I've got headdresses and robes from all over: I am the mystery of everybody's story.
Gonpo Tso was born a princess. As a young woman, she dressed in fur-trimmed robes with fat ropes of coral beads strung around her neck. She lived in an adobe castle on the edge of the Tibetan plateau with a reception room large enough to accommodate the thousand Buddhist monks who once paid tribute to her father.
Wherever you find 'men together' - writing the rules, as at exclusive golf or other men's clubs, businesses, and lodges where they wear elaborate robes and funny hats - women are kept completely outside if possible and, when grudgingly admitted, to highly restricted areas or token status.
Asceticism doesn't lie in ascetic robes or in walking staff nor in the ashes. Asceticism doesn't lie in the earring nor in the shaven head nor blowing a conch. Asceticism lies in remaining pure amidst impurities.
Through tattered clothes, small vices do appear. Robes and furred gowns hide all.
T. E. Lawrence was far more than a glamorous, swashbuckling, heroic figure in flowing robes mounted on a camel, leading the Arab tribes against the Turks in World War One.
Naked need is the occasion for God's giving, not a need adorned with the clean, elegant robes of respectability and good works.
One puts on black robes to scare the hell out of white people, while the other puts on white robes to scare the hell out of blacks.
Every generation gets the Constitution that it deserves. As the central preoccupations of an era make their way into the legal system, the Supreme Court eventually weighs in, and nine lawyers in robes become oracles of our national identity.
When politicians don black robes and seize powers they do not have, they should be called out for what they are - usurpers and petty tyrants.
