The death of a Tibetan nun shot down from a distance by Chinese riflemen on Nangpa Pass casts a long shadow from a very high place. It’s a specter of the Cultural Revolution at a time when China is showing more tolerance of religion.

Thousands of nuns live and practice in remote areas of the Tibetan Plateau. The Pundarika Foundation of Crestone, Colo., tells their story. Guided by a few aged survivors who came out of hiding, younger nuns are trying to preserve ancient lineages in a hostile world. They are threatened by loss of traditional support as their agrarian families are lured to the cities by promises of industrial jobs. The Chinese government seems to ignore them rather than persecute them. And this is hopeful. But the climber video of the Sept. 30 incident is not. (more…)

We were sitting on bamboo mats in a dark pagoda built at the site of a former Khmer Rouge killing field on the highway from Siem Reap to Angkor Wat. Our Cambodian guide was struggling through a recitation on the life of the Buddha depicted traditionally in murals on the walls and ceiling. “Bodhi tree there, Buddha he enlighten, eightfold path. . .”

I watched a monk who had been sleeping on a canvas cot in a cool place by the altar shuffle to a doorway. He stood in the bright frame searching the folds of his saffron robe for something – a pack of cigarettes. He looked depressed. The guide was getting the eightfold path wrong. “Right talk, right think, not steal and lie, right sexual. . .” I focused my old Canon SLR. The monk stood smoking in the light, looking out toward the killing field with its plain monument, a windowed box half full of human skulls.

Monument of skulls on the temple grounds

What was this monk thinking? (more…)

In a Thai village off the Gulf of Siam about 40 years ago I was swept into an ordination ceremony that, as an Eastern Classics MA would teach me in later years, defined the difference between the two vehicles of Buddhism, Theravada and Mahayana.

Theravada, with its orthodoxy of stories about the Lord Buddha in colloquial Pali, is the official religion of Thailand and Sri Lanka. It is the unofficial religion of Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia. Buddhism elsewhere, including Zen, is Mahayana, the “larger vehicle,” which follows expansive texts in Sanskrit, Chinese and Tibetan. (more…)

The cool driver – he had dreadlocks – kept the radio on reggae, which dropped like bricks out of the speakers wired along the rusted yellow Blue Bird carrying us north from the birder-supported village of Crooked Tree, Belize. Suddenly the prime minister was on live, assuring the nation that he would not cave in to the “politicians” calling for his resignation and that the teachers better not strike. (more…)

I have driven about 3,000 U.S. 285 miles between Santa Fe and my new place in the upper San Luis Valley in 18 months, during which I have often meditated upon . . . Española.

Artistic community. Multicultural center. Literary scene. Intended burial place of Christopher Columbus. (more…)