Word: theravada
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...Thailand is a nation that prides itself on its Theravada Buddhist heritage. But Buddhism in Thailand is blended with a brew of Hindu, animist, Khmer, pagan and other beliefs. King Bhumibol Adulyadej, the country's 82-year-old constitutional monarch, spent time as a Buddhist monk but also retains astrologers and Brahmin priests at court, as is tradition. So it's no wonder that coup plotters, Prime Ministers and lawmakers have frequently consulted fortune-tellers before making important decisions. Performing dark rites to increase one's power and defeat your adversaries is as pervasive among the political class as bribery...
...Cambridge Buddhist Association wins best location—it is about a 5 minute walk from Cambridge Common—nicely accessible from the River or the Quad. Four different types of Buddhist traditions are practiced in the Association: Theravada (South East Asian), Thich Nhat Han (Vietnamese), Japanese tradition and Sayka (Tibetan). They don’t have a website, but they will call you back and give you times, dates and prices of meditation...
Eradicated from India through the efforts of successive invaders by the 13th century, Buddhism--or, as its practitioners knew it, the dharma--had already expanded outward in three main variations. Theravada, which came to dominate Southeast Asia, was probably closest to the original, concentrating on meditation-aided awareness. Its monastic practitioners regarded the Buddha as a great sage but no deity...
Many Burmese who hate the regime also lament their inability to change it. "We are rubbish," says a student in Mandalay. "Our tradition and our religion prevent us from getting things done," says a Rangoon intellectual. The pacific teachings of Theravada Buddhism do not, for example, allow self- immolation of the sort practiced by protesting Vietnamese monks in the 1960s...
...passive survivor's religion. The essence of Buddhist teaching is summarized in the Four Holy Truths: 1) existence is suffering; 2) suffering springs from desire; 3) this desire can be extinguished by 4) following the Buddha's path of truthful and chaste behavior. The introspective Theravada school of Buddhism is predominant on the plains of Thailand and western Kampuchea, where the faith was once centered in the fabulous Angkor Wat. In Viet Nam, whose Mayahana school permits social concern alongside withdrawal of the self, Buddhists have sometimes supported nationalist movements, but rarely actively...