Some Buddhists Who Are Not Smiling

 

Smile of Bodhi

The Asia Times:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/SEA-01-090413.html

Burma/Myanmar's radical "969 movement" has been central in the recent brutal pogroms against minority Muslims that have left at least 40 dead and 12,000 displaced. The Buddhist monk-led group, however, cannot be understood outside of the interface between President Thein Sein's government and the country's racist society at large.

Nor can it be explained without examining the respective roles of a) the State, which in effect offers the country's neo-Nazi Buddhists impunity, b) Thein Sein's inaction, even amid indications of ethnic cleansing against minority Muslims, and c) the Aung San Suu Kyi-led opposition's moral bankruptcy throughout the crisis...

How many times have I read writers who dislike religion as a whole..., except for Buddhists, or Zen Buddhists? Or who take part in no religious displays, except for - perhaps - some Buddhist meditation.

Buddhists are humans, just like the rest of we clowns, schlemiels, schlubs... or Neo-Nazis.

And the part played by Aung San Suu Kyi and the opposition must be understood, lest she turn out to be another Media creation celebrity that was paraded around to persuade us. She could be the Tiger Woods of Politics and Human Rights if this goes the wrong way.

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