February 2022 trip to Khok Samrong and the Golden Buddha and Temple.
(1049 words)
A few hours out of Bangkok and along a Satnav route that seemed to take us away from our destination (we seemed to loop back around), we beheld the stunning sight of the Golden Buddha in Khok Samrong nestled in the Wong Phrachan Mountain. We parked the car at the foot of the mountain and got ready for the ascent. It was not the Buddha we planned to see, albeit impressive, but the temple (Khao Wong Phrachan Temple) at the top of the mountain. I knew the task at hand and felt slightly confident, almost overconfident, to scale the 3790 steps. However, I was absent in knowing what it was really going to feel like. It was hot but the day was fading. How fit did I think I was?
The summit has a spiritual meaning and the challenging task of ascending the steps was lessened when thinking about its divine context. It was to be like a pilgrimage. There is Buddha’s footprint at the temple at the top of the mountain. Believing I was a fit person, I first went under what seemed Chinese-influenced arch and made a hop and skip over the first steps and gently got into my stride as I was able to cover two steps with my long legs. However, it did appear to be steeper than I thought. I also started to notice water/drink pit stops with seating appropriately staggered as I walked up the steps. It was hot I will not lie but being Thailand it could have been hotter. I was not sweating the first part of the climb, and there was some shade from the trees and foliage. I actually passed a few people. Maybe, I did not realise they were pacing themselves. As I got up further the person I was with told me they believed they had ‘long COVID’. If ever I needed a sign to say this was going to be a longer climb than I thought it was coming from someone who had done this climb before and they were giving in.
You can just about see the Temple at the top in this photograph.
Anyway, I had not come all this way to stop, and it felt like a spiritual journey. The view of the Golden Buddha gave me a chance to see the sights and maybe give me inspiration. There was no way of seeing the top of the summit at this stage. Whether that was good or bad I did not know. The trees and vegetation were stopping that. It was now what was becoming an arduous but worthy task of making it to the top. I actually went past a lady who I would guess was 65-70 years old. If she could make it, who was I to start complaining? However, around 2000 steps I started to feel it the most if I had not felt it already. The spring in my step had certainly gone. The pit stops were becoming obvious to me and I plainly knew why each one was there. The problem was in my excitement I had left the person I was with and they had the money. I could not buy any drink. As I ascended more, I became a person to look at as much as I looked at others. The sweat was showing on my shirt, and I must have looked shattered. The conversations between climbers were about feeling tired and how are you feeling. I was a foreigner so maybe I stuck out more and people wanted to speak to me. I was certainly not alone in having the realisation that this was going to be a slog. Despite this, to make it to the top and the temple showed a person’s perseverance and how much they wanted to make it.
The sweat was starting to show on my shirt. I was doing one step by one step. There was no more jumping up two steps at a time. My back was now arched down, not lifting my legs as high and I was looking for the next pit stop. I summoned all my energy into making it to the next chance to sit down. I was met by other fellow climbers. There seemed to be a communal spirit to make it. I was hoping that it would soon say 3000 steps but I was in luck there was a sign that said 3200. I was nearly there. It was apparent that others were slowly making their way as I ventured on to the top and was on my own for a bit. I was soon turning the corner to see the temple at the top of the mountain. My personal pilgrimage to the summit was complete. I clocked in at about 90 minutes. 90 minutes of what was hard work I must say. I had to give myself another five minutes to compose myself and I needed some water. Anyway, It was all worth it.
Looking down to where I had started and the amazing scenery was something to behold. Thailand is a beautiful country. The sun was starting to set so the camera was out. The Golden Buddha looked resplendent in its position looking over the verdant land far and wide. There was a feeling of contentment that I had done this climb. It was a test. I expect it has more meaning to the Thai people when they arrive in all its spiritual meanings. However, I went over to the Buddha footprint and performed the 3 Wais. I believe it is called the Benchangkhapradit krap, not Wai. Nevertheless, an older Thai lady followed me, and I watched her perform it extremely appropriately with some chants to follow. It was funny when she then answered a call on her mobile phone next to the footprint and chatted away. Above all, this is a definite for anyone who travels to this area of Thailand. Get ready for a challenge but when you are at the top it is something else, spiritually and visually!
By the way the person I was with did make it. They also had some money to buy a drink. However, I met them as I walked down but agreed to go back up to the top.
PEACE – мир
It is so good to travel, meet new cordial and interesting people and see such wonderful and beautiful places all over this globe. The sights you see can be so magical and only open up your world. If not, I would not be able to capture pictures like this and have the experience. Freedom and peace are so precious.
Consider the treatment in one text of one or more of the Seven Deadly Sins
(776 Words)
As knowledge seekers, many people will strive harder or try appropriate means to achieve their goal for further knowledge to the extent that bridges onto excessiveness that reflects one of the Seven Deadly Sins. Doctor Faustus is this seeker of knowledge who wants to find out more than is suitable and appropriate for him to know. Faustus is a disdainer who gets a scorner’s comeuppance. He commits a mortal sin and goes to hell for it.
Dr Faustus deals with the ambition of the Renaissance to cultivate an ‘aspiring mind’. The Renaissance as a time of intense, all-encompassing infinite knowledge is embodied in Faustus. However, he shows little discrimination in his pursuits. He delights, for example, in the Seven Deadly Sins, ironically remarking ‘O thus feeds my soul’. Throughout the twenty-four years, he seeks experience of all kinds in the true Renaissance manner; however, instead of freedom, his knowledge brings him despair.
Nevertheless, Faustus, the Renaissance humanist has the desire to reach the highest peaks of life experience; there lies a quality possessed by this ambitious seeker. To enter the new world where distant shores could be talked about. This is manifested in Faustus, however, in his desire for none other than a God: ‘A sound magician is a demi-god’.
‘How am I glutted with conceit’ shows how his excessive pride is overtaking him. His almost unconcerned use of the words ‘I’ and ‘will’ (‘I’ll’) embodies a man of cupidity. He is a fearless taker of everything for his own greed. In an age of reason, Faustus tries to stand on his own two feet and work out his salvation. He is motivated largely, by his desire for pleasure. He is covetous in his thoughts of ‘flying to India for gold’, ‘ransacking the Orient for Orient pear’. He hedonistically rides on the crest of sin. So blind is the lust of gain.
Faustus’ desirous journey is the ‘Perils of the Pilgrim’: ‘For the wicked boasts of his heart’s desire and bless the covetous, of whom the LORD abhorred. The wicked, through the pride of his countenance, will not seek after God: God is not in all his thoughts. His ways are always grievous; their judgments are far above out of his sight: as for all his enemies, he puffs at them. He had said in his heart, I shall not be moved: for I shall never be in adversity. His mouth is full of cursing and deceit and fraud: under his tongue is mischief and vanity’ (Psalm 10, 3-7).
Aristotle stated that a tragic hero is predominately a good man, whose undoing is brought about by some error of human frailty, ‘the stamp of one defect’. The audience sees three such defects in Faustus that lead to his ultimate domination of Mephistopheles: his pride, his relentless intellect, and his desire to be more than man (to possess the power and the insight of a God). Any one of these three defects would have been sufficient to ensure his downfall in terms of the theory of tragedy. In his pride, he is guilty of hubris, a quality that the Greek tragedy was certain to arouse the wrath of the Gods. His desire to be equated with God is a sin in Christian terms as well. His restless intellect and deep dissatisfaction with the normal life inevitably lead to misfortune. Faustus falls to damnation
In some ways, Faustus’ aspirations are admirable. It was the glory and the ambition of the Renaissance man to have an ‘aspiring mind’. Faustus, on the one level, represents the new man emerging from the womb of the Middle Ages. The authority of the Church, which had limited the thought of the Middle Ages, was lessening. There was a movement of power from the Church to the state, which meant to a limited extent, the transfer of power to the individual man. The classical spirit was certainly a source of influence for Marlowe. The Greek attitude to their Gods was very different from that of the Medieval Church. The Greeks encouraged a spirit of inquiry in their thought that was quite foreign to the attitudes of the Medieval Church.
Above all, Marlowe’s story of Dr. Faustus is of a Renaissance figure, adventurously surveying a world whose horizons were widening every day as a result of voyages and explorations that results in a person to aspire to the greater, to hold knowledge over wisdom, to have a desire for material wealth or gain and ignore the authority of the spiritual world. One could well be blind to the ‘Seven Deadly Sins’ where one was on an ardent quest for knowledge and unsatisfied with being mortal.
