Sometimes I arrived at Yannawa temple early in the afternoon so I could have some quiet time by the river. All the hungry cats had been fed and they went back to their hidings to groom themselves and take a nap. They had stopped complaining about being famished and tried to sniff around my bags for some extra wet food. These cats were very similar to small children trying to get some more candy from their parents. Within ten minutes after finishing the feeding session, they all mysteriously vanished into thin air.
Then, I could take a walk along the riverfront and around the pier to watch the colourful sky. Sometimes the sunset could be quite spectacular and the sky would become deep red. The river would always be busy with big and small boats going up and down the river. The temple pier has become a landing pier for boat trips especially arranged for Vietnamese tourists. Though there’s a big commercial pier nearby, it’s better to have an exclusive pier for group tours. In this way, the temple could earn some income to pay for utility bills.
I was quite surprised that Vietnamese were very fond of temple tours to pay respect to famous Buddha statues in Thailand. The Buddhist teaching here belonged to the DharmaYut school while the widespread Buddhism taught in Vietnam (South) was the Mahayarn school. During the communist rule of South Vietnam, religions were forbidden and abolished. That’s probably why lots of Vietnamese and Chinese tried to seek some spiritual meanings and became easily superstitious and conned by fake holy priests and magicians.
These Vietnamese tourists would follow all the recommended rituals in making merits at the temple. They would but food to feed the fish around the pier. Then they would perform the ‘sharing of merits’ to all spirits, guardians and ancestral spirits. Some would even dressed in white costumes and were very serious and attentive. They seemed to have more faith in magical power of merit making than me. Perhaps I had taken familiar rituals for granted.
Some Chinese and Vietnamese businessmen have become very successful and their wishes were granted by some Buddha statues. So, these Buddha statues and temples became very famous. These businessmen would come back to these temples to make big offerings of food, sweets and praying rituals to show their gratitude. These grand ceremonies would be reported in local newspapers.
There used to be tour buses full of Vietnamese who came to pay respect to the oldest Buddha statue in Nongkhai every year. Some of these faithful devotees did survive a bad bus accident without a scratch while those passengers without the Buddha amulets suffered from serious wounds. There were several testimonies from people who were unscathed and survived bad accidents because they wore special amulets.
A famous one was reported in National newspaper years ago. A small airplane crashed before landing;the airplane was broken in half. The small Buddha statue, which was earlier in a cardboard box on the lap of a young man, turned up sitting on the wing of the airplane. The young man was safely sitting on his seat in the airplane. Several people were injured from the crash, only this man was still sitting with his seat belt on him. I did see this old report with the photo of the Buddha statue sitting on the wing!
We had so many stories and testimonies of people who escaped injuries in accidents and house fires. There were probably some special ‘mamtras’ or sacred words and chanting involved in the processes of consecration of these amulets. Different monks were famous for different ‘magical powers’, some would attract wealth while others could attract success, good health, good luck, love, lucky at gambling or safty from accidents or bullets.
In some cases, the gunmen had to search to amulets and throw them away before they could kill the targets with his bullets. Some people couldn’t be hurt or cut by knives or swords as they has special amulets on them. One of my relatives was deeply involved with a shaman’s tribe and he had so many ‘voo doo’ objects in his room. He even had ‘kuman tong’ or spirits of traditionally dressed kids who would look after him and give warnings about danger. I didn’t know about this until I heard them running around the house and banging the door.
In the end, I had to ask an experienced shaman to help me with releasing the two ‘kuman’ spirits to travel to other dimension so that they could be reincarnated in a higher realm. My cousin just stopped looking after them and giving them daily food offerings. I had a pity on them so I had to find qualified person for the job. These days, the older generations of white and black shamans had gradually passed away. One day, AI would do all the tasks of these mysterious shamans.
One day I met a Chinese film star and famous influencer at the temple. He was feeding these temple cats. He was very expensively dressed up with a private SUV and driver. He looked as if he just came out of a spa and phto shoot. He was in designer’s white suit with expensive watch and elegant face with perfect plastic surgery. He bought a whole big bix of cat food to feed these cats as a gesture of merit making. He told me that he was waiting to see a very famous monk at thus temple. This monk was a very famous astrologer and foreigners came to see him. I had not heard about this monk before. Later on, the skinny monk told me that this monk had lots of followers. Since I had known older generations of intelligent astrologers in the past, I knew monks weren’t supposed to indulge in this craft so they would never be as good as professional astrologers.
I think that AI would make better astrologers in the future. Whether AI cluld be ‘psychic’ or ‘remote view’ someone future to be very accurate on the predictions, I couldn’t yet make a conclusion. If AI could become ‘psychic’ then it would become ‘self aware’ which would make life much more complicated with unimaginable consequences. I hope i could still feed temple cats and enjoy beautiful sunsets to keep up some normality of life in the future.
Wishing you peace, good health and prosperity.
Stay strong and cheerful.
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