So on Friday, when I was at the Field Museum, I was standing in front of the Tibetan exhibit, right? Because the Tibetan exhibit is wonderful.

A) It's beautiful. It is stunningly visually beautiful. The walls are all red and the lights are all dim except for these specially-designed-not-to-hurt-the-artifacts lights, and the cases are full of beautiful gold sculptures of gods and vessels for sacrificial water and crap like that, and they're playing Tibetan monk chanting really soft over the speakers. It's awesome.
B) It's really super interesting. All the beautiful artifacts are accompanied with these great little paragraphs written in the plainest of English for the dumbest of Americans explaining all these cool little facts about Tibetan Buddhism. I.E. Around 900 A.D., a Buddhist cleric from India visited Tibet and was so amazed at the purity of the Tibetan water, he dubbed it worthy of the Gods. Ever since, Tibetan monks have made offerings of water to the Gods. Isn't that cool?
c) It holds a lot of sentimental value for me. I didn't have the internet or any fancy-schmancy crap like that when I was little, so my only methods of learning anything worth knowing were reading and visiting museums. The Tibetan exhibit in the Field Museum was my favorite exhibit ever. I visited it whenever I could and stared at all the beautiful things for hours. I was so absolutely taken with Buddhism. It was such a WONDERFUL, beautiful, peaceful religion. Visiting it again on Friday brought back all sorts of happy memories.

So I was standing in front of an altar to Champa, the Buddha of the Future, and there's this little white boy, maybe seven or eight years old, standing next to me. He's about the same age I was when I was first enchanted by the exhibit. I'm filled with joy at the idea that new generations are experiencing the same wonders I did. He's standing in front of a mannequin with Asian features that's dressed in traditional Buddhist monk gear - red robe, yellow brushy hat thing - and he says, "That man's a Buddhist. He worships Buddha. Buddha isn't a real God."

Double - you - tee - eff. Look. When I was a kid, I went to church. I believed unquestioningly in God (at least until I was nine or ten). I considered myself a Christian. But I still held a deep respect for other religions, because it never occurred to me to question the validity of their beliefs. I always just assumed that different people were going to believe different things. Kids don't just automatically belittle other cultures that way. If the FIRST THING OUT OF HIS MOUTH when seeing this stunning display of faith and craftsmanship and RESPECT FOR LIFE is, "Buddha isn't a real God," I have to assume that his parents taught him that. What the hell kind of parent sits their kid down and says, "Look, there are a lot of cultures out there with a lot of different religions. They're all bad. We're right."

That's pretty much tantamount to child abuse, no?

posted at 5:58 PM by Alison

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