The more I hear about it, the more I think Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche's new book Rebel Buddha may say something significant, and new (to the West, at least) about Buddhism. Here's a quote from it at Tricycle:

"It's not just some other people who have cultural habits and attachments, customs and points of view. We have to see that culture exists on both sides. Whether we come from the American or Asian side, we can be like fish swimming in the ocean. Fish see everything that's in the ocean, but they don't see themselves or the water they're swimming in. In the same way, we can easily see the habits and customs of others, but we can remain blind to our own." (RB, Chapter 15, p. 169)

Yes, and this relates so well to the discussion about the "rationalists" who want to cleanse Buddhism of "superstition" discussed in the last post. It's easy to criticize the cultural accommodations made by Buddhism in Asia over the years, but we in the West also are creatures of our conditioning, and realization requires breaking out of that conditioning.

People who want to make Buddhism over to accommodate the "rational" West have no idea what they are doing.

Dennis Hunter at Buddhist Geeks and Stephen Lundy at Drunken Koudou do not see eye-to-eye on Buddhist "rationalism" and the doctrines of karma and rebirth. Hunter argues that the western "rationalism" that dismisses karma and rebirth creates a distorted understanding of Buddhism. Lundy responds to Hunter's post, saying that supernatural beliefs about karma and rebirth are corruptions of the Buddha's teaching that Buddhists are better off without.

Both bloggers make good points. If you are a regular reader you'll probably guess, correctly, that I'm more in Hunter's camp than Lundy's, although I agree and disagree with both of them on some points.

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This week Aung San Suu Kyi was released from house arrest in Burma, which is a positive development. However, the Nobel Laureate has been released before, only to be arrested again by the military junta on trumped-up charges. We'll see how it goes this time.

Let us not forget that many others have not been released. This week the U.S. State Department denounced the military junta for its tight control of Buddhist clergy:

In Burma, the government continues its tight control of the activities of Buddhist clergy and discriminates against minority religious communities. The release last Sunday of Aung San Suu Kyi is a positive step. However, there are more than 2,100 political prisoners in Burma, including many monks and other religious figures.

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Over the last couple of days I've seen several news stories about the rush to excavate a "2,600-year-old Buddhist monastery" in Afghanistan. Obviously, the age of the temple has been misstated. The historical Buddha probably had not been born yet 2,600 years ago, and Buddhism didn't get to Afghanistan until the reign of the Emperor Ashoka (304-232 BCE).

But I see that 2,600 figure picked up by one media outlet after another, including the BBC. A little fact checking, people. When I was a journalism student, somewhat less than 2,600 years ago, the professors used to hand us fake news stories to see if we could find the errors. My favorite was a press release about Safety Prevention Week.

Anyway -- this is the same temple or monastery at Mes Aynak I blogged about a few weeks ago that probably dates to the 1st century CE. It really is a big deal, because the temple dates to the height of the Buddhist civilization of Gandhara, a particularly important era for Buddhist art. A team of archeologists is rushing to save as much art as they can before a Chinese company takes over the site and turns it into a copper mine.