Word: buddhists
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...what are they selling? Burma is the Land of the Golden Pagodas, where every man is expected to serve in a Buddhist monastery twice in his life, as novice and ordained monk. One of Asia's great temple cities, 800-year-old Pagan (see Detour), lies alongside the great Irrawaddy River in the central west. Upriver is the cultural capital Mandalay, in the east stunning Inle Lake offers towns on stilts and floating island farms, and peerless beaches fringe the Bay of Bengal and countless Andaman Sea islands...
...religion issue is stirring up trouble in Washington, it's nothing compared with what's going on at home. By most accounts, Vietnam is in the midst of a multi-faith religious revival. Buddhist festivals are common nationwide. And Catholics take their own annual pilgrimage to a site where the Virgin Mary is said to have appeared. Last year, 200,000 of Vietnam's five million Catholics attended. Like China, Vietnam tolerates religious devotion in churches that are under effective Communist Party administration, but the government appears anxious about the rise of renegade sects. The advocacy group Freedom House recently...
...that could topple the party's monopoly on power. Hanoi has thus appointed Vietnam's Catholic bishops since 1975, annoying the Vatican, which recently elevated an exiled Vietnamese bishop to cardinal. There are dissident priests in Vietnam, like Father Ly, but more troublesome are followers of the outlawed Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam, which won't allow state advisers. "The Communist Party considers churches to be another arm of the state," Abuza says. "Any deviance is dealt with harshly...
...Meanwhile, aid workers say over a million Afghans are now at risk of starvation caused by years of war, drought and their government's ineptitude. To many, losing a part of their heritage in Bamiyan?and at the other Buddhist sites in Jalalabad, Ghazni and Kandahar?is only one of many tragedies inflicted on them by 20 years of ceaseless turmoil...
...Some may go to Shantideva for consolation. It was in the eighth century, around the time that the iconoclastic synod gathered, that the Buddhist master composed the "Bodhisattvacharyavatara" or "The Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life," a classic of Mahayana Buddhism...