It is never a good sign when the name of my country of origin Sri Lanka appears in news headlines in the western media. It usually signifies a major catastrophe (like the tsunami) or a horrific massacre (like during the decades long civil war and insurgency) or somebody doing something really stupid, like Buddhist monks demanding (and succeeding) that the government change the country’s time zone (scroll down) because the country’s ‘spiritual plane’ was out of alignment. (What were the symptoms, I wonder? Headaches? Nausea?)
Naturally, I prefer the third case and yesterday we saw one of those. Three French tourists were arrested and sentenced to six months hard labor in prison for “wounding the religious feelings of Buddhists” by taking photographs of them ‘pretending’ to kiss a Buddha statue. There were no details of how this pretense was staged. I suspect it was using the perspective illusion, similar to photos tourists take of them propping up the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
The owner of the studio where the photos were developed alerted the police to this serious crime because Buddhism is the official religion of Sri Lanka and the government panders shamelessly to that religion and there are statues all over the place. The sentences were suspended for five years, which means that the tourists will not actually serve any jail time.
Thus Buddhists were pandered to while the tourist industry was not harmed too much, a win-win, you might say.
(Via Boing Boing)
Perhaps their real crime was that they were still using film in 2012?
But please tell me its okay to rub the Buddha’s belly for financial luck.
Though why it is, considering how poor most Asian populations are, has always eluded me.
This is just one reason why pR0n has been at the forefront of every advance in media.
Well that’s just it. You are supposed to rub the Buddha’s belly, not kiss him. Don’t people have any social boundaries anymore?
Oh, you’re supposed to rub the buddah’s *belly* for luck?
My bad. No wonder those monks were so pissed at me.
Statues everywhere, and messing around with any of them is a crime, and of course it’s a mess waiting to happen.
The “graven image” clause may be the only non-obvious thing YHWHism got right.
Thank you, Morejello. Now I have to clean my screen and keyboard.