(no subject)

[dodont]

On Bangkok, p32: Bangkok is otherwise known as the 'City of Angels'. Also mentions phii, invisible Thai spirits that walk amongst us and inhabit certain areas, warranting offerings and apologies to phii when their plot is disturbed for building etc. Shrines for phii are built in abundance to avoid offending them and inciting malevolence. In Bangkok, the phii are led by the Emerald Buddha.

p35: "[The turtle] is a symbol of the cosmos. The lower part of the shell is a square, the earth; the upper part is a sphere, the heavens. The turtle has always been used in divination because, enclosing the totality, it holds the key to time and space, and thus can understand the past and read the future."

p44: "According to popular belief, when a person dies violently his spirit does not rest in peace. And if, in the moment of death, the body is mutilated,. decapitated, crushed or torn to pieces, that spirit becomes particularly restless; unless the prescribed rites are quickly performed it goes to join the enormous army of 'wandering spirits'." In Bangkok, 'body-snatchers' tune into radio frequencies and wait for word of violent deaths, so they can quickly do the rituals and prevent the spirit from joining the phii."

On reporting, p47: "If no one is there to see, to write, to take a photograph, it is as if these facts had never occrred, this suffering has no importance, no place in history. Bceause history only exists if someone relates it."

p101-2: "The snake dominates all the elements, it is the lord of all levels of the universe; in heaven it dances, flashing through the clouds; on earth it can live in and out of water, and in the underworld, whose every door is known o it, it feels completely at home ... It is under the shade of the naga, the seevn-headed snake, that Buddha meditates."

p196: "'The Bunyan are the soft people. Do you follow? We're the hard people,' said Michael, touching my skin to show that it was solid, hard. "They, you see, are soft. Do you folow? In [their capital] Lingga there are lots of them, but no one can see them. They live their own lives. We live ours, and only occasionally do we mix with them. One of the hard people, like you and me, has been known to marry a Bunyan. It happens. But only seldom. I know a man on Lingga who married a beautiful Bunyan girl. He has to bed with her once a week, on Thursdays, otherwise he was free, and could even marry another woman.'
... "In the Chinese tradition too there are marriages between dead souls, arranged by the parents of the deceased; this is done, for example, to prevent an unmarried girl from returning as an evil spirit to disturb the young men of the village.
... "'The garau, the tree used in making the world's best incense, which the Chinese have come here to buy for centuries, belongs to the Bunyans ... The Bunyans don't have this division we have, here under the nose. Their upper lips are flat right across.'"

A prophecy of Buddha related by a layman, p251: "'There are houses, / but none live there. / There are roads, / but no travellers. / There are stairs, /but no one climbs them. / The black crows seem unarmed, / but withinm the fruit / the worms are there. / Only at Angkor there is feasting, / but of humanity none remain, / save those who stand where lies / the shade of a rain tree.'
... " Extraordinary! There it all was: the evacuation of Phnom Penh, with the houses and roads left deserted; the Khmer Rouge in their blackl pyjamas, ostensibly bearing the fruits of peace, but in fact unleashing the massacre; Angkor, the only place not touched by the revolution; and at the end so few survivors that they could all stand in the shade of a large tree."

Above, interpreted by a scholar (Olivier de Vernon), p252-3: "'Around the middle of the Buddhist era,' (the five-thousand-year era beginning with the birth of Buddha in 543 BC, so the exact middle would be in 1957) 'a palace of gold and silver will rise at the confluence of the four rivers.' (Where the Mekong and the Bassac ivers meet, forming four branches, Sihanouk had had a casino built. Subsequently, however, the vicissitudes of politics got in the way and the xcasino never opened. It has now been turned into the Hotel Cambodiana.) 'After that there will be a devastating war in the land, and the blood of the victims will run as high as the elephant's belly.' (The American war and then the massacres of Pol Pot.) 'Religion will be eliminated.' (Pol Pot banned all Buddhist activities, destroyed the pagodas and killed most of the monks.) 'Then will come a man disguised as a Chinese,' (Sihanouk returned from Peking) 'accompanied by a white elephant with blue tusks.' (The white UN vehicles witht eh blue berets of the soldiers on board.) 'There will be another brief war, until monk brings back the sacred scriptures from the Kulen Mountains,' (today one of the bases of the Khmer Rouge) 'and changes the name of the country from Kampuchea' (the Khmer name for Cambodia, meaning 'karm of pain') 'to Nagar Bankat Puri. Only then will happiness reign, all illnesses disappear, every man have fifty wives and live to the age of 220 years.'"

p284: Mongolia known in the 20s as 'the land of demons' (in Ossendowski's "Beasts, Men and Gods")

On Mongolia, p294: "From that land salvation would come. The Mongols in 1921 lived in the certainty that even if the whole world were doomed to destruction, beneath their feet the Underworld would survive. It wa populated by an ancient tribe which had vanished sixty thousand years before, ruled by the King of the World who had meanwhile penetyrated all the secrets of nature. In that Underground Kingdom there was no more evil; there science had developed not to destroy but to create; there men and women were the possessors of all that was knowable; there the destiny of humanity was written. When Ossendowski arrived in Mongolia he was told that barely thirty years before, the King of the World had made a brief visit to theb monastery near Urg. When he arrived all the altar candles had lit spontaneousl, all the braziers had begun burning incense; and he, the mythical king of Agharti, described for centuries in the sacred texts, had sat on his throne before an assembly of the most important lamas of the time and forecast the future of the world. He began with the words: 'More and more shall men forget their souls, and care only for their bodies...'"

In Beasts, Men and Gods, where Baron von Ungen has his fortune told for the second time: "'I see him ... I see the God of War ... His life is ending in a horrible way ... And then there is the shadow ... black as night ... Shadow ... 130 steps remain ... Beyond, darkness ... Nothing ... I see nothing ... The God of War has disappeared.'"

p369-70: "I have heard that in India, not far from Madras, there is a temple in whose recesses three thousand years ago a great sage wrote on palm leaves the lives and deaths of all men of all times, past, present and future. When a visitor arrives, a monk comes out to greet him, saying: 'We hav been waiting for you.' From somewhere he takes out one of those yellowed leaves, on which is written all that has happened to the visitor, and all that will happen to him in the future."

Comments

[poplife.livejournal.com]

it all sounds a bit eery to me!