Foreign events

I have passed this road no less than a couple of hundred times.  I have passed it so often that I know how to pronounce its name by heart.  Finally, I drove down the road to see what this Wat was all about.  The spire is symbolic to the Buddhists for the reverence that should be shown to the deity, the higher power.  The design of the temple courtyard and the temple itself is conducive to conveying a humble spirit, a decent journey in life, and reaching as close as possible to Nirvana.

So be it.  Such is Buddhism.  Any concept I have of Buddhism is only from what I have read, not from experience.  So, my limited knowledge is not enough to make me an authority on Buddhist beliefs at all.  It seems like a really strange religion.  Its tenets are foreign to the American way of thinking mainly because its eastern flavor of seeking takes time, seems to lack direction, and takes away from the pursuit of making a living or becoming happy because of its total neglect of anything material.  The words Wat Buddharatanaram  are indicative of how far away from American idealism this religion is since they are written in a way that is unmistakably NOT English.

I ponder the things that have happened in life more than I should, trying to analyze them, thus to understand them.  Many events defy my understanding.  They are as foreign as the near-eastern words are from English.  I don’t stand for them.  I didn’t train to accept them.  They don’t represent me in any way.  Yet they happen.  I can’t control their happening or the way they happen.  Anymore, I just refer to such events as my Buddharatanaram events or moments.  They make me a more accepting person to refer to them that way.  I sure don’t understand them, but I have to live in the same country that they are in.