According to a link that I saw on facebook the Buddha once said, in his / her chosen language, "Do not be fooled by outward appearances. Real beauty comes from within."
I like this sentiment. What you think and what you do is more important than what you look like and an extension of this is that what you think and what you do will also affect your outer appearance to others, often to its advantage. All good so far.
So if El Buddha is to be believed and followed why do we impose seemingly daft rules about certain body parts on certain occasions?
Earlier this week The Lawrence Clan visited The Uluwatu Temple on the far south of the island of Bali. I am no expert on world religions but it was a nice spot and the views were great too. There were various ornately carved things and areas and lots of people brandishing selfie sticks. It was also sunset too.
Before we could enter the complex all Lawrences had to be inspected however. The official who inspected us, as is often the case in such places, was some old bloke who looked like he had been chosen for the job due to his advanced years and thus an assumption that these years had brought him wisdom. He gave the children long, thin rectangular pieces of orange material which they were told to tie round themselves (Edwin being the ever respectful teenager decided to tie it round his head) and purple sarongs to
Lexi and I.
But what to do with the cloth? The bloke showed his deep knowledge and gesticulated in a random direction over my shoulder, thus completing the sharing of his cloth based wisdom. It would appear that tying the thing around my waist to cover my knees was what was required. With covered knees and a questioning mind I and other Lawrences entered the complex.
And it was ok as a temple complex. Packed with sarong wearing gentlemen and ladies often accompanied by their non sarong wearing children or teenagers with cloths on heads. It was clearly the knees that were the main difficulty in the complex. Uncovered heads, hair, shoulders and toes were all fine but adult knees were not permitted. Just to add to the sartorial confusion in the place we were not permitted to enter the most sacred of inner temples at all leaving me thinking why the hell did we have to cover our knees in the first place?
It seems that we are in a stage of the human evolution process where we are going through a daft phase about clothing. While I am not advocating total nudity everywhere in the world I am also not ruling it out completely. What I am against is the randomness of clothing rules, rules that have no logical reason for existing other than seeming to be used to exert A's will over B or, even worse, as a tool of oppression.
Needless to say I rebelliously tied my sarong so that the breeze blew it away from my knees and secretly applauded the tourist who was not wearing a sarong, freely enjoying the place, proudly, with knees.
Come on humans.