Am I alone in finding some Thai practices unusual. Take the practice of liberating small birds from a tiny cage in order to gain merit. Presumably there's an entire industry of bird-catchers who serve up these boxes to the punters. Do they lose an equivalent amount of merit? I asked a Thai monk once. He didn't know. I guess it's like the devout Buddhist abattoir worker or fisherman, who supplies his output to the dinner tables of Thailand. By the way did you know that carrots emit a quiet scream when they are pulled from the earth? What does this mean for vegetarians? Perhaps Jeremy Clarkson could tell us.
The latest thing I've heard is the practice of placing a hair in a box and nailing it to a flagpole. Must it be a hair from the head, or can it be a pubic hair? The latter are easily harvested from yesterday's underwear. Does anyone know?