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| The Wat (the name of which I haven't found out) that is near Ubonrat Dam. |
The Thai word
for temple is wat with a rising tone
so that it sounds like a question. When we repeated the word one by one in Thai
class, it sounded like a chorus of inquisition… “What? What? What?”
That stream of
confusion and of a desire to know more sums up exactly how I feel when we are
taken to visit various wats. What do
these paintings mean? What significance does each different statue of the
Buddha have? What kind of devotion does it take to embellish every square inch
of the 9 stories of Wat Nong Wang in vibrant gold and red?
As a religion
major, I’ve been intellectually prepared to learn about Buddhism, but none of
my book learning could have prepared me for the overwhelming scale and beauty
of coming face to face with the real thing. The experience of walking into a
cool and fragrant wat is powerful and
transcendent, rendering me speechless.
But the
experience is also participatory, and rooted in the every day. At the Khon Kaen
city shrine, residents come to wish for good luck on exams or in their work by
offering flowers, incense and by promising to repay the spirits when their wish
comes true. Often, this repayment comes in the form of a movie screening at the
shrine, for entertainment (humans can come watch too). One of our ajaans said that the wishes must be
being granted, because there is often two or three screenings in a night.
And at the top
of the temple at Ubonrat Dam you can divine your fortune based on the single
numbered stick you’re able to shake out of a tube. My fortune read that I was a
dragon in my past life, which is pretty cool.
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