The contrast, and the moment it has become stark, couldn’t be more striking. While the bigotry-filled Taliban, wreckers of the Bamiyan Buddha in Afghanistan, continue to hold the world hostage to their whims, a 108-foot tall Buddhist stupa, the largest in the western world, has just arisen in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado.
The Great Stupa of Dharmakaya, whose 10-day consecration concluded this weekend amid chanting and prayers by hundreds of Buddhist monks and followers, is being described as "a symbol of Buddhism's migration and development in the West".