Peace and Understanding – Part 2

Assuming theo-political wrangling among cons doesn’t serve to wrinkle your reality tunnel,  I should mention that Razib goes on to point up this Reuters account of war-mongering Theravada Buddhists mixing it up with Sri-Lankan peaceniks. 

The backdrop, of course, is the ceaseless and medievally sanguinary civil war being waged among (primarily Hindu) Tamil Tigers and (primarily Buddhist) Sinhalese nationalists, but since I can never quite wrap my brain around that convoluted post-colonial mess, the polarity-tweaking headline will, for present purposes, be reduced to the delicious spectacle of Buddhist fisticuffs. 

Quoting CNN:

On Thursday, around 1,000 people marched in Colombo then gathered in
a park to urge an end to the fighting. Reuters journalists said
scuffles broke out between the peace activists and hardline Buddhist
monks who oppose concessions to the rebels.

The scuffles turned
into an open fight after the shaven-headed, saffron-robed monks took
over the stage, forcing religious leaders from Hindu, Christian and
Muslim communities as well as other Buddhist monks to flee.

"They
were saying we should go to war," said pro-peace monk Madampawe
Assagee. "We like to listen to other opinions so we let them do that
but then they started fighting and we couldn’t control some of our
people."

So tell that to the Dalai Lama.  Oh yeah, I forgot.

While the sight of  war-rallying Buddhist rabble-rousers will come as no surprise to students of the War Nerd , I’m betting it’s enough to send those patchouli-doused  hipster friends of yours into spasms of cognitive dissonance.

Which, as they say, is entertainment.  (But then, so is this).