I went to a speech today by a prominent Thai forensic scientist who was heavily active in dealing with the mass fatalities after the tsunami. She talked about dealing with all the bodies, relatives, identification problems and dealing with the political issues. The focus was on the need to properly identify the bodies versus the desire to give them back to the families as quickly as possible, and the difficulties that this causes politically, and particularly when there’s a lack of protocols established. She showed some really gruesome pictures, and the school kids in the audience didn’t even freak out.
She spoke for 1.5 hours, and then concluded that “I can do my work because of Buddhism and the King”. She was later asked how she could keep going for a month straight without a break, and responded that “Buddhism keeps me going. I know that I am doing something good. I look after the dead, and the spirits shine on me a look after me.”
To have a medical doctor profess completely sincerely a belief in religion and the spiritual world was not something I’d encountered before.
It is easy to scoff, and discount what she said, but I found that I didn’t do that. There would have been no value in doing so. Just because I don’t believe in that doesn’t mean anything to near, and to disregard her beliefs doesn’t help me to understand anything. By accepting it I can gain an insight into something important to her. It’s a lesson learnt that I’ll keep and apply while I continue to live in a non-secular country.
LIVES LIVED: Who knows, but here’s hoping I come back as a dog in the next one – sleeping, eating, chasing tennis balls, sex, no work – sound great!
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