The Wisdom of the East

Netscape reports that a monk in Thailand mistook for eyedrops a tube of superglue, and predictably glued both of his eyes shut. Doctors were able to open one using a solvent, but the other eye required surgery.

My parents' generation essentially 'discovered' Eastern religion and imported it selectively in whatever deracinated form best suited their whims at the time. Yogi. Teacher. For our generation, at least those of us raised by secular blue state boomers, it's been an inherited cliche: there is, somehow, a philosophical superiority to eastern religion and philosophy, an extra-enlightenment sort of spiritual freedom that imbues it with an essential wisdom lacking in stuffy western religious traditions. Now, I remain more interested and affined (that might not be a word; consider yourself warned) with what I know of Eastern traditions, perhaps because at least some of them have not been invoked serially in the service of mass slaughter, as my inherited (ethnic?) religions have been.

But still and all, in a bigger-they-are-harder-they-fall sort of way, I take perverse pleasure in hearing that a monk did something so Darwin Award-esque. It tickles me to no end, something I can only acknowledge insofar as I gather he wasn't severely injured. And with that, I'll sleep.