Hiraizumi and Yanaginogosho

Why UNESCO dropped Yanaginogosho off Hiraizumi as the world heritage site?

柳之御所が世界遺産の平泉から落とされた理由

According to the professor I discussed this matter with, he said the people in charge of selecting world heritages chose only the religion connected sites for Hiraizumi. The religion is Buddhism and Yanaginogosho was the palace for one of the Fujiwara families that ruled the north of Japan for one hundred years.

The problem is without Yanaginogosho, there was no Buddhist temples or gardens. Yanaginogosho was the center and the accumulation of the culture which was unique to that region. The professor seemed to regret that the Japan side committee brought up "Pure Land Buddhism" into this argument. I read the UNESCO site as follows and understood why he said that: http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1277 

I think the Japanese official out of desperation trying to include Yanaginogosho to the world heritage piped the uniqueness using the term “Pure Land Buddhism.” The term sounds magical but I’m not impressed. How Japanese live with religions is different from the western standards. And Buddhism is quite different religion from Christianity and other western religions.

I think if we can, it’s more important to raise awareness of the difference than just to have Yanaginogosho included to the world heritage site. I know that's really tough, but after all, if UNESCO is the world standards, it cannot remain the western centric forever. What do you think?

Therigatha

The flowers in the photo have sweet taste.　I tasted it in my childhood.


The Earliest Women's Literature:
テーリーガーター　Therigatha

Theri means elder nuns and gatha, poems
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/thig/index.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therigatha#Online_in_English

Megasthenes and Truths

The photo is Oooka river near Kamioooka station. It leads to Yokohama harbor.

Megasthenes (350 BC-290 BC) traveled to India before 298 BC and wrote in "Indica" his amazing discoveries about India that the place had female philosophers and they thrived in vibrant discussions with male philosophers. The philosophers were Buddhists. Megasthenes didn't know detail about the society and apparently nothing about Buddhism.

He misjudged all philosophers as the top layer of India's caste system. He didn't know the philosophers of Buddhism were against the caste system. Of course! He didn't even know about Buddhism. In the very early Buddha teaching and actually even today for ordinary, not even religious, truth seekers, we know all people are equal including philosophers, priests, kings, prostitutes, slaves, and all. Don’t you agree? And we also know Buddhists are to seek truth militantly so I'm saying again and again that I cannot comprehend why those truth seeking experts for 2000 years never corrected the prejudice against women in the sutra.

Let us think about the sutra translators and the culture they lived in such as the ancient India, Korea, and Japan. They were all males as far as I know. Words got twisted through translations and became so powerful. But we can change that.

In a way, we are all translators and we are responsible in spreading our ideas. We need to read the original document although it's difficult and keep asking why.

Megasthenes was Greek and an ambassador to India under Syrian king.