CC Liu, Seven, Ashley Wells, Pat Macpherson, Wisdom Quarterly
 |
| Sylvan Zhangjiajie (bbs.chinadaily.com.cn) |
China, perhaps the most dominant force in Asia over the past 5,000 years, celebrates Lunar New Year (Sunday, Feb. 10th, 2013) this weekend, which is also known as the "Spring Festival."
Los Angeles, Orange County, and Chinese enclaves around the world are following suit. While Buddhism originated in the north (Magadha) and NW frontier (Afghanistan) of India, it had a spectacular impact on China.
At that time the great walled empire was the civilized world. Beyond the wall were the barbarians.
Buddhism arrived in the West, in Bactria and the Indo-Greco world of Alexander's creation, before it went East. But there are one billion uncounted Buddhists in China today.
Their numbers are concealed and discounted by the communist regime, even as it gives way to capitalist excesses -- particularly in its devastation of Tibet and its planned devastation of Afghanistan.
 |
| A few Afghan treasures (irtiqa-blog.com) |
The massive 2,600-year-old "Copper Well" (Mes Aynak) Buddhist monastic complex archeological site is to be razed by Chinese government mining interests before all its treasures can even be documented. But rare earth minerals trump priceless cultural treasures for a regime now almost completely seduced by capitalist excesses.
 |
| "Don't tread on me. This is my year." |
"Don't tread on us." We promote mountain top removal in our search for fossil fuels, which are actually renewable, and China, following suit, will gladly engage in stupa top removal to recover valuable components used in electronic equipment.
After all, it's the Year of the Snake. And census manipulations be d@mned, the country is celebrating!
 |
| China or Egypt? (Epoch Times) |
China was once an ethically Confucian empire deriving its spirituality from Taoism. It absorbed Buddhism from the "holy land" (India) like milk mixing with water. To this day these three traditions are followed by nearly everyone. And the Roman Catholicism the communist regime has welcomed into the country, the ethnic Muslims it has rejected (Uyghurs and others from the northwestern provinces), the infiltrating fundamentalist Christian missionaries it tries to keep out, and the few scientifically-minded atheists it tries to cultivate have done next to nothing to displace its ancient Mahayana Buddhism or the influence of Lao Tzu and Confucius.
 |
| Dalai Lama (R) meets Mao, 1955 |
Regrettably, Chairman Mao and other Red Army revolutionaries did more harm than good by becoming despotic dictators, high ideals notwithstanding.
Any naga or "dragon"-ruled country ready to kill monastics and destroy ancient temples and texts in the interest of a "cultural revolution" gets what it paid for: It gets to pay, and pay, and pay some more.
But the people should not be held accountable for the crimes of its government. A standing army of a million (like the Bible says a country would have) is a small fraction of a population of more than a billion. (Interestingly, there are at least 800,000 police officers in the US, which has a much smaller population, and that is not counting all of the armed government agents, military, and secret police).
No comments:
Post a Comment