Travel Report 24: Temples of Mandalay

Lest we forget what the real reason for my uncle's visit to the Golden Land is:

Another project brought to you by
the kind folks at the Wellenburg

This was a fascinating little Kindergarten. Finished only the very year of our visit. They even had solar panels, financed by a kind french soul. I saw them myself. Two millimeter of dust on them, no way the 10 % of the energy from the sun these panels would convert were actually converted. I asked the sisters about them, they told me that the panels are not working. The inverter was turned off. I wish my boy Stamati was there, to mess with inverters and marine batteries. They would have had half the neighborhood powered by the time he was done. Alas, it would have been pointless, as three month later two millimeter of dust would have accumulated on the panels again.

I have no comparison to other kindergartens or schools in Burma. Other than the ones that I saw from the outside at Inle Lake later and the ones that are my uncle's projects. At Inle Lake I bycicled past a few schools and thought 'Maybe if kids in Austria would be encouraged to holler and sing and dance all day long, my dear countrymen would not be so mieselsüchtig (lit: depressionaddicted) all life long'. Here I thought that if I could somehow guarantee myself sweet little anklebiters/dreikäsehochs such as these I would have had kids yesterday.
Mandalay is also where the money kindly donated to my Uncle's charity is used to support students at higher institutions. We are talking about Med and Chemistry students. For this Volker relies on Dr H's judgement. He makes the call in regards to who is eligible for contributions. The good Dr. is another fascinating Burmese character. Went to USSR in 1966 to study Animal Husbandry, it is what his country told him he must do. Never mind that he wanted to be an engineer. When this country tells you frog, you mostly jump and study the donkey's ass as if it was your own. He speaks Russian, English, Burmese and a couple of tribal languages. Fascinating as it was to chat to him, to compare situations around the world, to gain insights into struggles of every day Burma, it was outstanding to hear his thoughts on the recent attempted uprising by the Pongyis of Burma. He was relieved that the monks did not succeed in their endevour because otherwise Christians such as himself, and other minorities, would have had to worry about Theocratic Buddhism (my words for his sentiment). Noam Chomsky would think this very American, as in most secure nation that is most scared of evil knievel. I tell you, these religious folk provide endless hours of entertainment. I don't know what made me keep them at arms length for so long. Imagine all the laughs I lost out on.
I however refuse to miss out on all the great architectural leavings of their representations of god's wealth on this fine earth. his natural works are obviously not good enough for us, which is why we build mosques, churches, temples, synagogues. Each one of the faiths even has their own perfect miracle. You all have heard about the maria face in the toast on ebay. But there are also creepy claims to reality with beards growing on Jesus figures (Austrian St. Stephen's cathedral), bleeding wrists/ankles and crying eyes.

In Mandalay there is a Statue of a Buddha onto which the faithful have been sticking goldleaf for going on some hundred years now. They stick it everywhere, except the face.

You may ask, rightfully, why my atheist family
member is sticking goldleaf on this buddha.
What blessing can we hope to get?
My mother's. What can I say, nobody is perfect :)

The Miracle is that the body of the Buddha is about twice the size than what it was when it was originally erected. All that goldleaf seriously put some weight on the old man.

Holy smokes, look at all that gold

Yet, the face is still perfectly proportional to the body, even though the size of the body has increased so much with gold while the face was never touched.

They even have proof pictures of miracle. amazing!

Now, how did the face grow proportionally along with to the body? I don't know. Why don't you go ask the guy with the bleeding ankles, or the girl with the crying eyes, or the facial hair issue guy. You, with your western slant towards reality may think 'Well, of course the busy little monks come out at night, and switch the head'.

Where is the blood, the tears and the beard coming from then?
But let's let size not matter and neither the miracles or the tears and blood. Instead here is an anachronism of buddhism that should give all you wanabehippiesunderthebodhitree pause.

Peace-loving, veggie-eating, rebirth-giving, equitability-with-gaia-seeking
buddhism doesn't like the ladies to enter into its holiness

Its none of my business what you believe and I never have accused religion of logic but can we get some Reformation please? Anyone? While you are at it, extend that open hand to that closed muslim fist as well. Let's all move our ancient orthodox believes into the 21st century, or at least into the 18th. That way we can all post on facebook how gloriously we have been fighting the lord's war on evil knievel. Or dare I say, maybe even just straight up forget about his (h)ornery behind.