The Most Important Budda at Wat Po

In addition to being a monastery, Wat Po is also the oldest open university in Thailand. "Po" means "tree", incidentally.

As with many parochial schools, it started as a medical college and specialized in herbal cures. On the grounds there are numerous statues depicting different poses which help in relieving pain, and the monks still practice healing as well as operating a famous massage school.

Wat Po has over 300 Buddha statues around. Much like in the Christian church, you are believed to bring merit to yourself by donating a Buddha or some other useful item to the temple. Another similarity we caught – commemorative plaques. Although they’re written in Thai, it’s hard not to see the universality of “Donated by the Children of Harold and Margaret Whipplemeier, who belonged to this congregation for 68 years”.

That’s paraphrased, of course, but you get the idea.

Wat Po also is the home to the most important Budda. We’re still working on exactly why it’s the most important, but it is, without a doubt, impressive.  (We finally found out......of the Buddha statues....less than 1% are in the meditative pose...this one is the main one).  The statue stands about 27 feet tall and has a golden canope over him shaped like a wedding cake with 8 layers, again representing the different directions in which protection is offered by the King.

The chapel in which this Buddha is located is carpeted in red and is the daily chapel used by the monks and parishoners. The monks kneel on a raised dais (you don’t wear shoes in the temple, nor do you point your feet at the Buddha since this is disrespectful) and the congregants kneel in the auditorium part. The abbot of the monastery has a throne upon which to sit before giving the sermon.

Unlike Christian churches, photographs are encouraged here. Other than monks going about their business (and there were remarkably few of those) we saw only a couple of security folks with walkie-talkies, but there was no vandalism, nor did you see any indication that this was even an issue. I guess with 95%+ of the population belonging to the same religion, there’s a lot of societal pressure not to mess it up.