As of March 12th, news agencies across the world are reporting that the statues have now been blown up. Kofi Annan, Secretary-General of the UN. said: "True faith elicits respect and you have to respect what is sacred to others."
Pakistan's Foreign Minister, Abdul Sattar, said: "The whole world community remained a passive spactator to the disaster."
How very true. Let's ensure this kind of thing is never allowed to happen again.
We must all resist the Taleban, though it's a little late for that. This could well happen elsewhere: rebels in Chechnya have already sent messages of support and brotherhood to the Taleban.
NEWS.
March 25th. The Maha Bodhi Society in Sri Lanka has announced that it will build replicas of the two buddha statues destroyed in Bamiyan, hoping to receive public donations in order to finance this project.
Let's give them all the support we can and make this happen.
March 26th. from Steve Martin, standing in front of a giant Oscar statue at the Academy Awards ceremony in Hollywood last night: "if this statue was in Afghanistan, it would have been destroyed right now."
Flippant, yes, but it shows that people all over the world have heard about this Taleban atrocity, and are standing against it.
BAMIYAN.
Om mani padme hum.
1. 1222
Gengis Khan
defaced struck the
largest stone
statue in the
world, at Bamiyan,
curled a blind fist
thick as a dust
speck caught in it.
2. 632
More than one
can count on
two hands of
monasteries, more
than ten times
that
priests left
wandering apricot
orchards, nothing but
footprints breaking
dry frost of a
morning
* * * *
Hsuan-tsang
Xuanzang
Ch’en I
San-tsang
Mu’cha tip’o
Moksadeva
Yuan-tsang
20, with stealth
and a half-world
of strength saw
it all in an
instant.
In India, the Holy
Kingdom of buddhism,
was seized on a river
by pirates who,
indebted to Durga
made to have the
monk sacrificed,
diminished to no
more than sleep.
Hsuan-tsang reined
in a storm, quaked
the pirates, who
begged for forgiveness.
Decreed freedom.
And the
monk, still fresh
from Bamiyan
carried buddhas as
strips of soft memory
back to Bodh-gaya.
3. 2001
"For tonight the teeming world gives
birth to the world everlasting."
- Rumi, ‘Shamsi Tabriz’.
In a firing of
any weapon they
have to hand
at the figures, in
a stockpiling at
the feet of buddha
gunpowder, in
a mortar bombardment
at the heart at
the folds of his
robe, in
the blast of a
gun metal cannon
man can undo
but never erase.
"Thou wert dust and art a spirit, thou
wert ignorant and art wise."
- ibid.
4.
His face has been
taken. The serene
smile withdrawn, pulled
in-wards, to
the heart.
Still as – what? – rock?
Warm as a sun
borne mountain,
"How can there be laughter, how can there
be pleasure, when the whole world
is burning?"
brimming with a fire
kept fierce by a
silence.
5.
125’
174’
four feet
dwarfing.
6.
"The fool who thinks he is wise,
he indeed is the real fool."
- Dhammapada.
"Regression into medieval barbarism."
- Indian govt. spokesman.
And the karma you draw
will define you, blacken your heart.
7.
Once carved roughly
and refined over time
into what they became
for millennia
now the carving’s
removed from the
mountain leaving the
mountain fused with the
idea of buddha.
Leaving the buddha
fused with the
idea of mountain.
All things return
to the earth,
yellow leaves hang
on the tree of life.
8. Reassurance.
Faces, hands, and the folds of the
robes cast with hundreds of hands,
moulding beatitude, breathlessness,
peace.
The smaller of the two made
blue like Krishna, almost sky, the
larger one red. Hands facing us,
like we could envelop our whole
entity of being safely inside them.
And those two faces, four hands,
painted
gold, or decked with a fine
leaf bold and lively in high breeze.
Nobody ever again will see these.
9.
I laugh, cry
Dalai Lama tears
of joy to see this
isn’t the end of
everything; just a
beginning of
something new. Each
death is a fresh
opportunity, see?
10.
"All that is in the heavens and all
that is in the earth glorifieth Allah."
- Koran, Surah LIX.
* * * * * *
SEEING IS BELIEVING.
Two of them, from a
worldful, were eviscerated.
One observer, in the right
light, caught flecks of
cobalt sparkling like cold
fireflies in argon.
Another, half-blind, saw
gold, though that might
well have been dew
split by a 34° sun
sniping a mountain.
The explosion, when it
came, threw folds of
robe, and toes! The
exhausted storm that grew
flew towards us, hit
like a dry tsunami, frosting
spectacles, clouding our
vision, so were never
sure what we saw could
ever be believable.
Note. On March 1st 2001 the Taliban militia began systematically destroying two giant rock carvings of buddha at Bamiyan, in central Afghanistan, both of which were more than 1500 years old, and World Heritage sites. There has been global condemnation of this vandalism, including chastisement from the only three nations to recognise the Taliban ‘government’, namely Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. The Egyptian government has declared that this act is not justified by Islamic law, as is claimed by the fundamentalist Taliban. Several hundred other religious sculptures have already been destroyed in this purge, many of which formed the basis of the collection of the National Museum in Kabul. Offers by the US and India to purchase and preserve these sculptures and rock carvings for the world and in the name of the Afghan people have been rejected by the Taliban. Om mani padme hum.
* * * * * *
Comments, suggestions, to:
bamiyan@buddhist.i-p.com
If you'd like to see your work, in support of the buddha statues at Bamiyan, send a poem, story, article, essay, or whatever, to the above email address. You can remain anonymous if you'd prefer.
(Photograph from www.cnn.com)
