Singaporean Buddhism (Part 1)

So, I went back to the (not very old, but already pretty famous) Buddha's Tooth Relic Temple in Singapore this last trip, and this time went upstairs to the museum and rooftop section (as well as the floor that contains the actual Buddha's tooth.   Allegedly.)

The 3rd floor is a museum full of old and new Buddhist artworks, including a row of somewhat unnervingly lit wax models of significant past Buddhist leaders from Singapore and nearby areas.  Like this guy:

 Oh, I just noticed the reflections in that shot. Sorry.  Anyway, I imagined it being a creepy place in which to be accidentally locked in at night.  Not that wax models of deceased monks should be scary, but the lighting is spooky...

A lot of the artwork is impressive (some pieces very old), although many are modern and some seems a little peculiar:  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Anyhow, the main temple hall room downstairs, which is very pretty and looks like this:

OK, maybe I took a better pic last time:

I now know features this:

I had posted about Maitreya once before, but guess I didn't realise some temples were devoted to him?   That's the funny thing about Buddhism for the casual Western tourist - it's routinely not at all obvious what version of Buddha, or bodhisattva, which a statue represents, or to which a temple is devoted.  Got to do your research.

One other thing I only recently learnt about Buddhism (or parts of it) was the (shall we say, "fanciful") belief that cremated holy people left behind crystal like beads amongst their cremated remains that were taken as a type of relic that shows their sanctity.  There are many examples shown in the museum section of this temple, and I thought I took a photo, but maybe out of politeness in not wanting to look too sceptical, I didn't.  Anyway, in the very upmarket Buddhist magazine Tricycle, there's a good article about this belief, which comes out of both Tibetan and Chinese Buddhism, apparently, and it ends on this note:

There was no doubt that those who had witnessed Geshe Lama Konchog’s cremation believed the relics to be genuine; to them they were precious objects, weighty with meaning. I have decided that the Buddhist world, like the Christian, is divided into two camps: the Protestants, who regard relic worship as superstitious, silly, unintelligent, and to be put firmly into the basket of “idolatrous practice” and avoided at all costs, and the Catholics, for whom the numinous and the mystical are an essential part of their practice. Many thousands of people from around the world, including the United States, have visited relic exhibitions and have testified to finding the experience spiritually uplifting. For them, these small shining sharira encapsulate the hope that transformation of the very physical body is possible–as well as the immaterial mind. Venerating a holy object, be it an image or a relic, is seen by many as an invaluable part of spiritual practice, bestowing countless blessings, opening the heart, and lessening one’s pride.

And I suppose I should mention the Buddha Tooth relic itself, which is up on the 4th floor, behind a glass wall and sitting in a display stupa of around 320kg(!) of gold, and no photos are allowed.   You are not super close, but can make it out (I think! - see further comment below), and like other Buddha's tooth relics I had seen on the internet, it didn't look at all human to me.  It seems too big (although it would seem that the believers' answer to this can be that they have been scientifically shown that these tooth relics continue to grow!).  I thought it looked more like a horse tooth.  And now I read, in the same Tricycle article extracted above, this:

Buddhist relics, like their Christian counterparts, have their own history of fraud.

Skeptics point to Dr. Alois Anton Fuhrer, the German archaeologist who found the Buddha’s birthplace at Lumbini. In 1895, Dr. Fuhrer was caught selling horse teeth as relics to Burmese monks. Another tooth purporting to come from the Buddha himself was recently examined by the Natural History Museum in London and found to belong to a pig. I heard tell of sharira that were no more than mites of dust collected on religious pictures, and small gems thrown into the ashes of funeral pyres by conniving clergy to fool the faithful. There is even a story of a temple parrot that left sharira—he’d apparently imbibed the Buddha’s teachings!

 Oh, and here's a sceptical article from Straits Times in 2007:

Mr Yap Kok Feng, a paralegal executive, wrote to Lianhe Zaobao recently claiming that the relic looks nothing like a human tooth.

When contacted, he said that he had shown a picture of it to dentists who believe it to be a herbivore's.

One of them, Dr Pamela Craig, a senior lecturer at the School of Dental Science at the University of Melbourne, told The Sunday Times she had examined photographs and compared the tooth with teeth from various animal skulls in her comparative dental anatomy department.

'There's absolutely no possibility that it is a human tooth,' said Dr Craig, who specialises in human and animal oral anatomy.

'I'm almost certain that it belongs to a member of the Bos species, probably a cow or a water buffalo.'

Dr Craig said human teeth should be rounded with a short crown and a comparatively longer root, but the picture clearly shows a long crown and a shorter root.

'In this case, looking at a photo is clear enough because it's so obvious that it's not a human tooth. It's like comparing a pear and an apple.'

The Sunday Times also showed a picture of the tooth to four other dentists, including two forensic dental experts. All said the tooth could not have come from a human.

'This is an animal 'cheek tooth', that is, a molar at the back of the mouth,' said Professor David K. Whittaker, a forensic dental specialist at Cardiff University in Britain.

And I'm not sure about this last bit about when it can be seen:  I'm pretty sure I could see it:

The tooth relic was supposed to have been discovered by a Myanmar monk, the late Venerable Cakkapala of Bandula Monastery, in 1980 while restoring a collapsed stupa at Bagan Hill in Mrauk-U, Myanmar.

He gave the relic to Venerable Shi Fazhao, the abbot of both the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple and Golden Pagoda Buddhist Temple in Tampines in 2002.

The public can see the tooth only twice a year - on Vesak Day and the first day of Chinese New Year.

So, there you go.  Lots of member of the public donated a lot of money and gold to build a suitable  resting place for a relic that doesn't even look like what it is meant to be?    Not sure that I would be impressed.

As with the Catholic approach to things like the Shroud of Turin, you can always fall back on the old "does it really matter if a venerated object is genuine or not, as long as it helps the spirituality of the believer" defence.  That Tricycle article ends on that note:

At the end of my search into the meaning of Buddhist relics, I was reminded of an old Tibetan tale. A devout old woman asked her trader son if he would bring her back a tooth from the Buddha when he traveled to India. The son forgot all about his mission until his return home, when in desperation to please his mother he picked up a tooth from a dead dog he found rotting by the wayside. The mother’s eyes filled with tears of gratitude and wonder when he presented it to her, and she promptly put it on her small altar and everyday made obeisance to it. In time the tooth began to emit a strange, beautiful light. Even a dog’s tooth, if revered enough, will glow. 

Anyway, up on the roof of the Temple, they continue the modern Singaporean tradition of having a well maintained entire garden up there, and a prayer wheel in a pagoda:

 

It's lush and peaceful, and although there were couple of young women taking what looked like "influencer" style photos of one of them, we were pretty much alone in the quiet, walking above the floor with a 320 kg gold stupa worth (grabs my calculator and checks today's price) about $26 million. Someone should do a heist movie about it.  

It's well worth visiting.