Foreigner Causes Offense by Sitting on Buddha's Head on Battambang Mountain
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Foreigner Causes Offense by Sitting on Buddha's Head on Battambang Mountain
Battambang: An unidentified foreign man offended local people recently when he climbed up and sat on the head of the giant Buddha statue, which is still in construction, on Sampov Mountain, Battambang. Photos were posted on social media, showing a foreign man sitting on sacred Buddha's head, dangling his feet on the face of the great Buddha, while laughing as if he was making fun of the statue.
Predictably, when some locals saw his Facebook posts, many people reacted angrily because they thought the tourist was extremely rude, and that his act was disrespectful to Buddha and Buddhism.
There were some requests to the tourist police to find the foreigner and charge him with offensive behavior. Since he proudly posted his exploit on Facebook, it is quite possible that the tourist had no idea that his behavior was inappropriate.
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Re: Foreigner Causes Offense by Sitting on Buddha's Head on Battambang Mountain
Seems it has happened here before, and he probably won't be the last.
Always "hope" but never "expect".
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Re: Foreigner Causes Offense by Sitting on Buddha's Head on Battambang Mountain
The Muslim fundamentalist reaction needs to be adopted.
Beat the ferker to death.
Beat the ferker to death.
Re: Foreigner Causes Offense by Sitting on Buddha's Head on Battambang Mountain
Unfortunately, their reaction would be to destroy the Buddha's head.that genius wrote: ↑Sat Apr 21, 2018 2:03 pm The Muslim fundamentalist reaction needs to be adopted.
Beat the ferker to death.
Always "hope" but never "expect".
Re: Foreigner Causes Offense by Sitting on Buddha's Head on Battambang Mountain
I don't understand is it ignorance or just apathy when foreigners do stuff like this?
Life's simple you make choices and you don't look back.
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Re: Foreigner Causes Offense by Sitting on Buddha's Head on Battambang Mountain
The Mountain of Phnom Sampeau, located near Battambang, is most famous for the so-called Killing Caves from the time of the Khmer Rouge. It is also a pilgrimage site with many Buddhist shrines and statues.
The giant Buddha head that created this recent scandal of tourists behaving badly has an interesting history.
It is described in wikipedia like this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_c ... om_SampeauAnother feature seen is an incomplete Buddha carving, a 30-foot (9.1 m) image, carved partly into the rock face of the hill, with only the head of the Buddha exposed. Lack of funds was the reason for its incompleteness.[2][6]
This old article from the Cambodia Daily explains how the incomplete Buddha came into being. Apparently, the original idea was to carve three giant Buddhas into the side of the mountain, but the project never got past the first Buddha head.
This was the plan 15 years ago:
https://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/youn ... has-43717/Young Artists To Carve Battambang Buddhas
By
Van Roeun -
November 3, 2003
The 100 sculptors commissioned this month to carve three giant Buddha monuments into Battambang province’s Phnom Sampov are not nationally renowned artists, or even professional sculptors. They are a group of former street children and orphans, set to embark on a seven-year carving project.
The 38-by-112 meter wall of mountain rock in Banan district, 12 km west of Battambang, will depict three statues of the Buddha—at his birth, enlightenment and death, said Yi Hwa, director of Morodak Angkor, the NGO that trained the students.
The statues will be renditions of the Cambodian form of the Buddha, as opposed to Thai and Japanese Buddha statues, which differ in head shape and clothing. “We don’t want people to get confused,” said In Siyonda of the Ministry of Culture’s plastic arts and handicraft department. “We want them to know which Buddhas are ours and which ones are theirs.”
Local Buddhist and cultural authorities are in full support of the project. The Nov 27 groundbreaking ceremony will be attended by the supreme patriarchs of the two dominant sects of Cambodian Buddhism, and the Ministry of Culture will provide materials and expertise in shaping the bas-reliefs, In Siyonda said.
The mountain is a former quarry that was abandoned in recent years for fear of destroying a culturally and environmentally important region.
According to legend, the “Mountain of Large Boat” was named after a scorned lover sent her talking crocodile to attack an escaping beau. The crocodile was thwarted by the man’s new mistress; his grounded boat became the site of today’s mountain, which visually resembles a tipped boat.
Many youths are unfamiliar with the lore, and the monuments are intended to remind young generations of their ancestry.
“The statues will be both Buddha replicas and historical tokens,” said In Siyonda.
The monuments are also intended to promote culture, non-violence, Buddhism and tourism, said officials. The project is not yet fully funded, and later stages of the sculpting will depend on future charitable donations.
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Re: Foreigner Causes Offense by Sitting on Buddha's Head on Battambang Mountain
So a foreigner posted these pics on his FB page and some Cambodians saw them, then complained about it, but no one knows who he is. Kow
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Re: Foreigner Causes Offense by Sitting on Buddha's Head on Battambang Mountain
This is so disrespectful
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Re: Foreigner Causes Offense by Sitting on Buddha's Head on Battambang Mountain
Is there some text from the Buddha's teachings which suggests that inanimate (and incomplete in this case) representations of him were somehow given God-like status? I very much doubt it. While it's a good idea to discourage behavior which upsets the superstitious, there's no need to blow it all out of proportion. Where's the compassion instead of all this condemnation? The Buddha himself didn't encourage any statues or idols in his likeness, and for the first few centuries was represented as an empty throne or tree. It was much later that Hellenistic influences spread through what are now Afghanistan and Pakistan and brought the human-like representations of the Buddha like the one above.
Silence, exile, and cunning.
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