Tearing Down Walls

Last week, Jeremiah watched a documentary about Canti Borobudur, a 9th century Buddhist complex 40km from Java. A UNESCO World Heritage site, Borobudur is the most popular tourist destination in Indonesia. The founder of modern Singapore, Sir Stamford Raffles, is said to have played a role in the rediscovery of Borobudur, which was abandoned after Java converted to Islam.

Once a major Buddhist pilgrimage site, the complex consists of several temples and platforms with over 500 statues of the Buddha and over 2500 relief panels. Pilgrims would start from the first temple and make their way to the main dome (which is surrounded by 72 perforated stupas with Buddha statues inside) on the main platform. Along the way, they were supposed to reflect on the relief panels, i.e. murals on the stone walls, which depicted fables and the life story of the Buddha.

One such fable elaborated on in the documentary and which caught Jeremiah's eye was that of a double-headed bird. The heads of the bird were at different heights. The top head usually got all the good food while the lower head only got the not so good food and leftovers. The lower head would often ask the top head to pass some good food to him. However, the top head would usually respond that since they share the same body, whatever the top head eats would eventually make its way to the lower head. One day in despair and hunger, the lower head ate poison and the bird died.

Jeremiah reflected on this during the odyssey back to Singapore last Thursday. Because of the limited air connectivity between Singapore and Yogjakarta (there is only one direct flight daily and in Jeremiah's case, the timing was not suitable.), Jeremiah chose a 8h flight itinerary that included a 4h transit in Jakarta. The direct flight would have only taken about 2h.

To paraphrase someone wise, if you have two pools of water of different levels, the best way to even out their levels would be to dig a trench and link the two up, i.e. improve their connectivity. Water would flow naturally from one pool to the other.

You can take a pail to manually transfer the water but its efficiency is highly debatable. What is certainly not helpful would be building a wall around one pool of water. This would be akin to one of the heads of the bird sealing up its mouth.