{"id":75731,"date":"2018-03-17T14:35:56","date_gmt":"2018-03-17T21:35:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=75731"},"modified":"2018-03-17T14:35:56","modified_gmt":"2018-03-17T21:35:56","slug":"decapitated-buddha-statue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2018\/03\/17\/decapitated-buddha-statue\/","title":{"rendered":"Decapitated Buddha statue"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>Asoka Weerasinghe Kings Grove Crescent . Gloucester . Ontario . K1J 6G1 Canada<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>16 March 2018<\/p>\n<p>The Editor (Letters)<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Ottawa Citizen<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Dear Editor:<\/p>\n<p>On Friday, 16th morning, the Buddhist monks of the Hilda Jayewardenaramaya at 1481 Heron Road, woke up to a heartbreaking sight outside on the Monastery\u2019s front lawn.<\/p>\n<p>The four-foot white Buddha statue sitting on a four-foot pedestal had been decapitated and the head was broken to pieces and strewn on the carpet of snow. This peaceful Buddhist community was in shock and numbed and some were in tears.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter  wp-image-75732\" src=\"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/asoka1703181.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"675\" height=\"506\" \/><\/p>\n<p>We have difficulty to accept such an insensitive, moronic act in a very civilized, sophisticated and a compassionate Ottawa which is home for thousands of peace loving Buddhists.<\/p>\n<p>If this statue-assassin&#8217;s intention was to break the spirit of us Buddhists,<\/p>\n<p>then the person was wrong.\u00a0 Yes, the person did hurt us, but not our spirit and Ottawa will continue to be our home as Buddhists, and for some of us for the rest of our lives. And I humbly request this person not to hurt us again, as we do not deserve it.<\/p>\n<p>Since we Buddhists have to live in harmony with whoever you are in our fair City, I encourage you to try a daily half-hour session of the ancient art of Buddhist miraculous techniques of<strong><em> Metta Bhavana<\/em><\/strong> (Meditation on Loving kindness) to overcome your anger and resentment, and <strong><em>Anapana Sati , <\/em><\/strong>Mindful Breathing Meditation which will help you to calm yourself and develop inner peace.<\/p>\n<p>As Buddha\u2019s tenet teaches us about compassion <strong><em>(Metta)<\/em><\/strong>, I am being honest when I say to this Buddha-statue vandal &#8211; may you be well, may you be happy, may you be peaceful and may you be loved. And please take good care of yourself.<\/p>\n<p>Asoka Weerasinghe<\/p>\n<p>Coordinator of Outreach Programs and Meditation Leader<\/p>\n<p>Hilda Jayewardenaramaya<\/p>\n<p>Ottawa<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Asoka Weerasinghe Kings Grove Crescent . Gloucester . Ontario . K1J 6G1 Canada 16 March 2018 The Editor (Letters) The Ottawa Citizen Dear Editor: On Friday, 16th morning, the Buddhist monks of the Hilda Jayewardenaramaya at 1481 Heron Road, woke up to a heartbreaking sight outside on the Monastery\u2019s front lawn. The four-foot white Buddha [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asoka-weerasinghe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75731"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75731\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}