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The Buddha statue depicts Siddhartha Gautama, who lived in South Asia around 2,550 years ago. Born a prince, he would later renounce his worldly wealth and seek out enlightenment, eventually becoming the Buddha, a Sanskrit-derived word that means "the enlightened one," according to Buddhist tradition...The newfound statue dates to between A.D. 90 and 140, said Steven Sidebotham, a history professor at the University of Delaware who is co-director of the Berenike Project, told Live Science in an email.The 28-inch-tall (71 centimeters) statue shows the Buddha standing and holding parts of his robes in his left hand, representatives from the Egyptian...

A historic pilgrimage route believed to be the oldest in Japan has formed a friendship tie-up with the world-famous Routes of Santiago de Compostela, with the aim of increasing global name recognition for both through cooperation that transcends their different religions. The Saikoku Kannon Pilgrimage officially signed an agreement with the Santiago de Compostela, a World Heritage Site, at the Spanish Embassy in Tokyo on Tuesday. The 1,000-kilometer Saikoku route comprises 33 Buddhist temples worshipping Kannon Bodhisattva, and stretches across seven prefectures, including Osaka, Kyoto and Wakayama...

Loot, a despicable word, was evidently among the first few Hindustani expressions to enter the British lexicon. It aptly illustrates the brand of British colonisation like no other word. On a chilly evening in the first week of December in 1862, British Empire’s railway engineer E.B. Harris reached a small riverside market village called Sultanganj on the south bank of Ganges some twenty miles west of Bhagalpur. Here his 4,771 workers were excavating a vast mound of bricks on the hillside to build a railway yard. Harris, recognised among the railway engineers for the construction of the challenging Jamalpur tunnel,...

He was arrested after a roughly 5-hour standoff with police Atlanta police have identified the man arrested last week after allegedly spray-painting swastikas on the city's rainbow crosswalks that honor the gay community. Police identified Jonah Sampson, 30, as the man who allegedly spray-painted swastikas on Atlanta’s Midtown rainbow crosswalks. Authorities believe he is also responsible for graffiti that was found on a monument at the Federal Reserve Building, Fox 5 reported. Sampson was arrested in Atlanta on Friday outside his apartment after a roughly five-hour standoff with a SWAT team. Jail records show Sampson is facing three charges of...

Two religious leaders plan to join a lawsuit filed by a synagogue in Boynton Beach, Florida against a state law banning abortion at 15 weeks gestation. The two leaders, one Unitarian and one Buddhist, will argue that the law violates the state Constitution’s right to privacy and freedom of religion (via NBC): The retired Unitarian Rev. Harris Riordan and the Buddhist minister Maya Malay confirmed they will file a lawsuit in state court next week, echoing arguments from Rabbi Barry Silver. Silver intends to file his own amended complaint next week along with Rabbi Arthur Wascow, the founder and director...

The Yale University Art Gallery has finalized plans to return a sculpture of a Buddhist goddess to Nepal, the university said Friday. The return is the latest in a series of museum repatriations of Nepali artifacts. Yale acquired the artifact in 2015, though the donor has never been disclosed. The decision to bring the work back home to Nepal was a “collaborative one” done in tandem with the country’s government last year, the museum’s director, Stephanie Wiles, said. Bishnu Prasad Gautam, acting consul general for Nepal, said in a statement that the return “will help Nepal preserve its history and...

A group of firefighting monks was ready to defend a Buddhist monastery being threatened Tuesday by a wildfire burning in the rugged central coast mountains south of Big Sur. The seven monks have been clearing brush from around the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center and running a sprinkler system dubbed “Dharma rain,” which helps keep a layer of moister around the buildings, said Sozan Miglioli, president of San Francisco Zen Center, which operates the monastery. “The blaze is about a mile away but we've been lucky with the weather, it has really cooled down,” Miglioli said. The fire was climbing uphill...

Vice President Mike Pence joins military officers and a chaplain on Aug. 23, 2019, in a prayer for two Army men who died during operations in Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen) (The Conversation) -- In 1919, Lee Levinger buried four soldiers in France. The responsibility to preside over a funeral was not unusual for military chaplains. But during World War I, most Americans would have been surprised to learn that a rabbi led a service for four Christian soldiers. In 1917, when the United States entered the war, chaplaincy was a majority white and fully Christian organization. No law specifically stated...

When the 12 Thai boys who were trapped in a cave and were rescued one by one were first discovered by British divers a week ago, they were reportedly meditating. “Look at how calm they were sitting there waiting. No one was crying or anything. It was astonishing,” the mother of one of the boys told the AP, referring to a widely shared video of the moment the boys were found. Turns out that their coach, Ekapol Chanthawong, who led them on a hike into the cave when it flooded on June 23, trained in meditation as a Buddhist monk...

Colombo (AFP) - Sri Lanka imposed a curfew Monday in a central hill station town popular with tourists after days of communal unrest that saw a man killed and Muslim businesses set alight. Police had been placed on alert in Kandy, home to famous tea plantations and Buddhist relics, to ensure that the "situation does not spiral into inter-communal conflagration," the government said.

WASHINGTON, Jan 5: Hindus and Jews have gained ground in the new US Congress, even as a latest research suggests that the members of the legislative body remain overwhelmingly Christians despite significant change in the religious demographic profile of the country in less than five decades. This is for the first time in American history that the Congress has three Hindus members -- Tulsi Gabbard, Raja Krishnamoorthi and Ro Khanna. After Jews, who have 30 members in the new US Congress, Hindus and Buddhism, each having three members jointly share the third sport in terms of religious ranking of US...

MANDALAY, Myanmar (AP) -- Shunned by Myanmar's new government and its Buddhist hierarchy, a nationalist monk blamed for whipping up at times bloody anti-Muslim fervor said he feels vindicated by U.S. voters who elected Donald Trump to be president. Ashin Wirathu, a high-profile leader of the Myanmar Buddhist organization known as Ma Ba Tha, drew parallels between his views on Islam and those of the Republican president-elect. Trump's campaign was rife with anti-Muslim rhetoric and proposals that included banning Muslims from entering the country and heightening surveillance of mosques. The form his actual policies will take remains unclear.

A Buddhist monk living in Lafayette was sentenced Monday (July 25) to 30 months in prison for taking more than $263,463 from his own temple to gamble at a casino. U.S. District Judge Donald Walter handed down the penalty on Khang Nguyen Le, 36, a Vietnamese citizen who had pleaded guilty to wire fraud. Walter, whom President Ronald Reagan appointed to the Western District court, also ordered Le to pay full restitution. Le might also face deportation to Vietnam after release from prison, authorities said. From 2010 to October 2014, Le was president, presiding monk and resident of the temple...

Published on Jan 12, 2016 Police are searching for a man who was caught on video robbing a Buddhist monk as he bought lottery tickets in a Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, convenience store. https://www.lotterypost.com/news/298269

For years, Naropa has battled some 150 persistent prairie dogs over 2.5 acres of prime real estate on its Nalanda campus. One side wants to build more classrooms, the other more tunnels. Davis recalled one of her professors asking, "I wonder what we'd do if we ever got termites?"

On Sunday eastern Germany's first Buddhist graveyard opened in Dresden, marking a turning point for the region's Vietnamese community. But a missing symbol makes the burial ground a peculiarly German affair. The burial ground is long overdue, Ding Linger, a spokesperson for the Vietnamese Buddhist Centre in Dresden told The Local. "It's been needed for 40 years since Vietnamese people first came to East Germany," he said. Vietnamese are the largest immigrant population in east Germany, making up 100,000 of the population. Of those, 7,000 live in Dresden, reports the Hamburger Morgenpost. With around 85 percent of the Vietnamese population...

Classes began in early September last year at a small new international university, called Nalanda, in Bihar in northeast India -- one of the most backward parts of the country. Only two faculties -- history, and environment and ecology -- were holding classes for fewer than twenty students. And yet the opening of Nalanda was the subject of headlines in all the major newspapers in India and received attention across the world. "Ritorno a Nalanda" was the headline in Corriere della Sera. The new venture is meant to be a revival of Nalanda Mahavihara, the oldest university in the world,...

WASHINGTON: Following outcry from several groups, a prestigious American university has decided to rescind its suspension order against a student who displayed a Hindu swastika on his residence hall's bulletin board. The Hindu American Foundation (HAF) welcomed the move to rescind the interim suspension order by the George Washington University (GWU). HAF associate director of public policy, Harsh Voruganti, said that the decision reflects the facts of this case and the efforts by Hindu organisations to educate campus officials about the sacredness of the Indian swastika. The small, bronze, swastika was displayed by the student on March 16 on a...

He's been described as the "Buddhist Bin Laden," but Ashin Wirathu thinks he has more in common with the world's most famous fictional spy. "James Bond is a nationalist," the cherub-faced monk said in a recent interview. Flashing a smile, he offered a vague recollection of a movie in which 007, in order to extract information from a woman, took her to bed. "While he did not take much pleasure in the act," Wirathu said, "he did it for his country." His questionable reading of Bond aside, the firebrand Wirathu firmly says he is defending Myanmar against the people he...

The popular Boudhanath Stupa has also developed major cracks, said witnesses. Photos of the destroyed structure is being circulated on the internet and messages of support and condolence pour in from all over the world. Many Tibetans have expressed their solidarity with the people of Nepal on their facebook pages.