Today we got the good fortune of visiting 2 temples here in Chiang Mai. Now this is not my first time to see how the Buddhist worship. When I was in Cambodia not only did we visit a Wat, we also visited the Angkor Wat temples. I’ve seen some Buddhas. Buddhist temples are beautiful. They are all crafted with care and devotion. Though they can look pretty 1970’s(gold everywhere, gaudy, red velvet cushions, kinda reminds me of my grandparents house) they are unique, with every part of the temple having great detail. Kinda starts to remind you of High Church…
Offerings are everywhere. Food, water, items, pre-packaged buckets of things for the monks. People enter the temple(after taking their shoes off…holy ground…) bow toward Buddha(or one of the many Buddha statues, who all look different. Guess they can’t decide on what their savior looks like either) then wait in line to be blessed by a monk. They then hand what appears to be a paper with their requested blessing to the monk, he reads it over them then offers up a prayer on their behalf. Then a white string is tied onto the wrist of said person(the goodness from the blessing, or prayer, or hymn, whatever you want to call it fell on the string to help make them good) water is splashed(same reason as the string) and the people leave.
How often are we prayed over? How often do we ask for the blessings of God? How many WWJD bracelets do we own? How many baptisms have we attended?
All around there are alters to offer sacrifices to Buddha. People who don’t have anything to give scrimp together to offer something. All for better Karma, to reach Nirvana.
It all depends on what god we chose to serve. We discount other religions saying how sad that they worship something that can’t love them back, that they constantly try and will never receive the affirmation the so desire. We say how silly of them…so many gods…when we do the same. We love to be capitalist don’t we? How many sermons have we heard on idolatry, worshiping money or items? How many times do we tune them out?
We think we’re so different.
