mattbell

The roosters in Laos don't crow the equivalent of “cock-a-doodle-doo”. Instead it's “cock-a-doodle”, or even “cock-a-doo”. It's weird to hear them because for a split second I'm waiting with antici.....pation for it to finish (Rocky Horror style) but it never does. I wonder if the crowing pattern is completely genetically coded or if there's a generic blueprint and the roosters learn it from their parents.

Separately, there's some random bird here whose call is more or less a wolf whistle.

What should this post be titled?

• Going off half-cocked
• Shortened cocks
• Cocks that lack stamina.
• Cock, interrupted.
• Cock-blocked
• Why are you wasting your time with this?

I met a Scottish woman in Laos who is also blogging her trip around the world. We spent a few days together exploring Luang Prabang along with her friend Ambreen.

Now I can be lazy and quote her since she wrote up our shared experiences before I did.

You can read her various writings at miriam-thisflighttonight.blogspot.com . Apparently I'm in a polyamorous cult.
( more Laos adventures )

I didn't realize that some sects of Buddhism employ some very heavy-handed fear tactics similar to Christian concepts of Hell. One day I used a motorbike to visit a forest monastery, among other things. Inside the monastery there was a large temple. As I walked in I was greeted by two smiling elderly nuns, who welcomed me to look around. The room was filled with a 360 degree lushly painted panorama of various serene Buddhas dispensing serene Buddha wisdom. However, below that panorama was another panorama of various people suffering, and there was more sex and violence depicted there than in your average Tarantino film. There were naked women impaled on stakes, with their giant tits pointing toward the sky, demons forcing injured, bloody people to climb spiky trees, decapitations, people being burned alive, and other such horrific scenery. It all made for an interesting tableau... smiling old ladies, serene Buddhas, and scenes of attractive naked men and women getting tortured and killed in horrific ways.

It would be an interesting thought experiment to take Buddha and Jesus through time to show them the enormous monuments built to worship them. They'd probably both be horrified. Buddha would take one look at the giant golden statue of himself and would immediately start preaching about how everything is impermanent and how an overly strong attachment to possessions and worldly pursuits is the root of suffering.

Buddhism also seems to be substantially a philosophy of mind, but a philosophy of mind isn't enough to meet the religious needs of a diverse population. Thus, Buddhism in its evolved form also offers superstitions, rituals for good luck and other worldly aims, ancient relics (branches of the Bodhi tree where Buddha first attained enlightenment... very similar to the fragments of the True Cross offered by various cathedrals in Europe), fear-instilling cautionary tales, beautiful shiny temples, multi-tiered donation systems that stroke the egos of wealthy patrons, and knick-knack idols that people can buy for good luck.

In the end I think that any religion that becomes dominant must do so by displaying the trappings of power and getting in bed with the government. The government uses the religion to help legitimize its own rule and control the people, and the religion uses the government to suppress competing religions and get the funds to construct imposing monuments to its own power. Ultimately the religion's actual philosophy is somewhat irrelevant to this coevolutiion of church and state.