Thursday, October 22, 2009
Reincarnation, literally "to be made flesh again", is a doctrine or metaphysical belief that some essential part of a living being (in some variations only human beings) survives death to be reborn in a new body. This essential part is often referred to as the spirit or soul, the "higher" or "true" self, "divine spark", or "I". According to some beliefs, a new personality is developed during each life in the physical world, but some part of the self remains constant throughout the successive lives. 85
During our trip in one of the temples in Bangkok, particularly at one of the temples at Wat Po, there is this new temple which will be housing the Buddha of reincarnation according to our tour guide, Pattama. She said that while the temple is being made, we could write the names of our loved ones on the ceramic tile which then will be put on the temple and be blessed by the Buddha. My cousin and I asked our tour guide why would we write the names of our loved ones on a tile? She then explained to us that it is one of their beliefs that if the name of the person will be written on the tile, on your next life time, you will be able to meet that or those persons whose names you wrote on the tile. We were amazed by what she has said. We didn't think twice in getting a tile on the table and thought of all the people we want to meet again on our next lifetime! We lost count on all the names we wrote on the tile...for sure, our loved ones are written in there. Of course, we don't want to lose connection with our loved ones even in our next lives...
my cousin Jay and I busy writing the names of our loved ones...