The potential for violence at a gathering of monks?
Well, dear reader, you can count yourselves blessed, blessed by the vagaries of technology which have saved you from a rant.
This morning during the last remnants of a glorious storm, whilst the Little Spiderhunter pecked around the new banana flowers I sat in the bar with my third espresso and wrote only to have my thoughts consigned to cyber space by the Nats that inhabit my creaking old, steam driven, computer - don't blame Anantara, they keep trying to give me a new computer but I keep giving them to Amp or Oil, my computer is like an old torn pair of jeans, or my old Land Rover, comfortable if innefficient (qualities I aspire to).
I then read the papers this evening to find that I was not the only one to point out the oddity of the current action taken by some of my adopted country's leading monks to have Buddhism written into the constitution as the State religion - I won't bore you as my original blog undoubtedly would have - but I mentioned my confusion (& small amusement) at the need to deploy riot police when leading saffron robed Theravadan's marched on the capital to make their point - were we to encounter Buddhist extremists?
Fortunately for me many commentators, Thai and foreign, have picked up on this in today's papers but unfortunately none has shed light on the apparent oxymoron in the light of the Buddha's teachings. There are, though, some great theories as to why the saffron army may have taken to the streets but this is not a political forum so I will keep stum.
My original thoughts were to warn the riot police to watch for weighted stationery as I have read that when Younghusband popped his head into Tibet he found a country dictated to and (according to him) a peasantry run into the ground by warring Buddhist Lamas whose feuds with rival Lamaserais were fought by novices carrying metal pen cases as weapons - it may have been a bashing but it was a scholarly one.
Even with the weight of the Britsh empire (and not a few Gurkhas) with him the Lamas managed still to hand down a good few thrashings to Younghusband's men - my original amusement may have been unfounded.
But this was the other, more wordly, arm of Buddhism and anyway the following piece puts it better - K. Atiya also makes some good points about the elephants called upon to march with the monks though I, naively, assumed they would be well taken care of (if slightly innappropriatly placed) - these are extreme Buddhists after all - and just wondered where they came from.
Over to Khun Atiya for some informed commentary (and plenty more has developed over the day for those who care to dig).
http://www.bangkokpost.com/270407_News/27Apr2007_news24.php
This morning during the last remnants of a glorious storm, whilst the Little Spiderhunter pecked around the new banana flowers I sat in the bar with my third espresso and wrote only to have my thoughts consigned to cyber space by the Nats that inhabit my creaking old, steam driven, computer - don't blame Anantara, they keep trying to give me a new computer but I keep giving them to Amp or Oil, my computer is like an old torn pair of jeans, or my old Land Rover, comfortable if innefficient (qualities I aspire to).
I then read the papers this evening to find that I was not the only one to point out the oddity of the current action taken by some of my adopted country's leading monks to have Buddhism written into the constitution as the State religion - I won't bore you as my original blog undoubtedly would have - but I mentioned my confusion (& small amusement) at the need to deploy riot police when leading saffron robed Theravadan's marched on the capital to make their point - were we to encounter Buddhist extremists?
Fortunately for me many commentators, Thai and foreign, have picked up on this in today's papers but unfortunately none has shed light on the apparent oxymoron in the light of the Buddha's teachings. There are, though, some great theories as to why the saffron army may have taken to the streets but this is not a political forum so I will keep stum.
My original thoughts were to warn the riot police to watch for weighted stationery as I have read that when Younghusband popped his head into Tibet he found a country dictated to and (according to him) a peasantry run into the ground by warring Buddhist Lamas whose feuds with rival Lamaserais were fought by novices carrying metal pen cases as weapons - it may have been a bashing but it was a scholarly one.
Even with the weight of the Britsh empire (and not a few Gurkhas) with him the Lamas managed still to hand down a good few thrashings to Younghusband's men - my original amusement may have been unfounded.
But this was the other, more wordly, arm of Buddhism and anyway the following piece puts it better - K. Atiya also makes some good points about the elephants called upon to march with the monks though I, naively, assumed they would be well taken care of (if slightly innappropriatly placed) - these are extreme Buddhists after all - and just wondered where they came from.
Over to Khun Atiya for some informed commentary (and plenty more has developed over the day for those who care to dig).
http://www.bangkokpost.com/270407_News/27Apr2007_news24.php
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