Word: buddhism
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...slave-labor camps. Even the wounded were prodded at gunpoint from hospital beds ?and left to die along the roadside if they were too weak to walk. At the camps, Cambodians of all ages were forced to work from dawn until after dusk planting rice. Families were separated, Buddhism abolished as the state religion and virtually every trapping of civilization disappeared: postal services, telephones, currency, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly...
...monks, reigned as the nobility, anyone was free at any time to become a lama. The monasteries provided spirtual education and organized the administrative aspects of government, while the rest of the Tibetans lived mostly in villages, owned their own means of lievelihood, and above all, practiced Tibetan Buddhism...
...centuries the Dalai Lama was the god-king of Tibet, spiritual and temporal ruler of an enigmatic Asain civilization hidden among the Himalayas. Today the Dalai Lama remains a spiritual leader for millions of followers of Tibetan Buddhism across the world. But since Communist China took over Tibet twenty years ago, he has become a controversial political figure as well...
...Buddhism arrived in Tibet during the 7th century A.D. Over the following centuries it merged with many of the shamanistic practices of the native Bon religion to become a somewhat more mystical brand of Buddhism than that practiced in either India or China. A combination of the Theravada, Tantric, and Mahayana achools, modern Tibetan Buddhism blends the idea of seeking personal liberation from the material world through spiritual enlightenment and "magical" techniques with the supreme importance of helping others along the path toward enlightenment in this world...
...monasteries are gone, the land belongs to China, and the Tibetans have either been killed or assimilated. And yet, while China may have vanquished the country of Tibet, it cannot kill the Tibetan spirit. Hundreds of thousands of Tibetans throughout the world, as well as adherents of Tibetan Buddhism of all nationalities, still recognize the Dalai Lama as their leader. And many non-Tibetan Buddhists bow down before him as well. He is, perhaps, the world's most powerful living representative of the Asian religious ideal...