Buddha was kinda enough to have his birthday during my first week of employment. This meant a day off! Woot.
I headed off with Hun Su (an adult Korean student and a good friend) and some English teacher friends to some temples to mark the event and get a little bit of culture while we were at it.
The temple grounds were gorgeous. Many lanterns
had been set up so Buddha could find his way to his own birthday bash.
The lanterns were traditionally lit with candles. Nowadays they
are lit by little electric light bulbs. A sure sign of the way
Korea has lurched its way in the 21st century from being a flattened,
extremely poor country after the Korean war in 1953.
This was the first time I've ever felt as if I was truly in Asia. The sprawl I live in
could be any one of a number of sprawls in the world. But these Buddhist temples with their Buddhist monks praying inside felt like genuine Asia. Although technically Southeast Asia, the
Philippines feels more like a Polynesian nation than an Asian nation.
A curly-haired Filipino would not look out of place in Fiji or
Samoa.
The had a big formal ceremony to mark the event.
Lots of official people in official suits giving official
speeches. I couldn't understand a word of them, but I'm sure they
were boring. Buddhist monks led
chanting type songs while young kids placed wreaths and so on before
various statues of Buddha. We only watched for a half-hour or so.
It was hard to follow what was happening and it all seemed quite
repetitive.
Buddhism Rant
Of all the major religions in the world, I have the
least amount of problems with Buddhism. Their idea of the "middle-way" makes a lot of sense.
A religion that has peaceful ways at its heart is
much better than a religion that has a "petty, unjust, unforgiving
control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a
misogynistic, homophobic, racist, genocidal, capriciously malevolent
bully."* at its heart.
It is hard to find many wars centered around Buddhism
when you compare it to the other major religions. The are out
there though. The Buddhist and Hindus that are going at in hammer
and tongs in Sri Lanka are a notable exception.
Classifying it as a
religion is technically incorrect (it's more of a philosophy), but
seems practically correct. If you "do these magic things" then
"you'll get a better afterlife" seems to be one of themes of Buddhism,
and seems as good a definition of religion as anything else.
The idea that your next life is either better or worse
depending on your deeds in this life seems quite morally repugnant to
me.
Let's take young Fanta here as example to illustrate my point. Fanta lives at the Buduburam refugee camp
in Ghana. She has horrible burns down her right arm and I am sure
she has some horrible stories to go with it. The money making
options open to Fanta are pretty much limited to prostitution.
Prostitution is a thriving industry on camp. If you see a
young girl with a mesh top on that shows her bra or her breasts, then
you know the young girl is a prostitute and has been "trained" by
various camp pimps.
Fanta's future is bleak. According to the Buddhist
teaching of karma, Fanta deserves this. Firstly, this means
(according to karma) that I should not help her. She was probably some
Nazi butcher in a previous life and is getting everything she deserves.
Secondly, she is getting punished for crimes she is not even aware of committing. Punishment without explanation of crime seems like a crap deal to me.
Just ask the inmates of Guantanamo Bay detention camps - who are being
held and sometimes tortured without having a charge laid against
them - what being punished without explanation is like. I'm sure
they find the idea just as offensive as I do.
* Richard Dawkins. Chapter Two of the God Delusion.
I agree with the description by the way.
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