As Cambodia modernises and sex and drug scandals rock the monkhood, the famed saffron robes no longer command the respect they once did
Phnom Penh, Cambosia -- In 1959, May Mayko Ebihara became the first American to write an anthropological dissertation on Cambodian village life. Published in two volumes nearly a decade later, Svay: A Khmer Village in Cambodia depicted a pre-modern agricultural idyll governed by family and religion, in which monks were seen as the “living embodiments and spiritual generators of Buddhism”. More
A Buddhist Tradition to Save Animals Has Taken an Ugly Turn
By Jani Actman, National Geographic News, January 23, 2017
What began as a quest to protect wildlife is now killing animals and harming ecosystems.
Hong Kong, China -- Claudia He Yun recently witnessed an incident outside a Buddhist temple in the Tiantai Mountains, in eastern China, that disturbed her: a group of people about to place a laptop-size turtle in a shallow moat surrounding the property. A monk stood with them reciting something, possibly a blessing for the turtle. More