Post from Tim:
Borobudur was built around 800 AD and, with over 1000 carvings depicting Buddhist thought, served as a 60,000 cubic meter stone guide to Buddhism for visiting pilgrims. The temple rises above the Javanese jungle in nine levels. The first six levels contain carved stone panels depicting the cause and effect of abusing sense pleasures; the top three levels represent achieving nirvana through conquering abuse of sense pleasures.
We ascended the monument in circles, appreciating the stone carvings of each level's gallery. At the top, after playing tourist by trying to capture the moment on film, I relaxed and watched the sun rise above the quiet jungle. It was a peaceful moment; I sat imagining the hands that carved the stone around me 1200 years ago.
As impressive as the monument was, my mind was elsewhere when we left.
We watched an audio visual show on the way back to the car. The show itself was mediocre, but it explained the story of a Buddhist carving from a nearby temple. "The Bird with Two Heads" has a bottom head and a top head. The top head gets to eat delicious ripe fruit, while the bottom head is forced to eat rotten fruit that falls to the ground. The bottom head complains to the top head, but the top head just shrugs off the complaints arguing that it doesn't matter. "After all," it says, "the fruit all goes to the same stomach." The bottom head eventually becomes so despondent that it eats poison mushrooms, killing both heads.
The movie depicted the real-life analogy of this story well, starting with poor hawkers begging to sell anything to rich tourists and ending with society's self-destruction when such problems are ignored. The clash of Haves verses Have-nots is clear in developing countries. I'd declined pleading offers from hundreds of such hawkers in the last week alone.
The minds of travelers tend to dance around such thoughts, but the story didn't. What is my best response to this? In a week at home I make more than many people here do in six years - like the fisherman in Pangandaran who told Michelle he could get by on $1.20 a day with a wife and kid. My airfare to Indonesia alone would be $800 yet I'm living on a budget and reducing myself to feeling poor in an effort to save money while travelling. Even at my poorest, I'm more wealthy than many of the native Haves. I feel guilty for ignoring the conditions of poverty that cause people to beg me to buy from them, yet I get annoyed when they hassle me so often. I want to help, but how does buying one overpriced bottle of water help the 240,000,000 people that live in this nation alone?
We ascended the monument in circles, appreciating the stone carvings of each level's gallery. At the top, after playing tourist by trying to capture the moment on film, I relaxed and watched the sun rise above the quiet jungle. It was a peaceful moment; I sat imagining the hands that carved the stone around me 1200 years ago.
As impressive as the monument was, my mind was elsewhere when we left.
We watched an audio visual show on the way back to the car. The show itself was mediocre, but it explained the story of a Buddhist carving from a nearby temple. "The Bird with Two Heads" has a bottom head and a top head. The top head gets to eat delicious ripe fruit, while the bottom head is forced to eat rotten fruit that falls to the ground. The bottom head complains to the top head, but the top head just shrugs off the complaints arguing that it doesn't matter. "After all," it says, "the fruit all goes to the same stomach." The bottom head eventually becomes so despondent that it eats poison mushrooms, killing both heads.
The movie depicted the real-life analogy of this story well, starting with poor hawkers begging to sell anything to rich tourists and ending with society's self-destruction when such problems are ignored. The clash of Haves verses Have-nots is clear in developing countries. I'd declined pleading offers from hundreds of such hawkers in the last week alone.
The minds of travelers tend to dance around such thoughts, but the story didn't. What is my best response to this? In a week at home I make more than many people here do in six years - like the fisherman in Pangandaran who told Michelle he could get by on $1.20 a day with a wife and kid. My airfare to Indonesia alone would be $800 yet I'm living on a budget and reducing myself to feeling poor in an effort to save money while travelling. Even at my poorest, I'm more wealthy than many of the native Haves. I feel guilty for ignoring the conditions of poverty that cause people to beg me to buy from them, yet I get annoyed when they hassle me so often. I want to help, but how does buying one overpriced bottle of water help the 240,000,000 people that live in this nation alone?
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