thoughtjunkie

It's everything a tourist trap needs. It's full of beautiful ornate stuff, and spectacle, and bursting with tradition, and the implication of purpose.

Old robed men drone in languages the tourists don't understand, into a microphone hooked up to speakers strategically designed to resonate. Gilt dragons wind around the columns, gripping perfect orb light fixtures, ripped from streetlamps somewhere. You wear pink traditional clothes that look, in the dying light, like pajamas for an enlightenment-themed slumber party.

That's what it is, after all. A slumber party for you and 39 strangers. Two days of photo-opping-- "Hey! Look! I'm doing what real monks do! I'm bowing when he bangs a block of wood! I'm sitting cross-legged and rigid through the entire meal! THIS WILL MAKE FOR ONE AWESOME FACEBOOK PROFILE PIC! *click!*"

It's the tradeoff. The monks work with the slimeball from the tourism board who point-blank tells them he's using them for his numbers. They have to babysit 40-odd foreigners with cameras and a keen eye for "What's neat." They pass out pamphlets that bury their lives and their temple in the past as "a living museum." And in exchange, they get to keep their temple. They get to eat well and add new wings to their buildings anad never worry about Lotte Co. Inc. weaseling their land out from under them.

It all feels familiar: standing and bowing to the golden pantheonic paintings that stretch to the stratosphere ceiling. Listening to old robed men speak words I don't understand. It's just like every other church I've been in (only this time, ASIAN THEMED!) Knowing that I'm supposed to be feeling something spiritual, something transcendent, tethering me to God-- but I don't.

I just spot the calculations; the eight thousand tiny decisions to sell you on an idea: You are in the presence of divinity. The robes-- there's no real REASON for them, not in terms of the religion-- but they do sell us on tradition. The multi-tiered corners-up architecture-- sure it's a symbol of... whatever; but it also looks super-neat and HEY! We should go THERE. And look at the bell and that huge drum, and how about all those tiny Buddha statues behind the glass cases. All that detail work, they MUST be on to something.

They weren't designed to snag tourists and make money. They were designed to snag non-believers and maybe hook them in long enough to get to some actual philosophical or spiritual case. The robes aren't an integral part of the faith, they're a social tool-- at first, they were not that much more outlandish than the other garb of the times, but just a new layer onto the symbolism of a fledgling religion. But that layer froze, and time moved on. Styles adapted, but not the monk-robes. Those stayed the same. They are not for the monks-- a way of bringing them closer to the divine. They are for us-- a way of separating them from the rest of us: "Why's that guy dress the way he does? Oh, he's devoutly Buddhist? Oh, well I'm picking up on so many social cues right now that influence my superficial perception of him and Buddhism."

And that's what this whole experience was: We weekend Buddhists only get the trial version, with ads made of grave men and big echoey rooms, and the implication of grand, arcane wisdom.