March 03, 2007

Blind Faith

This coming Monday, Tawm and I have to make another trip to the border in order to renew my visa (hopefully for the last time). Monday is also a national holiday called Makha Bucha Day. It is a Buddhist holiday.

Since returning to Thailand, I have had the opportunity to teach Daeng English. Daeng is a lawyer in his mid 40's. We have gone to play badminton, Daeng came to our Christmas outreach and even came to vacation Bible school one day. Daeng is very religious. He goes to the temple regularly, tries not to eat meat, and does other good things hoping to improve his chances at a better next life. On Friday, I talked to him about what he would be doing on Makha Bucha Day. He told me he was going to go to the temple, listen to the monk's sermon and give food and clothing to the monks. He was traveling to a temple that had over 300 stairs to climb in order to get to the temple (I guess that increases their merit). Daeng told me it was an important Buddhist holiday. I asked him what Makha Bucha Day was in celebration or commeration of and his reply was, I don't know.

Since coming to Thailand, this is one of the things that I have noticed. Al;though statistics say that Thailand is about 94% Buddhist, most people are not very religious until they get older. Those who are religious have no idea why they do what they do. This is truly blind faith.

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