Fortunate Indeed…
“If a man can find a suitable and understanding wife and a woman can find a suitable and understanding husband, both are fortunate indeed.”
Rev. Danny Fisher
Just a Buddhist Minister Trying to Benefit Beings
Month: August, 2010
August 27, 2010
A Gift of Dharma for 8.27.10
Today’s quote is yet another from His Holiness the Dalai Lama, whom I first quoted and wrote a short biography for in this post. This is it–courtesy of my Insight from the Dalai Lama Desk Calendar:
Although meditation can sometimes mean sitting in a particular posture and stilling the mind, it can also include continuously familiarizing ourselves with positive thoughts. This is where we regularly read and recite the texts of scriptures and prayers.
August 27, 2010
U.S. Government Encourages Substantive Talks On Tibet
(L-R) His Holiness the Dalai Lama and President Barack Obama at the White House.
This via the Unrepresented Peoples and Nations Organization (via The Central Tibetan Administration):
The US State Department has submitted its annual report on Tibet negotiations to the Congress, encouraging substantive dialogue between His Holiness the Dalai Lama or his representatives and the Chinese government to resolve long-standing issues.
The 2009-2010 report outlined the ‘US Policy on Tibet’ says, “Steps taken by the President and the Secretary of State to encourage the government of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to enter into a dialogue with Dalai Lama or his representatives leading to a negotiated agreement on Tibet” and “Status of discussions between the PRC and the Dalai Lama’s representatives”.
“The US government believes that the Dalai Lama can be a constructive partner for China as it deals with the difficult challenge of continuing tensions in Tibetan areas. His views are widely reflected within Tibetan society, and he commands the respect of the vast majority of Tibetans. His consistent advocacy on non-violence is an important principle for making progress toward a lasting solution,” the report noted.
“China’s engagement with the Dalai Lama or his representatives to resolve problems facing Tibetans is in the interests of both the Chinese government and the Tibetan people. Failure to address these problems will lead to greater tensions inside China and will be an impediment to China’s social and economic development.”
The US government reiterated its call for China to respect the unique religious, linguistic, and cultural heritage of the Tibetan people and their human rights, and civil liberties.
The full report can be found here.
August 26, 2010
A Gift of Dharma for 8.26.10
Today’s quote is from Utah State University’s wonderful Charles Prebish, author of more than twenty books including the absolutely essential, must-reads Luminous Passage: The Practice and Study of Buddhism in America and Buddhist Monastic Discipline: The Sanskrit Prātimoksạ Sūtras of the Mahāsāmg̣hikas and Mūlasarvāstivādins. He is also co-founder of the following: The Journal of Buddhist Ethics, the Buddhism Section of the American Academy of Religion, and Routledge’s “Critical Studies in Buddhism” series. In addition, he was very deservedly honored with the “festschrift” Buddhist Studies from India to America: Essays in Honor of Charles S. Prebish in 2005, which acknowledges the tremendous debt our field owes him for all of his efforts. This is it:
Over the thirty-five years that I’ve been investigating Buddhism in North America, both as a practitioner and a scholar, I’ve seen the landscape change dramatically. In the seventies, the groups were almost completely exclusive…and continued that way on into the eighties, at which point people studying American Buddhism argued heatedly in the literature about how to classify the many kinds of groups of people who were coming together to practice various kinds of Buddhism. Maybe some of the distinctions we are talking about between different types of people who practice the dharma may be starting to dissolve in a way that could be very efficacious for the evolution of a genuinely American Buddhism, one that is inclusive of all types of Buddhism and all types of people practicing Buddhism.
