"Bangkok Buddhist Notebook | Dancing with Time among the Golden Scales of Wat Pho"

The morning light of Bangkok is kneaded into pieces of gold by the Chao Phraya River, sprinkled on the glazed spire of the Reclining Buddha Temple, and plated the 46-meter-long gilded Buddha body into flowing amber. At this moment, I put on a Thai silk tube skirt and let the silk gauze brush against the thousand-year-old lotus bricks. Suddenly I understood: the so-called Trip Moments are nothing more than using a traditional Chinese costume as a boat to draw elegant ripples between gods and Buddhas and the mortal world. [Where the sleeves flutter, there are scriptures] The teak corridors in the dressing room swallow up the old times. The Sabai shawl embroidered with gold thread is draped diagonally over the shoulders, and the peacock pattern of the Thai silk skirt is interwoven with the shadows of the Bodhi leaves outside the temple to form a secret language. When she was painting her Naga hairpins in the mirror, the old monk handed her a branch of magnolia with a smile - the cinnabar on her forehead was the gentle seal left by the Buddha for the worldly traveler. The moment you step barefoot into the main hall, you can feel the Buddha's foot patterns inlaid with 108 mother-of-pearl beads on the soles of your feet. Looking up at the compassionate eyes of the Nirvana Buddha, the hem of his silk dress is lifted by the breeze and dances with the hanging banners from the shrine - at the moment the shutter is pressed, the body of modern man and the soul of the Lanna Dynasty complete an instant reincarnation on the film. [Light and shadow are like silk, and the ancient temple is like a scroll] The teak lattice windows in the west corridor are the best frame for viewing. As the sunlight cast diamond-shaped spots on the lotus pattern on the skirt, the golden scales of the pagoda were swimming between the glazed tiles. The photographer guides you to lean against the mottled scripture column. Suddenly, a flock of pigeons flies over the octagonal corridor, startling the ensemble of fluttering clothes and Buddhist flags. Under the Bodhi tree in the back garden, look at a broken stone sculpture of a Buddha head. The wind sculpts the Xiangyunsha shawl into an arc like the flying fairy in Angkor Wat, and in the camera of your mobile phone, your modern smile is achieving an aesthetic reconciliation with the thousand-year silence of the stone Buddha. The most wonderful thing is the corner of the Sutra Library. When you look back suddenly, the monk’s yellow robe and your Thai silk skirt splash the most intense Siamese color spectrum in the camera. [Postscript: Storing a moment in eternity] The ultimate mercy of the Reclining Buddha Temple is to allow you to turn fleeting glimpses into immortality. When you take off your gorgeous clothes and return the suitcase, the manager will suddenly tie a blessing knot around your wrist with faded gold thread. When I walked to the pond where animals were released and watched the koi carps swallowing up the afterglow of the setting sun, I was startled to realize that the rented clothes had already quietly woven a certain divinity into the warp and weft of my life. While sorting through photos in the twilight, I discovered that in the folds of the lotus tiles where the hem of my clothes had brushed past, there was actually half a fallen Bodhi leaf. Suddenly I smiled: It turns out that Buddha never speaks, he only teaches people to understand the Bangkok aesthetic of "the moment is eternity" through every stitch and every brick and tile. Thai Trip Moments Mantra "สวยมาก" (So beautiful) - Say this mantra silently when you smile at the camera. If a monk puts his hands together and says "สาธุ" (good news) to you, please return the same gesture. That is a halo that is more precious than any filter. May you and I be like the gold foil on the hem of the reclining Buddha, forever shining amid the thousand-year-old incense, and always remember that we have danced with time in the most Bangkok way.