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Sep 12, 2007 Asians find common ground in Buddha By Raja M MUMBAI - A major Indian-Sri Lankan film on Gotama the Buddha [1] was announced at the picturesque seaside hotel Taj Lands End in Mumbai on August 27. To be made by well-known Indian director Shyam Benegal, the film is to be shot on a massive 400-hectare set outside Colombo. Mumbai-based Beyond Dreams Entertainment and the Light of Asia Foundation of Sri Lanka are producing the film. This joint film, in the 2,550th anniversary year of the passing away of the Buddha, is another indicator of how strife-torn Asian countries are increasingly finding common ground in his heritage. Taiwan, Thailand, South Korea and Japan lead in funding and supporting major projects in India related to the Buddha's teaching, the most significant being the historic Global Vipassana Pagoda close to completion in Mumbai (see India rediscovers its Buddha roots, Asia Times Online, February 24). A respectful repository for the bone relics of the Buddha, the Global Pagoda - the world's largest meditation hall encompassed in the biggest dome stone monument ever built without supporting pillars - is evolving as one of the most inspiring tourist attractions in Asia. With members of Thailand's royal family, Chinese entrepreneurs, Thai artists and members of the Myanmar junta coming to Vipassana meditation centers such as Dhamma Giri near Mumbai (it receives more than 3,000 applications for its two 10-day residential courses each month), the Buddha's teaching for inner change could be a significant aspect of the 21st century being Asia's century, or India's century. Obviously, the world can't change for the better if the individual doesn't. Proof of increasing acceptance of the Buddha's universal teaching is the word-of-mouth popularity of courses taught by Satya Narayan Goenkaji now being practiced in more than 100 countries. Vipassana, the practical quintessence of the Buddha's teaching, is being accepted by educational institutes such as the elite Indian Institute of Technology, major corporate houses, India's nuclear research facilities, and maximum-security prisons such as New Delhi's Tihar Jail and Donaldson Prison in Bessemer, Alabama. The attitudinal change toward the Buddha is emerging primarily through two extraordinary Asians: Burmese-born, now Mumbai-based retired Indian industrialist S N Goenkaji and his late teacher Sayagyi U Ba Khin, the first accountant general of independent Burma (now Myanmar). U Ba Khin (1899-1971) was the visionary who enabled more people outside Burma to practice the Buddha's practical mind technology. He also used Vipassana in enhancing public administration, such as removing corruption in various governmental departments given to his charge by prime minister U Nu, by conducting Vipassana courses in his office. Goenkaji, 82, honored last May by the president and prime minister of Sri Lanka in Colombo as a great ambassador of the Buddha's teachings, furthered his teacher's mission by not just returning Vipassana to India, the country of its origin, but also by tirelessly working with monks and scholars in Asian countries to remove myths and misconceptions about the Buddha - most ridiculous of which is that the Buddha was a reincarnation of a Hindu god and that his teachings are pessimistic. "This is a historic moment for South Asian cinema," Beyond Dreams Entertainment Ltd chief executive officer Yash Patnaik told the media conference to launch the film. "We are about to tell the story of a man - Gotama Buddha - who was born in the Indian subcontinent and redefined the way the world thinks. Buddha's philosophy is more contemporary today than ever before." Patnaik is right about the relevance of the Buddha's teaching but is inaccurate in calling it a philosophy. The Buddha's practical and experience-based teaching is being seen as not an intellectual debating game for philosophers and bearded sages, but as a pragmatic, realistic path to benefits here and now - as outlined by research papers being published by practicing psychiatrists, physicians and technology pundits - with the aim of the practice being to liberate oneself from being slave to one's own mind, vanquish the dangerous inner demons of impurity within, and develop wisdom to live a wholesome life full of compassion to oneself and others. The changed outlook toward the Buddha's teaching can be ranked as one of the most important paradigm shifts in human thought in past five decades, with the meaning of spirituality itself now gradually transformed from being dismissed as vague, unrealistic, religious ideals to being seen as a rigorous, mental workout very much needed in corporate boardrooms, newsrooms to classrooms, to cope with the ever-changing realities in one's world. Vipassana, for instance, involves summoning courage to cross many deep mental and physical pain barriers, developing the ego and dissolving the emotionally self-dependent realization that our thoughts, words and actions are responsible for our happiness or unhappiness, not others. "If you look for faults, look within; if you look for virtues, look for it in others," says Goenkaji. Also being practiced by astounded scientists as a living quantum physics, Vipassana involves objectively observing the changing bodily sensations, the sub-atomic, biochemical flow that arises and passes from the mind interacting continuously with the body. In reality, we react to the pleasant or unpleasant bodily sensations that arise from contact with objects outside. It's only the apparent reality that what someone said or did, or something outside, is responsible for us to smile or frown. Vipassana smashes delusions such as overtly or covertly craving attention from others. Director Shyam Benegal, winner of the Dadasaheb Phalke Award that the Indian government gives for lifetime contribution to cinema, said that it is essential to tell the story of the Buddha today when terrorism and tension is rife. "People relate Mahatma Gandhi with the message of non-violence, but it was Buddha who first preached it." Note 1. According to the Vipassana Research Institute, "Gotama" is the correct spelling, not "Gautama", of the family name of Prince Siddhartha, who became the Buddha. (Copyright 2007 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing
