American Buddhist Net

As the daily onslaught of traffic piled by on Street 178, I sat chatting with Professor Chan Sim about the mystery of chovea. This is the Khmer name for those familiar curving pointed forms seen on the roofs of traditional Khmer buildings. Also found in Thailand and Laos, in Thai the name is chofah, which roughly translates to “sky tassel”.

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Hundreds of Bangladeshi Buddhist student monks staged a peaceful rally outside the UN office in Bangkok, Thailand, on 5 March. The monks, largely members of the Jumma tribe from Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) in Bangladesh, called for UN help amid a spate of violence against the country’s indigenous people.

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LUANG PRABANG, Laos--More than 10 percent of the Buddha statues in Luang Prabang, an ancient city in Laos whose urban district is designated as a World Heritage Site, have gone missing in the past few years, according to Minobusan University in Minobucho, Yamanashi Prefecture.

According to the Buddhist university, whose students help restore statues in Luang Prabang, 120 Buddha statues are missing. As historical legacies related to the world's heritage are being lost, the Laotian government has begun conservation efforts with support from the university.

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President Mahinda Rajapaksa instructed officials to formulate a formal procedure to stop the presentation of erroneous information and distortion of material creeping into various Buddhist scripts.

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A book setting out the principles of a pared-down Buddhism has won praise from arch-atheist Christopher Hitchens

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In this tutorial “Spiritual Growth” I’ll walk you through the steps of taking a photo of a monk and turning it into a rich contemplative piece of work. We’ll be covering everything from photo manipulation to masking and much more. So let’s roll up our sleeves and dive right in!

(This tutorial was inspired by and is dedicated to, my good friends, the monks who reside at the Oregon Buddhist Vihara. Thank you all, for your devotion and dedication to making this world a better place!)

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The Romani, referred to colloquially and often derogatorily as gypsies, number somewhere between 8 to 12 million living principally in Europe, but also in some areas of the Middle East and Asia. Census data is inexact due to many of the people’s stateless status. They have no discernible homeland although genetically and by culture it is speculated that their origins were somewhere in South Asia (India).

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At a time when Buddhist pilgrims and tourists are flocking to the Huong (Perfume) Pagoda for the country’s most elaborate spiritual festival, Lao Dong newspaper has exposed a shocking truth: Several restaurants in the pagoda complex are openly slaughtering wild animals.

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The Italian archaeological mission in Pakistan has discovered a large number of Buddhist sites and rock shelters in Kandak and Kota valleys of Barikot in Swat in the North West Frontier Province which depicted the carvings and paintings from the bronze and iron ages.

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THE appeal of convicted Buddhist monk Ming Yi, 48, due to be heard on Monday, was postponed because of his lawyer's medical condition.

Ming Yi, the founder and former chief executive of Ren Ci Hospital, has filed an appeal to the High Court against his conviction and 10-month jail term on several charges.

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A Good Samaritan from Delhi ended the concerns of a worried family of a South African teacher of Indian-origin, who had gone missing in India last month.

Shaun Gounden, 34, set out from his Johannesburg home on February 5 to spend three weeks at a Tibetan monastery in Delhi before volunteering to teach English at an orphanage in Afghanistan, Time TV reported.

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India's first international Buddhist University is coming up near Sanchi, the world heritage site, 34 km southwest of Bhopal. Work on the Rs 300-crore Indo-Sri Lanka joint project is expected to start from June on 65 acre land provided by the MP Government.

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At least 20,000 Buddhist monks nationwide will take part in the planned anti-government rally in Bangkok next Friday, red-shirt United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD) prominent member Arisman Pongruangrong said on Saturday.

"The monks from different temples such as Dhammakaya and Kaew Fah will join this mass rally to give moral support to the red shirts while reminding the government, police and army officials who serve the elite bureaucrats not to harm the protesters," Mr Arisman said.

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Thais are struggling to find ways to cope with social problems caused by rising crime rates, the economic slump and political unrest.

Increasingly, stressed-out people seek solace in the teachings of the Lord Buddha, and are visiting Buddhist meditation retreats to pursue their interest. Practising dhamma is no longer limited to the elderly, as many young people are now taking a greater interest in studying and practising Buddhist teachings.

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THE February 27 magnitude 8.8 earthquake that hit Chile may have shortened the length of each day. Using a complex model, NASA scientist Richard Gross and his colleagues came up with a preliminary calculation that the quake could have shortened the length of a day by about 1.26 microseconds (a microsecond is one millionth of a second). Moreover the quake, Gross said, would also have moved the earth's "figure axis" by three inches.

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A group of Bangladeshi Buddhist monks have called on the United Nations to intervene and halt attacks on Buddhist communities in the Chittagong Hill Tracts region of south-eastern Bangladesh, which borders both India and Myanmar.

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NERANG is the wrong 'cultural' place for a 15m-high Thai Buddhist temple, say some Gold Coast councillors who asked if Buddhism was even a religion.

Councillors were alarmed by the proposed design which features a traditional steep-pitched roof.

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Thanh Pagoda in the northern border province of Lang Son held a ceremony this week to congratulate elderly Buddhists on their longevity and honour them for their role in raising their children.

The honoured Buddhist believers included 155 people over 70 years old – a few of them well over 100.

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Bhopal, Mar 3 : The Madhya Pradesh government has provided 65 acres for establishing a Buddhist University at that faith's world-renowned pilgrim spot Sanchi.

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Authorities in Kampot province have arrested a 17-year-old dressed as a monk after he was accused of stealing cash and a mobile phone from an older monk Thursday. Police said the theft happened after a Buddhist ceremony. The 68-year-old victim said he lost his phone and more than US$100. The accused man allegedly confessed to the theft, telling investigators that he shared his loot with other monks. However, district police said they did not find an ID card on the accused man, leading them to conclude that he was in fact a “fake monk”.

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Draw the Buddha's Face is the second interactive we'd recommend. In ancient Buddhist legend, artists used a grid to help them remember what Buddha looked like so that after he died artists could draw him. This interactive includes a video with artist Andy Weber using the grid format to draw the Buddha's face. There are also helpful background notes too, including details about the traditional colours used

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Bangkok - Millions of Thai Buddhists celebrated on 28 February, the day of Magha Puja, which celebrates the values of peace and purification of the spirit taught by Buddha to his first disciples. The festival took place just days after the conviction for corruption and abuse of power of former premier Thaksin, on 26 February that has renewed the risk of riots and tensions in the country. The former premier is accused of having pocketed more than 1.7 billion euros from public funds and bribery and is now in exile in the UAE.

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“FORGIVENESS is not a sign of weakness but of greatness” his holiness the 14th Dalai Lama once said.

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A 4 metre high stupa and 11 copper and brass statues of Buddha have recently been discovered in the Mekong River in Bokeo province.

Deputy Director General of the National Heritage Department of the Ministry of Information and Culture, Mr Viengkeo Souksavatdy, said he believes the relics may be from the 13th or 14th century, in the Lane Xang era. “But the area is so little studied it is hard to say at this stage,” he added.

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The Udumbara flower was found in the home of a Chinese nun in Lushan Mountain, Jiangxi province, China.

The rare Youtan Poluo or Udumbara flower, which, according to Buddhist legend, only blooms every 3,000 years, measures just 1mm in diametre.

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Bill Maher

New Rule: Stop saying "sex addict" like it's bad thing. In the wake of Tiger Woods' heartfelt apology that he gave to his fans, his friends, his foundation - and just to be safe, Elizabeth Edwards - the media has been interviewing sex addicts: on CNN one addict said, "The day Mount Saint Helens blew up, everyone was talking about it. But I didn't even know it happened because I was having sex all that day." Oh, the humanity! Please get this man some professional help soon, before he has a hot three-way and completely misses a tornado.

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My take on this is the real "isms" and "ists" of the world are defined by information--where you get your information and who you listen to. If you get a significant amount of information from TV, you are a TV-ist. If you are a TV personality, you are a propagandist. Bill Maher is a TV-ist propagandist, and I am sure he knows this. If you do not realize that information on TV is controlled, you really need some new sources of information. If you are a Buddhist, you accept the Dharma as a worthy tradition and teaching. After that, many interpretations are possible. I see Buddhism as an open door. It provides a valuable moral and intellectual grounding while encouraging the seeking out of as much new information as you can handle. I don't know whether Buddhism will survive as a major world tradition. I hope it does because having an ancient tradition that can accept new information seems like a very good thing to me. TV-ism cannot replace it except with a shallow and mesmerizing surface. ABN

Millions of Thai Buddhists yesterday took part in candlelight circumambulation ceremonies at temples and grand Buddha images across the country to mark Makha Bucha Day.

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Journey to the West is “China’s most beloved novel of religious quest and picaresque adventure”, according to historian Jonathan Spence. Published in the 1590s during the waning years of the Ming dynasty, the novel’s hero is described by Spence as “a mischievous monkey with human traits [who] accompanies the monk-hero on his action-filled travels to India in search of Buddhist scripture.” The work represents an allegory of pilgrims journeying toward India as individuals journeying toward enlightenment.

The inspiration for Journey came from the travels of a seventh-century Chinese man named Xuanzang (a name that has been rendered in various ways over the centuries).

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A delegation of the Vietnam Buddhist Sangha (VBS) will travel to India to receive a sari, said to be that of the Lord Buddha, to be brought back to Vietnam early next month.

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THONNAKKAL: All spiritual traditions in the world are, in their essential nature, the same. They only differ in their terminology, their presentation, the spiritual leader of the Karma Kagyu sect of Tibetan Buddhism Karmapa Lama has said.

He was inaugurating a seminar on ‘Tibetan culture and spirituality’ at Sai Gramam here on Friday. The differences between spiritual traditions are, however, valuable as they cater to the different spiritual appetite of people. Each being is capable of attaining ‘Buddhahood.’ The fundamental nature of all beings is peace and nirvana. This is veiled by “stains” that are secondary to our nature.

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