{"id":178,"date":"2006-09-02T14:39:02","date_gmt":"2006-09-02T08:39:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/?p=178"},"modified":"2017-11-05T08:03:52","modified_gmt":"2017-11-05T08:03:52","slug":"buddhist-ethics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/countries\/asia\/bhutan\/178","title":{"rendered":"Buddhist Ethics"},"content":{"rendered":"

My throat’s been better for weeks. My head clear for almost that long. But my energy is still in short supply. It’s getting better and the rain had gone north, so this morning we decided to cycle up the Thimphu valley to get a photo of the swollen river. We passed the King’s residence then went up the hill, around the Royal Bodyguard traning ground and through a small village with Marie in front all the way. I finally took the lead at the last hill and in the 1km between then and when she caught me, Marie’s tyre got a puncture. I had a pump, but the bit of glass she picked up had made sure that a pump would be as much use as an open air heater in antarctica.<\/p>\n

\"swollen<\/a>I’d seen a taxi outside the last house we passed, so we made our way back there and asked the owner for a lift back to Thimphu. He said he was busy preparing for a puja so he couldn’t help us. The irony grated. A puja is a ceremony monks perform to bless the house or land or new car or whatever. As far as I can tell, it’s really about increasing the karma of the owner of these commodities. But surely his karma would be better if he helped someone in need.<\/p>\n

Maybe I’m missing some kung-fu philosophy where he was actually helping Marie by making her rely on herself and in doing so he’s increasing his own karma. Or perhaps he thought it would be a waste of his time because another taxi would be along in a minute – the universe provides.<\/p>\n

Whatever. I left Marie to sort things out herself – she wasn’t in the mood for company – and went off to get the photos. With my mind on Marie and whether she’d found a lift, this was the best I got.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My throat’s been better for weeks. My head clear for almost that long. But my energy is still in short supply. It’s getting better and the rain had gone north, so this morning we decided to cycle up the Thimphu valley to get a photo of the swollen river. We passed the King’s residence then… Continue reading Buddhist Ethics<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1815,"href":"https:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178\/revisions\/1815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}