American Buddhist Net

Greetings in peace and love,

I was wondering if any of you in this group may be interested in this:

A 4-month Temple Stay / study program for Mandarin language, arts and music, Chinese culture, Buddhist studies, meditation, vegetarian cooking and diet, gardening, and the monastic way of life. The program is called the "Fo Guang Shan Philippine Humanistic Academy of Life and Arts" and is scheduled APRIL 1 - JULY 31, 2010 in the Philippines (starting in Bacolod Yuan Thong Temple and ending in Manila Mabuhay Temple).

It is under the supervision of Fo Guang Shan monastic order of the Linji Chan (Rinzai Zen) lineage and the philosophy of Humanistic Buddhism (engaged, cultural, etc). The language of livelihood will be English, but the life will be following a monastic code (silence, disciplined, etc). This means contact with the outside world will be limited, however entrants will be allowed 1-2 hours weekly to communicate with family. An entrant can choose to have no contact at all.

Entrants will enjoy free food (vegetarian), boarding, clothing, and for the first time in the Philippines, a formal curriculum to be taught by the Sangha. There is also a Php1,500 monthly allowance.

Opportunities for further scholarship or employment in Taiwan ROC will be available to outstanding students after the study program. Application deadline is on March 15, 2010.

For the application form, go to http://bliabacolod.multiply.com or contact me at 0907-155-4885.

Palms joined
Ji Dao

MANILA (AFP) – Philippine Catholic bishops, already waging a bitter battle with the government over birth control, received an unwelcome gift Monday when female activists delivered them two baskets of condoms.

LINK TO ORIGINAL

MANILA, Philippines - After he lost almost all of his belongings in the floods brought about by Tropical Storm "Ondoy" last year, this jeepney driver thought it wasn't enough to simply thank the strangers who helped him get back on his feet.

Sonny Hernandez, 48, a resident of Barangay Nangka in Marikina City, felt it was but right to repay the generosity of his benefactors with the same acts of kindness and love he was shown when he was down and out.

LINK TO ORIGINAL

A Filipino woman in Saudi Arabia is scheduled to be lashed 100 times by the government as punishment for being raped. To add to the tragedy, the Filipino has been held in prison since September 2009. In December 2009, the woman — known only as “Camille” — miscarried. Now, she is facing a medieval crime — all because she was raped.

LINK TO ORIGINAL

MANILA - ONE in three newborns in the Philippines is unwanted or unplanned, the government said on Thursday, as the country struggles with a population explosion and the Church's opposition to birth control.

LINK TO ORIGINAL

TOKYO (AFP) - Police near Tokyo said Wednesday they had arrested three Japanese men and their transsexual "wives" from the Philippines for faking their marriage registrations.

The Philippine nationals used the identification papers of women in their home country to pretend they were born as females so they could marry their Japanese partners, police said.

LINK TO ORIGINAL

LEGASPI (Philippines) - TENS of thousands of villagers in the Philippines fled their homes on Tuesday as one of the nation's most active volcanoes spewed lava and sent ash plumes high into the sky, authorities said.

LINK TO ORIGINAL

Kuala Lumpur - Malaysian police have rescued five babies and detained 15 people believed to be part of a baby-selling syndicate headed by a doctor, a news report said Monday. Police revealed Monday that the arrests, which also included two childless couples who were allegedly customers of the syndicate, were made earlier this month following investigations and public tip-offs.

The syndicate was believed to have recruited women from the Philippines, Vietnam and Indonesia to bear and then sell their offspring back to the syndicate for 5,000 ringgit (1,430 dollars), federal criminal investigations chief Bakri Zinin was quoted as saying by the Star online news portal.

LINK TO ORIGINAL

PROSPERIDAD, Philippines — Gunmen agreed to release 47 hostages Sunday held in a southern Philippine jungle hide-out that is surrounded by troops and snipers.

LINK TO ORIGINAL

MANILA — Gunmen took 75 people hostage at an elementary school on Thursday in the southern Philippines, later releasing 18 of them, including all the children, officials said.

LINK TO ORIGINAL

GENERAL SANTOS, Philippines (Reuters) - The military chief in the southern Philippine province of Maguindanao took over as local governor after martial law was imposed on Saturday, following the country's worst election-related crime last month.

LINK TO ORIGINAL

Reporting from Seoul and Zamboanga City, Philippines -- Authorities discovered the bodies of at least 30 people kidnapped early today in the southern Philippines and called the incident a politically motivated slaughter.

The victims -- including at least 13 women -- reportedly included a dozen journalists as well as lawyers and a woman who had planned to file her husband's nomination for elections next year.

LINK TO ORIGINAL

DUBLIN (AP) - A 79-year-old Irish Roman Catholic priest abducted in the Philippines a month ago was freed early Thursday and neither country paid any of the kidnappers' $2 million ransom demand, Irish and Filipino authorities said.

LINK TO ORIGINAL

Philippine troops and navy gunboats tried to encircle suspected Muslim militants to pressure them to release an ailing Irish priest, a military general said today.

No rescue was imminent out of concern for the safety of the Rev Michael Sinnott, 79, said regional military commander Major-General Benjamin Dolorfino.

LINK TO ORIGINAL

Manila, Oct. 12 (CNA) Eight tons of relief goods collected by a Fo Guang Shan Monastery, a Taiwanese Buddhist temple, for typhoon-affected victims in the Philippines arrived in Manila Monday.

The Philippines has been hard hit by two typhoons over the past few weeks, with nearly 1,000 people killed and more than 14,000 families left homeless and moved to temporary shelters.

LINK TO ORIGINAL

Fears are growing for an Irish missionary kidnapped in the southern Philippines, where militants are fighting the army for a separate Islamic state.

Father Michael Sinnott, 79, was seized yesterday at 7.30pm local time (11.30 BST) by six gunmen from his gated compound in Pagadian City, on the southern island of Mindanao.

LINK TO ORIGINAL

JAKARTA, Oct 3 (Reuters) - Indonesia's earthquake-ravaged city of Padang remains at risk of being wiped out during the next decade by a more powerful quake that could match the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami for destructiveness, an expert said on Saturday.

LINK TO ORIGINAL

Second storm slams into northern Philippines

(CNN) -- Ketsana, downgraded from a typhoon to a tropical depression, is heading towards Laos Wednesday after leaving a trail of death and destruction across Southeast Asia.

By early Wednesday morning, the death toll from the storm's rage had crossed 293: at least 246 in the Philippines, 38 in Vietnam and nine in Cambodia.

LINK TO ORIGINAL

MANILA — At least 83 people were killed and dozens of others were missing after a tropical storm swept through the northern Philippines over the weekend, with Manila experiencing its worst flooding in nearly half a century, officials said Sunday.

LINK TO ORIGINAL

Philippine authorities are continuing to search for about 30 people still missing after a ferry sank in the middle of the night.

LINK TO ORIGINAL

By BENJIE OLIVEROS

MANILA — Recent revelations regarding the presence and activities of US troops in the country have confirmed what progressive groups have been saying all along: that US Special Forces soldiers have established a permanent presence in the county. They have even built permanent structures to support their operations and have engaged in actual combat operations.

LINK TO ORIGINAL

Manila, Philippines - Every night without fail, Jim Turner is there at the far corner of the bar, chain-smoking his Marlboros and sipping ice-cold San Miguel from the bottle, watching over the Little Ones.

He considers them family, but they're not his children. They're the dwarfs and other little people the 70-year-old Iowa native has rescued from the heartless streets of this capital city to offer them friendship and honest work.

LINK TO ORIGINAL

Deep in the jungle primeval, Nepenthes attenboroughii awaits its furry prey. But N. attenboroughii isn't a stealthy cat or poisonous lizard. It's a plant, and it eats rats.

Scientists recently discovered this new species of pitcher plant on the verdant face of Mount Victoria in the Philippines.

LINK TO ORIGINAL

After forming as a tropical depression over the Pacific Ocean about 1,000 km east of the Philippines on August 2nd, Typhoon Morakot built in power and moved quickly west. Over the past several days, the storm has passed over the Philippines, Taiwan and Mainland China, causing hundreds of millions of dollars in damage due to high winds, flooding and mudslides. Southeast China evacuated nearly 1 million people ahead of the storm, after Morakot broke many records in Taiwan, dumping a total of 2.5 meters (100 inches) of rain on the island. At least 40 people are known to have died so far, but hundreds remain missing - many from one village in Taiwan, reportedly engulfed by a mudslide during the storm. (36 photos total)

LINK TO ORIGINAL

MANILA, Philippines – Former President Corazon Aquino, who swept away a dictator with a "people power" revolt and then sustained democracy by fighting off seven coup attempts in six years, died on Saturday, her son said. She was 76.

LINK TO ORIGINAL

The following comments and lessons on Japanese tactics and equipment have been gathered in interviews with officers who served with Filipino and American troops during the campaign in Luzon. They do not represent a complete survey of Japanese tactics and equipment, but are rather the 'observations of individual officers on what they saw and what impressed them.

The Japanese soldiers were fairly young, their average age being about 22 to 23, although the best troops were about 25, many of whom had had experience in China.

The Japanese have troops trained primarily for beach landing. Specially built barges drawn by motor boats carry 80 or more men. Landings were usually made at night; when possible, during a full moon. Ordinarily, the landings were made about midnight, with the barges coming as far in on the beach as possible.

LINK TO ORIGINAL

Before we get to the new stuff, we must recap: Two "Japanese nationals" (who may not actually come from Japan) were caught in Italy just as they were about to take $134.5 billion dollars in bonds into Switzerland. Most of these bonds, we are told, were of such a ridiculously high denomination ($500 million each) as to make them non-negotiable by normal humans. Only states could hope to use such things.

Mystery number 1: What did the "Japanese nationals" hope to do with these instruments?

Mystery number 2: Are the bonds counterfeit or real? If real, Italy stood to gain a windfall -- Italian law allows the government of that country to take 40 percent of the booty.

Mystery number 3: Why has the American press kept mum about a possible swindle that dwarfs the Madoff affair? The Europeans and the Asians are all over it.

LINK TO ORIGINAL

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- In what a U.S. military official calls an "inadvertent encounter," a Chinese submarine hit an underwater sonar array being towed by the destroyer USS John McCain on Thursday.

LINK TO ORIGINAL

Of the 195 countries in the world, only three do not currently allow for divorce and that number will be further reduced by one next year when Malta officially adopts a divorce law. This total includes all 53 countries in Africa, 52 out of the 53 in Asia, 47 out of the 48 in Europe, all 13 in South America, and all 7 in Central America. Each of these incredibly diverse countries—whether Christian, Muslim or Buddhist, democracy or dictatorship—have adopted some form of divorce law except for the Philippines and Vatican City.

LINK TO ORIGINAL

These pictures show the carnage caused after a water buffalo went wild during a religious festival in the Philippines.

Four people were injured in the town of Pulilan, north of Manila, after farmers lost control of the beast, who was part of a procession of 300.

LINK TO ORIGINAL