Rev. Danny Fisher
Just a Buddhist Minister Trying to Benefit Beings
Month: December, 2009
December 20, 2009
Pacific Asia Museum Awarded Full Accreditation by the American Association of Museums
Photo by Walt Mancini for SGVN.
Exciting news for the Pacific Asia Museum: the fabulous Pasadena fixture has just received full accreditation from the American Association of Museums. Congratulations and thank you for all you offer, gang!
December 19, 2009
A Gift of Dharma for 12.19.09
Today’s quote comes to us from the Dzogchen Khenpo Choga Rinpoche, courtesy of our Facebook friend Sean D. Young.
The 33rd generation lineage holder of the Dzogchen lineage and a recognized incarnation of Gedun Chopel Rinpoche, Dzogchen Khenpo Choga Rinpoche is a scholar and meditation master from Dzogchen Monastery and Dzogchen Shri Singha Monastic University in Tibet.
He received his khenpo degree from Dzogchen Singha Monastic University at age twenty-two (apparently a record at the institution), and has since founded practice and retreat centers in South and Southeast Asia, Europe, and the United States. He is also the current spiritual leader of the Dzogchen Shri Singha International organization.
His books include The Buddha Path, “a concise compendium in the form of a practice manual of the entire vast range of teachings contained within the Dzogchen Lineage of Buddhism.”
Here’s the quote (thanks again, Sean!):
You need to tell yourself four stories at the end of every day:
1. For any good things you did to help others during the day (or anytime in the past for that matter), you should sincerely rejoice.
2. For anyone who has done good things in this world think, “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” Accumulating the energy of “thank you” is the root of wealth. Even regarding someone who has done many negative things in his life, you need not delete your gratitude for the good things he did manage to accomplish. Both the energy of gratitude energy and the good things people have done in the past do not disappear.
3. For any bad things you’ve done, regret these acts for a little while, but not for an excessive amount of time. Next, promise never to do these things again. Keep in mind that simply forgetting your past negative actions is in no way equivalent to this combination of regret and commitment; just because you forget negative situations does not mean you no longer harbor any resentment.
4. For anyone who has done bad things to you or others, you should pray, thinking, “May this being be free from suffering and causes of suffering.” You should in this way cultivate compassion for those who have done wrong.
December 18, 2009
A Gift of Dharma for 12.18.09
Today’s quote is from His Eminence the 12th Tai Situ Rinpoche, Pema Tönyö Nyinje, whom I previously quoted and wrote a little bio for here. The teaching is below. It’s another in video form from him. I don’t know what it is about Rinpoche, but he seems to have a knack for communicating in video format–these teachings are always so lovely and memorable. You feel like you’re right there with him. With him in particular, the distance/barrier is felt much less acutely through the technology. It’s pretty amazing to me. Anyway, here it is:
December 18, 2009
“Global Restrictions on Religion” Report is Released by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life
“Global Restrictions on Religion”, a new report by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life, was released today. You can read the whole thing here. This is the bullet:
“Global Restrictions on Religion,” a new study by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life, finds that 64 nations — about one-third of the countries in the world — have high or very high restrictions on religion. But because some of the most restrictive countries are very populous, nearly 70% of the world’s 6.8 billion people live in countries with heavy restrictions on religion, the brunt of which often falls on religious minorities.
Some restrictions result from government actions, policies and laws. Others result from hostile acts by private individuals, organizations and social groups. The highest overall levels of restrictions are found in countries such as Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Iran, where both the government and society at large impose numerous limits on religious beliefs and practices. But government policies and social hostilities do not always move in tandem. Vietnam and China, for instance, have high government restrictions on religion but are in the moderate or low range when it comes to social hostilities. Nigeria and Bangladesh follow the opposite pattern: high in social hostilities but moderate in terms of government actions.
Among all regions, the Middle East-North Africa region has the most government and social restrictions on religion, while the Americas are the least-restrictive region on both measures. Among the world’s 25 most populous countries, Iran, Egypt, Indonesia, Pakistan and India stand out as having the most restrictions when both measures are taken into account, while Brazil, Japan, the United States, Italy, South Africa and the United Kingdom have the least.
This study examines the incidence of many specific types of government and social restrictions on religion around the world. In 75 countries (38%), for example, national or local governments limit efforts by religious groups or individuals to persuade others to join their faith. In 178 countries (90%), religious groups must register with the government for various purposes, and in 117 (59%) the registration requirements resulted in major problems for, or outright discrimination against, certain faiths.
Public tensions between religious groups were reported in the vast majority (87%) of countries in the period studied (mid-2006 through mid-2008). In 126 countries (64%), these hostilities involved physical violence. In 49 countries (25%), private individuals or groups used force or the threat of force to compel adherence to religious norms. Religion-related terrorism caused casualties in 17 countries, nearly one-in-ten (9%) worldwide.
…The study covers 198 countries and self-administering territories, representing more than 99.5% of the world’s population. In preparing this study, the Pew Forum devised a battery of measures, phrased as questions, to gauge the levels of government and social restrictions on religion in each country. To answer these questions, Pew Forum researchers combed through 16 widely cited, publicly available sources of information, including reports by the U.S. State Department, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief, the Council of the European Union, the United Kingdom’s Foreign & Commonwealth Office, Human Rights Watch, the International Crisis Group, the Hudson Institute and Amnesty International. (The complete list of sources is available in the Methodology.)
The researchers involved in this process recorded only factual reports about government actions, policies and laws, as well as specific incidents of religious violence or intolerance over the main two-year period covered by this study, from mid-2006 to mid-2008; they did not rely on the commentaries or opinions of the sources. (For a more detailed explanation of the coding and data verification procedures, see the Methodology. For the wording of the questions, see the Summary of Results.) The goal was to devise quantifiable, objective measures that could be combined into two comprehensive indexes, the Government Restrictions Index and the Social Hostilities Index. Using the current, two-year average as a baseline, future editions of the indexes will be able to chart changes and trends over time.
