World Cup fever reaches Tibet's monks

neutral_onliner SG

World Cup fever reaches Tibet's monks
Sapa, July 7, 2006

Lhasa, Tibet -- At Tibet's holiest shrine, young monks are getting up at 03:00 - not to pray - but to watch the World Cup.

A young monk looks at a magazine bearing Brazilian player Ronaldo in the cover in his dormitory where pictures of the Dalai Lama and the Karmapa adorn the walls.

Lights flickered in the windows of the Potala Palace, former home of Tibet's exiled ruler, the Dalai Lama, as France beat Portugal this week to set up a final showdown on Sunday against Italy.

Monks watched on a 54cm colour TV, drinking Coca-Cola and eating instant noodles, said Lobsang, a 27-year-old monk with a gapped-toothed smile and a closely shorn head.

"I get very excited, very happy, when I watch the games because I get to see a lot of the famous players," said Lobsang, who like many of the 83 monks at the palace goes by only one name.

Tibet's Buddhist monks aren't encouraged to play soccer, though they are allowed to watch. But among ordinary Tibetans, the game is as wildly popular as it is in the rest of sports-mad China.

"Most Tibetans love and play football," says Bian Ba, a former rear guard for Tibet's official league team. He now works in the Potala Palace, helping with tourists and keeping an eye on the treasures.

At the sports bar of the Yak Hotel in Lhasa, about 20 mostly Tibetan fans watched games as they drank beer and ate meat and potatoes grilled on skewers over a trough of hot coals.

Restaurants in the Tibetan capital that stayed open until early morning were crammed with Tibetans and Chinese migrant workers watching the game.

At the Johkang Monastery, where the main hall is filled with jewel-encrusted gold religious statues, the walls of the dormitory for young monks are hung with posters of Brazil's Pele and Ronaldo and Real Madrid's Roberto Carlos. The monks call them the "soccer kings."

Other pictures show the Dalai Lama and the Karmapa, another exiled Tibetan spiritual leader.

A young monk sits on a floor cushion absorbed in a Chinese-language soccer magazine with articles about England's David Beckham and other stars.

But is it acceptable for monks to become so attached to a sport when their goal is to let go of worldly pleasures?

Lobsang, from the Potala, thinks so.

"This activity brings a kind of happiness," he said. "It doesn't harm anybody and it brings people together."

^spidee^ SG

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0201840/

laurence82 SG

Interestingly, i got this VCD, a movie made in Tibet where Tibetan monks enjoyed playing soccer

neutral_onliner SG

Did they shout....GOAL!!! Cool

laurence82 SG

i think so

neutral_onliner SG

maybe should hav a World Buddhist Monks Cup Cool

sanath SG

Hard for that if you get terms like these...

Cambodian monks warned away from World Cup

Phnom Penh - The chief monk in the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh has warned his charges away from the World Cup, but said that if they must watch matches, they should do so quietly.

"Nobody should allow monks to watch the World Cup or bet on the games," Non Ngeth said Monday.

"But because of the world's new technology, it is hard to ban the monks from watching the games because World Cup is too famous," he told AFP.

"If the monks cannot avoid watching the games, they should not scream and cheer as they watch," he said, adding that those who did enjoy the football spectacle would suffer bad karma.

"Buddha's rule does not allow monks to watch or to play games. Those monks who are found watching World Cup must be punished and kicked out from their pagodas," the capital's supreme religious patriarch said.

There are more 40,000 Buddhist monks in Cambodia. The World Cup matches, which kicked off in Germany last Friday, have been widely broadcast across the Southeast Asian kingdom. -- Agence France Presse

And worse...

Soccer-mad Thai monks 'too tired to recieve alms'

3.20pm Thursday June 22, 2006

BANGKOK - Buddhist monks in Thailand are too tired to receive early morning alms because they are staying up late to watch the World Cup, according to a Thai newspaper.

The Nation quoted a woman in the northern city of Chiang Mai who said her birthday celebrations were ruined because monks at a city temple were not awake to receive her morning offering, a mandatory religious ritual in the predominantly Buddhist country.

The woman, who declined to be identified, said she was told by a senior monk that most of his young colleagues were still asleep because they had stayed up to watch the games which can go on well past midnight.

The Sangha Council, which oversees the tens of thousands of Buddhist temples in Thailand, has not banned monks from watching the World Cup but said it should not interfere with religious activities.

Chiang Mai chief monk Phra Thep Wisuthikhun said he had received complaints about "inappropriate behavior" at seven temples in the province. "It is the duty of the abbot of each temple to supervise the behavior of young monks, making sure that their religious activities will not be affected by the games," he said.

In neighboring Cambodia, some 40,000 monks have been warned they could be defrocked if they became too excited while watching the games.

"If they make noise or cheer as they watch, they will lose their monkhood," Phnom Penh patriarch Non Nget said earlier this month.

concerned_man SG

Title: CNN.com - Kung fu master to attend cup final - Jul 5, 2006
CNN.com will expire this article on 07/19/2006.

http://edition.cnn.com/2006/SPORT/football/07/05/kungfu.final.reut/index.html