Rev. Danny Fisher

Just a Buddhist Minister Trying to Benefit Beings
March 4, 2009

AFP: Thailand’s AIDS Temple Offers Life Lessons in Death

The Agence France-Presse reports on Thailand’s Wat Phra Baht Nam Phu, which is located in the country’s central Lopburi Province. The temple functions as a Theravāda Buddhist monastery, AIDS hospice, and education center. It currently serves about 120 resident and 300 non-resident patients. As the AFP notes in their article:

    [Wat Phra Baht Nam Phu was] founded 17 years ago by a monk to care for those living with a disease that is still considered taboo in Thailand.

    “My family, my dad, my mum – nobody knows I came here. I just told them that I went to work. I don’t want to tell them. I feel they cannot take it,” [one patient] told AFP.

    “This place is the last place. Everybody knows it’s their last but they are strong, they make their own happiness. All the time we laugh, we cannot think too much,” she said.

    The temple, 50 miles (80 kilometres) from Bangkok, has cared for more than 10,000 people – still a small proportion of the estimated 610,000 people living with HIV in Thailand, according to UN figures.

I’ve blogged previously about Wat Phra Baht Nam Phu, and you can read those posts here.

1 comment
March 4, 2009

Tibet News (3.3.09)

[This post has been updated as of 12:50 a.m. EST on 3.4.09.]

Extra! Extra! Read all about Tibet today:

  • The Agence France-Presse reports that China is “open to new talks with the Dalai Lama over Tibet but repeated demands for the exiled spiritual leader to renounce ‘separatist’ activities, which he already denies.”
  • The BBC reports that Chinese authorities deny that the Tibetan monk who immolated himself during the Tibetan New Year last week was shot by police. And strangely, while confirming that the monk immolated himself, the government says that there were no Tibetan protests in the Sichuan Province of the southwestern China.
  • And then, trying another tact entirely, the Chinese government said the protests by Tibetans were actually “celebrations,” according to Reuters.
  • Via Barbara O’Brien over at Barbara’s Buddhism Blog: Rebecca Novick writes about Han Chinese journalist Zhu Rui, “Tibet’s unlikely defender,” for The Huffington Post.
  • Tibet Custom reports that the Tibet Film Festival 2009 will kick off tomorrow in London.