December 21, 2008

281206 Wat Saen - big bird, eating house

The building (below, left) beside the viharn, which a cat's Lao consultant refers to as an 'eating house':

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According to him: it use for meeting and chanting, some time there's a special ceremony they will have a meal inside. It looks like small but its inside is quite large and it's easy to walk. this is because there has no too much statue inside.

Click here to watch someone's video of this building in use during the former abbot's wake. The roof is supported by eave brackets less elaborate in design than that of the vihaan...

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...& the stairs lack balustrades - no fish-wielding makara here:

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One of the two buildings directly behind the viharn:

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Not sure who exactly the four-faced Pha Phom (Brahma) & other deities are worshipping:

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The central figure is sitting upon a lotus flower & resting his foot on a smaller bloom, but is still wearing a crown & the clothing of a prince, & lacks a halo around his head...might he be Maitreya (aka. Ariya Mettayya), the future & fifth Buddha of the present universe?

The other building directly behind the viharn:

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Two white nagas twirling in a beautiful way:

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Buddha stepping on a hermit:

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In a previous life, the future Gautama Buddha was Sumedha, the only son of a rich couple in the city of Amaravati, who gave away all his inherited wealth & became a hermit in the forest. On hearing that the Dipankara Buddha (aka. พระทีปังกรพุทธเจ้า Thipangkon Buddha) was coming to Amaravati, Sumedha set about repairing the road in preparation for his arrival. However, he was unable to finish in time, & prostrated across the muddy incomplete section, offering his own body as a bridge (above left). Dipankara Buddha then predicted that Sumedha would one day be reborn as a Buddha himself (above right).

A new addition spotted during the cat's 2008 visit - once the previous abbot's funeral carriage, now a gradually crumbling monument to impermanence:

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