Buddhafest returns to D.C. June 20

Buddhafest returns to D.C. June 20–23

Tickets are on sale for Buddhafest, a four-day festival of films, talks, meditation, and music just outside Washington, D.C. Inspired by the Buddhist practices of mindfulness, compassion and meditation, this year's Buddhafest runs from June 20–23 at the Artisphere in Rosslyn, Virginia. Speakers include Robert Thurman, Sharon Salzberg, Ven. Pannavati Bhikkhuni, Khen Rinpoche Lobzang Tsetan, and many more. The film lineup features One Track Heart: The Story of Krishna Das, An Uncommon King, Digital Dharma and more — click here for a full list of speakers and films.
Last year's festival drew 4,000 people, and many events sold out, so guests are encouraged to order their tickets in advance. To buy tickets, and to see the whole schedule, click here.
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How an MBA degree helped Buddhist priest Matsumoto to revitalise temples in Japan

by Priyanka Sangani, ET, May 3, 2013

Tokyo, Japan -- It's hardly unusual for mid-career professsionals to take time off to study management. Having had some real world exposure, an MBA usually helps put things in perspective. It's the same logic that Keisuke Matsumoto used when he decided to enrol for a management degree at the Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad in 2010.

A philosophy graduate from the University of Tokyo, Matsumoto is a Japanese Buddhist priest. The decision to pursue a management degree - with a specialisation in marketing and strategy - came after spending seven years as a monk at the Komyoji Temple in Tokyo. "These days, many people from nonprofit entities like schools or hospitals are studying in B-schools. In order to manage any kind of organisation, an MBA is very useful," he explains. In Japan, the Buddhist temples, called Otera, have been at the centre of community life; but not anymore. Matsumoto wants to change that. "An MBA would help me to revitalize Otera and local communities in Japan," says the 33 year-old.
The Otera, which were once a gathering ground for people across all ages are now used only for ancestral ceremonies. Observing the people around him (the temple is in the heart of the city) Matsumoto realised that most people view temples as conservative places and prefer to stay away. To change that perception, he set up the Young Buddhists Association with a few friends who were interested in Buddhist and the temple culture.

Their activities range from holding a music concert at the temple to yoga classes to setting up a free Temple Cafe that was open to everyone. All this helped in bringing more people to the temple. He agrees that there is hardly any common ground between business and temples. "There are no parallels between the two. Both of them are what humans do. I know businesses are for profit and temples are not. But regardless of the type of the organisation, the mission is the most fundamental aspect," he says. The Otera are at the heart of Buddhist, and their mission, he says, is to help people live a happy life and cultivate their mindfulness. The choice of India wasn't surprising given that it's the birthplace of Buddhist. "I love India and I wanted to study at a world-class school. ISB was the only b-school across the world which could satisfy my interest," he says.
Matsumoto has always tried to bridge the gap between the temple and the changing world. In 2003, he was probably the first monk to start blogging in an effort to guide others through the process of becoming a monk. Eventually, this resulted in Japan's first online Buddhist 'temple' where anyone can log on for spiritual guidance or simply to clear their mind. The temple is connected through various social media. Given the way the world is changing, Matsumoto feels that Buddhist is relevant more than ever before.
"In a sense, Buddhist is a kind of science which can analyse and cultivate our mind. In the current world environment which is changing very fast in terms of value system, I believe Buddhist can play significant role as a next value system which focuses on the human mind rather than money making," he says. He has carried out a study, 'Economy and Buddhist' to understand the impact it can have in this current overwhelmingly capitalist economy.
And how did the MBA actually help? "Having a customer-centric view is one of the greatest learnings from the MBA," he says. And initiatives that make the temple more accessible to the younger generation fit in perfectly with that. Quoting Drucker, an obvious effect of the b-school training, Matsumoto says that temples should be changeagents. "The value of temples exists not in tangible assets but intangible assets like relational value with people. Temples should focus on how to change people better in terms of spirituality."
Matsumoto believes that he can use his B-school learnings to revitalise the temples. He has already set up a management school for Buddhist priests and monks and has over 100 monks studying there this year. "After launching the school, I have been creating a powerful Buddhist monk's network. In one or two years, the number of temples in our community will reach over two hundred across Japan. I would like to support those temples to create good relationships with people in a local community," is what his vision for the future is.
His time at ISB was an experience he cherishes. "At ISB, I was very much influenced in every moment. Particularly, I learned a lot in the friendship with Indian friends on and off campus. They are open, friendly and kind. They greatly appreciate their family. I was moved to see how strongly bonded their families are," he says. And no, he never considered giving up the temple for the corporate world after finishing his management education.

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Eastern US Tour by Buddhist Teacher and Author Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche

The Buddhist Channel, May 6, 2013

Tibetan Buddhist Teacher and Author Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche will give a series of interrelated public teachings in New York, Connecticut, and Philadelphia in May.
New York, USA -- This three-city tour of the Eastern United States is the first tour by Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche since the publication of his book, Rebel Buddha: A Guide to a Revolution of Mind (Shambhala), which introduced the Buddhist teachings in the context of an authentic emerging North American Meditation, free of Asian cultural trappings.

Many know Ponlop Rinpoche for his article on Huffington Post "Is Meditation a Religion?"which in 2010 sparked a viral response in a matter of hours, inspiring commentary by a broad readership from many traditions.
The tour, sponsored by Nalandabodhi, kicks off on Saturday, May 11 in New York, NY at Tibet House US, founded by His Holiness the Dalai Lama in 1987 to preserve the culture of Tibet. On May 11-12 Rinpoche will give a series of three talks on "Independence and Interdependence,"and on May 12, "Buddhism as a Science of Mind: A Talk for the Asian Community."
Rinpoche's teaching tour continues with a weekend program in Connecticut May 17-19, "The Altruistic Heart: Training in the Four Immeasurables"(St. Thomas Seminary in Bloomfield, CT), and ends in Philadelphia on Saturday, May 25, with a talk on "Emotions as the Path, not the Problem" (Arch Street Friends Meeting House, Philadelphia, PA).
Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche is a leading Buddhist teacher in North America and an advocate of American and Western Meditation. A lover of music, art and urban culture, Rinpoche is a poet, an avid photographer, an accomplished calligrapher and a visual artist, as well as a prolific author. Rinpoche is fluent in English and well versed in Western culture and technology. He is also the founder of Nitartha International, a non-profit educational corporation dedicated to preserving the contemplative literature of East Asia.
Nalandabodhi is an international network of meditation and study centers for students of Meditation, under the guidance of Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche.
For more information please contact: Ceci Miller at outreach(at)nalandabodhi(dot)org 206.261.6900 or Diane Gregorio at diane(at)nalandabodhi(dot)org

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Dalai Lama promotes vegetarianism on first ever World Compassion Day

Ahimsa360.com, May 5, 2013

New Delhi, India -- Animal welfare was the topic of discussion and the XIV Dalai Lama propounded the ideals of ahimsa and vegetarianism at the first-ever World Compassion Day, organised at a suburban hotel on Wednesday.

"I was not vegetarian till about five decades ago, but when I saw hens being abused on an animal farm, I decided to become vegetarian," said the Dalai Lama, at the event organised by Pritish Nandy Communications (PNC), an entertainment company, and the Humane Society International (HSI), the international branch of the Humane Society of United States (HSUS), an animal welfare organisation.
"World Compassion Day is an idea we have had for a while. The objective is to rediscover the relevance of ahimsa. We want to revive the idea of compassion not just as do-good gestures but also as an initiative to create an alternate lifestyle," said Pritish Nandy, founder, PNC.

The Dalai Lama promoted the need to create awareness about respect for life and vegetarianism. "The media must play an important role, and even the younger generation must be informed about moral ethics through education," he said. When asked about his stand towards China, he said, "Though we are compassionate, we will not bow down to them. We have to wait and watch if the new regime acts according to new realities, where there is no room for totalitarianism," he said.
The guests included actor Anil Kapoor, writer Chetan Bhagat, and police commissioner Satyapal Singh.
"To be compassionate, one requires four things. One must be spiritual, believe in humanity, believe that you will face the consequences for your actions, and one must be vegetarian," said Singh.
Wayne Pacelle, president, HSUS, said, "Indians consume less meat than many countries. While the meat consumption in India is three to four kgs per person per year, that in the United States is as high as 100-110 kgs."

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Enter the Buddhist College at the foot of Mt. Emei

People's Daily Online, May 3, 2013

Mt. Emei, China -- At the foot of Mt. Emei in SW China's Sichuan province, stands a unique college - Emei Buddhist College. The college is built in Dafo Temple. Unlike other temples filled with worshippers, the Buddhist College is tranquil and solemn.

According to Master Changquan, all the students in the college are chosen from candidates recommended by temples or Buddhism associations around the country. What's more, they should take entrance exams before being accepted.
Comparing with other colleges or universities, Emei Buddhism College is small. However, students here have classes from morning to afternoon, Tuesday to Sunday. There are 74 monks and 36 nuns studying in the college.
Students begin a day's study at 5:30 a.m. every morning. In class, they will stand up and chant "Amitabha" as a greeting to the master (teacher). At 11:15 a.m., all the students will line up to have lunch in Wuguan Hall after a break in the dorm.
The foods are very simple, potatoes and cabbage, with rice as staple food. After lunch, students will have one hour's rest. Some will read books in the dorm, some will sit in meditation and chant sutras, and some will lie down for a while. At 2 p.m., afternoon classes will start. There is a nun's class in the college. The nuns study in Fuhu Temple, which is far away from Dafo Temple.
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Buddhism: Made for the internet

by Rachael Kohn, Australian Broadcasting Corp, 30 April 2013

Sydney, Australia -- Buddhist is a largely de-centralised religion, with ancient communities throughout Asia and more modern practitioners in Australia and across the world. Mapping the modern day face of the religion proved a difficult task for Professor Lewis Lancaster, until he struck on the idea of a digital atlas.

Religious Atlas of China and Himalaya can be viewed at http://ecai.org/chinareligion/index.html
At the heart of Buddhist is a metaphor for interconnectedness: Indra's net. The Vedic god's net, which is supposed to hang over his palace on Mount Meru, is said to stretch to infinity. At each point where the threads cross sits a jewel that reflects all the other jewels, and like mirrors within mirrors, the entire cosmos is reflected.

Lewis Lancaster, Professor Emeritus of Buddhist at the University of California at Berkeley, knows how apt that metaphor is in the current world. For years he's struggled to find an adequate way of documenting the complicated, almost infinite spread of Buddhist from its 5th century BCE Indian origins. That is, until he found an equally complex instrument to map the ancient faith. Sanskrit and Pali were the first languages of the Buddhist canon known as the Tripitaka (Three Baskets: Sutras, Vinaya, and Abidharma) but by the 2nd century the first translations into Chinese began. These texts were taken to Korea in the 4th century, and from there on to Japan.
To trace this epic journey, and map the contemporary face of Buddhist, Professor Lancaster formed an association of scholars and developed the Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative, which is essentially a collection of maps with dots, with each dot representing a place where Buddhist temples, monasteries, communities, resources, and histories are available by simply clicking your mouse.
From early on, Buddhist was a uniquely portable religion, spreading far and wide, with few of the barriers that anchored other religions to their original historic settings. After being driven out of India in the late middle-ages, Buddhist was not associated with one nation, one territory, one sacred temple, and not even one sacred tongue.
The Electronic Atlas was not Professor Lancaster's first attempt to engage Buddhist with the modern world. For the Seoul Olympics he transferred a complete 13th century Korean woodblock printing of the Tripitaka onto a CD Rom. During the Korean Olympic Games, the CD Rom was placed in a glass reliquary and carried into the stadium by Buddhist monks.
The CD Rom as sacred relic is characteristic of Buddhist's adaptability. Relics in fact are typical of Buddhist, and are often found as crystalline knobs in the cremated remains of a Buddhist saint or Bodhisattva. The Temple of the Buddha's Tooth in Kandy Sri Lanka is a rare example of an actual part of the body as a relic.
Today, however, a sacred relic might just as well be a CD Rom that contains the Dharma or Buddhist teaching. The Dharma teaches that the nature of the material world is transient and insubstantial. It's made of elements that come together and will later decay, only to be reborn as something else. This endless cycle of birth and death is known as samsara, and Buddhists believe it's the fate of all things and beings. The electronic digital age has also plunged us into this perspective and no more obviously than in our attempt to store information in new, fragile forms.
In contrast to the wooden printing blocks of 800 years ago, which can still be used to produce copies of the Buddhist canon, we do not know what digital platforms will be in use even 20 or 40 years from now. To keep abreast of this constantly changing technology, the Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative, which has been stored at the University of California Berkeley, is now poised to be housed in Taiwan, where a more advanced software will allow it to survive the inevitable obsolescence of the computers and programs it was created on.
'If you start a project on a computer, you have a baby that never grows up,' Professor Lancaster says. 'You can never leave it, never ignore it. If you do, it dies.'
So the transient nature of digital technology is testing the preservation of the Dharma even as it confirms its teachings. If this is not ironic enough, a Buddhist nun and doctoral student of Professor Lancaster, Jue Wei Shin, is recreating a Buddhist festival of 1500 years ago from the ancient capital of Lou Yang. Her tool? An interactive multimedia display of Buddhist images and icons which can be seen at Darling Harbour on 11–12 May for the Buddha's birthday celebrations.

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Disturbing Buddhist Trend toward Violence

by Bruce Matthews, Asian Sentinel, 2 MAY 2013

Colombo, Sri Lanka -- Recent incidents of anti-Muslim religious nationalism in Sri Lanka and Myanmar, ostensibly in defense of the Theravada Buddhist faith held by the majority, have opened fresh cultural and political wounds.

What would Buddha do?
In Myanmar and Sri Lanka, anti-Muslim religious nationalism opens wounds
Growing violence appears in danger of spinning completely out of control in Burma, most lately in the town of Okkan on the outskirts of Yangon, where a Buddhist mob burned as many as a dozen homes and ransacked a shop shouting "Let's destroy the property of Muslims." Two mosques were desecrated and Qurans were torn to pieces.
Some of these are violent events with alleged government or Buddhist monastic (sangha) backing. Others appear spontaneous, beyond the control of state and Buddhist hierarchy. Either way, they are destructive and troubling. Buddhist is revered as a faith of healing and mercy, but like all religions, it can promote contradictory elements of triumphalism and intolerance.

Both countries are newly emerged from recent politically traumatic experiences released from a decades-long military autocracy (Myanmar) and the ravages of a civil war (Lanka). Both are spectacularly ill-served by this latest outburst of jingoism in the name of a faith that in both instances appears to be manipulated to meet political ends. Turning first to Myanmar, the state has a long record of relations between the majority Buddhists (90 percent) and minority religions, notably Muslims (5 percent) and Hindus (3 percent). Muslims from a variety of Middle Eastern and Central Asian ethnic backgrounds were at one time a welcome part of historical Burmese kingdoms, traders for the most part, but even serving in the infantry of the great king Mindon Min in the mid-19th century.
Others, particularly the Rohingya in Arakan State bordering on present-day Bangladesh, filtered across porous borders over decades. More controversial were thousands of Indian Muslims brought in by British colonial officials for their commercial skills and hard work.
Anti-Muslim outbreaks associated with Burmese Buddhist economic resentment occurred periodically prior to independence. But Muslim fortunes in Myanmar were virtually ruined by the 1962 military take-over of the state. The Rohingya in particular were held back by the 1982 Citizenship Law, which required proof of ancestry in Myanmar for three generations.
Elsewhere, in 1997 the government allegedly provoked a violent anti-Muslim riot as a diversion over the disappearance of a precious, mystically powerful ruby rumored to have been stolen by superstitious generals from the famous Maha Myat Muni Buddha image in Mandalay.
Further attacks in 2001 in Taungoo and Pyinmana were precursors of the vicious 2012 pogrom on Rohingya communities in the western Rakhine state. This sometimes featured Buddhist monks in the vanguard of activism organizing and encouraging forcible relocation of the Muslim population. More recently in March, 2013, a minor altercation in a Muslim-owned gold shop in the small mid-country city of Meiktila, was suddenly compounded by the murder of a Buddhist monk.
This provoked a week-long rampage. Dozens of pro-Burmese motorcyclists suddenly appeared. Photos of a Buddhist monk manhandling a bull-dozer, and of police standing by while Muslim buildings burned, lent credibility to the suggestion that disgruntled military parliamentarians over the reforms of the government of President Thein Sein were behind the incident, perhaps a circuitous appeal for a return to military rule.
Though Muslims are only a fragment of Myanmar's population, a recent avalanche of rumors about rising Muslim economic and demographic dominance is further spurred on by widespread circulation of inflammatory Islamophobic DVDs. These are complemented by the infamous but relentless hate-filled sermons of the maverick Buddhist monk U Wirathu of Mandalay's otherwise prestigious Masoeyein monastery.
The vitriol spills over into street-level social and commercial relations, with Buddhist businesses demarcating their premises with a special number (969) purporting a spiritual significance, and Muslims adopting something of the same strategy with their own sacred numerals (786).
Left unresolved, these unsavory activities are serious harbingers of a possible failure of Myanmar's three-year experiment with reform and democracy.
Second, Sri Lanka is an example of how sectarian conflict can ruin an otherwise fortunate country. Despite the end of the long civil war in 2009, inter-community relations have sharply deteriorated, and minority vulnerability is high.
This has provided space for a new, anti-Muslim ethnic fault line. Lankan Muslims make up only 9% population and have a centuries-old historical lineage with the Middle East. Many Muslims have been caught by surprise at the recent turn of events, believing themselves to be well integrated, loyal to the state during the civil war, and with longstanding senior appointments in government.
But the roots of Buddhist resentment and suspicion about Muslim presence in Lanka emerged a century ago with the introduction of the ?Aryan myth' into Sinhala politics, which claimed that all minorities live in Lanka by the grace of Sinhalese supremacy and must know their secondary place.
This was the background to the infamous 1915 anti-Muslim riots. Nowhere was motivation for an activist Sinhala Buddhist role more clearly articulated than in Ven. Walpola Rahula's 1946 ground-breaking Bhiksuvage Urumaya (The Heritage of the Bhikkhu).
An intense religio-ethnic struggle had come to characterize the nation, and Buddhist played a critical role in fostering a tough, uncompromising ethnocentric faith, characterized by the 1956 and 1983 riots, this time focused on Ceylon Tamils. An appeal to neo-traditionalism, rather than a needed reappraisal of the role of the sangha and Buddhist in public life, became commonplace.
The situation in 2013 is really not much different in this matter. Just as even an educated Sinhala middle class was persuaded that the Tamils were taking over commercial, educational and professional opportunity in Lanka in the 1980s, now there is renewed antipathy towards the longstanding indigenous Muslim community, an attitude that thrives under the present government, feeling vindicated by the victorious Eelam war.
Anti-Muslim actions have involved attacks on mosques with little or no effective police response, claims that national examination results are distorted to favor Muslims, demands for repeal of Halal certification with the claim that its fees go toward mosque construction, ludicrous conspiracy theories (e.g., that certain sanitary napkins sold in Muslim stores to Buddhist women lead to sterilization), claims that Muslim families are too large, and malicious spreading of rumors of rape and coercion. Within the last year there have been attacks on Muslim mosques or businesses in Dambulla, Gampola, Peliliyana and Colombo, some involving stone-throwing Buddhist monks.
This is accompanied by the sudden rise of the Bodhu Bala Sena (Buddhist Power Force), a relatively new expression of Sinhala ultra-nationalistic patriotism. The organization uses crude language to describe, for instance, Muslim imams, and is also actively anti-Christian.
It has top-level patronage support, with its new leadership academy in Galle opened by Defense Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, who recently intoned "It is the monks who protect our country, religion and race. No one should doubt these clergy."
Buddhism is not a monolithic organization in Sri Lanka. The sangha is comprised of approximately 30,000 monks (bhikkhus) belonging to three principal nikayas, in turn divided into many smaller groups. Each monastery is virtually an autonomous unit.
This indicates that centralized authority over the conduct of sangha members is almost non-existent. Buddhist's many nuances, structural and ideological, make it impossible for senior monks to dictate an alternative official Buddhist position or to propose any one sweeping commentary on its participation in the political destiny of the country.
This is compounded by a current climate of fear and helplessness, with people silent or unable to speak out against rampant injustice and intimidation, violence. The government appears indifferent to alternative opinions and is obsessed with majoritarianism, not with unity in diversity, or equality and justice in a pluralistic state.
Lankan moderates, of which there are many, have failed to sustain or act on inter-religious friendships and to speak out and protect each other. Regrettably there is no key internal pressure from the electorate to challenge the slide into communalism, despite the horrors stance this has visited upon Lanka since independence in 1948.
Muslim leaders have not been confrontational, and remain largely conciliatory. But there is the risk of Sri Lanka losing any political and economic good will the government might have built up with Middle East countries, many of which are huge sources of employment for Sri Lanka domestics and their important economic remittances.
No government representing a majority Buddhist population should tolerate such anti-Muslim activism. As Ven. Arriya Wuthu Bewuntha, abbot of the Myawaddy Sayadaw monastery in Mandalay has put it, "This is not what the Buddha taught." But in both Myanmar and Sri Lanka, this is an on-going uncomfortable reality. It remains to be seen what further deleterious consequences these events will have for these nations.
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Bruce Matthews is a Professor Emeritus of Comparative Religion, Acadia University, Nova Scotia

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Dharma bum: a year in a pagoda

by Nathan A Thompson, Phnom Penh Post, 3 May 2013

Phnom Penh, Cambodia -- When I was asked to give a gift to the head of the Buddhist temple where I would spend the next year, I expected to hand over symbolic lotus flowers or pricey Western goods. Sarong, my host, pointed to two dusty cases of Red Bull. "That's what the monks like", she said.

<< Photograph: Scott Howes/Phnom Penh Post
When Nathan A Thompson swapped his stress-packed life in the UK to live for a year with monks in Takeo province, he expected to immerse himself in a stark way of life. The reality was rather different. Here, he reveals what it's like to forsake everything you know to live in a temple.
My new housemate, Sareun, sat cross-legged, his face hard-set. He was swathed in orange robes and had a scar that bloomed from voice box to shoulder. I sat on the floor with my legs swept to one side and bowed three times. I raised my gift in his direction, and he took it without comment. In the renunciate life of a monk, the odd can of Red Bull can provide quite a kick.

Three weeks previously, I had been trapped in the longest, darkest winter the UK had seen for years. I worked in overdrive to gather enough money to fund the first few months of a new life I had planned, thousands of miles away. A freelance writer, I took every job I could get; I churned out content on everything from hotels to sofas. Two days out of every fourteen were spent in bed, glassy-eyed with exhaustion. As soon as I felt better, I hunched back over my laptop in the winter twilight, tapping away, pulled by thoughts of Cambodia.
I planned to live in a rural village and volunteer for a new NGO. For months at a time, I would be the only foreigner there. Like many over-stimulated Westerners, I had romantic notions about Eastern spirituality. I started my days with some meditation and yoga postures. When Sarong's email told me that I would be living with monks, I was thrilled.
I arrived in a tuk-tuk packed with bags, boxes of books and my bicycle. We rattled through the temple entrance guarded by two Angkor warriors in peeling paint. We passed the small reservoir and the assembly hall. The hall is two storeys high and is large enough to accommodate all 200 families in the village on a celebration day like Khmer New Year. The courtyard beyond the hall was surrounded by houses painted blue, white and yellow.
Centre stage was Sareun's mansion, which loomed yellow and gold in the sunlight, two giant storeys with huge pillars that supported the balcony.
I stumbled out of the tuk-tuk wanting to get into my room as quickly as possible. Then I met Sareun for the first time, cigarette dangling from his lips.
My first surprise. "The Buddha never said we couldn't smoke," he told me, speaking through a translator, on my second day at the temple.
Sareun's headshot is framed along with other unsmiling heads of his order in my room. Every day he is surrounded by friends – men who are now grandfathers. They sit outside his grand stone house on the slatted wooden platform talking and joking. The young monks scurry past his gaze clutching Dharma books, their eyes downcast.
When he was ordained as a monk in 1979, after the colossal destruction of the Pol Pot regime, there was, he says, "no other kind of education available". He learned the Dharma – the teachings of the Buddha – from a man named Hing Ngat, who escaped the regime.
Sareun's decision to become a monk was prompted by contracting tuberculosis and cancer following the Khmer Rouge years. The diseases left him a curious legacy. "If I have sex I will die – the doctor told me. So I decided not to get married and focus on learning the Dharma. I want to follow the Buddha's teachings and be a saintly person."
At first, he lived in a palm leaf cottage on the site of Wat Baray, which was then a brick-strewn crater. One building remained, and he began to use it to teach Dharma. After Hing Ngat died in 1988, Sareun succeeded him as head of the temple. It has taken 30 years for him to rebuild the fishscale roofs and pink and yellow buildings – most of the work funded by donations from the local people. The monks who live there now are mostly teenagers who come because Wat Baray has a good reputation as a place to learn both Buddhist scriptures and English.
I was given a room at Wat Baray in Sareun's stone house with cool tiled flooring. It's unusual for a Westerner to live in a temple. The few NGOs that work with temples have separate accommodation for staff. The NGO I work for is founded by a woman whose family is from the village, so it was no problem for her to get the monks behind her project. Buddhist temples exist for the benefit of the community and often have people staying there. Anyone in need is welcome: orphans, people with disabilities, friends and family – they must, however, be male because monks are celibate. I make a monthly donation to cover my costs.
My first few days were fraught. I had to learn to eat egg fetuses, sleep on a straw mat and wash in a giant bucket next to a hole. Not everyone was immediately welcoming. On my third day at the Wat, I needed a knife to peel a mango. I approached the kitchen, where the 70-year-old Yay Nath, a shaven-headed nun, sat among stained cauldrons and pots. She sounded like an army major shouting at a group of sloppy recruits. "Knife – what is?" I mumbled pathetically, trying to sound amicable. She unleashed a battery of angry-sounding syllables. I didn't return for two weeks.
When I did, she fed me roasted banana and told me her story. She's been a nun for 24 years. "After my husband died, Sareun asked me to come and cook for the monks, and I was happy to volunteer while my son supports me financially."
She hopes that through service she will be reborn into a good life. "I don't want to reborn underground or as a ghost. If I cultivate good virtue in this life by serving the monks, then I will be reborn as a human or a heavenly being."
Buddhists believe that the type of mind we posses when we die determines our reincarnation. If the mind is pure, the positive vibrations lead to rebirth in a human or heavenly body. Bad vibes lead to hell.
It's not easy keeping the mind pure.
"I wish the Buddha would have allowed us to eat dinner in the evenings," teenage novice Nam Soukhaine told me on an empty stomach one evening. Buddhist scriptures stipulate that monks should not eat after noon. At the temple, they have breakfast at 7am and lunch at 11am.
At 16, Soukhaine is only required to learn Dharma for three hours a day, as opposed to the seven hours put in by his older peers. He hopes to leave the monkhood when he turns 20.
"For my parent's generation, you had to be a monk before you could get a good job like doctor or policeman. They wanted me to be a monk because monks have fine accents and virtuous characters."
Some monks exemplify the virtuous ideal more than others. Every so often, a report pops up about wayward behaviour: recent months have seen pagoda chiefs defrocked over singing, drinking and cavorting with women at karaoke clubs. In recent years, there have even been reports of sexual assaults carried out by monks.
"These bad monks join the monkhood for their own gain," said Sambo, the ex-monk who teaches Pali, the ancient language of the Buddhist scriptures.
"They create fake building projects and ask for donations; sometimes they buy a gun illegally and use it to rob rich people. It is mostly a problem in the city; because there are so many monks there, it is difficult to control them."
"But the monks at Wat Baray have an excellent reputation," he added, laughing.
In the evenings, the television casts a glow on the white-tiled walls. Sareun watches Chinese and Korean kung fu films, sitting with one leg thrown over the arm of his mahogany recliner. The young monks guiltily abandon their studies to watch.
There is a debate within the Buddhist community over how much television and internet should be allowed in a temple. So far, no dictum has been reached. Keo Vichith from the Khmer-Buddhist Educational Assistance Project, who was a monk for 10 years, favours the middle path.
"It depends how the monks use it; if they are watching TV or using their iPhones for educational purposes, that is OK because monks should not be isolated from the issues that are important to people," he told me.
At Wat Baray, Sareun does not allow the young monks to have iPhones for fear that they will waste too much time.
As time wore on, I began to let go of my expectations of temple life. The strict regime of work, exercise and meditation that had led to burnout in the UK was no longer needed because, for the first time in my life, I had enough money. I bought a moto. I swam in the reservoir with the children, their dolphin-like movements interrupted by the "Pwchaar" noises of a mimed gun battle.
I have also witnessed incredible compassion. One day, we felled a small tree for firewood and came under attack from a colony of ants. While I slapped and cursed, the monks were calmly picking each ant from their skin and placing them back on the tree scrupulously, following the Buddhist precept to "harm no living being".
Another day, the monks dragged me to the reservoir in the Wat - a lush patch of water with an island in the middle – with the words, "Come quick. You must see, you must see." A huddle of children were watching something in the water. It had the head of a dog with the skin of a frog. Two yellow reptile eyes. Everyone was still.
As it moved towards the stone steps that lead into the water, the outline of a shell and two flippers became visible: it was a narrow-headed soft-shelled turtle, one of the most endangered species in the world. Sareun adopted two from the 100 Pillar Pagoda in Kratie province, home to the Mekong Turtle Conservation Centre. The kids threw rice in the water and prehistoric jaws opened and slammed shut. The two turtles are just some of the menagerie of animals that bark and scratch around the pagoda. "I hope these turtles will survive with Buddha's blessings," Sareun said.
Not all the monks will stay for long.
One young man who recently left the monkhood lives in a nearby village. Now that his arranged marriage to a Cambodian-American woman is secure, his parents are barely letting him leave the house. He is their ticket out of poverty. (He did not want to be named in case it affected his application for an international marriage licence.)
"I want to be a monk forever because everything the Buddha said was right," he told me, as generations of cats, chickens and dogs flowed in the dust around our ankles.
As we talked, his teenage sister rode in with a smile; you'd never guess she'd cycled and sweated 16 kilometres to attend school. "It's a shame I have to get married," he said wistfully. "But I can't go against my parents wishes."
He is 20, athletic and handsome. "The body is a very ugly thing. It is full of sweat and waste. Only crazy people like their bodies; the Buddha teaches us to not care about the body or property." Reluctantly de-robed and dressed in jeans and a grey zip-up hoody, he sat in a hammock strung between two concrete pillars that support the wooden room he shares with his parents and sister.
"I miss living in the pagoda because all my friends are there." He gave a pained smile. "We would talk about the Dharma, and I would learn so much." In order to cheer him up, I Googled pictures of his new home: Atlanta, Georgia. He looked at the twinkling skyscrapers. "Wow."
On my way out, I thought about what awaits him in the US and if his earnest Buddhist will survive an encounter with hyper-consumer culture. In my room at the temple now, the only thing that remains from my old life among the skyscrapers is my to-do list – meetings, work, gym sessions. Underneath are many sheets of blank paper.

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Thai Meditation: A Land of Smiles

Posted: 06 May 2013 12:00 PM PDT

In Thailand, it pays to smile!

Thailand is rightly known as the Land of Smiles (เมอืงยิ้ม / 'meuang-yim' in Thai). Everywhere you go in the country, you will be greeted by smiles. Often in the most difficult of situations, smiles will be seen. Why? Well, to smile in adversity is considered a virtue in Thai culture, and it is also considered polite, whereas a grimace or frown is usually taken as impolite. Moreover, a smile can hide a multitude of sins; guilt, embarrassment, unease, dislike and even anger. It communicates warmth & friendliness, visual signals that make people feel at ease, and feeling at ease (สบาย/ 'sabai' in Thai) is a quality that Thais consider most important.

Of course, not everyone smiles all the time in Thailand; that would be insane! When upset a Thai can cry or display other behavior that reveals their feelings. And, as Thailand modernizes, its traditions are coming under continual strain, and the age-old customs of politeness and smiling are being worn away. Nevertheless, even amongst the more mode! rn set in Thai society, smiles are mush more abundant than found in many other countries. And its effects are immediate; when we smile with each other we feel more relaxed and happy. Smiling isn't just a result of being happy; smiling can inspire a happier state of mind as well.

Again, as indicated above, not all smiles in Thailand are genuine in the sense that a person smiling really feels happy or actually likes the person they are smiling to. A Thai can sweetly smile to you while inside they might be thinking something like, "What a jerk!" Seeing the behavior of a lot of foreigners in Thailand, it would seem that this reaction is probably widespread! An incident from many years ago comes to mind. In a fast-food restaurant in Bangkok, a western man and his small children had been waiting quite some time for their takeaway meal. Too much time for the westerner's liking, so he promptly started to berate the staff, who reacted by standing silently staring at him with wide grins on their faces. Probably misunderstanding their smiles as smirks, he shouted even louder at them until his food finally arrived and he stormed out, children in tow.

The above story illustrates the cultural importance of smiling in Thailand. The staff were not smiling at the foreigner, as though laughing at him, but were smiling to him, in the hope of placating him and quietening him down. It didn't work, as the westerner no doubt thought the smiles were completely inappropriate in that situation. For Thais, however, a smile from someone not performing to their expectations will normally calm them down, at least for a while. This goes to show that wise usage of the smile i! s cultura! lly-dependent, and this should be understood so's not to create unnecessary antagonism. This withstanding, non-Thais can learn from the Thais' implementation of smiling. And this is related to Buddhist practice too, as it is in the spirit of Meditation to act in friendly, non-aggressive ways to others, and smiling can assist in this. (It's worth noting that many eastern peoples that use the smile in the same way as the Thais, such as Cambodians, Laotians, and Burmese, etc. are also predominately Buddhist.)

Now, walking around with a permanent grin on one's face is likely to get one locked up, or at the very least, one will find threes giving one a wide birth when in public. The smile should be primarily used when actually in contact with others (animals included). It's interesting to experiment with smiling and see if people respond differently; this author has found that they do. And, when smiling is combined with qualities traditionally lauded in Meditation, such as calmness, friendliness, helpfulness, gentleness etc., it creates a very positive atmosphere not only for the recipients of the smile, but also for the smiler. Why not try it? Start by smiling more in specific stings, such as at home or at work, and see how people respond to you. Depending on your particular circumstances, you will need to adjust when & how much you smile, but the results will surely be positive…overall. Smile away, and create a land of smiles in your own life!

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