Monks Alm Ritual - Liebe zur Erde

Part 1: The monk alm ritual in Laos - ancient ritual with social beauty

Morning before dawn sees the monks in Laos together in the temples to pray. Their chants and drums form the acoustic and spiritual atmosphere in which the other villagers will awake: a prayer room. Then the monks pass through the village with their begging bowls - actually not a nice term for the beautiful large vessels that are carried on the shoulder by a strap around the neck, because actually it takes place something completely different:










The monks, which are walking during the day in sandals, come barefoot as a sign of modesty. The villagers have prepared for them the rice which they now put in small chunks in the space of the opened vessel for every monk: the offering or watching men may stand there, women must sit - and no one should be higher than the monks. Long processions of monks in the groups of the temple run one after the other along the road. Each monk receives from the offering resident the same: no one comes to the temptation just to feed "his" favorite special monk and no monk can get better treatment than the brother next to him. The monks go quite quickly and quietly: There is no talking and no eye contact with the giver - the women look only up to the bowl. Even so, an equality between the monks is maintained. Nevertheless, people perceive each other: the villagers themselves as giving towards higher standing monks, the monks as donees of the people whom they serve with their religious rites.

Every Laotian is one time in his life for a few weeks or months as a novice in the temple and experience the alsm giving first-hand. This is certainly not begging. The people are preparing the food for the monks, they sacrifice their time and see how the monks are live modestly - namely mainly of rice. The monks prepare the mental space for the villages. Both groups live hand in hand and take apprehend each other - what a different structure than a tax or anonymous donation, where no one knows what finally happens to the money!

And now Part 2: - Curtain up to the blessings of the modern Homo Touristicus :
Are you also one of them? -
A payoff with the dull stupid vampirism of modern mass tourists, their potential for destruction and collateral damage:

In the meantime in Luang Prabang at morning with the dawn, tourist busses decent on the former silent streets around the temples. First thing happens to the exiting people are the attacking street vendors who want to sell their stuff as offerings to the monks. Even the Laotians now warn tourists not to buy from them, because the monks turned out to get sic from the stuff. Whole groups of tourists position themselves: some with cameras, tightly pushing the lens to the action of the alm offering, the other with their contributions to the diet of the monks. The whole thing is even supported in part by tour guides who obviously don´t come from Laos. The silent calls from panels fixed in the temples about how to behave as a tourist, go unheard. They mention, for example, things like this: it is improper to follow the monks in buses which drive after them because the tourist would sit higher than the monk stands .

This by the tourists offered "diet" contributions also have their downsides, as it is now well known all over the place: the monks, who eat almost exclusively sticky rice, get from the stuff in fact sick. Let's leave it open whether it is because of the quality, or the kind of the gifts. This defensive, so non-confrontational shy Laotians and their monks now see no other way in order to not break the ritual but to accept the gifts - and dispose of them inconspicuously again a few feet away in boxes and trash cans, which are provided charitably by the sacrificial Women making the food offerings. I 've been looking at this buckets: in it rice I do not want to eat, packaged supercheap biscuits, other stuff.

There are many possible ways to observe the ritua, to participate, shared intentionally AND to take pictures without having to literally push in the monks way and sit on their robe. But what we witnessed there, is beyond all forms of cultural decency. And we see in horror how the for this country deeply needed tourism, which could be a real rescue from the nature destroying economical forces, is contributing through the selfish, stupid delusion of his individual specimen to erosion and utter destruction of a centuries-old cultic and social structure of immense beauty - and even thinks it great to do so. Can´t THESE people stay in their holiday resorts and Robinson camps, getting their fun with animation programs? (Sorry, folks - ...)