Buddah’s Bones In New Pagoda

Mumbai is to have Asia’’s largest Pagoda at 325 feet tall. It is intended to be a mass meditation centre and also a major tourist attraction in the years ahead. It will the house of actual bone relics of Gautam Buddha, the founder of Buddhism.

Modelled on the lines of the Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon (pictured), the Indian version aspires to pay homage to the Buddha and his teachings. It also stands as a tribute to Myanmar, which has through history cherished Buddhist secularist traditions and thought.

Pagodas are tiered towers with multiple eaves and built to host religious functions. These are common in countries of the Far East such as Myanmar (Burma), Thailand, Cambodia, China, Japan, Korea and Vietnam. The modern pagoda structures have been evolved from the ancient Indian Stupa, a tomb-like pillared structure where sacred relics could be kept safe and venerated. The pagoda has been constructed using only stone and limewater. No cement or steel. The sandstone was transported from Jodhpur.

The interior of the dome is a large meditation hall, a seamless expanse designed to accommodate 8,000 meditators. A giant golden wheel or the Dhamma Chakra is set in the centre from the inside. A four-tonne keystone bears Buddha relics. Two small pagodas outside the main one will also serve as meditation centres.

Indian President Pratibha Patil, will formally inaugurate it on February 8, 2009 after 11 years of construction.The land was donated by a Vipassana student. The project has been spearheaded by the Global Vipassana Foundation.

My question is where have the Buddhas bones been until know?

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Yoga As Art

Wishing Everyone A Happy Healthy and Enlightening New Year

 

“You are a Spiritual being having a human experience" Living Liberation is the missing manual Find out more 

Science V Religion

One of the perennial questions is the relationship between spirituality and religion. I’d like to look more deeply at this issue in the future and for today to offer a very interesting video. It isn’t really looking at  spirituality and religion, but religion and science, which is today the third force that merits a inclusion in this discussion.

The talk is by  Philosopher Dan Dennett who in it calls for religion - all religion - to be taught in schools, so we can understand their nature as a natural phenomenon. Then he takes on The Purpose-Driven Life by Rick Warren, disputing its claim that, to be moral, one must deny evolution. Dennett argues that human consciousness and free will are the result of physical processes and are not what we traditionally think they are. His 2003 book Freedom Evolves explores the way our brains have evolved to give us - and only us - the kind of freedom that matters, while 2006’s Breaking the Spell examines religious belief through the lens of biology.

I have to say, somewhat prefacing future writing on the subject that I do agree with the idea of teaching all children about the religions of the world. I’m not sure about limiting the teaching to the ‘facts’ about them as in the talk Dennet doesn’t defined exactly how these would be defined. When we look at the world today and then turn our gaze back through history, it is appalling how much blood has been spilled and horrors inflicted in conflicts between religions. Understanding others religion would I believe go a long way to prevent the demonizing that makes this possible.

I hope you enjoy the talk, let me know what you think.

 

 

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Online Guru Puppetji On Non-attachment

I recently came across online spiritual guru puppitji, and he had me in stitches. While clearly done for humor, there is spiritual wisdom too in puppetji’s words. The video I am posting here doesn’t have any swearing,most of them do, just to warn you if you are sensitive to such things. Enjoy!

 

 

 

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