FRED DE SAM LAZARO, correspondent: Jakarta looks like any other modern Asian capital, but here, alongside the glittering office towers, you’ll also find imposing houses of worship. At the Istiqlal mosque recently, about 10,000 worshipers gathered for Friday noon prayer. It’s part of a religious revival that’s been taking place alongside a booming economy in recent decades. It is visible in mosques—and in malls. At this crowded shopping center, the most popular garment seems to be the head scarf.

INDONESIAN WOMAN: I’m here because Islam tells women to wear the scarf.

Dewi Fortuna Anwar

DE SAM LAZARO: This 40-year-old accountant began covering her hair three years ago.

INDONESIAN WOMAN: I feel ashamed, because I should have been wearing it since I was young, but at least I am wearing it now.

DE SAM LAZARO: Islam is making a comeback in Indonesia along with democracy that began 10 years ago. For years after independence from the Dutch in 1945, and then under decades of Suharto’s dictatorship, religion was officially tolerated at best.

DR. DEWI FORTUNA ANWAR (Indonesian Institute of Sciences): Islam and the traditional, customary laws were regarded as being backward and primarily blamed for, you know, the defeat for many Muslim countries under European rule, so that many of the earlier nationalist leaders, many of the educated elite, in fact, turned their back on religion, and among the younger generation there seems to be a greater willingness both to be openly religious and to be modern and educated at same times. I think maybe this is not just a search for greater spiritual anchor, but also I think it’s greater self-confidence.

DE SAM LAZARO: She and others say this growth of religious expression is spawned by the new democratic freedoms. It’s neither fundamentalist nor militant, notwithstanding recent terrorist incidents. Bombings in two Jakarta hotels killed nine people last July, and a 2002 attack in the tourist haven of Bali killed more than 200. But religion scholar Ulil Abdalla, with the liberal Islamic Youth Association, says such extremism is not widespread.

ULIL ABDALLA (Islamic Youth Association): For some people, Islam as practiced in this country is corrupted. Movies and food and, you know, lifestyle and so forth, it’s pretty much influenced by the American cultures. So when radical Islamic ideologies was introduced by some activists to Indonesia, it appealed to young people, but that’s, you know, the appeal is limited to a fringe in the society. It’s not a predominant trend.

Ulil Abdalla

DE SAM LAZARO: The more accurate gauge, he says, is Indonesia’s recent election, in which secular incumbent [president] Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono won easily. Islamist parties, which had surged to 40 percent of the vote in 2004, lost ground, to less than 30 percent.

ULIL ABDALLA: Some people feared that if democracy, if the democratic space is opened it will allow Islamist party to dominate the arena. That is not true.

DE SAM LAZARO: Significantly, the reaction of the Islamist and other parties after the election indicates a commitment to democracy, says Anies Baswedan, a scholar of political Islam.

ANIES BASWEDAN (Paramadina University): We have around 40 parties. Only nine were able to gain seats in the house, yet we do not see significant problems from supporters who are not having their parties in the house. Acceptance to political result, democratic result, is very important.

DE SAM LAZARO: He says Indonesians, especially the 14 percent who survive on less than a dollar a day, have much more pragmatic concerns—food prices, the economy in general, and corruption—even voters who’d like to impose stricter Islamic law or sharia.

MARTA: From what I understand about Islamic states, the people live in prosperity, and the law is enforced very strictly. Those who steal, those who are corrupt, they cut off their hand, rather than here, where people who can bribe judges and police get away with things.

DE SAM LAZARO: Yet Marta, who like many Indonesians uses just one name, voted for the secular president. So did his neighbor, Samsuddin, who praises a government initiative that’s helped the poor.

SAMSUDDIN: Number one is cash for poor families, and the second is cheap rice. We get $10 a month in cash and 15 kilos of rice. We are a Muslim family, but we are not that strict. I voted for the party that is already helping people. It doesn’t matter whether it’s Islamic or not.

Anies Baswedan

DE SAM LAZARO: That kind of sentiment has moved Islamist parties to the center.

ANIES BASWEDAN: People understand now, campaigning, that “we are Muslims, we are an Islamic party, this is a sharia platform” does not sell. People ask, “Tell me what else, tell me in reality, what will you deliver beyond the slogans?”

FAHRI HAMZAH (Member of Parliament): We don’t name it sharia, because if you name it sharia people then from beginning suspicious to see.

DE SAM LAZARO: Fahri Hamzah is a Member of Parliament with the most successful Islamist party, called Prosperity and Justice, which joined the ruling coalition government. Although it once campaigned for Islamic law and more conservative women’s attire, Hamzah says they are happy to govern by consensus in a liberal democratic framework.

FAHRI HAMZAH: We are an Islamic party, but what we talk about Islam is Islam as the universal value, because we believe every religion, you know, inspired by God. We follow this direction that anti-corruption is Islamic agenda, clean government is Islamic agenda, you know, welfare, manage our economy, open economy, you know, liberalize our economy is one of the, you know, good agenda.

DE SAM LAZARO: That interpretation might well have its roots in the history of Islam in this vast, diverse archipelago.

DR. DEWI FORTUNA ANWAR: We are used to living in differences. Indonesia is composed of islands, over 17,000 islands and over 700 different ethnic groups with different languages, different cultural traditions. Islam came to Indonesia fairly late, from 12th century up, mostly through traders and Sufi teachers. They found Indonesia already very rich layers of cultures, and to be accepted a new belief, a new religion would have to adapt to local circumstances from the beginning. I think that was the case when Hinduism came here and when Buddhism came here and then when Islam came here, when Christianity also came here.

Fahri Hamzah

DE SAM LAZARO: So even though it’s 85 percent Muslim today, Islam here reflects Indonesia’s polyglot culture, readily evident in architecture, language, even in the mall scarf shops.

YUDI TOZA (Shop Owner): We believe in Indonesia that Islam is more modern, more moderate. People who wear the plain dress, it’s not our way.

ROSA LESTARI (Shop Clerk): It will look strange if an Indonesian woman wore that kind of plain clothes, especially nowadays. They probably think you are a terrorist’s wife.

DE SAM LAZARO: Shop owner, saleswoman, and customer told us there’s no contradiction between Islam and fashion, that the notion of a plainly dressed, fully covered woman is—foreign. Shopping here was Nur Inani, who was buying for customers in her own clothing business in the island of Sumatra.

NUR INANI: Mostly they are looking for clothes this long and this long, which is basically covering the butt and the arms. I look for the dress first, and then I will find the matching scarf, the color, the style.

DE SAM LAZARO: Terrorist incidents aside, Indonesia is enjoying a period of stability rarely seen in its independent history. Indonesians are free to choose their government, and they are free to pursue religion, and they’ve made it clear in elections that they want to pursue each separately, that is, to keep religion out of government.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, this is Fred de Sam Lazaro in Jakarta.

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: We had a chance early this past spring to visit members of a Chinese family as they honored their ancestors at their graves. It is the belief of many Chinese that there is an ongoing spiritual connection between them and their forebears. They venerate them, pray to them, and take gifts to their graves. Our guide was Jan Lee, a third-generation resident of Chinatown in New York.

JAN LEE: Chinatown has been described oftentimes as a village within the city. There’s a certain pride in passing on the culture and every tradition possible so that the younger generation understands where they came from.

The Chinese have a belief that you don’t exist on your own, that there is this continuum.

We observe certain traditions within our household, and that includes making sure that my grandfather’s altar, and now my father’s altar in my mother’s house, has food during the holidays, for instance during the Chinese New Year.

Home altar

We’ve been observing for many, many, many decades this tradition of going to the graveside and sweeping the graves and planting flowers and bringing offerings of food.

When my grandfather was planning for the future of the Lee family, he had the foresight to purchase a large family plot in Evergreen Cemetery. It had all the benefits of being not only a beautiful site, but a great place for cosmic energy — feng shui.

Once the candles are lit, it really signifies the connection between us as mortals and our ancestors’ spirits and that we’re opening sort of a gateway to communicate with them. And when we light incense, we pray. It’s the time when they get to join in the feast that we bring to the cemetery, and that includes offering them wine, and that includes burning money so that they have money to spend. It’s all the idea that, by burning it, you’re bringing it to them.

Jan Lee

We bow three times because there’s a belief that the spirit actually splits. In the Chinese belief, one of your souls will go to heaven or hell depending on your past deeds, and one is interred. But there’s also a part of the spirit that stays among us, and that’s the spirit that we call on when we need help.

Once the candles are finished, it signifies that the spirits have finished their meal and we can partake of the food that we brought.

I think everyone in my family still believes that my father’s with us. That belief comes from starting when we were very young going to cemetery and having a family altar in my family home.

The connection to the ancestors is something that I think we all feel important to us, so it’s never been an idea of obligation. It’s our choice.

by Anne-Marie Slaughter

The death toll continues to rise in Burma, also known as Myanmar. As of this writing at least 32,000 people have died and that number is expected to rise significantly in the days ahead. Most of us have seen the photos, watched the video footage, and read reports of the cities and villages devastated by the cyclone — bloated corpses clogging the rivers, starving villagers huddled in monasteries, and the rising tide of water-borne disease. Meanwhile, the Burmese government is blocking or slowing aid flights and visas for hundreds of aid workers from around the world, insisting that all aid be delivered to and distributed by Burma’s military.

On Monday (May 12) the normally reserved United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon expressed “immense frustration” with Burma’s military dictatorship, the diplomatic equivalent of pounding his shoe on the table. Ban’s plea followed an earlier outburst by French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner, who argued that the Burmese crisis was large enough in scope to force a U.N. resolution on the issue, based on the “responsibility to protect” doctrine. Responsibility to protect (R2P in shorthand) is a relatively new concept in foreign affairs, but one which was adopted by the U.N. General Assembly in 2005 and which in essence recognizes that the international community — that is, U.N. member states — have a right to intervene through U.N.-sanctioned collective action when countries cannot or will not protect the human rights of their own people against serious violations of international law.

Survivors of Cyclone Nargis reach for used clothes from a local donor at a village destroyed by the cyclone, south of Yangon, May 12, 2008. REUTERS/STR New

Kouchner touched off a diplomatic firestorm. Even some proponents of R2P, including the U.N. Secretary General’s special advisor for R2P issues, Professor Ed Luck, argue that the doctrine would be misapplied if the international community were to intervene in the case of Burma — that R2P is to be specifically applied to crimes against humanity, war crimes, and ethnic cleansing.

Luck is right, but in my view the deliberate blocking of aid that could avert the deaths of tens if not hundreds of thousands of Burmese people constitutes a crime against humanity. The world is not obliged to come to the aid of the Burmese people; that is precisely the job of their government. But if governments, aid groups, and individuals around the world reach out to the Burmese simply on the basis of our common humanity and the corollary desire to stop suffering where we can, then the Burmese junta’s determination to put itself between its people and that aid is nothing short of murderous.

Beyond the law, however, is the even more vital question of what practical steps can be taken to give the R2P doctrine effect — or simply to change the situation on the ground. Sending helicopters into Burmese airspace without permission is likely simply to add violence and bloodshed to the Burmese people’s woes, creating a war out of a natural disaster. Sanctions against Burma as a whole simply punish those who are suffering. Sanctions aimed at changing the lifestyles of individual junta members and their families could be more effective, but have presumably been tried. Other alternatives include inviting the prosecutor for the International Criminal Court to prosecute individual members of the junta for crimes against humanity, or working intensively with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to suspend or even expel Burma unless it accepts aid. ASEAN has just passed a charter of human rights; Burma makes it a mockery. ASEAN diplomats will argue that carrots work better than sticks, but then they must come up with the carrots that work — immediately.

Burma’s generals are forcing the world’s citizens to stand by and watch their people die. We have the legal doctrine to authorize action, but actually saving lives in Burma now requires both political will and practical tools.

Anne-Marie Slaughter is dean of Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and the author of THE IDEA THAT IS AMERICA: KEEPING FAITH WITH OUR VALUES IN A DANGEROUS WORLD (Basic Books, 2007). She has written for Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly on Pope Benedict XVI’s UN address, and she spoke last year with R & E about faith, values, and foreign policy.

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: We have a more now on a story we told in 2006. It’s about Scott Neeson, an Australian, now an American citizen, who gave up a rich life as a Hollywood movie executive to go live in Cambodia. There he helps poor children escape their lives as trash pickers and get an education. Recently, producer Trent Harris went back to Cambodia to see how Neeson and his kids are doing. The answer, as Lucky Severson reports, is inspiringly well.

LUCKY SEVERSON: He takes this walk practically everyday through the slum that surrounds the Steung Meanchey landfill outside Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Thousands live here amidst the filth and stench.

SCOTT NEESON (with little boy): He’s playing with his own syringe here. Oy, it’s not a good idea.

SEVERSON: They spend their days picking through the chemical waste and broken glass, searching for anything of value. Human scavengers — many are children. It’s where we first found Scott Neeson two years ago.

Mr. NEESON: When I first came here, I had nightmares. I had terrible dreams for a week or two afterwards, and I think some of the things I’ve seen out here are just horrendous.

Scott Neeson

SEVERSON: Neeson first came to Cambodia on a backpacking trip in 2003. What he saw changed the course of his very comfortable life. He was a Hollywood big shot — president of 20th Century Fox International.

Mr. NEESON: It was a really glamorous life, you know, I had the Porsche.

SEVERSON: And a big house?

Mr. NEESON: Yeah, a five-bedroom home that was worth a few million dollars. I had the Porsche and a big old boat.

SEVERSON: You were a man of means?

Mr. NEESON: I was a man of means and luxuries, and yet I sort of enjoyed it, but I wasn’t particularly happy.

SEVERSON: So he started the Cambodian Children’s Fund, the CCF, a live-in school where kids from the dump can learn reading and writing and about a world they never dreamed of. It’s a sparkling place with healthy food and clean, smiling faces. His goal in the beginning was to care for about 40 kids. When we saw him last in September 2005, the number had grown to 118. Back home, colleagues like Mitch Yankowitz were still waiting for him to come to his senses.

MITCH YANKOWITZ: I thought Scott would be back in Los Angeles in 12 months, kind of the stereotypical midlife crisis for a highly stressed senior executive, but Scott really proved me wrong.

“I no longer have a 401k, but I have all the coconuts I can drink and eat.”

Mr. NEESON (by coconut tree): I no longer have a 401k, but I have all the coconuts I can drink and eat. It’s a tradeoff.

SEVERSON: Two years later, the former highly stressed senior executive still takes his daily strolls through the tin shanties, but now he’s rarely alone. He’s become a pied piper, a symbol of hope in a heap of despair.

Mr. NEESON (speaking to boy): We’re going to buy you some pants one day. Just for the hell of it, we’re going to buy you some pants.

SEVERSON: They’re like his extended family. He seems to know every little kid and every mom and dad, and by now, they know him.

Today, the CCF cares for and schools over 300 children, almost 10 times his original goal, and it may be the best education Cambodia has to offer. Imagine coming from this — to this. The school uniforms were contributed by an Italian designer.

Mr. NEESON (to girl): Hey, you. Her older sister is at our vocational center right now studying to be a hairdresser, and she wants to come and join — don’t you?

Joseph Mussomeli

SEVERSON: Neeson rose to the top ranks of Hollywood even though he never even graduated from high school. Maybe that’s why he is so obsessed with education. It drives him crazy when he can’t accommodate all the kids who just want to learn.

Mr. NEESON: I haven’t come up with a good answer for that yet. It’s so sad. We’re just at capacity. Boys like this — all he wants to do is study. That’s all he wants to do.

SEVERSON: Joseph Mussomeli is the U.S. ambassador to Cambodia.

JOSEPH MUSSOMELI (U.S. Ambassador to Cambodia.): I think he’s inspired a lot of people here. Even some jaded Westerners who have become cynical about everything — when they see what Scott has done in really just less than three years, they’re always just amazed.

SEVERSON: What he has done is quite remarkable, and it reaches beyond the second new school, and the third and the fourth. Neeson wants to lift the entire community out of the rubble.

Mr. NEESON: Now the kids here are learning how to bake bread. In fact, most of them bake bread easily — they’re doing croissants and the more difficult things. That’s a fabulous sign, the CCF’s Star Bakery, Phnom Penh, and this is our fabulous baker girls.

The Cambodian Children’s Fund

SEVERSON: The baker girls are attending the new vocational school. They bake as many as 175 loaves of nutrient-enhanced bread each day, much of which goes to the families at the dump.

Mr. NEESON: I love this place. Right here is the makeup class. The girls are being trained for hair dressing and makeup. That’s their chosen profession.

SEVERSON: And then there are the sewing classes where kids make bags out of garbage.

Mr. NEESON: So that’s the bags themselves. This is an old fish food sack. The women and men that work here four or five hours a day working with the bags, and three hours a day learning reading, writing, English, and computer.

SEVERSON: These teenagers are also learning design. Neeson wants them to create their own clothing lines. Eight of his vocational graduates have found good paying, full-time jobs, including this young lady working in the kitchen of an upscale restaurant.

Marie Cammal

Mr. NEESON: And she’s been here quite a few months saving her money, and last month she bought the family their house and the land they’re on.

SEVERSON: Marie Cammal has worked with homeless children in Cambodia for many years. She says what Neeson is doing will make a difference.

MARIE CAMMAL: Because when you change the life of one child of Cambodia, in Cambodia that means you save at least two or three generations ahead. You give education to one boy or one girl — that means this boy and this girl will have a better job and will feed 15 people in their family, within their family, yes, but we need a lot of guys like him.

SEVERSON: What drives Neeson is the deep satisfaction he gets when he sees the transformation in these kids’ lives.

Ambassador MUSSOMELI: It’s like this is the big romance of his life. He came here, unexpectedly fell in love with the country and the people, and it has given him a reason to live.

SEVERSON: This is CCF’s new community center. Neeson like to call it the Steung Meanchey Country Club, because it’s an exclusive club. Only families from in and around the dump can be members.

Mr. NEESON: It provides a sense of community to become a member and to be able to meet you neighbors probably for the first time. You can sit around, you can talk, watch movies, because currently there’s no sense of community. People sit under their houses, they’re drinking alcohol, and there’s a terrible, terrible level of domestic abuse.

SEVERSON: He hopes the center will give the families a sense of community pride, and for those who break club standards, a sense of community shame.

Thet, one of the children Neeson helps

Mr. NEESON: On the other side, of course, is if there’s bad behavior in terms of domestic violence, then we can rescind club membership.

SEVERSON: Actually, the community center offers perks some country clubs don’t — a day care center, for example. The reason most toddlers are wandering through glass and chemical waste is because mom is working at the dump and dad, if he’s around, is often drunk.

Mr. NEESON (to boy): Oy, be careful there, be careful. Oh man, this kid’s got some serious parasites going on, huh? What do you do? The kid, you know, got these drunken guys here and you don’t want to hand the baby back. She needs to go to a doctor.

SEVERSON: What pleases him most is his HMO plan — free health care for all the families living and working at Steung Meanchey, one of the best health care plans in the country. He arranged it through an American charity called Hope Worldwide. The medical center treats everything from cuts and bruises to diseases that would often be fatal.

Ambassador MUSSOMELI: I mean, on a very grass roots level, Scott is doing more for this country. He’s changed the lives of several hundred children and probably several thousand families. When people see him they have to think good thoughts about America.

SEVERSON: Except for his fund-raising efforts in America, Neeson is focused on only one thing — giving these kids a chance. And he says as long the contributions keep coming, he won’t rest until he does.

Mr. NEESON: I don’t know how you rest, actually. There’s nothing worse than awareness, unfortunately, nothing worse than having your eyes open.

SEVERSON: While producer Trent Harris was with Neeson at the site, he spotted a little girl who could not find a smile.

Mr. NEESON (to Thet): Come on honey, come on, its time to go home.

SEVERSON: Her name is Thet. At first, she was bewildered and scared, overwhelmed by all the food. This is her most recent picture. It’s why Scott Neeson left Hollywood.

For RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY, I’m Lucky Severson reporting.

TIM O’BRIEN, guest anchor: The Dalai Lama, spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, is visiting the U.S. Next week (October 17), he’ll be presented with the Congressional Gold Medal, this country’s highest civilian award, for his “many enduring and outstanding contributions to peace, nonviolence, human rights and religious understanding.” To celebrate the occasion, monks from the Dalai Lama’s private monastery in India spent five days building a sand mandala at Auburn Theological Seminary in New York City. The mandala is a symbolic structure that represents a Buddha’s dwelling. It is said to bring peace and harmony to the area where it is being made. Karen Humphries Sallick, who organized the monks’ tour, explains.

KAREN HUMPHRIES SALLICK (Tibetan Buddhist Practitioner): The mandala is a teaching and meditation tool so that we can focus on evoking in ourselves the Buddha nature that we Buddhists believe you have inside you.

A sand mandala is made typically from precious stones that have been hand-ground and then hand-dyed. The sand goes in a funnel. They’ll rub it and the sand will come out. That’s how they put these layers of sand down to create these beautiful, spiritual forms of art.

One can use the mandala as an aid to meditation helping you through the process of eliminating emotions that are unhelpful to you so that you can then uncover and evoke what’s in the center.

There are thousands of mandalas, and, in fact, even for one type of mandala there are several ways to do it, depending on how much time the monks have. You can take five days. You can take a month to build a mandala. Every aspect of the mandala has meaning.

The very center is the representation of Chenrezig, the Buddha of compassion. Tibetan Buddhists actually believe that His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama is the reincarnation of Chenrezig.

The next ring outside of the central figure of compassion are representations of four different Buddhas. The Buddha for eliminating hatred is represented by a thunderbolt. Then we have a jewel that represents the deity that can eliminate suffering. Then we have a wheel of knowledge or dharma, the deity that represents the elimination of ignorance. And then the last is a green sword that cuts through jealousy.

The next circle are lotus leaves. If you’ve ever seen a statue of a Buddha, they are often sitting on a lotus flower, so the family of Buddhas that are represented in the center are sitting in a ring of lotus.

Then outside of that is the vadra ring of protection from negative thoughts.

Finally, in the very outside ring — fire, and that fire is to burn through ignorance to enlightenment.

The dissolution is actually a very important part of the mandala process, because it really is showing the nature of impermanence. As Westerners, we get so attached to things. So here’s this beautiful mandala that these monks have worked five days on. And, with no emotion whatsoever, they reach their hand into the middle and just mess it up. And then they’ll sweep it up with brushes, and they’ll place it into a vase.

The mandala will be brought to the water. The deities in the mandala will then go into the water as a blessing, back to the Earth.

The Tibetans believe that anyone who watches the building and dissolution of a mandala actually accumulates merit and can begin to evoke that Buddha nature, being the most compassionate we can be.

The sangha, the community of Buddhist monks, played an important role, second only to that of students, in the democracy movement of 1988. In Mandalay, for example, it is widely believed that the participation of thousands of monks, manning the barricades and providing security, prevented that city from descending into the anarchy witnessed in Rangoon and elsewhere in the country at that time.

Since the failure of the 1988 movement, the military enacted a number of institutional measures that successfully hindered students’ capacity to organize politically. This included the suspension of classes for long periods and permanently emptying the main urban universities, and in their place requiring students to attend newly built satellite campuses in isolated rural areas.

Such measures could not be enacted easily with respect to the Burmese sangha, given its organization and ubiquitous presence throughout the country, from rural monasteries in virtually every village and town to the large monastic colleges of Rangoon and Mandalay. This country-wide array of institutions represents a network of communication and cooperation that typically transcends regional and ethnic differences and traditionally has always been an avenue by means of which monks could quietly organize, whatever the purpose. While institutional matters pertaining to the sangha are overseen at the national level by the central government’s Ministry of Religious Affairs, sangha loyalty and political sentiment remains naturally wedded to those of its principal donors, in this case everyday citizens, most of them poor — farmers, laborers, government servants, petty merchants, and so on, most of whom also intensely dislike the current regime.

As of Wednesday (Sept. 26), the news broadcasts are reporting that the Burmese government has begun to crack down on the monk-led demonstrations. Doubtless security forces will be able to suppress this outbreak of political expression with force as they have done so many times before. But will the military junta ever succeed in wooing the sangha from its ties with ordinary people and turn it into a willing instrument of religious-political legitimation in this devoutly Buddhist country? Perhaps the generals themselves do not believe so. At the base of the Shwedagon Pagoda, prominently placed and gorgeously decorated, one can find a specially built ordination hall reserved for the sons of military families, a ritual space for creating new monks, and in this case perhaps a new religious caste in this otherwise casteless religion of the Buddha.

– Patrick Pranke teaches Asian religions at the University of Louisville in Kentucky, where his area of specialization is Burmese Buddhism.

Socially engaged Buddhism has added a significant voice to public discourse in Asia since it developed after World War II. Its concrete efforts to translate Buddhism into a means of positive social change for the benefit of all living beings has resulted in numerous and highly successful projects for social and environmental justice. Socially engaged Buddhists in Asia have produced initiatives for health care in poor areas, for peace building in conflict areas, and even for interreligious cooperation on a global scale.

These successes, however, have taken place in developing and developed countries that respect human rights and religious freedom, such as Sri Lanka, Thailand, Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan. In countries where freedoms are tightly controlled by central governments, these successes have, by and large, not happened. This is true of Myanmar.

For the near future, I expect the government of Myanmar to block the monks in their monasteries and repress any demonstrations by the Buddhist laity. The result of the demonstrations will be failure.

In the long run, however, dialogue between the monastic leaders and the government may lead to positive changes. This is now happening in China, where engaged “humanistic Buddhism” is working with the government to address social and environmental issues of concern to all Chinese. Since the Chinese government is a close ally of Myanmar, my hope is that they will encourage the Myanmar government to engage in dialogue with Buddhist leaders for the good of the country and region.

– Donald W. Mitchell is a religious studies professor at Purdue University and the author of BUDDHISM: INTRODUCING THE BUDDHIST EXPERIENCE (Oxford University Press).

These successes, however, have taken place in developing and developed countries that respect human rights and religious freedom, such as Sri Lanka, Thailand, Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan. In countries where freedoms are tightly controlled by central governments, these successes have, by and large, not happened. This is true of Myanmar.

For the near future, I expect the government of Myanmar to block the monks in their monasteries and repress any demonstrations by the Buddhist laity. The result of the demonstrations will be failure.

In the long run, however, dialogue between the monastic leaders and the government may lead to positive changes. This is now happening in China, where engaged “humanistic Buddhism” is working with the government to address social and environmental issues of concern to all Chinese. Since the Chinese government is a close ally of Myanmar, my hope is that they will encourage the Myanmar government to engage in dialogue with Buddhist leaders for the good of the country and region.

– Donald W. Mitchell is a religious studies professor at Purdue University and the author of BUDDHISM: INTRODUCING THE BUDDHIST EXPERIENCE (Oxford University Press).

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: We have a Belief and Practice segment today about the Chinese Buddhist tradition of honoring deceased family members at the place where their ashes are interred. Harry Leong of New York City was our guide as he and his mother remembered his late father at the Chuang Yen monastery in Carmel, New York. He spoke to us about the Buddhist belief in reincarnation and the hope that prayer and good deeds will help the deceased achieve better and better lives, until eventually they’re reborn in the Pure Land.

HARRY LEONG (at memorial service, Chuang Yen monastery’s Great Buddha Prayer Hall, Carmel, NY): Over 30 families are here today for the spring memorial service, and they’re from all over the country and even from overseas. The families are here together because for traditional Chinese families, it’s considered very important for them to be present at the time when the ashes are interred, because it’s considered their filial responsibility.

We chant the mantra for rebirth in the Pure Land because it creates merit. And then, when that merit is generated, we share and we dedicate it to the deceased, which helps the deceased achieve a positive rebirth, or even better, rebirth in the Pure Land.

In Buddhist literature, the Pure Land is described as this very beautiful and perfect place where everything that you see gives you this longing to achieve rebirth there — this place created by Amitabha Buddha as a means for us to achieve enlightenment quicker, because the mind is pure. The mind is purified of defilements and the mental afflictions so we can practice without distraction, without suffering.

In Buddhism we believe that all beings are bound to samsara. Samsara is what non-Buddhists understand as reincarnation. So long as one doesn’t achieve spiritual enlightenment, one’s continually reborn in samsara, over and over again, and for Buddhist practitioners, the goal is to escape from this cycle, to achieve supreme Buddhahood, which is nirvana.

Buddhism makes us understand that death is a natural progression of life. Even though we understand that death and impermanence [are] inherent in all things, I think it’s still difficult for us to let go of our loved ones.

I think about impending death all the time. When you remind yourself about your own mortality, it gives you motivation to have diligence in spiritual practice, because you feel like time’s running out.

My goal in this human realm is the same goal as for all Buddhist practitioners, which is to practice compassion and try to benefit other living beings. And then, hopefully, at the end of this life, to achieve rebirth in the Pure Land.

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: Also today, Belief and Practice. This past week has been the Hindu festival of Diwali, celebrating the end of the year and many events in the lives of the some of Hinduism’s most important deities. Hindus believe in one ultimate God, but also worship and ask for help often at home from the many thousands of more familiar gods and goddesses. Last weekend we visited Monu Harnal in Burke, Virginia, as she helped prepare her parents’ home to welcome the Goddess Lakshmi.

Monu Harnal

MONU HARNAL: Diwali, Deepavali are one of the same thing. It means “the festival of lights.” During Diwali, we want to illuminate our house so that the Goddess Lakshmi can find her way.

The whole family gets together. We celebrate in our homes. Everyone gets to wear new clothes. It’s similar to Christmas plus New Years all at once.

In our house, we have the puja room, the prayer room. My Dad, he chants and we follow him. First, we pray to Lord Ganesha, who is the removal of all obstacles. And then, we pray to the Goddess Lakshmi to bring in both material and spiritual prosperity.

In Hinduism, the nice thing is all the gods like are your board members in your life. They act like board members. And you can call on one of them whenever you need something for a certain problem or issue or whatever it is. You can call on them to say, “Okay, Goddess Lakshmi, I need a little cash here. So help me, give me some energy to remove this problem for me.”

We don’t see prosperity as anything negative. It’s actually very fortunate that you’re prosperous. You’ve done good deeds and you’re being rewarded with prosperity.

Because the coins are a symbol of Lakshmi, the goddess of abundance, we wash her in milk and decorate her with vermilion, the red what’s on my forehead right now.

It’s called a “tika.” It’s a confirmation of us performing puja – the actual prayers that we do to evoke the goddess.

I’m striving to eliminate ignorance, become more spiritually awakened. That’s my goal as a Hindu.