How many bad thoughts do you have?

Have you ever sat down to count how many bad thoughts you have? Well apparently someone in the Buddhist religion did and it came to 108.

I was eating lunch with a friend of mine the other day, discussing my plans for the upcoming New Years Eve. My brother and sister-in-law will be visiting then so we thought we’d do something quite traditional and go to a temple for the bell ringing.

My friend asked me if I knew how many times the bell was rung. From memory I thought it was 188 (it seems I have more bad thoughts than most), but was corrected and told that it is 108.

The number is not arbitrary, but instead represents the 108 bonno (mortal desires) that plagues humankind. The reverberation of each bell toll is believed by Buddhists to wipe away all the bad luck and ill deeds of the previous year. The 108th bell is rung in the first few seconds of the new year.

So that’s how I’ll be starting out 2007, with a clean slate and a year ahead of me to do 108 bad things in time for the next cleansing…..