Buying Faith

Tibetan prayer flags, miniature Buddhas for luck and prosperity, idols to pray to; these are just a few ways your rupies can buy you some grace from the gods. At Hindu temples, you can buy flowers to give to your god or goddess of choice. You can even pay to have someone else perform religious ceremonies for you. And after you walk out of the temple, your options continue. Lining the streets are shops where you can buy a small statue of gods and goddesses for your home. Want to show a little more faith? How about a large silver statue of Ram? Or are you looking for some extra money in your bank account? Perhaps a nice plump, laughing Buddha of gold is what you want. But make sure to avoid those skinny, peaceful Buddhas, those are only for enlightenment. Not sure about the idols? How about some lovely prayer flags? No prayer flags? Okay, here’s a prayer wheel. Now all you have to do is spin it around for your prayers to be sent off to whoever you are praying to. And here’s a bigger one if you want your god to hear you a little clearer. Prayer beads are always a wonderful gift for anyone back home. Feeling a little tired, no worries. A little child will come up to you selling the same items so you don’t even have to leave your shaded bench. You can even buy yourself some nice powder for bindis so everyone will know what a good Hindu you are. Not so sure about the whole Buddhism thing? Maybe just the yoga for you then; and here’s a book for you to buy telling you all about yoga without any of that pesky 8 Fold Path stuff. Don’t forget, it comes with a free CD and Tibetan prayer flags too!
As you may have guessed, dear reader, there was an overload of items for sale. Over the past few days we went on a tour of Buddhist, Hindu, and Sikh temples near Varanasi where we had the opportunity to pay for a demonstration of faith and I was stuck by the amazing number of ways capitalism has seeped into religions when visiting these places of worship. Moreover, I was amazed at the disrespect for religion this seemed to show. At several temples there were shops nearby. In one there was even a stand of items for sale right inside the room along with Buddha (remembering of course that Buddhism is a religion for those seeking detachment from material things). A particularly blatant capitalist cooptation of religion is the obese laughing Buddha. Buddha, a real historical figure, found his enlightenment after first starving, then eating only enough to survive. He also found peace, not happiness. The laughing Buddha represents none of these Buddhist traditions. Instead, the Buddha is portrayed as fat to represent prosperity and is laughing to show happiness (probably because he is so prosperous). At the Ganges, there is an evening prayer each night where pilgrims gather to see the beautiful ceremony. However, for me it was difficult to see the prayer ceremony as children selling postcards of the ceremony were gathered in front of me. At least I was blessed by a priest, for a small donation of course. I was shocked that there was so much consumerism during a religious ceremony on the banks of a sacred river. But the tourist is not supposed to worry about petty things like respect for religious traditions. S/he is suppose to buy many, many things to show just how worldly and cultured s/he is. It truly is a strange world we are living in today…