Buddhism in Russia: Lhasa's Emissary to Tsar

Amber Larson and Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly; John Snelling; J. Anderson

The Kremlin in Red Square, Moscow: imperial capital of vast land holdings that again include Crimea but not the "Stans" of Central Asia, formerly Buddhist countries overtaken by Islam.

 

Buddhism in Russia: The Story of Agvan Dorzhiev: Lhasa's Emissary to the Tsar is a fascinating story of political and religious intrigue.

It tells the story of Agvan Dorziev, a Mongolian Buddhist Lama, who was instrumental in the founding of Buddhism in Russia.

 

[Russia/USSR as an empire spread out to include many formerly Buddhist lands in Central Asia. It also contains Kalmykia -- Europe's only indigenous Buddhist country, the home of international chess tournaments and Lenin's grandmother. The shamans of Siberia practice a shramanic/shamanistic form of Esoteric Buddhism from Mongolia, Tibet, Western China, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, and faraway Afghanistan (Gandhara, India), Russia's "Vietnam." With secret CIA help, Afghans eventually repelled the USSR so the USA/MIC could illegally invade, occupy, and plunder it.]

The book includes an update on the status of Buddhism in Russia since Glasnost.

NUMBERS: There are under-counted Russian Buddhists throughout the country -- particularly in Buryatia, Yakutia (Sakha Republic), Kalmykia, and Siberia -- with census numbers reflecting more "atheists," "animists," and "Eastern Orthodox Christians" as if any of these designations negated one's Buddhist beliefs or practices. A Moscovite who practices the Dharma will still routinely be listed as an official atheist (formerly a good Communist party member) unless s/he is from a Buddhist Russian republic or territory.
 

Soviet slice of Buddhist history

J. Anderson, edited by Wisdom Quarterly 

Gorgeous Russian Buddhist temple, Buryatia, Russia (J. Weeks/VOA.com)

 

Civil war in Ukraine gathering pace

John Snelling's major work was being completed when he passed away in 1992. It tells a fascinating story about Ven. Agvan Dorzhiev, a brilliant Mongolian lama and the Tibetan capital's emissary to Russia in the 19th century.
 

Arrayed against the backdrop of the fiercely Orthodox court of the Russian Tsars -- with its sacred religio-political [unseparated church and state] dominance over nearly every aspect of Russian life, the extraordinary progress made by Ven. Dorzhiev in setting Tibetan Buddhism on a solid footing in that land is a story of remarkable courage and success.
  

Odessa's tragedy buries Ukraine's hope

Snelling's books can be a bit dry and academic, but his scholarship shines, and the text is surefooted and informative. The book's success rests on its thoroughness. Snelling takes a comprehensive look at the early and post-Communist state of Buddhism in Russia.
 

The enormous expanse of Russia bordering the rest of Northern Europe on the left and Siberia on the right with America just to the right beyond the Bering Straits. Buddhist Kalmykia is shown in red on the shores of the Caspian Sea.

Russian Buddhist monk, Vesak 2013 (rbth.ru)

This, indeed, makes a valuable contribution to the study of the spread and influence of Buddhism as a world religion. It even speculates with respect to the future of the Dharma in Russian Asia.
 
Included are some marvelous photos of Ven. Dorzhiev and a brilliant mini-history of the Buryats (from which he arose). While readable, it is definitely a specialist's book. More than biography, less than hagiography -- it concerns itself with what is rather than what if.

I want a Pussy Riot! - We do, too, Comrade.

In any case, it is a tale unlikely to be told anywhere else.
 
Certainly, it is told nowhere else with as much authority, passion, and carefully wrought scrutiny as Snelling delivers. Recommended for anyone inclined toward the myriad diversity of Buddhist history beyond India and Southeast Asia. 

World War II: Behind Closed Doors

J. Anderson, edited by Wisdom Quarterly 

This is a welcomed reappraisal of Churchill, a film incorporates information from Soviet files not available until the 1990s. One important outcome is a new and welcome delineation of the lying duplicity of England's Winston Churchill, his involvement in handing half of Europe to Russian Dictator Joseph Stalin, sentencing the Eastern Bloc nations to half a century of Stalinist (Orwellian) suffering. On the whole, it presents a view of history distinct from stories regurgitated in the West... More

• The Shakyans (Scythians) of Central Asia?
• Ukrainian forces prepare to "provoke" Russia in Donetsk
• Ukrainian military contingent involved in punitive raid reaches 30,000 servicemen 
• Ukrainian army may use rockets against protesters in Slavyansk - local militia
• Russian, German FMs stress necessity of joint efforts in Ukrainian dialogue
• Drone use in US National Parks could end in fine and prison
• Surprise! $350,000 gov’t drone mailed to US student
• Pentagon chief urges US to press foreign policy harder
• Victory Day concert for veterans in Dnepropetrovsk put off pending threats from radicals
• US experts: data collection [spying by corporations for gov't] opens door to abuses and discrimination
• Illegal alcohol kills at least 50 people in Kenya

• Pravda was more powerful than fourth power
• Germans demand referendum: independence from US yoke
• Second mystery around Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370

Buddhism in Europe, Siberia, and Asian Russia

Dhr. Seven and Amber Larson, Wisdom Quarterly

The European Vajrayana Buddhist Gold Temple (kalmykia.eu)

 

Massive Lake Baikal, Siberia, Russia

The early history of Siberia is greatly influenced by the sophisticated nomadic civilizations of the Scythians (Pazyryk culture as far west as modern Ukraine) on the west of the Ural Mountains and Xiongnu (Noin-Ula) on the east of the Urals, both flourishing before the Christian [common] era. The steppes of Siberia saw a succession of nomadic people, including the Khitan people, Altaic people, and the Mongol Empire. 

• Were the Scythians the Buddhist Shakyans?
• Was the Buddha a Scythian (Thai Mangoes)?

The Buddha, Indo-Pakistan/Afghanistan, Gandhara

In the late Middle Ages, Tibetan Buddhism spread into the areas south of Lake Baikal. A milestone in the history of the region was the arrival of the Russians in the 16th and 17th centuries. This was contemporaneous and in many regards analogous to the European colonization of the Americas (and the formation of the USA). When Russia was an empire, Siberia was an agricultural province and served as a place of exile. More

Eurasian people, as in the Caucasus region, traveled north taking Central Asian Buddhism with them, most notably the Kalmyks.

They settled along the Caspian Sea in Kalmykia opposite formerly Buddhist Kazakhstan, the only indigenously Buddhist region in Europe.

This should come as no surprise when we understand that the Buddha, who had blue eyes, was born in the "Middle Country" (Majjhimadesa/Kamsabhoja). 

This refers to the land between East and West, in what is now historically Buddhist Afghanistan (i.e., Bamiyan, Mes Aynak, Tepe Narenj), once the northwest frontier of India (Jambudvipa). The Silk Road went right through making the area very rich but susceptible to invasions by various empires including the American military-industrial complex.

Map of Silk Road routes over land and sea, which allowed the Dharma travel across Asia

  

Buddhist Europe (S.U./kalmykia.eu)

The "Longer Discourses of the Buddha" (Digha Nikaya 1.90-95) tells a story of the Buddha's people, the Shakyans, possibly Western history's Scythians. From an Indian point of view, they are "foreign." The Buddha describes them as extremely "proud." 

The Brahmin Ambattha (the youth Ambattha-mānava from Ukkatthā or the "Middle Country" of Uttarapatha, who later became a Buddhist) describes them as "fierce, rough spoken, violent, wanderers (referring to their itinerant or nomadic lifestyle, often incorrectly translated as "menials"). They do not respect Brahmins nor pay homage to them." 

Silk Road through Gandhara, Greek Bactria

In that area, the administrator-Brahmin caste (brahmanas) was subordinate to the warrior-nobles (kshatriyas). 

 

Upon visiting Kapilavastu, the Shakyan capital and the Buddha's hometown, Ambattha explains them as those who "sat upon high seats in meeting halls, engaging in laughing, rough playing, poking each other with fists and fingers and paid no regard to [Ambattha a Brahmin who felt he was deserving of their regard because of his caste status]."

 

In referring to the Buddha, the "Sage of the Scythians," Shakyamuni (DN 3.144), he is fair (golden hued) with blue eyes.

 

Review: Pussy Riot in L.A. (video)

Amber Larson, Seth Auberon, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly;  Library Foundation L.A. (lfla.org)

Nadia T. (right) and fellow Pussy Riot member post-prison; Euro TV (RTE 1) last month (S).

 

What were we expecting to find at author (Words Will Break Cement: The Passion of Pussy Riot) Masha Gessen's Pussy Riot lecture in LA? Riot Grrrl protests in a staid building in the middle of the largest library in town? There were crowds taking advantage of the extra hour afforded by daylight savings time. It was cool and breezy, yet there was not a single balaclava in the audience. DayGlo hair yes, "Free Pussy Riot" teeshirts yes, feminists yes. Activists? Not so much. No nude protesters, no riot police, no mobs of newsmen after photos of topless demonstrators.
 

Don a balaclava and you, too, are Pussy Riot

The capacity crowd was here to be intellectually stimulated by researcher Masha Gessen, who somehow managed to survive gay and out in increasingly draconian Russia. She relayed the arresting details of a sham trial that was a "trial" only in one sense: The Pussy Riot defendants got to read their own prepared statements near the end. It almost brought us to tears as Nadia (pictured above, right), who conceived of a Wee-wee (later changed in English to Pussy) Riot, a radical feminist art protest collective, read a statement that explained our whole reason for working on Wisdom Quarterly: American Buddhist Journal. Nadia speaks for us by her brave court statements. She was a philosophy major, after all.

 

(HBO Special) "A Punk Prayer" the American Pussy Riot documentary

 

We got to hear first hand from Gessen how Putin is, indeed, a dictator the likes of which have not been seen since George W. Bush stole a pair of American elections. (She is also the author of Man Without a Face: Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin).

He appointed himself "president" three times then rigged elections after the fact to confirm and legitimize the appointment. He was suffering from a great deal of unpopularity, particularly at the time Pussy Riot was singing a "Punk Prayer" (see entire HBO special above) against him in the former empire's most famous Christian church.

Russian Buddhist temple (Alexey Savransky)

(The Buddhist temples, such as the famous monastery in Elista, tend to be in the east, in Europe's only indigenously Buddhist country, Kalmykia, which is part of Russia). But, Gessen pointed out, traditionally the Eastern Orthodox Church has always been the last resort of scoundrels in officially atheist Russia.
 

If Imperialist Hillary says so

Russia was never actually atheist; that was just the official party line, and most Russians were never members of the official party, which was for elites. The Church was always there to back a dictator if called upon, according to Gessen. (This was because the KGB killed or defrocked any resistors within the Church then replaced them with spies and cronies, much like our American mainstream media).

Protesting Putin, promoting Pussy Riot (FP)

Putin has only recently seen his numbers skyrocket because of his incursions into Ukraine and Crimea, moves which most Russians seem to approve. Moscovites and Kremlin insiders certainly love it, as do the very rural areas of the country. Why? As Gessen reveals, 85% of Russia is wholly dependent on state-run media [and, we would guess, the other 15% is involved in making and/or disseminating that media].

 

But now, as of the day of her lecture, it's worse. What little independent media there was has been dismantled in the past two weeks. Since Sochi things have only gotten worse. Pussy Riot activists have been attacked, as aided and abetted by the police state. But Russia has never known democracy or any real freedom in their lifetimes, yet Nadia and the others recognized the lies and faux freedoms were lies.

 

Men conquer, and I'm The Man.

For instance, how could Russians not see how Pussy Riot was trying to help and liberate them? The state-run media saw to that: A "Punk Prayer" has the lyrics "oh shit, oh shit, oh shit," and due to this and some spin doctoring, most of the surprisingly pious country to this day thinks Pussy Riot members defecated inside the church. Thus their sensibilities were hurt, accused and convicted of a hate crime.

RT helped WikiLeaks

And as ludicrous as it may seem, even RT -- which has done so much to reveal what American media/propaganda tries to conceal -- has been forced to go overtly pro-Moscow in reporting new propaganda. The channel was always funded by the state but exhibited editorial freedom that made it one of our favorite outlets to turn to get a view on what our own government wouldn't tell us. An opposition party, no matter how awful, is always needed in a democracy.

• Datelines, maps - casualties of Russia’s Crimea invasion
• Yes, there are bag guys in the Ukrainian gov't [but never mind that, the U.S. loves friendly dictators]
• AUDIO: Pussy Riot: Words Will Break Cement!

Ukraine is Europe's biggest crisis (video)

Amber Larson, Seven, Pfc. Sandoval, Wisdom Quarterly; T.J. Raphael, Takeaway (PRI)

The CIA's fingerprints are all over this strategic geopolitical revolution. 

Copies of The Company's Anarchist Cookbook must have been translated and sent in. Hare are the "best moments" of the Ukrainian Euromaidan Revolution of 2014. These shocking events transpired in the capital of Kiev from Feb. 18-20, 2014. Police and Special Forces (Berkut) move in, and Ukrainian snipers shoot civilians in the head antagonizing the mob. Snipers aim at neck, heads, and hearts. 

Ukraine's devic opposition leader PM deposed

Police beat children, the elderly, women, and innocent bystanders. Activists respond by attacking a detachment of Berkut with molotov cocktails right out of the Cookbook, stones, pieces of asphalt, and any other materials that come to hand. The Euromaidan movement gains size and wins. It is then the Berkut vs. the Ukrainian people battling on Institutska Street, Kyiv.

Military personnel, believed to be Russian, walk outside territory of a Ukrainian military unit in village of Perevalnoye outside Simferopol 3-3-14 (David Mdzinarishvili/Reuters).

Ukraine Maidan protected by protesters (WP)

The confrontation between Russia and Ukraine continued Monday. Ukrainian officials and some journalists say Russia demanded that two Ukrainian naval ships surrender by 5:00 am local time or face an attack. Russian officials denied making any such demands.
 

EuroMaidan, Ukraine (FEM)

What the Kremlin!

US Secretary of State John Kerry is being dispatched to Kiev to reassure the new government of US support. He told ABC's George Stephanopoulos Monday that “all options are on the table” when it comes to steps the US can take to hold Russia accountable for its military movements in Ukraine. Russia's moves in Crimea have challenged Pres. Barack Obama in a way that no other international crisis has so far. More

This is how Russia's intervention in Ukraine is playing in Moscow

• What can the US do about Russia's occupation of Crimea?
• VIDEO: Russian Navy on the move to the Ukraine
• Shocking knife attack in China compared to 9/11

Pussy Riot: "Words Will Break Cement" (audio)

Wisdom Quarterly (Eds.); Masha Gessen, Words Will Break Cement, Terry Gross (Fresh Air)

Pussy Riot collective as punks, Lobnoye Mesto, Red Square, Moscow (Denis Bochkarev)

 

Nadia, the face of Pussy Riot

Because of the Winter Olympics that are coming to the Black Sea resort city of Sochi, Russia, next month, Pres. Vlad Putin had Pussy Riot (the feminist collective) members released a few weeks early. They did not ask for the amnesty, nor would they have accepted it. They had no choice, and far from thanking Putin, they are condemning the atrocious gulag system that almost approaches the misery of the US Prison System with its death penalty, torture, homosexual rape, and widespread indefinite solitary detention. No other country is as bad as us, the U.S. But Russia has its own forms of abuse -- overworking inmates, starving them, threatening them... WHYY's Fresh Air with Terry Gross talks with Russian lesbian, mother, feminist, wife, journalist Masha Gessen about Pussy Riot, members of whom she interviewed after their release from prison.

"In war, you're either a collaborator or a resister. You don't get a choice to be neutral." 

- Masha Gessen

 

Wisdom Quarterly, being forced to choose, chooses to resist. Pussy Riot and Gessen do, too.

• German Chancellor Angela Merkel angry over NSA spying
• Telling schools to ease up on racist "zero tolerance"
• Governor wants New York to legalize marijuana

The Passion of Pussy Riot

Pussy Riot in glass cage in Moscow court, 10-10-12 ( Natalia Kolesnikova/AFP/Getty Images)

 

Words Will Break Cement (256 pages, $16)

Masha Gessen is a prominent journalist who is also a lesbian and an outspoken LGBT rights advocate in Russia. After Russia passed two anti-gay laws in June (2013), she decided it was time for her, her partner, and their children to leave. In late December, they moved to New York.

 

"The only thing more creepy than hearing someone suggest the likes of you should be burned alive is hearing someone suggest the likes of you should be burned alive and thinking, 'I know that guy.'"

 

That's what Gessen wrote recently, referring to an experience she had with one of Russia's most virulent homophobic public figures.

 

Gessen is the author of a critical book [A Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladamir Putin] about President Vladimir Putin, published in 2012. Her new book is about Pussy Riot, the Russian group that has used punk rock as a form of performance art to protest against Putin. 

I have face! - Putin

Its most famous "action" was in February 2012 inside a Moscow cathedral [in allegedly atheist Russia, which was never atheist but always quietly Christian and Buddhist] where band members danced and played air guitar as their boom box played what they called "A Punk Prayer":

"Virgin Mary, Mother of God, chase Putin out
...The phantom of liberty is up in heaven,
Gay pride sent to Siberia in a chain gang
...Virgin Mary, Mother of God, become a feminist!"

 

The action resulted in the arrest of three members of the group. Two of them, Nadezhda [Nadia] Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina, were sentenced to two years in prison.

  

Straight host Terry Gross (nymag)

"Not coincidentally, their arrest ... launched Putin's crackdown on the opposition and on his critics, which has lasted for the last two years," Gessen tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross.

"So, in a way, both their performance and their arrests marked the beginning of a new political era in Russia."

 

As part of Putin's pre-Olympics prisoner amnesty, Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina were released last month, two months before their sentences were up. Gessen's new book is called Words Will Break Cement: The Passion Of Pussy Riot.

Interview Highlights

On the working conditions inside the women's prison where Nadezhda Tolokonnikova served time:

 

What had happened at her penal colony was that the sewing factory that has served as the lifeblood of every women's penitentiary institution in Russia, and many of the men's ones, was taking on more and more orders, so the inmates were forced to work longer and longer hours. By the end of the summer, the workday was about 17 hours... LISTEN TO INTERVIEW (37:52)

• Russia's Magic Mountain base, an underground world
• Dolphins, whales killed in U.S. lust for seafood (NPR)
• Cold, hungry? Try eating in Antarctica (The Salt)
• NASA lied about televised Moon landing, lost film proving it

Russia hires Shamans to ensure snow (video)

R-sport (en.rsport.ru, Dec. 2, 2013); Dhr. Seven, Amber Larson (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

VIDEO: The Olympic flame was welcomed in by shamans and village folk in Yakutsk with the algys traditional rite. The torch-bearers rode on caribous and on dog sleds (RIA Novosti).

 

Modern shaman (hamidsardar.com)

GORNO-ALTAISK, Russia - Not content to merely watch the weather forecast, Russia’s winter Olympic organizers took matters into their own hands Monday, arranging for dozens of shamans to pray for snow in Sochi.

 

As the record-breaking 65,000-kilometer torch relay entered Russia’s remote Asian region of Altai, where ancient shamanism is still popular, traditional holy men and women greeted the Olympic flame in full traditional dress.

 

Siberian shaman 1692 (Nicolaes Witsen)

“Altai shamans held a special ceremony to make sure everything’s fine with the snow at the Games in Sochi,” Olympic organizing committee chief Dmitry Chernyshenko said on Twitter.

 

A lack of snow forced the cancellation of some test events in February, putting the weather into focus as a possible problems for the February 7-23, 2014 Olympics.

 

Sochi snow (Anton Denisov/RIA Novosti)

Fears of unseasonably warm weather in the Caucasus Mountains have prompted organizers to store nearly half a million cubic meters of snow in huge refrigerated reservoirs ready for deployment on the ski slopes if the clouds fail.

 

The Vancouver 2010 Games were afflicted by spring-like conditions, and snow had to be trucked into Cypress Mountain ahead of the event.

• Olympic Chief: No snow deficit for Sochi
• AUDIO: Olympic snow: machines give nature a nudge (NPR)
  

Protest: An Ultimatum in Ukraine

Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly; Victoria Butenko, Sergei L. Loiko (latimes.com)

A protester faces riot troops protecting Ukraine's presidential administration building in Kiev (Sergei L. Loiko/latimes.com)

 

Ukraine bows to Russian pressure (LAT)

KIEV, Ukraine - Protesters toppled a monument to Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin on Sunday during the biggest march and rally in central Kiev since Pres. Viktor Yanukovich galvanized his opposition by turning down a trade deal with the European Union (EU).

 

The protesters blocked and barricaded government offices and said they were giving Yanukovich 48 hours to disband his government [just as happened in Iceland] before marching on his country residence near Kiev. A government spokesman said Yanukovich's administration was "ready for negotiations."
 
In turning down the trade deal with the EU, Yanukovich was in effect asserting that Russia remained Ukraine's key trading partner. The country [formerly a part of Finland] is politically and geographically divided between those who favor ties to Russia and those who would like to see Ukraine more aligned with Western Europe.
 

Seven Balkans still not part of EU (LAT)

That gave the toppling of the Lenin statue symbolic resonance -- despite the fact that most Lenin statues in Russia itself were torn down during the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Statues of the Soviet leader were once ubiquitous throughout the East bloc, but those that remain are more likely to be museum pieces than public memorials.
  
No police officers could be seen anywhere in the vicinity of Taras Shevchenko Boulevard, where the granite and marble monument was brought crashing into the street by a group of young protesters. "It is amazing how the authorities allowed Lenin to go down!" said Sergei Andriyenko, a 51-year-old Kiev businessman who applauded the action. "Where were the police, where were the communists who were always protecting him?" More

Sheriffs indicted for crimes against humanity; "sad day," Sheriff Baca laments

In spite of what Baca claims, the misconduct and abuse charges suggest a larger, institutional problem with the abusive guards in L.A. County jails.

Police abusing and murdering SoCal citizens  at will

18 LA sheriff's officials indicted, accused of abuse, obstruction

Eighteen current or former Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department officials have been indicted in five separate criminal cases in...

Retired FBI agent: "Deadly force" used on Kelly Thomas

The use-of-force expert says striking a suspect in the head with an impact weapon is NOT acceptable police procedure. 

Viagra for women? Blue pills may help alleviate menstrual cramps 

Beached whales, all female or calves, died near each other

Striking L.A. County social workers rally on Monday

Kendall (Kardashian-)Jenner leaves Harry Stiles in UK