Friday, April 18, 2008

Venerating the Buddha




Pilgrims at Wat Phra That Doi Suthep, Chiang Mai

zoom in for a better view.

5 comments:

lyka tan said...

i like this.. nice ang color :)

Jonal or Ose' . said...

Good Ogie...
I like the pictures

yayam otarra said...

nice pictures! as always! :D

Daniel Huang said...

Nice pictures, Ogie! As I said earlier, you really have a photographer's eye. What's the significance though of all the water pouring . . . on people and on the Buddha?

Ulysses Salgado Cabayao said...

thanks again, fr danny..

bathing the buddha was a way of making merit. the ones i asked about the custom told me that it was meant to bring luck and prosperity. The water they used was not just plain water though. it was scented with a fragrance that reminded me of our sampaguita. i observed how people held a little silver bowl in their palms, drew it close to their foreheads in a prayerful silence, and then after some time, they would start to bathe the buddha images. interestingly, people never pour water on the head of the buddha. they usually pour water on the shoulders or on other parts of his body. i think that this has something to do with the thais' belief that the head is sacred.

the splashing of water on people was originally meant to be a sign of respect for people. younger thais poured scented water on the hands of their elders, and the older ones sprinkled water on the heads of the younger ones.

one unwritten rule for water splashing among thais is that you should only use either clean or scented water. a far cry, i must say, from being doused with smelly water during our san juan festivals. hehe