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Showing posts from June, 2006

The Boddhisatva of Bishalnagar

Buddhism Comes Home By Sushma Joshi ECS Magazine Tucked away in a corner of Bishalnagar is a building with newly erected concrete pillars enclosing a spacious hall with unfinished concrete ceiling and floor. About two hundred people arrive there on the last Saturday of each month for the Bodhipushpanjali. Pushpanjali means an offering of flowers, and bodhi means wisdom. On the podium is a man wearing sunglasses reading out the day’s offerings in Nepali through the mike. He is Narayan Risal, a part-time physics professor and full-time Buddhist practitioner who leads the gatherings. Today, the theme of discussion is death. “Many people from our sangha have died this month,” says Narayan. The audience includes people from Hindu backgrounds seeking to understand the experience of a recent death. Dissatisfied with a priestly reading the high Sanskrit of the Garuda Purana, a text used to mitigate and make legible the incomprehensible nature of death, people await to hear what Narayan-ji has