{"id":509,"date":"2009-06-05T08:01:48","date_gmt":"2009-06-05T08:01:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dagfooyo.com\/blog\/?p=509"},"modified":"2009-06-05T08:01:48","modified_gmt":"2009-06-05T08:01:48","slug":"the-erawan-museum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/dagfooyo.com\/blog\/?p=509","title":{"rendered":"The Erawan Museum"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

I found this place when looking for a modern art museum to visit. As it turns out this is technically a “Modern Art Museum” only in the sense that it is a museum of antiquities which is itself modern art. See, a few years ago, an eccentric billionaire Thai businessman named Lek Viriyapant commissioned the construction of a museum in the shape of a giant three-headed elephant on a pink pedestal, containing a rich collection of Thai antiquities and artifacts. Well, I had to check that out. I’m very glad I did. I was one of the only foreign tourists among a sea of local visitors. It felt great to be off the beaten path a bit. Besides, the energy of the place was so good, so joyful and peaceful. It is a shrine as well as a museum (Thais are fond of turning all sorts of places into shrines), and it really felt very holy there.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Erawan, by the way, is the Thai name for Airvata, an elephant in Hindu mythology who carries Lord Indra.<\/p>\n

There are three levels to the building – one is the basement, which contains the most ancient artifacts, mostly pots and ceramics, but there’s one exhibit of jade which is breathtaking. Then there’s the interior of the pedestal – the architecture of this space completely overshadows the relics on exhibit here. Here’s a view of the domed ceiling:
\n<\/p>\n

There are two staircases leading up towards the legs of the elephant. They wind like elephant trunks.
\n<\/p>\n

At the top of the balcony inside the pedestal, a spiral staircase travels upwards through one of the elephant’s legs. It’s covered with paintings of mermaid-like creatures and water lillies. It was too dark in here to get a good photo, though. Entering the stair brings a welcome blast of super-cold AC — the interior of this holy elephant is air-conditioned.<\/p>\n

Arriving at the top of the stairs, I stepped out into the inside of the elephant. An oddly shaped room because it is in the shape of an elephant’s belly, this temple is dimly lit by a glowing night sky scene. And it is filled with Buddhas.
\n<\/p>\n

Just as breathtaking as the interior of the elephant are the surrounding gardens.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The reason, so I understand, that this museum is also a shrine, or perhaps just the reason it’s such a popular one with locals, is that a thai girl won the lottery shortly after visiting here. Now people believe the elephant is very lucky and come to pray and meditate and ask Erawan for boons. There is a specific process you can follow to do this. First you light a bundle of incense and kneel before the outside shrine, in front of the elephant. Then, you take a lotus blossom and float it on a pond that encircles the elephant. Finally, you can take a piece of gold leaf and press it onto a smaller statue of Erawan that sits in front of the shrine. I felt moved to perform this ritual myself. I lit the incense and knelt and meditated for a while. Then I took a lotus blossom to float onto the pool. The lotus blossoms were being given out at a nearby stand, included with each ticket to the museum. Each was floating in a bowl of water. I took one of the bowls and walked over to the pool.<\/p>\n

I experienced a rather wonderful revelation while doing this. Since part of the ritual is to make a wish, I pondered what I should wish for. I realized that I was in a state of tranquility, accepting things that came to me, and quite free of need – at least in that particular moment. I felt so centered that to make a wish at that point would actually have been to re-introduce need and desire, and imbalance myself. So I decided not to wish for anything in particular. I felt perfectly happy just to clear my mind and focus on sending positive energy out into the world, and to those around me. I knelt by the pool and meditated for a couple minutes. Then I dipped my bowl reverently into the pool, watched the water of the pool merge with that of the bowl, and gently carry the lotus off along the current.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I found this place when looking for a modern art museum to visit. As it turns out this is technically a “Modern Art Museum” only in the sense that it is a museum of antiquities which is itself modern art. See, a few years ago, an eccentric billionaire Thai businessman named Lek Viriyapant commissioned the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/dagfooyo.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/dagfooyo.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/dagfooyo.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dagfooyo.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dagfooyo.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=509"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/dagfooyo.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":528,"href":"http:\/\/dagfooyo.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509\/revisions\/528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/dagfooyo.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dagfooyo.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dagfooyo.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}