March 19
Temple day. The first one is in Chiang Mai. They are celebrating the birthday of the abbot and had some sort of ceremony for young children. It isn't about them becoming novice monks, but more like a confirmation - kids making promises in how they are going to live their lives according to Buddhist teachings. We ask Mr. Moon whether Thailand had the same back and forth between Hinduism and Buddhism like Cambodia did. He said that Thailand started out in Hinduism, became Buddhist and then stayed that way. His view on the back and forth in Cambodia was that Buddhism and Hinduism have always been pretty compatible and that the back and forth was more of a way for each leader to show that they were greater than the previous guy, especially if the new guy was the victor in a war between kingdoms. Here are a couple of pictures:
The white monuments are stupas, ceremonial towers built to house sacred relics (usually the remains of monks or nuns) so this is the graveyard for this temple. Large stupas like the towers in Angkor Wat are also used for mediation. Part of that mediation is called Parikrama and involves walking around the stupas, so many large stupas have a Parikrama pathway next to them.
The site of the second temple, Wat Phra That Doi Suthep, is up in the mountains about 15 km west of the Chiang Mai city center. The site was supposedly chosen by an older albino elephant who was carrying one of Buddha's sacred relics (the legend says it was part of his shoulder bone). The elephant climbed up the mountain and walked around the mountain top three times, then put down the relic and died. The King of Lanna (whose territory included most of northern Thailand) ordered that a pagoda be built on the spot. Visitors to the temple can walk up the 309 steps, drive up in a car or take a tram. It is already getting hot so we opt for the tram.
Once we are at the temple, Mr. Moon gives us a brief history of the life of Buddha. Buddha was born into a Hindu royal family in what is now Tibet in 563 BCE. Normally, a Hindu mother-to-be travels to home of her parents to give birth, but Buddha's mother did not get home in time and Buddha (then known as Siddhartha Gautama) was born in the wilderness. Upon birth, he took seven steps, and a lotus flower grew immediately under each step. Buddha then announced that this was going to be his last life (meaning he will reach enlightenment during this lifetime). Buddha's mother died shortly after Buddha's birth, but before doing so convinced her younger sister to raise Buddha, who then married Buddha's father. They were afraid that Buddha would leave home so they cleaned the household and the village of all older people, poor people, basically anything that was ugly or bad so that he would only be surrounded by beauty. His parents also arranged his marriage at 16 in hopes of keeping him nearby. He had one boy, but then at 29 decided that he needed to see the world. Almost immediately, he encountered a hermit and learned that people got old (he said that he did not want to grow old) and a man dying on the side of the road and learned that people got sick (he said that he did not want to get sick) and a monk. Buddha wondered how the monk could have nothing (no material goods) and still be happy and decided that he wanted to be like the monk. His travels took him through all of the seven kingdoms and eventually, he reached enlightenment. Then he wanted to teach others how he had reached enlightenment and that was the beginning of Buddhism. The first Buddhist monk was the monk that he first met, and the first novice monk was his son. Here are some pictures:
Next stop is lunch at one of the Royal Projects (one of thousands of projects sponsored by the King for the benefit of the Thai people). This project is all about organic farming. Among our too many dishes, we have the most popular soup in northern Thailand called Khao Soi:
Start with a coconut milk base, add in chili paste and a little fish sauce. Boil until cooked. Throw in some protein (we had chicken) and yellow noodles. Finally, stir fry some noodles to make them crunchy and throw them in. This is really good - spicy, although Mr. Moon says that we are getting "elementary school" levels of spice. If so, I don't think I would survive graduate school spice levels! I also had a Butterfly Pea Lime drink. Mr. Moon tells us that the color of Butterfly Pea changes depending on acidity level. In acidic solutions like this lime drink, it is purple, but in basic solutions, it is pink. Just to check, I add a little lime juice, and the drink turns a deeper purple. This is a great drink for a chemist!
Our 3rd Temple was a forest temple. Here the monks went into tunnels under the pagoda to meditate, apparently because there is too much noise from wildlife. Mr. Moon buys a "gift pack (including toilet paper) for one of the senior monks so that he would give us his blessing. He also showed us how his robe was folded to go out into the world or when he was studying/meditating. Here are a couple pictures:
Our final stop in the afternoon is a series of archeological sites fairly close to the Ping River southeast of Chiang Mai. It is thought this was the site of a city called Wiang Kum Kam founded by King Mangrai (one of the founders of the Lanna empire) in the late 13th century and later made the capital of Lanna. Due to repeated flooding of the Ping River, the capital was moved to Chiang Mai and the city was lost to time after a Burmese invasion in 1558. Sometime after that, it was finally buried in another flood and the course of the Ping River moved to the west. It was only rediscovered around 1990 under nearly 2 meters of mud. Since the original names are unknown, these rediscovered temples are named after the families on whose land they were rediscovered. Here are some pictures:
It has been a long time in the heat, so we are happy to go back to the hotel for an afternoon nap before going out this evening for a walking/riding tour of the old city center. Afternoon nap followed by a walking/riding tour of the old city. Here are the electric tuk-tuks that arrived to take us on this outing:
We stop at a park close to the city canal/moat where people were exercising and see a couple of very unusual sports. In one, a group of six or eight people in two teams surround a three-sided hoop suspended about 15-20 feet off the group. The object of the game is to get the ball through a hoop without using your hands. Sort of like hacky sack on steroids. The second game was like volleyball, but you could only use your feet, or your head and they use a rattan ball. One young guy made several bicycle kicks with top spin to keep shot on the court. Here are a couple of pictures:
Our next stop was Wat Chedi Luang - a temple built between the 14th and 15th century. When it was completed, it was the tallest building in the Lanna empire. In 1468, the emerald Buddha was installed in the stupa. Unfortunately, the stupa partially collapsed during an earthquake about 75 years later and the emerald Buddha was moved to Laos. We will come back to this artifact in a few more blog entries. Here are some pictures:
We also check out a night market and a night flower market. We finally end up at a nice quiet restaurant for dinner and enjoy a great meal next to the canal. Then we get back in our tuk-tuks and head back to the hotel. I hope that you enjoyed our day as much as we did!
No comments:
Post a Comment