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Keywords: Temple

  • RELIGION

    Solace from grief in an unfamiliar temple

    • Tseen Khoo
    • 18 April 2017
    6 Comments

    Last Sunday, I headed to a Buddhist temple in Springvale, in Melbourne's outer south-east. I wasn't going for a Songkran festival (Thai New Year), and it wasn't a regular part of my routine. I was going because my mother wanted to pray for her eldest sister, who had died on the Friday. My mother is a temple frequenter. I am not. But I was thankful for the immediacy with which she felt she was part of a worshipping community, even though she'd never before been to that particular temple.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Daniel Berrigan's rebel spirit

    • Juan Garrido-Salgado
    • 27 March 2017
    1 Comment

    Pain is a cold food like garbage left, no compassion ... Compassion, bread and old wine, waste in a temple to worship money and power. Mankind has lost its root system thirst for happiness. Our bread is autumn leaf tossed into the branches as the bird dies. They make wine from the waters of these rivers suffering bloodied by the blood of Syrian children. Wine is the blood of indifference on the streets of Palestine. The wine is the blood of cruelty in Nauru ... why are you silent?

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  • EDUCATION

    Towards a more inclusive religious curriculum

    • Sophie Chalmers
    • 21 March 2017
    21 Comments

    The Dalai Lama is turning 82 this July, and he may be the last in his line. The religious and political ramifications of this are often lost on the general public. Many people in largely Christian Australia don't know the significance of a Mikveh in Judaism, can't explain why the Buddhist Middle Path is so important, or recite what the Five Pillars of Islam are. There are as many diverse interpretations of Hinduism as there are for Christianity, and as many insightful Buddhist stories as there are in the Bible.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Barbers of Mauritius and inner Sydney

    • Bernard Appassamy
    • 30 January 2017
    3 Comments

    I grew up terrified of my father's barber, Andre. He announced his arrival by ringing the bell of his black Raleigh bicycle at our gate. I was dragged to the chair where the towel was passed on to me. Andre did his best to keep his calm with me. I must have tested his nerves to a limit when he told me of the day he so badly severed one ear of a young boy who wouldn't sit still that a pig's ear had to be stitched on in replacement. 'I don't believe you,' I replied, but sat frozen from thereon.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    GOMA's summer of frivolous art

    • Sarah Klenbort
    • 13 December 2016
    5 Comments

    I will always remember the first time I saw Giacommeti's statues in in Europe. They were grotesquely thin, elongated people. Giacometti explained how he tried to make people with more flesh, but after World War II and the six million, it was impossible. And so those statues reflect the time he lived in. Queensland's Gallery of Modern Art, on the other hand, is celebrating its tenth anniversary, and has chosen fairy floss and rainbow fuzz to reflect our current society.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Countering ISIS by going off-script

    • Fatima Measham
    • 20 November 2015
    12 Comments

    It is tempting to view the aftermath of terrorist attacks such as those in Paris as a well-rehearsed script. There are condemnation of the killings, sympathy for the families of victims, resolve to seek and punish perpetrators, expressions of solidarity across nations. Also, assaults targeting Muslims on the street and in policy. This time a few things have gone off-script. 'Hugs and hashtags' won't stop ISIS, but there is strength in refusing to cede control over our language and behaviour to terrorists.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Devil worship on Boston's mean streets

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 08 October 2015
    2 Comments

    A Black Mass is a travesty of the Catholic Mass in worship of the devil. In this instance it is a metaphor for FBI agent Connolly's devotion to violent criminal Bulger, due in part to the social benefit he attains through his association with this powerful criminal, but running all the way back to a formative childhood encounter that is hinted at but not articulated in detail. Of the flatly villainous Bulger and the morally complex, wilfully compromised Connolly, the latter is the more palpably evil.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    It's time to ask why refugees are on the nose

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 18 June 2015
    13 Comments

    Refugee Week has been overshadowed by stories of harsh new laws, reports of government misbehaviour and ministerial silence. Regrettably hostility towards asylum seekers is widespread. We must look beyond this crabbed little world to imagine a polity in which states cooperate to change the conditions that force refugees to flee.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Helen Garner's 'Best Essays' triumph

    • Barry Gittins and Jen Vuk
    • 13 February 2015

    The Best Australian Essays 2014 finely illustrates the unnervingly unclear line between essay and short story, but no-one plays with form quite like the indomitable Helen Garner. She offers such a brooding, aching ode to her mother. Proof again that good writing is an inexorable, spiritual exercise that seers itself into the reader's memory. How does she do it?

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  • RELIGION

    An Aussie Muslim's Taiwan Christmas

    • Irfan Yusuf
    • 19 December 2014
    6 Comments

    Christmas is a fabulous time to spend at home. Even those of us who aren’t terribly Christian can enjoy a free holiday with friends and family. And if you like choral music, you can always come along with me and a Jewish mate to St Mary's Cathedral. But last Christmas I found myself in Taiwan.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Suitcase crammed with affluence

    • Jena Woodhouse
    • 25 November 2014
    8 Comments

    What they thought could not be read in faces pinched with need. They plodded on, a ragged band of hungry, thirsty refugees, hoping for a crust of bread ... Perhaps tomorrow, there'd be grapes and oranges awaiting them; farmers who would pay in kind for harvesting.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    There's no such thing as a free blessing

    • Catherine Marshall
    • 14 November 2014
    2 Comments

    I looked at the Brahmin and felt a cackle rising in my throat. 'You said this blessing was free,' I said. 'The blessing is free, but you must pay for the maintenance of this place,' he insisted, sweeping his arm up towards the ghats and the temples surrounding it. I wondered briefly what the consequence would be of defying the Brahmin's demand.

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