Tag Archives: building vocabulary/conceptual knowledge

In its continuing observance of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month 2022, Mark’s Text Terminal offers this reading on The Dalai Lama with its attendant vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.

Were you aware that the succession of the Dalai Lama has become primarily a political, rather than spiritual, process? Neither had the Tibetans who await the next reincarnation of the Dalai Lama–Martin Scorsese did a fine job of relating this process in his film Kundun. I’ve followed this story for several years. I don’t know about you, but I watch with interest to see the outcome. That may mean two Dalai Lamas enter the world stage after Tenzin Gyatso, the current (14th) Lama, leaves this world: one a geopolitical figure representing China, the other serving Tibetan Buddhists wherever they may be in their diaspora.

If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

For the second week of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month 2022, here is a reading on Shiites and Sunnis in Islam with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.

If you have followed the United States’ war on Iraq, you have undoubtedly heard of the strained relations, between these two branches of Islam, which have occasionally broken out into violent, internecine conflicts. In just about every respect, the tensions between these two communities of belief are standard religious conflicts; they resemble the European wars of religion that broke out during the Protestant Reformation. You can see elements of the Sunni-Shia schism in the Iran-Saudi Arabia proxy war, which has devastated Yemen.

If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

May is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month (which I have shortened, for typographical purposes, as above, to Asian Pacific American Heritage Month; I hope I offend no one with this stylistic liberty). As usual Mark’s Text Terminal will observe the month with a series of document posts and quotes relating to the history of Asian and Pacific Islander Americans as well as Asia and the Pacific Islands themselves.

So, let’s kick off the month with this reading on Confucianism along with its attendant vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.

If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.