Word: buddhism
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...Silk Road that the project takes its name from refers to an ancient trade route, which flourished around the first century B.C. The Silk Road was an important nexus of cultural exchange—Buddhism was carried into China through travellers on the road, while lutes from Persia were brought to Japan and Chinese gongs to Europe...
...beginning of the 3rd century A.D. until the Tang emperors solidified control in 589, China was both politically and culturally a very messy place. Confederations of mounted nomads from the steppes were ransacking China's northern flank while to the South, Chinese aristocrats tangled with one another. Buddhism was seeping in from India and Islam from Central Asia and the Middle East. But rather than shun this cultural commotion, many Chinese came to welcome it?after all, the interlopers brought along some really cool stuff. Local artisans copied and reinterpreted foreign objects, and wealthy Chinese connoisseurs were entombed with their...
...looking dern and being it are entirely different things. Clues to Thailand's recent rural past are everywhere?witness motorcycle-taxi drivers in Bangkok sewing fishing nets as they wait for their next fare. This is still very much a society in transition, a place where the National Buddhism Office in 2003 felt obliged to warn monks not to use mobile phones in public. Very Thai is a compendium of fast-disappearing folklore: fortune-tellers who divine omens from rat-bitten clothes; apothecaries who make herbal aphrodisiacs so strong that they "could make a monk leap over the temple wall...
...lies in this inner freedom rather than the freedom to acquire and consume. Happiness is determined by one's state of mind rather than by external events. It is not subject to time and decay, or dependent on the acquisition of things and people. Today, it is what recommends Buddhism to so many people living in societies built around the endless stimulation and satisfaction of individual desires, but which seem to bewilder and oppress people as much as or more than the simpler world to which the Buddha offered his unique therapy...
...Nhat Hanh, with the serene attitude of a Zen master, says he's not worried about being used as a propaganda tool. "That may be possible," he allows. "But my thinking is not conditioned by these things." His goal, he says, is to allay government concerns that independent Buddhism is a threat. "In order for freedom to be possible," he says, "we should help remove fear, misunderstanding and discrimination." Dispelling decades of suspicion may be a quite a challenge, even for a Zen master...