One Tibetan dead after double self-immolation; another reportedly killed by Chinese police
One Tibetan dead after double self-immolation; another reportedly killed by Chinese police |
- One Tibetan dead after double self-immolation; another reportedly killed by Chinese police
- From the September 2012 magazine: “Where the Heart Beats”
- Letter: May Loving-Kindness Spread to the Arakan State of Myanmar
- Buddhist Activism and Public Policy: The International Network of Engaged
- Buddhist organization urges KPK leniency toward Hartati
- Buddha circuit in Gulbarga - new attraction for visitors
- Buddha statue from the ancient Gandhara civilisation covered up
- Bamiyan Buddhas: Should they be rebuilt?
- Taiwan holds same-sex Buddhist wedding
- Choeyang Kyi, Tibet’s first Olympic medalist
| One Tibetan dead after double self-immolation; another reportedly killed by Chinese police Posted: 14 Aug 2012 08:00 AM PDT At least one Tibetan man is dead after a double self-immolation, and another Tibetan has reportedly been killed in clashes that erupted with police. According to the Hindustan Times, a former monk named Tashi, aged 21, and a monk named Lungtok, 20, set themselves alight near the Kirti Monastery in Ngaba Province. Lungtok died, while Tashi was taken away with severe burns. The Telegraph reports that Chinese police were trying to clear the immolation site when fighting broke out between them and local Tibetans, and one Tibetan man was reportedly beaten to death in the fight. Chinese police were apparently using metal batons spiked with nails to beat people. There is also a report of a third self-immolation, though it is still unconfirmed. This is the worst flare-up of violence in Sichuan province since January, according to the Telegraph, when fighting with police left six Tibetans dead, according to Tibetan activists. Chinese police maintain that only two people were killed. Nearly 50 Tibetans have self-immolated in protest of Chinese occupation since 2009. For all of our coverage of the self-immolations, see here. Read More @ Source
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| From the September 2012 magazine: “Where the Heart Beats” Posted: 14 Aug 2012 08:00 AM PDT
You can read the rest of our "September Books in Brief" here. Also, the Fall 2012 Buddhadharma magazine includes a lengthy excerpt from Larson's book exploring 4'33," from its Zen-inspired lessons to its infamous first performance to its enduring legacy; read a selection from it here. And to get an idea of what a performance of 4'33″ is like, watch this video of pianist David Tudor performing it. Read More @ Source
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| Letter: May Loving-Kindness Spread to the Arakan State of Myanmar Posted: 13 Aug 2012 11:00 PM PDT by Kelvin Khor, Penang, The Buddhist Channel, Aug 13, 2012
Many could still probably recall the image of the Saffron Revolution in Myanmar in 2007 when thousands of the Theravada monks flooded the streets in protest over the ruling junta's decision to ridiculously raise the price of fuel. That momentous event, although undoubtedly tends to depict the monastic as compassionate heroes who fought for the benefit of the poor peasants and citizens in Myanmar, also raises several issues that pertain to Buddhism. For example, one very prominent question was how could the monks, who have renounced the worldly affairs, interfere in the political arena? But then, when thrown with this question, many Buddhists prefer to justify it as an act of compassion for the suffering Burmese people. Recently, the Burmese Theravada monastic was thrown into the spotlight again when several monks' associations played on the nationalist sentiment and aggressively called for the "extermination of the Rohingya Muslim community" due to their "cruel nature." While monks are not prohibited from having a sense of nationalism and love for their country, it may not appear right in the eyes of Buddhism if the monks start asking or encouraging others to kill, no matter how cruel or wrong others could turn out to be. Lack of respect for one another is one very common reason how conflict begins. Recall that during the Buddha's time, there were also many different sects and teachers. Throughout his 45 years of teaching, neither had he proclaimed that those others as evil or cruel, nor he called upon his disciples to exterminate them. He even drew up the "Charter of Free Inquiry" as manifested in the Kalama Sutta where he encouraged individual freedom and respect for others by telling that one should not blindly accept his teaching. Hence, if the Buddha himself had never condoned such act of violence and slander in propagating the Dhamma, his disciples, even from this contemporary generation, should never set the precedence for it. Even if a conflict breaks out, violence is never the solution. Recall the Buddha's intervention to stop an imminent war break-out following the quarrel between the Sakyas and the Koliyans over the Rohini river. Respectful compromise, patience and most importantly, non-hatred, should be one's best armor in dealing with conflict, not anger or violence. Again and again, we are reminded of the Buddha's timeless message as recorded in Dhammapada v.5: "Hatred is never appeased by hatred in this world. Only by non-hatred is hatred appeased. This is the eternal law." What happen to the famous Karaniya Metta Sutta that has often been chanted during the Saffron Revolution in 2007? The sutta says that one should not deceive, despise or wish any harm to another with insult or ill-will and that one should cultivate a boundless heart toward all beings just like how a mother would protect her only child at the risk of her life. Wouldn't it be very contradictory if those monks were to chant this sutta but at the same time inflicting harm on the Rohingya community? At this point, perhaps it is clarifying to emphasize that I do not intend to criticize the Sangha Order in Myanmar. I am not attempting to question the purity of the Sangha there. Rather, I am airing my opinions to only those certain quarters of the Burmese Sangha who subscribed to such violence against the Rohingya community. I personally believe that there are still many blameless bhikkhus who arduously practice the teachings of the Buddha in its true spirit and promote the Buddha-sasana through peaceful and respectful means in Myanmar. In fact, to help alleviate the current predicament that tarnishes the reputation of Buddhism and the Sangha Order, we would need to rely upon this group of blameless monastic members. It is through their strict adherence to the Dhamma-Vinaya that the members of the Order could be inspired to practice likewise and be less inclined to engage in unskillful deeds. I definitely do not expect all the monks to be saints, but at least I hope they could see and live by the spirit of ahimsa as preached by the Buddha. 
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| Buddhist Activism and Public Policy: The International Network of Engaged Posted: 13 Aug 2012 10:00 PM PDT by Matt Bieber, The Huffington Post, Aug 4, 2012San Francisco, CA (USA) -- Jonathan Watts is a member of the executive board of the International Network of Engaged Buddhists (INEB). He is also the coordinator of Think Sangha, a Buddhist think tank affiliated with INEB. In addition, he is a fellow at the Jodo Shu Research Institute in Tokyo, a fellow at the International Buddhist Exchange Center in Yokohama, and the author or editor of several books on engaged Buddhism and social justice.
Matt Bieber: Let's start with Think Sangha and the International Network of Engaged Buddhists. You've described Think Sangha as a venue in which you and others analyze social problems through a Buddhist lens, in which you try to "to think like a Buddhist." What does it mean to think like a Buddhist? Jonathan Watts: We feel like there are a lot of people who are socially engaged who, as another friend said here, "just happen to be Buddhists." They're engaged and they're Buddhists, but their Buddhism is not really informing their social action. They tend to understand social issues using other frameworks, like Marxism for example, and not bringing concepts and ways of thinking unique to Buddhism to their social activism. A really influential book and essay has been Ajahn Buddhadasa's "Dhammic Socialism," written in the 1970s. In [that book] he talks about the difference between Marxism and the socialism of the day and what he understands as Buddhist socialism. That kind of spirit and that kind of thinking is what's behind Think Sangha. We're looking at the importance of engaged Buddhism on a certain level -- what's special about Buddhism that we can bring to social issues? We feel like Buddhism brings a lot of different important perspectives, so that's why we try to think like Buddhists.
Another one is socializing or applying Buddhist principles and themes. This is something that A.T. Ariyaratne, the founder of the Sarvodaya Movement in Sri Lanka, did a tremendous amount of. An example of this is re-expressing the classic teaching of the Four Noble Truths as: What's the social problem? What are the causes, especially looking at structural and cultural violence? What's the vision? How do we realize it? And thirdly there's the aspect of radical creativity in Buddhist practice. If I'm a seriously practicing Buddhist, then much of what I do will embody Buddhist principles, so I will act out of my Buddhist creativity. We've had -- I wouldn't call it a tension; it's sort of more of a different flavor. In our work in Think Sangha, we have people like me and Santikaro (a leading disciple of Buddhadasa) and other people who come from Theravada backgrounds who love to follow the second style, kind of Abidhamma-like -- taking principles and applying them and thinking about modern society using Buddhist conceptual models. And some of our Zen friends dislike that, feeling it is artificial. They tend toward the third style of radical creativity, trying to speak more directly, and not using overly conceptualized models. I think both styles are useful. Right -- various schools of Buddhism think about social problems pretty differently. So, when you say that you strive to think like a Buddhist, are you calling on what you take to be a common set of resources across all of Buddhism? Or is that statement more aspirational -- that you think this is the best of what Buddhism has to offer and you're therefore claiming the label? I could also see self-identifying in this way for strategic reasons -- knowing that this will have a cachet for a certain sector of the population, that it will lend you credibility and influence. Well, I think fundamentally we use the word "Buddhist" as an identity marker -- we're proclaiming our identity. We're first and foremost Buddhist, maybe even before we're social activists ("socially engaged" Buddhism is a modifier of "Buddhist"). So I think the common grounding is that we're Buddhists, and then we have become socially active. Obviously, there are people who became socially active first and then became Buddhists later. I mean, there are plenty examples of that, like our colleague Alan Senauke who was a student radical at Columbia University in the '60s and then came into Buddhism later. But eventually what happens is that Buddhism becomes the core identity, because it's seen as the grounding for social work, and without that grounding, you can lose what we feel are essential aspects of social activism, like non-violence, open-mindedness and holding suffering without over-reacting. In INEB, almost everyone agrees that if they don't have that Buddhist identity (which means that they're a Buddhist practitioner), then they won't be able to properly do their social work or accomplish what they want to accomplish, because the Buddhist practice offers them a variety of really important tools for grounding themselves and understanding how to deal with others. We talk about three different levels of engagement. There are the tools that you use for personal practice that help keep you grounded, that can help keep you from burning out and that help to see how to deal with the world. Then there are relational tools that Buddhism has for dealing with others, dealing with enemies, dealing with difficult people. And then at the third level are the Buddhist tools for understanding the world and how to see and understand society. ------- 
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| Buddhist organization urges KPK leniency toward Hartati Posted: 13 Aug 2012 09:00 PM PDT The Jakarta Post, August 11 2012
Jakarta, Indonesia -- The Indonesian Buddhists Association (Walubi) has called on the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) to be lenient with its chairwoman, Siti Hartati Murdaya, who is a suspect in a bribery case Deputy secretary-general of Walubi, Gatot Sukarno Adi, said the antigraft body should not detain Hartati as Walubi still needed the businesswoman to run the organization. "We need Ibu Hartati's leadership to maintain the unity of the 12 Buddhists councils under Walubi," he said after meeting with KPK commissioners on Friday. The KPK named Hartati, who is also a Democratic Party patron, a suspect on charges of bribery. She was accused of bribing the regent of Buol, Amran Batalipu. The KPK has alleged that a Rp 3 billion bribe was paid to Amran to expedite the issuance of a business permit for PT Cipta Cakra Murdaya and PT Hartati Inti Plantations, two companies controlled by Hartati. The money was paid in two parts: Rp 1 billion on June 18 and Rp 2 billion on June 26. Gatot said that if Hartati was detained, it could humiliate Buddhists around the country and disrupt the organization's programs. Walubi gave a guarantee that Hartati would not flee from the investigation or take any action that would obstruct the investigation. "We believe that Ibu [Hartati] will follow all the legal processes, even if she is not in detention," Gatot said. Tadisha Paramita, coordinator of the Walubi's council of monks (Sangha), said Walubi members were convinced that Hartati was innocent, adding that she was merely a victim of extortion. "I and other Buddhists in Indonesia are concerned about what has befallen Ibu Hartati. Businesspeople often have to deal with extortion in this country," he said. Separately, Amran's lawyer, Amad Entedaim, once again maintained that his client's innocence. "She [Hartati] willingly gave the money to Amran as a contribution to his campaign fund," he said. Amat said that Hartati had once asked for assistance from Amran, but that he had declined to respond. "She still went ahead and gave him the money because she predicted that Amran would win the next regional election," he said. Hartati also requested Amran to secure the interests of her companies in the region. The KPK has named four suspects in the case: Hartati; Amran; Yani Anshori, the general manager of PT Hardaya Inti Plantations; and Gondo Sujono, the firm's operations director. In addition to chairing Walubi, Hartati was reportedly one of the largest contributors to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's presidential campaigns in 2004 and 2009. KPK chairman Abraham Samad said that the KPK would soon be detaining Hartati. "If the investigators feel it necessary, when they near the end of their investigation, she can be detained like any other suspect in a graft case," Abraham said. KPK spokesman Johan Budi said the commission's leadership would take the Walubi request into consideration. "We will discuss the request further," he told reporters. 
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| Buddha circuit in Gulbarga - new attraction for visitors Posted: 13 Aug 2012 08:00 PM PDT by ND Shiva Kumar, TNN, Aug 12, 2012BANGALORE, India -- Lord Buddha - smiling and sleeping -- is an added attraction in the Hyderabad-Karnatak region, the treasure of Islamic monuments. The Buddha Vihara in Gulbarga became an instant hit after it was inaugurated in 2009. Shortly, the 'Sleeping Buddha' in the adjoining district will draw crowds. The hills surrounding the Shahpur town in Yadgir district hold the curiosity. The visitors can hardly miss the view on a hill, which looks like 'Sleeping Buddha.' Realizing the importance of the place, the government is developing the area as a tourist attraction at Rs 4.38 crore. The Buddha hill will have a walkway, watch tower, parking facilities, open air theatre, meditation center, barbed wire fencing, direction markers and roadside facilities. The union ministry of tourism has already approved the and the state government has already released Rs 40 lakh to the Yadgir deputy commissioner. The government is developing four acres 25 guntas of land for the purpose. The process of land acquisition has already begun and Rs seven lakh has been released for the purpose. In Karnataka, 767 monuments have been declared as 'Protected Monuments.' The number of protected monuments in the Hyderabad-Karnatak region is 196. Of this, Gulbarga has 32 and Yadgir 55. Mosques, tombs, Dargahs, pre-historic stone circles, cairns and avenues are the most common monuments in Gulbarga and Yadgir. The department of Kannada and culture is developing 14 monuments in the twin districts at Rs 813.35 lakh. The four-year project, which has begun in 2011-12, will be completed in 2014-15. From the tourism department, to develop the religious and historical places in Gulbarga district, Rs 17.74 crore is being spent and Rs 9.4 crore in the Yadgir district. Besides being a tourist attraction, the Buddha Vihara, which is adjoining the Gulbarga University, has now become a meditation centre. The Vihara, which is built in 70 acres of land was inaugurated by former President Prathibha Patil and Tibetan spiritual Guru, the Dalai Lama in 2009, draws huge crowd, especially during the Full Moon Day and special occasions like Buddha Purnima. Brahmanand, a visitor, said: I visit often for meditation. I never miss to be here during the Full Moon day.'' Buddha Vihara has two floors -- ground floor has six-foot tall black stone statue of Buddha and the first floor hosts a six-foot tall statue of smiling Buddha. Besides these two places, the authorities have unearthed several scripts and Stupas in Gulbarga district. Stupas have been found in Sannathi and Knaganahalli. Priyank Kharge, whose father Mallikarjun Kharge, union labour minister, is responsible for the establishment of Buddha Vihara, admitted that the increasing fascination for Buddhist. But, Of late, it has become a fashion status for many, including those from the Hollywood. This shouldn't be done. Budddhism teaches only basic human values,'' he said. 
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| Buddha statue from the ancient Gandhara civilisation covered up Posted: 13 Aug 2012 07:00 PM PDT AFP, Aug 12, 2012 BAMIYAN, AFGANISTAN -- "It's there," says an archaeologist pointing to the ground, where fragments of a Buddha statue from the ancient Gandhara civilisation have been covered up to stop them being stolen or vandalised. More than 10 years on Western experts say Afghanistan's ancient Buddhist and early Islamic heritage is little safer. At the foot of the cliff where the two Buddhas used to stand 130 kilometres (80 miles) west of Kabul, an archaeological site has been found and parts of a third Buddha, lying down, were discovered in 2008. The area of the lying Buddha is around half the size of a football pitch. A dozen statues or more lie under tonnes of stone and earth. "We covered everything up because the ground is private and to prevent looting," says Zemaryalai Tarzi, the 75-year-old French archaeologist born in Afghanistan who is leading the project. Tarzi says he dug first in the potato fields to find artefacts, which he buried again afterwards. All around him, under a large area of farmland, he says, lie exceptional treasures. In the West, the presence of such riches would lead to a large-scale excavation, frantic research and in time, glorious museum exhibitions. In Afghanistan, ground down by poverty and three decades of war, it is the opposite. "The safest place is to leave heritage underground," says Brendan Cassar, head of the UNESCO mission in Afghanistan, adding that policing the thousands of prehistoric, Buddhist and Islamic sites dotted around the country was impossible. Below ground, the relics are protected from endemic looting, illegal smuggling and the corrosive effects of freezing winters. "There is looting on a large or small scale at 99.9 percent of sites," says Philippe Marquis, director of a French archaeological delegation in Afghanistan. Middlemen pay Afghans $ 4 to $ 5 a day to dig up artefacts, which are smuggled abroad and sold for tens of thousands of dollars in European and Asian capitals, he says. Cassar believes the solution is educating locals about the value of their history and the need to implement the law, and a global campaign using Interpol and customs to stop smuggling. UNESCO added the rocky Bamiyan valley, with its old forts, temples and cave paintings, to its list of endangered heritage sites in 2003. But sites have been destroyed throughout the country. Hadda in the east was home to thousands of Greco-Buddhist sculptures dating from the 1st century BC to 1st century AD, but it was devastated in the 1990s civil war. Hundreds of pieces have disappeared or been destroyed. Marquis says the old city of Lashkar Gah, the capital of the southern province of Helmand -- whose 11th-century arch appears on the 100 afghani ($ 2) banknote -- was irreparably damaged by an influx of refugees. A Chinese copper mining company has been granted a concession over an area in Logar province, south of Kabul, that includes an ancient Buddhist monastery, and researchers fear the ruins will largely be destroyed. Archaeologists complain that culture is only a secondary consideration to development and security. "Cultural issues are never the priority. Security, yes, which eats up 40 percent of the Afghan state budget," says Habiba Sorabi, the governor of Bamiyan province, where few public resources are allotted to archaeology. A meeting in Paris last year decided one of the two niches that housed Bamiyan's giant Buddhas should be left empty as testimony to the destruction, while experts should look at partially reassembling the other statue on site. But local archaeologist Farid Haidary says "lots of money" was spent on restoring the Buddhas before the Taliban destroyed them. "What's the point in building something if the Taliban, who are 20 kilometres away, destroy it afterwards?" he asks. 
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| Bamiyan Buddhas: Should they be rebuilt? Posted: 13 Aug 2012 06:00 PM PDT By Stephanie Hegarty, BBC World Service, 12 August 2012 Bamiyan, Ahghanistan -- The destruction of Afghanistan's Bamiyan Buddhas in 2001 led to global condemnation of the Taleban regime. But the decision by Unesco not to rebuild them has not put an end to the debate about their future.
His biggest victims, in size as well as symbolism, were two standing stone Buddhist statues. Once the largest in the world - one measured 55 metres in height - they were carved into the sandstone cliff face of the Bamiyan valley in central Afghanistan during the 6th Century. When the Taliban were overthrown in 2003, Unesco declared the valley a world heritage site and archaeologists flocked to it. What they found were two enormous empty caverns and a pile of debris littered with unexploded mines.
The Bamiyan valley marked the most westerly point of Buddhist expansion and was a crucial hub of trade for much of the last millennium. It was a place where East met West and its archaeology reveals a blend of Greek, Turkish, Persian, Chinese and Indian influence that is found nowhere else in the world. But last year, Unesco announced that it was no longer considering reconstruction. In the case of the bigger Buddha, it was decided there wasn't enough left to rebuild and though rebuilding the smaller one is possible, they said it is unlikely to happen. Instead they are working with teams from Japan and Italy to secure the cracking cliff face and keep the cliffs and any of the remaining wall paintings that once covered the caves and niches intact. But a German group of archaeological conservationists, the International Council on Monuments and Sites (Icomos), are still pushing for the Buddha to be rebuilt. Bert Praxenthaler works alongside Icomos and since 2004 he has been working on the site to salvage any remaining fragments of the sculpture, some weighing up to 40 tonnes and putting them under a protective covering to preserve them as best he can. He is interested in a process called anastylois which involves putting these fragments back together using a minimal amount of new materials. "It's a jigsaw puzzle with missing links but with geological methods we can discover where those fragments have been before," says Praxenthaler. The method has been used on the Parthenon and the Acropolis in Athens but it would be the first time it is used to reconstruct a monument that was intentionally destroyed and arguments against reconstruction abound. Not least is money. Rebuilding just the small Buddha would cost millions of dollars in a region that lacks basic infrastructure such as roads and electricity. It would require the manufacture or import of a huge amounts of metal which would have to travel along the dangerous road from Kabul. "Of course the counter argument to that is that jaw-dropping sums of money are spent in Afghanistan every day," says Dr Llewelyn Morgan, author of The Buddhas of Bamiyan, a history of the sculptures. "This would be a drop in the ocean." Still, Morgan says, there are more pressing issues that archaeologists need to look at in Afghanistan. "Bamiyan has a tendency to draw all archaeological resources to it," he says. "But in Afghanistan you are looking at an astonishing archaeological treasure trove."
In a recent Huffington Post article he publicised the case of Chehel Burj, a medieval fortress in the mountains to the west of Bamiyan that is suffering from degradation. "Give it time and illicit treasure hunting, earthquakes and old-fashioned freeze-thaw action will destroy more than the most single-minded iconoclast could ever dream of," he said. But whatever the reason, the Bamiyan Buddhas have captured the international imagination and ideas for what to do with the site still pour in from archaeologists, architects, artists and historians. One that has gained quite a lot of attention is a proposal from Italian architect Andrea Bruno to construct a small underground sanctuary at the foot of the Great Buddha which would allow visitors to look up at and appreciate the immensity of the empty niche. Bruno believes the niches should be preserved as a monument to the crime of their destruction. "It is a kind of victory for the monument and a defeat for those who tried to obliterate its memory with dynamite," he says. He argues that reconstruction would be culturally insensitive. "Here the Muslims strictly oppose images - to recreate the Buddhas would be an insult even to non-Taliban Afghans. We must show good manners," he says. But Praxenthaler believes that reconstruction is a matter of local pride for the Hazara people, Shia Muslims who were targeted and persecuted by the Taliban.
He also says that reconstruction would enrich the local economy. His project has already employed over 50 people for salvaging and has also helped to train students from Bamiyan University in ancient stone-cutting techniques. "People are building homes and they are employed by us, they are working and they get a decent salary." Llewelyn Morgan, who last visited the site a year ago, also found reconstruction to be popular among locals for whom the Buddhas were once a great source of income from tourists. "The impression you get in Bamiyan is that they are almost too naively positive about the reconstruction of the Buddha," says Morgan. "I've spoken to people who would like to see it go up in concrete, which of course Unesco would never countenance." But the reception to rebuilding in the rest of the country is unpredictable. "Afghanistan is a great melting pot of cultures but the one thing many of them share is they are very pious," says Morgan. "Though many clerics and religious leaders may not have agreed with the destruction of religious idols, building them again is an entirely different matter." 
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| Taiwan holds same-sex Buddhist wedding Posted: 13 Aug 2012 05:00 PM PDT REUTERS, August 12 2012
Taipei, Taiwan -- Two women tied the knot on Saturday in Taiwan's first same-sex Buddhist wedding, a move rights groups hope will help make the island become the first place in Asia to legalise gay marriage.
Fish Huang and her partner You Ya-ting, both wearing traditional white bridal gowns, said I do in front of a Buddha statue and exchanged prayer beads rather than rings in a monastery in Taoyuan, in northern Taiwan. Nearly 300 Buddhists chanted sutras to seek blessings for the couple, both aged 30. Shih Chao-hui, a female Buddhist master who presided over the ritual, hailed it as a historic moment. We are witnessing history. The two women are willing to stand out and fight for their fate... to overcome social discrimination,said Shih, a well-known advocate for social justice. Some people might find it astounding (a woman performing the ceremony) but Buddhist does not engage in ideological struggles and I am used to strange looks from my own experience in the social movement, she said. The couple's parents were notably absent from the ceremony, in an indication of the pressure facing some homosexuals and their families. Our parents initially agreed to attend and they regret that they couldn't be here. We understand that people have different acceptance of media exposure and we want to give them more space, Huang said shortly before the wedding. We hope with the master's support, the wedding will change many people's perspective even though it is not legally binding, said the social worker. We hope the government can legalise same-sex marriage soon. Taiwan is one of the most culturally liberal societies in East Asia, and gay and lesbian groups have been urging the government for years to make same-sex unions legal. Aiming to create awareness about the issue, about 80 lesbian couples tied the knot last year in Taiwan's biggest same-sex wedding party, attracting about 1,000 friends, relatives and curious onlookers. Taiwan's cabinet in 2003 drafted a controversial bill to legalise same-sex marriage and allow homosexual couples to adopt children. However, President Ma Ying-jeou has said public consensus was needed before the government can move ahead with the law. Gay rights groups drafted a new bill earlier this year and urged Ma to push for its legislation before his term ends in 2016. 
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| Choeyang Kyi, Tibet’s first Olympic medalist Posted: 13 Aug 2012 02:00 PM PDT At the 2012 Olympic Games in London, Tibetan race walker Choeyang Kyi made history by bringing home a bronze medal in the women's 20km race walk, becoming Tibet's first-ever Olympic medalist. She competed in the colors of China, and is known to the Chinese as Qieyang Shenjie. Choeyang had two different groups of fans supporting her at the games — supporters from China and from the exiled Tibetan community, both waving their respective flags and shouting slogans of support in their language. For more on the story with photos of Choeyang, head over to Voice of America. Read More @ Source
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In our 
This interview took place via telephone on July 2.
When the Taliban were at the height of their power in Afghanistan, leader Mullah Omar waged a war against idolatry.
<< You Ya-ting (2nd L) and Huang Mei-yu (2nd R) take a photograph with their friends and the Buddhist host Shih Chao-hwei (C) after casting their stamps during their symbolic same-sex Buddhist wedding ceremony at a temple in Taoyuan county, northern Taiwan.| You are subscribed to email updates from BuddhaRocks ☸ Buddhist To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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