Rev. Danny Fisher

Here are some recent news items and opinion pieces about Tibet:

Religion & Ethics Newsweekly did a great feature recently on “Seminaries and Sex.” Though they don’t address the training that happens in seminaries for those not affiliated with the Judeo-Christian religious traditions, there’s a lot of food for thought. Buddhist ministers and chaplains, take note!

“My favorite poet was Aeschylus. He once wrote: ‘Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.’

“What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black.

“So I ask you tonight to return home, to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King, yeah that’s true, but more importantly to say a prayer for our own country, which all of us love–a prayer for understanding and that compassion of which I spoke. We can do well in this country. We will have difficult times. We’ve had difficult times in the past. And we will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; and it’s not the end of disorder.

“But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings that abide in our land.

“Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.

“Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people.”

- Robert F. Kennedy on the evening of April 4th, 1968

Twenty-two years ago today, the Vidyadhara, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, died. Those of us who practice Buddhism in the United States have benefited enormously from his work and all he left behind for us. As a graduate of Naropa University, the educational institution he founded, I feel especially grateful to him every day for gifting this world with a place so hugely beneficial.

Over at elephant, our pal Waylon Lewis remembers Rinpoche with a poem by Allen Ginsberg. Give it a read.

“Night falls on Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon.” Photo by the Agence France-Presse.
Here are today’s stories and pieces of note about Burma: