Angkor is bringing in. People do have cell phones (charged by generator), and some have small tractors, but there are few other signs of affluence here.

Banteay Chhmar was created in the Khmer Empire's last great burst of construction, under the 12th-century Buddhist king Jayavarman VII. His engineers were thinking big even by Khmer standards: To contain a great settlement, they built earthworks and moats that formed a square measuring roughly one mile on each side. At its center, within another square moat system half a mile on each side, they built the temple.

More than a century ago, French archaeologist Etienne Aymonier found the temple to be in a state of "indescribable ruin." It still is, despite the efforts of that friendly mason, who is part of a small reconstruction team. But that's part of what makes the site so enticing. Exploring it means climbing over piles of large fallen stones, something to be tackled by only the sure-footed. We passed ruined towers, courtyards and ceremonial walkways. Sometimes the stones were so high that we were walking at roof level.

The temple is no longer a formal religious site, but Cambodians believe that it, like all those that their forebears left behind, remains a holy site. In one surviving chamber we found a small contemporary shrine, with a Buddha image wearing a cloth robe, where people made incense offerings. When rain is needed, local people are reported to walk in a procession around the temple, imploring heaven to help.

One of the best parts of this temple is the many hundreds of feet of bas-reliefs on its outer walls. We had to scramble up more stones to get a good view. Before us was a full sample of life 900 years ago: processions of elephants, prominent ladies tended by maids, children roughhousing, villagers in a sampan, servants tending a stove.

There were also many scenes of war with Champa, the long-vanished rival state to the east: The temple is in large part a memorial to four generals who lost their lives in that long conflict. On land, the men of arms go at one another fiercely with spears (you can identify the Chams by the curious blossom-shaped headdress they wear). On water, rows of men pull at oars from galleys as others strike at the enemy with spears. There are also images of the divine, notably the god Vishnu, with 32 arms arrayed like rays of light emanating from the sun.

The carving style is similar to that of the Bayon temple reliefs in Angkor. The difference is there's no need to fight for a view. We did cross paths for a few minutes our first day with a party of about 20 French-speaking tourists. We saw no other visitors that day or the next.

Late in the afternoon, we went for a look at what the ancient Khmers could do with water. Just east of the temple, they created a reservoir that measures roughly a mile by a half-mile. Academics disagree over whether this body, and others like it, did only symbolic duty as earthly stand-ins for the mythic Sea of Creation, or were part of a vast irrigation system, or both. Whatever the truth, I was awed by the scale. The tree line way, way off in the distance was the northern bank.

The reservoir was now largely dry, but because its floor is low and collects water before the surrounding land does, it has been divided into rice paddies. We went for a stroll, walking along paddy dikes to keep our feet dry. We said hello to members of a farming family who were tinkering with a small tractor. A woman had caught a bucketful of paddy crabs and insects, which she would sell as food. In the final daylight, we passed a group of young men bringing cattle home.

I passed the night at the house of a Cambodian family, friends of a friend. They couldn't have been more gracious. They gave me a room of my own, bottled water, mosquito coils and a big luxury: a car battery hooked to a fluorescent light. I could have light all night if I wanted it.

Other members of our party slept at a formal homestay, the term given to guesthouses as well as family homes that accept paying guests, a few steps from the temple's gate. It had two rooms with large beds covered by mosquito nets. Downstairs there was a basic bathroom with a squat toilet and scoop bath.

Staying the night brought another cultural experience. A festival was going on nearby, and its amplified music carried into my room as I sat reading. Then around 10 p.m., silence. Private generators don't run all night, even for a celebration.

I got up at dawn, scoop-bathed in slightly murky water and walked to the moat from which it had been drawn. I took in the early morning sights: the mist, dogs prowling around in first light. I played amateur archaeologist for a bit, noting that an ancient feeder or outflow channel, now dry, was connected to the moat at this corner.

Later we went exploring on foot. Mixed in among wooden homes were the stone walls of lesser 12th-century relics that had been monasteries or small temples. The ruins of one temple's gate lay foliage-shrouded just a few steps from a house. Little boys ran about, and a teenage girl ironed clothing.

We had breakfast at a stall in the town's market; there are no proper restaurants. It was noodle soup with chicken, and very good.

I first visited Angkor in 1969. Back then, you could be alone in the big temples even there. I once walked through the largest of them, Angkor Wat, encountering hardly a soul. It's good to know that such an experience can still be had. You just have to work a bit harder for it.

John Burgess is a former foreign correspondent for the Washington Post.
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OTHER CAMBODIAN TEMPLES

Getting to Banteay Chhmar from Angkor takes about four hours, maybe longer. And in Cambodia you need to be game for some adventure, or at least for some delays. But other ancient sites beyond Angkor can be reached more quickly.

The 12th-century temple complex of Beng Mealea lies about 1 1/2 hours by road -- a good road -- east of Angkor. Being so close, it has some tourist bustle, but nothing like Angkor's.

The temple was built at roughly the same time as Angkor Wat and shares many of its style characteristics. Perhaps Beng Mealea was a trial lab for the better-known temple's style. Visit and you may wonder: If the ancient Khmers had Beng Mealea, why would they need Angkor Wat?

Another site, Koh Ker, lies an hour and a half beyond Beng Mealea by a generally rough road. Koh Ker is an area, not a single temple, that for centuries was a center of provincial culture. In A.D. 928, when its prince became King Jayavarman IV, the capital came to him, rather than vice versa, for reasons perhaps related to his feuding with the previous king.

Today Koh Ker has dozens of stone creations, some large and imposing, some small and intimate. The most spectacular is a complex that is three temples in one, including the Prang, the largest pyramid that Khmer architects built. Faced in sandstone, it has seven levels and stands about 115 feet tall. This was Jayavarman IV's state temple.

From that complex, we drove a circuit through wooded land, coming to smaller but still remarkable temples every few hundred yards. Prasat Krachap has many images of the god Shiva. Banteay Pichean has two brick towers standing in front of a collapsed central sanctuary. At those places and others, I encountered only a guard who was posted there to prevent art theft.

Without question, the most spectacular of the Khmer monuments outside Angkor is Preah Vihear, built atop a 1,700-foot cliff. The visitor ascends a long stone-paved avenue, arriving at ever-larger holy buildings. At the top is the main sanctuary and, a few steps beyond, a jaw-dropping view of Cambodian countryside.

But for now, Preah Vihear is best left off your schedule. Situated in Cambodia right at the border with Thailand, it has since last year been the scene of a military standoff between the two countries' soldiers. This is the latest flare-up in a long feud over the temple, which the World Court ruled in 1962 belonged to Cambodia.

But if on a future trip the soldiers have left, give thought to a visit. Going from Siem Reap is daunting: perhaps five hours each way over very rough roads, then a hike or motorcycle taxi in the heat up the cliff. Accommodations are minimal. The more comfortable and common way to reach the temple, assuming the border is open, is from Thailand. Thai tour companies can make the arrangements.

But remember: Check first about security

Cambodia: Controversial Angkor Wat lighting project Sunday

2009-06-16T23:53:00.002-06:00

To promote “night lighting” tours and to reverse the 20 per cent drop in visitors, the Cambodian government has installed artificial lighting in the 11th century-old Angkor Wat Temple. This project is opposed by some heritage conservationists and concerned Cambodian citizens. Angkor Wat is the most popular tourist site in Cambodia and is recognized as a World Heritage site.

Heritage conservation specialists describe the installed light bulbs as “unsightly.” Since 2006, more than $12 million were spent for the lighting of the temple. It is part of a grand project to transform the Angkor Wat as a complex of entertainment venues.

The government defended the lighting decoration by arguing that it has the support of the UNESCO. Authorities also added that only solar powered lighting technology was used in the project.

The public was stunned when it learned that holes were drilled in the temple to install electric bulbs. This was denied by the government and the project contractor:

“The working team explained that they have a technique to set up electric bulbs which causes no harm to the temple. They install bulbs by using cork stoppers put into already existing holes, and they set up lights only where it is possibly, and also at the lower layers of the stone. The working team claims that the heat of the bulbs is weak and does not affect the temple.”

The controversy became more intense when the person who exposed the Angkor Wat lighting was sued by a government lawyer for spreading false information. The accused has fled to France to avoid prosecution.

Angkor Wat Temple. From the Flickr Page of DragonWoman

Below are some reactions from the Cambodian blogosphere. From The Son of the Empire:

Can this equipped light attract more tourists to Angkor Wat and Cambodia as a whole while a leader of a country is incompetent to lead a country with transparency, security, stability, human right respect, and yet committing corruption and dependent on alm and submitting to neigboring countries?

Personally, the light decoration is untolerable and I think those who allow this project to be carried out is considered as a traitor and are untolerable.

Those people must think about the long term and should have done their best to preserve this most wonderful work of our greatest ancestors who have built this marvelous heritage for the world, for us and has become the soul, the spirit, and the pride of our people and nation.

Real Cambodia appreciates the effort to improve the image of Angkor Wat

I kind of like the idea of seeing Angkor Wat at night. I imagine some of the statues, carvings, and shadows would be pretty amazing, particularly after happy hour. And hopefully they'd use really environmentally-friendly lighting, like LED lights, in a smart and innovative way, creating lots of trippy, dramatic angles. But I'd also hope they left most of the park undisturbed, all the better to retain its unique position at the nexus of natural and supernatural.

The Southeast Asian Archaeology Newsblog warns that increasing the number of tourists in Angkor Wat is bad for business

The move may serve to boost falling tourism numbers, but does nothing to address what heritage specialists have been saying for years - that the effects of increased traffic to Angkor is ultimately bad for business.

An anonymous commenter rejects the lighting project:

Even from a plain, regular guy like me, I could see that the lighting was absolutely inappropriate for a sacred monument any where in the whole world, let alone a magnificent heritage like Angkor Wat. Who ever came up with that idea should be fired from his job!!!! No sense of fine aesthetic, whatsoever!!!

The Deputy PM will be summoned by the Parliament to answer questions about the controversial project.

Thumbnail image used from the Flickr Page of tylerdurden1

PFF: UNESCO WHS week: Angkor Wat (apostcardaday.blogspot.com)

http://globalvoicesonline.org/2009/06/14/cambodia-controversial-angkor-wat-lighting-project/

Cambodian authorities consider opening Angkor Wat temples at night for tourists

2009-06-16T23:50:00.000-06:00

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

The Associated Press

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia -- Cambodia is considering opening the famed Angkor Wat temples at night to draw more tourists to the impoverished country, an official at the archaeological site said.

Similar night tourism efforts have been introduced at other sites in Southeast Asia.

Cambodia already has installed some lights at the network of centuries-old temples, said Bun Narith, who leads the agency responsible for managing the Angkor park.

Tourism is a major foreign currency earner for cash-strapped Cambodia. More than a million foreign tourists are expected to visit this year, with most from South Korea, Japan and the United States. More than half of tourists visit the Angkor temples, by far the country's biggest draw.

Visitors are now ushered out of Angkor at sunset, but authorities are considering extending visiting hours to as late as 8:30 p.m. local time.

"We want tourists to see all views of the temple, even in the dark places where they may have not have seen some of the sculptures and statues," Bun Narith said.

But conservationists have long expressed concerns about tourism's impact on Angkor. They say the uncontrolled pumping of underground water to meet the rising demand of hotels and residents in the nearby town of Siem Reap may be destabilizing the earth beneath the temples.

First published on June 16, 2009 at 12:00 am

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09167/974488-37.stm#ixzz0IfDSLIQ2&D

Temple Watch: Ancient wheel turns again

2009-06-11T03:57:00.001-06:00

Written by Dave Perkes
Thursday, 11 June 2009
The old stone bridge, Spean Thma, is near the temple of Ta Keo and near the metal bridge on the road to Ta Prohm. The bridge was originally constructed in Angkorian times, but it has suffered badly through the centuries. Huge trees grow out of the stones with much of the masonry severely damaged. Travellers who stop and look can see the corbelled arches and the remains of a stepped embankment. The Siem Reap River flows about five metres below it. The river was originally canalised by the ancient Khmers and took a straight route north to south. The river eventually cut a deep ravine and turned at right angles to the bridge, leaving it high and dry. Upriver from the bridge is a large waterwheel which has just been replaced after being removed for repairs. It's about 10 metres in diameter and an impressive sight in its own right. Yet it is ignored by most tourist groups, which focus on the ancient stones. The waterwheel is a marvellous example of industrial archaeology, and it is still used to pump water to the Takeo nurseries. Now that the rainy season is here, it is fascinating to watch the huge wheel working again. The Phnom Penh Post

Lighting project part of broader push for Angkor entertainment

2009-06-11T03:37:00.001-06:00

Written by Peter Olszewski
Thursday, 11 June 2009
SIEM REAP A series of entertainment projects have been proposed at Siem Reap's temples in recent years, including a three-day festival on the backburner and an operational night festival. Photo by: KYLE SHERER An assortment of lighting equipment used for the Angkor Wat Night Festival is stockpiled on the grounds of the temple. THE ONGOING light installation project at Angkor Wat temple - which in recent weeks has sparked allegations of temple damage and a defamation lawsuit - is the latest in a series of projects intended to transform Siem Reap's temples into major entertainment venues. Though some of these projects have not moved past the proposal stage, one of them - the Angkor Wat Night Festival - is fully operational and has the backing of both UNESCO and the government. The most recent plans for an entertainment project were presented by the Russian company Rise Entertainment during a meeting of the International Coordinating Committee for the Safeguarding and Development of the Historic Site of Angkor (ICC) held last week in Siem Reap. The Moscow-based company, which in 2007 pitched a series of concerts as part of a festival to be titled "Angkorica", now aims to host a three-day concert festival at Bayon temple. The "Angkorica" proposal, which included plans for an appearance by the Icelandic singer Bjork as well as elephants covered in white-and-gold cloth, was priced at between US$3.5 and $5 million and would have been staged at Angkor Wat and other temples. Vladimir Meshkey, general producer for Rise Entertainment, told the Post earlier this month that the company had been advised by the Apsara Authority, the body that manages Angkor Wat, to consider a more modest festival at an alternate site. "We're trying to work it out," Meshkey said. "We'll see in another year." Lighting tours The Sou Ching Co, the company implementing the light installation project at Angkor Wat, hosts "Night Lighting" tours of the Kingdom's flagship tourism complex. The project sparked controversy when the company began inserting lights into holes in the walls of the temple to replace lights placed on the ground. The company said the holes were pre-existing, though tourists and others said they suspected that the holes had been carved out specifically for the project. Photos of Angkor that showed lights placed at regular intervals in part fuelled the allegations, though Sou Ching has denied causing any damage to the temple. We have our mandate from the government... we need visitors to be visiting more. The government and the Apsara Authority have also rejected claims that Angkor Wat sustained damage as a result of the installation project. "The accusations of people that the light fittings were carved into the wall of Angkor are just not true," Phay Siphan, spokesman for the Council of Ministers, told the Post last week. Earlier this month, the government filed a suit in which it charged Moeung Sonn, president of the Khmer Civilisation Foundation, with spreading false information and inciting the public in connection to his claims that holes had been drilled deep into the temple's walls. Shortly after the suit was filed on June 2, Moeung Sonn fled to France to avoid arrest. In an interview from France Saturday, Moeung Sonn said, "If the trial starts, let it be done by international courts because Angkor Wat is a World Heritage site." Photo by: KYLE SHERER A wall-mounted light installed at Angkor Wat. Angkor Wat Night Festival During the dry season, Sou Ching also hosts the Angkor Wat Night Festival in conjunction with the Apsara Authority and the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts. The nightly production, which features more than 150 performers, 45 lighting technicians and engineers and 50 support staff, is massive, moving across the interior of Angkor Wat and culminating in a traditional dance show held on a stage with light gantries that have been erected on the site. The entire temple interior is lit up and wired throughout for sound, and a dining area provides an up-market Khmer dinner for guests. Jamie Rossiter, former director of marketing for Sou Ching, told the Post in March that UNESCO, which granted Angkor Wat World Heritage site status in 1992, approved of the project, and that there had been no resistance to it. Unesco officials, including Olabiyi Babalola Joseph Yai, president of UNESCO's Executive Council, joined government officials on a visit to the site in March, during which they dined at the restaurant and watched the show. "There has been no controversy over the show, absolutely none," said Rossiter, who has since left Sou Ching. He said, "We have our mandate from the government. It was Apsara, Unesco and the government together which said we need to use the temple more, we need visitors to be visiting more and enjoying it more and there is more we can be doing with these temples." ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY NICKY MCGAVIN The Phnom Penh Post

Contrary Cambodia

2009-06-08T00:53:00.000-06:00

8th June 2009
PHILIPPA PERRY
The West Australian

Cambodia is a country of contradictions, and tourists can find themselves marvelling at the ancient beauty of the temples of Angkor one day before being horrified by a memorial containing thousands of human skulls at the Khmer Rouge killing fields, on another.

The calm of the countryside is in stark contrast to the intense activity of the capital city Phnom Penh where the lively nightlife hides the country’s flourishing prostitution trade.

Bewildering? Yes. Boring? No. As first-time visitors to this increasingly popular South-East Asian tourist location, we started our journey in Siem Reap, a city which bases its livelihood on its proximity to the glorious temples of Angkor. Our limited time meant we had only two days to explore the 12th century temples, which stretch over a deceptively large area of which the famous Angkor Wat is only one part.

Starting our journey at the walled kingdom of Angkor Thom, our first stop was the Bayon, the King’s state temple. Our childish sense of adventure was delighted by its hidden passages, steep stairways and endless ornate doorways. Next was Ta Prohm, a temple so overgrown by giant tree roots it captures the prehistoric imagination of all who visit, including the Hollywood producers who filmed Lara Croft: Tomb Raider here.

The constant presence of beggars following us was a reminder of the crushing poverty of this country in which four-year-olds ask you to take their photo then demand money; and victims of landmines, less forceful but no less visible, play music outside temples in the hope westerners will donate. It was in that context we arrived at Angkor Wat, the national symbol of Cambodia and the creation of King Suryavarman II. While impressed by its splendour and size, I could not help feeling the glories of the past could not compensate for the problems of the present.

Our second day was filled with temples further afield and shopping at the Psar Chaa markets in the city centre. The markets are a haven of jewellery, silks and wooden ornaments that would never be allowed through Australian customs.

The next day was a six-hour boat ride south down the Tonle Sap river to Phnom Penh. We were unprepared for the circus that greeted us as our boat docked in the capital city. Tuk tuk drivers grabbed our bags without warning and tried to herd us towards their vehicles, promising cheap rooms if we followed. Refusing all offers of assistance did not make us any friends but it enabled us time to breathe and find our own accommodation in the riverfront area of Phnom Penh. Dumping our bags on the top floor of a guesthouse with no lifts, we set out to explore the city.

The Tuol Sleng torture museum was known as the S-21 prison during the reign of the genocidal Pol Pot. A former high school, the museum now houses graphic photos of torture victims, found when it was liberated in 1979, and a series of mug shots of the sad faces of each prisoner who passed through its barbed-wire gates. A 15-minute tuk tuk ride out of the city then took us to the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek, where most of the 17,000 detainees held at S-21 were executed. A glass tower containing 8000 human skulls and their clothes is overwhelming in itself. But walking through the killing fields, treading on human bones and clothing poking through the ground after years of erosion, was more disturbing.

The story of the Cambodian genocide is unavoidable in Phnom Penh. The city was emptied by Khmer Rouge soldiers in 1975, remaining uninhabited until the Vietnamese invaded in 1979. The Khmer Rouge killed an estimated 1.7 million of their fellow countrymen through execution, starvation and disease. The impact was devastating but no one has ever been held to account for the tragedy. The former Khmer Rouge prison chief Duch is currently on trial for war crimes, while the Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen is a former Khmer Rouge commander.

The recovery of the country has been slow, with poverty endemic in most areas. We came face to face with an extreme example of this deprivation with a visit to the Stung Meanchey rubbish dump on the outskirts of the city. Here, hundreds of people live in nauseating squalor, making a measly living from collecting recyclable rubbish.

Our guide was David Fletcher, an English expatriate who runs a not-for-profit organisation that does food runs to the dump two or three times a week with the help of donations from young travellers. He also owns a local bar, mostly patronised by older Western men and young Cambodian women. After seeing our donations go directly into buying fresh food from the markets, we then helped out at the dump by attempting to keep order in the queues while bread rolls and fresh fruit were distributed. The scene was chaotic but our momentary contribution worthwhile.

A visit to neighbouring Laos was also on our itinerary and it couldn’t have been a more different experience. With a short history as a nation-state and a far less violent past, Laos, once a French colony, is known as a place to relax on the often chaotic South-East Asian backpacking route. The capital city Vientiane, has a population of just 300,000. We also visited Pha That Luang, a beautiful temple symbolising the country’s Buddhist influences and its fight for sovereignty.

Our next stop was a town called Vang Vieng, a 3 1 /2-hour bus ride north of Vientiane. Described by Lonely Planet as “soulless”, the whole town seemed to be on permanent school leavers’ week, with restaurants frequented by hung-over tourists playing Friends and Family Guy on a loop.

The main attraction of the town was the infamous tube ride down the Nam Song River. People have apparently died on the trip so it was with trepidation we hired our tyre tubes and jumped on a tuk tuk that drove us to the river bank. There we were greeted by pumping music, bars along the river serving $US3 ($3.60) buckets of cocktails, flying foxes and water slides. The recommended two-hour trip down the river took us six hours and, needless to say, was memorable.

A more cultural experience was awaiting us at our next stopover. Luang Prabang, a hairy eighthour bus trip north of Vang Vieng, is the former royal capital of Laos. A nature lover’s paradise, it is Unesco World Heritage-listed and attracts many eco-tourists.

Our adventures in this beautiful town and its surrounds included a visit to the stunning Tat Kuang Si waterfall and a kayaking trip to the Pak Ou Caves which contain thousands of Buddha images.

The future of this mainly undeveloped country rests heavily on its rapidly increasing share of the tourist trade. But its emphasis on eco-tourism will hopefully prevent the destruction of its largely untouched wilderness and unique national spirit.

Source: http://www.thewest.com.au/default.aspx?MenuID=49&ContentID=146608

The dark side of Angkor's night visits

2009-06-05T19:00:00.001-06:00

Plans to boost tourism by opening temple at night alarm conservationists

By Andrew Buncombe, Asia correspondent

Saturday, 6 June 2009

Thousands more tourists could pour into Angkor, damaging the 12th-century site

The magical temples of Angkor – already visited by around half a million tourists a year – could lure even more people if the Cambodian authorities go ahead with a controversial plan to open the 12th-century complex into the night.

In an effort to boost tourism at the site, officials at Angkor say visiting hours could be extended and lighting provided to give visitors a different experience. "We want tourists to see all views of the temple, even in the dark places where they may have not have seen some of the sculptures and statues," said an official, Bun Narith.

The plan is just one proposal being considered by officials who are trying to counter the first slump in visitors to Angkor, which for a decade has experienced a boom. Recent figures show a 14 per cent drop in visitors to the town of Siem Reap, where Angkor is located, compared with last year. The authorities have also called on hotel owners to reduce their prices.

Foreign tourism is hugely important to Cambodia, reportedly providing up to 75 per cent of its foreign currency earnings. Around 50 per cent of all tourists to the country end up visiting the temple complex, six hours' drive north of the capital Phnom Penh.

But the issue of tourist numbers is complex. Conservationists warn that boosting the number of people visiting Angkor, without doing more to control them when they are at the site, could have a detrimental effect.

"Angkor is colossal but the problem is that there is very little control over the movement of tourists," said John Sanday, country officer with the Global Heritage Fund. "It can handle the number of people that are there if they are co-ordinated – perhaps with tickets."

Already, there has been controversy about the installation of lights at Angkor. This week officials were forced to deny reports from tourists that the building's structure had been damaged by the lights. "This accusation that new holes were created simply is not true," said Phay Siphan, spokesman for the Cambodian Council of Ministers. "The installation will not involve any new holes being drilled."

Ahmed Bennis, a French lighting expert who was commissioned to install the new lights, said there would be no structural alterations made. "These new lights will use solar power and they will not be built into the structure of the temple," he said. "Because the lights are powered by the sun there will be no electricity cables at the site."

Angkor was removed from Unesco's World Heritage in Danger list in 2004, but conservationists remain concerned for its welfare. Last year, Unesco raised concerns about the impact that the growth of Siem Reap was having on Angkor's foundations.

The UN organisation said that a surge in demand for water had led to a massive increase in the amount of groundwater being pumped. Philippe Delanghe, the culture programme specialist at Unesco's Phnom Penh office, said: "There is a very important balance between the sand and water on which the temple is built. And if that balance is taken away then we might have trouble with collapse."

Angkor is believed to have been built as a funerary temple for King Suryavarman II to honour the Hindu god Vishnu. The sandstone blocks from which it was constructed were quarried more than 30 miles away and floated down the Siem Reap river.

Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/the-dark-side-of-angkors-night-visits-1698162.html

Ethics in Early Cambodian Buddhism

2009-06-05T15:05:00.002-06:00

Note: the author has well accumulated academic credit in this article, but he is likely lacking comprehension of using Theravada terminologies. With this matter, he should not use term "reincarnation" to describe Theravadian teaching. Reincarnation literally derived from Brahmanism's "Avata" which directly translates the concept of permanence of Atman which has been reborn again and again. Atman is the permanent soul and entity in Brahmanism. Buddha had always pointed out that we will be always reborn again and again according to our Kamma (action), Vibaka (consenques), and Kilesa (fetters). Thus, Buddhists accept the rebirth and recycling lives in the concept of impermanent entity. Buddha taught that "all beings are impermant (Anicca) , all counpouned lives (Sanghara) are suffering (Dhukka), and all Dhammas are non-self (Anattha)".

By Sochenda (Ph.D. candidate, Delhi)

The spread of Buddhism to Cambodian Land added new and more numerous gods to the belief systems to offset the perceived declining power of the traditional gods and engender new possible sources of protection. Early Khmer Buddhism offered a more gentle religion with an explanation of the human condition and prescription for a humble life, in contrast to a basis for elite associated with Brahmanism. Rather than a priestly class with their supernatural powers and access to supernatural sanctions, the teachers of Buddhism lived simple lives exemplifying the moral values of the religion and were supported solely by the voluntary contributions of the laity[1]. Buddhism is described by one scholar as “a system of thought, a way of understanding life, an analysis of mental processes, and a series of well-constructed arguments which point towards the adoption of certain attitudes and values and practices which may create the conditions for a new vision of human life and purpose”[2].

Buddhist doctrines speak to the role of sadness and suffering in life (dukha), acceptance of proper relationships between groups in society, the effect of past actions (good and bad) a determinant of the current life circumstances (karma), and proper behavior, humble attitude and merit-making to improve reincarnation. The ethics of Khmer Buddhism are expressed through two interrelated components: the Dhamma or ideas, ideals and truths; and the Vinaya or concepts of social regulation and organization. Buddhist teachings emphasize ethical action that is calculated to enhance moral or “karmic” condition. The whole emphasis is upon turning attention away from the individual towards a shared, common life[3]. Buddhist teaching, for example, clarifies the proper behavior between the major type of human relationships or roles.. Human life is explained as essentially social in character, connected through these interlocking and reciprocal relationships. The Buddhist concept of political authority assumed that given the imperfections of man, a king was needed if social order was to prevail. Suksamran[4] describes the relationship between the king and his subjects as follows: “… the king has reached his exalted position because he was the great merit maker in former lives. Such accumulation of merit entitled him to the kingship… Thus, Buddhist kingship was essentially based on the concept of righteousness… The morality and righteousness of the Dhamma Raja is closely related to the prosperity of his kingdom and the physical and mental well being of his subjects. The king’s conduct and his action have far-reaching consequences since they affected not only his own kingship but the fortunes of the subjects as well who were almost entirely dependent on him.”

The relationship between the ruler and the Sangha was also reciprocal: the ideology of Buddhism needed a supportive political power and the ruler befitted from a legitimizing theology. Buddhism has its origins in the cities of India, and as Max Weber observed, was mainly urban and rationalistic[5]. To maintain the integrity of the teachings and Buddhist precepts presupposes intensive scholarly study and reflection, and Cambodian Buddhism has lacked the resources or perhaps the inclination to engage in either. Buddhism in Cambodia finds its greatest number of followers in rural areas, and has been greatly affected by the rural influences. The merging of classical Buddhist thought with animistic and Brahmanist traditions produces patterns which are quite atypical of Buddhism as practiced elsewhere. What is essentially a social doctrine in ancient Cambodia can best be understood by examining the relationship between its principles and actual practice in social life. Cambodian society is inherently conservative, reflecting its historical position as an agricultural-based folk society and its religious heritage. The constant theme that runs throughout its cultural history has been a search to mitigate the fear of unseen powerful threats to the sense of security of peasants which stemmed from two sources: the unrestrained authority of personal cults (embodied in the role of the elite) to determine the fate of their subjects, and the constellation of numerous spiritual gods with awesome power to inflict retribution should they be ignored.

[1] Trevor Ling, A Buddhist Concept to Build the National Economy. Nationale University of Singapor, 1986.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Suksamran, The Buddhist Concept of Political Authority. Bangkok: Chulalongkorn Unviersity, 1986

[5] Ibid, Ling

Temple Watch: Welcome to Angkor Wet

2009-06-05T02:55:00.001-06:00

Temple Watch: Welcome to Angkor Wet

Written by Dave perkes
Thursday, 04 June 2009
I visited Angkor last week to get some rainy season photography. Black and white shot against the light with people carrying rain-soaked umbrellas always make great subjects. It's one of the occasions when I love to see tourists, especially bedraggled tourists. Of course they usually smile when they see me juggling my camera equipment and fighting with a brolly, that is attempting to self-destruct in a sudden rain-sodden gust. If I were lighter in weight, I could do a Mary Poppins, flying across the heavens like an Apsara. Instead, I am on terra firma in the middle of the Angkor Wat causeway, just about equidistant from any nearest shelter. It's at times like these that Angkor Wat seems big, very big. In fact, it can seem so big in the rain that those celestial oceans that surround the temple appear to be travelling to the ends of the earth. My expensive camera equipment might be water-resistant, but is not designed for this kind of tropical deluge. Come to think of it, my folding umbrella is designed to do precisely what it is doing right now - self-destructing - in anything more than a light breeze. Why did I ignore the boy selling rain macs 10 minutes earlier?

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វិបត្តិផ្លូវចិត្តជាបញ្ហាធ្ងន់ធ្ងរដែលកំពុងវាយលុកដោយស្ងាត់ស្ងៀមលើសង្គមខ្មែរ