Travel, illness, and Devas

Journeying from one Wat to another.

Some part of me is really put out by travel. I’ve come to regard it the same way I regard trips to the dentist –  necessary but unpleasant.  I almost always have some kind of physical reaction before, during and after any travel beyond mere commuting. This time it has been a particularly nasty cold, bordering on the flu. I was fine right up until the day I purchased my train ticket, then I started to get a headache…

The train took me from Ubon back to Bangkok, to visit Wat Fah Kram – another of the monasteries founded by Ajahn Chah and his disciples. The abbot there is a famous meditation teacher, Ajahn Piak.

The upside of travel is that it broadens one in various ways, and for as much difficulty as I might encounter, I also find kindness, friendliness, and unexpected kindred spirits also wandering the earth.

I took a songteow – a pickup truck with two rows of bench seats – from the monastery to the train station in Ubon. When I boarded I was the only passenger. Along the way the songteow driver pulled over at a clothing factory to pick up a group of his regulars, and he came around back and sat with me while we waited, explaining what was happening and asking me about my travel. He was short, slight, and dark, and very kindly. When he found out I was planning to ordain his face lit up – “I was a monk once too! For 6 months! Saddhu!”

As we talked the sides of the road where we parked became jammed with motorcycles and cars, waiting for the end of the shift. The hour turned and the factory suddenly disgorged hundreds of workers, mostly young women. They flooded out to the waiting vehicles. His regulars boarded and he told them about me “He’ll be a monk!” which caused much staring and giggling from the women. I feel oddly like a celebrity, with my shaved head and foreign features, the object of many furtive glances. If only my nose weren’t running.

When the truck stopped at the train station I got out and went to the front to say goodbye to the driver. He clasped my hands and a fervent grip and wished me luck and safe travel and a tumult of polite phrases.

On the boarding platform at the station I met an Australian man whom I had seen that morning visiting the monastery. We struck up a conversation and fell into a deep and intense exchange. Michael Kalyaano had been a monk in his 20′s and was now nearing 50, also homeless like me, visiting monasteries. The parallels between us were striking, from our fanatic attachment to the Dhamma, right down to the way we were dressed – green pants, white shirts. He told me about a concept something like “nearly stream-enterer” (first level of enlightenment) which appears in the Suttas and suggests a guaranteed favorable rebirth next life if one doesn’t make it in this life. “Favorable” means rebirth as a human being or higher.

It really rubs against the grain of my Western education and training to admit that I believe in rebirth. I do not think that it is actually necessary to believe in rebirth in order to do the practice.  And it wasn’t that long ago that I might have said, “maybe yes, maybe no”. But at some point in my practice my view shifted, and I have no real doubt on that issue.

If one believes in rebirth in the Buddhist sense, then the next adjacent belief is higher and lower realms – levels of existence in which the mind stream can take rebirth, including heavenly realms and hell realms. I’m not quite there yet, but I have suspended my disbelief. I have yet to personally observe a Deva (a higher-realm being; an angel), but I’ve found it works as a good principle to operate as though I believed in them. I reckon that I have one or more guardian Devas that are keeping an eye on me, and that helps me keep my precepts. It may not be literally true, but behaving as if it were true is helpful.

And, well, it may be true…

When I arrived at Wat Fah Kram near Bangkok at 4:45AM, I sat on a bench in the dark and thanked the Devas for my safe arrival, for the kindnesses that I received along the way. That thought expanded and I realized that the journey was much longer than just one train trip across Thailand, that I have been journeying for a long while indeed. And so today is an appropriately special day for gratitude; for my parents, family, friends, and teachers. For the seemingly random strangers who appear and bolster and encourage me along the way. For all those who contribute the sustenance of this life and the possibility of awakening.

Thank you so much!

May your heart overflow with gratitude,

The temple in the forest

I am brushing my teeth at an outdoor sink attached to a campground-style bathroom building made out of small red bricks. The water is sweet, the air is balmy, and my body is achy after sleep. It’s 3:06 AM and very dark, as even starlight is mostly blocked by the heavy tree canopy overhead, and I’ve turned off my flashlight to better enjoy the black stillness. In my peripheral vision I can barely perceive a ghostly hint of my white clothing, the lightest thing in the forest just now.
In the distance the sonorous tone from the bell tower is fading. The postulant had started ringing the bell at 3:00, “wake up!” and he persists for some minutes to make sure everyone gets the message, but now that task is done.
Suddenly a small damp weight lands on my shoulder – plop! Is that a big wet leaf? I fumble for my flashlight and glimpse the tree frog as he leaps from my shoulder to the ground and then immediately springs into the darkness. I turn and play my light on the building’s eve overhead and I see one of the familiar gekkoes that patrol the building, keeping the bugs under control. This particular specimen is the size of an overfed squirrel and elaborately marked, I reckon it to be the monarch among gekkoes locally. It gives a small croak and undulates away from my light. Perhaps the tree frog had been elbowing into its territory.
I stoop to wash my face in the cold water, dry off, and head back to my 8′ x 8′ hut to tidy up my bedding. As I pick my way along the footpath I hear crickets and cicadas softly chirruping, and now a light breeze rustles the leaves. I step over formations of oversize ants hurrying from one place to another in the forest floor. Their bite is exquisitely painful. A new friend here at the monastery compared the experience to having a lit match jammed into one’s skin to extinguish it. I can confirm that the comparison is apt, as I discovered on my third day. But they only attack if they perceive an assault, so they’re only responding to my carelessness. It’s best not to step on them in any event as I’ve taken a vow to refrain from taking any life, and that includes insects.
Back at my hut, or “kuti” as it’s called, I ascend the rickety wooden steps to land on an open porch, and enter the tiny room. The kuti is a small solitary building on stilts and below is an open space for sitting outdoors when it’s hot. The whole thing is made out of teak or similar hardwood, a readily available commodity back in the 70′s when it was built, but very dear nowadays.
I light a candle in front of the small brass Buddha statue in the corner. A previous resident had donated it and it is welcome in this otherwise dark and austere room. I have a few belongings piled in another corner.and my sleeping mat and sheets are still tangled on the floor.
It took me some days to get used to sleeping on a hardwood floor. Before I came here I had been working up to it by making a habit of sleeping on floors on an inflated camping pad. Here the custom is to use a folded blanket and a straw roll-up mat as a bed – and the folded blanket is considered a bit of a luxury. But I am 50 after all. Let the 25-year-olds sleep directly on the floor. I’m not there yet.
The sleeping on the floor bit is in keeping with the spirit of the place. It takes as its example the simplification of life and renunciation practices that the Buddha himself used to achieve his enlightenment. The monastery’s founder, the great forest monk Ajahn Chah, had something of a motto – “Eat little, sleep little, and talk little. This mode of practice is never wrong”.
The 30-year old teak floor makes ‘sleeping little’ fairly easy to do. After 4 or 5 hours on it, getting up is a relief.
After tidying up I make my way along the paths through the forest towards the meditation hall. Among the boughs I can see flashes of light showing other forest residents heading the same way. At 3:30 we’ll start chanting, and after 30 minutes of that we’ll have an hour of silent meditation, siting on the floor. It’s a concrete floor tiled with tough, thin vinyl tiles, reminiscent of the hallways in the high school I attended in Phoenix.
Another hard surface to be on. We don’t sit directly on the concrete. I have been issued a mat, which consists of a short length of straw matting between two layers of cloth. It offers the padding equivalent of a bath towel folded in half. It’s not much, but definitely makes the floor more bearable.
Why bear it at all? Do we love the pain and numbness that comes from sitting cross-legged like this? Not at all, but it goes back to the philosophy of simplicity. I like to think that Thoreau would have admired the place. Once you get used to it, it’s possible to sit on the concrete with tolerable discomfort. As soon as you stand up and walk around for a minute or so, all the pain goes away and there’s no harm done.
So, for the cost of that bit of discomfort there’s no need for carpeting or thick and expensive sitting mats and cushions, and the floor is wonderfully easy to clean and maintain in a tropical environment. And if it’s too much for some visitors there are some actual chairs available.
I’ve never seen one of the monks or novices sit in one of the chairs. That’s part of the ethos, to not accommodate one’s own desire for comfort. Perhaps it sounds awful, but when you get into the spirit of it there’s a kind of liberation to be found in not being a slave to your likes and dislikes.
Of course I have a long way to go before I no longer desire to sit in the chair, or sleep on a mattress, but seeing these monks who do without for years, and having them tell me that they have come to prefer it that way – I sense that I can do it too.
After the meditation it’s time to go out on alms round. Today I go out with two monks to receive alms from a small village south of the main gate. The monks bring their alms bowls and I bring a large cloth sack like a duffel bag, and several plastic bags. The monks will receive more alms than they can fit in their bowls, and I’m going along with my bag to take on the excess. No donations are refused even if we have more than enough because the villagers want to make merit by contributing to the monks’ support.
We head out the monastery gate barefoot and immediately leave the crooning soundscape of the forest and the limited views afforded by the crowded mottled tree trunks fade behind us as we plod out into rural, agrarian Thailand. Roosters crowing, barking dogs, woodsmoke, the desolate moan of traffic on the highway. The sky is lighter now and I can see rice fields and small land holdings stretching out towards the horizon of this Kansas-like farming region. The soil here is poor, as former rain-forest soil often is, and this is the poorest province in Thailand. Nearly all the trees that once stood here in a vast, impenetrable forest have gone, replaced by fields, woodlots, orchards, stockyards and villages.
We pass from dirt roads and fields, across a modern highway, and back to dirt roads again. After a 15 minute walk we approach the village, a collection of small farmhouses on small plots of land collected together on relatively higher ground. Dogs, poultry and water buffalo wander and laze in the yards in front of the tiny shack dwellings. The sun breaks the horizon and before us in the dirt kneels the first villager, a farm housewife, who has rice for the monks. As is the tradition, she has shucked her shoes so she too is barefoot when she makes the offering. The monks approach her silently, eyes down, and remove the covers from their bowls. She places a tied-up bag of still-warm cooked rice, hard-boiled eggs, and small cartons of soy milk into the two bowls, emptying her basket. She makes the prayer-like wai gesture to the monks as they move off.
We turn down another lane and more villagers are lining up to donate, more housewives, school children, old men, some kneeling, some standing.. Down one side of the road and back up the other, we collect the alms, as has been done for many years before my arrival. When the bowls get full we transfer the contents to my bag. In 15 minutes I’m lugging 30 lbs of food, all of it to go to the monastery’s collective breakfast table.

At this training monastery every monk goes out every day for alms, unless he is ill or fasting. This requirement for daily humble contact with the lay people is part of what keeps the two groups connected, and keeps the monks from evolving into self-sustaining hermits. They aren’t permitted to cultivate plants, cook, or store food. If they don’t go out begging for alms, they don’t eat.
However this begging is of a different quality than what we in the West usually associate with the term. The monks aren’t permitted to ask straight out for what they want, though they can respond to questions. They can’t try to engage people, block their path, hail them, make a pitch, loiter for any time, nor make a gesture to suggest giving. They mustn’t even say “thank you” as such a thing would suggest that the relationship between the villagers and the monks was one of food in exchange for personal gratitude. There’s much more to it than that.
All they are permitted to do is walk through the village and receive the offerings.
As we finish with the donors they put their shoes back on and begin quietly chatting with each other in a neighborly way and head back indoors to start the workday. Small holdings such as theirs yield an annual income of typically less than $1000 per working adult. And yet they feed the monks too, starting each day with an act of generosity.

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Nanachat check in

I’ve decided to stay a while longer at Wat Pah Nanachat. The practice is good here, nice and strong. I’ve slipped out for a bit to visit an internet cafe, so I must be brief. All is well. Love to you all. I’ll write more soon.

Report Card, leaving Chiang Mai

Today was the last day of the Thai class and my teacher gave me an “A” on my report card. Unlike in the U.S., here an “A” means Average. Oh, well. Language has never been my strong suit. From my experience with shopkeepers and others I figure I am moderately understandable, and I think I know enough to be able to ask for what I want, though often I don’t understand the reply!

I’m leaving Chiang Mai tomorrow and I’m sad to go. It’s really a great town, very manageable in size, friendly easygoing people, lots to do and see, and it is inexpensive. No wonder that it seems to be 20% ex-pats living here. Many people with more experience have told me it’s the most livable city in SE Asia. You can buy a 3-bedroom house here for about $30K, and live on about $500/month for food, utilities, transport, etc. It’s one of those places that, after you’ve been here for awhile, you start to think, “Hmmm. What would I have to do to be able to live here too…”

My next destination is Ubon Rachathani province, in the Northeast of the county. I’ll be staying at Wat Pah Nanachat, a sister monastery to Wat Abhayagiri in California. This will be the start of my Ajahn Chah pilgrimage – visiting the important Wats. In case I haven’t mentioned it before, Ajahn Chah is one of the continuation teachers in the latest reformation of Buddhism in Thailand, a phenomenon that cycles through the system about every 200 years or so. Meditation monks from the forest come out and influence the hierarchical clergy system with their practice and their popularity with devoted lay followers. Their writing and teaching causes many to take notice, and a widespread revival of “the real teaching” ensues. Ajahn Chah attracted many Western followers and established monasteries in Europe, Australia, New Zealand and the U.S.

After a week or 10 days at this first monastery, I’ll go to a series of 7 or 8 others, spending 2-3 days at each. Around the first week of December I’ll head back to Chiang Mai for a 10-day retreat at a meditation center here, maybe. That’s my vague plan, extremely subject to change. When I get some computer access between visits I’ll post updates.

A very short retreat

I did a 2-day retreat this week with monks from Wat Suan Dok at the Chiang Mai International Retreat center. I’ve been hungering for some more contact with fellow practitioners and I wanted a booster for my own daily practice, and this outing served the purpose well.

The lead monk, Ajahn Sunbon, is from the Karen tribe, indigenous to the hills straddling the border between Burma and Thailand. The retreat was intended to be a very basic introduction for raw beginners. I didn’t expect to learn anything new, but I did so anyway! Three variations on meditation techniques I already use, plus a deeper appreciation of the various influences on Thai culture that have helped make it the strange brew that it is.

After hearing the monk’s talks about these influences I can more clearly see aspects of Buddhism in Thailand that are “merely cultural”, the overlay of prior culture onto the adopted system of Buddhism. This topic alone deserves many essays that I’m not qualified to write. It bears on the issue of Buddhism as a religion vs. as a way of life / self-development. (Or should I say, “not-self-development” :-))

Festival reaches a fever pitch

If you can’t beat ‘em…

I held out until 8:00PM, but as the concussions and whistling of fireworks grew to a steady roar outside my window, I decided there’s nothing to do but have a closer look.  The Loi Krathong festival was demanding my attention.

I hopped on the bike and rode out to the river, through heavy throngs of cheerful Thais and foreigners. The sidewalks were crowded with vendors selling food,  fireworks and lanterns, the streets streaming with pedestrians threading their way through nearly-stopped traffic.  As I wheeled onto the bridge my pace was slowed by the crowd to a crawl, and I was buffeted by the volume of fireworks being set off on every side, and the blinding lights of sparklers, lanterns, and roman candles.

Children set off screamers and crackers on the sidewalk amongst the ankles of the crowd. Men and women lit fused works and tossed them over the edge to see them explode. Some less cautious souls simply dropped their entertainment on the pavement for all to duck away from and enjoy. Laughter, music and cheers bubbled as counterpoint to the thunder. A bottle rocket shrieked past me. My eyes burned with smoke and glare.

The sky all around was filled with a slow-moving river of glowing lanterns slowly ascending and being carried away, bearing with them the sins and prayers of their petitioners.

Having crossed the bridge I stopped to the side and shot a few minutes of video with my venerable Canon A610, posted above. A particularly huge explosion shattered the air, throwing water from the river below onto the bridge. That was no ordinary firework, more like a stick of dynamite. Ashes and drops of wax settled on my shoulders from the tide of lanterns and explosions overhead.

I turned and eased my way back across the bridge, going against the current of even more people coming to the party. I never saw any alcohol being consumed, but the mood was joyous, excited,  euphoric.  I was buoyed by the happiness around me, but relieved to get some distance from the sensory overload of the bridge.

And not everyone was partying. The massage-parlor ladies cooed invitations to me as I passed, the way they always do. I waved and smiled, the way I always do. The 2nd-shift beggars were out, having relieved their colleagues of the good begging spots around 5. The night market vendors were carrying on a feeble trade, their customers’ interests lying elsewhere.

Back in my flat I type another blog entry, waiting for the cacophony to die down.

Wishing everyone a very happy Loi Krathong!

Explosion-loving Yahoos

The residents of Chiang Mai are getting ready for the upcoming Loi Krathong festival, which starts tomorrow and runs for 4 days. This involves a lot of parades, ceremonies, beauty contests, and most of all, fireworks.

Fireworks, and paper hot-air balloon lanterns.

I’ve been reading about some of this, but the fireworks I’m getting first hand.

Every night.

All. Night. Long.

I suppose that with thousands of pounds of fireworks on hand it’s hard to resist setting off a few just to test the stock. For the last week the pace has slowly increased from a few odd booms in the night to something which sounds more like a city under siege.

The big fireworks event is supposed to be Monday night, but I can stand on my deck right now and see a pretty steady trickle of paper hot-air balloons going up, each with a suspended wax-soaked open wick burning like a torch, and possibly a payload of sparklers set to go off once the thing has climbed a bit. This along with various bottle-rockets, roman candles, fire-crackers, whistlers, M-80′s, cherry bombs, and all the rest being set off all around town. It’s very amusing, but not so great for sleep.

Despite that I’ve been getting enough rest to make it through my routines OK, and after next week it all falls apart. I’ll be finishing up my Thai class and heading out to take up residence at various Wats around the country.

More on all that later.