American Buddhist Net

Kushinagar is set for one of the biggest Buddha statues in the world, a 500-ft structure that would dwarf the Taj Mahal and the Bamiyan carvings.

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WASHINGTON — A complete Tibetan Buddhist shrine room, including a silver Buddha, gem-encrusted adornments and silk scroll paintings, goes on display for the first time in Washington on Saturday.

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Japan's representative for this year's Miss Universe contest has been selected. On Tuesday, the 2010 Miss Universe Japan finals were held in Tokyo, and 25-year-old Maiko Itai was crowned as the winner.

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Only some of these worked for me, but I like the concept. Reminds me of five-minute chess games. Rather than going for shock, shorts could portray transitions and/or symbolic shifts, semiotic constellations. ABN

These are the latest creations of extraordinary artist Tommy McHugh - a former builder and youth offender who can't stop painting since he emerged from a coma.

Mr McHugh, 60, nearly died after two blood vessels burst in the back of his head.

But after a week in a coma, he awoke with an uncontrollable urge to create and began writing poetry, painting the interior of his home, sculpting and carving.

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Scientific examination of the subject has found that as the use of porn increases, the rate of sex crimes goes down.

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In this tutorial “Spiritual Growth” I’ll walk you through the steps of taking a photo of a monk and turning it into a rich contemplative piece of work. We’ll be covering everything from photo manipulation to masking and much more. So let’s roll up our sleeves and dive right in!

(This tutorial was inspired by and is dedicated to, my good friends, the monks who reside at the Oregon Buddhist Vihara. Thank you all, for your devotion and dedication to making this world a better place!)

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Like the man himself, Gary Snyder's poems speak with the keenness of a knife blade and the knottiness of a Zen riddle.

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Chinese authorities sentenced a popular Tibetan singer to 15 months of 're-education through labour' after he released an album containing lyrics deemed political, US-based Radio Free Asia said Monday.

The broadcaster said it obtained a copy of a document declaring that Tashi Dhondup was sent to a labour camp in his home province Qinghai because he had 'violated laws' by singing songs in support of Tibetan independence and Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama.

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...The Department of Health wants to make tobacco use one of the criteria for deciding what age rating to give a film, a move that could mean some animated movies are out of bounds for children.

"Smoking (in movies) has a much worse impact on health than sex and violence," the department said in a statement posted on its website.

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ABC Vs. Loose Change Part II

Ultimately 9/11 comes down to this--do you want more information or not? Do you want the official institutions of our society - Congress, courts, media, scientists, police, and more - to openly and deeply investigate 9/11 or not? Think about it for a minute. Who wants to close off information? When do societies say no more information on this can be allowed? Cults do that to their members. Religious fundamentalists do that to their members. The military does it with secret technology and plans. Some companies have secret formulas. But who else does it? When do governments do it? Why do they do it? Ultimately 9/11 comes down to do you want your society to openly and transparently gain more information on the subject or not? ABN

Ron Mueck is an Australian sculptor based in the UK. He produces hyperrealistic sculptures which look perfect from all angles

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Japanese designers Nendo have completed the interior of a mental health clinic in Akasaka, Tokyo, where none of the doors open and patients and staff instead move around the building by opening sections of the walls.

...By providing alternate perspectives for viewing the world, and avoiding being trapped by pre-existing perceptions, the interior allows visitors–and staff members–to experience opening new doors in their hearts, one after the other.

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WARSAW — They loiter at the mall for hours, young teenage girls selling their bodies in return for designer jeans, Nokia cell phones, even a pair of socks.

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"Love Stands Alone: Selections from Tamil Sangam Poetry" Edited by A.R. Venkatachalapathy, Viking, Rs 399

Sangam literature is a body of classical Tamil literature created between 600 BC and 300 AD, although the span and the exact dates have been debated for long. It has 2,381 poems by 473 poets, some 102 of whom remain anonymous. The poems were composed by Dravidian Tamil poets from various professions and classes. They were edited and tagged with colophons only around 1,000 AD, before being collected into eight anthologies called Ettuthokai. Sangam literature fell out of collective memory soon thereafter, until it was rediscovered in the 19th century by scholars like C. W. Thamotharampillai and U. V. Swaminatha Iyer.

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Footage of a lush, idyllic landscape from the Indian-Nepal border region quickly morphs into hand-drawn animation of a woman dreaming of a white elephant, with a lotus flower on its tusk, entering the side of her body.

And so unfolds The Buddha, as an ethereal violin theme floats over the meditative drone of a sitar.

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We have previously seen Buddhist monks build an entire temple using a million trashed beer bottles and here we have something similar, but on a much larger scale, six times larger that size to be precise. Built by Tito Ingenieri, a recycling enthusiast from a city called Quilmes has spent the last 19 years in building a house from over 6 million beer bottles.

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More than 100 photographers were killed or went missing while attempting to capture images of the Vietnam War. In 1997, photographers Horst Faas and Tim Page presented works by their fallen colleagues in a photo exhibition Requiem: By the Photographers Who Died in Vietnam and Indochina.

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Draw the Buddha's Face is the second interactive we'd recommend. In ancient Buddhist legend, artists used a grid to help them remember what Buddha looked like so that after he died artists could draw him. This interactive includes a video with artist Andy Weber using the grid format to draw the Buddha's face. There are also helpful background notes too, including details about the traditional colours used

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This music video by a young Chinese girl has been spreading on Kaixin001 as “A recently very popular girl — A computer + a mobile phone + a camera = legendary MV [music video]“.

The music video (3:39) is named “ABCD Said” and is claimed that all the music was made with the Apple iPhone 3Gs. On Youku, it has been viewed over 1.25 million times already.

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ATLANTA — Visit any of the nation's more than 100 historically black colleges or universities and you'll see clusters of men and women engaged in the rhythmic clapping and foot stomping routines known in black Greek circles as "stepping."

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NEW YORK - Patti Smith, Iggy Pop, Regina Spektor and many others contributed to a potent sonic cocktail that rocked Carnegie Hall at the 20th Annual Benefit Concert for Tibet House US, a non-profit organization charged with preserving Tibetan culture.

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A Thai princess' intricate paintings of classic realism and surrealistic fantasy are on view at Paragon for the next month

The 79-year-old daughter of His Royal Highness Prince Chumbhot of Nagor Svarga and MR Pantip Paribatra has spent most of her life abroad and is little known in her homeland, but she is internationally celebrated and has often shown her work in Paris and Provence.

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NEW DELHI — India's best-known painter M.F. Husain, who went into exile after receiving death threats from Hindu hardliners, has accepted Qatar's offer of citizenship, his son was quoted as saying Saturday.

Husain, 94, a Muslim artist known as the "Picasso of India," angered hardline Hindus by portraying Hindu deities in the nude or in a sexually suggestive manner.

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A traditional-values group is taking issue with a supposed "art display" at the University of Louisville.

The more than 100 photos are of unclothed women and girls shown as part of "Body Awareness/Body Appreciation Week," an annual event on the campus. A university spokesman claims the exhibit does not constitute pornography. But Kent Ostrander, who heads up the Family Foundation of Kentucky, disagrees.

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COPENHAGEN - A Danish newspaper on Friday apologized for offending Muslims by reprinting a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad with a bomb-shaped turban, rekindling heated debate about the limits of freedom of speech.

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