Tucson Weekly, Sept 6-12, 2012, published a story "Buddha in the Desert,” by Mari Herreras and an image on its front page. After reading this story and seeing the cover, I feel responsible to comment, as one of the Buddhist community leaders in Tucson. I am an ordained Theravada Buddhist monk from Thailand and have lived in Tucson since 2000. I am Abbot of Wat Buddhametta: Tucson Buddhist Meditation Center since its founding in February, 2010. Tucson and indeed the United States is a good home for many Buddhists from all around world for decades. Many Buddhists have lived and still live in Tucson. First, the image of the Buddha as depicted on the front page is offensive and disrespectful. The person who designed this front page intentionally depicted the Buddha image on the ground, threw dirt on the Buddha’s face, and covered it with words. He or she desecrated the Buddha image in this way and by placing “BUDDAH” covering his forehead and “DESERT” covering his mouth. He or she also misspelled the name, Buddha. All this is very disrespectful toward a religious object, in this case, the image of the Buddha. The story which Herreras wrote has NOTHING to do with the Buddha and his peaceful philosophy BUT it is about the man whose name is Michael Roach and his followers at Diamond Mountain in Bowie. Buddhism is a religion founded by the Buddha, more than 2600 years ago, not a cult. The picture on the front page should be the picture of Michael Roach NOT the Buddha. In the eyes of Buddhist monastic communities, Michael Roach is NOT recognized as a monk. Why? Because Buddhist monastic persons, similar to many other monastics in other religions, CANNOT BE MARRIED or have a “partner”. That was why the Buddha renounced his worldly life as a married prince to become a monk in the first place. Herreras did a very poor job on researching information about this story related to Buddhism. But Herreras did a good job presenting the man who died in the desert, his wife, and ex-husband of his wife. I ask the Tucson Weekly to publish a retraction of the errors about Buddhism and apologizing for their desecration of the Buddha image.
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