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Message: <blockquote data-quote="xenoflare" data-source="post: 2874054" data-attributes="member: 12431">No worries man! Glad to help <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":-p" title="Stick out tongue    :-p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":-p" />I carry a piece of yellow paper with me wherever i go. It's a buddhist blessing, given to me by my mom, who got it from a temple here in Singapore. It's one of the oldest temples, and people believe in the power of the divinations and blessings from the priests here because the patron spirits are said to be very much watching over the community. There were a couple of fires there, and this temple survived while most of the other houses went kaboom, adding to its mystic reputation.Next door, there's a Hindu temple dedicated to Rama. We've got guys walking in from the Buddhist temple over to the Hindu one, offering incense to both divinities. The general feel of SEAsian religious culture is that of mixture, of heterogeneity, of mixing and adapting things. It's like, old things are put in new contexts.Even the Muslims in Indonesia, for example, conducted a lot of animistic rites in their worship. We have goddesses of the rice field, the queen of the south sea, the lords of the sky... and the Hindu/ Indian elements brought the whole idea of the ascetic, who swears oaths to the universe in exchange for temporal power and spiritual enlightenment, is still very strong. You can use that as the Vows from the BOED, or the Marks from BOVD? There's this term, "pusaka" - it means relic. People are proud of their relics - be it textiles, weapons, paintings, even flags and clothes - which accumulate ritual power and occult significance with each passing generation. People take care of their relics by treating them as people - for example, you sleep with the kris dagger in hand, after meditating for 3 days and abstaining from meat, alcohol, and sex.. so that you can commune with the spirit of the weapon, thus finding out in the dream what the spirit wants to tell ya.Also, well, i like the idea bout the Naga and the Garuda. There's a traditional rivalry - some say it is cos Garuda's mom was killed by poisonous snakes, and so he hates the Naga. However, weird thing is, Nagas aren't bad guys either. Lol.In Hinduism and Buddhism, there's this thing bout the "Six Worlds" concept. it's basically a planar cosmology. You have the harshest world of all - the world of the hells, which is basically your fiendish planes. There, souls suffer in retribution for their sins. The demons torturing them could be similarly souls suffering - to be demonic i guess isn't exactly a good thing, come to think of it. Or they could be delusions - illusions crafted by the sinners trapping themselves in hell. Anyway, it's not a nice place. Liars get their tongues cut out, adulterers get trapped in diamond-edged valleys snowing diamond dust that flay them, while trying to avoid stone-beaked vultures and stuff. You get Rakshas here too.Then we get the world of the hungry ghosts. In Sanskrit, they're the world of the pretas, of the undead. Those who live and die with the sin of greed, of desire overpowering them become undead shades, with thin necks and big bellies, feeding off the faeces and filth of humanity. They are condemned to be incorporeal, invisible, never being able to influence the world they desire, and  hungry and thirsty. Spend enough time there, get some good karma, and off you go to...the world of animals. Beasts. Those who live like animals become animals - rutting, eating, sleeping. Nothing much to say there - though this could both be a literal plane of its own- as well as being part of the Prime Material... The Nagas, Yakshas (earth elementals/ treants/ giants), Garudas and stuff are somehwere between here and humanity. Primally powerful, magically gifted, and human intellgience to boot. Some of them are more celestial, which we'll get to later.Then we have the world of humans. We're caught a bit in the middle, of hell and heaven. It's the best chance then for us to practice enllightement, for we don't have the distractions of hell's demons pulling out your guts for a BBQ, nor do we have the comforts of heaven to lull us into complacency. Then after that, we have the world of the demigods - the Ashura realm. There, you get the Internet pwn-crazy phenomena. The ashuras are godly beings full of power and wealth, but always striving for more, and never ever content. They are gods, but not as high up as the Devas, and thus they are bitter about this, and forever jealous.Then we have the Devas, whew. That's where the divine nymphs make music, the gods hold court, and everyone's happy. You're rich, you're powerful, you're beautiful, and you're the top of the food chain. But since there's little motivation for you to improve yourself, you will slowly run out of good karma if you're slack, and lose your place in heaven, as you become compalcent.So, well, even the Devas are not enlightened, in that sense.After the 6 worlds, comes Nirvana, the world of enlightenment.. which is a mystical experience that is pointless to describe. Suffice to say, ascetics try to achieve "moksha" - a term meaning "to disappear", so as to disappear from these 6 worlds of Maya, of illusion, and enter true wisdom.Sorry if i got preachy there. not meaning to proseltyze, just sharing the folklore!Hope this helps.</blockquote>

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