Celebrate Vesak : Fly Buddhist Flag

On this holy blessed Vesak Day, it is a time when all Buddhists regardless of sects and lineages gather at the front of our Teacher -Shakyamuni Buddha.We ought to be proud oof being a follower of Lord Buddha and we need to beproud that to be a Buddhist! This is why I am starting this campaign for allBuddhists "Celebrate the Vesak , Fly the Flag", The Buddhist Flag consist of 6 auspicious Auras that Buddha emanated upon Enlightement and it's explanation of 6 colours are as below:

Blue symbolises Confidence/ Wisdom
Yellow symbolises Holiness
Red symbolises Wisdom
White symbolises Purity
Orange symbolises Desirelessness

Combination Colour symbolises the Universality of the Truth of the Buddha's
Teaching.

In fact, the Buddhist flag was invented in 1880 by an American journalist, Colonel Henry Steele Olcott. Olcott was a fascinating character. A former soldier and lawyer, he set up the Theosophical Society of New York. He arrived in Sri Lanka with the renowned spiritualist Madame Blavatsky on 17 February 1880 - a day which was subsequently celebrated as Olcott Day in independent Sri Lanka. He founded the Buddhist Theosophical Society, devised a Buddhist catechism, encouraged Buddhist versions of Christmas carols and cards, and inspired the founding of Buddhist schools and the YMBA - the Young Men's Buddhist Association.

There are six colours in the flag, but the human eye can see only five. They are described in the Scriptures as emanating from the aura around the Buddha's body. There are 5 vertical stripes of red, yellow, blue, white and orange. The sixth colour is a compound of the first 5, but for design purposes its five ingredients are all shown in small horizontal stripes on the flag.

Webpage of Buddhist Flag with animated Buddhist flag:
http://web.singnet.com.sg/~sidneys/buddhist_flag.htm

How the aura looks like see : 

http://home1.pacific.net.sg/~wsarada/

(be patient as the Buddha image takes some time to appear)

Many Buddhist have misconcepts for owning and hanging this Buddhist Flag. Many think that Buddhist Flags are only to be hung in temples and not homes/shops/etc. In fact, this is wrong because this Buddhist flag was specially and designed for all Buddhists like you and me. It is just like national day when you hang the national flag to express your Love for the country. Likewise, hanging the Buddhist Flag also expresses our Love and pride of being a Buddhist, showing everyone one that all Buddhists stand in Unity & Harmony. Please bring this Joy of Vesak back to your home and share it with your family, friends,relatives and even your neighbors !

Those who wish to celebrate this Holy Vesak by flying a Buddhist Flag ,please e-mail to me at hsiongcai@yahoo.com or call me at my hand phone at 98306362 . The prices ranges from S$10 dollars to S$30 dollars (Inclusive of Delivery to your home ). All earnings will strictly be directed to the reproduction/printing of Dharma Materials.

Note: the delivery service is within Singapore only.

New Laws against Proselytizing in Sri Lanka faces a crisis

The powerful Jathika Sangha Sammelenaya (JSS), Sri Lanka's biggest organization of Buddhist Monks clashed with the government's Buddhist Affairs Minister W. J. M. Lokubandara and accused him of breaking the agreement his government reached with the Buddhist monks to preparelegislation against unethical Christian proselytizing in the country.

The written agreement was reached between the government and the Buddhist monks, December 30, as conditions of stopping the fast unto death performed by Venerable Dr. Omalpe Sobhitha and Venerable Rajawatte Wappa in front of the Buddhist Affairs Ministry.

Lokubandara, himself an oriental scholar and a Buddhist monk oriented man coming from the heart of the Sinhala Buddhist countryside of the central hills has been utilized by a Cinnamon Gardens urbane elite oriented Prime Minister who was brought up in a Church of England culture, to keep the politically agitating Buddhist monks at check. Lokubandara did the job for his boss well for quite a period but the growing crisis showed that his political fortunes were fading away and to keep the Buddhist monks in control with the same old tricks were no longer feasible

When the opposition Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) accused Ranil Wickremesinghe of entering into a secret pact with the LTTE before elections, Lokubandara told Buddhist monks there was no such pact and despite glaring evidence many Buddhist monks believed Lokubandara. When JVP accused Ranil Wickremesinghe of trying to lift the proscription of the LTTE Lokubandara held meetings of Buddhist monks all over the countryside and told them not to agitate against the government since nothing of that nature would ever happen. With the agitation of the Buddhist monks successfully stopped also with the help of the state controlled Dinamina of the Lake House, the Sinhalese daily reaching all temples, helping the government policy, Ranil Wickremesinghe was successfully able to lift the legal proscription of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) fulfilling an important promise given to the rebel group as a condition of support to put him in power in the Prime Minister's seat. Many Buddhist monks say privately
that was also the way the country's Buddhist Affairs minister lost his credibility among the Buddhist monks

This time the JSS publicly rejected the state gazette notification published by the Buddhist Affairs Minister and said the notice contravened the agreement reached between the government and Buddhist monks about appointing a Buddhist monk Committee to address the initial need of drafting new laws against proselytizing.

A spokesman of the JSS said, " We repeatedly requested the Minister the committee should reflect all three sects of the country while he was telling us that he could appoint whoever monks we liked. But we wanted to do this in a proper way and gave a specified plan of how to appoint the monks. That has never been heeded by the minister."

The spokesman interviewed over the telephone said when a committee did not reflect the Sect structure of the Buddhist monks and appointed haphazardly according to the wishes of the Minister what would happen was that conflicts could arise between the official sect versions and individual monk versions destroying the purpose of the intended bill .

The spokesman said that the committees of the three sects of the Buddhist monks should have nominated the appointees to the committee but the Minister had appointed them without consulting the committees. The appointees were very much embarrassed when they were named without the official consent of the three sects, the JSS accused

The JSS charged the minister of taking arbitrary steps when the instructions of how to appoint the committee was very clear in the agreement. The spokesman accused the Minister of confusing the issue instead of resolving it

A New Holy War against evil: A Buddhist Response

Like most other Americans, I have been struggling to digest the events of the last week. It has taken a while to realize how
psychically numbed many of us are. In the space of a few hours, our world changed. We do not yet know what those changes will mean, but the most important long-term ones may well be psychological.

Americans have always understood the United States to be a special and uniquely privileged place. The Puritans viewed New England asthe Promised Land. According to Melville, We Americans are the peculiar, chosen people.

In many parts of the globe the twentieth century has been particularly horrible, but the continental United States has been so insulated from these tragedies that we have come to think of ourselves as immune to them although we have often contributed to them.

That confidence has been abruptly shattered. We have discovered that the borderless world of globalization allows us no refuge from the hatred and violence that predominate in many parts of the world.

Every death reminds us of our own, and sudden, unexpected death on such a large scale makes it harder to repress awareness of our own mortality. Our obsessions with such things as money, consumerism, and professional sports have been revealed for what they are: unworthy of all the attention we devote to them. There is something valuable to learn here, but this reality nonetheless makes us quite uncomfortable. We do not like to think about death. We usually prefer to be distracted.

Talk of vengeance and bomb them back to the stone age makes many of us uneasy, but naturally we want to strike back. On Friday President Bush declared that the United States has been called to a  new worldwide mission to rid the world of evil, and on Sunday he said that the government is determined to rid the world of evil-doers. Our land of freedom now has a responsibility to extirpate the world of its evil. We may no longer have an evil empire to defeat, but we have found a more sinister evil that will require a long-term, all-out war to destroy.