"Teach this triple truth to all: A generous heart, kind speech and a life of service and compassion renew humanity," the historical Buddha once said. One wonders what he would say now as innocent blood is shed in his name.
ADAPT leads the counter-trafficking efforts at the frontiers of Vietnam. They provide shelter for victims of human trafficking. Below is an interview I conducted with one of those victims who managed to return from a brothel in Cambodia.
Several days before Hanoi's gay-pride parade, I conducted an interview with Nguyen Qui Duc, a Vietnamese-American author, artist, translator, and radio broadcaster living in Hanoi, for his point of view on Vietnam's latest cultural trend.
By sending space probes to the edge of the solar system, by collecting Moon rocks and comet dust, by landing probes on Mars to dig for soils and search for signs of life, we are in constant exchange with outer space.
The man who stood at the entrance to my New World was my first English teacher, Ernie Kaeselau. He passed away recently, and though I hadn't seen him in decades, the news of his demise left me unexpectedly bereft.
Whether humanity can move toward a global civilization will depend by and large on how it can act collectively to deal with what's arguably the central issue of our time: climate change and resulting human displacement.
I take it as some cosmic law of exchange that if Disneyland pops up in Hong Kong and Tokyo, Buddhist temples can sprout up in Los Angeles. Indeed, it comes as no surprise to many Californians the most complex Buddhist city in the world is here.
Not long ago, frugality was a virtue. Now, two-third of our economy is based on consumption.
Eight years a PBS film crew in a TV series called "My Journey Home" followed me back to Vietnam, and in Dalat, a small city on a high plateau full of pine trees and waterfalls and pristine lakes, they coaxed me into revisiting my childhood home. The quaint pinkish villa on top of a hill was by then abandoned, its garden overrun with elephant grass and wildflowers.
