San Diego is not all peaches and cream

I went to a Buddhist Temple today to take some pictures. There were lots of intricate decorations and many shoes strewn about. Some of the buildings on the grounds have the symbol you see in the pictures on the right hung over the doorway. It's called a Swastika - some of you might have heard of it. It stands for "good fortune" and "well being" - some of you might not have heard of that. I myself had heard of that only once, so when I saw these posted about the temple, I was reminded of what I had heard, and looked into it. And I'd say for any of you who don't quite understand why I am saying the symbol that represents some of the worst atrocities of mankind stands for such positive things, then I suggest you look into it as well. Start Here.

A quick summary in my words. The symbol has been in use for nearly 10,000 years, and for the last 2,500 had risen in importance as the premier symbol of good luck for Buddhism and Hinduism. Then less than 100 years ago, it was adopted by a certain group of rather nasty folks, who managed to turn it's incredibly long history of positive symbolism into an image of pure hatred and evil. And as far as my previous knowledge and education was concerned, had eradicated the western worlds ability to conceive of it as anything but, let alone know it meant anything different.

So do yourself a favor and read up on it a little. A perfect example of the extensive positive history of this symbol can be seen by wikipedia's write up on it, and that the mention of its use in a negative fashion is a small, rather insignificant paragraph at the end of a substantially long article. Worth a mention is the small blurb in the section of "Taboo in Western Countries" in which it states despite the symbols virtual disappearance in use in the western world, there is a building located in San Diego of all places, that when looked at in Google Earth (32 40'34.09" N, 117 09'27.96 W) or Google Maps it can be seen as an obvious swastika. Way to go SD - now that's a noble claim to fame.