A pity you didn't pray for yourself

(Originally 20th October 2006, 7:56 pm)

He walked up to the monk, paid his 250 baht, and walked away with a stack of incense, candles and flowers.

A four faced Buddha stood there with a beckoning mien, but the significance of it all does not strike him. Yet he knew it was something he had to do regardless of the deeper meaning and implication of it all. And it was quite irrational at that, the whole place being hot, smokey and traffic was crawling all around the place. One moment he was teared by the thick smoke of the fragrant incense around, another he was choked by the exhaust fumes.

He lit all 12 incense, shaking off the lingering flame, and stepped up to the majestic avatar. People thronged all around and they all apparently seemed to fully grasp the essence of treading around this sanctity. He still couldn't really understand.

Hell, it's the thought that matters.

To each face, with the incense, candles and flowers in hand, he muttered a prayer, bowed as respectfully as he could through all the awkwardness, then stuck 3 incense before the face. A flower was hooked onto a grill seperating the face from the maddening crowd and a candle was lit and stuck onto the ground before it.

3 more to go.

He repeated the same thing for all the faces, each time slightly easier than before as the offerings left his hand, delivered into the fate of this deity. And as he offered up to the last face, he added,

I sure hope you heard me, I said it 4 times.

He dropped another 200 baht into a box and as he left that place, the relief of escaping the mad throng of human bodies and smoke seemed to be underscored with a odd feeling of happiness and joy. The feeling of praying for someone felt inexplicably good but it wasn't really happiness or joy per se; you can't really be happy or joyful from that torturous environment. Yet, it felt like something that would command a positive reaction.

And as he walked away, he thought he heard someone say

A pity you didn't pray for yourself.

Slightly disturbed, he turned around but saw no one near him, just the Buddha facing him.