{"id":531,"date":"2009-06-09T13:11:36","date_gmt":"2009-06-09T13:11:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dagfooyo.com\/blog\/?p=531"},"modified":"2009-06-09T13:26:54","modified_gmt":"2009-06-09T13:26:54","slug":"the-street-of-shrink-wrapped-buddhas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/dagfooyo.com\/blog\/?p=531","title":{"rendered":"The Street of Shrink-Wrapped Buddhas"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Here in Bangkok, just south of the backpacker hub of Khao San Road, and just north of the big tourist attractions like Wat Pho and the Palace, there is a street, several streets actually, full of stores.  Stores selling nothing but shrink-wrapped Buddhas.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/dagfooyo.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/06\/swb-5.jpg\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-533\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/dagfooyo.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/06\/swb-1.jpg\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-533\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/dagfooyo.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/06\/swb-2.jpg\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-533\" \/><br \/>\n(To give you a sense of scale, the big Buddha in the above picture is about 6 feet tall!)<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/dagfooyo.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/06\/swb-3.jpg\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-533\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/dagfooyo.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/06\/swb-6.jpg\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-533\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/dagfooyo.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/06\/swb-4.jpg\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-533\" \/><\/p>\n<p>This is just a sampling.  There have to be at least 50 of these stores all in this one block.  It boggles my mind that, even in a country that loves its gold Buddhas, there could be such a demand as this.  And I&#8217;ve seen at least two pickup trucks driving away from these stores, completely full of Buddhas.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, it all relates back to one of the essential teachings of Buddhism, the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Noble_truths\">Four Noble Truths<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p>1.Life is suffering.<br \/>\n2.The cause of suffering is being covered in shrink-wrap.<br \/>\n3.This suffering can be alleviated.<br \/>\n4.To remove suffering, remove shrink-wrap.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here in Bangkok, just south of the backpacker hub of Khao San Road, and just north of the big tourist attractions like Wat Pho and the Palace, there is a street, several streets actually, full of stores. Stores selling nothing but shrink-wrapped Buddhas. (To give you a sense of scale, the big Buddha in the [&hellip;]<\/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-531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/dagfooyo.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531","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=531"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/dagfooyo.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":547,"href":"http:\/\/dagfooyo.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531\/revisions\/547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/dagfooyo.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dagfooyo.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dagfooyo.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}