Word: buddhistically
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...more jarring, then, that upon arriving in New York City last Thursday to start a 16-day American tour, the icon of enlightened harmony was met by demonstrators. And not just any protesters, but saffron- and maroon-robed Tibetan Buddhist monks and nuns hefting a sign that read DALAI LAMA, PLEASE GIVE RELIGIOUS FREEDOM and accusing him of suppressing devotions to a deity known as Dorje Shugden. The pickets thus introduced a startled public to a long-simmering drama featuring charges and countercharges of everything from sacrilege to bullying to murder, most of it allegedly done by holy...
...toward Shugden is debated. Some cite the influence of the state oracle, a deity who speaks to Tibetan leaders through a monk in a trance state. Less exotically, the Shugdenites' purism hinders the High Lama's attempts to unify the Tibetan diaspora by reducing differences among its four main Buddhist schools. The Dalai Lama told TIME that he was worried about people's seeking "external help" from a protector spirit while neglecting Buddha's teaching of compassion and wisdom: "Some people worship toward [Shugden] almost equal with the Buddha. That's a disgrace...
American Tibetan-style Buddhists, however, will have to digest the occultism, interschool feuding and occasional violence that have long marked the culture they thought was their model. Donald S. Lopez Jr., a professor of Buddhist and Tibetan studies and author of an important new book, Prisoners of ShangriLa: Tibetan Buddhism and the West, says the fracas will help Americans realize they "have a bowdlerized version of Tibetan Buddhism." Editor Tworkov goes further. "This allows us as Westerners to ask, How do we bring this tradition into our society and our lives, and what is best left behind in Tibet...
...Zero." In the name of a bizarre blend of peasant romanticism and radical Maoism, the Khmer Rouge conducted a reign of terror intended to give birth to an agrarian utopia. At the point of their guns, they emptied Cambodia's cities, abolished money and markets, shut down schools and Buddhist monasteries and forced the entire country to wear black pajamas as a sign of "instant communism." Inspired by China's Cultural Revolution, Pol Pot carried its practices to the extreme. Anyone who questioned the system, anyone who spoke a foreign language, anyone who wore glasses, was executed. Thousands upon thousands...
...scene is irresistible: smiling children in colorful clothes running and playing while behind them, green rice paddies stretch to distant mountains illuminated by a splash of sunshine off the gilded dome of a Buddhist temple. It is hard to imagine how this scene could be the latest weapon of a despotic military regime which continues to rule the Southeast Asian nation of Burma. But the scene is as dangerous as it is irresistible...