Showing posts with label Thimphu. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Thimphu. Show all posts

Thursday, March 27, 2025

Baseball begins, LA (Buddhist Bhutan)


America brings us hegemony I mean baseball.
Hegemony means cultural influence. The USA may have too much of it. Buddhists in Bhutan, the last Himalayan Buddhist kingdom, play baseball in front of the giant Buddha Dordenma statue in the capital Thimphu, and MLB couldn't be happier.

Buddhist Bhutan obsessed with Western sports

The Cup (Bhutanese film)
The Cup (Tibetan ཕོར་པ། or Phörpa) is a Tibetan-language film written and directed by Khyentse Norbu in his feature directorial debut. It's about two young football-crazed Tibetan refugee novice Buddhist monks who desperately try to get a television for their remote Himalayan Buddhist monastery so they can watch the 1998 FIFA World Cup final. Though not nominated, The Cup was Bhutan's first-ever submission for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film.

In the Buddhist mountains of the world's most remote country, baseball takes hold
Baseball in Thimphu, Bhutan (Major League Baseball/Matthew DeSantis @matthewrdesantis)
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King Pop Warner Bhutanese Little League?
(MLB) High up in the Himalayas between Tibet and [Buddhist] India sits the small Buddhist country [former kingdom] of Bhutan.

Sometimes known as the world's last Shangri-La, this nation of snowy alpine peaks and untouched mountain streams has fewer than 700,000 people who call it home. Yet, what is perhaps the most remote country in the world is on its way to being a baseballing nation, growing from a few dozen kids playing on a concrete slab after school to more than 6,000 children who are fast becoming baseball fanatics despite few having ever seen a Major League game.
Bhutan Baseball and Softball Association (X)
"Everything from the friendship I grew with my father to my brothers to everyone in my town growing up, it was all based around baseball," Matthew DeSantis, the co-founder and chairman of the Bhutan Baseball and Softball Association told me during a recent visit to New York.

Why are American so rich and pretty? Maybe

Angelic Shohei Ohtani used to get the US girls
"From a community perspective in Bhutan, it was a way for me to both be involved stronger, and also to give something back that I thought the kids would love and connect over," Matt went on to say.
Ohtanis are expecting a baby girl (People)
Soft-spoken and thoughtful, the American was dressed in a warm brown gho -- a robe cloth that is part of the national dress, the traditional Bhutanese garb, on the day we met.

Though his trip to capitalist New York brought him close to where he grew up in nearby Wilton, Connecticut, one got the feeling that Buddhist Bhutan is where he always belonged.


Paro Taktsang, Tiger's Nest Monastery, Bhutan
Oddly enough, baseball wasn’t how DeSantis first discovered the small Himalayan country, but rather its young leader, Prince Dasho Jigyel Ugyen Wangchuck, whom he met on the school basketball team while attending Choate Rosemary Hall in Wallingford.

(Bhutan is now a parliamentary democracy, but the royal family still holds its titles -- similar to the monarchy in England).

After DeSantis’ first three weeks in Bhutan, where he trekked through the dense and pristine southern rainforest and stayed in roadless villages, he decided to move there for good.

Tibetans reborn white in America
Reborn in America, 1973, after being killed by Chinese in Tibet in 1960.
Tibet was once a Himalayan empire made up of 25% Buddhist monastics:
  • Fresh to US from Bhutan: DragonHerbs.com
    American Ron Teeguarden     married a Bhutanese woman to access pure herbs for his tonic concoctions, which he used to sell from a tea shop in Santa Monica, California: Dragon Herbs
  • Bhutan used to be one of the hardest countries in the world to visit, due to severe limits on visas (and a necessary commitment to spend hundreds of US dollars a day when visiting) to keep it pristine and to limit hegemony and decadent outside influences. It's stilly pricey: MyBhutan

Rich Ron married Bhutanese beauty for access
It was while founding the tech company and luxury travel operator MyBhutan, which helped visitors explore the region, that DeSantis met Karma Dorji.

Dorji, now the president of the Bhutan baseball association, "had a strong passion to bring sports to the kids and make it accessible and free."

Shohei Ohtani dating Cal Berkeley's K Dung?
They had no grand design on establishing a baseball association, though: The two simply loved baseball. DeSantis learned the game back in America, while Dorji fell in love while attending the World Children's Baseball Fair in Japan. They wanted to offer it to the children who lived nearby the military barracks in Thimphu. More: mlb.com

Los Angeles environmentalist to protest Dodgers
Dodgers vs. Detroit Tigers opening day game at Dodger Stadium (Sierra Club Angeles | IG)
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Sierra LA World Water Day
The Sierra Club's next protest [against Phillips 66 petroleum polluting corporation and sponsor affiliated with the team] will be at the Dodgers' first home game, today, Thursday, March 27th, 2025, at 3:00 pm.

We meet for the pre-game outside Dodger Stadium on the south-east corner of Stadium Way and Vin Scully Avenue. Recommended parking: Lot 13 south of entrance on Stadium Way. All environmentalists are welcome. Wear Dodgers logos and fan gear if available. More

Protesting the Dodgers at a game
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Friday, June 3, 2016

Tsechu Mask Dance Festival, Bhutan (video)

Dhr. Seven (ed.), Wisdom Quarterly; EBSLanguage (EBS 외국어 학습); Tapas Photography
(Part 4) "In Search of a Celestial Kingdom," onward to Bhutan's capital Thimphu for a Tsechu ("Day Ten"), the kingdom’s grand festival (영어로 하는 세계테마기행, Themes Around the World).
Indigenous Himalayan shamanic influences color Teschu masked dance festivals (TP).
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Bhutan's famed Tiger's Nest monastery (AW)
High in the last Himalayan Buddhist kingdom -- now a democracy after the final king stepped down to modernize the country rich in unspoiled resources but more interested in Gross Domestic Happiness than Gross Domestic Product -- there is an ancient festival underway.

Hindu sadhu far below on the Ganges (TP)
Bhutan's Vajrayana Buddhism, which blends indigenous shamanism (Bon) and Tibetan/Chinese Mahayana universalism, devotees take part in a colorful annual display.

Tsechu is a masked dance festival that lasts for several days and celebrates the life of Guru Rinpoche, who brought Buddhism to Bhutan.

Tsechu: "Day Ten"
Wisdom Quarterly Wikipedia edit
Dance of the Black Hats (Stephen Shephard)
Tsechu (ཚེས་བཅུ།), literally "Day Ten," is an annual Bhutanese religious festival held in each district or dzongkhag of Bhutan on the tenth day of a month of the lunar Tibetan calendar, the month depending on the place.

Tsechus are religious festivals of the Drukpa Lineage of the Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism (Bhutanese Vajrayana). They are large social gatherings that perform the function of social bonding among people from remote and very spread out villages.

Buddhist India, Arunchal Pradesh (TP)
Large markets congregate at fair locations, leading to brisk commerce (Dancing on the Demon's Back: the Dramnyen Dance and Song of Bhutan, Elaine Dobson, John Blacking Symposium: Music Culture and Society, Callaway Centre, Univ. of Western Australia, July 2003). The Thimphu and Paro tsechus are among the largest in terms of participation and audience. More
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Saturday, January 16, 2016

What is the famous "Dhammapada"?

Amber Larson, Crystal Quintero, Wisdom Quarterly; Ven. Buddharakkhita; Bhikkhu Bodhi
Towering in the Himalayas, the Buddha at Thimphu, Bhutan (Srijan Roy Choudhury).
 
Thimphu, Kuenselphodrang, Bhutan (ST3)
The Dhammapada is the best known and most widely esteemed text in the Pali Tipitaka (the "Three Collections" in the exclusively-Buddhist language called Pali), the sacred scriptures of Theravada Buddhism.

The work is included in the "Minor Collection" (Khuddaka Nikaya) of the Sutra Collection, but its popularity has raised it far above the single niche it occupies in the scriptures to the ranks of a world religious classic.

Composed in the ancient Pali language, this slim anthology of verses constitutes a perfect compendium of the Buddha's teaching, containing between its covers all of the essential principles elaborated at length in the 40+ volumes of the Pali canon.
 
According to the Theravada Buddhist tradition, each verse in the Dhammapada was originally spoken by the Buddha in response to a particular episode.

The Vissudhimagga (Ven. Buddhaghosa)
Accounts of these, along with exegesis of the verses, are preserved in the classic commentary to the work, compiled by the great Indian scholar-monk Bhadantacariya Buddhaghosa in the fifth century C.E. on the basis or material going back to very ancient times (much of it preserved in Sri Lanka).
The contents of the verses, however, transcend the limited and particular circumstances of their origin, reaching out through the ages to various types of people in all the diverse situations of life. For the simple and unsophisticated the Dhammapada is a sympathetic counselor.

For the intellectually overburdened its clear and direct teachings inspire humility and reflection; for the earnest seeker it is a perennial source of inspiration and practical instruction.

Insights that flashed into the heart of the Buddha have crystallized into these luminous verses of pure wisdom. As profound expressions of practical spirituality, each verse is a guideline to right living. The Buddha unambiguously pointed out that whoever earnestly practices the teachings found in the Dhammapada will taste the bliss of liberation, freedom, emancipation (nirvana).... 
— Acharya Buddharakkhita
What is the Dhammapada?
Bhikkhu Bodhi

From ancient times to the present, the Dhammapada has been regarded as the most succinct expression of the Buddha's teaching found in the Pali canon and the chief spiritual testament of early Buddhism.

In countries following Theravada Buddhism, such as Sri Lanka, Burma, and Thailand, the influence of the Dhammapada is ubiquitous. It is a rich source of themes for sermons and discussions, a guidebook for resolving the countless problems of everyday life, a primer for the instruction of novices in monasteries.

Even the experienced contemplative, withdrawn to forest hermitage or mountainside cave for a life of meditation, can be expected to count a copy of this book among his or her few material possessions.

Yet, the admiration the Dhammapada has elicited has not been confined to avowed followers of Buddhism. Wherever it has become known its moral earnestness, realistic understanding of human life, aphoristic wisdom, and stirring message of a way to freedom from suffering have won for it the devotion and veneration of those responsive to the good and the true.
 
The expounder of the verses that comprise the Dhammapada is the Shakyan sage called the Buddha, an honorific title meaning "the Enlightened One" or "the Awakened One."

Gandhara texts of the Dhammapada (GD)
The story of this venerable personage has often been overlaid with literary embellishment and the admixture of legend, but the historical essentials of his life are simple and clear. He was born in the sixth century B.C., the son of a king ruling over a small state in the Himalayan foothills [in the northwest of what is now India, the land of the Sakas or Sakyas, presently Afghanistan].

His given name was Siddhattha and his family name Gotama (Siddhartha Gautama in Sanskrit). Raised in luxury, groomed by his father to be the heir to the throne, in his early manhood he went through a deeply disturbing encounter with the sufferings of life, as a result of which he lost all interest in the pleasures and privileges of rulership.

One night, in his 29th year, he abandoned the royal city and [traveling east] entered the forest to live as an ascetic, resolved to find a way to deliverance from suffering. For six years he experimented with different systems of meditation [under two yogis] and subjected himself to severe austerities, but he found that these practices did not bring him any closer to his actual goal.

Finally, in his 35th year, while sitting in deep meditation beneath a tree at Gaya, he attained Supreme Enlightenment and became, in the proper sense of the title, "the Buddha," the Enlightened One. 
 
The Buddha, Penang, Malaysia (Mark Neilson/ Hotel Lust List/flickr.com)
 
Thereafter, for 45 years, he traveled throughout northern India, proclaiming the truths he had discovered and founding an order of monks and nuns to carry on this message around the world and far into the future. At the age of 80, after a long and fruitful life, he passed into final-nirvana peacefully in the small town of Kusinara (Kushinagar, India), surrounded by a large number of disciples.
 
To his followers, the Buddha is neither a god, a divine incarnation, or a prophet bearing a message of divine revelation. He is a human being who by his own striving and intelligence has reached the highest spiritual attainment of which man is capable -- perfect wisdom, full enlightenment, complete purification of mind.

His function in relation to humanity (and the devas on earth and in space) is that of a teacher -- a world teacher who, out of compassion, points out to others the way to nirvana, final release from all suffering.

His teaching, known as the Dharma (Pali Dhamma), offers a body of instructions explaining the true nature of existence and showing the path that leads to liberation.

Free from all dogmas and inscrutable claims to authority, the Dharma is founded solidly upon the bedrock of the Buddha's own clear comprehension of reality, and it leads the one who practices it to that same understanding -- the knowledge which extricates the roots of suffering.

The title
American monk Bhikkhu Bodhi
The title "Dhammapada," which the ancient compilers of the Buddhist scriptures attached to this anthology, means portions, aspects, or sections of Dharma.

The work has been given this title because, in its 26 chapters, it spans the multiple aspects of the Buddha's teaching, offering a variety of standpoints from which to gain a glimpse into its heart. 

Whereas the longer sutras or discourses of the Buddha found in the prose sections of the Canon usually proceed methodically, unfolding according to the sequential structure of the doctrine, the Dhammapada lacks such a systematic arrangement.

The work is simply a collection of inspirational or pedagogical verses on the fundamentals of the Dharma, to be used as a basis for personal edification and instruction. More

Dhammapada: The Buddha's Path of Wisdom
Acharya Buddharakkhita (trans) with an introduction by Bhikkhu Bodhi
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Monday, March 18, 2013

The Great Buddha of Bhutan (video)

Ashley Wells and Dhr. Seven, Wisdom Quarterly; JokerTrekker (flickr.com)
Bhutan's historical Shakyamuni: Buddha Dordenma statue (Michael Foley/blog.dwbuk.org)

  
As the last "Himalayan Buddhist Kingdom," now abdicated by the king for the sake of modernization, Bhutan is constructing a massive Buddha statue.

While seen here in the famous Earth-witnessing mudra, which recalls the time the Earrth Goddess Bhumi (Greek, Gaia) saved Siddhartha's, the tendency in Vajrayana Buddhism is to build statues of the future Buddha Maitreya.

The Maitreya Project is an international organization launched in 1990 to construct a 152 meter statue of Maitreya Buddha in the town of Kushinagar in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh near Nepal (which may not be the actual location of the historical Buddha's passing) along with education and healthcare facilities for the local population.

The largest monuments are forward looking in a messianic (Messiah/Mettayya/Maitreya/ and possibly the proto-Christian Indo-Iranian deity Mithra) move to beckon him, Bodhisattva Maitreya, whom the historical Buddha Gautama said is currently living in a world in space known as Tusita, awaiting a time when he will be reborn on Earth to strive for supreme teaching-enlightenment (sammasambuddha-hood).

This is most evident today in the rolling "Relics Tour" efforts of Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhists culminating in building the world's most massive statue in Kusinagar (Kusinara), India, where the last buddha attained final-nirvana.
 
Buddhas do not come back by rebirth, having been freed of that bond by full enlightenment. New ones arise, whether silently or as universal teachers. Until then they are known as bodhsattvas, "beings bent on supreme enlightenment."
 
The massive Buddha in the capital of Bhutan, Thimphu: Buddha Dordenma on Changri Kuensel Phodrang at Buddha Viewpoint (Jokertrekker/flickr)
 
Buddhist lore states that a bodhisattva, prior to a potential final rebirth, looks down from the Tusita world in space onto Earth in search of specific signs: Does the Dharma (Teaching) still exist? Is the human lifespan sufficient for the average person to attain liberation if they were taught? Do appropriate parents exist? ...

Interestingly, amusingly, Vajrayana Buddhists seem to be confounding those signs with a visible monument that might be visible from space for the future-Maitreya ("Friend") to see. The signs are "seen" psychically, and they appear in accordance with Universal Laws (niyama-dhamma) are announced by devas ("shining ones") in space and on Earth.

So which one is Maitreya?
 
(inspirationalposter.org)
The most famous and perhaps most beautiful depiction of Maitreya is behind the Himalalyas in Thiksey Lamasery, Ladakh, India. In the Greco-Buddhist art of Gandhara (Northwest India/Pakistan/Afghanistan/Iran), in the first centuries of the common era in northern India, Maitreya is represented as a Central Asian/Northern Indian noble (kshatriya) holding a "water pot" (kumbha) in his left hand, sometimes a "wisdom urn" (bumpa). He is flanked by his two acolytes, the brothers Asanga and Vasubandhu.
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Friday, December 2, 2011

Buddhism and modern life in Bhutan

Mary Kay Magistad in Bhutan (TheWorld.org)

Above: Tktsang Palphug Monastery, also known as Tiger's Nest. Below: Bhutanese high school students Nanjita (left) and Sonam (Mary Kay Magistad).

BHUTAN, Himalayas - The guys in the band are in black, with shaggy hair, and attitudes. They do a sound check in their rehearsal room and then let it rip.

Guitars shriek through a familiar opening then move into a hyper-paced riff on the Pachelbel Canon. This might not be the usual punk rock fare -- but then, not all self-proclaimed punk rockers are polite, well-spoken Bhutanese college students.

“Most of our audience is not into hard music, like what we like to play,” says 19-year-old guitarist Ughyen Phuntso, a communications major. “So mostly, we end up playing in my garage.”

Or they play here, at the Youth Development Fund’s youth center in [the capital of] Thimpu, where rehearsal space and instruments are offered free as an attempt to keep young people off the streets and out of trouble.

“We had noticed there were very few places where the youths could engage productively,” says Dorji Ohm, the center’s program director. “They’d go to the movies or to the bars. In fact, we did a survey and found 500 bars and one library, which was shocking.”

Perhaps it wouldn’t be so shocking in many places, but Bhutan is experiencing growing pains. It has long been a mostly rural, deeply Buddhist, largely isolated [Himalayan] mountain kingdom. But in the dozen years since it decided to modernize and opened up to television, Internet, and other... More plus photos


*Bhutan is a small, landlocked mountain kingdom wedged between giants India and China with more than 70 percent of its population living in rural areas, 50 percent illiterate, and much of its budget coming from overseas aid [to turn it into a strategic military asset in the region] and grants.
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Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Building the World's Largest Buddha (Bhutan)

Wisdom Quarterly
(michaelfoleyphotography/flickr.com)

The largest Buddha in antiquity was perhaps in Afghanistan, at Bamiyan. It was destroyed by Taliban vandals. Other enormous statues of the Buddha, possibly larger and in the supine position, were also discovered in Afghanistan. Ancient artisans of the area (Central Asia), where Siddhartha may have grown up far from Nepal, often portray the Buddha-to-come, Maitreya, rather than the historical Buddha Gautama welcoming him with great monuments. Maitreya is a favorite of Vajrayana and Mahayana Buddhism. The new Bhutanese Buddha in the capital of Thimphu rivals the great rock-hewn statue at Leshan, Sichuan, China and other enormous statuary.

()

This is a tiny glimpse of what is purported to be the world's largest Buddha, high above Thimphu Valley, Bhutan -- which until recently was the last Himalayan Buddhist kingdom (before the king unilaterally converted to democracy), from the author of Radio Shangri-La: What I Learned in Bhutan, the Happiest Kingdom on Earth.

(Lisa Napoli)
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Monday, September 21, 2009

Killer quake hits Bhutan, shakes India

Wasbir Hussain (AP)
GAUHATI, India – A 6.3-magni-tude earthquake shook the remote mountain nation of Bhutan on Monday, killing at least 11 people, damaging an ancient monastery and forcing hundreds to flee, officials said. At least 15 people were also injured.

The afternoon earthquake was initially reported in Gauhati, the capital of India's northeastern Assam state, but it was centered in a little-populated eastern region of the tiny nation of Bhutan. Much of Bhutan [the last Himalayan Buddhist kingdom], a nation sandwiched between India and [Tibet], is sparsely populated, reachable only by walking paths and without electricity or telephones.

"We're trying to piece together information to assess the damage," Ugyen Tenzing, the country's director of disaster management said from Thimphu, Bhutan's capital. More>>

Around the World

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