Buddhism

To parry with Socrates—an Athenian philosopher who feared the written word would be immobile and lifeless—I feel the books of the dead prattle on incessantly. Unlike the relentless cawing at Poe’s chamber door, my raven quoth “ever more.”

Is the practice in Thailand of asking for “holy things” syncretism? Looking at the genealogy of the word saksit—the “holy” in “holy things”—provides an answer.

“Religion, I would argue, ought not to be a functional aspect of social norms, but a method to escape the ordinary world.”