Peace and Prayer

Yesterday was Wesak Day. I went to the Buddhist Maha Vihara in Brickfields with my mom to pray.

We are not very religious, but even so, we abstained from eating meat on this day.

It was overcast when we arrived at in Brickfields at around 3:30pm. The street on which the temple's entrance was located was lined with stalls selling all sorts of things: flowers, joss sticks, candles, vegetarian food and drink, statues and images of Buddha and Buddhist symbols. There were also stalls set up by buddhist societies collecting donations for the building of new temples. Oddly, there were companies such as Celcom (telecommunications) doing promotions for their services there as well, which I felt wasn't very appropriate.

As we were walking towards the temple's entrance, I came across a stall selling lanterns depicting Buddhist images as well as Nepali silver jewellery and prayer beads, the same one I bought a few items from last year. To my surprise, the Nepali businessman, Mahendra, actually recognised me, and bade me a warm welcome. As I was browsing, it started to rain quite heavily. All the stallholders hurriedly covered their goods with plastic sheets, and we were ushered into Mahendra's colourful stall to wait for the rain to subside. I chose a few items, a few packs of Ilam tea and a bag made of some sort of pretty tribal weave, and spent the rest of the time talking with Mahendra about the conditions in Nepal and having him explain to me the meanings of the images on the lanterns.

After a long while, the downpour became a drizzle, and I started taking photographs.

Photographs of the elaborate floats that passed by, preparing for the long procession that would start at nightfall, heading to the Kuala Lumpur town centre and then back to the Maha Vihara. This procession would last till around midnight, as the long line of floats would be escorted by candle-carrying devotees accompanying the floats on foot. Photographs of the devotees who thronged the temple clutching umbrellas along with their offerings of candles, joss sticks and flowers. Photographs of the serene monks who moved amongst the crowd, clad in their distinctive saffron orange robes.

Everywhere you looked, there were people running around offering your lotus candles for a 5 ringgit donation, or two paper containers of flower heads for RM1; people frantically taking photographs; people holding long stalks of pink lotus buds or bunches of chrysanthemums; people eating ice cream and vegetarian food. And the beggars. There were so many beggars... in a wheelchair, or sprawled on the roadside with a diseased limb in full display, or holding a pitiful sleeping child - their begging bowls placed in front of them, awaiting your donations.

Mom and I went to kneel amongst other devotees - Chinese, Indian, Burmese, Sri Lankan, Nepali, Thai - to pray. Offering flowers, we got sprinkled with holy water by the monks. We lit oil lamps for peace and happiness. We donated to the beggars. And I kept taking photos till I felt quite wilted from the rain and humidity and sea of humanity around me.

The results of my labours can be seen in this Flickr photoset.