Facebook Upshot: Nepal – the Country of the Mt. Everest and the Buddha

Posted by Ram Kumar Shrestha on June 22, 2011

A photo album was created in Facebook yesterday with the title “Nepal – the Country of the Mt. Everest and the Buddha“.  One of the objectives to create the album in this International Network is to give hands to “Nepal Tourism Year 2011″ to promote Nepal. After this album some friends from different countries are either tagging themselves  or tagging to their friends and some are sharing in their walls. Let’s see this example:

Nithiananthini’s Profile · Nithiananthini’s Wall

• 

  Nithiananthini Kumarawel

  AwESOMe .-)…

  

  Nepal – the country of the Mt. Everest and the Buddha

  By: Ram Kumar Shrestha

  4 hours ago · Unlike ·  · Share

  • You and 2 others like this.
  • • 

      Mogan Raja Thangavelu I changed my laptop wallpaper with ….Thanks for sharing

      3 hours ago · Like
    • 

      Nithiananthini Kumarawel then u should click the above link for more awesome pics Raja..its from my bro..Ram Kumar Shrestha..he’s promotin Nepal.N he’s a staunch “devotee” of Nepal.. .-)

      3 hours ago · Unlike ·  1 person

Another Chinese foundation plans to raise $ 3b to make Lumbini ‘magnet for Buddhists’

Posted by Ram Kumar Shrestha on June 20, 2011

 

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Months after plans of a Chinese private sector company to invest Rs 8 billion to develop Lumbini as an International

Buddha Center hogged media headlines there comes news that a Chinese-backed foundation is planning to raise $ 3 billion to help Nepal develop Buddha’s birthplace.

According to Reuters, the Asia Pacific Exchange and Cooperation Foundation plans to raise the aforesaid amount at home and abroad “to build temples, an airport, a highway, hotels, convention centres and a Buddhist university in the town of Lumbini.”

Interestingly, UCPN (Maoist) chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal is the vice-chairman of the foundation which aims to transform Lord Buddha’s birthplace in southern Nepal “into a magnet for Buddhists in the same way as Mecca is to Muslims and the Vatican for Catholics”, the report adds.

The foundation signed a memorandum of understanding with Nepal government last month to jointly develop and operate Lumbini.

Nepal to build £1.9 billion ‘Buddhist Mecca’

Posted by Ram Kumar Shrestha on June 20, 2011

China is providing funds to Nepal to build a $3 billion (£1.9bn) ‘Buddhist Mecca’ to attract millions of pilgrims and spiritual tourists to the birthplace of the religion’s founder Gautama, Lord Buddha.

China and Nepal signed an agreement earlier this year to develop the site in Lumbini Photo: REX

By Dean Nelson, New Delhi, Peter Foster in Beijing

Lumbini is a Unesco world heritage site that attracts half a million pilgrims every year from China, India, Japan, Sri Lanka and Thailand to its sacred ponds, gardens and temples.

Planners hope to build an airport, hotels, convention centres, new highways, temples and a Buddhist university at the site on Nepal’sWestern border with India, where Lord Buddha was born about 2,600 years ago.

The scheme is supported by a Chinese government-backed foundation and has brought together an unlikely alliance of Nepali government ministers, Prachanda, the former prime minister and leader of the Maoist insurgency, and Paras, the former crown prince, whose family Prachanda ousted from power.

It also has the support of Steven Clark Rockefeller, the heir to the Rockefeller dynasty. According to Nepali officials devout Buddhists spend more time at the other three main pilgrimage sites in India because Lumbini does not have the infrastructure necessary for longer stays.

Sarnath, in India’s Uttar Pradesh, where Buddha first taught “dharma” or natural law, Bodh Gaya in Bihar, where he found enlightenment under the Bodhi tree and Kushinagar where he found “nirvana” in death, are all drawing increasing numbers of high-spending tourists, and Nepal’s government wants to increase its share of the spoils.

Genocidal war against the Tribal people in India – London Program Report

Posted by Ram Kumar Shrestha on June 14, 2011

 

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Arundhati Roy spoke to an audience of about 500 people at Friends Meeting House in Euston about the War on the People of India by the Indian State on 12th June 2011.

Arundhati’s resistive expression to the murderous activities of the Indian State, support to the public voices and understanding of democracy by external world in Indian context and the reality were very impressive and inspirational. She highlighted with lots of examples that why India cannot be considered as democratic country as army led government Pakistan that time.

She told the audience about her recent speech at School of Oriental and African Studies when she was confronted by a hostile questioner who said she should be thankful she was born in India the world’s largest democracy has if she had been born in China she would be in prison.

Arundhati’s answer was that if she was not the world renowned Indian Author with the name Arundhati Roy, winner of the Booker Prize she should would be sitting in an Indian prison along with the thousands of others unjustly imprisoned in India for resisting the crimes of the Indian State exposing the hypocrisy of Indian Democracy.

Arundhati clearly explains the two Indias, the middle class one so loved by the Western Media and the poor India, but Arundhati’s heart and mind are deployed with the 850 million Indians who live on 50 cents a day. She explains how the mineral rich areas are also the tribal areas and the Indian State has a plan of urbanization to drive 500 million people of the land into the cities. It is employing all weapons of war including starvation to drive the tribal people from their land to benefit the multinational companies who are hungry for India’s raw materials.

She read out the UN definition of genocide which so well describes the Indian State’s activities against the 100 million tribal of India but also stated that when speaking to the United Nations representative they indicated that what India did in its own borders was its own matter has India was the blue eyed boy of the international community and world capital.

Buddhism In America: What Is The Future?

Posted by Ram Kumar Shrestha on June 14, 2011

By Jaweed Kaleem

GARRISON, N.Y. — Backed by the nation’s largest Buddhist magazines and meditation centers, a recent invite-only gathering at an old monastery in this riverside hamlet north of New York City included a guest list of crimson-robed monks of Buddhism’s Tibetan line, tattooed “Dharma Punx,” professors and Japanese-influenced Zen Buddhists that read as a “who’s who” of Buddhism in America.

But the “Maha Council” (maha means “great” in Sanskrit) has created buzz and sparked soul-searching among members of the growing Buddhist religion in the United States for different reasons.

Who speaks for “western Buddhism,” many attendees and observers of last weekend’s event have asked, and how accurately and honestly are elder Buddhists passing on their knowledge to new generations?

What is the relation of U.S. Buddhists to those in India and other parts of Asia, where the spiritual practice was born from Hindu roots in the 5th century B.C.?

The Buddha Comes to Sussex

Posted by Ram Kumar Shrestha on June 14, 2011

Genocidal war against the Tribal people in India – Int’l program in London

Posted by Ram Kumar Shrestha on June 4, 2011

 

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In September 2009, the Indian state, the “largest democracy in the world” openly launched a genocidal war against thepeople of India. Deploying over 200,000 paramilitary forces and other Special Forces supported by the Indian Army, Indian Air Force and various intelligence agencies in the forest regions of eastern and central India have unleashed an unprecedented military offensive — code named Operation Green Hunt (OGH). The war is being aided by the US, Israel and many European governments because the corporations of many of these countries are setting up multi-million dollar industries in this region. This is where millions of adivasis (tribal peoples), the poorest of India’s poor, live. While the government claims that this war is solely aimed at the Maoists, in reality its objective is to grab the rich minerals and natural resources of these areas and hand them over to multinational corporations who will exploit them for their own super profits.

Rising popular resistance against this outrageous anti-people offensive by the Indian state has already engulfed the largestsections of the masses in these regions and across the rest of sub-continent. There is fierce resistance against OGH and people are getting better organised in the defence of their land, habitat and livelihood while at the same time getting wide support across the urban spaces all across.

The government has intensified the clamp down on the media, civil liberties activists and other democratic minded citizens. Flagrant violations of the democratic rights of the people are on the rise. The number of political prisoners and those waiting to be tried is on a steep the rise. Ever new draconian laws are being promulgated by the Indian Parliament and various provincial legislatures to curb all voices of dissent, and to exterminate the people with impunity. Already, the Indian state has armed itself with a plethora of notorious legislations such as the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), Disturbed Areas Act, Chhattisgarh Special Public Safety Act, etc., which are in direct contravention of the basic rights of citizens in any country that claims itself to be democratic.

भारतीय बिस्तारबाद बिरुद्ध लण्डनमा अन्तरराष्ट्रिय कार्यक्रम

Posted by Ram Kumar Shrestha on June 2, 2011

 

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यही जुन १२ तारिखका दिन भारतीय बिस्तारबादद्धारा नेपाल तथा छिमेकी मुलुकहरुमा गरिएका अन्यायपूर्ण हस्तक्षेप र भारतभित्रै पनि भारती जनताद्धारा गरिएका न्यायोचित आन्दोलनका बिरुद्ध गरिएका श्रीन्खलाबद्ध दमनको बिरोधमा लण्डनमा अन्तरराष्ट्रिय कार्यक्रम आयोजना गरिदै छ । उक्त कार्यक्रममा बक्ताका रुपमा भारतकी चर्चित लेखिका तथा उपन्यासकार एबं “The God of Small Things” उपन्यासका लागि १९९७ को बूकर पुरस्कारकी बिजेता अरुनधती रोय, “Imperialism and Proletarian Revolution in 21st Century” का लेखक तथा एनेकपा माओबादी पोलिटब्यूरो सदस्य बसन्त (ईन्द्र मोहन), अमेरिकाको उप्सला कालेजबाट साहित्यमा मानार्थ डक्टरेट उपाधी प्राप्त एबं “Red Star Over India” का लेखक स्वीडेनका डा  जान मिर्डाल र क्यानडाबाट इस्ट इण्डिया डिफेन्स कमिटिका महासचिब हरभाजन चीमा हुनुहुन्छ । कार्यक्रममा बक्ताहरुको प्रस्तुति, प्रस्नोत्तर र फिल्म प्रदर्शन हुनेछ ।

उक्त कार्यक्रम इण्टरनेशनल क्याम्पेन अगेन्स्ट वार अन पिपुल अफ इण्डिया (ICAWPI) को प्रायोजनमा संयुक्त नेपाली मोर्चा यूरोप (UNF Europe), इण्डियन वर्कर्स एसोशियसन {GB), AFPRISA, TKM, 100FCC, WPRM-Britain, UFSO, CCRC लगायत अन्य संस्थाहरुको आयोजना र कन्फेडेरेशन फ्रम वर्कर्स फ्रम टर्की इन यूरोप (ATIK), प्रगतिशील नेपाली समाज यूके, कपिलबस्तु दिवस अभियान र एण्टी कास्ट डिस्क्रिमिनेशन {ACDA) को सहयोगमा हुन लागेको हो । 

स्थान: 

Friends House, Main Hall,

173 Euston Road, London NW1 2BJ

समय: 1:30 pm till 5:00 pm

दिन: Sunday, June 12, 2011

संपर्क:

नबिन सापकोटा – 07898728062

कर्ण शाही – 07894339531

रण बहादुर केसी – 07878744494

रामकुमार श्रेष्ठ – 07838028717

LUMBINI ( BHAGAWAN BUDHDHA KO JANMASTHAL)

Posted by Ram Kumar Shrestha on May 28, 2011

 

Buddha’s teaching of wisdom

Posted by Ram Kumar Shrestha on May 27, 2011

by Vickramabahu Karunaratne

( Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian)The Government of Lanka says that on Wesak day this year, 2600 years after Buddha will be completed. Of course there are those who dispute the calculations of advisers to the government. In any case it must be pproximately true; and after so many years it is worth making an investigation into the fundamental teachings of Buddha. Buddha was probably the first human teacher to reject the idea of God or the Creator. Also, he rejected metaphysics and beliefs in super natural phenomena that existed in the religious practices at that time. In particular he rejected the idea of soul and the transmigration of soul towards an eternal life. In opposition to all that he put forward the idea of Dukkha as the fundamental truth of the universe. What is meant by Dukkha? Generally we hear, that Dukkha means suffering of the human subject. In that sense it is a universal truth confined to the human existence. However, what Buddha preached was a universal truth about the whole universe, or the total reality.

What is the objective meaning of dukkha? In the most general sense, dukkha means severe emptiness or negative nothingness. Does that mean continuous negation is the fundamental reality? Buddha often referred to a universal formula to depict the basic character of the reality: anitta- dukkha- anatma, meaning change-negation- lack of soul or substance. However Buddha was eager to explain the idea of dukkha referring to twelve varieties of happenings or movements. Rise and collapse, growth and decay, damage and recovery, unity of the opposite and separation of the equals, pressure and release, disturb and settle. In some places Buddha removed the last two sets and included these within damage and recovery.

In that case there were only eight movements included within dukkha. Inspite of such variations dukkha means all such possible severe happenings common to any thing and every thing within the universe. Impermanence, negation in nothingness- dukkha- is at the bottom of every thing. Physical world is a product of this self movement. Buddha said the four physical states, maha bhootha meaning general physical states, patavi or solidness, aapo or liquidness, vayo or gases, and thejo or fire are products of dukkha. In turn all physical things arise from four maha bootha.