Word: buddha
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Buddha proclaimed the same truth-without the benefit of modern methods for torturing laboratory animals -more than 2,500 years...
Buddhism was one of the first institutions affected when pro-Western governments in Cambodia, Laos and South Viet Nam were replaced five years ago by Communist regimes. In Viet Nam, bonzes managed to keep the pagodas open by strategically placing busts of Ho Chi Minh opposite altars crowded with Buddha images. In the mountainous kingdom of Laos, the new Communist rulers were less tolerant. Monks in Luang Prabang were lucky to escape with re-education in "seminar camps." Many others who had become wealthy by selling protective amulets to hill-tribe animists had their magic severely tested by Pathet...
Buddhism, however, is a passive survivor's religion. The essence of Buddhist teaching is summarized in the Four Holy Truths: 1) existence is suffering; 2) suffering springs from desire; 3) this desire can be extinguished by 4) following the Buddha's path of truthful and chaste behavior. The introspective Theravada school of Buddhism is predominant on the plains of Thailand and western Kampuchea, where the faith was once centered in the fabulous Angkor Wat. In Viet Nam, whose Mayahana school permits social concern alongside withdrawal of the self, Buddhists have sometimes supported nationalist movements, but rarely actively...
...neither dogma nor Pope, and lacks both the promise of immortality and the threat implied in sin, Buddhism is often dismissed as a weak religion. In reality it offers one of the few elements of cohesion in the ethnographic jigsaw that is Southeast Asia. On the plains, the Buddha's concepts of the "flood" (travail in the material world) and "further shore" (the search for nirvana) are apt metaphors for peasant lives constantly subjected to natural disasters. In mountain societies, which are often driven by a lust for Lebensraum, Buddhism's "middle way" tempers excesses...
...money rebuilding temples. For now, Kampuchea's impoverished peasants seem prepared to accept the financial burden of maintaining Buddhism by themselves. The 100 families in the tiny hamlet of Damrak Ampil, 12½ miles west of Phnom-Penh, recently contributed enough money to cast a new bronze Buddha and begin restoring their roofless temple. "Lord Buddha sustained us during our darkest hours," explains Village Committeeman Chea Non. "Our village is poor, but our faith is strong...