Latest news with #Buddhism
South Wales Guardian
5 hours ago
- Health
- South Wales Guardian
Pontarddulais man behind new mindfulness guide
David Oromith, from Pontarddulais, was having a mental health crisis at the age of 18 and planning his own death. Now, more than 12 years later, he is a popular meditation teacher helping others find peace and happiness. A desperate late-night Google search for "Why is life just suffering?" introduced him to the path that would change his life. This summer, he releases a guide for people wrestling with anxiety, stress, and burnout. 'Calm Mind, Open Heart: 108 Reflections from Buddhism, Psychology & Real Life' distils the lessons that helped Mr Oromith trade panic attacks for peace of mind. Mr Oromith said: "I know how real life feels – panic attacks, depression – and I want others to know genuine change is possible without escaping to a mountaintop. "I learned that the hard way – and I wrote this book so no-one has to feel as helpless as I did." Mr Oromith first encountered mindfulness while working in mental-health services, already grappling with depression himself. He recalled: "Professionals told me I might have to just live with it. "Buddhism showed me that thoughts aren't facts and compassion and happiness can be trained like any other skill." Today, Mr Oromith co-runs the UK charity Samadhi, teaches weekly classes online and in person, runs retreats around the country, and produces podcasts. Manu Oromith, Samadhi co-founder, said: "David's story proves small, daily changes can transform a life. "'Calm Mind, Open Heart' puts that power in the reader's pocket." The book is set to be published on August 1, with signed pre-orders being shipped on July 25. The book can be pre-ordered on Samadhi's website for a signed copy delivered one week ahead of the street date and before the title appears on Amazon and in UK bookshops.
Malay Mail
12 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Malay Mail
‘Just another human being': Dalai Lama's enduring grace, in his translator's words
NEW DELHI, June 28 — With his flowing red monk's robes, beaming smile and contagious laugh, the Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, has been the charismatic global face of his people's cause for decades. The Nobel Peace Prize-winning monk, Tenzin Gyatso, is expected to celebrate his 90th birthday on July 6 with huge crowds in northern India, his base since leaving his homeland fleeing Chinese troops in 1959. While China condemns him as a rebel and separatist, the internationally recognised Dalai Lama describes himself as a 'simple Buddhist monk'. Thupten Jinpa, his translator of nearly four decades, described a man who uses humour to calm, fierce intellect to debate, and combines self-discipline with tolerance of others. 'He's never deluded by being extraordinary,' said Jinpa, an eminent Buddhist scholar born in Tibet. The Dalai Lama treats those he meets in the same manner whether they are a president or a peasant, world leader or Hollywood star. 'When he's getting ready to go and see a president or a prime minister, everybody around him is all getting nervous he's just completely relaxed,' said Jinpa, who is now a professor at Montreal's McGill University. 'Once I asked him how is it that he's not nervous, and he said, basically, 'the person I'm meeting is just another human being, just like me!'' 'Self-confidence and humility' Despite being revered as the 14th reincarnation of the Dalai Lama, a role stretching back more than 600 years, he does not act with a sense of superiority. 'He is one of the most self-confident people I've ever met in my life,' Jinpa said. 'Self-confidence and humility generally don't go together that well, but in him, they sit beautifully.' Jinpa highlighted the Dalai Lama's ability to bring people together through his 'contagious' sense of humour and famous giggling 'individual laugh'. 'He uses humour immediately, so he has this ability to make you feel at ease.' But the translator also described a man who applied the rigorous education and skills of philosophical debate learned as a monk to address the challenges of a complex world. 'He's gone through a formal academic training,' said Jinpa, who himself studied as a monk and holds a doctorate from the University of Cambridge. 'So when he's sitting down with scientists and philosophers and thinkers in deep conversation, his ability to get to the gist, and ask the question that points towards the next challenge, is an amazing display of his focus.' Jinpa described a man who pursues an austere monastic life with 'very high discipline'. 'He gets up at 3:30am and has meditation. He doesn't eat after lunch, which is one of the precepts of monastic ethics,' he said. 'He has always maintained this strictly.' While he was born to a farming family, the Dalai Lama grew up in Lhasa's Potala Palace, a vast building reputed to have 1,000 rooms. Since then he has spent much of his life in a hilltop monastic complex in India's town of McLeod Ganj. 'His bedroom is actually a small corridor between two large rooms, doors on the two sides, and a three-by-six single bed attached to the wall, and next to it is a shower cubicle — and that's it,' Jinpa said. 'He has got his photographs of his gurus, teachers, above his bed — very simple.' 'Non-judgement' But the Dalai Lama balances that toughness towards himself with softness for those he meets. 'Generally, when people are more pious, more disciplined, more pure, they also tend to be less tolerant,' Jinpa said. 'A lot of the intolerance really comes from puritanism in the world, whether it's religious or ideology,' he added. 'But again, in him, this understanding and non-judgement towards others — and expectation of a high standard for himself — it sits beautifully.' Jinpa added that as the holder of a centuries-old institution, the Dalai Lama places his people before himself. 'In all the negotiations that he has had with China, he has constantly made the point that the issue is not about his return, or his status,' he said. 'The issue is about the Tibetan people — there are over six million of us,' said Jinpa. 'Their ability to be self-governing on the Tibetan plateau, which is their historical home, and their ability to exist with dignity as a distinct people within the People's Republic of China.' — AFP
20 hours ago
- Health
Bathing and 'Purity': Cleanliness and Nationalism in Modern Japan
In the spring of 2024, the phrase 'bath cancelling community,' or ' furo kyanseru kaiwai ' began trending on Japanese social media. Some young people had decided that bathing every day was not worth the hassle and took to social media to announce that they were resigning from the practice. 'The idea that you could 'cancel' your daily bath, of course, only makes sense if it's normally taken for granted that taking a bath every day is just something you do,' says Kawabata Miki. 'I was interested in where that idea came from, and how it was formed.' Probably many people in Japan have childhood memories of their parents urging them to hurry up and get in the bath before supper, and still feel today that they would rather choose a leisurely soak in a bath over a quick shower even on a trip away from home. Kawabata says she remembers wondering as a child why her parents were so insistent about getting her in the bath every evening. These formative experiences played a part in her choice to focus on bathing customs in her research. 'I felt these bathing habits had deeply influenced Japanese standards of cleanliness. I wanted to trace the origins of this belief that the Japanese are a nation of inveterate bath-lovers, clean and pure in body and mind, and look back at how these customs took shape.' Too Much Bathing Bad For Your Health? Local traditions throughout the country make it clear that people were bathing in natural hot springs from an early period. Following the arrival of Buddhism in the middle of the sixth century, temples around the country established bathing facilities and steam baths, which were open not only to monks and nuns but also to visiting pilgrims. Temples began to accept donations from bathers, who could accumulate merit by donating money to these facilities attached to Buddhist temples. These simple baths developed into commercial operations, and sentō bathhouses began to flourish during the Edo period (1603–1868). The first sentō in Edo opened in 1591, the year after Tokugawa Ieyasu entered the castle town that would become Japan's largest city. By the seventeenth century, records show that there was a bathhouse in more or less every district of the shogun's capital. 'The establishment of the shogunate in Edo prompted huge numbers of civil works projects, and workers from all over the country flooded into the city. It wasn't just Edo. The same thing happened in Osaka and Kyoto as urbanization progressed. Bathhouses were generally known as yuya at the time (湯屋, written with the same character 湯, meaning 'hot water,' as sentō 銭湯). Steam baths were the commonest type. People bathed frequently, eager to sweat and scrub away the grime of daily life, and leave feeling clean and fresh. 'In the mid-Edo period, the neo-Confucian scholar Kaibara Ekiken wrote in Yōjōkun (Precepts for Health) that bathing in hot water encourages perspiration and therefore exhausts the vital energy source known as ki . He issued a stern warning against the dangers of excessive bathing. In other words, people were bathing often enough to prompt warnings about overdoing it.' Most Edo-period bathhouses were built in what is known as zakuroguchi style. A wooden partition divided the area where people washed from the bath itself. A low opening in this divide served as an entrance to the bathing area. People had to crouch down to enter, in order to prevent the steam from escaping. On the bathing side inside the zakuroguchi , it was so dark that people sometimes failed to notice things floating in the water. Since there was no piped water supply, the bathwater was not changed very often. A picture of the low zakuroguchi entrance at a bathhouse in Santō Kyōden's Kengu irigomi sentō shinwa (Wisdom and Folly Mixed in New Tales of the Bathhouse). (Courtesy National Diet Library) Regulations on Mixed Bathing For much of the Edo period, it was common for men and women to bathe together in the public yuya . Over time, concerns were raised that this might be 'injurious to public morals' and there were repeated attempts to regulate the practice, including a ban on mixed bathing issued during the Kansei Reforms (1787–1793) by Matsudaira Sadanobu, a senior councilor of the shogunate. 'Some scholars believe the real purpose of these regulations was to exercise control over the urban poor, who often used bathhouses in the basue , or peripheral neighborhoods on the edge of the city. At a time when violent riots and protests commonly followed poor harvests or rice shortages, the authorities may have wanted to use bathhouses as a tool for monitoring and managing unruly elements.' When Westerners started to arrive in Japan in the mid-nineteenth century, they were full of admiration for the Japanese custom of daily bathing, which they saw as a mark of cleanliness and hygiene. But they were also shocked by the relaxed attitudes to nudity and the widespread practice of mixed bathing. This discomfort gave added impetus to calls for reforms—but even then, mixed bathing was slow to disappear. In 1879, the Tokyo government became the first local authority to establish a comprehensive set of bathhouse regulations ( yuya torishimari kisoku ). These covered licensing, fire prevention rules, and a ban on mixed bathing. By the late Meiji era (1868–1912), similar regulations had been introduced across the country, and bathhouses were brought under police supervision. Bathhouses began to modernize—not only in how they were run, but in their physical appearance too. Purity of Body and Mind Ordinary people in Edo bathed frequently to wash off the grime of everyday life. But that was not all. In his 1802 work Kengu irigomi sentō shinwa (Wisdom and Folly Mixed in New Tales of the Bathhouse), Santō Kyōden describes people gathering in a bathhouse at the end of the year to wash off the accumulated grime of the past 12 months. Cleansing the body, he says, purifies the mind, washing away base desires and worldly attachments. 'As the culture developed over the three centuries of the Edo period, the act of bathing became closely linked with the idea of spiritual cleanliness and purity,' Kawabata says. Following the 1868 Meiji Restoration, bathing increasingly came to be seen as a moral virtue. It was in this period that the modern discourse of the Japanese as a 'nation of bathers' began to take shape. 'From the turn of the twentieth century, you start to see a certain kind of discourse: people start to claim proudly that Japan has possessed this tradition of bathing since ancient times, that Japanese of all classes bathe regularly, while in the West, even the upper classes bathed only infrequently, and so on. Bathing was essentially seen as an inherently good thing, and Japanese customs reflected the fact that they were a uniquely clean and hygienic people.' This rhetoric gained force following Japan's emergence as a major power following its military victories against Qing China (1894–95) and the Russian Empire (1904–05). 'How had this small nation of diminutive people defeated great powers like Russia and China? Politicians and intellectuals looked for explanations in things like bushidō, in the supposed character of the Japanese people—and even in this habit of regular bathing. Many of these ideas were framed in the context of an implicit comparison with the West. They were part of a response to condescending Western views of Asia at the time, and the racist panic of the so-called Yellow Peril.' One of the formative moments in linking cleanliness and the national character came with the Rescript on Education ( Kyōiku chokugo ), issued by Emperor Meiji in 1890. Intended to unify the nation through moral instruction, the rescript itself was written in terse, abstract language that was difficult for most people to understand. To help the message reach a wider audience, more accessible books on public morality were published in great numbers and had a marked impact. 'The government needed a set of national values to unite the people spiritually and encourage patriotism and loyalty to the state and the emperor at its pinnacle. This gave rise to the idea of a national morality, supposedly built on the national character. Of course, this led to debates about what exactly that national character was. One of the positive traits that people fixed on was purity. People pointed to bushidō, for instance, where a samurai who had compromised his loyalty could prove his spiritual purity by performing seppuku. And this found its reflection in the idea of physical purity and the national custom of regular bathing.' 'People argued that physical uncleanliness led to spiritual defilement. They cited early mythology, drawing on the story of the god Izanagi, who purifies himself with water to rid himself of defilement after returning from the underworld. In the Edo period, the idea of cleansing the spirit by washing away the 'grime of the heart' was already part of the culture and this may have made such ideas easier for people to accept.' Wives and Mothers and Hygiene at Home In schools, government-issued textbooks on 'moral training' ( shūshin) taught children that maintaining hygiene and health was not just for their own benefit but for the good of the nation. These books were used from 1904 until the end of World War II. At home, it was the housewives and mothers who were responsible for hygiene and for making sure that the nation's children got their daily soak. (Photographed by ) After the Sino-Japanese War, women were encouraged to live up to the ideal of ryōsai kenbo (a 'good wife and wise mother'). Numerous books were published offering advice to women on how to run the household. These books repeatedly emphasized the importance of children's bathing. Women were expected to pass on Japan's bathing traditions to the next generation and raise clean and healthy children to be dutiful subjects of the empire. 'Seen in the broader historical context of women's pursuit of their full rights, it's likely that at least some women embraced the role willingly, seeing it as a way to affirm their value in society. But this historical role of motherhood for the state, which many women accepted and internalized, has had a lingering impact. We can see its effects in many of the issues we face today, I think, including the unpaid 'shadow work' that many women are still expected to do behind the scenes.' Public Baths and Good Citizens While many ordinary Japanese people took pride in the national custom of bathing, from around the turn of the twentieth century bureaucrats and social reformers started to take cues from the public bath movement in the West. Emerging during the second half of the nineteenth century, this movement focused on providing public bathhouses in urban areas for immigrants, workers, and the poor. 'Both in the West and in Japan, bathing was associated with ideas of spiritual cleanliness, social order, and class. In Japan, people were told that bathing helped make them into loyal subjects of the emperor. In the West, the emphasis was on turning people into good citizens.' 'Japanese public hygiene specialists who traveled to observe conditions in the West came home advocating that public baths should be built as part of social policy, and that the government should help to make them affordable. This led to a system in which the government built the facilities, which were then run as private businesses. This public-private partnership policy led to a boom in new bathhouses, especially in major cities. In Kyoto during the 1910s and 1920s, for example, public baths were built in burakumin areas that had traditionally been the subject of intense discrimination. These were run by residents' groups representing the local community. The projects not only improved hygiene but also created employment opportunities in socially disadvantaged areas and helped improve infrastructure by providing piped water.' Bathhouses were also built in places where regular bathing had previously been less common, such as in Ainu communities in Hokkaidō, in Okinawa, and in Japan's colonies in Taiwan and Korea. 'Bathing practices and notions of cleanliness were sometimes used to justify discrimination and assimilation. Ignoring differences of culture, custom, and environment, people readily dismissed the Ainu or Okinawans as 'dirty' simply because they didn't share the bathing customs of mainland Japan. 'In the colonies, efforts to promote assimilation and hygiene coexisted with discriminatory practices of apartness, including separate facilities for Japanese and the local population.' Cleanliness and Purity Kawabata says cleanliness was a process of eliminating anything that deviated from the norm, as a way of cleansing society of its 'impurities.' 'After the war, it gradually became common for people to have their own bath at home, and daily bathing became standard. Norms of cleanliness became even stronger than before the war, becoming internalized and almost unconscious.' These internalized norms can still surface across society even today. During the COVID-19 pandemic, there was increased emphasis on mask-wearing and handwashing, and instances of exclusion and discrimination—such as the so-called 'self-restraint police' ( jishuku keisatsu) checking up on businesses and individuals, and in harassment directed at healthcare workers perceived as infection risks. 'In the early stages of the pandemic, when case numbers and fatalities were relatively low in Japan compared to the West, some politicians claimed that this was because of the superior public morals and hygiene of the Japanese. This was essentially a revival of the same logic used more than a century before, when Japan's victories against Russia and China were chalked up to the collective spirit and group harmony of the Japanese.' Looking back at the history of bathing and cleanliness reveals a whole range of issues: gender, government authority, discrimination, and exclusion. It can also prompt us to reconsider the values we often take for granted. (Originally written in Japanese by Kimie Itakura of and published on June 4, 2025. Banner image: Drawing of a public bath at Shimoda, Shizuoka, in 1854 by William Heine. Courtesy International Research Center for Japanese Studies.)
India Gazette
20 hours ago
- Politics
- India Gazette
Dalai Lama's 90th birth anniversary to be celebrated with global event in Delhi
New Delhi [India], June 27 (ANI): The International Buddhist Confederation (IBC) will hold a special event on Sunday, July 13, at the Ashoka Hotel in New Delhi to celebrate the 90th birth anniversary of the 14th Dalai Lama. This occasion aims to honour the Dalai Lama's lasting impact, spiritual teachings, and his contributions toward promoting global peace and compassion. The entire day will be dedicated to commemorating the occasion, bringing together a notable array of international scholars, Buddhist leaders, and experts who have had long-standing associations with Dalai Lama. The schedule will include panel discussions covering topics that resonate with His Holiness's principal teachings and his outlook for the future of Buddhism. Significant themes will include the 'Relevance of Buddha Dharma in the 21st Century' and 'The Future of Tibetan Buddhism and the Preservation of its Culture.' A key feature of the day will be a session called 'Quantum Physics, Neurosciences and Buddhism,' which will investigate how modern science intersects with traditional Buddhist philosophy. The event will wrap up with the adoption of a special declaration focused on 'Karuna & Its Relevance in Conflict Avoidance,' highlighting compassion as a core principle for addressing contemporary global challenges. Among the esteemed participants will be Prof. Samdhong Rinpoche, a prominent scholar and former Prime Minister of the Central Tibetan Administration, and Richard Davidson, a well-known American psychologist and founder of the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Other international figures taking part include Most Ven. Phrarat Vajarasuttiwong from Thailand, Geshe Lobsang Tenzin Negi from Emory University, Prof. Ceon Ramon from the University of Washington, and Buddhist scholar Alex Berzin. Also participating in the event are Edi Ramawijaya Putra, Rector of Sriwijaya State Buddhist College in Indonesia; Ven. Nicholas Vreeland, former Abbot of Ratod Monastery and the subject of the documentary Monk with a Camera; Kate Saunders, former head of the International Campaign for Tibet; and Claude Arpi, Distinguished Fellow at the Centre of Excellence for Himalayan Studies, Shiv Nadar Institution of Eminence in Delhi. (ANI)
South China Morning Post
a day ago
- South China Morning Post
Chinese monk ‘Papa Wu' famous for caring for abandoned babies faces fraud probe
A Chinese Buddhist monk, affectionately known as 'Papa Wu' due to his more than a decade of charitable work – including the care of hundreds of abandoned children – has been detained by police for alleged fraud. Advertisement The accusation involves the misappropriation of funds totalling more than 10 million yuan (US$1.4 million). This shocking revelation has sparked intense discussion online, with many expressing disbelief and outrage. Wu Bing, 48, also known by his monastic name Monk Daolu, hails from Jiangsu province in southeastern China and began his widely publicised philanthropic efforts in 2012. He established a 'Protective Abode' in Zhejiang province, which, at one point, housed over 50 children ranging from newborns to 10-year-olds, who affectionately referred to him as 'Papa Wu'. Wu founded a 'Protective Abode' in Zhejiang province, which at one time provided shelter for over 50 children, ranging from newborns to 10-year-olds, who affectionately called him 'Papa Wu'. Photo: Douyin In addition, he dedicated himself to providing shelter and assistance to single pregnant women unable to care for their children.
