The Associated Press

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The Kansas City Zoo gets a complaint about Buddha statues in an Asian-themed area.

David Engle, of the Kansas City suburb of Overland Park, Kan., complained after visiting the zoo on Sunday. He says it’s “phenomenal to me” that the zoo would put up two smiling statues of Buddha when “We can’t have a cross or a nativity scene on public property.”

Engle, who says he is Christian, called the statues idolatry and “infuriating to God.”

Buddha is the name ascribed to Siddhartha Gautama, the founder of Buddhism.

Zoo Director Randy Wisthoff says he has never heard complaints about the statues before.

He said they were bought a few years ago, along with concrete pagodas and a terra cotta warrior, to provide an Asian theme for the zoo’s Tiger Trail.

He plans to discuss the complaint with the zoo’s board.

———

Information from: The Kansas City Star,

http://www.kcstar.com

each has their suffering.

Some suffer too much, others too little.

— The Buddha

“Some suffer too much; others too little.”

“Too little”  — AH!

Posted in Meditations, Quick Winks Tagged: buddha, compassion, dharma, suffering ]]> http://winkingbuddha.wordpress.com/2009/01/03/winking-wisdom-10/feed/ 0 bodhiness http://winkingbuddha.wordpress.com/2008/12/24/christmas-chanukah-whats-the-difference/ http://winkingbuddha.wordpress.com/2008/12/24/christmas-chanukah-whats-the-difference/#comments Wed, 24 Dec 2008 20:39:56 +0000 bodhiness http://winkingbuddha.wordpress.com/?p=286 ]]>  

The latest post has lots of Buddhist “heart” in it. As well as a few Buddhist gods playing tricks on me, I suppose. Perhaps for ignoring thihs one.

Check out When Snow Falls and Pigs Fly over at OlberBlogging.

Joining the chorus, Utah State Senator Chris Butters introduced legislation to “encourage” retailers to use the “Merry Christmas” greetings exclusively. Butters says although he’s tired of the so-called Christmas war, “we are a Christian nation and ought to use the word.”  Ah, Mr. Butters, some people would disagree that Utah was indeed part of a “Christian” nation, but that’s another ecclesiological issue.

Every year, some zealot condemns any use of an inclusive “happy holiday” salutation as anti-Christian bias. A few years ago, I wrote an article Happy Holidays and Other Profanities so with the current spirit of the season, I reincarnated it in The Winking Buddha Blog. Enjoy

People (usually scientists) who state animals lack emotions and memories, must lack such themselves

Please click here for the video. Have a hankie ready.

Congress set aside today, the Friday after Thanksgiving, as the first national day to recognize the contributions of Native American tribes to the country we stole from them as illegal aliens back in 1620 (Take that, Lou Dobbs). 

However, unless Congress takes further action, Native American Heritage Day will be a singular event — another broken metaphorical treaty between the US government and a people who, to their ongoing detriment, took Washington leaders at their word.

If Congress decides to make Native American Heritage Day an annual Federal holiday, the holiday most likely will be slotted on the fourth Friday in November (aka the “day after” Thanksgiving). And once again, our countries indigenous citizens will get screwed.

A “day after” holiday offers Native Americans another ancillary role to the “white man’s” interests, a footnote to history once again. And with most Federal workers taking the “day after” Thanksgiving off anyway, the government saves on an extra paid holiday. 

A Native American Heritage Day could replace Columbus Day, pretty much a wasted observance that essentially has little to do with our nation’s history. Actually, the Vikings — and perhaps the Chinese — came here first and thought better of the effort. Columbus, the Gilligan, of his time, missed his intended harbor in India by a mere 8,000 miles and foolishly stuck the indigenous populations with the misnomer “Indians.” However, taking Columbus Day from East Coast Italians is paramount to stripping our nation’s capital football team of its racist “Redskins” moniker, so such an obvious observance switch never will occur.

Supporters of the “day after” tribute cite the selfless hospitality of the local Patuxet Wompanoag tribe with saving the inept alien pilgrims from oblivion – nearly half the Anglos died in their first year here.  The tribe taught them how to grow domestic crops and hunt in the forests. In return for saving their hides, the pilgrims signed a “treaty of friendship” with the Patuxet, the first of centuries of swindles and frauds against tribes in the name of “good will.” The treaty turned out to be a land grab contract, which the tribes who lacked any concept of “land ownership” failed to grasp. Then the group sat down to the first Thanksgiving feast. If the Patuxet knew what came next, they’d have choked on their drumsticks. 

Thus began an aborigine Armageddon. America’s wielding of torture did not begin against “enemy combatants” in Gitmo, but against Geronimo. Worse, the genocide perpetrated against native americans came under the deceit of “friendship” and “peace”. Blankets laced with smallpox, germs in which Indians had no immunity, became our first bioterrorism weapon. The Trail of Tears footsteps predated train tracks to Auschwitz. Andrew Jackson was our Adolph Hitler. The value of trophies Nazis stole from Jews pales to the property stolen from Indians through outright slaughter or thievery. Wounded Knee was as American pogrom. 

I’m no “Cherokee princess,” but growing up as a Jewish princess, I knew the shame that came with celebrating a “subordinate” holiday. All through grade school, I suffered through yearly “winter pageants” sitting on stage with my Christian peers who sang Christ’s praises while my silence resounded. Jewish students finally received recognition when we performed our “traditional Chanukah” song, from which the music teacher always chose I Have A Little Dreidel. No, traditional Rock of Ages, not even the the Hebrew version Sivivon, Sov, Sov, Sov – nope, always I Have A Little Dreidel until I turned high school freshman. And the school marms even bastardized our innocuous dreidel song with verses about feasts of duck and yams. Never did my family nibble on duck or yams on any Chanukah night. I guess the goys couldn’t translate latkas.

A few years ago, I attended a week-long seminar on Cherokee history sponsored by Rice University. I never knew that the Cherokees (and all native americans) were such intelligent, prosperous, educated, sophisticated and cultural people. The first democracy in the America was established not by our Founding Fathers but by many Indian tribes, whose forms of government were the inspiration for our Constitution. I did not know that Cherokees had a written language, a first for Indian tribes, published their own newspapers, and operated their own schools and hospitals. Prior to the Trail of Tears forced expulsion, Cherokees owned land, including large plantations in the South, engaged in commerce, dressed in fashionable duds, fought with US military and worked in the US government.  

I never learned about continual history of Federal atrocities against all native american tribes in school. I listened aghast at this horror that we call “Indian Affairs,” how every treaty, even today, comes with pages of tiny print addendums. I grew up in the upper Midwest where our local minority group was Lakota, not black. Their biggest offense, drunkenness. We criminalized Indian’s ceremonial peyote, sage and other medicinal herbs, and substituted our liquor, as white man’s choice of a substance to abuse. 

Even today, the white men co-opt Indian traditions from greed. Self-proclaimed “shamans” with the obligatory quarter drop of “indian” red platelets hold workshops teaching secret Indian rituals to eager Anglo seekers for hundreds of wampum. These sham shamans fail to tell their patsies that true native shamans never advertise nor take any payment for services rendered to the tribe. True shamans refuse to “teach” outsiders any sacred magic for fear of misuse and fraud. 

The Federal government hates to apologize for past “oversights.”  We offer welfare checks today in lieu of centuries of slave wages. The US doesn’t torture, only enhances interrogation techniques when necessary. Hiroshima saved millions of (Allied) lives by preventing an invasion of Japan. That millions of Japanese civilians faced a nuclear holocaust becomes a footnote in our history books.

So celebrate Native American Heritage Day  – before we take it back as well.

I have been through some terrible things in my life,

some of which actually happened.

– Mark Twain

Reality is the leading cause of stress amongst those in touch with it.

- Jane Wagner

Now devotees wearing shoes

can enter Bodh Gaya temple complex

IANS, November 20, 2008

Patna, India — The decades-old ban on entering the Mahabodhi temple complex in Bihar’s Bodh Gaya while wearing shoes has been lifted, an official said Thursday.The move was welcomed and lauded by Buddhist devotees, mostly Tibetans and tourists visiting Bodh Gaya temple, Buddhism’s holiest shrine.

However, shoes will not be allowed within the temple’s sanctum sanctorum.

The Bodh Gaya Temple Management Committee (BGTMC) took the decision to lift the ban on entering the temples while wearing shoes.

“The BGTMC decided to lift the ban early this week in the wake of repeated demand made by devotees and tourists to allow them to enter the temple with shoes on,” said Nandji Dorjee, secretary, BGTMC.

Hundreds of Buddhist devotees and tourists, particularly foreigners, are now being allowed to enter the temple with shoes on, a big relief during winter and summer months.

Time and again, devotees and tourists complained to the officials about the discomfort they faced while walking bare feet within the temple complex.

“Bare foot entry to temple poses threat to health in chilly winter, particularly during early hours and hot summer season,” said another BGTMC official.

In winter, considered a tourist season, temperatures come down to as low as 2 – 4 degrees Celsius. During winter, bare feet entry to the temple to offer prayers was difficult.

The Tibetan Buddhists have been demanding the right to temple entry with boots on, as per their traditions. They do not see anything wrong in entering the temple with boots on.

In 2001 Ugyen Trinle Dorje, the teenaged chief of the Karmapa sect of Tibetan Buddhists defied the ban on temple entry with shoes on. Dorje entered the Mahabodhi temple sanctum with heavy boots, inviting loud protests from the neo-Buddhists.

The neo-Buddhists demanded the invoking of the penal clause in Mahabodhi temple management act, which says that a fine has to be imposed on anybody who entered the buddhist shrine with shoes on.

Then, Dorje made a bare feet entry to the temple to offer prayers.

The 1,500-year-old temple stands behind the sacred Bodhi tree under which Buddha attained enlightenment 2,550 years ago.

The Mahabodhi Temple, declared a World Heritage Site in 2002 by Unesco, is visited annually by thousands of tourists, especially from countries where there is a strong Buddhist community.

This article comes from The Buddhist Channel site

(http://www.buddhistchannel.tv)

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