The Burden Of Worldly Possessions

I remember reading about a Buddist monk, who explained that the general, nagging stress that we all feel from time to time does not come from an a$$hole boss, someone driving 35 in the fast lane, or the Gator's far-from-stellar offensive performance against Arkansas, but in fact, this stress comes from the burden of our worldly possessions.

Get rid of these "earthly necessities" and most of your problems will go away - but so will your cable TV, mobile phone, and air conditioning. It almost makes sense, but for the time being, I'll take my pain with my pleasure.

Anyway, this dichotomy between pleasure and pain is why I joined Nuch on a recent jaunt to the famous Patumwanaram Temple, which is a beautiful Buddhist oasis located in the heart of Bangkok's shopping district.

Almost anywhere you look in Thai culture you can find dualities, dichotomies, ironies, and hypocrisies, but this temple, tucked between Bangkok's two largest shopping centers (I'm talking about 6-story monstrocities dedicated to the gods of capitalism), is probably Thailand's most glaring example of how comfortably contradictions coexist within with Thai culture.

So, here we go. To avoid the congestion of the Central Shopping District, we took the Sky Train.



Here's a picture of the temple from the Central World Department Store. You can see the Paragon shopping center and IMAX theatre to the right and the Siam Square Sky Train Station in the background.

While Nuch prayed and made merit, I took a tour of the temple grounds.

I was warned not to play or make fun of the elephant and chicken statues, as they possess some kind of power - and little or no sense of humor.



I think Nuch had some fish that she wanted to donate to the monks, so while we waited to make our donation, this cat came over to make our acquaintance.



Here's Nuch praying that we, our family and our friends are healthy and happy; that the farmers will get rain for their crops and that it will stop raining in Bangkok, so I don't have to drive through a flood to get to work. Finally, she'll pray that the Buddha will grant us good fortune, so we can visit the department stores looming over us and stock up on worldly possessions.