Bangkok: In deeply religious Thailand, monks have long been revered. But badly behaved clergy, corruption scandals, and the vast wealth amassed by some temples has many asking if something is rotten at the heart of Thai Buddhism.

From selfies on private jets to multi-million dollar donations from allegedly crooked businessmen, Thailand's monks are coming under increasing fire for their embrace of commercialism.

So much so that even the military junta is threatening to intervene. In Wat Hua Lumphong, a temple in downtown Bangkok, garlands of banknotes flutter in the breeze as trader Sakorn Suker slips a 20 baht note ($1) into an urn.

"It makes me feel good, boosts my health and makes me do better business," Suker told AFP.

His donation entitles him to take a "lucky" floating candle in the shape of a flower.

Nearby, coin-operated machines -- similar to jukeboxes, but with a Buddha statue on top -- churn out "lucky numbers" for the faithful as kneeling devotees hand over envelopes stuffed with cash, many picking up a tax reduction certificate on their way out.

In one corner of the temple complex sits a monk in an air-conditioned box.

"Donation means sacrifice. You sacrifice your things, sacrifice your time, sacrifice your money, sacrifice your heart," the monk, Pra Maha Noppadom, explains.

In contrast to the increasingly empty pews and coffers of many European churches, temples remain a boom business in Thailand.

The overwhelmingly Buddhist nation is one of the most generous countries in the world, according to the 2014 World Giving Index.

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Chequebook Buddhism offers Thailand citizens stairway to heaven

by Delphine THOUVENOT / Thanaporn PROMYAMYAI

Bangkok (AFP) -- In deeply religious Thailand, monks have long been revered. But badly behaved clergy, corruption scandals, and the vast wealth amassed by some temples has many asking if something is rotten at the heart of Thai Buddhism.

From selfies on private jets to multi-million dollar donations from allegedly crooked businessmen, Thailand's monks are coming under increasing fire for their embrace of commercialism.

So much so that even the military junta is threatening to intervene.

In Wat Hua Lumphong, a temple in downtown Bangkok, garlands of banknotes flutter in the breeze as trader Sakorn Suker slips a 20 baht note ($1) into an urn.

"It makes me feel good, boosts my health and makes me do better business," Suker told AFP.

His donation entitles him to take a "lucky" floating candle in the shape of a flower.

Nearby, coin-operated machines -- similar to jukeboxes, but with a Buddha statue on top -- churn out "lucky numbers" for the faithful as kneeling devotees hand over envelopes stuffed with cash, many picking up a tax reduction certificate on their way out.

In one corner of the temple complex sits a monk in an air-conditioned box.

"Donation means sacrifice. You sacrifice your things, sacrifice your time, sacrifice your money, sacrifice your heart," the monk, Pra Maha Noppadom, explains.

Read more from the original source:
Chequebook Buddhism offers Thais stairway to heaven

Those new to Buddhism, especially Westerners, often get caught up in the wrong notion of emptiness. This is easy to do, I must admit, having done it myself especially as a Westerner. Such emptiness is best described by Asanga in the Bodhisattvabhumi who said that anyone asserting that emptiness is the negation of all (sarvbhvat) has wrongly conceptualized emptiness.

We learn from the Buddhist canon that the Buddha was not a pan-positivist (all is). However, we are comfortable with the negation of "all is" which Asanga warned us against. Then we discover later that the Buddha was also not a pan-negativist-he didn't accept the negation of "all is." We tend to forget this. The Buddha's great enlightenment transcended both the position of the pan-positivist and the pan-negativist.

Believe me, I have sympathy for the beginner who does not have a good grasp of emptiness. It is easy to misunderstand emptiness.

We can also wrongly misunderstand emptiness by falling into the habit of believing nirvana to be a kind of extinction or annihilation. We gloss over all of the positive epithets of nirvana that it is the beyond, the subtle, permanence, the exquisite, bliss, the wonderful, the marvelous, the pure, the island, the shelter, the harbor, a refuge and the ultimate.

Exploring the term empty, its use in the Pali canon, we find it used as an adjective, "the empty village." Here empty doesn't mean that there is no village, only that the object qualified, namely, the inhabitants of the village, are not there at this time. They are elsewhere. This is the same with an empty house in the empty village. There is nobody in the particular house at this time. When we read that a monk goes to an empty place to meditate, the place he goes to is not emptiness, but a place that is empty of distractions. We also learn from the Pali canon that the world is empty (suam lokam) in the sense of being empty of what belongs to the true self.

Turning now to the freedom of Mind (ceto-vimutti), it is empty. This means that Mind is empty of desire and delusions. Next, when a monk's Mind is freed he enters pure ultimate unsurpassable emptiness, this is a positive state devoid of all determination which means that emptiness, i.e., the state of the empty, is a pure dynamic field-not mere absence.

Needless to say, emptiness occupies an important place in Mahayana Buddhism which can be very confusing for the beginner because the term can be used in different ways. Here are some examples.

"The ambrosial teaching of emptiness aims at abolishing all conceptions (samkalpa). But if someone believes in that [emptiness] you [have declared] he is lost" (Lokttastava).

"Majushri said....if he contemplates emptiness as the defilement, he is said to be engaged in right practice" (The Inconceivable State of Buddhahood Sutra).

"The Buddha-essence is emptiness of traits of adventitious [defilements] with discriminations, but it is not emptiness of the supreme attributes of Buddhahood, which have the character of differentiations" (Uttaratantra).

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Grasping emptiness with an empty mind

Artist John Duckworth, who stages the occasional performance art piece in addition to being a well-known painter, created a multi-room, immersive art experience featuring paintings, sound, video, and public meditation by the artist, that is. During the opening reception, guests waited in line to be let into the exhibit, which opened with a 12-minute video that was projected onto and around Duckworth as he meditated. The idea was to bring the viewers into the present awakening them so that they would be able to be more receptive to the work that followed. After the video, guests kept their wireless headsets on and followed a path through small galleries, created especially for Awake, filled with paintings of the Buddha, abstract technicolor landscapes, vinyl-mounted photographs, and various works on paper while listening to music written as a soundtrack to the experience. There were 90 pieces total, making it one of the City Gallerys largest exhibits ever. Taken together, those 90 works of art gave us a glimpse into Duckworths personal mindfulness practice, which is a major part of his life and work.

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Best Buddhism-Visual Arts Mashup

As crazy as that headline may sound, it's true. Really. I too was amazed at this news when we investigated this story on "Interfaith Voices" for our "God and Government" series, which explores the relationships between religion and state in countries around the world.

Now, we need to be clear. The People's Republic of China remains suspicious of religion, especially religions with foreign ties like Catholicism, Protestantism and Islam. And it has certainly done a great deal to intimidate practitioners of these faiths. In the not-too-distant past, in the days of the Cultural Revolution, it destroyed temples and churches of all kinds. It's also important to realize that Tibetan Buddhism is not favorably regarded by the Chinese government because officials regard its leader, the Dalai Lama, as some kind of threat.

The Buddhism that China has begun favoring -- and even funding at times -- is Chinese Buddhism.

The big question is: Why? Why would an officially atheist government promote any religion, even a religion with long and traditional roots in Chinese society?

Well, according to our in-country reporter, Ruth Morris, Chinese officials are very concerned about the morals and ethics of their people in the wake of unprecedented economic growth, the rise of a middle class interested in material wealth, and a focus on all things material. At the same time, there has been a resurgence of Chinese interest in traditional, ancestral religions. So the government sees a potentially positive role for Chinese Buddhism in curbing excessive materialism and being "in sync" with contemporary trends.

Check out Global Sisters Report's blog by Jo Piazza, When Nuns Rule. Read it here.

Buddhism is not, of course, a dogmatic religion. It has the advantage of enabling people to focus on values and meditative practices without insisting on a set of beliefs or teachings that might challenge the Chinese government. Thus: a Buddhist renaissance in China.

Listen to this radio piece in its entirety.

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China, an officially atheist country, promotes Buddhism

By Lauren Renteria | Published 4 hours ago

This fall, the UA Department of East Asian Studies will introduce its new Buddhist studies minor.

Buddhism, one of the most ancient religions, continues to thrive across the globe. With more than 350 million adherents, Buddhism makes up approximately 6 percent of the worlds population, making it the worlds fourth largest religion.

Hoping to further educate Arizona students in the diverse and colorful cultures around the globe, the new Buddhist studies minor will be available for the 2015 fall semester.

The new minor will target students from a wide variety of disciplines to expand knowledge on what East Asian studies professor Jiang Wu describes Buddhism as not just a religion but a cultured tradition.

With the new Buddhist studies minor, students will be able to gain better insight into other cultures and lifestyles that contribute to life around the world.

This new minor will help the students appreciate the different cultures that have been influenced by Buddhism, said Albert Welter, head of the Department of East Asian Studies, and [it will] overall change how they look at the world.

Students can take an assortment of different classes concerning Buddhism. From the introduction to East Asian Buddhism to Zen Buddhism, there is a wide variety of courses to choose from. UA students will also have the option to take classes pertaining to ancient, medieval and modern Japanese religion, as well as those pertaining to other East Asian countries.

While the program will not be available until the fall semester, students said they are excited for what the minor has to offer.

Florence Luna, a UA senior studying business economics and East Asian studies, with a minor in Mandarin, said she will also be adding the Buddhist studies minor to her repertoire. Luna said that with this minor, students can gain further knowledge in other cultures and have the opportunity to discuss topics they would not have been able to explore before.

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Studying Buddha