BOB ABERNETHY, host: Faith-based and international aid groups rushed to help victims of the catastrophes in Japan. It’s estimated that more than 10,000 people were killed by the massive earthquake and tsunami. Japanese officials say more than 450,000 are homeless and in need of supplies. Humanitarian efforts, however, have been severely complicated by radiation from four of the country’s nuclear reactors.

We get more from Dave Toycen, the president and chief executive officer of the Christian aid group World Vision Canada. We spoke to him by phone from Tokyo on Friday night (March 18). Dave, thanks so much for staying up so late to talk with us. Are you and the others doing relief work there, are you able to get to all the people who need help, and do you have the supplies you need to help them?

DAVE TOYCEN (President and CEO, World Vision Canada): Well, basically we do. We’re anticipating we’ll be raising somewhere between $10 and $20 million, so our team here has already spent, you know, a chunk of that because they know it’s coming. But of course we believe we’re going to be able to raise that amount of money, and of course that turns into supplies and things that we can provide here. So, yes, I am positive about that.

ABERNETHY: But you are able to, or the people who are in need are able to get help from you or from the government or from somebody else, right?

TOYCEN: Yes, generally so. My perception is, in the conversations we’ve had, what I’ve seen first hand, people are getting at least the basics of life. That means water, food on a daily basis, and most people now are in schools, gymnasiums, community centers, so that they are at least not out in the elements. It was minus four this morning with about ten, well, eight inches of snow.

ABERNETHY: What have you seen that moved you the most?

TOYCEN: Well, I think one of the things that moves me so much is in every one of these centers they have sheets of paper with people either saying yes, I’m alive and I’m at this location. The other ones that are even more poignant are the ones where you read where people are saying I am looking for my son, my daughter, do you know about them? And that always touches your heart. That just really, really touches your heart. And today I had a mother say to me, you know, this has been awful, but it’s my kids. The fact that my kids are alive, and children are precious because they remind us that life is about hope, and even our children in the midst of these difficult circumstances they still find the time to be happy and joyful. That’s humbling.

ABERNETHY: Dave, very quickly, we are almost out of time, but a lot of people are saying, well, we don’t need to give anything because Japan is a first-world country. It’s well organized. They don’t need as much help as perhaps people at other places and other disasters. How would you respond to them?

TOYCEN: Well, my first comment is yes, you’re right to a certain extent. They don’t need as much help. This is a first-world country. But, on the other hand, my experience is that most of us, or many of us at least, when somebody’s in trouble we have a sense we want to help out in some ways. And then when you think about, even I think of. say. Hurricane Katrina in the United States, how much Americans appreciated, at least that’s the feedback I got, when people from Canada and other places in the world came in and pitched in and gave, either volunteered or gave some money. So I think everybody has to make their choice, and we’re so pleased at World Vision. We’ve had so many people who want to step up and say we’re willing to help in Japan and send a message of hope.

ABERNETHY: Dave Toycen of World Vision Canada. Many thanks.

Faith groups around the world held prayer services this week for victims of the disasters. Meanwhile, some observers have spoken about the strong cultural and spiritual resources the Japanese have displayed as they deal with the catastrophe. Reverend Maggie Izutsu is an Episcopal priest who is also an expert on Asian bereavement rituals. She lived in Japan for many years and joins us now from Austin, Texas, where she leads the organization the Rite Source. Maggie, welcome.

REV. MAGGIE IZUTSU: Thank you. It’s an honor to be here.

ABNERNETHY: As you see the way the Japanese people are responding to these tragedies, what stands out for you?

IZUTSU: I guess one of the things that my mind keeps going to is how they don’t ask the question “why me?” They’re not consumed with wondering what put them in harm’s way. They know they’re in harm’s way. They are very attentive to their surroundings, and they have a great reverence and fear of nature.

ABERNETHY: And so a disaster is just part of life? Multiple disasters are just part of life? You accept it and get on with things—pick up and continue you life?

IZUTSU: Yes, I believe so. I think that partly comes from their Shinto tradition of this reverence for nature and their understanding of the vicissitudes of nature and capriciousness of nature. It’s also part of their Buddhist tradition that understands that all things are impermanent and things are subject to change, and they don’t see themselves as entitled to good fortune all the time or even good fortune ever. Of course, they seek that and they strive for that, but that’s not their focus.

ABERNETHY: We’ve seen a little disruption—frustrations of trying to get supplies and things. But, in general, the images have been of people who are very orderly and very respectful of each other. Talk about that a little bit.

IZUTSU: Yes, well, I think that may come from very early training that is part and parcel of the Confucian tradition, which was imported from China, that seeks to make every opportunity in life—in daily life, secular life, as well as spiritual life or, more pointedly, religious life—an opportunity for moral self-cultivation, and it starts at a very early age. For instance, my son in a three-year-old’s class at nursery school’s teacher would talk about how she went home every night to try to understand how she could better inculcate a sense of little Johnny’s effect on little Tommy in terms of how he was behaving. So that sensibility of commiseration or empathy or understanding how our behavior affects other people starts there at a very early age.

ABERNETHY: And now there is the grieving and the rituals that are available, too, for helping people through that. What are the most important of those?

IZUTSU: The Buddhist tradition, as well as the new religions, have these very elaborate, very elongated memorial services—a sequence of memorial rites that go on literally ad infinitem, and they’re a wonderful occasion for families and friends of the deceased to come together at sporadic intervals to remember the deceased and share in the support that they can offer each other in that process. It also serves, I think, as a context for remembering the relative nature of our own egos, and the place that we have in this vast line of our ancestors and hopefully the progeny that will yet be coming, and to remember our place in society, and that also becomes a context for remembering that behaving well is a very important attribute of living.

ABERNETHY: Reverend Maggie Izutsu of the Rite Source in Austin, Texas. Many thanks.

IZUTSU: Thank you.

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Since its “opening” in 1854 by U.S. Navy Commodore Matthew Perry, Japan often has been defined in the West by a single, simple image.

Sometimes that image has been one of exotic, romantic tradition (a samurai or a geisha); sometimes it has been the image of technophilic hypermodernity (a bullet train or a robot). Over the past week, Japan has been visually defined in television and online news accounts by the imagery of disaster: flooded fields and streets, bodies and vehicles washed ashore, nuclear power plants exploding, and houses afire.

Disaster looms large in the Japanese cultural imagination. Even casual consumers of Japanese media are aware of the nation’s appetite for apocalypse, as seen in films from 1954’s Gojira (Godzilla) to 2006’s Nihon Chinbotsu (Japan Sinks), not to mention anime (cartoon) and manga (comic book) series such as Akira and Sunabōzu (Desert Punk). What the average Godzilla or anime fan may not realize, however, is how deeply rooted Japanese perceptions of disaster are in traditional Japanese religious culture.

In traditional Japanese religion (not only Shintō but also forms of Buddhism as well as hybrid and new religious movements), kami (deities) are entities of great power and unpredictable, even nonexistent morality. As the influential religious thinker Motoori Norinaga (1730-1801) wrote:

The changing of spring and fall, the falling of rain and tempest of wind, all things good and evil which may befall men and lands, one and all are the doings of the kami…. Among the kami are good and evil, and their doings are likewise in accord with that nature…. When provoked, a good kami may erupt in rage, while evil kami may soften their hearts when happy, and it is not entirely inconceivable that they might even bestow blessings on humans. And although people may not realize it, the actions [of a kami] which may at first be thought evil, in fact turn out good, while those first thought to be good, may in fact turn out evil.

Many a Japanese apocalyptic drama or disaster movie has perpetuated this ambiguous concept of the sacred. Much like kami, Godzilla has been depicted as both an agent of destruction and a powerful protector who both menaces and saves Japan, depending on the film in question. Interestingly, in the original Godzilla film, nuclear radiation is said to have been responsible for creating the mutated prehistoric menace that is Godzilla, while in Japan Sinks, nuclear warheads are used to detonate portions of sea floor, thrusting the flooded Japanese islands back up above sea level. Thus, whether one speaks of supernatural figures, fictional monsters, or contemporary technology, power in Japan is cloaked in moral ambiguity, and it ultimately teaches human beings important lessons about the limits of their own power as well as their own hidden resources.

Unlike practitioners of Western religious traditions such as Christianity, Islam, or Judaism, who may struggle with why a good God would permit evil to exist, traditional Japanese religious communities have tended to turn such moral reflection inward. Instead of asking why disaster occurs or whether it confirms divine justice, one often hears those influenced by Japanese religious traditions asking how they should respond to disaster and how that disaster might lead to self-cultivation and self-transformation. Phrases customarily uttered by Japanese during moments of crisis, such as gaman (“putting up with it”) and ganbatte (“do your best!”), reveal the faith that they often place in the healing and redemptive power of suffering as an occasion for both the strengthening of collective bonds and the development of personal character.

The ideas, institutions, and practices associated with Confucianism and Buddhism, in particular, reinforce the notions that individuals exist interdependently with others as members of a group and that people carry within themselves deep wellsprings of spiritual potential that can be actualized through self-effacing behavior and collective discipline. In medieval Japan, the experience of disaster both confirmed people’s sense that they were living in the era of mappō (“decline of the Buddhist teaching,” a degenerate period in which salvation was increasingly difficult to attain) and encouraged them to seek relief in either the tariki (“other-power” of merciful beings such as Amida Buddha) or the jiriki (“self-power”) of their own latent Buddha-nature. Either way, disaster could be transformed into an opportunity for cultivating one’s gratitude and fortitude in service to others.

In many ways, Japan is one of the world’s most secular societies. By Western standards of religiosity (personal belief, individual membership, embrace of doctrines and scriptures), most Japanese do not appear to be very “religious.” But when monstrosity strikes, the character of a culture is revealed. In the case of Japan, the imagery of disaster also includes the visage of a Buddha, reflected in the faces of millions of ordinary Japanese standing in line for aid, searching ruins for loved ones, and lending a helping hand to others: calm, compassionate, and concentrated. Such an image still inspires Japanese and others who cope with the inevitable loss and suffering that living and dying as impermanent, interdependent beings entails.

Jeffrey L. Richey is director of the Asian studies program and associate professor of religion at Berea College in Kentucky.

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KATE OLSON, correspondent: On a recent Saturday morning at the First Congregational Church in Berkeley, California, church members and neighbors gathered to hear Brother David talk about living “a spirited life.”

Church group singing: Viva, viva la musica…

OLSON: For Brother David, it is grateful living that makes everything come alive.

BROTHER DAVID STEINDL-RAST, OSB: The practice of gratefulness that I’m concerned with is grateful living. That means every moment of your life you practice gratefulness. You practice awareness that everything is gift, everything is gratuitous, and if it’s all given, gratuitously given, then the only appropriate response is gratefulness What we really want is joy. We don’t want things. We don’t want to accumulate things. We forget that, and so gratefulness can help us see that, can help us realize that.

OLSON: Though Brother David acknowledges there are many things for which we cannot be grateful, he encourages people to be open to the opportunity being given in every situation.

BROTHER DAVID: We cannot be grateful for war. That’s an unmitigated evil. We cannot be grateful for exploitation, for untimely death. But we can be grateful in every situation. The key word is “opportunity.” If you catch onto that, then if we are in practice, when something comes along for which we cannot be grateful, spontaneously we will—our mind will say, “Well, what’s this the opportunity for now?” And there’s always an opportunity for something positive, usually the opportunity to learn something new, even in the worst situations, or for the opportunity to do something. If we learn of an injustice we have the opportunity to stand up and to speak up and to do something.

OLSON: During the day, people reflected on moments of ‘epiphany’ in their lives – what brother David calls mystic or peak experiences, which often include an experience of profound gratitude.

BROTHER DAVID: The mystic is not a special kind of human being, but every human being is a special kind of mystic. We all have mystic experiences, and in these peak moments, in these peak experiences, all of us have this experience of being one with all. Those are the moments in which we feel most alive, most truly ourselves.

OLSON: Grateful living is something you can practice moment by moment in your daily life, he says, and like other spiritual practices, such as Zen meditation, its goal is to live in the present moment, to see everything as “word of God.”

BROTHER DAVID: “Word” is not just vocabulary, but “word” is everything that speaks to us, and in this sense a flower can be a word that speaks to me. A poem as a whole can be a word that speaks to me, a piece of art, everything. It speaks to me. It tells me something, it tells me something about ultimate reality. That’s a mystic insight that every human being can appreciate, I think, and experience, if we only allow ourselves.

OLSON: Cultivating this aliveness in life is central to Brother David’s vocation as a monk and to his message. Born in Austria, he immigrated to the US in 1952 and joined Mount Savior Monastery in Elmira, New York.

Brother David singing: Alleluia …

OLSON: For decades he has lived part of his life as a hermit, in prayer and contemplation and writing books. The other half he travels the globe lecturing and leading retreats, helping people discover this “aliveness” in their own lives. Finding the deeply shared personal experience is at the heart of Brother David’s work in interreligious dialogue.

Brother David speaking at retreat: “…always checking it back with your own experience, always checking it back against your basic faith…”

OLSON: A pioneer in the Christian-Buddhist dialogue, he returns frequently to Tassajara, a Zen monastery in California where he lived for several years. As part of the dialogue with Buddhism, Brother David trained in Zen meditation and joined in Buddhist rituals. He says the task of interreligious dialogue today is to understand the meaning beneath the words of particular creeds or beliefs, to discover the faith that underlies these words that we all share.

BROTHER DAVID: Deep down there is only one faith that all human beings have, and that is that deep trust in life. Even our body expresses that trust in life by always taking another breath. We can’t even stop it. We can’t stop breathing. So that deep trust in life—that is what all humans share, and that expresses itself, then, in a Buddhist way, in a Christian way, and even in ways that we don’t recognize as explicitly religious. Many atheists have a deep faith. They all have that deep faith, but they express it very differently.

OLSON: Beliefs are not faith, he says. Faith is deep trust. And the opposite of faith is not doubt, but fear.

BROTHER DAVID: The one most frequently repeated command in the Bible is not “love your neighbor,” but “fear not.” And if there is one thing that we need in our world, if there’s one thing that we should write on our mirror and see every morning when we look into the mirror, it’s “fear not.” If we went into the day with that command deeply tattooed on our heart, “fear not,” we’d be completely different people and create a completely different world—a world of faith.

OLSON: This deep trust in life is at the heart of what he sees as “the round dance of grateful living.”

BROTHER DAVID: So we participate in this tremendous dance in which the gift comes forth from the source and through thanksgiving returns to the source, where the word comes out of the silence and through understanding returns to the silence. Gratefulness is not just saying “thank you.” It’s acting. It is being your self. A mother is grateful, shows gratefulness by mothering, a scientist by doing science. That is what the Bible calls “in God we live and move and have our being.”

Church group singing: “Viva, viva la musica…”

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, this is Kate Olson reporting from San Francisco.

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KATE OLSON, correspondent: It’s early morning along the Pacific Coast. Norman Fischer, a Buddhist priest who’s been teaching meditation for over three decades, opens a day of silent meditation for practitioners of Zen Buddhism.

NORMAN FISCHER (speaking to group): Thank you all for coming, and I hope that everybody has a good day, a peaceful day, a day in which whatever needs to arise in your heart will do so.

OLSON: Other days, Fischer is at Google in Silicon Valley offering the same meditation practice to employees participating in a class called “Search Inside Yourself.”

FISCHER (speaking to class): Lengthen the spine, open the chest, and let your body pull itself up.

OLSON: Or he may be at a Jewish contemplative retreat sharing the practice with Jews seeking to experience their own faith tradition more deeply.

FISCHER (speaking to retreat): The practice that we’re doing on our cushions is fundamentally the practice of just feeling our life.

OLSON: The various hats that Fischer wears are part of his effort to help enrich everyday life experience by sharing the spirit and practice of Zen with the world.

FISCHER: If you really do the meditation practice and you continue that over time, your life really changes. You really have a sense of purpose, you really have a much greater sense of connection to other people, and loving kindness and interest in others and wanting to help others. Nothing makes us feel better about our own lives than that.

OLSON: At Google, Fischer is helping employees increase their so-called emotional intelligence on the job. Since the class began just over two years ago, close to 600 employees have taken it with the full blessing of management.

FISCHER: At Google it’s very explicit. Our brief is let’s get smarter about our feelings and emotions. Let’s go deeper than we usually go for the purpose of getting closer to ourselves and being able to be more empathetic and more understanding of others, and that’s the whole realm of emotional intelligence. There is no better technique or practice for going into and working through and really understanding our heart and the hearts of others than meditation practice.

OLSON: Developing emotional intelligence is not a cognitive process, Fischer says. Understanding the heart calls for another way.

FISCHER: This doesn’t work by thought and will. It doesn’t disregard thought and will, but thought and will are not the engine that makes this go. The engine that makes this go is taking a step back and trusting the body, trusting the breath, trusting the heart. We’re living our lives madly trying to hold onto everything, and it looks like it might work for awhile but in the end it always fails, and it never was working, and the way to be happy, the way to be loving, the way to be free is to really be willing to let go of everything on every occasion or at least to make that effort.

So the practice really works with sitting down, returning awareness to the body, returning awareness to the breath. It usually involves sitting up straight and opening up the body and lifting the body so that the breath can be unrestrained. And then returning the mind to the present moment of being alive, which is anchored in the breath, in the body.

Then, of course, other things happen. You have thoughts, you have feelings. You might have a pain, an ache, visions, memories, reflections. All these things arise, but instead of applying yourself to them and getting entangled in them, you just bear witness to it, let it go, come back to the breathing and the body, and what happens is you release a whole lot of stuff in yourself. A whole new process comes into being that would not have been there if you were always fixing and choosing and doing and making. This way you’re allowing something to take place within your heart.

OLSON: Fischer says the meditation practice, which includes meditative walking, is not an escape from difficult or painful emotions and negative thoughts, but a way to be present, and not attached, to whatever arises. This opens a whole new way of seeing oneself and others.

FISCHER (speaking to class at Google): I begin to notice others are rather like me and I’m rather like them. There’s not so much difference, you know. I’m scared. Well, probably they are too. I have yearnings or longings. Well, maybe they do too. So maybe there’s more of a felt sense, not a theoretical sense, but a felt sense of actual kinship.

OLSON: And this has implications that go beyond working more effectively for a company.

FISCHER: You end up coming to a place where it becomes more and more difficult to be harmful to others. It becomes more and more difficult not to be kind, more and more difficult to push for a result and not notice the consequences.

OLSON: At the Jewish retreat, Fischer teaches meditation to help Jews experience their own faith more deeply. He draws on traditional Jewish language and imagery in his teaching, such as Jacob’s ladder.

FISCHER (speaking to retreat group): A ladder rooted in the earth and stretching up toward heaven—that’s the human body. That’s the spine is that ladder.

OLSON: Fischer, who is a practicing Jew, feels much of the teaching about Judaism today doesn’t do enough to support a personal connection with God. Meditation not only deepens this relationship but helps one see God in everything, as he says the Torah teaches.

FISCHER: When we sit we recognize the crucial, divine importance of absolutely everything that arises—every thought, every feeling, every breath, every unspeakable, unnameable impulse. But also we recognize the ultimate importance of the others—of the sky, of all the sounds inside and outside the room. As the mind becomes a little more quiet the sacredness of everything within and without becomes clear to us.

OLSON: So how can a practice from Zen Buddhism, a tradition that does not speak of God, help practitioners from a tradition where God is central?

FISCHER: Buddhism in general is not committed to God or no God. It’s committed to awakening. So taking this practice from Buddhism and applying it to Judaism, it’s a way to go deeper into our heart, our mind, our consciousness and in a Jewish context, when you do that I think, at the bottom, you find the divine. You find God, and there’s nothing in this practice nor is there anything in Buddhist or Zen thought that would deny this possibility.

OLSON: Fischer, who has served as abbot of the San Francisco Zen Center, says it’s important on the spiritual journey not to ignore the emotional realm, which is sometimes overlooked in religious practice.

FISCHER: When we think we’re going to go from, you know, everyday life straight through to the divine, leaving out maybe all the many needs and feelings and human foibles and frailties that are actually there, they need to be processed and dealt with.

(speaking to retreat group): The thing about this practice that is, to me anyway, so sweet is that we are doing it together. We’re walking the big long line all together, like one person walking.

OLSON: Wherever Fischer teaches, he says the practice is an ongoing contemplation that leads beyond the self to a deep connection and compassion for others and all life.

FISCHER: And if you stay with this practice long enough, you basically will work through all the knots and confusions that your life has sort of set up within you. The practice will help you work through that and see below, below, below, below all of that to the place where you see what’s really important to you, and what really matters to you is that you are alive, and you are alive in a world with others. You really feel like my life is a life of complete connection, and it’s a life of joyful connection and concerned connection, and then you have to act on that.

OLSON: Fischer says the practice he teaches doesn’t conflict with other faith traditions, but can be helpful to anyone on the spiritual journey, a journey he calls “to the bottom of the heart.”

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, this is Kate Olson in San Francisco.

LUCKY SEVERSON, correspondent: This ragtag parade in northwest Thailand, in the area known as the Golden Triangle, is a celebration of sorts, but it also has a very serious purpose, and one that has had dangerous consequences.

(speaking to Thai man): How was he killed?

PIPOB UDOMITTIPONG: He was stabbed to death.

SEVERSON: You think that he was killed because of his environmental work?

UDOMITTIPONG: Of course, definitely.

SEVERSON: Why?

UDOMITTIPONG: Because there was no other reason. He’s such a nice man. If you meet in person, he’s a very amicable man. He has no enemies whatsoever.

SEVERSON: What was so unusual about the killing was that the victim held a position of great respect in Thai society. The victim was a Buddhist monk, an environmental activist.

Susan Darlington is writing a book about Thailand’s environmental Buddhism.

PROFESSOR SUSAN DARLINGTON (Hampshire College): There were 18 human rights and environmental activists who were assassinated in Thailand in a three-year period, none of whose murders were solved. So somebody was feeling threatened and had the power to push back and try to send perhaps warnings or to stop these people altogether.

SEVERSON: Sulak Sivaraksa is a noted Buddhist scholar who has written over a hundred books. He claims he knows who was pushing back against the monks who were trying to protect the forests: international corporations with financial ties to some corrupt generals in the Thai military.

SULAK SIVARAKSA (International Network of Engaged Buddhists): Unfortunately the big loggers, in cooperation with generals, they don’t care. They cut the trees, and the monks protested, and they even arrested monks. Not before in history that monks had been arrested.

SEVERSON: Darlington is a professor of anthropology and Asian studies at Hampshire College in Massachusetts. She says it wasn’t until the late 1980s, after whole forests had vanished, that monks became activists.

(speaking to Professor Darlington): We’re talking about whole forests, clear cutting?

DARLINGTON: Clear cutting to either get the logs—the teak forests were going at a rapid rate, other hardwoods—or cutting down forest to make room for intensive agriculture.

SEVERSON: The forests went away, and the animals, too, and then in 1988 catastrophic floods caused people to reevaluate what they had been told was progress.

DARLINGTON: Up to three hundred people were killed from the floods, and most experts pointed to this and said the flooding would not have occurred if there hadn’t been such severe deforestation.

SEVERSON: Sulak Sivaraksa founded the International Network of Engaged Buddhists. He says Buddhism’s views of the environment are both moral and spiritual.

SIVARAKSA: Buddhism believes that we are all interrelated, not only among human beings but to all sentient beings, including animals, nature, the river, the trees, the clouds, the sun, the moon, we all related. We are brothers and sisters. So if you harm any of these you harm yourself.

DARLINGTON: Buddhists’ primary motivation, primary goal is to end suffering, and destruction of the environment causes suffering on many levels. Therefore as monks it is part of our role to make people aware of this and to undertake actions to prevent this and to protect the forests that still exists.

SEVERSON: To protect to the forests, one monk did something radical, just as they are doing here now. He started tying orange robes around trees, in effect ordaining the trees.

DARLINGTON: He was called crazy, and a national newspapers called for him to disrobe from the sangha [community or order], that this was not appropriate behavior for a monk, he’s misusing the religion. But meanwhile other monks began to do tree ordinations as well. “You can’t ordain a tree. What does that mean?” So people started debating, what does it mean to ordain a tree?

SEVERSON: To the monks, it meant making the forests sacred, off limits to exploitation. The idea has caught on with some villagers, like these. The forests rangers with the guns are not official rangers. They’re volunteers who patrol the mountainside looking for timber poachers. Senior monk Anek took us to an area near his village that was clear-cut in the dark of the night. August 21st there was a forest here. August 22nd it was gone. Three acres of prized hardwood disappeared overnight. Anek says he doesn’t think monks’ robes wrapped around trees would have prevented this.

INTERPRETER (translating senior Buddhist monk Anek): He says it might not deter them because they are investors from outside, they have no respect for the culture, they have no respect for the tradition. He’s saying that he feels sad because it took them many years to preserve this.

SEVERSON: Anek says he still gets threats for ordaining trees but not as many as before and not as severe. He doesn’t think this area was clear cut for the trees, but instead for the land, which foreign companies are using for huge farming operations, like the tangerine plantations that stretch for miles along rolling hills that were once covered with pristine forests. Unfortunately for the locals, the companies are hiring cheap labor from nearby Burma. So they’re losing the land and their ability to live off it. In the middle of the plantations there is a Buddhist monastery that acts as a buffer against development. The senior monk here is also an environmental activist. His name is Abbot Kittisap.

(speaking to Buddhist abbot): But you’re not fearful?

Because of his activism, and because he is testifying in the trial of the murdered monk who was his friend, Abbot Kittsop has 24-hour-a-day police protection, the gentlemen you see here. The abbot says he is still fearful for his safety, but his conscience keeps him going. Even though it’s been four years since the controversial killing, no one has been convicted of the crime, and recently the chief investigator confirmed many people’s suspicions when he accused the police of tampering with the evidence. Many here don’t think justice will ever be served, but Susan Darlington says that doesn’t mean the monks have not made progress. The Thai government, for instance, has cracked down on illegal logging.

DARLINGTON: I think the role of Buddhism in protecting the environment has come a long way. These monks really do, they put a moral standard into the environmental movement that makes people really stop and think. It brings a spiritual element to it.

SEVERSON: Others like Sulak say spirituality also requires action.

SIVARAKSA: Spirituality is not merely personal contemplation, not only meditation, that you feel peaceful and then you feel “I’m alright, Jack.” I think that’s is dangerous. It’s escapism.

SEVERSON: Sulak Sivaraksa, who received the Right Livelihood Award, also known as the alternative Nobel Peace Prize, says many Westerners and many Buddhists alike do not understand the meaning of engaged Buddhism.

SIVARAKSA: In fact, meditation only helps you to be peaceful. But you must also confront social suffering as well as your own personal suffering, and people suffer now because of the environment.

SEVERSON: The generals and the developers still have the upper hand, but the battle for the land, and the hearts and mind of the people is not over. Ordinary people are now beating a drum for the monks.

For Religion & Ethics Newsweekly, I’m Lucky Severson north of Chang Mai, Thailand.

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: The Dalai Lama is now here in the US for nearly a month of teaching across the country. He is the world’s best-known representative of Tibetan Buddhism, perhaps of all Buddhism. But now another potential Buddhist leader is emerging. The Dalai Lama, who turned 73 last Sunday, leads one of the four schools or denominations within Tibetan Buddhism. The 23-year-old Karmapa Lama leads another. His supporters believe he may one day succeed the older man as Buddhism’s leading international voice. Recently the Karmapa visited the US for the first time, and Kim Lawton talked with him.

KIM LAWTON: They call him a reincarnation of the living Buddha, and this young spiritual leader is already on his way to international superstar status. His name is Ogyen Trinley Dorje. His title is the 17th Karmapa Lama, and after the Dalai Lama he’s now Tibetan Buddhism’s second-highest ranking spiritual leader. During a recent visit to the US, his first introduction to the West, thousands came out to venues from New York to Seattle to see the 23-year-old Buddhist master.

DZOCHEN PONLOP RINPOCHE (Narlanda West Buddhist Center): The young Kamarpa is the most powerful Buddhist meditation teacher. His scholarship is excellent, and also his youth and his presence makes a profound impact.

LAWTON: The term “karmapa” literally means the embodiment of all the activities of the Buddhas. For the last nearly 1,000 years, a Karmapa Lama has led the Kagyu tradition within Tibetan Buddhism. Buddhists believe enlightened spiritual masters can choose to be reincarnated in order to come back and help others achieve enlightenment. This Karmapa’s followers see him as part of an unbroken line of Buddhist wisdom.

LAMA SURYA DAS (Western Buddhist Teachers Network): He feels very close to us from the last life and through all of our good aspirations and good things that we have been trying to do together to help bring peace and sanity and wisdom and love into this very volatile modern world.

LAWTON: In an exclusive American television interview, the Karmapa told me he’s pleased with how Buddhism has taken hold in the US.

GYALWANG KARMAPA (through translator): Americans have taken a great interest in Buddhism and many Americans have put forth a lot of energy in order to propagate the teachings of Buddhism, and I think they have achieved excellent results within this short period of time.

LAWTON: The Karmapa’s international acclaim is enhanced by the dramatic story that surrounds him. He was born in 1985 to a family of nomads in eastern Tibet. When he was eight years old, he was identified as fulfilling the prophecy left by the previous Karmapa who had died in 1981. The Dalai Lama had a dream which confirmed the recognition of the new Karmapa, and Dorje was taken to live in a monastery. Although some rivals support a different Karmapa, Dorje is the only high lama to have been officially recognized by both the Dalai Lama and the Chinese government. But China keeps a tight reign on Buddhism in Tibet, and when he was 14 Dorje snuck out of his monastery and made a secret escape across the Himalayas by foot, horseback, taxi, and train. Eight days later, he arrived in Dharamsala, India, headquarters of the Dalai Lama, where he has spent the past several years in study and meditation. As the heads of two different streams within Tibetan Buddhism, Karmapas and Dalai Lamas have historically been rivals. That has now changed.

SURYA DAS: This Kamarpa 17th is very close to the Dalai Lama and lives in Dharamsala, and they’re like this. So there is no sectarian rivalry or anything. They’re very much close together.

LAWTON: That closeness has led many to suggest that the Dalai Lama, now 73, is grooming the Karmapa as his spiritual heir and the next international voice of Buddhism. It’s a suggestion the Karmapa doesn’t shy away from.

GYALWANG KARMAPA (through translator): I have no special plans to take over any specific role after whenever it is that His Holiness the Dali Lama passes away. However, I would be delighted to serve in accordance with the level of confidence and trust the people had in me. It does seem to be the case that I am receiving more and more recognition in the world, and my main aspiration is that I use this recognition for a beneficial purpose.

LAWTON: Because the Dalai Lama heads the Tibetan government-in-exile, there is much speculation about the Karmapa’s potential role in China-Tibet politics as well. He avoided such sensitive topics during his visit to the US, and steered questions about politics back to the practice of Buddhism in Tibet.

GYALWANG KARMAPA (teaching, through translator): It’s important to understand that cherishing sentient beings, loving sentient beings is really the root of compassion.

LAWTON: As his public role now expands, expectations about his future leadership are high. With his trip to the US, the teachings he once gave to private audiences at his monastery are being sold on DVDs and posted on the Internet.

PONLOP RINPOCHE: I’m not talking politics but from spiritual point of view. You know, he is like a spiritual king. Naturally he has that presence, he has that command.

LAWTON: The Karmapa is learning English, although not yet confident enough to teach or give an interview in the language. But a few words trickle through.

GYALWANG KARMAPA (speaking English): I need dictionary.

LAWTON: He can come across as uncomfortable, reserved, even stern. Yet there are flashes of humor, too.

GYALWANG KARMAPA (speaking English): I forget the translator.

LAWTON: It’s easy to forget he’s only 23. During one Seattle appearance, he mentioned that he used to like reading X-Men comic books, but then people stopped giving them to him. So we got him one. In many ways, he’s been isolated, his responsibilities pressed upon him since he was a small child.

GYALWANG KARMAPA (teaching through a translator): And I would think thoughts like, why are my attendants who are disciples of the Karmapa making my life so miserable? Why are they locking me in a box and putting on the lid?

LAWTON: Followers say this Karmapa is well aware that technology has made the world a smaller place and that Buddhism must stay relevant.

GYALWANG KARMAPA (through translator): Because of the Internet, we live in an age in which information can travel very rapidly to different places. Before, it used to be the case that just having a Karmapa alive was good enough for everyone. People didn’t need a lot of information about who the Karmapa was or what the Karmapa was doing.

SURYA DAS: He has continuously talked about not holding on to things just because they’re old, but to adapt, and keep the essence, but to adapt to new times and places.

LAWTON: This Karmapa believes that Eastern Buddhists and Western Buddhists can learn from one another.

GYALWANG KARMAPA (through translator): The essential points of Buddhism are beyond culture and beyond traditions.

LAWTON: Given the level of devotion he’s already cultivating in the West, his followers say this Karmapa Lama may well be the future face of Buddhism around the world.

I’m Kim Lawton in Seattle.

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: We have a special report today on the plight and paradox of Tibetan Buddhists. They teach nonviolence, but their demonstrations against the Chinese have sometimes become violent. How can they persuade the Chinese that they and the Dalai Lama are not a threat? Lucky Severson reports.

LUCKY SEVERSON: Chinese authorities called these protesters in San Francisco “Tibetan hooligans” whose only purpose was to use violence to embarrass China in its moment of Olympic glory. Lhadon Tethong was there. She’s a Tibetan activist and leader of Students for a Free Tibet.

LHADON TETHONG (Students for a Free Tibet): There has to be tension. There has to be crisis. They have to feel the occupation is a problem for them whether they agree with us or not.

SEVERSON: The protests in San Francisco and around the world were mainly a reaction to demonstrations by Tibetan monks inside Tibet and China. The Chinese government mobilized troops. Many Tibetan monks and nuns were arrested when the initial demonstration began earlier this year in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet. The Chinese placed the blame squarely on the leader of some six million Tibetan Buddhists — the Dalai Lama. Columbia University professor of Buddhist studies Robert Thurman says the charge is simply not true.

Professor ROBERT THURMAN (Department of Buddhist Studies, Columbia University): The Chinese are desperate now to try to claim that the Dalai Lama caused all this upset, which of course he totally did not. He was totally upset.

SEVERSON: The work of the protesters is raising questions among Tibetans themselves and people around the world. For instance, will the demonstrations actually force the Chinese to loosen control of Tibetan Buddhism? And how can a religious philosophy built around peace and compassion continue to hold the high ground when the protests are resulting in so much violence? Professor Thurman says the Tibetan devotion to nonviolence goes to the core of their faith –the path to total enlightenment takes place over many, many lifetimes, many reincarnations, and to commit violence threatens that path.

Prof. THURMAN: My life is my own evolutionary moment to progress, and I’m not going to do violence. So therefore, to cherish your own life, you don’t want to risk it for some sort of worldly aim. You want to develop your soul because that’s what your life is for.

SEVERSON: But he says those who think protestors have violated the basic principle of nonviolence don’t understand the Tibetan Buddhist philosophy of self-defense.

Prof. THURMAN: Buddhist ethics is intense about nonviolence, but it’s also pragmatic. There is one sutra where it’s stated if you are invaded by an enemy and you can successfully defend yourself and repel the enemy, and the enemy while occupying you will cause tremendous violence, then you should defend yourself.

SEVERSON: Chinese history professor Tu Weiming of Harvard believes at least part of the problem stems from a lack of understanding by the Chinese leadership of Tibetan Buddhism and the role of the Dalai Lama.

Professor TU WEIMING (Harvard University): The Chinese government is not at all informed about the Dalai Lama as a spiritual leader. They always perceive him as a political leader interested in mobilizing anti-Chinese forces outside of China. My sense is that it’s a misperception that needs to be corrected.

SEVERSON: If any Westerner ought to understand the role of the Dalai Lama among Tibetans, it is Robert Thurman. Before choosing to be a professor, Thurman became the first Western Tibetan Buddhist monk under the tutelage of the Dalai Lama. He says the Dalai Lama is to Buddhism what Jesus is to Christianity.

Prof. THURMAN: If Jesus was constantly coming back, how would Christians feel about that person? You can get an idea of how the Tibetan and Mongolian Buddhists feel about the Dalai Lama.

SEVERSON: But Chinese officials say the looting, the beatings, and destruction of property prove that the Tibetan people and their leader are hypocrites. The Chinese government maintains, and most of its citizens believe, that Tibet has always been a part of China. The Tibetans disagree saying their country didn’t become part of China until 1951 after it was forcefully occupied by Chinese troops. The Dalai Lama fled to his new home in exile in India in 1959.

Prof. THURMAN: For 30 years, from the ’50s to the end of Mao, they did the most violent thing. You can’t even believe it. They killed a million people. Half of it was famine craziness, and a lot of it was this class struggle thing, you know, “kill the landlords,” and political things and eradicating the religion. You couldn’t even have a rosary. You’d go to work camp prison for life.

SEVERSON: Chinese authorities dispute these charges and say China has lifted Tibet into the 21st century.

Prof. WEIMING: China believes that in the last few decades the government has contributed significantly to Tibetan growth in terms of economic growth, in terms of building roads and so forth.

SEVERSON: But many Tibetans say the Chinese government is systematically diluting their culture and religion while encouraging millions of Chinese to move here. The Dalai Lama has called it “cultural genocide.” The Chinese dispute the genocide charge and accuse the protesters of purely anti-Chinese activity. Many of today’s Chinese leaders come from engineering and science backgrounds. Professor Weiming says these leaders are most interested in generating wealth and modernization — that they have a deep skepticism of all religions especially if their leaders threaten authority.

Prof. WEIMING: Tibetans feel they are humiliated, they are ignored, they are marginalized because people don’t understand why they are so devoted to religion, to the Dalai Lama. Their devotion sometimes is wrongly perceived as a kind of superstition and that should be overcome by modernization.

SEVERSON: The Dalai Lama has always preached nonviolence and never demanded independence from China.

DALAI LAMA (during U.S. visit): The whole world knows the Dalai Lama not seeking independence. Our approach is not separation, within the People’s Republic of China for full guarantee about our unique culture and heritage including our language.

SEVERSON: Arjia Rinpoche was a highly positioned Lama in Tibet before he defected to the U.S. 10 years ago. He supports the Dalai Lama’s approach to peace.

ARJIA RINPOCHE (Tibetan Mongolian Buddhist Cultural Center): Most of Tibetans like His Holiness’ idea. You know, the Middle Way works.

SEVERSON: The Middle Way, however, meaning more autonomy and more freedom, is not the ultimate goal of young Tibetans. They want full independence, their leader the Dalai Lama notwithstanding.

LHADON TETHONG: He is like a parent, a senior elder, respected member of the family whom you love and whom I can also disagree at times when I hear him saying something politically that I might not necessarily agree with or like. But that doesn’t change the nature of how much I respect or how much I love him.

SEVERSON: They may love him, but young Tibetans are growing impatient with the Dalai Lama’s Middle Way, and he may be feeling the pressure.

DALAI LAMA (during U.S. visit): If things become out of control then my only option is completely resign.

SEVERSON: Professor Thurman says if Chinese leaders were willing to meet with the Dalai Lama in person, the conflict could be resolved.

Prof. THURMAN: If I can get him a room with Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao, it would have a profound impact actually on the world. They would turn around, I think.

Prof. WEIMING: I was deeply worried when I was in China that not just the government officials, but some intellectuals believe that if the Dalai Lama fades from the scene the problem will be resolved. If the Dalai Lama fades from the scene, the situation will be uncontrollable. I think the Chinese government should be critically aware of this.

SEVERSON: Even the most ardent followers of the Dalai Lama, like Arjia Rinpoche, appear to be losing hope that the Chinese government will come around.

Mr. RINPOCHE: When I escaped in 1998 then I thought, oh, in eight years I might return to home. Ten years, I’m pretty sure. So today is exactly the 10 years now. So the situation is getting worse.

SEVERSON: For now, there is little indication that the Chinese will relax control of Tibet. Many Tibetans are counting on the next and more informed generation of Chinese leaders to realize they are not a threat.

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

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: In Myanmar in Southeast Asia, tens of thousands of Buddhist monks have been marching against the military government and where the regime cracked down, violently. Scott Flipse is a senior policy analyst at the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, where he specializes in U.S. policy toward Asia. Welcome.

SCOTT FLIPSE (Senior Policy Analyst, United States Commission on International Religious Freedom): Thank you.

ABERNETHY: Tell us about the power of Buddhist monks in Myanmar and what they accomplished with their march.

Dr. FLIPSE: Buddhist monks are powerful in Burma because of their moral authority. There’s possibly up to half a million Buddhist monks and novices, and I think going out into the streets signifies to the people of Burma that the monks no longer believe the government has Buddhist bona fides.

ABERNETHY: Buddhist values?

Dr. FLIPSE: Buddhist values, right.

ABERNETHY: Such as?

Dr. FLIPSE: Such as minimizing sorrow, maximizing happiness, supporting the poor, and promoting Buddhist values such as generosity and compassion.

ABERNETHY: Does that mean that the Buddhist monks’ demonstration was for those values more than it was for democracy?

Dr. FLIPSE: Well, I mean if you looked at the signs that they were demonstrating [with] it said, “Love and Kindness” and not about democracy. But democracy is the form which I think most of the younger monks believe will bring about Buddhist values and reconciliation.

ABERNETHY: We saw some photographs of Buddhist monks holding their rice bowls upside down. What’s the significance there?

Dr. FLIPSE: It’s called turning over the rice bowl, which is a Buddhist form of excommunication. They are playing spiritual hardball saying that the military cannot be Buddhist, cannot give alms, cannot practice generosity.

ABERNETHY: And the reason that has power is because that is a good deed that then will serve them well in the next life? Is that the idea?

Dr. FLIPSE: Yeah, there’s a merit aspect to alms-giving as well. So I guess they’re telling the military that they don’t believe that they are good Buddhists.

ABERNETHY: So came the crackdown and a lot of casualties and arrests. Does that mean that the Buddhist monks have failed?

Dr. FLIPSE: No, I don’t think so. It’s yet to be seen. The government had to decide whether or not it was going to shoot Buddha in the streets. I think it did; it made that choice. And I think it signifies to the Burmese people, again, that this military government has no political legitimacy. It has — it does not represent Buddhist values.

ABERNETHY: And so, very quickly, does that suggest a backlash against the government?

Dr. FLIPSE: I think it’s a start of a revolution of the spirit, which may have political implications later on.

ABERNETHY: Scott Flipse of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, many thanks.

Dr. FLIPSE: Thank you.