Rev. Danny Fisher

Over at Shambhala Sun Space, Barry Boyce reports that “unless the Vietnamese government relaxes its position, 400 residents at a monastery following the teachings of Thích Nhất Hạnh, who are now living without electricity, water or phone service, will be forcibly evicted.” 

Thích Nhất Hạnh himself asks that you visit helpbatnha.org for “information on writing senators and members of Congress, plus other ways to support the Vietnamese monks and nuns.”

Here’s the story of all the trouble very quickly: The monastery itself is not affiliated with Nhất Hạnh’s movement, but rather the official Buddhist Church of Vietnam. Following Nhất Hạnh’s return to his homeland in 2005, the abbot at Bat Nha invited Order of Interbeing members to study and teach at the temple. The Order spent upwards of $1 million on new land and buildings at the monastery so that they might have appropriate space to do their work and not interfere with the other trainings taking place at Bat Nha. Then, presumably upset with some of Nhất Hạnh’s outspokeness on several hot-button political issues, local authorities cut off water, electricity, and telephones to the group. Then things turned violent. International concerns about religious freedom have long confronted the Vietnamese leaders, who responded to criticism about the situation at Bat Nha Monastery, saying they only want to “manage” Nhất Hạnh’s community, not “control” it.

[Image via helpbatnha.org.]

This via MahaSangha News:

The Milarepa Children’s Theater and Chorus, whose members are children and young adults of Tibetan, Asian and Western descent living in New York City. They offer traditional songs of realization as taught by the great Tibetan yogi and scholar Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso Rinpoche and the Vidyadhara Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. They performed at the 92Y on June 22/09 before an event with Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche and Daniel Goleman. The chorus was led by Paul Griffin, and guest director Harry Einhorn. Flute music played by Steve Gorn.

Photo by David H. Wells.

Our friend and past interviewee Erick D. White points us to a feature by Robert D. Kaplan in the latest issue of The Atlantic that argues, “after 26 years and 70,000 casualties,” the key to “easing the fears of [Sri Lanka's] historically beleaguered Buddhist majority while protecting its Hindu minority” is “rediscovering the blend of faiths that laid the foundation for the ancient kingdom of Kandy.” Here’s a choice snippet:

…Even if the artistic grandeur of Kandy has helped form the emotional source of Buddhist nationalism, which has proved itself as bloody as other religious nationalisms, Kandy’s religious monuments also offer a much deeper lesson: the affinity—rather than the hostility—between Buddhism and Hinduism. Buddhism arrived in Sri Lanka from India as part of the missionary activity of the great Mauryan emperor Ashoka in the third century B.C. And later eras of Indian history would witness an amalgamation of Buddhist teachings into Hinduism. A few miles from Kandy, deep in the forest amid glistening fields of tea, I saw statues of the Buddha and of Hindu gods under the same roofs, together in their dusky magnificence: in dark stone vestibules at the 14th-century temples of Gadaladeniya, Lankatilake, and Embekke. At the temple of Embekke, I lifted aside a veiling Hindu tapestry to behold the Buddha. At Lankatilake, I saw the Buddha surrounded on all four sides by devales (shrines) devoted to the deities Upulvan, Saman, Vibhisana, and Skanda—of mixed Hindu, Buddhist, and Persian origin. At the Buddhist shrine of Gadaladeniya, I saw stone carvings based on the style of the Hindu empire of Vijayanagar in Andhra Pradesh, in southern India. Each of these temples “reflects the fusion of Buddhism and Hinduism,” writes SinhaRaja Tammita-Delgoda in Eloquence in Stone: The Lithic Saga of Sri Lanka (2008).

In fact, Wickrama, the Buddhist king who was deposed by the British, became the last in a dynasty, the Nayakkars, that was South Indian and Hindu in origin; even as its members patronized Theravada Buddhism, they sought Hindu brides for their male Buddhist heirs. The British, by ending this dynasty and thus breaking the link between Buddhism and Hinduism, helped set the stage for the polarization of politics in the postcolonial era. The truth was that Theravada Buddhism, so concentrated on ethics and the release from worldly existence, was too austere for the Kandyan peasantry, who were drawn to the color and magic of the Hindu pantheon. Kandy and its forests are a monument not only to Buddhism, but to Hinduism as well. The historical and aesthetic legacy of Sri Lanka that long predates modern statehood is, in the final analysis, deeply syncretic. Only when Sri Lanka’s political leadership recognizes that legacy will communal peace be at hand—and with it the arrival of globalization and chain hotels, and the end of Kandy’s quaintness.

Read the whole piece here.