Tibet and India: Buddhist Traditions and Transformations

The Metropolitan Museum of Art just opened an exhibit that shows how the Buddhist Tibetan traditions drew from outside influences, especially in the 11th and 12th centuries. That's when Islam came into the northern part of India and disrupted political and religious traditions. And that's when, according to exhibit literature, monasteries of the north began an exchange with Tibet.

Tibet wanted to "purify their understanding of Buddhism and thereby establish correct religious practice." As a consequence, northern Indian monasteries sent teachers to Tibet and Tibet sent monks to study in northern India.

The "exhibition examines how esoteric imagery, texts, and Vajrayana ritual practices contributed to reshaping the complex religious landscape of Tibet"  and  runs from February 8th through June 8.

You can view some of the objects in the exhibition on the museum's Pitnterest board here.

Black Liberation Theology

Studying Christianity? Black liberation theology is an interesting and controversial strand of contemporary Christianity. It's controversial because one of the founders, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, was also President Obama’s home pastor in Chicago. Opponents of the president brought up some of Rev. Wright’s more incendiary sermons during the 2012 election.

What is liberation theology?  According to Bill Moyers in the video clip above,  it attempts to “read the Bible through the experience of people who suffered and who are then able to say to themselves that we read the Bible differently because we have struggled."

The movement started in 1966 during the Civil Rights era. Wright and others portray their struggle for civil rights as a struggle for justice.  And they see God as involved in that struggle.

According to religious scholar and professor, Anthony Pinn, "God is so intimately connected to the community that suffers, that God becomes a part of that community."   Chapter 4 of  Luke's Gospel is the central text for liberation theorists, according to Dwight Hopkins, a professor at the University of Chicago Divinity School,   "Jesus says my mission is to eradicate poverty and to bring about freedom and liberation for the oppressed."

In 2012, opponents of President Obama tried to portray liberation theology as violent.  They pointed to specific sermons (you can see one of them in the Moyers clip above) they saw as inflammatory. According to the New York Times, Glen Beck, the conservative radio host, called Liberation theology “the theological tradition based in hate, intolerance and racial black nationalism.”

But Linda Thomas, who teaches at the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago, says in this NPR story, that the point of liberation theology "is to challenge the powerful and to raise questions for society to think about. Thomas says if white people are surprised by the rhetoric, it's because most have never visited a black church."

Under the Spell of Yoga

The exhibition, "Yoga: The Art of Transformation," left the Freer and Sackler Galleries in Washington, DC last month and is now at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco until May 18. You can preview the exhibition with the very short introductory clip below.

The exhibition is all about the visual culture of yoga and the different meanings of yoga to both practitioners and to those who interact with them, according to the Sackler curator.

If you cannot visit the museum, you might read William Dalrymple's excellent review in The New York Review of Books called, "Under the Spell of Yoga."  Darlymple has written a number of books about India and Indic religions. I especially enjoyed his book, Nine Lives, In Search of the Sacred in Modern India. His chapter about a Jain nun provides a great introduction to Jainism.

Darylymple explains how yogic art developed. Before 1600, most Indian art reflected the power of the monarch.  It served as a kind of "dynastic propaganda."  But that changed after 1600 when a young Hindu prodigy began painting "portraits of holy men performing yogic asanas or exercises aimed to focus the mind and achieve spiritual liberation and transcendence." 

The yogic tradition goes back more than two thousand years. Archaeologists have dug up seals from the Indus River Valley civilization that some scholars believe show a figure practicing some kind of meditation.  By the 3rd and 5th centuries, Darylmple notes, "yogic techniques and goals spread so as to become practiced across northern India and were eventually codified in the Yoga Sutra of Patanjali that date from the fourth century AD."

This history of yoga is part of what makes Darylmple's review so interesting. He helps put the exhibition in context. So even if you plan to see the exhibit, you might want to read this essay.

.

Private Tibetan Texts Find Home in China

The largest private collection of Tibetan texts, recently donated to a Chinese University in Chengdu, are a "treasure trove" for Buddhist scholars. One text even includes details about Kublai Khan's wife.

The collection includes 12,000 texts and, according to the New York Times, was amassed by E. Gene Smith, a private collector in New York.  Smith died in 2010 but wanted his collection in Asia where it came from.

The texts ended up in China rather than Tibet because government policies make it difficult for scholars to travel there.

Smith was born a Mormon, but converted to Buddhism and  moved to India where, according to the Times, he "began a 25-year quest to find Tibetan books, many of them smuggled out by refugees who had trekked over the Himalayas."

Awesome Buddhist Cave Temples

These Buddhist temple caves in Asia are beautiful. You can see larger versions of these and others at the Huffington Post. The first image is part of the Yungang Grottoes in Shanxi, China (252 caves and 51,000 statues), and the second is the Khao Luang Cave Temple in Phetburi, Thailand.

Alternative Hindu History Gets Pulped

Should free speech ever be restricted when it comes to religion?  In 1978, the ACLU defended neo-Nazi;s who wanted to march through Skoie, Ill where many Holocaust survivors lived. The government allowed the march.

In India, Penguin Publishers pulled a new book that criticizes Hinduism. Critics inside and outside India question the publisher's commitment to freedom of press.

The short clip above summarizes the issue. Penguin Books in India recently withdrew a new book about Hinduism by Wendy Doniger, an American professor,  from store shelves and destroyed them. A conservative Hindu group challenged the book as "malicious," "dirty," and "perverse," according to the New York Times.  Critics inside and outside India are challenging Penguin's decision.

Booker prize-winning author Arundhati Roy might break her ties with Penguin because of its decision. She even wrote Penguin asking why it made the decision to withdraw the books, nothing there was not even a ban or court order.

Here's a PRI interview with Wendy Doniger, the American author of "The Hindus: An Alternative History." She told the BBC that "it marks a shift, a very dismaying shift in submitting to the growing atmosphere of intolerance."

Rumi: The Great Mystical Poet

For Valentine's Day, here's a Sufi poet that few students know by name but whose poetry they may have read.

His name is Jalaluddin Rumi. He's a 13th century mystical poet and one of the best selling poets in the west.

The son of a Sufi scholar, Rumi, as he is known, wrote many poems describing his love of god. You can read many of his poems in Coleman Barks translation called The Essential Rumi.

In 2012, Krista Tippet discussed Rumi on her show, On Being, with Fatemeh Keshavarz, a professor of Persian & Comparative Literature at Washington University in St. Louis, and the author of a couple of books about Rumi.  You can listen to the show below. Tippet summarizes Rumi's life in the first few minutes.

Here are a couple of good sites, if you want to explore Rumi's poety on the web.

• Love poems of Rumi
• Poems of Passsion
• Selected Rumi Poems at On Being

You can find out more about Rumi at this BBC Religion site.

Ethnic Cleansing in Central African Republic

Christian militias in the Central African Republic (CAR ) are attempting to purge Muslims from their war-torn country. Amnesty International calls it ethnic cleansing and says that the militias are forcing "a Muslim exodus of historic proportions."

Why and why should anyone care?

The CAR is a former French colony. Last year, Muslim rebels (known as Seleka) ousted the president. Christian militias then began fighting Muslims and forcing them out of the country. Peacekeepers include about 1600 French troops and about 6000 troops from an African Union-led peacekeeping force. According to this CNN story,  Amnesty International says that these forces have not done much to stop the violence.

The UN Refugee Agency calls the violence "a humanitarian catastrophe of unspeakable proportions." And the New York Times reports that "entire neighborhoods in the capital, Bangui, have been emptied because of attacks by the Christian militias."

Reuters says that there is a risk of genocide without  "a more robust international response."

The BBC has an excellent short  country profile of the CAR and they call it one of the least developed countries in the world. And NPR just did a story about the fleeing Muslims which you can access here.

Camels Had No Business in Genesis

 CC0 Public Domain

Radiocarbon dating of camels suggest they were not around when Genesis says they were. That means that Abraham, Jacob, and Joseph were not camel riders as Genesis says they were.

According to the New York Times , archaeologists "used radiocarbon dating to pinpoint the earliest known domesticated camels in Israel to the last third of the 10th century B.C. — centuries after the patriarchs lived and decades after the kingdom of David."

The historian, Juan Cole, has an interesting story about the  discovery called "Camel Bones and Jerusalem: Archaeology Shows Bible written Late, Full of Errors."

11,000 Images of Persian Manuscripts Online

Check out these beautiful Persian manuscripts at the The British Library.  Most are small paintings designed to go into books.  You can read posts about some of the manuscripts which explain them in great detail. For example, you can read a famous poem by Manṭiq al-ṭayr, and examine the image, which is a Sufi allegory of the quest for God. And you can zoom in on most of the images and see awesome detail.

According to the Library, "the manuscripts were selected for their historical, literary and artistic importance and form part of a three year project to provide digital records of our Persian manuscript collection and images of 50 manuscripts."

Open Culture, where I first saw these has a nice review of the manuscripts. 

The opening of Timur’s grandson Iskandar Sultan’s pocket encyclopedia containing 23 works.

Country's First Muslim Fraternity

Many American universities have fraternities but until recently, none had a Muslim fraternity. According to this story in the New York Times, that's changing.

The first Muslim fraternity was started this fall at the University of Texas. Called Alpha Lambda Mu ("named for three letters that start several chapters of the Quran: Alif Laam Meem"), it has spread to other campuses.

  

Sacred Cows & Modern Life in India

Teaching Hinduism? Here's an interesting report from Religion and Ethnics News Weekly about the sacred cows today and the conflict the cows pose.

Israel and the BDS Movement

Should Israel divest itself of land it occupies in the West Bank?

That's what a relatively new movement wants Israel to do. Called the BDS movement, it uses  boycotts divestment and sanctions in an effort to get Israel to divest itself of occupied land on the West bank. Israel calls it the “delegitimization” movement.  And a number of articles suggest that Israel is starting to get nervous.

Why?  Here are two reasons. The Dutch pension fund PGGM recently divested Israeli banks of its $200 billion because of the country's involvement in Palestinian occupied territory. And in December, the American Studies Association voted to endorse an academic boycott of Israeli academic institution.

BDS's non-violent approach is different from the intifada of an earlier generation. According to Hirsh Goodman in an essay for the New York Times, "their message has started to resonate with trade unions, churches, universities and international companies in Europe and the United States, who see Israel as oppressing Palestinians and violating their human rights."

The Soda Stream controversy occurred against this heavily charged background.

World Distribution of Christians 1910 to 2010

Wow!  What a difference a century makes! In 1910, most of the the world's Christians lived in Latin America and Europe, as you can see in the Pew Research graph above.  Not in 2010. Almost half of the world's Christians now live in Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa!

You can see the changes in the numbers for the Global North and the Global South. In 1910, the Global North had about 5 times more Christians than the Global South. That changed by 2010. The Global South now outnumbers the Global North by almost 50 million!

That's not big news. Writers have been talking about the rise of the Global South for years.  In 2011, Philip Jenkins released a book about the phenomenon called" The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity."

Pat Robertson Calls Creationism Rubbish

Here's the story from the Huffington Post.

Where do Americans Fall on Nye/Ham Debate?

Bill Nye, the Science Guy, and Ken Ham (a best-selling Christian author and president/CEO of "Answers in Genesis" (AiG), debated evolution and creationism last night. Where do most Americans fall on that debate?

The Pew Research for Religion and Public Life asked that question last year. You'll see, for example that 64%  of white evangelical Protestants believe that humans have existed in their present form since the beginning of time.

The way people view evolution and creationism also breaks down politically.  Republicans tend to see humans as existing in  their present form since the beginning of time while independents and Democrats tend to believe in evolution.

Bill Nye & Ken Ham Debate Creationism

The debate was long, over two hours. And lots of people watched it live. You Tube showed over 500,000 watching at one point.  CNN moderated the debate and has an excellent summary here and here.

Reddit also lit up during the debate and you might find some of the entries there entertaining. Time Magazine offers a minute by minute review and the page already has over 500 comments. NPR also has a good summary of the two as does the Washington Post.

Nye and Ham disagree about the story of creation presented in the Bible. Ham trusts the Bible as the "word of God," while Nye does not. If the creation story is true, then the earth is only 6000 years old.   Nye challenged Ham on this fundamental question saying "it means that Mr. Ham’s word is to be more respected than what you can observe in nature, what you can find in your backyard in Kentucky.”

Most and Least Religious States in the Union

Mississippi ranks as the most religious while Vermont as the least religious, according to this new Gallop poll on the State of the States.

The Face of the Prophet

An English political candidate faces death threats and criticism because he tweeted a cartoon image of Jesus and Mohammed. Muslims forbid people from making images of the Prophet or Allah. They do not believe that either should be idolized. 

According to 4News in London, Maajid Nawaz, a parliamentary candidate in Hampstead and Kilburn in England, said that "he did not feel threatened by the image."

This is an interesting story that religion students might discuss. Thanks to Emma Le Neve Foster for tweeting the link.

Huge Islamic Art Collection Goes to Dallas Museum

Want to see Muslim art in the United States?

Until today, the two best museums to see that art were the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and the Smithsonian Freer and Sackler Galleries in Washington, DC.

Soon, you can also go to the Dallas Museum of Art whose recent agreement with a private art collector will instantly make it the the third largest repository of Muslim art in the United States.

According to the New York Times, the collection comes from a private collector, Edmund de Unger, who amassed what The Times calls "one of the most important collections of Islamic art in private hands."

The Times reports that this acquisition (which will last for fifteen years) will help raise the profile of Islamic art in the Untied States.

Hopefully, once Dallas gets the art, they will make it available online so that students and others can view it.

Soda Stream Ad Sparks Controversy

What's the controversy?  This Al Jazeera news clip sums it up nicely?

Soda Stream, an Israeli company, located it's factory in an Israeli occupied settlement, which many in the international community see as illegal.  Pro-Palestinian activists oppose the factory for that reason.

What does Scarlett Johnasson have to do with the controversy?  The actress is a spokesperson for Oxam, but when she starred in the Soda Stream commercial, Oxfam criticized her. That's because Oxfam, like much of the international community, oppose Soda Stream's location on the occupied West Bank. Oxfam said that Soda Stream furthered "the ongoing poverty and denial of rights of the Palestinian communities that we work to support.”

Johansson resigned her spokesperson position with Oxfam and defended Soda Stream saying that she supports "building a bridge to peace between Israel and Palestine, supporting neighbors working alongside each other..."

BuzzFeed has an excellent story about the controversy here.

This story might help students better understand the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis.

Pentecostalism Challenges Historical Churches

Studying Christianity?   Here' an interesting clip about the Pentecostal movement and the challenges it poses to traditional Christian churches.

Pentecostals number about 470 million and by 2025, they should grow to almost a quarter-billion. The movement has a strong messianic influence and focuses on speaking in tongues.

You can read more about Pentecostalism at this excellent BBC religion site. And here is an interesting story about Pentecostal snake handlers.