Buddhism: in the news

I hope to start a regular (perhaps weekly) posting on Buddhism in the news; so here goes…

One of my bookmarked websites is Google News, which I’ve customized to exclude the ‘Entertainment’ and ‘Sports’ sections and include ‘Buddhism.’ I still get some Entertainment news in there, things like ‘Jennifer Aniston embraces Buddhism’ [can’t find the link now] or ‘Sharon Stone Meets the Dalai Lama‘ and Sporting news like ‘Tibetan Monks support Italy in World Cup’ [no link]… But for the most part I’m reading about current events in South Asia along with the mostly mundane happenings of the Western Buddhist world.

Well, this week is no great exception, an honored nun, a Christian (sort of) becoming a Buddhist,

Buddhist nun honored for life’s work: about the Venerable Yifa, who at the tender age of 47 has already created a long list of accomplishments including Ph.D. from Yale, the founding of an interfaith community, and the presidency of America’s second largest Buddhist University, The University of the West.

Can it be? A priest who is a Christian Buddhist agnostic? – A somewhat flippant but still wise article about getting beyond titles and symbols to reach what we all have in common. About Buddhism he says:

The Buddha isn’t God, or a god; he was just another human being who pointed the way for his fellow seekers to find answers, truth, peace and liberation from life’s downers. Scholars like famed mythologist Joseph Campbell and the Trappist monk Thomas Merton have firmly established that there are more similarities than differences between the heart of the teachings of Jesus and the Buddha.

Buddhism isn’t a religion; it’s a way of thinking and living that does not call upon the authority of a deity for validation. There are probably some Jewish Buddhists, certainly Christian Buddhists, maybe atheist Buddhists. Islamic Buddhists?

We should take some issue with his use of the word just – which seems to lower his importance as the only human in our era to gain awakening without awakened guidance and the only human to set forth teachings for the awakening of all of humanity… Are there Jewish Buddhists? For sure. I read an article in the last year or so which asserted that Jews are something like 8 times more likely to adopt Buddhism than Christians according to statistics. Atheist Buddhists? I think I know a couple of those. Islamic Buddhists? hmm… I have yet to come across one of those, but I’m sure they’re out there. He goes on to say:

Words, titles and religious doctrine are useful, necessary symbols, but some people, including priests and rabbis and imams, get hung up at the level of believing the symbols are the essence of belief.

Sad!

And finally, a local story gracing the front page of our local weekly: the Missoula Independent. It’s called “Rinpoche’s Garden” and focuses on the building of an enormous garden of 1000 Buddhas near Arlee, MT, about sixty miles north of Missoula. The reporter (Jason Weiner, who happens to have his MA in Philosophy from UM) does a great job of explaining the principles that go behind the garden. He also describes many of the unique features of Buddhism’s transmission to the West: the difficulties with language and lack of religious devotion in many Americans, and so on. And best of all, as any great reporter does, he lets the people in the story (mainly the Rinpoche himself) do most of the speaking.