New Mandala

In a recent posting about Thaksin Shinawatra’s birthday, there were some marvelous pictures of monks taking part in the festivities.  One pair showed some monks removing a curse, with their begging bowls used to signify the removal of the curse.  Other pictures showed live monks in conjunction with pictures of Thaksin (Actually, Mr. Thaksin was [...]

[Read more →]

Talking ranges from communicating mundane facts to building meaningful relations with other human beings. Communicating personally with others generally requires the establishment of a shared language but it seems to me that something more is needed, such as a shared ‘conversational context’. What I mean by this is a language-use which is underpinned by a [...]

[Read more →]

The notion of external ‘help’ to the people of Burma has taken a beating from across the ideological board. The debate around the issue even made international headlines during that brief moment following the tragedy of Cyclone Nargis when Burma was apparently interesting enough to the rest of the world to warrant significant reportage (September [...]

[Read more →]

The word is ‘kilt’. The metaphor might be a stretch, but in the spirit of the four-letter word series, the word ‘kilt’ reminds us of why there’s more to some policies than meets the eye.
As Thailand careens eagerly toward aims of achieving Gross National Happiness by bringing itself in line with Bhutan on some aspects [...]

[Read more →]

 
A recent article in the Asia Times states that Cambodia is about to overhaul its laws that deal with NGOs.
In late September he [Hun Sen] called for the revival of a controversial law which would require the country’s more than 2,000 associations and NGOs to complete a complex registration process and submit to stringent financial [...]

[Read more →]

For weeks, a steady stream of four-letter words have run through my mind in connection to the unfolding events in Thailand.  Most of these words have reflected either my fear of what might happen next or my frustration at my failure to make sense of what has already transpired.  Unfortunately, while many of these four-letter [...]

[Read more →]

I’ve dislocated both shoulders on several occasions – although fortunately, not at the same time. With the corpse-like limb dangling from its socket, any movement is acutely painful. Nevertheless, I find the best solution is to grasp the limp wrist with my remaining good hand, and slowly but firmly twist outward and downwards in a [...]

[Read more →]

In late 2005 I made my first trip to Cambodia. Before my departure from Australia I’d bought myself a guidebook to the region. Instead of being stranded and needing to survive in an unfamiliar environment, the theory was that all I would have to do is turn to the guidebook of laziness for warmth and [...]

[Read more →]

The first time was the worst, although the second was pretty bad too. The only two times in my life I’ve been on an intravenous drip.
I’ve had malaria about 20 times — although I can’t be sure exactly, because towards the end I was self-diagnosing, and medicating with Artesunate and Mefloquine. During this period in [...]

[Read more →]

In 1983 Charles Keyes wrote “the evidence from monastery libraries in Laos and Thailand reveals that what constitutes the Theravādin dhamma for people in these areas includes only a small portion of the total Tipiṭaka…Moreover, the collection of texts available to the people in the associated community are not exactly the same as those found [...]

[Read more →]