Word: sutras
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...core of the Soka Gakkai practice is the chanting of the phrase nam myoho renge kyo - "I devote myself to the mystic law of the Lotus Sutra" - but it is otherwise stripped of mysticism or ascetic self-denial. It teaches a mix of personal affirmation, positive thinking, and the basic Buddhist principles of peace and non-violence. Saurabh Popli, a lanky, 34-year-old architect, says he found in Soka Gakkai "a philosophy that can help us navigate these incredibly complex lives that we're living." He adds, "It doesn't require me to live in the mountains...
...Surfer Sutra, Lost...
...country that gave the world the Kama Sutra be so prudish? It's a longstanding cliché to note that India has produced both the world's most famous guide to love and erotic pleasure and some of the most conservative social rules this side of Saudi Arabia on such questions as kissing in public. That paradox was on display once again this week in the firestorm that swept India following a seemingly innocuous - and obviously staged - celebrity kiss on the cheek at an AIDS-awareness event...
...were the protests generated by real indignation, or were they just a ploy by the BJP and other nationalist parties to bolster their support? Sudhir Kakar, who has written a novel based on the Kama Sutra and one of dozens of new translations of the ancient text, says the answer is both. "The people who protest want the masses to be offended by [the kiss]," says Kakar, a psychoanalyst and a former senior fellow at the Center for Study of World Religions at Harvard. "They want people not to go down the road towards erotic freedom. There's a struggle...
That's a pretty good description of Ten Days in the Hills (Knopf; 445 pages), a leisurely stretch of talking and rutting that takes its structure from The Decameron and a good part of its spirit from The Kama Sutra. Let's start with The Decameron. In Boccaccio's 14th century compendium of tales, 10 people depart Florence, where the Black Death is raging, for two weeks of food, drink and storytelling in the Tuscan countryside. In Smiley's update, the Iraq war stands in for the plague. Los Angeles, the silkier parts, plays Tuscany. As the war begins...