Every religion emphasizes human improvement, love, respect for others, sharing other people’s suffering. On these lines every religion had more or less the same viewpoint and the same goal. — Dalai Lama
for the first time in nepalese history, the kumari or ‘living goddess’ has been appointed by the maoist government, rather than by local priests. the new kamari, shreeya bajracharya, was appointed this week after undertaking a gruelling selection process.
while numerous villages appoint their own kumaris, the royal kumari of kathmandu is the most well known and revered. the kumaris are believed to be the living incarnation of the goddess taleju and they serve from approximately age 6 until the day they begin menstruation.
the previous kumari left her post early, after scandal relating to her decision to travel to the united states to promote a documentary about the life of kumaris in nepal.
kumaris live a life of great power and privilege, but also of isolation. they have various civic duties to perform until their reign has ended. former kumaris are granted a national pension for life and attempt to rejoin society. however, there’s a common belief that marrying a kumari is bad luck and that the husband will die soon after. this myth, although popular, is easily dispelled.
full story courtesy of bbc. a story about the life of kumaris. wikipedia entry about kumaris.
ibuddha.org has received a face lift, and a few extra photos. the site now has a 100 photograph, horizontal scrolling gallery. yay!!
i really like the new look … however, be warned, it takes a while to load.
oh, speaking of web stuff, i bought a few domains. i noticed that davidsmeaton.org and davidsmeaton.net were still available. so i bought them … might as well own the lot.
this. this is seriously one of the best short videos i’ve ever seen. i stumbled across it and i’m really glad that i did. i don’t know if it’s possible to understand how profound this is. what’s more, this sums up my opinions about life and the highly ravenous approach to life in korea.
if those thoughts aren’t enough to grab you, perhaps you’ll be more interested to know that it’s narrated by alan watts (famous buddhist philosopher) and animated by trey parker and matt stone (creators of southpark).
so, i got my girl, and i got my job, and i got my gold tooth, and i got my life. things aren’t perfect, but they’re cruising along nicely for the moment. i’ve been wrangling with banks in preparation for next year. i’ve finally found a bank that will give me an international debit card and a credit card. they also have high interest savings accounts, so i’m in the process of moving all my money over to them. monday or tuesday that should all be done.
yesterday i had my gold crown put in … finally. i had to wait while they remoulded the filling. when i went back to the dentist yesterday the filling was perfect and they cemented it in. it feels a little strange, but it’s very comfortable. after that i headed to cheonan to meet up with ryan. after a mixup at the bus stations, we finally got together and headed to gakwonsa temple. the temple was really awesome. the grounds are quite big and at first we couldn’t find the big sitting buddha. however, we were standing in front of the main temple and i looked to the left, there amongst the trees was the top of the buddha’s head sticking out. we wandered around for a few hours and got a lot of shots. the weather was poor, so the shots aren’t as good as i had hoped. however, we liked the temple and buddha, so we plan to head back there in the future, when we can get blue skies.
today is washing day. i’ll probably end up chatting to senor culo, wash and clean my apartment, curse netherlands for losing to russia, edit photos and relax.
