RECLINING BUDDHAS IN TIME OF TRANSFORMATION
By: Iris P. Concepcion
August 31/mid-afternoon, thunderstorms declaiming
Bolts of lightning had struck as I am scribbling down sentences right now. Nature is nagging in screaming, booming natural speakers. It creates an intuitive havoc to people underneath longing for earthly redemption. I can never possess a spunk to converse with Nature when it is raging mad.
My brother and sister-in-law had invited me today to visit a natural cave within the vicinity of Yala. They had just gifted me with Big Mac, a comfort food whether or not I am thrown to the wilds or marooned in a deserted island. They had just come from Haad Yai for a meeting.
I did not expect this natural sanctuary to be a square-off with Asian/Oriental transcendental meditation, the nerve of Thailand essayed in international publications which is the exact opposite of paragraphs garrulously depicting it as a sex trade frontier with exotic ethnicity, seat of tsunami and coup rumors.
I was not prepared for this Immensity which made me speechless in a wand strike for minutes. I was devoutly astounded with nary a gaping word coming out from my mouth even in silent hisses.
The reclining Buddha is the Power Of Immense Herself (a she).
Simply put, it is beyond the sphere of aesthetics and spirituality; it has revolved around the universe that no music nor poetry can ever usurp its multi-dimensional openings to self-awareness. It is sacred, it holds conversation in subliminal contexts, it is not for the faint-hearted and men trapped in skis.
I was stunned, bawled, frozen, unskyped as my brother and sister-in-law, both with cameras each, took grails of a spiritual wat unbeknownst to mortals. I look ridiculously flayed and senseless as a human appendage to the lens, an obscure entity to its glorified majesty. This is awareness travel and I will never trade it for a steeply-priced concert of an incomprehensible boy band.
I think no one is ever prepared to this classical-folksy religiosity.
Coming off from the lesser, touristy version of this temple underneath with monkeys I so dearly love, one might find little consolation that the world has edges far beyond jumping in and out of airplanes and heading straight to fancy hotels.
Here, you climb a 100-steps stairs with white railings and is greeted by a black, ghetto-like sculpture of an aborigine, all big and robust.
You climb more stairs and shall come across with a row of Buddhas and gods sitting in an otherwise touristy nook.
The gate beckons though. We entered it and there, she reclines. With ten toes on Her feet, well-trimmed and shaped. She is big. A blimp. Breathtaking wonder.
In immediate reflex, I motioned and paid homage by giving these gods a sublime and heartfelt Thai peace greeting.
This is why you explore. That is the very reason why holiness is not a traded word in the stock market.
It says: "Some things are held sacred and should remain as is."
You spit on the King's holy ground just for entertainment fracas, confession is not enough a big box to atone for that transgression.
As an adjunct, meditational segue, here is a thread lifted off from "philosophers" as posted in Facebook. The writer is a friend and I shall render him nameless here. It reads like a shortened novellette. I dub it the novelletisimus. For good thinking and mind widening:
Underneath a mango tree, a Karma Yogi and a Jnana Yogi had a tiff one afternoon on how to view the concept of "ripening" from a spiritual perspective. The Karma Yogi said: "It is action that propels one to ripeness...just like that mango fruit" to which the Jnani Yogi said: "It is being and becoming that propels one to ripeness...just like that mango fruit". Then coming out of nowhere Kanhaiya Lal, the young Krishna, squeezed himself through the narrowing gap between the two, climbed up the tree and gobbled the mango up. Coming down, he said: "Enjoying the fruit minus all the talk and the thinking is what Bhakti or devotion all about. Life is to be lived and God to be made your lover. Now, shut up."