tzillah:

gasshofriend:

saintshiva:

heartoflaos:

Buddha Statues’ Heads: What it actually means.

Yesterday, I went shopping at Homegoods with my mom for some interior decorations and a few gifts. And what do you know: Buddha’s heads, either in brass and sold as “antique” or dipped in bright neon paint. My mom shook her head in disapproval and laughed. This really got my mind thinking that shoppers have literally no clue what these statues’ heads are really about.

This really got my mind thinking about that Thai movie “Ong-Bak“ about how a group of thieves decapitated a Buddha statue’s head  & how a Muay Thai skilled warrior volunteered to return it before it is sold in the black market. Cutting off that religious statue’s head is seen as an act of vandalism & violence. It is one of the utmost disrespectful marks one could do in the religion. The original heads were stolen from respected places of worship. Cutting off Buddha statues’ heads have been happening for who-knows-how-long originally by greedy thieves.

And now they are replicated into fashion statements or interior decorating. They really have such a dark history behind them that nearly a lot of people had forgotten. (None of those pictures belong to me.)

The Buddha bust, usually in a faux Thai or Indonesian style, is one of the ugliest and most ignorant bourgeois accoutrements one can posses. Not only is it a bland and obvious attempt to purchase the appearance of spiritual depth, its presence immediately belies a total ignorance of the context and history of Buddhist images themselves!
A severed Buddha head, plundered from Borobudur, in the corner of a gentleman’s study is a romantic relic from a bygone age when the world considered genocide and forced military conquest a viable means of affairs. To keep a stolen cultural artifact as a trophy is to deny a sovereign people access to their own cultural heritage to satisfy one’s own ego.
That the idea of the severed Buddha head as decoration flourishes today is a disappointing remainder that the aesthetics marketed towards the middle class are a cheaper version of those objects collected by the wealthy, further divorced from their original context.

The Buddha is not an accessory or a complement for your decor. 

Reblogging for historical context I didn’t know about.

theunitofcaring:

So I haven’t posted about this since college because I don’t think it’s ever happened to me since I got out of college, but a recent conversation reminded me that it’s still negatively affecting lots of other people, so:

Lots of people find it distressing to be asked their pronouns. They might be trans and not out, or trans and out to some of the people present but not all of them, or not sure if they’re trans, or entirely cis and just really hate being asked to think about the question. I personally freak out about ‘preferred pronouns’ because it makes me go “uh, I don’t really prefer ‘she/her’, I’d much rather be parsed as a genderless amorphous being, but I don’t prefer that strongly enough to go through the hassle of trying to get people to actually see me that way, especially since I’m not really sure it’d work, and people will get confused by ‘they/them’, and if I express a pronoun preference then I’ll be more upset about people getting it wrong than if I don’t, and aaaaaahhh I prefer not to be in a social context where I have to have this thought process it makes me sad!!!”

Other people find it affirming, and that’s legitimate too. There are definitely competing needs here. But I think, since there are competing needs, you at least need to allow for an exit strategy for the people who will be harmed by pressure to come up with an answer.

So: “nametags are here, also feel free to put pronouns on your nametag if you want” is great. “nametags are here, put your name and pronouns!” or “why aren’t there pronouns on your nametag?” are going to cause stress and potentially cause harm.

“Share any of ‘favorite animal, best concert you’ve been to recently, and preferred pronouns, but feel free to skip any of those if you’re coming up empty’” is a decent way to handle competing needs if you’re doing “go around in a circle and introduce yourself”. And if you’re doing introductions with pronouns and someone doesn’t volunteer a pronoun, don’t remind them; the risk they skipped it on purpose and you’re putting them on the spot is not worth the benefits of getting an answer if they just forgot.

Gender sucks. When we’re trying to make it better for people, we need to keep making sure there are doors open to flee screaming ‘aaaah fuck gender’.

I’m not into pranking people, so I decided I’d show you some animals that look silly instead.

taibhsearachd:

thatgaybich:

the-letter-why-in-parenthesis:

Andean Cock of the Rocks (ALWAYS WATCHING)

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Arabian sand boas (DOING THEIR BEST)

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Dik diks (SMALL?????????)

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Softshell turtles (SMOOTH BOYS)

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Christmas tree worms (FESTIVE FRIENDS)

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Saiga antelopes (I LOVE YOU BUT WHY)

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Baikal seals (ROUND BOYS)

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I refuse to believe any of these are real

Tibetan Foxes are also very good: