Chinese New Year a Religious Holiday?

As many of you probably already know, this past weekend, and for some this week as well, has been the celebration of the Lunar Chinese New Year. Our family did common New Year activities that many people probably also partake in – visiting a temple, burning paper money for ancestors, gathering for a big family dinner, receiving red envelopes. While scanning through Google Reader this morning, I came across an interesting article titled “Business of Chinese New Year”, featured on the Belief.net website. The article basically talks about how Chinese New Year has become one of Las Vegas’ “most critical holidays”, as vacationers come for gambling, performances, shopping, and even just a short getaway.

While reading the article, what got to me was not the main issue at hand, but rather that the article was posted on Belief.net in the first place. There were no religious/spiritual references in the article nor did they mention anything about how religion plays a role in Chinese New Year. I could not figure out why Belief.net would post such an article, especially since their mission is “to help people like you find, and walk, a spiritual path that will bring comfort, hope, clarity, strength, and happiness”. Unless of course, they assumed Chinese New Year is a religious holiday! Well, is it?

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Level 8 Buddhist

So there’s this great blog called the Level 8 Buddhist. It was online as recently as yesterday, but it was gone when I logged in to check it out today: “The authors have deleted this blog. The content is no longer available.” It was quite without warning, and I was shocked and am still pretty sad about this. Whether intentional or otherwise, all things are of course ever-changing.

I really thought this was one of the best Buddhist blogs out there, a great resource to many and the heart of some great discussions. The owner had on various occasions mentioned that the effort he put into blogging took away time from his practice. Blogging was also sometimes a little bit stressful. I hope he has much more time on his hands now to practice and spend time with his family.

Now if this deletion happened to be accidental, I hope we get the Level 8 Buddhist back soon!

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Wendy Miyake

Last week Andrea Miller posted a short story over on Shambhala Sun Space: “Remembering Koizumi” by Wendy Miyake. I’ve tried countless times in the past thirty minutes to try to give a one-sentence summary of this story. Each time I try, my words cannot seem to do the story justice. You just have to read it for yourself.

Miyake manages to weave Buddhist ritual and philosophy into her story both lightly and meaningfully. Her writing is colorful, funny, engaging and touching. I was delighted to read her writing, and I was even more delighted that it was Shambhala Sun Space that brought Miyake’s work to my attention.

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Save the Thai Temple

I saw this letter on Asian Pacific Americans for Progress, and I had to re-post it. Back in the day I used to write letters all the time to build support for temples that neighborhoods were trying to shut down. It’s funny how things haven’t changed in these past fifteen years.

Update: Here’s what you can do to help. Visit the Save Sundays at the Thai Temple website, click on “How to help!” and call, fax and email Berkeley’s elected officials. There are sample letters and phone transcripts already posted, so with just five minutes of your time, you can help save and preserve 27 years of Sunday traditions at Wat Mongkolratanaram! Why do I care? Because the same thing that’s happening to the Berkeley Thai Temple happened to Wat Thai of Los Angeles. The difference is that this time I’m not going to sit on my hands and watch another group of NIMBYs bully a Buddhist temple into submission.

Another Update: The Save the Thai Temple website is down, but if you’ve got a Facebook account, you can get all the contact information for Berkeley’s elected officials (including sample email and phone transcript) from the Save the Thai Temple Facebook group (see this discussion topic). Please contact them before the hearing on February 12!

Below is Pahole Sookkasikon’s letter to APA for Progress:

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May His Memory be a Blessing

I was scanning news stories this morning when I came across “Alan Lew, brought meditation to Judaism, dies.” Rabbi Alan Lew was a socially engaged rabbi emeritus at Congregation Beth Sholom in San Francisco, who was well-known for his meditative practice. I learned of Rabbi Lew through his book, One God Clapping: The Spiritual Path of a Zen Rabbi. I never knew him, but he wrote in a way that connected with me.

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For who the Buddha is…

I recently received a late Christmas present from a friend and of all things he could have given me, he gave me a Pocket Buddha, the exact item I wrote about on my ” Buddhism for Sale” post. It comes with a set of stickers and a quote from the Buddha – “Better than a thousand hollow words, is one word that brings peace”. Though a direct product and example of the commercialization of the image of the Buddha, I have to admit that I really like it. It’s cute and a rather dashing ornament to put on my bookshelf.

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Zen Sensitivities

I just read Rev. Danny Fisher’s brilliantly titled piece Zen and the Art of Using the Word “Zen”. It’s a good talk about something known in the linguistic sciences as semantic drift, or more simply, changes in a word’s meanings. The specific issue here is the word Zen, originally from Sanskrit dhyana, and it’s (mis)use in respectable mainstream publications like the New York Times. When a Buddhist word is used in a non-Buddhist context, should we be insulted?

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Meditating on Sudafed

Now is the time of the year when thousands of Buddhists across the world undertake the heroic New Years resolution to meditate every day. Time to get back to business. Nothing will stand in our way. This is where my father would say something like, “You’ve made a New Year’s resolution to sit on your ass and do nothing?” Exactly. So how hard could it really be?

There are a number of traditional bad habits that I trip over. The number one bad habit is staying out late. This stumbling block is naturally reinforced by friends. (“You’re no fun!”) Even if I’ve been really good about meditation, I’ll crawl back home late past midnight and tell myself, “I’ll just meditate tomorrow.” We all know what happens tomorrow. Or rather, what doesn’t happen.

But there’s one foe that I haven’t yet learned to conquer: sickness.

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Controversy over the Rock Opera

When writing up my last post, I forgot to check with Cambodge Soir. As I read there today, I found out that the rock opera Where Elephants Weep has not been banned outright, as is also reported in a (translated) piece on KI Media. I found the Cambodge Soir report particularly insightful, relating who exactly said what and also including the views of the monk, the government and the opera representatives. You can read the original report in French by Ung Chansophea and Alain Ney on Cambodge Soir. My translation is below.

I must ask for forgiveness in advance. My translation from French is as bad (and liberal) as it is from Khmer. I hope that you can at least walk away from this with an understanding that there is a more complex story behind a headline as simple as “Monks Force Rock Opera Off Air.”

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Oh Those Cambodians…

Via Danny Fisher, I read about the rock opera that was forced off the air in Cambodia due to complaints from monks. Apparently, they were offended by the character of a bad monk who disrobed, slept with a woman and then was later seen again in robes. There was some other coverage of this story at Precious Metal, Mongkol and also at Shambhala Sun, where Rod Meade Sperry in particular caught my attention with the following lines:

This stands in stark contrast to how we Westerners mostly deal with cultural portrayals of Buddhism. Whether it’s a rapper co-opting a chant for his song, or a major motion picture taking incredible liberties with Buddhist ideas or imagery, or just the mountains of semi-Dharmic knick-knacks that are popping everywhere, we — for the most part — just shrug our shoulders and say, “Meh.”

It seems like a very simple story. Cambodian monks are basically narrow-minded angry Asian Buddhists who get offended every time they see Buddhism wrapped up in something they don’t recognize. If only they were as open-minded as us Western Buddhists. Those rock opera producers certainly had no idea what they were doing when they put the character of a nasty monk into their plot. Or did they?

Few journalists care enough to report in depth about Cambodia (except you Nicholas Kristof!), so here’s what I’ve got to say on the subject.

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