Word: buddhists
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Still, there's no better guide to Angkor Thom than Zhou's text, which breathes life into the mute, inanimate temples - unlike most of the Angkor-related books hawked in the tatty gateway tourist town of Siem Reap. Those are mostly bogged down with encyclopedic elucidations of Hindu and Buddhist iconography, with which Zhou hardly bothers. The Bayon, with its weird smiling heads, widely considered to be hybrids of the bodhisattva Avalokitesvara's face and that of the Bayon's famous Buddhist builder, Jayavarman VII, is for Zhou simply a "gold tower." The few times he does play the amateur...
...abbot didn't bother to lower his voice. Around us were sitting half a dozen local Buddhist worshippers, including one man whose aggressive curiosity about my presence made him a likely informant for the repressive Burmese junta. No matter, the abbot had no time for fear. "This is a very famous monastery," he said, as I, the first foreign visitor in many months, nodded. "Important people have come here: Nehru, Indira Gandhi and, of course, the Lady...
Thailand markets itself as a Buddhist kingdom, all golden spires and saffron-robed monks. But 80% of the country's southern tip is Muslim, peopled by descendants of a former Malay sultanate that was annexed by what was then known as Siam in 1902. Over the past five years, a steady stream of bombings, shootings, beheadings and other terror attacks in the country's deep south have claimed roughly 3,500 lives, both Muslim and Buddhist. Most of the killings have been blamed on separatist Muslim insurgents, while others are thought to be the work of Buddhist vigilantes...
...Unlike with many other Muslim terror groups, the insurgents in Thailand's deep south don't tend to claim responsibility for their actions, nor have they publicly stated the reasons for their violent handiwork. Nevertheless, there's no doubt that Muslims in largely Buddhist Thailand have faced decades of prejudice, even on an official level. In a particularly tragic incident in 2004, hundreds of Muslim protesters in the village of Tak Bai were rounded up by security forces, stuffed like sardines into trucks and left to roast in the heat during a drive to an army detention center in Pattani...
...Buddhist, the only thing we can do is pray for them," the Dalai Lama said to a group of reporters following him to Siaolin. This week, the Tibetan spiritual leader has come to Taiwan to pray and console. Unlike his first two visits in 1997 and 2001, when he met with incumbent presidents Lee Teng-hui and Chen Shui-bian, both advocates of independence for the island, he won't be meeting or even crossing paths with President Ma Ying-jeou, who has been drawing Taiwan closer to China. (See pictures from the Dalai Lama's 60 years of leading...