Buddhism on the Silk Road (The Met, NYC)

Editors, MetMuseum.org; (Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History); Wisdom Quarterly  

 

Along the Silk Road (Asterix611/flickr.com)

The fifth and fourth centuries B.C. were a time of worldwide intellectual ferment. It was an age of great thinkers, such as Socrates and Plato, Confucius and Laozi.
  
In India, it was the Age of the Buddha, after whose passing a religion developed that eventually spread far beyond its homeland.

The Gupta period, from the fourth to the sixth century A.D., in northern India, sometimes referred to as a golden age, witnessed the creation of an "ideal image" of the historical Buddha.

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Along the Silk Road (Asterix611/flickr.com)

Siddhartha, the prince who was to become the Buddha, was born into the royal family of Kapilavastu, a small kingdom in the Himalayan foothills [likely in what is now Afghanistan, traditionally believed to be in modern Nepal]. 

 

His was a [beginning associated with a dream by his mother, Maya, and spoken of as a [divine conception and miraculous birth], at which sages predicted that he would become a universal monarch, either in the physical [or the spiritual realm].

  

It was the latter conquest that came to pass. Giving up the pleasures of the palace to seek the true purpose of life, Siddhartha first tried [meditation and samadhi under two yogis then] the path of severe asceticism, only to abandon [these efforts] after six years as a futile exercise [not getting him to enlightenment and the final end of all suffering].
  

Buddhism along the Silk Road at the Met, New York City, Jan. 9, 2013 (Asterix611/flickr)

  
He then sat down in yogic meditation beneath a banyan tree [pipal or "sacred fig," the Ficus religiosa, the forebear of world's oldest historically documented tree] until he achieved enlightenment. He was known henceforth as the Buddha, or the "Enlightened One."

  

He found the Middle Path, rejecting both hedonism and asceticism. Buddhism proposes a life of good thoughts, good intentions, and straight living, all with the ultimate aim of achieving nirvana, release from [all conditioned] existence. 

 

(Asterix611/flickr.com)

For most beings, nirvana lies in the distant future, because Buddhism, like other dharmas [doctrines] of India, believes in a cycle of rebirth.

 

Beings are reborn many times, each time with the opportunity to further perfect themselves or devolve. And it is their own karma -- the sum total of deeds, beneficial and harmful -- that determines the circumstances of future births. 

 

Aukana Buddha, Sri Lanka (visitserendib.com)

The Buddha spent the remaining 45 years of his life teaching a doctrine and discipline and making vast numbers of converts. When he entered final nirvana, released from all rebirth, his body was cremated as was customary in India.

The cremated relics of the Buddha were divided into several portions and placed in relic caskets that were interred in large hemispherical mounds known as stupas. Such monuments are centrally placed in Buddhist monastic complexes. They attract pilgrims from far and wide who come to experience the teaching, the monastic order, and even some small portion of the remains of the Buddha. 

 

Stupas are enclosed by a railing that provides a path for respectful circumambulation. The sacred area is entered through gateways at the four cardinal points. More

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Why do we have wisdom teeth?

Frank J. Jerome, D.D.S, Tooth Truth (New Century Press, pp. 370-371); Wisdom Quarterly

The Buddha had 40 magnificent teeth, straight and white, partly because he was born in the East, partly because they are part of the major Marks of a Great Man (KanikaBadwal).

  

Why do we have wisdom teeth? This is a question many patients ask. We have wisdom teeth for the same reason we have front teeth. 

  

Have you ever asked, "Why do we have front teeth?" Probably not, because they do not cause problems. So the question should be, "Why do wisdom teeth cause problems?"

Are they left over from caveman days when our mouths were bigger and will they eventually disappear from human beings? These are possibilities, but it is much more probably that the problem is cause by us. The truth may be found by looking at people in other countries, countries with a more natural diet than ours.

Teeth in Other Countries

Novices, Ladakh, Buddhist India (Sayid Budi)

When Dr. Weston Price toured the world in the 1930's, he found that it was the influence of Western diet that had the most to do with the improper growth of the body, including the jaws which hold the teeth.

When the jaws do not develop to their full size, they are too short to hold all 32 teeth. The last ones in are the wisdom teeth, and there is no room left.

This crowding is also seen with the eye-teeth (canine or cuspid), which may come in like tusks in people with small arches. We do not wonder if we will be losing our eye-teeth through evolution.

If you consider the full meaning of this information, you will understand this this same lace of space caused by our diet is the reason that millions of American teenagers continue to need braces year after year.

Have you ever wondered how the billions of poor people around the world get along without an orthodontist to handle all their crooked teeth? For the most part they don't need them because their teeth are not crooked. 

Having orthodontists to fix our ids is not a luxury Americans can afford because we are a rich, but because our diet causes the crowded teeth. And the more generations that are on the Western diet, the worse the problem becomes. The solution has been know for generation but the only response by the dental schools is to produce more orthodontists. (See "Braces.") [Prevention first then treatment.] More

  

Dr. Hulda Clark [Cure For All Diseases] has sparked a growing debate on the way diseases are treated. Her one-woman crusade to help people escape the archaic methods of many medical practices has take root. ...Her claim is that the body is self-healing, once we can clean up the body of toxins, bacterial invasion, poor nutrition, and parasites [which her device detects and eliminates], is echoed throughout the literature. She has joined earlier voices against the toxic effects of dental materials (p. 35).

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The Asian Tsunami (movie)

DarlowSmithson Productions Ltd. for Channel 4; Wisdom Quarterly

"Tsunami: Caught on Camera" (Part 1 of 7)

The Asian Tsunami that struck on Boxing Day 2004 has now been made into a film -- using real footage from three vantage points. Buddhist Thailand and Sri Lanka and formerly Buddhist Indonesia are all shown close up as the earthquake and waves hit. The footage was recorded by European tourists on Christmas vacation in paradise.

The deadliest tsunami in history?

• Part 3
• Part 4
• Part 5 
• Part 6 
• Part 7

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Buddhist artifacts in Maldives destroyed

OnIslam.net; Wisdom Quarterly

Few realize that the diving paradise known as the Maldives, most of which is at or close to sea level and doomed to destruction as the planet warms due to manmade and natural causes, used to be Buddhist.

  
Now some entity or agency has brought about a coup and is trying to create international outrage by destroying priceless Buddhist art and history. What kind Company or clandestine service would do such a thing? Surely not the CIA, who created the Taliban to make war for the military-industrial complex possible in Afghanistan. So we do not know who it was, but we do know it was not the CIA.

• VIDEO: Formerly Buddhist Maldives in turmoil
• Buddhism in the Maldives

The Maldives are sinking

MALE, Maldive Islands - The destruction of several historical priceless Buddhist artifacts exhibited at the Maldives National Museum has alarmed Maldivians, provoking warnings of a possible rise of Islamic extremism and Taliban-style intolerance in the holiday paradise.

"They have effectively erased all evidence of our Buddhist past," a senior museum official, who asked for anonymity, told Agence France Presse (AFP) on Sunday, February 12, at the now shuttered building in the capital Male.

 

"We lost all our 12th century statues. They were made of coral stone and limestone. They are very brittle and there is no way we can restore them," he explained.

Last Tuesday, Maldives' first democratically-elected president Mohamed Nasheed resigned following three weeks of protests that were joined by a police mutiny.

During the coup that ousted President Nasheed, scenes of violence resulted in the wanton destruction of historical treasures.

The destruction occurred when a handful of men stormed the Chinese-built museum and destroyed its display of priceless artifacts from the nation's pre-Islamic era.

The incident echoed the 2001 destruction of the Bamiyan Buddha statues in Afghanistan by the Taliban, damaging the nation's image. More 

 

Why is someone destroying Maldivian statues?

The Buddhist Blog

Similar to the [CIA-created] Taliban’s destruction of priceless Buddhist and historic artifacts in 2001, an Islamic extremist group has vandalized and destroyed precious Buddhist and Hindu statues in the Maldives. This kind of destruction is derived from extremist beliefs, which are almost always rooted in fear of anything different. Any extreme (whether liberal or conservative) is dangerous because when we believe that we alone are good, then we're more likely to justify intolerance, destruction, and killing. Destroying an ancient statue is tragic, but statues crumble with time anyway. Intolerance, however, quickly destroys happiness, lives, families, countries, and planets. More

• Muslim Maldives president quits after mutiny
• Maldivians rally for Islamic law
• Maldives slams UN on adultery penalty
• Maldives bows to protests, bans spas
• Afghanistan reclaims history piece by piece

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"Poson" at Los Angeles Buddhist Vihara

Lanka.com; Wisdom Quarterly; Los Angeles Buddhist Vihara

 

Poson full moon observance day is a festival celebrated on the Buddhist island of Sri Lanka.

It marks the  arrival of Buddhism in the 3rd century BCE. It is therefore of great historical and religious significance to the island's majority Sinhalese Buddhists, if less important to the nation's many Tamil Hindu, Indian and Maldivian Muslims, British and Portuguese Christians, and a tiny marginalized minority of indigenous aborigines, the Veddas.

 

The full moon day of June commemorates the arrival of an enlightened emissary from India, the arhat son of Emperor Asoka. Over 2,000 years ago Arhat Mahinda converted Sri Lanka's King Devanampiyatissa to Buddhism.

The center of celebrations is Mihintale, the ancient monastic complex where the royal missionary monk along with his enlightened sister gave a sermon to the island's ruler. Anuradhapura, the ancient capital, is also a place where large crowds of pilgrims converge. Mass religious observances and illuminated pageants are part of the celebrations.

For the island's Buddhists, this sacred day is second only to Vesak. Long lines of devotees dressed in white climb the many steps to the top of Mihintale stone outcropping -- a kind of Plymouth Rock (Mihinthalaya) -- first to the temple then to the pagodas (dagabas) adorned in the nearby hills. The top of the rock is where Arhat Mahinda delivered his initial discourses.
  

This area is called the cradle of Buddhism in Sri Lanka. With the establishment of a monastic order (Sangha) all the elements of a civilized society began to emerge: the art of writing, art, architecture, canals, reservoirs, song and dance forms, literature, all with royal patronage.

  

[Oh wait, all of these "civilizing" elements were here before. But the Sinhalese trace their dominant culture to the civilizing influence of the Dharma's appearance on the island; they even trace their genes back to northern and northwestern India so as to make them Buddhist-Buddhists and somewhat nationalist in character, which has been quite harmful to the other inhabitants of the island.]

Many religious activities are organized during Poson such as virtue (sila) campaigns, Bodhi tree rituals, dana-salas (freely donated food and refreshments), devotional songs, parades, and lanterns.

  
Many temple fill with Eight Precept devotees and pilgrims from all over the island to mark the event. The devout are clad in pure white -- just as in the Buddha's day -- with no adornments like make up on their way to temple. There they spend the next 24 hours actually practicing the Dharma in quiet contemplation or meditation.

   

Meanwhile, the rest of the village gathers on temple grounds after sunset to participate in less spiritual activities -- like reading sacred books, listening to saffron-clad monastics recite sutras (bhana), relate ancient stories from the Buddha's past lives (jatakas), or chant protections (parittas).

  

During the Poson Festival the selling of alcohol and animal flesh is usually prohibited, and slaughterhouses are closed. Emperor Asoka made such decrees in ancient India (Bharat) as well after becoming a Buddhist. More

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Anti-Conversion Bill in Sri Lanka.

An anti-conversion law titled, "Prevention of Forcible Conversion Bill," is being considered in Sri Lanka's parliament. It is a bill that I generally disapprove of because I believe in the freedom of religion and while I don't personally like proselytism I think it should be included in a country's freedom of religion rights. In a country, which is 70% Buddhist (Sri Lanka) I do not understand how Christianity is such a threat that it needs to basically be outlawed.

In addition, the structure of "Buddhism" itself can be yet another attachment. Without practice and mindfulness a Buddha statue is nothing but another chunk of wood or stone and temples become glorified houses. I'm not saying that such things aren't beneficial and needed but that Buddhism will evolve how it will and if it disappears in a free world then so be it.

Besides, some say that Buddha himself said that one day Buddhism will no longer be taught in this world. Even if I am the last "Buddhist" on Earth I worry not for the Dharma as it will always be reborn in one form or another either here and/or on other planets. And if not then I am confident that it will have served its purpose. I have faith that karma and change will take the course that it must.

Now. That said I do agree with a limited version of this bill if it simply bans using humanitarian aid, education and health care as a tool to force people to listen to sermons/scriptures and be converted. If these services can not be donated without stipulations then I consider that using unethical behavior. It is taking advantage of the needy to forward your religious ideology instead of giving because it's the right thing to do--period. After all my years of reading the Bible and practicing Christianity I do not believe that Jesus would condition help to proselytism or conversion. It is pure manipulation usually of those whom are vulnerable both spiritually and otherwise. It is not right for religions (whether Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Muslim, etc.) to use peoples' suffering to advance the interests of their belief system.

Also, I wonder if these Christian organizations will now stand up for the freedom of non-Christians here in America to be free of Christian influence in government such as prayer in school, nativity scenes on government property, etc. As a Buddhist I stand up for them to have the right to proselytize in America and abroad but they need to back off a bit on some of the demands that they are placing upon the American government and other secular based governments. There is no reason that religions can not exist together nor is their any reason that religious people and non-religious people can not exist together. I reject extremism on either side of the spiritual spectrum. Whether it is fundamental Christianity (or fundamentalist Buddhism) or militant atheism.

~Peace to all beings~

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