On 24 May, a young Buddhist monk set himself on fire near the main entrance to the Temple of the Sacred Tooth in Kandy, Sri Lanka. The burns he suffered were so severe that he soon died in hospital. His name was Bowatte Indaratana Thera, and his suicide was an act of protest against what he believed to be the oppression of Buddhism in Sri Lanka. More specifically, he intended to draw attention to the immorality of cattle slaughter.

I’d been writing about Burma for some years but it wasn’t until actually going there for the 2010 election and being with the people themselves that the full nature of their experience began to come clear.’

There has been a resurgence of interest out there on the blogs about Buddhism, its Western interpretations, and the various statements of the provocative Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek on the subject. To represent Zizek’s opinions is to take aim at a moving target, as he develops them over time, dialectically, and often contradicts himself even […]