Saturday, November 29, 2014

Tibetan monk explains Buddhism to students

Amber Larson, Crystal Quintero, Wisdom Quarterly; Roger McKinney (Columbia Tribune)
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Tibetan monk Champa Lhunpo speaks about the Buddhist religion to Hickman High students. "We believe all religions have the same value," said Ven. Lhunpo (Vivian Abagiu/Tribune).

Human life is precious, a Tibetan Buddhist monk told students Thursday [Nov. 13] at Hickman High School. [Ven.] Champa Lhunpo talked about his religion with students from world religion classes at Hickman and Battle high schools.

Thursday afternoon he was slated to speak with members of an Amnesty International student group at Hickman about human rights violations against ethnic Tibetans in China.
 
[Ven.] Lhunpo escaped Tibet in 1959 after the Chinese takeover, initially settling in Dharamsala, India, home of the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government in exile. Now in the United States, he teaches Tibetan language courses at the University of Kansas.
 
Tibetan culture survives in India's Himalayas: Ladakh Tsemo Gompa, Leh behind Mt. Everest on the way to Tibetan desert (SylvainBrajeul/flickr.com)
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[Ven.] Lhunpo said after the talk that the situation in Tibet under Chinese rule is worsening. “Things are really deteriorating in Tibet,” he said. He said monks are practicing self-immolation to protest Chinese oppression.

[Ven.] Lhunpo lives a comfortable life in the United States now, but he’s in contact with people in Tibet. “My fellow citizens in Tibet are suffering,” [Ven.] Lhunpo said. “We are kind of their representatives to the rest of the world.”

He said he would encourage students in the Amnesty International (amnesty.org) group to write letters to U.S. government leaders and to sign petitions to help give Tibetans more freedom. More

What's better, monastic life or prison?
NZHerald.co.nz,
The 800-year-old Hilandar Monastery in Mount Athos, Greece. Photo / Brian Donovan
800-yr-old Hilandar, Greece (Brian Donovan)
A fugitive from justice has preferred life as a monk over jail, holing up in monasteries in northeastern Greece for eight years before police finally tracked him down, police say. The 48-year-old man, convicted of financial misdeeds in 2011, hid out on the remote Mount Athos peninsula, an autonomous monastic state, where he passed himself off as a novice monk, police said on Tuesday. More

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