Welcome

Here are some photos of and thoughts about some recent travels. Mostly from this summer, but some other posts from previous summers are here as well. You will find both photos and writing here, but more of the former than the latter. There is no particular chronological order here, just posting as I get to things.

There is what I hope is a temporary glitch in blogger: most of the photos here are showing up much lower resolution than they should. I'm working on fixing that. If there is a picture that looks blurry or pixellated, and you'd like to see it look sharper, click on it and it will show up in its original high resolution.

Comments are welcome, here or via email.

email me at rileybk@gmail.com

Wednesday 31 August 2011

the temple tree















One finds these trees scattered around Thailand. The bodhi tree represents both the tree under which Siddhartha Gautama was sitting when he attained enlightenment, and the buddha himself. The branches and poles leaning against the tree represent the followers of the buddha, leaning on or being oriented toward him, seeking to find enlightenment under his aegis as he found it under the tree. On some trees the poles are carved, decorated with ribbons, scarves, and other embellishments such as this origami dragonfly, or painted bright colors, seeming to seek attention to their devotional role; on others they are simple branches, simply leaning for support.










The base of this tree was also home to a clay figure of a chicken, and a hen and her chicks were weaving their way among the poles and roots.

















at
Labels: , , , , ,

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)