Thich Nhat Hahn named Pacem in Terris winner

By Deirdre Baker, QC Times, October 23, 2015

Thich Nhat Hanh, a Buddhist monk from Vietnam, is the 2015 Pacem in Terris Peace and Freedom Award winner, presented by the Diocese of Davenport.

California, USA -- A monk and spiritual leader of Buddhists from Vietnam - who may be compared to the Dalai Lama of Tibet - is this year's recipient of the Pacem in Terris Peace and Freedom Award, made by the Diocese of Davenport.

Thich Nhat Hanh, 89, suffered a severe stroke a year ago and is recovering in California. Bishop Martin Amos of the Diocese of Davenport will meet on Oct. 30 in California with a representative of Nhat Hanh and 120 Vietnamese monastics. They will accept the honor on their leader's behalf.

Nhat Hanh had a friendship with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., a previous Pacem in Terris award winner.
Amos will be accompanied by Katie Kiley, Davenport. Kiley proposed Nhat Hanh for the peace award and has championed the monk's life work for the recognition.

Britain's most dangerous prisoners to get meditation lessons

Robert Booth, the Guardian Monday 19 October 2015

Prison staff are to teach meditation to Britain’s most dangerous criminals in an attempt to aid their rehabilitation and quell their violent impulses.

About 60 of the most violent men held in segregation units in the country’s eight highest-security prisons will have access to one-on-one training by psychologists and prison officers, the Guardian has learned.

A prisoner in HMP Wakefield’s close supervision centre (CSC), where the armed robber and hostage taker Charles Bronson is being held, is the first to undertake a mindfulness-based stress reduction course, derived from a 2,400-year-old Buddhist meditation tradition.

Leading Buddhists call for agreement on climate change

Fifteen Buddhist leaders from around the world, including the Dalai Lama, signed statement on climate change, ahead of the 21st United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris at the end of November. – Reuters pic, October 30, 2015.Top Buddhist figures, including the Dalai Lama, have called on world leaders to axe fossil fuels and tackle global warming at climate talks in Paris starting next month.

Fifteen Buddhist leaders from around the world signed the statement, saying that "our survival and that of other species is at stake".

"Together, humanity must act on the root causes of this environmental crisis, which is driven by our use of fossil fuels, unsustainable consumption patterns, lack of awareness, and lack of concern about the consequences of our actions," it said yesterday.

The urgently worded statement comes ahead of the 21st United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris, from November 30.

Cancer patient's tumours shrink on vegan diet and Buddhist meditation

Mark Sharp PUBLISHED : Thursday, 01 October, 2015

Free treatment at temple in Vietnam has given a stage-four 
liver cancer patient - one whose cancer can spread rapidly - 
a good chance of making a full recovery, as son-in-law will 
tell a Hong Kong audience this month.

• 

Cancer patient Nguyen Bao An (second from right) with medical staff and volunteers.

Global spending on cancer treatment crossed the US$100 billion threshold for the first time last year, which was cause for celebration among pharmaceuticals companies. It was hardly good news for cancer sufferers though, as about eight million people still die from the disease every year, the World Health Organisation says.

In December, with the dollar figure close to its new milestone, Vietnamese retiree Nguyen Bao An was diagnosed with stage-four liver cancer and given three months to live. Almost 10 months after his fateful visit to the doctor, however, the 64-year-old former driver's health has improved considerably after receiving traditional treatment - absolutely free - at a Buddhist temple and clinic in rural Vietnam. The apparent cure has been traditional Vietnamese medicines, a vegan diet, and spiritual teachings to soothe his mind, says Hongkonger Paul Tarrant, Nguyen's son-in-law.

Nguyen's tumours have reduced in size to the point where he has a good chance of making a full recovery, says Tarrant, who, with his wife and two daughters, is a Buddhist.

Conversations with Aung San Suu Kyi

BY ALAN CLEMENTS| SEPTEMBER 1, 1997

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Over the course of nine month—from October, 1995 to June, 1996—I had an exceptional series of conversations with a unique woman and, currently, the world’s most famous political dissident. Burma’s Aung San Suu Kyi is, in the words of Vaclav Havel, one of the outstanding examples of the power of the powerless.

Aung San Suu Kyi told me her own story in many conversations at her home in Rangoon. The full record of our dialogue is presented in The Voice of Hope, from Seven Stories Press. It was a journey into the soul of the struggle for freedom in this southeast Asian nation of 45 million people, many of whom, at this very moment, may be risking their lives to win the right to choose their destiny.

After having spent some eight years as a monk in a Rangoon monastery, I returned to Burma in October 1995 never having met or spoken to Aung San Suu Kyi. Yet she was not unknown to me. I had written and spoken extensively on political developments in Burma, and from everything I had learned, I was fascinated by Aung San Suu Kyi, as were so many others. She offered me, as she does to all, a great vision that places self-respect, human dignity, compassion and love above material considerations. Placed under house arrest, separated from her family for years at a time, she kept silent, and so grew into a living legend. Finally, once again speaking defiantly and acting boldly to unlock the prison doors of the SLORC military dictatorship, she will not be stopped.

This is the Aung San Suu Kyi that I came to know—a dynamic woman with an unshakable conviction, inseparable from her principles and sustained by a sense of justice and duty. She abhors hypocrisy, while admitting her own shortcomings. Her compassion is tangible. The one quality that I feel best defines her is sincerity, at the core of which is her conviction in self-improvement. Aung San Suu Kyi is a seeker, one who makes her life a vehicle for an awakening to deeper and deeper truths.

She wears her spirituality quietly, unpretentiously, and with subtlety. But this casualness makes it all the more delightful. She laughs freely and easily. Her voice is harmonious and sweet; her words are so simple at times as to take you by surprise, yet spoken without equivocation. She is straight and direct.

Does she have faults? She would be the first to admit having some. Was I satisfied with my conversations with her? Ultimately I wanted more than she was willing to give. Aung San Suu Kyi is a fiercely private woman, secret about her personal life and any aspect of her inner world that she deems private. I found her to be like a sealed vault in some areas and an open universe in others. Aung San Suu Kyi is her own person in every sense and it was this aspect of our time together that I most appreciated: a woman enjoying her sovereignty and happiness while fighting for the independence of others.

Aung San Suu Kyi’s party wins apparent landslide in Burmese election

BY HEATHER WARDLE AND SAM LITTLEFAIR WALLACE

NOVEMBER 11, 2015

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"Remise du Prix Sakharov à Aung San Suu Kyi Strasbourg 22 octobre 2013-04" by Claude TRUONG-NGOC. Via Wikimedia Commons.

Almost 20 years ago, in the Shambhala Sun, Alan Clements wrote of Aung San Suu Kyi and her campaign for democracy, “she will not be stopped.” Now, Aung San Suu Kyi’s political party, the National League For Democracy (NLD), has reportedly swept the polls in the Burmese election. While the results have not yet been officially announced, both Aung San Suu Kyi and incumbent President Thein Sein have declared the NLD the winners.

This is the second time Suu Kyi’s party has won a general election. The first time, in 1990, the results were nullified and Suu Kyi was placed under house arrest. She received the Nobel Peace Prize the following year for her nonviolent campaign for democracy.

Mindfulness at risk of being 'turned into a free market commodity'

Harriet Sherwood, The GuardianWednesday 28 October 2015

The mindfulness movement is in danger of being turned into a commodity, “a product to be bought and sold on the free market”, a Buddhist Society conference was told.

“People are becoming professionally mindful,” Steven Stanley, a social psychologist at Cardiff University, told an audience of Buddhists and secular mindfulness practitioners on Wednesday.

It was possible to make a living from mindfulness, with growing opportunities for research, teaching and speaking, he said, adding that it is becoming an “increasingly professionalised domain” with a tendency towards standardised instruction.

PRAY FOR PARIS. PRAY FOR PEACE.

May suffering ones be suffering free, may the fear-struck fearless be;
May grieving ones shed all grief, may all beings find peace & relief.
Send love when we see hatred,
forgiveness when we see resentment,
strength when we see weakness,
tranquility when we see chaos,
peace when we see hostility,
courage when we see fear,
hope when we see despair,
comfort when we see pain,
kindness when we see cruelty,
compassion when we see suffering.
May All Beings Be Well, Peaceful, Comfortable, & Happy.

From ~ Pattakamma sutta (AN 4:61)

I’ve enjoyed wealth,
supported my dependents,
and overcome adversities.

I have given an uplifting offering
and performed the five oblations.

I have served the virtuous monks,
the self-controlled celibate ones.

I have achieved whatever purpose
a wise person, dwelling at home,
might have in desiring wealth;
what I have done brings me no regret.

Recollecting this, a mortal
remains firm in the noble Dhamma.
They praise him here in this life,
and after death he rejoices in heaven.