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Muhammad Yunus (Bangladeshi Nobel Laureate), BonsaiPeople.com; Wisdom Quarterly
"Poor people are bonsai people. There is nothing wrong with their see. Society never allowed them the space to grow" (Yunus). Using the power of microcredit and social business to unleash human potential. A documnetary by Holly Mosher.
THE VISION OF MUHAMMAD YUNUS - What if the power of the free market could be harnessed to solve the problems of poverty, hunger, and inequality?
It may sound impossible. But Nobel Peace Prize winner Yunus (pronounced Eunice) is doing exactly that. "Bonsai People" is an emotionally compelling look at Yunus' visionary work.
Yunus is one of seven people in history to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the Congressional Gold Medal.
JOIN US! Host a screening. Creative a vision group. Recommend the film to teachers. Join the Social Business and Microcredit Forums. Get the newsletter. Stay informed on Twitter or Facebook. More
In this anti-Buddhist propaganda photo suggesting Buddhists monks (Tibetan lamas) are up to no good standing among corpses, what is really happening is quite the opposite. Lamas were brought in to bless and comfort victims after a massive Himalayan landslide in Tibet -- in this inflammatory, undated photo tagged with a url link to a video reporting atrocities committed against Burma's minority Muslim Rohingyas, which the world seems to be ignoring:tinyurl.com/93hqzme.
UPDATE: The editors of Wisdom Quarterly are not apologists (defenders the faith ready to explain any and every negative thing away). If monastics or nominal lay "Buddhists" harm others, we report it.Reports have reached us that Buddhists did NOT go on murderous rampages. They might have, but there is a more plausible explanation. Rohingyas are in a tense stand off with their coompatriot neighbors, Burmese Buddhist villagers and co-religionist Muslims in nearby Bangladesh. Buddhists are angry about a sensational rape of a Buddhist female by Rohingya boys, ongoing drug dealing, and general anti-social behavior. But it is alleged that Rohingyas set fire to their own villages using gun powder provided to them from some outside source agitating for change. Rohingyas want to have their plight recognized, so they had to do something to get sympathy and vital humanitarian relief from either the world in general or Bangladeshi officials in particular.
Burma has a history of massacring minorities.
The worldwide MIC (transnational military-industrial complex) has succeeded in sucking in some Buddhists, tragically pitting some poor Burmese villagers against their fellow countrymen, an ethnic minority known as the Rohingya. Neighboring Muslim Bangladesh has refused to help save lives and prevent this nascent genocide by admitting Rohingyas attempting to flee the violence, which goes both ways with Rohingyas attacking minority Bangladeshi Buddhist temples and villagers and majority Burmese Buddhists retaliating.
But this is not a simple case of neighbor-on-neighbor violence. Pres. Thien Sein of Burma hasadmitted that the monstrous Myanmar military -- which in 2007 attacked, imprisoned, and slaughtered uncounted Buddhist monks and pro-democracy protesters in the ongoing Saffron Revolution -- has been systematically executing Rohingya. The military junta headed by Burmese dictator Gen. Than Shwe have ruthlessly attacked and waged war against many of Burma's ethnic minorities, including Buddhists along the its mountainous borders with Thailand and China.
Stop! Consider the consequences of shortsighted action (karma)! Hatred will never cease by hatred. Every gain will mean even more loss (Ahsanul Bari).
We go to Bangladeshi Buddhist abbot and scholar Ven. Karunananda, Ph.D. for comment.
WQ: "Venerable sir, Buddhists are killing Muslims?"
VK: "Villagers are fighting, but this has absolutely nothing to do with religion. This is not a religious crusade or anything Buddhist monastics sponsor. Rohingya attacked Buddhists in Bangladesh; Buddhists in Burma are attacking Rohingya."
WQ: "Where is Hillary Clinton in all this?"
VK: "That is a good question."
WQ: "Worse yet, where is our heroine Nobel Peace Laureate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi?"
VK: "This is a very delicate matter, very tragic."
There is a dictum in Buddhism that any person who attacks another is wrong to do so, but a person who retaliates is worse. Revenge is NOT justified in Buddhism, contrary to Western conceptions of God and Jewish-Christian ideals of vengeance, following a tribal God(s) into war against neighbors.
Fortunately, New Testament Christians speak of a new ideal (forgiveness) and a new God (Issa/Jesus) replacing the warring eye-for-any-eye mentality attributed to YHWH.
But many Christians in the West (US, UK, EU, and the Holy See) do not distinguish Old and New Testament Gods when it comes to such things as revenge, war, imperial-crusades, and ethnic-genocides. Conducting war in the name of One God (peruse the Christian Bible's Book of Judges if there's any doubt) and world domination is a mainstay in the Far West and, sadly, the Middle East as well.
The CIA can't make all this war without some help from a minority of Muslims bent on upholding the eye-for-an-eye mentality of monotheistic tradition. But to whom are we to attribute most of the violence in the world today?
Who does what?
(americanbedu.com)
Photographer Kombizz Kashani rhetorically asks: "Who started the first world war? Muslims?? Who started the second world war? Muslims?? Who killed ten million aborigines in Australia? Muslims?? Who dropped nuclear bombs on civilian [non-combatants] in Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Muslims?? Who killed more than 100 million Native American-Indians in North America? Muslims?? Who killed more than 50 million indigenous-Indians in South America? Muslims?? Who trafficked ~180 million Africans as slaves with 88% of them dying or being thrown into the Atlantic?? Muslims??"
No, they weren't Muslims! They were mostly [nominal] Christians.
Let's define "terrorism." If a non-Muslim does something untoward, it's a "crime." But if a Muslim commits the exact same misdeed, it's "terrorism." We first have to disabuse ourselves of this biased double-standard.
COX'S BAZAR, Bangladesh - A mob torched and vandalized a village of Buddhists in Cox's Bazar's Ramu Upazila early on Sunday in one of the worst religious attacks in Bangladesh apparently triggered by a Facebook posting allegedly defaming the Quran (Koran).
Eyewitnesses and police said the assailants set fire to at least six Buddhist temples and nearly 20 homes and looted and damaged more than a hundred others until 3:00 am in the hate attack.
Cox's Bazar is rocked by communal violence.
Cox's Bazar district's Superintendent of Police Selim Mohammed Jahangir acknowledged the violence in the Buddhist-dominated locality. He said around 3:00 am situation in the Ramu district headquarters was under control but in areas on the fringe, tension was palpable.
"Police patrols have been strengthened in the Buddhist-majority areas," SP Jahangir added.
Paramilitary BGB personnel have been called out to restore order in the affected areas, Suresh Barua, teacher at a local school, said.
Several houses and Mithhachharhi Bonbihar, some five kilometres from Ramu Sadar Upazila, were set on fire around 3:30 am, said General Secretary of Ramu Upazila Juba League Nitish Barua.
A 100-foot high under-construction Buddha sculpture was also ravaged in Bimukti Bidarshan Babna Centre in the locality, he added.
Gias Uddin Ziku, Office Secretary of Cox's Bazar district unit of Jatiyatabadi Chhatra Dal and Chairman of Jhilangja Union, said he dispersed Jamaat-e-Islami activists who had gathered around localities of ethnic minorities. He also said he had informed the police of the incident.
Local people said followers of an Islamist party led by several leaders took out a procession around 10:00 pm on Saturday alleging that a photo was uploaded on the Facebook to defame the holy book.
At a subsequent rally, they claimed a youth by the name of Uttam Barua had pasted the purportedly offensive photo in the social networking website and demanded his arrest.
Another militant procession was taken out that marched down towards the Barua Parha around 11:30 pm and some youths from the procession set some homes of the Buddhists on fire.
From then on, 15 homes, three temples including "Saada Ching" and "Laal Ching" were burned to the ground, Dipak Barua, a local, said.
Police, local administration officials and public representatives were trying to quell the arson and destruction that continued at least until 1:30 am.
Cox's Bazar, Banglandesh panoramic view in the morning (en.wikipedia.org)
A local journalist, who was hiding with family in the neighborhood that came under attack, told bdnews24.com the Cheranghata Barakyang Temple close to his home was set alight. He said the flames died out around 2:45 am.
Also, Ramu Maitree Bihar, Saada Chinglaal, Ramy Sina Bihar and Jadiparha Bouddha Bihar were torched, ransacked and looted.
At least 10 Buddhist villages were attacked and Purbo Merongloa locality that had around 20 houses was burned.
Chairman of Ramu Upazila Council Sohel Sarwar Kajal said efforts were on to quell the tension.
Several Facebook users, meanwhile, said Uttam Barua, the Ramu youth being accused of Quran defamation, did not post the photo deemed to be offensive to Islam. They said Uttam was tagged in the photo from a Facebook ID called "Insult Allah" and so he was in no way responsible.
Recently, there was much hullabaloo was created after Rohingya Muslims tried to cross the border into Bangladesh fleeing the religious riot in Myanmar's Buddhist-majority Rakhine state. A section of the civil society in Bangladesh reacted to the government refusing the refugees entry. The government believes communal forces were behind this incident.
Are Burma's troops slaughtering Muslims? Dhr. Seven, CC Liu, Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly
The nominally "Buddhist" police state government of Burma (Myanmar) is killing its ethnic minorities. This has been going on for a long time. The hill tribes have been fending off the central government for decades hiding in the forests and retreating into Thailand and China.
Of course, this brutal regime which imprisoned Aung San Suu Kyi is the least Buddhist government in one of the most Buddhist countries in the world. But that country is largely closed off to the world, in spite of Hillary Clinton and the US military-industrial complex's recent attempts to win the resource-rich Burma over to Western interests instead of it being a pawn for Chinese rule.
Sadly, Muslims believe Buddhists in Burma and/or bordering Bangladesh are involved in the slaughter of ethnic minorities along their shared border. Burmese soldiers are more than happy to kill Buddhist monks in robes, Buddhists in the street, and anyone else the junta orders them to slaughter.
Ordinary Buddhists may indeed join in to ethnically cleanse their area and send Muslims into Islamic Bangladesh. And this would explain why Muslim extremists in Bangladesh would retaliate -- under the pretext that a Buddhist's Facebook posting of Islamic material is setting off their religious sensibilities -- and loot and burn Buddhist temples and homes.
But the problem is much more complex. There are minorities on both sides of the border. Bengalis (Bangladeshis) have become a problem even for Burmese Muslims living in Rakhine (Arakan) state, Burma. Similarly, Muslim Rohingyas are a problem in Buddhist parts of Bangladesh. These minorities are upset at their treatment by the larger society that considers them illegal aliens and displaced peoples.
Not surprisingly, they strike back when they can in what little way they can. Now army troops and soldiers will be called in for a police state solution. It seems to be the MIC's preferred answer to all fabricated and spontaneous disturbances around the world, particularly when they involve Occupy Movement activists here and "radical Muslims" abroad.
NOTE: It is not the job or intention of Wisdom Quarterly to be apologists for Buddhists, Buddhism, or any national government. Nor is it the intention of its editors to uphold the additional Mahayana precept of keeping quiet rather than criticizing the sangha (Buddhist community). In the name of fair reporting, we report material detrimental to the image and reputation of Buddhists just as we do anyone else. It is intolerable to show bias in favor of a favored ingroup while disparaging other. it is on account of such bias that deplorable secrets (as seen in the Catholic Church and its ministers as well as the US military and its leaders) have been allowed to flourish while most of the world sits on its hands in denial. The truth will out before long, and we intend to help it out sooner.
In Burma the massacre of Muslims is being carried out ruthlessly, and the world remains silent. The silence of the UN is deafening. US Secretary of State, who is busy currying favor with Burma at all costs, the world community, and the SAFMA do what?
Allegedly a genocide has already taken over 20,000 Muslims -- by murdering, burning, raping, and drowning. There has also been forced displacement of nearly 100,000 -- something triggered by a FALSE news report released by a journalist (as happened in India among the ethnic mountain minorities frightened into leaving other parts of the country).
Meanwhile, the world is silent rarely uttering the word "genocide." Many hold the Burmese government responsible for this atrocity. Islamic Bangladesh has refused to allow the poorest of Burmese-Muslim refugees (the Rohingyas) to enter. Why is Bangladesh reluctant to help them? It does not want more ethnic minorities, particularly as it deals with its tiny remaining population of indigenous Buddhists who inhabit the Chittagong, Hill Track, and Cox's Bazar areas of the country.
There is, of course, also a worldwide provocation and manipulation of Muslims ostensibly set off by an American YouTube video, which was only a trigger that ignited long simmering discontent about many other things. The problem has come to roost for ethnic Buddhists in Bangladesh, just as Burmese Buddhists have suffered for years under the dictator General Than Shwe and his junta's totalitarian regime, funded by China and largely ignored by the US, who has been pandering to China since at least the Clinton administration.
Innocents are caught in the middle. And religion is used to exploit delicate sensibilities for peoples who do not enjoy many personal freedoms, civil rights, or liberal educations. Religion becomes the focus of social, political, and economic thought and activity. The dangerous combination of religious sentiment, profound emotion, and manipulation by Western provocateurs (MIC agents), mainstream media mouthpieces, and temperamental religious leaders has created a powder keg with no easy answers.
Rohingya have been persecuted and discriminated against for decades, but few can even pronounce their name let alone know their plight. The UN describes them as one of the most persecuted minorities, yet their suffering increases. So are the world's democracies ignoring them? Guests: Justin Wintle, Brad Adams, Mohamed Nour, Dina Madani.
Ethnic cleansing of Muslims in Burma (Orwellian police state Myanmar) is being carried out by nominally "Buddhist" police state troops. Meanwhile, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi is "criminally silent" about it.
A prominent political analyst says that Burma's president's proposal to expel Rohingya Muslims from the country is an "ethnic cleansing."
"This is ethnic cleansing... the government and even this Nobel prize winner, the Lady [Aung San Suu Kyi] is so criminally silent about the problems of this minority in Myanmar," Professor Ghulam Taqi Bangash at the Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Institute of Science and Technology (SZABIST) told Press TV.
The remarks come after Burma's President Thein Sein said that Rohingya Muslims must be expelled from the country and sent to refugee camps run by the United Nations.
The government refuses to recognize nearly-one-million-strong Rohingya Muslims community, which the UN calls one of the world's most persecuted people.
Burma claims the Rohingya are not native and classify them as illegal migrants although they have lived in the country for generations. Burma's opposition National League for Democracy party (NLD) leader Aung San Suu Kyi was elected to parliament after she was released from house arrest earlier this year.
However, many people are disappointed at the way she has been avoiding the issue.
Last month at a press conference in Geneva, Suu Kyi said she "didn't know" if Rohingya Muslims were Burmese citizens.
The Stream (Al Jazeera English) "The Plight of the Rohingya"
Bangash said Washington is also criminally silent over the issue as the US tries to coax the countries in this region of Southeast Asia to stop them from having better relations with the People's Republic of China.
"Southeast Asia is becoming much more inconspicuous on the economic map for the United States of America," he added.
"They should rather strengthen the sanctions against Myanmar until this problem should be solved, but they are not doing that," Bangash added.
Burma's current government is run by military figures, which have been accused of rights abuse.
Over a dozen Muslims were killed on June 3 when a mob of ethnic Rakhines, who are mostly Buddhist, attacked a passenger bus [in retaliation for an alleged rape of a Buddhist girl] in the Rakhine state in the west of the country that borders Bangladesh [slaughtering 10 innocent Muslims simply for being Muslims].
Over the past two years, throngs of ethnic Muslims have attempted to flee [Burma to go to Bangladesh] by boats in the face of systematic oppression by the [Burmese] government.
The Buddha lived in Magadha, in a middle kingdom ruled by a benevolent king (Bimbisara) seated in a capital ringed by seven hills (Rajagriha). He preferred a lookout from a hill called Vultures Peak, so named because the shadows of the large stones there appear from a distance to be vultures.
This kingdom, or janapada (warrior caste clan territory), once included what is now Bangladesh, the eastern limits of ancient India, according to the abbot of Long Beach's Bodhi Vihara, Ven. Karunananda, Ph.D.
Long Beach ("the LBC") is quite short compared to Bangladesh's Cox's Bazar, the world's longest sandy beach, squeezed between Burma and India. But the seaside city at the southern end of the megalopolis that is Los Angeles has attracted a sizable number of Bengali Buddhist transplants. The ancient Buddhism practiced by them traces its history to the Buddha in Magadha.
The "teaching (vada) of the elders (thera)" refers to the enlightened elder disciples (theras) of the Buddha, leading disciples such as the chief nuns Khema and Uppalavanna and chief monks Sariputra and Moggallana, as well as Maha Kassapa (who organized the Buddha's teachings into a "religion" at Saptaparni Cave in the first hill near the gate of the capital) and Ananda, Maha Prajapati and Sundari Nanda, the Buddha's mother and sister.
What is the teaching the missionary wing of California Bodhi Mission works to promote? Bangladeshi Buddhists, who claim as a peoples to have originated in and around Bodhgaya (where Siddhartha became the Buddha), believe that the Awakened One taught only two things -- disappointment and the end of disappointment, suffering and nirvana.
What is disappointment? It is rebirth, old age, sickness, death; sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, and despair; to be united with the unloved, to be separated from the loved; to not get what we want or wish for; in general, identifying with the Five Groups of Existence (form, feeling, perceptions, formations, and consciousness) is disappointing.
What is nirvana? It is the "unconditioned element," the falling away of all formations, bliss unutterable -- a happiness without supports. It is blameless and visible here and now.
How?
The Buddha taught the path and the answer by encapsulating it in a tight and often misunderstood formulation called the Four Noble Truths. "Everyone thinks they know what those are, but if they really knew," the abbot explains, "they would be enlightened."
Why? "It is because fully penetrating the full meaning of these truths is enlightenment. Enlightenment is not omniscience; it is fully knowing these four things -- what is the problem, what is its cause, what is the solution, what is path/not-path leading to the solution -- at the level of liberating insight-wisdom."
Well said, sir, well said! (Sadhu, sadhu, sadhu!) How can people help your mission?
"They can donate to our cause or participate in an upcoming ceremony, the Honey Offering Full Moon Observance (September 29, 2012), treasured by Bangladeshi Buddhists. Of course, the best way is to contact the temple and offer their supportive participation. We are here to benefit Americans, to serve the US Bangladeshi community, and to unite the Sangha as one brother-and-sisterhood of support. Everyone is welcome to visit Bodhi Vihara."
AUGUST 15th marks India's independence from British oppression. Much like the United States, the "greatest experiment in democracy" (India) liberated itself from United Kingdom colonialism in 1947. Unfortunately, it meant the loss of a great deal of land ceded in the interest of the departing empire. It has kept India fighting with its neighbors (the new Pakistan and East Pakistan, now Bangladesh) ever since. Imperial UK strategists cut India up along religious lines. But ethnic strife has continued to plague the nation as well as its infamous communal violence. Tens of millions of Indian Muslims were given a homeland of sort, but 100 million Muslim remain in India. And Pakistan poses the greatest threat to its sovereignty. With the US military on former Indian land (Gandhara now Afghanistan) as it continues to prosecute the longest war of its short history, the even shorter-lived nation is determined to take sides against its own neighbors squeezing it to give up territory, Pakistan and China. Southern California is privileged to have numerous Independence Day celebrations on weekends throughout the month, particularly in LA's "Little India" (Artesia).
More troops sent to India's strife-torn northeast(AP) Clashes between members of the ethnic Bodo community and Muslim settlers in Assam state have left 42 people dead and 13 others missing, state...
India says Pakistan websites caused migrant panic (Aug. 19) The exodus followed clashes in India's Assam state in recent weeks between ethnic Bodos and Muslim settlers that killed more than 50 people and...
Safety fears restrict relief work after Myanmar riots
Reuters; Manny Mogato in Manila; writing Martin Petty; editing Andrew Heavens
Armed troops patrolled Burma's northwest city of Sittwe on Friday [June 15, 2012] as a fragile peace held in the wake of days of sectarian violence that has stoked nationalist fervor and displaced 30,000 people, with many feared dead.
Heavy rain kept many residents indoors in the Rakhine state capital as police and aid groups struggled to get food to thousands of ethnic Rakhine Buddhists and Muslim Rohingyas [next to formerly Buddhist now Islamic Bangladesh] displaced by rioting and arson that have presented a big test to Burma's post-military-dictatorship and new 15-month-old quasi-civilian government.
United Nations officials told Reuters three of their staff, two from the UNHCR refugee agency and one from the World Food Programme (WFP), all Burmese nationals, had been detained by police in the Rohingya-dominated town of Buthidaung for unknown reasons.
The WFP had provided hundreds of sacks of rice to some areas, said Aye Win, spokesman for its operations in Burma.
Dealing with anyone in the way of oil pipelines
"We will try to get to other camps as soon as we can, when it is safe and secure. We are doing as much as we can. We will go in but security is paramount," he added.
More than 20 houses were burned down late on Thursday in a village near Sittwe, residents said, adding to the 2,500 torched in the past week. But there were no reports of further deaths. More
Why is there "ethnic" trouble? Wisdom Quarterly (COMMENTARY)
Daw Suu Kyi, the new face of Burma with same dictators
It is common to stoke up ethnic strife to cover up worse crimes. What could be worse than pitting Buddhists and Muslims against one another? Dictator Than Shwe's dreams of an oil pipeline around Bangladesh and into India (then secretly China). Who is in the way? Ethnic minorities displaced by the project. Burma is a police state and has been since at least 1948 (which inspired Burmese-British writer George Orwell to title his most important work 1984).
Burma's dictator and head of the ruling junta General Than Shwe (Time.com)
As such its ruling junta has remained in power -- changing the country's name, enslaving millions, relocating the capital, imprisoning its duly elected democratic leader (Daw Aung San Suu Kyi), and killing complainers at will -- even if they are Buddhist monastics engaged in peaceful demonstrations known as the Saffron Revolution. Actress Ellen Page referred to the little known as less recognized Than Shwe as "Hitler." In response to world pressure, Burma has done what America has always done: put on a show of democracy while engaging in the same oligarchical/police state practices it was founded to oppose.
Released from custody, Suu Kyi holds little power
The US remains a colonial power of the military-industrial complex bankrolled by old European banking interests. Burma now hides behind the veneer of an elected president and even a minor minister (Daw Aung Suu Kyi).
Where have all the dictators gone? They are at home at ease in futuristic mansions of a made up city called Naypyidaw. Corporations 1, People 0.
If ethnic tribes want to stand in the way of Shwe Gas, there is going to be hell to pay. And where is America (aka "the police of the world") in all this? They are first in line to wheel and deal, as recent visits by Hillary Clinton demonstrated. We were not about to sit back and let China and India divide the spoils. Clinton only asked one thing: Pretend to respect human rights. (We'll show you how).
Than Shwe with UN's Ban Ki Moon (AFP)
So Daw Suu Kyi was given a nominal seat in government and has gone out into the world portraying the country as "reforming." It is far from reformed or reforming. It is merely becoming entrenched in a more sustainable deception. False appearances are much easier to maintain than shows of brute force, and it is especially nice when a government can do both and simply hide behind its reforms. We're not like the old Burma; we're the new progressive people's choice as shown by paid selections being called "free elections."
SHWE GAS: Corporations and governments are commonly very secretive to the public regarding routes forconstruction and there has as yet been no mentioning of an Environmental and Cultural Impact Assessment along any of these routes.
