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About Medford mail tribune. (Medford, Or.) 1909-1989 | View Entire Issue (Aug. 29, 1963)
o THURSDAY. AUGUST 29. 13WJ MEDFORD MAIL TRIBUNE. MEDFORD. OREGON iittist Scholars Distressed fey Recent Fiery uicioes By LOUII CAMEL! United Prox Iatecaaliorml Within the past two months, our monks and a nun have burned themselves to death in South Viet Nam to dramatize Buddhist griev ances against the regime of President Ngo Dinh Diem. Their immolations have caused many newspaper read ers in the West to associate Buddhism with fiery self-destruction. This is an ironic turn of events, and very distressing to Buddhist scholars outside South Viet Nam. These scholars say that nothing could be further from the true spirit of Buddhism than to take a life even one's own life in a polit ical quarrel. Buddhism traditionally has been a gentle and unworldly religion, disdainful of polit ical concerns. One of its basic tenets is an extreme "rever ence for life." Buddhist monks even strain the water they drink to make sure they do not accidentally ingest and cause distress to some small living thing. Buddhist scholars say that suicide cannot be squared with the teachings of the faith even if it is prompted by noble and unselfish reasons. Ancient Faith Buddhism has no central authority which could rebuke Vietnamese monks for un Buddhist tactics. A lack of formal organization is charac teristic of this ancient faith. No one even knows for sure how many Buddhists then: are in South Viet Nam. Est imates range from 20 to 80 per cent of the population, which totals 15 million. Buddhism comes in almost as many varieties as Christ ianity . . . counting all of its sects and subdivisions, in cluding the one called Zen which currently is enjoying a vogue among Western beat niks, there are about 150 million Buddhists in the world. The main centers of Buddhism today are Japan, Korea, China, Mongolia, Tibet, Ceylon, Burma, Thai land, Laos, Cambodia and Viet Nam. There are relatively few Buddhists in India, where the religion originated 2,500 years ago as an offshoot of Hinduism. Dreised in Rag Its founder was an enor mously wealthy Indian prince, Siddhartha Guatama, who was born about 560 B.C. in a northern province about 100 miles from Benares. Legend says Guatama had three pal aces and 40,000 dancing girls to amuse him. But he learned early in life lhat luxury did not lead to happiness. When iin was about 29 years old, he abandoned his sumptuous life as a prince and went into the forest, dressed in rags, to seek enlightenment in the solitary life of a Hindu ascetic. No one ever practiced mor tification of the flesh with greater dedication than Gua tama. He fasted, eating one bean a day, until his spine could be seen through his shrunken stomach. But he found no answers to his ques tions about life, and conclud ed lhat extreme asceticism was no better than luxury as a pathway to happiness. After six years of futil searching, Guatama seated himself one evening beneath the shade of a fig tree nea the village of Gaya in north east India. He vowed that he would sit there until he saw the light. Poisoned Mushrooms According to Buddhist scrip' tures he remained for 49 days. He emerged from this experience as the Buddha, or "the enlightened one. For the next 45 years, he walked from one Indian village to another, sharing his new in sights with all who would listen, and founding an order of monks to pass on his mes sage. He died at the age of 80 after eating some poisoned mushrooms that had . gotten into a dish by accident. Buddha's original teachings constitute a philosophy of life rather than a religion. He taught that human life is characterized by suffering and the basic cause of suffer ing is "tanha," a word which is often translated as "desire" but which actually connotes selfish craving, the tendency in every person to seek his own private happiness. To break free from slavery to "tanha," Buddha said men must follow "the eightfold path" of. right knowledge, right aspiration, right speech, right behavior, right occupa tion, right effort, right think ing and right absorption. Under each of these eight headings, he laid down rules for rigorous self discipline. Buddhists were forbidden to lie, steal or kill any living creature, including animals and insects. They were al lowed to cat only what they could bog, and then just enough to keep the body alive and functioning. Alcoholic beverages and sex relations were strictly forbidden. Ecitatic Union Buddha said this monastic way of life, if earnestly prac ticed, would eventually lead to "nirvana." Exactly what he meant by this much-abused term is hard to determine New Law To Go Into Effect on Tuesday Salem -UIPH- A new 1 a w making many social security recipients ineligible for un employment insurance bene fits will go into effect Tues day, Employment Commis sioner David H. Cameron re minded today. The law, adopted by t h e 1963 legislature, provides that unemployed persons eligible to receive social security ben efits shall be presumed to have withdrawn from the la bor force and shall not be el igible for unemployment ben efits, unless the individual can show he was not volun tarily withdrawn from the la bor force and is a bona fide member of the labor market. Educators Expected At November Event Salem -Educational leaders from every slate in the union will visit Oregon in November when state superintendents of public instruction and members of their staffs arrive in Portland for the annual meeting of the Council of Chief Slate School Officers. State Superintendent and Mrs. Leon P. Minear, mem bers of the Oregon state board of education, and their wives will be the official hosts of Ihe meeting, which will be held Nov. 17 through 21. This will be Ihe first time the Chief State School Offi cers have met in Oregon, ac cording lo Dr. Minear, who said members of the council accepted his invitation to hold the meeting in Portland in or der to observe at first hand the Oregon program for im provement of education and significant changes which have been made in the role of the slate department of ed ucation as a result of the pro gram. The Chief State School Of ficers will visit the state de partment of education in Sal em Friday. Nov. 22. Approx imately 150 people are ex pected for the meeting. Dennis the Menace ' f r iilllHin,,,."--- from his authenticated say' ings. At times, he seems to think of nirvana as a state of nothingness, a final blot ting out of human individual ity and hence of the selfish cravings which cause suffer ing. At other points, he speaks of nirvana in terms com parable to those which a Christian mystic might use to describe ecstatic union with God. It is sometimes said that Buddha was an atheist, be cause there are no direct ref erences in his teaching to a personal God. But his silence on this subject seems to have derived mainly from a de cision that he would avoid all theological "specul a t i o n s" with which Hinduism was al ready rife and concentrate on teaching a way of life. Dr. Huston Smith, professor of world religions at Harvard, points out in his authoritative book, "The Religions of Man (Harper & Row) that all of the things which Buddha tried so hard to keep out of his movement-including meta physics, creeds, rituals and superstitions-came "tumbling in with a vengeance" after the founder's death in 480 B.C. Whole Pantheon Today the austere philos ophy of Buddha is preserved primarily by the so - called "theravada" monks of Burma, Ceylon, Thailand and Cam bodia. The popular Buddhism of other countries worships Guatama as a divine savior, and admits a whole pantheon of other gods. Like Christianity, popular or "mahayana" Buddhism places great emphasis on com passion and human brother hood. Room has been made for prayer and ritual, and sal vation is something man re ceives by divine grace, rather than something he must earn by rigorous self-denial. Lay men as well as monks can hope to reach nirvana, which in mahayana Buddhism sounds rather like a primitive Christian version of heaven. Real Truth Zen is a special case. It developed in China in the 6th century A. D., and by the 12th century had reached Japan, where it took root and still flowers. The heart of Zen is the conviction that real truth can never be expressed or understood in verbal for mulae, but can only be direct ly experienced through a flash of intuition or enlightenment called "satori." To drive home the futility of reason as a road to truth. Zen masters re quire their disciples to spend endless hours working on "koans" or nonsense problems to which there is no rational solution. Get the best cooler! PIGGLY WIGGLY jj oj i ij PIGGLY WIGGLY Be Smart Be Thrifty! BIG WEEK-END SINCE 1896 01 BAY VALDBS IftTAMP J BRENTWOOD Cottage Cheese Wuy 'em at LOW, LOW prices.. . and get M Piggly Wiggly Will Be Open on Labor Day Piggy Wiggly Will Be Open From 9 A.M. to 9 P.M. On Monday, Labor Day, fon Your Shopping Convcnienct GREEN STAMPS. loo! SWIFT PREMIUM SLICED BOLOGNA BUDDIGS SLICED 3 ,b. 49c $1.00 Pint Carton COCA-COLA m 6-Pack Carton 12-oz. Bottles m MTAMPM BEEF OR HAM 39c. RESERS ASSORTED SALADS 35e. 2,., 69c FRESH AND LEAN GROUND BEEF fc 45c Free Samples Fri. & Sat. 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