Announcement

Dear Dharma friends
Sukhihontu.

We have ended the 13 parts series of  Vajrayana teaching  notes which was diligently and faithfully prepared by Margaret Ong.  We hope this little gesture of ours find resonance with friends who are seeking the spiritual path.

I will now start another series of Dharma sharing. This time, 12 letters written by Vui Kong, then a 21 year old, while waiting for his death sentence. He was arrested in 2007 with 47.27 grams (1.667 oz) of heroin. Execution is mandatory in Singapore where the crime occurred, for a person convicted of trafficking in more than 15 grams (0.53 oz) of diamorphine. He was 19 years old at the time, and thus not an adult (the age of majority in Singapore is 21 years).

Due to Vui Kong's young age, it sparked off protestations from the sympathetic populace both sides of the border (Vui Kong is a Malaysian) and the defence lawyer succeeded in getting a stay of execution. However, on 14 May 2010, the Court of Appeal of Singapore ruled that the mandatory death penalty imposed by the Misuse of Drugs Act did not infringe Article 9(1) and 12(1) of the Constitution. 

^{After the appeal failed, human rights support groups rallied around and started to campaign to have the sentence commuted. It received overwhelming support particularly from both Singaporean and Malaysian especially in view that Vui Kong was underage at the time of the crime and he seemingly was not aware that he was a 'mule' in this saga.} 

Vui Kong, 21, started writing letters on April 22, 2011 and continued in the next 12 weeks to  Yetian, a member of the Save Vui Kong Campaign, as he faces death sentence. These letters were published at Malaysiakini, a Malaysian on-line news portal.

These poignant letters have a lot of Dharma teachings and learnings. At a time where most will most probably break down psychologically and emotionally especially in his predicament, Vui Kong showed exemplary disposition. His simple letters oozes out gargantuan portions of faith, contentment, patience, equanimity, acceptance and repentance. Nearer to the end, on the twelfth letter he displayed bravery not many people can say they possess. And in spite of knowing it could be weeks or even days that the death penalty will be carried out. 

At that time, I signed the petition appealing the sentence on Vui Kong to be commuted and I saved the letters as they appeared on Malaysiakini. After the last letter, I had completely  forgotten about Vui Kong until last November I heard that his death sentence was commuted. You can imagine my joy!

I would like to share these letters with you as I somehow feel we could all learn and benefit from a real tragic-turn-celebration-of-life story in our midst. These letters will appear every Monday of the week for the next 12 weeks. 

With Metta, Kevin 

P/S: [In July 2012 the Singapore government agreed to ratify changes to the mandatory death sentence for drug trafficking and murder offenses - those currently pending sentence of execution may apply to have their sentence of execution changed to life imprisonment. On 14 November 2013, Yong's death penalty was officially lifted. He has become the first drug trafficker on death row to have his sentence reduced to life imprisonment and 15 strokes of the cane, under amendments made to the Misuse of Drugs act].

Dalai Lama on Leadership

Dalai Lama, the 76-year-old exiled spiritual leader of Tibet, always

impresses me with his thoughts. While the Dalai Lama, a Buddhist monk,

does not often speak about leadership explicitly, choosing instead to

focus on teachings about compassion and peace, his teaching has always

had a profound impact on leadership.

Here are some thoughts of Dalai Lama’s leadership tenets that I would

like to share with you this month.

Develop your View

In order to lead, you must understand the reasons for our actions. As

the Dalai Lama says, “The nature of our motivation determines the

character of our work.” In leadership, this means remaining aware of not

only your own interests but the interests of all those you lead.

Establish the Right Conduct

Setting up widely-accepted leadership principles, however, is not

enough. I see so many leaders with strong principles which they fail to

apply. In order to ensure your best intentions are consistently applied to

your leadership practices, develop a system of regular progress reports

and evaluations.

Train your Mind

The Dalai Lama describes the untrained mind like a monkey jumping

around in a tree, excited, and unable to concentrate. Buddhists counter

this cerebral activity by training their minds, or meditating. Dalai Lama

maintains that a peaceful, well-trained mind is important for increasing

quality of thought and decreasing irrational impulses. The leader has to

recognize when negative emotions like frustration, impatience, anger,

lack of self-confidence, jealousy, greed start to influence his thought

processes. These negative thoughts and emotions not only can lead to

wrong decisions but also waste mind energy. Simple relaxation

techniques such as deep breaths, relaxing muscles, and controlled

emotions might help even the busiest leaders keep composed at all

times.

Focus on Happiness

What makes you happy? What makes you unhappy? By asking two such

simple questions, a leader can discover how best to motivate his

employees, persuade his customers, and support its shareholders.

According to the Dalai Lama, happiness is the highest universal form of

motivation. We tend to forget that despite the superficial differences

between us, people are equal in their basic wish for peace and

happiness. Employee, customer, and shareholder satisfaction should take

precedent over the bottom line. But, that does not mean sacrificing

profits. Some think happiness is a tradeoff for making money, but it’s

not. A happy company is a successful company. You are more invested

in success when you care about where it comes from.

Become Interconnected

Buddhists believes in interconnectivity—the idea that people only truly

exist in relation with other people. From a Buddhist perspective,

leadership is a network for these connections. The interconnected leader

sees himself or herself as the generator of impulses into an

interconnected system to realize the purpose of the organization. When

an impulse—anything from a conversation to a presentation to a policy—

reaches another individual, it triggers an idea and sets off a chain

reaction for creative productivity. It is the leader’s job to manage and

reinvigorate impulses among colleagues. But, interconnectedness is not

only with relationships within a company but also relationships with

clients, the customers, and even competitors.

Stay Positive

Appreciate how rare and full of potential your situation is in this world,

then take joy in it, and use it to your best advantage. Every problem has

a solution, and having the right attitude from the beginning may help

you find it.

Silk Road Secrets

The Buddhist art of the Mogao Caves

By Paul Hastie, BBC, 23 October 2013

London, UK -- In a secret cave on China's ancient Silk Road, one of the world's most incredible collections of art lay locked away in darkness for 900 years.

It held a treasure trove of 50,000 Buddhist paintings and manuscripts dating back to the 5th Century.
And it would have remained hidden from the world if it had not been accidentally uncovered by a curious priest - who sold it away for a fraction of its worth.The cave is one of the 500 surviving caverns at the Mogao Caves, on the edge of the Gobi desert, at Dunhuang in western China.
"It is incomparable to anything else," says Zhang Hongxing, the V&A's Senior Curator of Chinese Collections. "The caves are like a gallery covering 1000 years of art. "It's the world's largest site of medieval Buddhist art, with sculptures and paintings, fine art and murals. They show how different styles and iconography progressed until the 14th Century."
 
Flourishing trade
Dunhuang had been a major commerce hub on the Silk Road, and a centre of religion for Buddhist monks and missionaries. It was established as an outpost during the Han Dynasty in 111BC, with the first cave temples carved around AD350.
 
By the seventh century, as Silk Road trade flourished, there were more than 1000 caves decorated with magnificent statues and murals.
 
In 1900 Taoist priest Wang Yuanlu, acting as caretaker at the site, stumbled upon a secret cavern while attempting conservation work.
 
It had been walled-up in the 11th Century and was stacked floor to ceiling with the site's oldest silk manuscripts and paintings.
 
Why they were shut away remains a mystery, but the darkness and dry desert air had allowed them to survive. It was nicknamed the 'Library Cave'.
 
Culture Show presenter Kate Bryan, who visited Dunhuang for The Art of Chinese Painting, says the place still "buzzes with the excitement of what was discovered there."
 
"It is awesome in the truest sense of the word," she says. "Two kilometres of caves painted over a 1000 year period. It's a physical art history encyclopaedia for Chinese art.
 
Changing fashions
"The Library Cave had tens of thousands of priceless manuscripts, scrolls and paintings that spanned all the great dynasties. They tell the story not just of people and politics but also of art."
 
Many of the paintings were commissioned by families for Buddhist funeral rituals, to earn themselves merit and secure the rebirth of their loved ones.
They often depicted images of the families themselves, so serve as a record of changing fashions in ancient China.
 
They also reveal the talent of the unnamed early artists, showing skilful composition and ability to capture different ages and characteristics in groups of figures. The V&A exhibition shows how they influenced Chinese Art for centuries to come.
 
Bryan, who is Head of Contemporary at the Fine Art Society, says the "spatial arrangement seems years ahead of its time" in her favourite painting at the show - Court Ladies Preparing Newly Woven Silk.
 
"It is a beautiful work dating from around 1101-25," she adds. "It is believed to be painted by Emperor Huizong - a terrible leader but a great artist and connoisseur.
 
"It is extraordinary how vivid the colours are and the level of detail are."
While statues and cave murals remain at Dunhuang, Bryan says it is "poignant" that the silk paintings were removed.
 
When Wang Yuanlu uncovered the Library Cave, he offered the contents to local officials in the hope of receiving funds for conservation work. But they declined and told the priest to seal the treasures away again.
British-Hungarian explorer Aurel Stein heard about the discovery and met with Wang in 1907. He bought around 10,000 documents and paintings for the British Museum for £130.
 
French sinologist Paul Pelliot arrived soon after. His linguistic skills allowed him to identify some of the best items in the collection, which he took away for just £90.
 
Explorers from Russia and Japan followed, and by 1910 the Chinese government ordered the remaining silks to be transferred to Beijing. Only a fifth of them remained.
 
The cave's treasures are now dispersed around the world in collections in Beijing, London, Paris and Berlin.
 
V&A Curator Zhang, originally from Jiangsu province in China, says his position leaves him ambivalent to Stein and Pelliot's actions.
China's loss
 
"As a scholar, I believe they were both brilliant archaeologists, and genuinely believed in the scholarly importance of what they were doing for Chinese history.
 
"But as a Chinese, I feel it is China's loss if we don't provide the opportunity for this material to be studied and researched. If museums can make it available it will compensate for them being removed."
 
Zhang, who studied at the Nanjing Institute of Arts, says the caves remain a "Mecca for art students" today, after much of China's traditional cultural heritage was destroyed during the Mao regime.
 
"After the Cultural Revolution young people had a desire to find out what had been hidden away and not told.
 
"Art students wanted to find what traditions had been lost. At Dunhuang the murals and statues were still there, but because the silk paintings were not, they were missing out."
 
The caverns were made a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1987. Kate Bryan says their importance to the cultural history of China cannot be overestimated.
 
"The Mogao caves reveal great insight into the connectivity of the world during the age of the Silk Road, there are influences in the paintings from India, Tibet, Mongolia," she says.
 
"A bit like a cathedral built over centuries, you can see a multitude of styles. The caves physically show the progression of art."
--------
P/S: This article was written for V&A exhibition - Masterpieces of Chinese Paintings: 700-1900 is at the V&A in London from 26 October 2013 to 19 January 2014.

Perfect Maturity

A traveller's view on Mahaparinirvan Express

A trip on Mahaparinirvan Express to explore the Buddhist trail

By Harish Nambiar, Economic Times, Dec 15, 2013

Varanasi, India -- The spectre of a kitschy image-led Hinduism pancaked in a simplistic, neo-conservative politics has been haunting India's latest election. The country's ancient history, always an enigma wrapped in undercared for manuscripts in nearly undecipherable languages, has however caught the interest of a few who grew up in Independent India and are past its median age of 25.

So, when the Railways started a train that would explore the Buddhist trail, I booked a seat. And it was with great expectation that I boarded the Mahaparinirvan Express early October from Delhi's Safdarjung station, marigold garland of the IRCTC (a corporate impostor spinoff of the Railways) in hand, while liveried bearers insisted on carrying my unwieldy backpack aboard.

The train had only 31 passengers, but 10 air-conditioned coaches were hauled throughout the week-long trip for them. It is one of the early bird gifts of the first tender and tentative public-private partnerships in newly opened economies; a nightmare for a CEO in chase of profits.

Another of those gifts was that we had an unusually qualified guide throughout the trip. RB Singh, a 74-year-old retired senior official of the tourism ministry, had an MA in Pali from the Nava Nalanda Mahavihara in 1963. The university was created to give modern, aspirational shape to the powerful symbolic meaning the ancient Nalanda had for newly Independent India.

{GAD)Bhikkhu Jagdish Kashyap, a Buddhist scholar-monk of the time who was born in Ranchi but spent time in Malaysia, Japan and Sri Lanka and mastered the Buddhist canon in Pali, headed the new institution. His tenure produced the first definitive 41-volume Devanagari version of the Pali canon. At one point, he even had to sell his house to pay his staff.

Despite such accomplishments, impoverished Bihar's inability to sufficiently fund the institution, saw the federal government move in and take charge in the early nineties, with generous goading from the Indophile, German professor Gustav Roth, who joined as its director in 1982.

Lucky With the Guide
That a motley bunch of urban tourists from Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore with a couple from Nanded (Maharashtra) and another from Vizag (Andhra Pradesh) should have a man like Singh on a guided tour was a piece of luck that would flake out in some time.

Singh was an astute, bilingual storyteller. At the very first stop — Bodh Gaya — Singh told us the history of the temple and its significance to the story of the Buddha. When he reached the Bodhi tree, he insisted that this was the new outgrowth from the same tree under which the Buddha achieved enlightenment.

Singh regaled us with the lore of how one of Ashoka's wives, upset with him embracing Buddhism, attempted to make sure that the Bodhi tree the emperor was trying to consecrate was killed. She had the tree axed down and made sure that the roots did not sprout again by pouring sugar cane juice for the ants to nibble on them.

This current Bodhi tree, Singh said, was an offshoot from one of the two saplings that miraculously survived all the assaults on the original tree. I thought it was supposedly brought from Anuradhapura in Sri Lanka, where a sapling from the original Bodhi tree was planted. When I asked Singh, he threw a friendly arm around my shoulder and faked shock. "Do not say such controversial things. That is true according to history, I am telling you the story according to Buddhism."

A Different Side to History
In front of the Mahabodhi Temple in Bodh Gaya is a single storey building with three small rooms housing Hindu deities in stone. Offerings of flowers and money had been made to these deities. Singh said this property still belonged to the Hindu mahant who had taken over the custody of the Buddhist temple and grown rich.

Jainism, followed about 200 years later by Buddhism, was the first of the two spectacularly successful reform movements against Vedic Brahmanism in ancient India. Both religions benefited from the patronage of kings and kingdoms and flourished for several centuries, before a wave of Hindu revivalism sidelined these two major world religions.

These shifts of power over the entire subcontinent must have convulsed society, seen bloodshed and great conflicts. However, an average educated Indian perception is that the transition was smooth and peaceful. I was hoping to see if some scrapes and scars still survived about these conflicts at these ancient sites.

The Bloody Truths
The spectacular ruins of Nalanda were a visual palimpsest in red bricks on raw earth, rather than paint on a two-dimensional canvas, of the various dated layers of building over the ruins of the original university.

The university, renowned for being the world's first residential university, flourished between 5 and 12 century CE, though it is said to have existed at the time of Mahavira and the Buddha. One of Buddha's foremost disciples, Sariputta, was born and achieved nirvana here. Bhaktiyar Khilji burnt books and monks to destroy the venerable institution in 1193 CE.

The Nalanda museum had even more exciting things. What caught my attention was a sculpture of a decidedly blood-thirsty divine being trampling on an ascetic. It had a helpful caption underneath that said "Heruka dancing over Mahavira, the Jain Thirthankara". Another sign that the transition of power had not been as bloodless as we imagined.

Heruka is a Mahayana Buddhist figure with close affinity to tantric excesses on blood and gore. That there was a sculpture from before the middle ages depicting a violent overthrow of the earlier faith by the new one suggested a more organic and bloody history most Indians do not know.

Sculpting New Views
Our next stop was Sarnath, the place the Buddha delivered his first sermon after enlightenment. I had visited Sarnath earlier, many years ago, so was interested more in the museum.

It was at the Sarnath Museum that another clue that suited my private search swept into view. As soon as you enter the museum, the first thing you see, occupying central pride of place, is the magnificent Ashoka pillar of the four lions that is India's national emblem. That a nearly 3,000-year-old sculpture of exquisite beauty and artistic detail, made of sandstone from Chunar in Uttar Pradesh, should retain the gleam of polished granite is jaw dropping.
The very first sculpture on the wall, to the left of the door, was striking. Only the lower torso wearing a pleated skirt with Buddha heads adorning its hem, obviously a fierce female deity in the fashion of Kali, trampled Shiva, part of the Hindu trinity, and his consort Parvati, with one foot planted firmly on each face. It was the Trailokyavijaya, as I was to learn later, a form of the fierce Vajrapani, who conquers the Lord of the three worlds, Shiva Maheswara. It is also a symbolically powerful representation of Buddhism's fight with Shaivism. And the Trailokyavijaya image was male, not female, as I had assumed.
These dead ancient images in stone sharpened my notion of how any new idea of medieval times, religious as much as temporal, would have to perforce use strategy of power to gain social traction of a scale momentous enough to establish itself.

Birth of a New Era
At Lumbini in Nepal, where Buddha was born as Prince Siddhartha of the Shakya clan, the only eye catching thing was a bas-relief of the nativity scene of the Buddha. His mother, Maya Devi, stands holding the branch of a sal tree with her right hand, delivers the divine baby, according to legend, from her right side.

However, after a Japanese-funded project began excavation at the site that has been accorded the Unesco's heritage status, this nativity scene of one of the older religions of the world is under a thick canopy.

That work has just discovered stunning archeological evidence — the remains of a wooden structure, that places the Buddha in the sixth century BCE, a clear one century ahead of the most credible claims of the Buddha's lifetime so far.

Like so many other sites, the bas-relief of Maya Devi is dated to be of the 4-5th century CE. The oldest evidence in Lumbini so far were Ashokan pillars that date 249 BCE. And, Buddhist worshipers did not frequent the place after about the 15th century CE, though Hindu worship of Maya Devi kept the place alive in the local community.

The Hidden Embers
Then we headed to Kushinagar, the place the Buddha attained parinirvana. As our group was led through the solemn stories of the Buddha's final release from earthly existence, our guide said the Buddha died of poisoned mushrooms. I seemed to have remembered that he died after a last meal of pork from Abraham Eraly's Gem In The Lotus: The Seeding of Indian Civilization.

The one man in our group, a revenue service officer from Mumbai who had read deeply about Buddhism, heard my musing aloud at the edge of a group and told me that that was Hindu propaganda. I caught Singh later and asked him what he knew of the event from his study of the Pali canon. Singh said the Pali word for the last meal the Buddha had was "sookar maddam" and while maddam meant "meal" sookar could mean both mushroom and pork. There were still enough embers hidden in the quaintly peaceful Buddhist sites that validated my own dilettantish assumption that Buddhism's spread must have operated in several zones of assault of the time. However, most such material was, well, material, and dead. It was at Sravasti, the site where the Buddha gave the maximum number of his sermons according to historical records and spent most of his rainy season retreats, at the ruins of a largish hall eyelashed with smaller chambers for scholars and monks, that Singh told us a story.

Resenting the spread of Buddhism, a group of locals hatched a conspiracy to discredit the Buddha at Sravasti and they prevailed upon a woman to tie up small wooden blocks to her tummy to suggest pregnancy and sent her over to the place the Buddha was preaching to his monks.

There the woman, known as Cinca Mavik or Sundari, accused the Buddha of "preaching serenely while I am in this state because of you", in Singh's words. The Buddha just looks at her compassionately and the wooden blocks fall from her tummy to the floor. She eventually reveals that the locals had used her against the Buddha.

In the 1960 novel The Serpent and the Rope, the esoteric Raja Rao posited that Buddhism lost out in the land of its birth because it abolished all rituals and became overly a religion of the mind. Fortunately, it has kept alive its stock of stories, the other great way that must explain the religion's return to some favour back in India.

The writer, a former journalist, now travels and writes.

Climate Change

The Earth as Witness: International Dharma Teachers’ Statement on Climate Change

Posted on January 8, 2014 by 1 earth sangha

Endorsement Sought by Dharma Teachers and Sangha Members Worldwide

Climate change is the most serious issue facing humanity today. It is already seriously impacting economies, ecosystems, and people worldwide. Left unchecked, it will cause tremendous suffering for all living beings.

A group of Dharma teachers from Africa, Europe, Asia, Canada, and the U.S. have issued a statement describing core Buddhist insights into the root causes of the climate crisis and ways to minimize its potentially tragic consequences. Over 100 leading Dharma teachers from around the globe have already signed it. The teachers seek the endorsement of the statement by other Dharma teachers as well as Sangha members worldwide. The teachers hope that by signing the statement both Dharma teachers and Sangha members will make solutions to climate disruption a central focus of their personal and collective activities. The teachers also hope that signers will use the statement to describe the Buddhist community’s perspective on the causes and solutions to climate change in interfaith dialogues, policy debates, and other public forums.


A draft version was hosted here on our site and your feedback, along with that of other teachers and sangha members, has informed the statement below. We invite your signature on the statement as well as your responses to its content and implications as well as ideas for its use within and beyond our community. Post a comment by sending an email to connect@1earthsangha.org.