Taliban Kills Buddha: ‘…the fate of the Bamiyan Buddhas is a matter of who may control our notions of permanence; of who
will have the power that goes with defining the sacred…. The demolition of the Bamiyan Buddhas is a flashpoint between two warring notions of permanence, two
irreconcilable considerations of the sacred. What we are witnessing now in Afghanistan is a charismatic
moment, one that does not give a damn for the permanence or the sacredness we find in the “world’s cultural
heritage.” ‘ But the joke is that it’s a textbook illustration of the central Buddhist truth of the impermanence of all things. Killing the Buddha