Thoughts from Thailand on Esotericism
I'm posting this for now in the moderator den because posting it on the public boards can have me jailed. I'll post it in the ethos when I'm out of Thailand. There is only a brief word about the king but unfortunately it would only take the most unfortunate of cases....how the hell they would trace it back to me I have no idea but hey I'm not risking a jail sentence in Thailand. It has also been written after a night out on a PC that isn't mine so it will give me a chance to save it and revise it adding in more detailed information when I'm sober
Relative to buddhism. This is just a quick hello from Thailand, a brief snapshot of my thoughts while I have internet access and am sober enough to use it (ish). At the minute I'm about 11 days into a trip to Thailand. I've been very distinctly seperated from the typical tourist culture due to the fact that I'm staying with a thai friend. That means living a thai life (though not working), eating where they eat, going to their temples, visiting the places they visit and avoiding the typical resort areas. This is a matter partly of neccessity thanks to a lack of money but also because to me it is pointless to travel somewhere this far away and stay in a holiday resort. It has its pros and its cons, eating ''issan food'', issan being a culture from the north east of thailand with a distinct slang (hints of laotian) and a fairly distinct food type that is pretty disgusting to someone like me with a western pallet not to mention slightly undesirable effects on the body and that isn't just limited to westerners. A typical example is papaya salad (somtum) which is salad mixed with papaya and typically a particularly smelly type of seafood I have forgotten. It is a smelly horrible diet, so I usually opt for normal thai diet with a smattering of 'falang' (western) food but the bowel movements are irregular and....interesting. Also the poverty is fairly apparent.
I believe you'll never see so many chelsea taxis (4x4's) as in Thailand, there are tons of them, every other car seemingly and all fairly new, but like the Italians they will live in a shack or a hut and drive a nice car instead. Different priorities seemingly. The restaurants are usually shacks, a normal looking bar or restaurant housed in a basic corrugated iron roof, or sometimes not even making the effort to have a normal bar merely a few stands to display the food and a freezer box for the water and pepsi. Riding a motorbike, and a motorbike taxi in Bangkok was quite frankly stupid and suicidal, but life in Thailand is cheap and it is treated as such. Good driving is mistaken for aggressive driving and the lack of a decent driving test is obvious, as well as the lack of education leading to some crazy stupid beliefs is equally apparent.
This rambling diatribe has finally got me to where I wanted to be with this, their beliefs. Up until recently, it is slowly being phased out, the older thais were terribly insulted if you displayed your feet to them even if you were just relaxing. They have a tremendous cult of personality built around their king, the average thai will stop speaking to you if you insult him, some will call the police and some will actually attack you. They are highly emotional or at least the ones I've met are. If you stand on a piece of currency near a policeman you will be arrested, it is a crime. In some ways though the guy (with an apparently murky past, the heir apparent was shot dead in the palace and this king ascended) is responsible for holding thailand together. There are two factions in the country that will erupt when this frail old man dies, that alone does not and should warrant the sheer level of fanaticism and devotion present in a large segment of the population.
They strongly believe ancestor worship has power, that King no5 as they call him, who was responsible for holding together a fragile kingdom of Siam (thailand) is revered above all others, possibly more than the Buddha. They believe that their parents and ancestors will have some power of influence over their lives.
So funny beliefs.... One of the things you encounter as a westerner who is a bit of rational empiricist and atheist but finds himself drawn to buddhism is a lot of skepticism. One of the central tenets of buddhism is to take things and test them, test ideas especially those held in buddhism with your peers, with those more knowledgable than you and with those around you and if after adequate examination they are proved to be useless discard them. If they are found to be good, adopt them and use them as best you can to further your progress in life. As a discipline, as a religion or as anything else it has always seemed to me to be primarily concerned with good mental health, happiness and the happiness of those around you. If anything it is the science of happiness. It is in many ways steps ahead of western psychology, though that doesn't stop many monks I've met from aquiring western psychological degrees at university, and undergoing all that neccessitates like the clinic work and the required personal therapy. I don't think anyone who has read the words of buddhism would reject an idea just because it wasn't in the buddhist canon of teaching. So I find myself drawing on all the ideas that seem useful in buddhism like many other western and educated easterners, dismissing the concepts that don't seem to make sense, aren't testable or cause unneccessary conflict in the system (usually because there are aspects of mythology that have been drawn into it or were used for the purposes of teaching). In the words of one famous buddhist, don't use what you learn in buddhism to be a better buddhist, use it to be a better you. It is also worth bearing in mind some scholars doubt that there are even any original surviving words of the buddha himself. A lot of it may indeed be recounted or remembered. Myth or not.
However inevitably, and usually from people who aren't buddhists, is the criticism that as a westerner who is to concerned with rationalism or the scientific method you will never be able to understand the true teachings, or that when you read more or study more you will inevitably through the need to test ideas and understand the true nature of buddhism lose the true nature of it. As though the typical slightly atheistic look at buddhism is missing some esoteric nature that the east ''gets'' that eastern buddhism is superior than western buddhism and we are lacking something. This is the myth that I intend to break. I already knew it was false, but I'd never really bothered to hold a fearsome debate. It is however the tradition at least in Tibet for the buddhist monks to engage in passionate and heated debate to test their ideas on buddhism, their is no blind acceptance. It is a shame that the rest of their practices aren't quite so enlightened but a lack of education and extreme poverty will do that to any culture.
I came to Thailand partly int the naive hope that I would learn more about buddhism as it is practiced most commonly in the east. In thailand that means therevaden buddhism mixed with some cultural beliefs. Only to find that the religion these people call ''buddhism'' actually has very little to do with it. I went to the Golden Palace (something palace anyway) which is the house of the king and the estates as well as housing an ancient and venerated statue called the emerald buddha. Surrounding this jade statue are what can only be described as hindu vedic effigies, infact the jade buddha which is held sacred is the only image of buddha I saw in this massive estate that is supposedly a buddhist sanctuary. The rest of it is covered to the last bastion and pillar in effigies of spirits, demons and vedic god images. I went with my thai friend to ''pray'' which involved lighting a candle, a few large incence sticks and then laying a flower before a sacred cow before bowing down. Upon entering the temple of the emerald buddha we were forbidden to take photographs and then permitted to a gaudy large shrine where people made obeiseiance in the most ridiculous fashion. I then questioned my friend asking, ''you do realise the buddha said he wasn't a god and wasn't to be worshipped, that the wisdom and healing buddhism comes from within, you won't recieve aid by bowing a few times but through meditative practice or some such? You do meditate don't you, if you believe this strongly surely you must follow one of the most basic practices?'' To which I recieved either deliberate or unavoidable blank incomprehension. The language barrier was strong despite the mix of hybrid thai and english we converse in.
At some point and for some reason I won't go into, I recieved a touching gift of a buddha and later recieved an extremely nice silver chain with which to hang it around my neck. As a gift I treasure it, though for different reasons. Later in Bangkok I was drinking beer at my friends brothers which is an army barracks. I will digress for just a moment to describe how thai army people live. It is a concrete apartment block, the toilets are a porcelain basin in the floor with no flush but a reservoir opposite along with a bowl. God knows what would happen if I had had to drop one of my prodigous western turds into that small repository without and adequate flush. The concrete surroundings housed this small cubicle of a ''toilet'' a bedroom, a small living room and bedroom without a door just a gap dividing the two. Though there was a TV next to the fridge and a laptop with webcam, MSN and wireless. Just one of the many odd dissonances you get when examining the curious mix of poverty and privilege. The guy in question certainly eats out more than me, drives a mitsibushi warrior which is certainly nicer than my Titanium Mondeo.....odd. Anyway upon walking in the first time I encountered this gentleman praying to the buddha. His eyes partially closed rapidly reciting a prayer out of a book, very rapidly and quickly with seemingly little thought. It was highly ritualistic and vapid to be honest. Later this man gave me a lift back to my hotel for the night and proceeded to call his girlfriend while I was in the car and say he was going for beers with me, instead he was going to meet another of the 3 girls he had on the go. This about 6 hours after ritualistically and passionatly (if pointlessly) praying to a statue of the representation of a religion that espouses above all other things honesty in action, thought and word and in lessening pain not increasing it. When enquiring about the buddha statue/amulet/whatever around my neck I was told ''it has great power if you pray with it''
The overall impression that you gather when following around thai people and their daily ritualistic practices, the bowing and ''sacrifices'' of flowers and joss sticks is that they are highly supersticious with both their religion and their beliefs in general. That they will believe anything gives them luck for bad or good like a sports player with a smelly jock strap or lucky shirt he refuses to watch. This has seemingly occured from the migration of various beliefs into their own traditional beliefs structures. While one of them has been buddhism, and the overall belief system has come to be named buddhism you have extremely strong hindu influences from cambodia and india, chinese spiritualism and native superstition. That a monk will often become so to escape poverty and will happily bless a cowshed to stop cows dying and bring buddhas blessings down upon people to bring them luck.
It is a shame that up until now I have not had a chance to debate ideas with an educated monk, perhaps I would have found more satisfaction. The central tenet that should be addressed though is this, that while a western buddhist has not entered a monastic order and devoted decades to meditation of 8 hours a day the chances are due to more education and more inclination to look he probably knows more about buddhism than 99% of other self proclaimed buddhists in the east. In fact talking to a westerner who has virtually no interest in the religion I was told in a broad aussie accent, ''its no bloody good asking a thai about buddhism, they haven't got a bloody clue, its all bowing scraping and worshipping crazy statues hoping it will bring them luck''
One of the people I do have a lot of respect for was actually ordained in Bangkok, Ajahn Brahm a Cockney running a western Aussie Buddhist society and one of the most popular buddhists going certainly doesn't seem to want to set up a divide between those who would believe certain aspects of buddhist thought over another, such is not a very productive path. Far more productive is finding the common ground of having a code to live by mainly avoiding suffering in yourself through the practices that lead to good mental health like positive actions and thinking as well as a bit of meditation.
If you have ever wondered why Thailand seems like a contradiction in terms, buddhist yet full of sex drugs and violence it is because language and ideas are highly subjective. Never more so when you combine poverty and a lack of education though. Buddhism isn't some magic pill that will cure all ills, as some would claim about that or other religions. It isn't responsible for morality in society, people are. It is a science to reduce suffering, reduce pain even if that pain is considered relatively minor by society like mild depression or simply being unhappy. It is to some what it should be, the science of understanding your own conscious process'. I have found it to be almost a twin to Neuro Linguistic Psychology as they are both concerned with a healthy brain and consciousness and they are both lacking in some things but hugely abundant in others if your someone like me who was seeking better mental health but reluctant or skeptical about therapy. It won't make a good country, if your lucky it will make a better you. It is incredibly selfish and I love it for that.
Forgive my rambling thoughts that are so brief, the sheer amount of difference has impacted me in so many ways and there is so much to talk about I can only briefly touch on any one thing as there is so much to think about. Certainly made me appreciate the UK a bit more than I did before, even if I am thoroughly enjoying myself.
My favourite NLP podcaster Mark J Ryan talked about how you can bring things to another level of abstraction. What we can just consider as Snow, can to a snowboarder be soft snow, wet snow or a dozen other types of snow. When you examine a snow fall you can make further distinctions, about how it falls and how it lies. When you look at snowflakes you can bring it to a whole other level of abstraction. Travelling has done that for me. I can understand now how potentially travelling can improve a personality. England and Scotland has always seemed to me to be special, I now know why on a whole new level of abstraction, I can make finer distinctions about why I like it, what the differences are and more specifics about why I like it. The forests of the UK are spectacular but I now can compare them to a Thai Jungle, the sky, the air quality, food, restaurants and many many other things.
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Originally Posted by Denny Crane!
