tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-73130697533938772602024-03-13T21:56:57.989+07:00Somtow's WorldUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger421125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7313069753393877260.post-43754215633068790132019-07-09T12:24:00.001+07:002019-07-09T12:24:26.695+07:00Somtow's BlogOwing to the problems with maintaining too many websites, my blog is now located at my main website, somtow.com<br />
<br />
There are two blogs — a regular one and a dream diary. Both can be found there.<br />
<br />
Best<br />
Somtow<br />
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This site remains as an archive.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7313069753393877260.post-71330915418439320442016-06-30T02:32:00.001+07:002016-06-30T02:32:47.948+07:00Heaven of Thirty-Three<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/jrY0w5r1n3g" width="480"></iframe>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7313069753393877260.post-92208381405760871362016-03-10T13:32:00.002+07:002016-03-10T13:32:56.764+07:00Important Announcement: New HomeI am consolidating all my online material at somtow.com.<br />
<br />
Therefore this blog will now only remain online as an historical archive.<br />
<br />
If you go to somtow.com, you will find two blogs, a regular blog and a dream blog, as well as access to everything else.<br />
<br />
Please enjoy.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7313069753393877260.post-62760803186191490202015-10-11T11:40:00.002+07:002015-10-11T11:53:53.064+07:00Trisdee's Subtitle ControversyI feel impelled to comment on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Trisdee">Trisdee na Patalung</a>’s little subtitling fracas. This tempest in a teapot erupted this morning and is causing people all over the spectrum to make comments. I think the controversy itself is a silly one; but it illuminates a much bigger issue which I would like to address and that is the state of English language teaching and proficiency in Thailand.<br />
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History: Trisdee and his friend Tom emerged from a showing of The Martian, and were discussing how dreadful the Thai subtitles were. This discussion blew up into an internet flame war, because the translator of these subtitles turns out to have been one of the most highly respected subtitlers in the field, having done this kind of work for years and being responsible for the subtitles of many of the top Hollywood pictures shown in Thailand. Trisdee pointed out one or two egregious errors and this lady responded with an astonishing level of vehemence and self-righteousness, driving nail after nail into her own coffin and revealing over and over again the depth of her ignorance of the subtleties of the English language.</div>
<div>
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So let’s start with the basic problem: Thai subtitles, generally speaking, are abysmal. One sees elementary errors all the time. They have not improved in the many decades in which I’ve happened to watch movies in this country. The kind of errors Trisdee pointed out are commonplace.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglMyQ5mKa-XGuum9gCwoPB3g5qONVFmIMT0SgOF7gLobGm2XxMQpHg5GAYCaGYxWpFEGEAZR4vdbn71xC1enZEDzrZgSkc7RqLoPJ4LOXuCGoSqjltq_twlw-x2LSmLiuYdhEyqtlcjY0/s1600/Trisdee+na+Patalung.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglMyQ5mKa-XGuum9gCwoPB3g5qONVFmIMT0SgOF7gLobGm2XxMQpHg5GAYCaGYxWpFEGEAZR4vdbn71xC1enZEDzrZgSkc7RqLoPJ4LOXuCGoSqjltq_twlw-x2LSmLiuYdhEyqtlcjY0/s640/Trisdee+na+Patalung.JPG" width="426" /></a></div>
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This all goes back to the way that English is taught in Thailand, and the fact that almost all those in teaching positions are not really fluent, but can quickly rise to the level of being perceived as “experts.” Although almost everyone one runs into here has some knowledge of English, one almost never encounters a genuine command of the subtleties of idiom, let alone of nuance, implication, irony, or humor.</div>
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One of the few people I know who actually does know English in a truly native way is Trisdee. The reason that he is this way is that he grew up in my home, which is an English-speaking household. He has been exposed to colloquial English in many varieties both British and American, and has always taken the trouble to ask me to explain complexities, weird etymologies, and aspects of language not apparent on the surface. </div>
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The examples Trisdee gave in his exegesis were all extremely obvious mistakes that any native speaker would immediately notice, yet this translator flew into an insecure rage at the notion that she might not actually be quite as knowledgable about colloquial contemporary English as she is perceived.</div>
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Even if every word in a film script were to be translated literally and correctly into Thai, the audience would miss more than half of the content of those words, because language is not a series of equivalences, but a living thing. But correct translation would be a really good start, and it’s not really happening. If, as she herself seems to maintain, this particular translator is one of the most highly-regarded in the field, one hesitates to think about what the worst examples of the genre might be.</div>
<div>
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This lady may think that because Trisdee doesn’t have a degree in English or whatever, that he is not qualified to critique her translation. But of course, his ability to make these sorts of comments is in itself prima facie evidence of his qualifications.<br />
I, of course, do have a degree in English, and I’ve published almost sixty books in English and have received a great deal of critical praise for my use of English. But more apropos is the fact that two of my novels are cited in the Oxford Dictionary of Idiom as source texts for correct idiomatic usage and one of my books has been an A Level text in the past. Therefore, if I tell her that Trisdee’s criticisms of her incorrect translations are spot on, I really don’t think she can dismiss me in the same way.</div>
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For example, it was evident from her protestations about the word “booster” (“I’ll spell it any way I like”) that the problem is not how it is spelled in Thai but that she simply didn’t realize that it comes from the word “boost”, not the word “boots”. </div>
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In every case, her overblown rantings seemed to be about “How dare you have the chutzpah to attack a great one such as myself” and never about, “That might have been a mistake, I’ll take another look.”</div>
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Thailand is entering a period in which the use of English is going to become a major passport to advancement on a social, cultural and business level. Thailand’s decades of insularity are ending very quickly. This means that there are going to be a lot of “Emperor has no clothes”-type revelations, and — given the near godlike status afforded to those believed to be experts — a lot of those “experts” are going to be shaken to the core, especially by young people like Trisdee who actually do know a thing or two.</div>
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I think that no matter how old or experienced you think you are, it’s never too late to go back to school. I have learned a lot from all of my students, and others my age should do the same.</div>
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<br /></div>
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<a href="http://drama-addict.com/2015/10/09/%E0%B8%84%E0%B8%A3%E0%B8%B9%E0%B8%84%E0%B8%B0%E0%B8%84%E0%B8%A3%E0%B8%B9%E0%B9%81%E0%B8%9B%E0%B8%A5%E0%B8%8B%E0%B8%B1%E0%B8%9A%E0%B8%9C%E0%B8%B4%E0%B8%94/" target="_blank">Link to a juicy part of this flame war</a></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7313069753393877260.post-60476937812900827962015-10-01T21:16:00.000+07:002015-10-01T21:16:48.151+07:00Somtow Television<object height="344" width="640"><param name="movie" value="http://static.embed.worldtv.com/flash/embed-player-slick.swf" /><param name="quality" value="high" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="flashvars" value="domain=http%3A%2F%2Fembed.worldtv.com%2F&rootUrlPath=http%3A%2F%2Fembed.worldtv.com%2F&staticRootUrlPath=http%3A%2F%2Fstatic.embed.worldtv.com%2F&channelId=1630156" /><embed width="640" height="344" flashvars="domain=http%3A%2F%2Fembed.worldtv.com%2F&rootUrlPath=http%3A%2F%2Fembed.worldtv.com%2F&staticRootUrlPath=http%3A%2F%2Fstatic.embed.worldtv.com%2F&channelId=1630156" allowfullscreen="true" movie="http://static.embed.worldtv.com/flash/embed-player-slick.swf" allowscriptaccess="always" quality="high" wmode="transparent" name="embedPlayer" style="" src="http://static.embed.worldtv.com/flash/embed-player-slick.swf" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" ></embed></object>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7313069753393877260.post-70674155112730789112015-01-20T12:22:00.001+07:002015-01-20T12:22:23.970+07:00On Brundibar<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">THAIS and the HOLOCAUST</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Why Opera Siam is producing “Brundibar”</span></div>
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<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">A few years ago, I casually mentioned the Second World War to one of my young students and I suddenly realized that he didn’t know anything about it. He didn’t know that Thailand entered the war on the side of the Axis and certainly didn’t know of the brilliant subterfuge by which this country avoided being severely penalized at the end of the war. He didn’t really know who Hitler was, and he had certainly never heard of the Holocaust.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">From that time on, I had occasion to ask more than a couple of dozen young people what they knew about WWII, and discovered that my experience was not an aberration. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">Recently, the use of Hitler as a comedy icon by Thai students has stirred much anger in the international community, but that anger has mostly elicited bewilderment in the offenders. They simply really don’t know about it.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">This is why I realized we must produce this opera, <i>Brundibar, </i>composed for children by a brilliant Czech composer who was imprisoned in the Terezin “ghetto” — and performed over fifty times by the children of that camp. An opera that was filmed by the Nazis and shown in the propaganda film <i>The Führer grants the Jews a City, </i>to give the world the impression that millions of Jews were not being put to death in the most monstrous machinery of genocide ever conceived. An opera from which, after its usefulness to the Nazis had been served, the entire cast, crew, orchestra, and the composer and the director were subsequently shipped off to be gassed in Auschwitz. </span></div>
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<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><i>Brundibar </i> is a fairy tale about two children who need milk to save their sick mother. They try to raise money by singing in the village, but their music is drowned out by the monotonous and hypnotic drone of an organ grinder, a mustachioed villain named Brundibar.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">With the help of the animals and children in the village, Pepicek and Anninka manage to break the organ grinder’s spell, and their beautiful song moves the villagers who finally chip in to help their mother.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">It’s a feel-good story about good and evil, but it is much more than that. When you read the script, it is perfectly obvious that Brundibar is Hitler. When the whole village sings in triumph about defeating the dictator and overcoming his venality, and about how love of family and country trump tyranny, we have to realize they were defying the Nazis right in front of their very noses, using the only weapons they had: words and music.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">One survivor said in an interview, “We didn’t know whether it was because the Nazis couldn’t understand Czech, or whether it was simply that they knew they were going to kill us anyway, and didn’t care.”</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">In Munich last year, Trisdee and I met Greta Klingsberg, an 85-year-old woman who had played Anninka in Terezin, been subsequently sent to Auschwitz and managed to survive until liberation. I asked her whether she had any message for the children in Thailand who are about to play <i>Brundibar, </i>and she said, “Enjoy the music! And enjoy what you are doing.” And later she said as well, “It is so important that Hans Krása’s music should live on.”</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">And this music is sheer genius: quickly reorchestrated for the available resources in a concentration camp that happened to contain some of the best musicians in the region, it is a score dripping with sweetness and irony, its melodies inspired by Czech folk music with a generous helping of Yiddishkeit.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">In this production of <i>Brundibar, </i>I wanted to clearly show the irony that this work, so full of beauty and innocence, was being performed in the Terezin camp by those who, in the eyes of their captors, were already dead. </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzICshC274SEU3hj9uu1-yvJ-Z4Pq-e9J20Go4H0B69MlKeIQcG3XTR6fznze3omMkaxqZiXMIkZ6N39MLBS-f4HeQQccKLfjYVH_8r_q98RUvB-BzCYif32yFR71yXAiH42fqhJuiGag/s1600/IMGM4505.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzICshC274SEU3hj9uu1-yvJ-Z4Pq-e9J20Go4H0B69MlKeIQcG3XTR6fznze3omMkaxqZiXMIkZ6N39MLBS-f4HeQQccKLfjYVH_8r_q98RUvB-BzCYif32yFR71yXAiH42fqhJuiGag/s1600/IMGM4505.JPG" height="640" width="426" /></a></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">This is why I’ve anchored the fable of picturesque villages and talking animals within a reality that the children who first performed this opera were about to experience. I’ve set an iconic concentration camp gateway right in the faces of the audience, in order to set up a zone of discomfort so we are forced to think about the work in its historical context. I’ve created a subdued, grey world in which splashes of color - like the yellow stars or Brundibar’s bright red barrel organ - are jarring and disorienting.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">We are also prefacing the opera with a mini-concert of music and poetry - all composed and performed originally at the Terezin camp. It includes poems written by the children which are almost unbearable in their intensity. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">Yesterday at one of the rehearsals I walked into the costume room where they were sewing yellow stars onto the costumes. At that moment, though I know that theatre is “make-believe”, the past became so real that I began weeping uncontrollably. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">As long as we think that the past is something that was done by others to others, we will never really understand the present. The past is a mirror into which we dare not look, yet only by looking can we see who we really are.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
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<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><i>Performances of BRUNDIBAR are free to the public. They are taking place Jan 22, 23, and 24 at 8 pm, and Jan 24 at 4 pm at the Small Hall of the Thailand Cultural Center. As the theatre only holds 220 seats, advance pre-registration is recommended: </i><a href="http://allevents.in/bangkok/brundibar/"><span class="s2"><i>http://allevents.in/bangkok/brundibar/</i></span></a><i> has a clickable form for reservations. Otherwise, write to </i><a href="mailto:tickets@bangkokopera.com"><span class="s2"><i>tickets@bangkokopera.com</i></span></a><i>, or come to the door.</i></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7313069753393877260.post-23675743027954589122014-08-19T22:34:00.001+07:002014-08-19T22:34:53.845+07:00Somtow conducts Mahlers THE SONG OF THE EARTH<a href="http://allevents.in/bangkok/926647800695614#.U_NukCRIgEM.blogger">Somtow conducts Mahlers THE SONG OF THE EARTH</a>: In Loving Memory of HRH Princess Galyani VadhanaDepartment of Cultural Promotion and Opera Siam presentThailand Cultural CenterWednesday September 10at 8 pmFor tickets see belowSomtow once promised HRUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7313069753393877260.post-83994992266138927232014-08-18T07:29:00.001+07:002014-08-18T07:29:30.754+07:00Dan no Ura - World Premiere of Somtow's opera<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/HZmDj24I75I" width="480"></iframe>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7313069753393877260.post-51646194835263314512014-06-17T21:50:00.001+07:002014-06-17T21:50:41.531+07:00Siam Sinfonietta in Central Park<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/rD2cZqzjh_c" width="480"></iframe>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7313069753393877260.post-45927973473460281532013-11-27T23:49:00.001+07:002013-11-27T23:49:42.050+07:00How to Bring Thaksin Home (and why he should return)As I'm not a politician, my thought processes are not that subtle. I'd like to propose a very simple solution to the huge dilemma that Thailand is in right now. A lot of very complex solutions are being considered right now, most of which involve moving millions of people around a congested city, impeaching half the government, or shooting people. But there are much easier ways to handle our problems.<br />
<br />
The first problem which seems to afflict about half the country is, "How can we bring Thaksin home?"<br />
<br />
Well, duh, he buys a plane ticket. <i>Huh? I thought he was banned from the country.</i> No, he is not not "in exile" as the foreign press is so fond of saying, excising the word "self-imposed" in the interests of dumbing itself down for the sound-bite-conditioned audience.<br />
<br />
You see, some key words are also missing from the question posed above. They are the words "without going to jail."<br />
<br />
Is jail so terrible? Would Thaksin really spend more than a token amount of time in prison before receiving some kind of pardon? <br />
<br />
The point is that being willing to spend even one day in jail would go a long way toward rehabilitating this man's claim to "statesmanship." <br />
<br />
I can hear him grinding his teeth right now. "Why should I spend a day in jail for being caught with my hand in the cookie jar? Look at all the hands that are still reaching into that jar."<br />
<br />
There are two answers to that. First, just because everyone else is doing it doesn't make it right. And second, you shouldn't have tried to take <i>all</i> the cookies.<br />
<br />
Spending even a token amount of time in jail would convince many people that your party was serious about fighting corruption. When P.M. Yingluck stated the other day that this was a primary goal of her party, it was widely seen as a joke. Your willingness to go to jail would be an amazingly statesmanlike gesture. It would be as if someone had opened up the dusty cave of political corruption and finally let in the first rays of sunlight.<br />
<br />
Thaksin coming home and taking his lumps would remove all sorts of obstacles in Thailand's journey towards a better democracy. His party would no longer need to gyrate, manipulate and deceive with bogus amnesty laws, and we can get on to real amnesty.<br />
<br />
Real amnesty will only occur after real transparency. Which means that there needs to be an honest, public display of <i>mea culpa</i> from everyone who has betrayed the trust of the Thai people for the last several years.<br />
<br />
Which means people would have to realize that it is okay to lose face. Indeed, if you lose a little face now, you can gain a lot more later.<br />
<br />
It means that the people who seized the airport have to come clean and admit that they crossed the line from acceptable dissidence to hooliganism.<br />
<br />
It means that those who shouted slogans about burning down the city will have to admit that they, too, crossed the line of civilized, democratic discourse.<br />
<br />
It means that the military will have to admit that, well-intentioned though their takeover might have been, they completely blew the aftermath, and made things worse.<br />
<br />
It means that those who hold a majority in parliament must admit that there are constitutional limits to their power and that a system of checks and balance is supposed to be in place. <br />
<br />
Amnesty is <i>forgiveness. </i>You can't be forgiven if you don't admit you've done anything wrong ... or worse, if you don't even <i>think </i>you've done anything wrong because you think that your rights are more important than everyone else's rights.<br />
<br />
So that is my solution. As I don't have the subtle mind of a politician, I know it won't work, but I propose it nonetheless:<br />
<br />
Mr. Thaksin, buy a plane ticket, come back to this country from which you were never exiled, and accept the rule of law.<br />
<br />
Once people see that even you are able to do this, things will start to fall into place. I believe that others, too, from both sides of the divide, will start to put their country ahead of their own interests. You won't smell like a rose right away, you understand. I mean, there's the little matter of the extrajudicial killing of a few thousand alleged drug lords, the inhumane treatment of the Muslim community, the manipulation of legal loopholes in order to terrorize our once-free press, and what else? Oh yeah, corruption. But you would be surprised at how much people are willing to forgive, if you only show a little shred of remorse.<br />
<br />
Even though I'm not getting a million bucks a month for this advice, unlike a certain PR firm in the U.S., I believe it is the best advice you will ever receive. <br />
<br />
If you try this advice and it happens to work, of course, I'd be glad to accept the fees you're paying the other guy.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7313069753393877260.post-55393060683911756492013-11-23T12:50:00.002+07:002013-11-23T12:50:21.472+07:00STATUS UPDATE - Somtow ReissuesSTATUS UPDATE<br />
<br />
Dear friends:<br />
<br />
It has been my plan to make sure that all 59 of the books I have written so far can easily be obtained by anyone who wants to read them.<br />
<br />
So, I have been returning all my out of print books to print via DIPLODOCUS PRESS, the publishing company I created eight years ago.<br />
<br />
As of November 23, today, here is the progress report:<br />
<br />
The Inquestor Tetralogy -<br />
all four books now in print<br />
<br />
The Riverrun Trilogy<br />
all three books now in print, the third volume available as an independent book for the first time<br />
<br />
The Timmy Valentine Series<br />
All three Vampire Junction Books back in print<br />
<br />
Mainstream/Thailand-related<br />
Jasmine Nights<br />
Opus 50<br />
Dragon's Fin Soup - all back in print<br />
The Stone Buddha's Tears (English language version by Post Books available only in Thailand) - in print in hard and soft<br />
The Other City of Angels, back in print<br />
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Coming Soon<br />
The Shattered Horse, should be in print within a few days<br />
Mallworld, waiting for scanning<br />
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New Books<br />
Bible Stories for Secular Humanists<br />
available in both hard and soft<br />
Sonnets about Serial Killers<br />
available in both hard and soft<br />
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Caravaggio Times Two</div>
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available<br />
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and yes, here is a link....</div>
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7313069753393877260.post-8483236123649569112013-10-12T13:53:00.001+07:002013-10-12T13:53:19.609+07:00How Not To Run An Airline (Part Two)<br />
It's been a few months since the last blog. Indeed, I am not blogging very much these days. For the last eighteen months, my entire life has been in an emotional limbo. At some point, since these pages often have a confessional tone, I may reveal why, but I don't think I'm quite ready yet.<br />
<br />
However, I think a report on the resolution of the Air Asia incident might prove entertaining....<br />
<br />
You see, a week or so after the incident written about below, I received a response from the owner of Air Asia. He apologized for the incident and said it seemed to be about the intransigence of a single employee, not Air Asia policy. All this is true. I wondered whether they would give me any free flights, or at the very least pay some compensation, since I had paid the premium fee in order to be able to get off the plane quickly, and Ms. Salaya had caused the entire off-loading of the passengers to be delayed by forty minutes with her eccentric accusations.<br />
<br />
It chanced, however, that yesterday I came to fly Air Asia again, and again I was travelling with my nephew Top. We were in Chiengmai airport and the line onto the plane wasn't moving.<br />
<br />
"Maybe Salaya's on this flight, kicking up some other fuss," I joked.<br />
<br />
"Ha, ha," Top said, "Let's fly the Hong Kong leg again sometime, just to visit our old friend."<br />
<br />
And so, laughing and joking as we waiting an inordinately long time in a queue that seemed to last forever, we eventually came face to face with Ms. Salaya. She had changed her hairstyle, and at first I didn't realize it was her ... I had to double-check with Top, who actually had to look at my blog to see if her photograph matched. It did.<br />
<br />
Salaya never looked at us, never made any kind of eye contact so I couldn't very well initiate a conversation.<br />
<br />
When we sat down, Top said, "I forgot to tell you; the owner's daughter told me that Salaya was suspended for five days as a result of 'The Incident'."<br />
<br />
I thought this was eminently fair: she should be taught a lesson, rather than actually being kicked out. I never wanted to be responsible for the destruction of her entire career as a flight attendant. It did occur to me that this domestic run was probably less prestigious than Hong Kong, so perhaps she had also been reassigned to a slightly less glamorous route.<br />
<br />
In any case the staff were exceptionally polite at all times. Except Salaya that is; she avoided any possibility of contact whatsoever, and hid in the back whenever there was a reason for the flight attendants to go up and down the aisle.<br />
<br />
Now Top, you must understand, is not un-mischievous. He said, "I'll find a way to talk to her, whether she wants to or not." So shortly before landing, he went to the lavatory, which had been locked for descent, and told her he really had to go, so she had to unlock it. When he exited, he said to her, "Why don't you check the lavatory out? Maybe someone has activated a life vest."<br />
<br />
"Kha, kha, kha," said Ms Salaya. As Top returned to his seat, she then spent the next few minutes with a colleague, turning the lavatory inside out. <br />
<br />
It was a little cruel of Top, but she did subject us to a ridiculous police investigation and hold up an entire flight on the ground....<br />
<br />
But here's the delicious part. Top and I were sitting somewhere in the 8th row of the plane. After it landed, on the way out, I decided, on a whim, to look under the seats in Row 1, the row we had been sitting in when the fateful incident in Hong Kong occurred.<br />
<br />
On that occasion, Top was in 1F, the window seat on the starboard side. I made a joke to Top as we walked passed that row of seats on our way out.<br />
<br />
"I bet the life jacket's missing again," I said.<br />
<br />
We both looked over to Seat 1F.<br />
<br />
I glanced under the seat.<br />
<br />
Guess what?<br />
<br />
<i>The life jacket was missing.</i><br />
<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7313069753393877260.post-29658776699635571932013-05-31T12:15:00.000+07:002013-05-31T12:35:21.731+07:00How Not to Run an Airline<div style="text-align: center;">
How Not to Run an Airline</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFWvci_-z3MpqRbloCkXLZScXPz3t4DYLdV1M4YSVOHAY8eg-QG3N2GjyB9NsyFRPAWAS5thw_zzsWS1ct6x4vmth0buo3i5bBRLtsWqWzkzD0fJ1zZhxVyyeo9h15H8XdyL_WlCE8TKQ/s1600/photo.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFWvci_-z3MpqRbloCkXLZScXPz3t4DYLdV1M4YSVOHAY8eg-QG3N2GjyB9NsyFRPAWAS5thw_zzsWS1ct6x4vmth0buo3i5bBRLtsWqWzkzD0fJ1zZhxVyyeo9h15H8XdyL_WlCE8TKQ/s400/photo.JPG" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Miss Salaya, the Grand Inquisitor of Air Asia</td></tr>
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<br />
I would like to share with my friends a wild and hideous experience I had last week travelling on Air Asia to Hong Kong with my nephew Top, one of Thailand's outstanding young violinists.<br />
<br />
I had paid extra money for the privilege of sitting in the front row of the plane, close to the lavatory and with the advantage of being able to be the first off the plane. At the beginning of the flight, we enjoyed the privilege greatly; I used the loo a few times, Top did so once, we had a meal, and we both fell asleep; it looked like it would be a pleasant flight.<br />
<br />
About 40 minutes from arrival, I was awakened by a conversation; the stewardess was interrogating Top. She was accusing him of stealing the life jacket from underneath his seat and inflating it in the lavatory. And she was doing so in a manner which suggested that he had murdered someone. <br />
<br />
Top had done no such thing, of course, and dozens of people had gone to the lavatory since we had done so near the beginning of the flight. <br />
<br />
I said to her, "I watched him go to the toilet. To remove the live vest, you would have to get up, reach under the seat, and actually physically take it out. This is not an act that I would fail to notice. He did not do so."<br />
<br />
She said, "But you are travelling with him, and therefore you are lying."<br />
<br />
I asked Miss Salaya (I noted the name) whether the life vest was in fact now missing from under his seat. She said it was the only one missing. I asked how she knew. (She had not looked under his seat, or any other seat.) She said she just knew. I asked whether the live vests had been properly tallied before takeoff. She said they had been. I said, "Do you have a checklist with everything properly checked off?" She spluttered and fumed. I said, "Have you questioned the dozens of people who used the toilet after Top, to determine why none of them saw an inflated life vest in the toilet, which must have filled up the space and made it impossible to use the facilities?" She spluttered and raged some more, and kept insisting that we were lying. I asked her whether her aggressive and inquisitorial manner might not be an attempt to cover up for the airline's own negligence in not properly checking every item before takeoff. She insisted that <i>all </i>the evidence pointed to Top as the culprit, and that I simply lying, and that my point of view didn't fit the facts — however, she did not furnish any facts to contradict my point of view.<br />
<br />
The stewardess's behaviour went far beyond an attempt to find out what had happened. It was an attempt to bully me and Top into perjuring ourselves — presumably because if Top did not "confess", the only alternative truth would have been that the airline had not performed its pre-flight check thoroughly enough. Which is a far more credible possibility than the theory the stewardess was trying to ram down our throats - without<i> </i>even bothering to look under Top's seat, or anyone else's seat, or question anyone else, and merely because Top, a seasoned air traveller with thousands upon thousands of air miles under his belt, looked young and therefore was clearly some kind of juvenile delinquent. Her posturing and bullying were reminiscent of a bad TV courtroom drama, and had nothing to do whatsoever with establishing any facts.<br />
<br />
Indeed, during the entire period of the stewardess's questioning, she was insisting that the life vest under Top's seat was missing, so since we were flying over water this entire time, according to her statement the airline must have been criminally liable for that entire period should any accident have occurred. However, Miss Salaya, the stewardess, did not consider the idea of looking under the seat, checking whether their system had misregistered, or any other answer other than an assumption of Top's guilt.<br />
<br />
After some twenty minutes of this grilling, the stewardess returned to her seat because the plane had to land. As soon as it landed, she announced that no one was to leave the plane.<br />
<br />
Six policemen then boarded the plane and the stewardess spoke energetically to them and pointed furiously to us. The policemen began barking viciously in Cantonese. I said, "I haven't a clue what you're talking about — please find an interpreter."<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Salaya denouncing the passengers to the authorities.</td></tr>
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Eventually a more senior police officer who spoke English showed him. Once I explained the situation to him, he began to realize the absurdity of it all. The stewardess was still standing around being accusatory, but the officer could see that they had absolutely no evidence to prove that Top was some kind of criminal.<br />
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<br />
Unfortunately, they had released all the other passengers so there was in fact no way the truth could now be arrived at, and they never performed a check on any seats to see whether any other life jackets were missing. Since we were seated in the front row, the stewardess had simply seized on the most convenient suspects before launching into her Torquemada-like rant.<br />
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"Your uncle!!! Why??"</div>
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<br />
We were detained for some forty minutes despite the fact that I paid extra to be the first to leave the plane. In the end the police officer said, "Of course we cannot rule out the possibility that Top did this, but I don't know them and I don't know you, and there is simply no evidence." He then let us go.<br />
<br />
Well, yes. I told her so in the first place.<br />
<br />
As we left, Top took the stewardess's photo in an attempt to have a record of the situation as we will of course complain to Mr. Bijleveld, the CEO of the company, whose daughter is Top's school friend. She flew into a rage at that point, leading me to suspect that it was beginning to dawn on her that the airline might indeed have been negligent in the first place and that she might actually get into trouble. Oh yes, we informed Salaya that we could get to her boss very easily. In the last 30 seconds of our sojourn with Air Asia, Salaya suddenly became very sweet and told us how we must understand that she was only doing her duty, etc. etc. <br />
<br />
Her duty, presumably, must have included ensuring that each seat was equipped with a life vest at all times.<br />
<br />
It must also have included being courteous to passengers, especially those who paid a premium in order to receive special services. <br />
<br />
It must have also included properly performing cabin checks before takeoff.<br />
<br />
Salaya's bad hair day was a disaster for her that far exceeded the inconvenience and annoyance that it caused two of her passengers. Her actions will undoubtedly cost her a severe reprimand if not her job, and may cause the airline to be subjected to legal action if we are feeling in a vindictive mood.<br />
<br />
It's been a few days now and it's become more of an entertaining story than a nightmare for us, but perhaps the nightmare is only beginning for Miss Salaya....<br />
<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7313069753393877260.post-62463929512810437302013-05-29T00:31:00.002+07:002013-05-29T00:31:27.017+07:00Another excerpt from NIRVANA EXPRESS (Day Five)
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<span class="s1">Day Five: Lucid Dreaming</span></div>
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<span class="s1">The previous night, I have been attempting, once more, this reclining meditation. Nothing seems to happen, although I do drift off into a profound sleep. But, just before dawn, I have an astonishingly vivid dream.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s1">I see a person I’ve never seen in one of my dreams before. He’s the ringleader of the kids who vandalized my house in Los Angeles, several months before my coming to Bangkok to be a monk. This is someone who was highly successful in triggering my martyrdom instinct — and who, until I learned what had been happening behind my back, was one of my most trusted people. I will call him simply the Kid; there isn’t another in this story.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s1">We’re standing in a museum, carrying a Persian rug between us. And the Kid is complaining about something or other — about how Africa isn’t in the exhibition, I think. So the museum guard says to us, well, there’s an Egyptian exhibition in the next building; it’s been there for a year and is set to remain for a total of two; and we decide to check it out, still carrying the rug. Though I have to remind the Kid that Egypt is, in fact, in Africa; he doesn’t seem to have learned that in school.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s1">I enter the museum; the Kid stands in the anteroom, in front of the revolving door, still holding the rug. I go through, look in the gift shop for more rugs; I decide they’re too expensive. I don’t remember actually looking at the exhibits; all I know is that the Kid never enters, and when I start to leave, he is gone, and instead there are two lines of graffiti on the wall, written in marker, already fading … medium fine point marker, bright red, the color of blood.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">Outside, the scenery has abruptly changed. I am in the ruins of an ancient temple. Gray, decaying stone … it’s beautiful, like Ayuthaya used to be in my childhood, before easy-access highways and wandering tourists. There are stupas, gorgeous statues of stone and stucco; the sky is a ruddy twilight. I am walking through the grounds, slowly, in a meditative state … more so than I have achieved during real life walking meditation.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s1">Suddenly, a huge gray pagoda rears up in the sunrise. I spot two kids half-way, on a ledge, graffitiing with spray cans. I am furious. I run up the steps, I scream at them: “Don’t you realize this place is unimaginably ancient, it was lifted stone by stone from an archaeological site and brought here to be shared by all the world? Thousands of years of history and you’re ruining it … there’s a place for what you’re doing, but not here!”</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s1">Chastened, they slink away.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Startled, I awaken.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">I’m sure it is almost dawn, but I get up and look, in the dark, at the clock; it seems to say that it’s 11 at night. I try to get back to sleep. Dogs are barking … as they do in movies when a ghost or spirit passes. My whole body is tingling … as though I have recently been possessed, and the alien presence’s breath is still exuding from me. I can’t or won’t find the light switch; I am groping about in a strange half-dark. This Twilight Zone-like weirdness persists for a very long time; I lie down, trying to return to sleep, vaguely aware that I’ve had a very powerful dream that is trying to teach me important lessons about my past, my future. </span></div>
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<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s1">I close my eyes for a moment, and then —</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s1">Jumping out of bed, I find that it’s after six! I have to run out with my begging bowl! Seizing my bowl and robe, I run out of the door just in time for a helpful monk to put it on for me. </span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">It has just been raining, and I tread along the wet street, absorbing more unfamiliar sensations — the slick cobblestones, the grit, the agglutinating particles of earth. It is a beautiful experience sharing the love and generosity of people I have never met or known. I wish I could walk among them all the time. I am at the same time a stranger to these people, and the most familiar icon in their perception of the world. </span></div>
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<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">It is breakfast now, and they have decided that the four of five pieces of the Khunying’s famed chocolate should be offered to me all once. I decide to take the entire plate to the novices’ table. They are, after all, children, and children love chocolate cake … don’t they? And I can have the Khunying’s cake anytime … this succulent recipe that brings in a million baht a year.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">In my room, I notice, suddenly, that the clock by my bed is upside down. That explains the confusion over time. It was the wee hours before dawn when I woke from that peculiar dream, and that is why I seemed to have overslept.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">I sit in the mother-of-pearl chair, trying to analyze the dream. Though its basic meaning is pretty clear. My life has become a sacred place. Those who interfered with it in the past no longer belong. They can be sent away. The visit to Africa/Egypt has all sorts of mystical connotations, from the “darkest” Africa of my childhood adventure novels to the Egyptian symbology of death and resurrection. A rug is a relationship … one that has proved, it seems, too expensive to be worth continuing. The ancient temple dug up stone by stone and moved to the new setting … that must be the ancient wisdom that has now been transplanted into the landscape of my new consciousness. And the kids, expelled from this new paradise … that too is obvious, indeed so fraught with symbolic logic as to seem to have been cooked up by a novelist. Well, look who’s talking.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">Using images from the unconscious mind to teach my conscious mind important lessons — is this what my attempts at the sleeping meditation are beginning to achieve? If so, it is surely about time. The human psyche so frequently walls off parts of itself from other parts. Lines of communication are weak. I’m very encouraged. I seem to have blown open a channel and forced the people inside me to talk to each other.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">I’ve blown open another kind of channel as well, this morning; something has disagreed with me, and an upset stomach keeps me from attending morning chapel. Indeed, the Seer tells me I’d better not go to meditation class at all this morning; I wouldn’t want to have a little accident while off in an adjacent universe.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s1">The Seer insists that I take plenty of medicine and sends word to the Guru that his recalcitrant new monk won’t show up this morning. I do hope that the Guru won’t be annoyed. There is, you see, a subtle tension between the two, although I have not yet learned enough of the temple’s politics to get all the nuances.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s1">Now, all day long, people inquire about my upset stomach, even people I have never seen. Later I am told that the Guru has announced my diarrhea to the entire throng of meditation students. Imagine that happening at my old English boarding school! I would be the butt of jokes for weeks. But here, there is the greatest concern.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"> One monk after another comes to my room to show sympathy. One particular monk shows up at my door with a herbal remedy in his hand. This monk is very youthful, pale, always staring off into the distance, and he tells me that he knows things about me that others do not know.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">“For instance,” he tells me, “I know that you can see into the heart of the Guru, and that you have sensed a certain darkness there … I know because I have seen it myself … but we won’t speak of it, because it’s enough that we both know it is true.”</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">It is a strange thing for one man to say to another as he presents him with herbal remedies for diarrhea, but this monk is unusual. Thais do not like to say things directly; they speak in understatement and misdirection, out of the desire to protect others from losing face, out of a fear of losing face themselves; this monk says things straight out, insightful things that perhaps one would rather not speak about. </span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">He sees things. I tell him I have a friend who sees things — I’m talking about Sharon, on her mountaintop in Georgia, and the spirit Tomm who seems to speak through her. “Yes,” he says, “I understand that completely. And you are like that, too.”</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"> I don’t want to say that I’m very doubtful that I have any such abilities, so I simply smile. I will call this monk the Psychic. He is a new monk, but appears very otherworldly, as though he spends large chunks of his existence exploring other dimensions. He tells me that he has a genuine relic of the Lord Buddha in his room, and invites me to go and see it one day, when I’m feeling better.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">I’m deeply moved at the gentility and compassion everyone shows towards me. There is also a certain chivalry that is rarely evident in the world outside, a certain profound respect for personhood; this is a community that lives by the principle of compassion.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">During the lunch break, my parents show up; my dad will return to San Francisco tomorrow. My mother has brought the housekeeper from home, and insists that she clean my bathroom; she’s worried because she doesn’t think I’ll succeed in doing it myself. A professional is needed. But there are problems, as a woman may not touch certain objects used by monks — “intimate” objects such as towels. At first, my mother tries to put away the towels herself, but our family chauffeur, who once served time in a monastery himself as a novice, tells her that the monkly towels are out of bounds.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">In the afternoon, I rush back to meditation class to discover the walking meditation in full swing. Unable to find an unobtrusive spot to walk back and forth, I am compelled to traverse the very platform where the Guru himself is sitting, lost in some transcendental state upon his sermonizing chair. It is very strange. As I walk slowly back and forth, I close my eyes, trying to measure out the steps by feel alone … wondering if this is how the blind walk … trying to feel the space by some means of extrasensory perception.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">But it is hard to concentrate. I imagine that Big Broth</span>er, in the form of the Guru, is peering down at me from his High Chair. And of course, behind him, there is also the towering golden Buddha of the beatific, enigmatic and utterly tranquil smile. And I admit that it is a little scary, and I can’t find that tranquil spot within myself at all. I imagine the Guru’s baleful stare and I squeeze my eyes tight shut and hope for the buzzer to go off soon … the buzzer which, like an oven timer, tells me that it will soon be time to come out of my meditative state.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">Of course, the Guru probably isn’t even staring, balefully or otherwise. But I feel it nonetheless, like an overactive superego.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">Later on there is the sitting meditation, too — thirty minutes of it — but someone it doesn’t feel quite as long as before. I must be getting used to it after all. My body is still not entirely attuned to it all, but there has clearly been improvement.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s1">And still later, I get myself into a deep conversation with my fellow sufferer, the Skeptic. It turns out that he has major issues with what the Guru has been saying which go to the most basic concepts in Buddhism — the true nature of reincarnation, for instance. I myself do not wish to argue the niceties of philosophy. I don’t want to know how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. I only want to know that they do in fact dance. That, I suppose, is the major difference between us.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s1">The time comes for the evening meditation and now I find myself standing in the outer vihara under the stars — what passes for the stars in Bangkok — and all of sudden comes a light sprinkle, which, as I begin the walking meditation, turns into a storm. Thunder and lightning and a raging wind, yet somehow I don’t find myself running into the cloister to seek shelter. I keep my eyes closed, I keep walking. This time, Big Brother is not watching. Bud-dho, Bud-dho, I repeat in my mind, the mantra for stilling the inner storm. It doesn’t work. I walk. Rain flecks my face. It is beautiful; the air is pungent with the smell crushed jasmine. I taste it on my lips. The wind whips against my robes. I feel all these things and revel in them, yet I am also very far away.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">It is not the word Bud-dho, buddho that keeps ringing in my ears. Instead I hear a voice that whispers again and again a phrase from T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets : “the still point of the turning world.” It is this motif that helps me to locate my inner center, and not some Pali mantra. Over and over these words sound in my inner ear, the “t”-sounds of still and point and turning punctuating the mantra much like drops of rain.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">Can a poem by a Bostonian-turned-Englishman really substitute for the ineffable name of the Enlightened One as a formula for inner peace? I do not know, but I already from my study of the Guru’s teaching that words are in themselves nothing more than the empty air. It is not the words that precipitate the states of inner mindfulness. The Guru has said that even simple words like “in, out” or counting from one to five would work, if only the mind is ready for them to work. But for my over-educated cranium the Buddha comes to me in the voice of T.S. Eliot, and then, later, in words from the King James Bible — for the voice that whispers the words of Eliot seems to me to be none other than the “still, small voice” alluded to in the Old Testament. Is it hubris to believe that such mighty powers might be speaking directly to oneself? I do not know. Buddhism does not, in the end, believe that such mighty forces are real; like the corporeal world itself, they too are parts of a great dream, though perhaps from a higher plane of dreaming than our concrete cosmos.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">I feel myself detaching from my body. I feel myself at the eye of the tempest. The world rages; I am calm. I know that I have been searching for this stillness for a long time. But the stillness has stolen up to me, has ambushed me; I am so surprised to be holding the grail in my hands, even for a fleeting moment, that before I am aware of it, I have already let go.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">When I was a child, I was in love with the wind. I felt that the wind spoke to me. I had a very strange adventure with the wind once; I wrote a poem about the wind when I was eleven, which poem ended up, by a strange string of coincidences, being published in the Bangkok Post. Even more oddly, the American actress Shirley MacLaine was passing through Bangkok at that moment, and for some reason the poem seemed to make an impression on her, although she did not apparently know it was by some child. Perhaps the very awkwardness of its expression made it look as though it were the inadequately translated work of some ancient sage. Or perhaps, with the instinct so many artists seem to possess, she saw past the silly words straight into the soul of an alienated, anguished child.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">Be that as it may, years later the poem about the wind appeared as the epigraph to Ms. MacLaine’s autobiography, Don’t Fall off the Mountain, and my childish words about the wind have sold more copies than all my “real” books put together. </span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">Mistaken for an ancient sage at 11, here I am now, perhaps trying to pass myself off as a sage after a few days of monkhood! There are ironies here to be sure. I once told this story to a reporter for a well-known psychic magazine in the States, and she said, “Well, since that Shirley MacLaine book can fairly be said to have kicked off the New Age, that makes you the godfather of the entire New Age, doesn’t it?” Scary.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">But seriously now, there are things all children know, things they forget when they pass through the flames of adolescence and enter the grownup world, where imagination must sit in the back of the bus, where the touchable is confused with the real. These things we knew as children can be rediscovered as adults, but often only at the end of arduous voyages or after much pain.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">The wind that whispered to me in my childhood and gave birth to a rather dreadful poem has spoken to me again, and this time I recognize it as a friend, and am almost ready to call it by name.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">When I return to the vihara for the sitting meditation, the wind is still carrying on outside. I decide to continue my communion with nature. Resolutely, I pick up one of the little plastic chairs I have been using to meditate in, and place it by the window. A gorgeous window, paneled wood, black and gold lacquerwork, covered with images of gods and demons; it is ajar, and I push it wider, thinking, here, in the safety of the vihara yet exposed to the roar of the wind, I will once more hear the voice of God.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">But wind does not help me at all. It howls, it batters my face. I am hopelessly distracted.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">Profound inner experiences, it seems, can neither be manufactured nor preordained.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7313069753393877260.post-34723762282585660272013-05-26T17:01:00.002+07:002013-05-26T17:01:57.618+07:00Participate in Mahler 8 in Thailand this summer!<div class="mbl notesBlogText clearfix" style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 15px 15px 0px; word-wrap: break-word; zoom: 1;">
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<b>INVITATION TO THE SYMPHONY OF A THOUSAND</b></div>
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July 20-24, 2013</div>
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Dear Choirmaster, Voice Teacher or Individual Singer:</div>
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The performance of Mahler’s “Symphony of a Thousand” taking place in late July in Thailand is an incredibly historic event. With already about ten choirs from four continents sending representatives, it is the first performance of the largest work in the standard classical repertoire in Thailand. Singing in “Mahler Eight” is a life’s dream for many choristers around the world and it is only possible in Thailand because we are working with the Festa Musicale’s international choir festival in Pattaya, and are able to bring choirs participating in this festival into our concert.</div>
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We currently have about 250 singers, local and international, involved, with a core group of around 75 plus a large children’s choir rehearsing regularly each Thursday. But I could use about 100, or even 200 more local singers in order to make sure that we have enough to balance the 130-piece orchestra that Mahler has written for.</div>
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In view of this I am writing to heads of music departments, music schools, and choirmasters in Bangkok to invite your participation.</div>
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This concert is undoubtedly the most ambitious classical music event in Thailand’s history. People who love to sing often dream of participating in the “Symphony of a Thousand” and this would be the first time the opportunity is ever made available in Thailand.</div>
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We would very much love to have you on board whether you are in Thailand or from abroad. Many choirs have already joined or are sending representatives — choirs from as far away as England, Czech Republic, Indonesia, and the United States. We’re working on trying to get singers from every continent to make this a true reaching across the globe.</div>
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If you are an international group or outside Bangkok, the idea is that you would study the work in advance and arrive in Bangkok in time for the final rehearsals. These rehearsals will take place in the last week, from July 20th onward. We can give you access to all sorts of aids to help you learn the work, such as learning mp3s and so on.</div>
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Because the performances of the Symphony of a Thousand are in part subsidized by the Department of Cultural Promotions of Thailand’s Ministry of Culture, we are able to offer an extremely cheap land package, based on double occupancy, at a convenient hotel in Bangkok. The first hundred people to sign up will receive their land package gratis; for the rest we ask for a contribution of only 100 Euros, which includes your hotel, transportation to and from the rehearsals, and most meals.</div>
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If you are local to Bangkok, you will have the ability to rehearse along with the Orpheus Choir, which meets every Thursday evening in a convenient location next to the Thong Lo BTS station. </div>
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A children’s choir is also being formed in Bangkok which will join with children of the Montfort School in Chiengmai and the Bonifantes choir from Pardubice, Czech Republic, to sing the children’s choir sections of the work, so children from age 8 or so may also join this group.</div>
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An online form is available to join up at <a href="https://www.facebook.com/notes/somtow-sucharitkul/invitation-participate-in-mahler-8-in-bangkok/10151661663242090#" role="button" style="color: #952173; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;"></a><a href="http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mahler1000.com&h=TAQFLBOAL&s=1" rel="nofollow" style="color: #952173; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">www.mahler1000.com</a>. Or you can write directly to Athalie de Koning, the choir master of the Orpheus Choir, at <a href="https://www.facebook.com/notes/somtow-sucharitkul/invitation-participate-in-mahler-8-in-bangkok/10151661663242090#" role="button" style="color: #952173; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">athalie@bangkokopera.com</a>. </div>
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Please join us and become part of this historic event. We look forward to hearing from all of you!</div>
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Best wishes</div>
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Somtow Sucharitkul</div>
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General and Artistic Director</div>
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Bangkok Opera Foundation/Opera Siam</div>
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SCHEDULE OF FINAL WEEK:</div>
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CHOIR WORKSHOP AND MAHLER 8 PREPARATIONS</div>
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Saturday, July 20: </div>
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morning: arrive in Bangkok with music already rehearsed</div>
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afternoon: free: Bangkok tour</div>
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evening: welcome dinner and preliminary rehearsal</div>
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Sunday, July 21:</div>
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morning: free</div>
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afternoon: piano rehearsal, choirs and children’s choirs</div>
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evening: rehearsal with orchestra and soloists</div>
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Monday, July 22: </div>
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late afternoon: rehearsal with orchestra and soloists</div>
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Tuesday, July 23:</div>
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6 pm: sound check</div>
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8 pm: OPEN DRESS REHEARSAL (for video)</div>
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Wednesday, July 24:</div>
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6 pm: sound check</div>
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8 pm: PERFORMANCE</div>
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10 pm: post-performance reception</div>
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July 25 onward: Festa Musicale Competition and Festival in Pattaya </div>
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(optional)</div>
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7313069753393877260.post-35107105494486021242013-05-22T04:38:00.001+07:002013-05-22T04:38:14.292+07:00Nirvana Express - Day Four
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<span class="s1">... more from my memoir from a dozen years ago about my brief time in the monastery ...</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Day Four: The Begging Bowl</span></div>
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<span class="s1">My attempts at sleep meditation do not seem to have borne fruit. I sleep fitfully. Partially it is nervousness; in the morning I am to step out of the monastery alone for the first time. One of the most inviolable precepts of monkhood is that one may not work for, earn, or in any way strive to attain personal comfort. Eating is a particularly complex issue. The rule is that one must not take that which is not freely given, and in the case of food this generally means walking around in the morning with a begging-bowl.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s1">For the first three days of monkhood, one is sequestered within the monastery walls, and isn’t allowed to go out foraging in the streets. Now, you might think that this has to do with a sort of ritual immersion in spirituality … the idea that you need to become wholly and utterly sanctified before setting foot beyond the gate. After all, three is a magic number in all cultures. For example, from Neolithic mother-goddess cults all the way to Christianity, any divine being wishing to come back from the dead is expected to grant the living the courtesy of staying down under for three days. No self-respecting being expects to be resurrected overnight. You’d think that the three-day quarantine is all about that, but it’s not. Like many other Buddhist customs, it’s purely practical.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s1">Three days is the average time it takes for a monk to learn how to walk around without his robes falling off.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s1">On the fourth morning of monkhood, I learn that I am somewhat below average in this respect. My morning struggle with the robes has yet to yield an elegant result. Nevertheless, after about half an hour, I emerge from my room with the robes more-or-less attached and with the little tail that one uses to twist and tighten it sticking firmly out from under my left armpit. I’m sure Sigmund Freud would have seen some phallic imagery there, but, quickly remembering that I am supposed to be beyond such metaphors, I quickly dismiss them from my mind. Gathering up my bowl, I march proudly out to face the secular cosmos.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s1">I don’t get very far. Only two steps from my room, I run into the Maha, who gazes at my attire in horror.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">“Oh dear, oh dear,” he says, “you’re wearing your robe all wrong.”</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s1">“No, I’m not,” I insist. After all, I have followed the instructions pretty faithfully. And usually there’s a forewarning before the robes drop off — a twitching of the fabric somewhere, a shifting in the folds. “Don’t worry, I think I can manage a ten minute walk without an embarrassing incident.”</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s1"> “Well, you seem to have figured it out all right,” says the Maha, “but you see, when you go outside the temple, you have to wear the robes in a different style.”</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s1">Now I suddenly recall one of those 227 monastic precepts — it’s about going completely covered when a monk goes among laypersons. I had thought that I was completely covered, but in fact, inside the temple, one goes about with one’s right shoulder exposed. </span></div>
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<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s1">Presumably, it wouldn’t do to inflame any passing laywomen to see that little piece of shoulder, and so yes, there’s a completely different way of wearing your robes when you set foot outside the gates. And that, as the dawn begins to break over the temple’s gilded gables, is what I must now proceed to learn — and fast, because after all, the hordes of well-wishers with their offerings of food are not going to hang around forever.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s1">They’ve got skytrains to catch.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">A few days ago I already gave one description of how to wear those robes; a second, contradictory description would probably not be very useful. So, suffice it to say that, beginning with finding the little square of cloth that aligns with the back of one’s neck, there’s a completely new system of twirling and wrapping to be learned, and the end result is that the monk, with his begging bowl inside the robes and accessible only by manipulating a little flap, is totally rolled up inside that rectangle of saffron, much like a piece of ravioli, or rather, I should say, a wonton. </span></div>
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<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s1">I had thought that the previous style of monkly couture was a little stifling, but this is positively suffocating at first. However, the mode of dress lends itself to those delicate, deliberate steps that one always sees monks taking as they move slowly down the alleys in the dawn. Now I understand why; the full-wrap technique winds up you so tightly that it is impossible to be anything but delicate and deliberate in one’s movements. </span></div>
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<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s1">Oh yes, the hands. The left hand, supporting the bowl so that it doesn’t go bouncing on the pavement, is completely concealed. Well, left hands, in Asian cultures, are pretty unseemly anyway; one knows what they are traditionally used for. But the right hand, too, is hidden in this style of dress. Only by wriggling its way through a tightly wound roll of fabric can the hand create a little slit for itself and emerge to open the lid of the alms bowl or manipulate small objects.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">It is with a certain measure of self-consciousness that I finally manage to make my way down the steps of the kuti. The Maha, who in addition to showing me the ropes, performs the function of a sort of babysitter, leads the way. I do not wear my sandals. This is a very strict monastic order — some do, in fact, allow monks to wear sandals for this ritual — but we must, like the Lord Buddha himself, go completely barefoot into the world, heedless of the thorns, snakes, bugs, mud, and gravel that might assault our delicate, city-bred soles.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">The back door of the temple leads to a parking lot, and then to a little alley bordered by noodle stands, before reaching the main road. It is morning, and the Maha walks much faster than I do, so I find myself alone in the alley. This is it, I tell myself. This is the “going-forth”, as the English-language monkhood manual so grandly calls it, a descent from Parnassus into the seamy secular cosmos.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">There is a moment of panic, but all at once, the technique of the walking meditation takes over. I take one step at a time. Slowly, breathing deeply, trying to become aware of each minuscule sensation. One step, then another. </span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">Why is it that we are commanded to go barefoot into the world? To show our humility, no doubt, our vulnerability; to be a living metaphor of the frailty that is flesh. </span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">These sound like very negative reasons, but there is another, more positive one. The skin is a living, breathing organ, the organ of the human body that has the largest area, the greatest sensitivity to the outside world. And the earth beneath our feet is the earth that gave us birth, our mother, the earth that will receive us once our struggle against entropy has ended. Children may run barefoot in the grass, but as adults we shield ourselves from the earth; the act of putting on shoes is an act of subversion, of resistance to reality.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">Shoes? Why, in Los Angeles, one doesn’t even walk at all. Not only are one’s feet shielded from the earth, but even one’s shoes; I for one use the drive-through for my ATM, my diet Pepsi, and my car wash. </span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">Not for a long time have I felt against my feet the sharpness of a cobblestone, squeezed moisture from the moss in the cracks of concrete. Not for a long time have I swerved to sidestep the squish of excrement between bare toes or the crunch of a dying cockroach. </span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">I suddenly grasp that these homely sensations, these textures of reality, forgotten since God knows when, are a severed link in the chain of being. </span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">The journey down the alley, which only takes a minute, is in itself a miniature voyage of discovery. </span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">Or rediscovery.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">Once I emerge from the alley, I see the Maha across the street; he has gone to the newsstand to fetch the Seer’s daily newspaper. I hug the alms bowl to my chest and twirl the tail of my robe in order to hitch it a little higher so that it won’t drag on the pavement. Then, taking my life in my hands as all Bangkokian pedestrians do, I cross the street.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">The other side of the street consists mostly of shophouses: pharmacies, electrical appliance stores, and newsstands with living quarters in their upper storeys. In front of one of the ubiquitous Chinese pharmacies, a wooden table has been set out, and there are trays of food: little plastic bags of curry and soup, and cups of boiled rice. There is a bit of a cottage industry as the faithful line up to buy food which they will in turn offer to the monks. </span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">My first benefactor is a man I’ve seen, all in white, at the meditation class; I’ve seen him sitting not far from me, lost in thought. I wonder if he even recognizes me. I am, after all, not a person anymore, but a metaphor, and a pathway for his own karmic journey. Gingerly, I lift the lid of the bowl. He empties a cup of rice into it, and puts in a bag of curry. My eyes remain downcast, as is seemly. I do not proffer thanks; that too is improper in this ritual. It is the strangest thing to me that I cannot show him this common courtesy, but it would diminish the karmic value of his gift to me. </span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">I see the Maha in a dark alley nearby. I follow. Suddenly, I am in a marketplace, hidden from the street by the façades of the shophouses. It is so early that many of the stalls are still untended. Still, there are people everywhere. Dawn is the time to make merit before picking up the groceries for the kitchen back home. This isn’t a shiny American-style supermarket, where the odors of fresh food are carefully masked by layers of Saran wrap. Here, every kind of scent assaults one, from the noxious fumes of leaking petrol to the fragrance of jasmine of rose petals.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">A bleary-eyed woman turns chicken drumsticks on a grill. Another arranges flower garlands on rattan trays. The market is dingy; the dawn has not penetrated, and here and there a naked bulb sheds harsh light over a pile of durian or an old man blending milk and coffee in a glass urn. The concrete paving is moist and warm; grit works itself between my toes. There are monks here, each one moving in a sort of bubble of solitude, for though shopping in Bangkok is very much a contact sport, the throng parts each time a monk moves through. </span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">As I follow the Maha, his shaven head bobbing up and down in the distance, I too sense the parting of the crowd; I am like a mini-Moses breasting the Red Sea. The yellow robe really does make me something other than myself. There is an unseen radiance that envelops me. </span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">When I have given food to monks in the past, I have often been distracted by the thought that hey, maybe they won’t even eat it, or perhaps they’re not even going to like it, or some monasteries are so bloated with offerings the leftovers must surely end up in the garbage. But as I accept the people’s offerings, their piety overwhelms my skepticism. I am of course precisely repeating the footsteps of the earliest Buddhist monks. I feel the weight of history; I feel like a tiny pattern within an immense and ever-turning mandala; and this sense of belonging somehow subsumes my doubt.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">Well, back the kuti, it occurs to me that when the bags of food arrive at the breakfast table, they’re not the same bags that were offered to me in the marketplace. In fact, the food seems a lot more to my liking now than it did then. In fact, those little muffins on the tray by my place at the table … well, I don’t remember receiving those at all. They are a sort of Chinese variant of those blueberry muffins that are such a fixture of breakfast in American greasy spoons.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">I am not, of course, allowed to evince any kind of preference for one kind of food over another; but I suspect that there’s been some Machiavellian maneuvering in the kitchens of the kuti, and that someone has conspired to mix up the bags so that this Thai monk who isn’t quite Thai can be allowed to eat some farang food that isn’t quite farang.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>#</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">Having successfully avoided several large piles of dog turds during my perambulation of the marketplace, I run into an extremely large pile during the Guru’s morning lecture on meditation. He chooses to use shit as a metaphor for karma. Once again, I am impressed with the ubiquity of bodily functions in Buddhist philosophy. The King James Bible seldom mentions excrement; I can think of only one instance offhand, and that’s in the Old Testament.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">The Guru tells us a parable. In ancient times, he says, in India, naturally, the land of parables, two indigents are walking down the street, each carrying an empty basket. They see an enormous pile of dried excrement in the road. “We can sell this as fertilizer,” they tell each other, and they eagerly fill their baskets, place them on their heads, and go off through the forest, on the road to the nearest town.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">They come across a pile of dried wood. One of them, the cleverer of the two, presumably says, “Well, let’s trade in our shit for this dried wood, which will fetch a much higher price in the town.”</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">His friend says, “I’ve been carrying this shit for so long; I think I’ll wait until something better shows up.”</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">The wander through the forest some more, and they stumble on an abandoned cart filled with bolts of expensive silk. Well, you can see where the story is leading. From silk to silver to gold to piles of diamonds, the clever one keeps upgrading his basket, while the other one, faithfully plodding along, says, “I’ve been carrying this shit for so long, I think I’ll wait just a bit more.”</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">They reach the city at last, and the clever man turns in his precious cargo for a huge fortune and lives happily ever after. His stupid friend doesn’t really mind; he’s not the jealous type; he’s not a bad person, you see, and he is perfectly happy to trade in the basket of dried excrement that he’s been carrying on his head for so very long. But just as he reaches the fertilizer shop, it begins to rain.…</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">With this repulsive image fresh in our minds, the Guru then says, “Now, students, I’m going to add another five minutes to the clock … and I want you all to empty your minds and meditate for thirty-five minutes.”</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>#</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">Lunch today features one of the most famous chocolate cakes in Bangkok, made by the hand of M.R. Malinee, a friend of my mother’s and creator of this well-known recipe. My mother and sister have surveyed the various offerings in the kuti, and have decided that the roast duck down the alley is probably a better deal. They vanish for a while, leaving me alone with the Seer and the chocolate cake.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">The Seer looks at me and says, “You shouldn’t go back to America yet. Your chart shows a cloud that extends over your life all the way until at least February 2002. Becoming a monk has mitigated what could have happened — it was a sort of surgical solution to your inner turmoil. But you’re in danger until at least October, and the shadow will not utterly pass until February.”</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">“But I do have commitments,” I tell him. “Books to write and whatnot.”</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">“Other factors will intervene,” he says. “You will be fine here.”</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">I do not know how clearly he sees into my heart. I do not entirely understand why, only two weeks ago, a voice whispered in my ear that I must begin this inward journey. I am troubled by things left undone, by my condo in Los Angeles left in disarray, even by the fact that — now that I think of it — I didn’t turn on the dishwasher before I left California. And yes, the dishwasher thing has been gnawing at me from time to time.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">“Let it go,” says the Seer. “You can buy more dishes.”</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">The Seer has endowed an upcountry temple that specializes in the teaching of novices, many of them poor kids who would not otherwise have a chance to go to a decent school. He suggests to me that perhaps, if I stay at the monastery, I could be placed in charge of the entire kuti, and he could spend more time at the rural wat, where, I suspect, his real heart lies, for he was born and raised in Thailand’s deep south.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">The idea of being placed in charge of an entire division of a monastery when I have in fact only been here for a few days is strange to me. On the other hand, the Seer seems to suggest it in all seriousness, and I realize that even in a few days, I have become accepted here, eccentricities and all; being a monk is not, despite the shaved heads and identical robes, about conforming. Every monk here is on a unique journey, and every journey is equally deserving of respect.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">I decide that I will, next time I get near the internet, transmit this to Sharon and Tomm; perhaps they will have another perspective on it all.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">It is now time for the afternoon session of the meditation workshop, and piti is the word of the day. My companion-in-suffering, the Intellectual, tells me he hasn’t managed to achieve any kind of piti whatsoever. He has tried and tried. The aches and pains of an aging body, forced to hold weird positions for long periods, have militated against piti. I ask him if he’s tried the chair thing. I know I couldn’t have done it without a chair. </span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">He whispers in my ear, “Seriously, though, I think there’s another reason why it’s never worked out. You see … I don’t entirely … believe.”</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">But I don’t entirely believe either … at least, I don’t think I do. But piti has still descended on my doubting mind. Before I can argue this point, though, he says, “I’m too angry. That’s it, I’m just too irritated at all the superstition.”</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">I believe that the Intellectual is experiencing some disillusionment. It’s because of what I mentioned briefly in the chapter defining piti. The fact that levitation in the imagination was bandied about in the same breath as levitation in actuality. The Intellectual doesn’t buy this, and it colors his perception of the entire process.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">“You know,” I say, “maybe it’s better not to think about these things too much. We should take from this teaching what we are able to accept, and let the rest go.”</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">“I know,” he says. “But it’s a bit of a leap to go from penetrating psychological insight to — fables and hearsay about people flitting through the air like in low-budget Indian epics.”</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">There may be many doubters, but the Intellectual is the only one with the courage to express doubt openly. His honesty touches me. </span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">We continue to listen to the discourse on piti, but I am too distracted to enter a deep state of meditation; I am haunted by images of my home in Los Angeles, and by the Seer’s obscure predictions of a shadowed future.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>#</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">After the evening chapel, I have a surprise visit from my Uncle Mai, his friend, and my cousin, and I show them around my quarters — I feel like a little boy again, you know, when friends come over and your mother says, “Now, why don’t you show Little Jethro your room?” They prostrate themselves and present me with several dozen containers of fruit juice — the best quality — as well as the Oriental Hotel’s prized cookies. Then they proceed to admire the furnishings — the air conditioning with its remote control, the private bathroom that even has its own urinal despite the fact that it is against the 227 rules for monks to pee standing up.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">After they leave, my nephew, Pup, comes by; he’s been studying for a test at Mahidol, and he has his homework with him; he asks me a few questions about four-part harmony. </span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">The Littlest Novice shows up. He has the VCD he told me he wanted to watch on my computer. To my amazement, it is a pirated edition of the Spice Girls movie. Heavens! Is this too lewd for a young novice to watch, I wonder? I decide that to let the kid be a kid, and I put it on while Pup babysits (or is it the novice who is babysitting my nephew?) and then I am summoned for the evening meditation.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">That’s where I have my miraculous experience of the day. It is during walking meditation, and it has started to drizzle. All the monks and supplicants have scurried to take cover under the roof of the cloister or inside the vihara. But for some reason I don’t notice this at first, so concerned am I with the act of putting one foot in front of the other. </span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">The wind begins to blow. It’s a warm, moist wind; in the tropics, in the midst of the rainy season, the wind that presages rain is not a hurtful wind. It plays with the hem of these robes, but I walk on. It billows a little, but I am only dimly aware of it at first.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">The rain comes. A little at a time. I become conscious of each individual raindrop as it glances off my skin. I breathe, I walk, I stop, I turn. The marble pavement becomes slick, as though stone itself were sweating. The rain falls harder now, and as it pelts down I feel what I have rarely felt in my adult life — I feel enveloped in, caressed by the forces of nature. Nothing can harm me. The rain spins about me a silken cocoon of being, of immediacy. This is another piti: not an experience of inner reality, but a more profound embrace of the external world. There is an aspect of Buddhism that emphasizes withdrawal and detachment, but tonight I am feeling the opposite; I am the plaything of the earth and sky, a figment of the world’s imagination. Though nature is vast and I am small and helpless, I feel nurtured; I feel loved.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">Well, after that, my sitting meditation is something of an anticlimax. And when I ask my friend, the Intellectual, whether he has finally achieved any piti, he says to me, “I appear to have snoozed off.”</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">“Don’t worry,” I say to him. “It’s only, what, the third day of the meditation class; we have four more to go.”</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">He smiles ruefully. “That’s true,” he says. “Well, maybe my karma just isn’t up to it. Or maybe it will be all the sweeter for coming at the eleventh hour.”</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7313069753393877260.post-90978531738829192602013-05-13T08:34:00.004+07:002013-05-13T08:54:37.888+07:00Siam Community Orchestra's Bruckner 9 - Complete<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I decided to post the entire concert from last week...enjoy!</div>
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<br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7313069753393877260.post-82037309985238134642013-05-11T11:41:00.002+07:002013-05-12T02:40:19.451+07:00Nirvana Express Day Three: A Momentary Ecstasy<br />
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*** continued serialization of Somtow's "Nirvana Express", the diary of his brief monkhood which he kept in 2001</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgV_atECY_fKF4E5TVwZznL5SM327eHbMY-r8IAydKRMtIPEVSx9bvrc4Vtl1CNo0cGi1DzYDQ0Uj5MA3JEb3T1G_ApHqqSqWR4DGyGrWCRUNFlJ-FdSYP6yQaVs8MTeq4gaUdkZ4ApIX8/s1600/Photo+45.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgV_atECY_fKF4E5TVwZznL5SM327eHbMY-r8IAydKRMtIPEVSx9bvrc4Vtl1CNo0cGi1DzYDQ0Uj5MA3JEb3T1G_ApHqqSqWR4DGyGrWCRUNFlJ-FdSYP6yQaVs8MTeq4gaUdkZ4ApIX8/s320/Photo+45.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
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<span class="s1"></span>Day Three: A Momentary Ecstasy</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">The dawn brings the delivery of a delicious honey-roasted pork from my mother. The plate, piled high, awaits on the lazy susan at breakfast, but of course I am not permitted to show too much enjoyment. Eating with gusto is one of the many things forbidden in the 227 rules of monkhood — along with chewing loudly, taking large mouthfuls, and covering up one’s curry with rice so that it appears that one has no curry, and thus tricking one’s benefactor into ladling out some more — I kid you not, the latter is actually an official prohibition.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I show no visible gusto, but I do end up with a bit of an upset stomach. Perhaps, I think, meditation will cure it. After all, the Buddha specifically states that walking meditation helps regulates bowel movements. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I spend the hour before morning chapel in my room — I suppose I should call it a cell, as Catholic monks do, but I find it hard to feel any sense of imprisonment when the room has both air conditioning and a private bathroom, There is a beautiful chair in the room, inlaid with mother of pearl and doubtless worth a hundred thousand baht. Although the room itself is spartan in its furnishings, each simple object is an exquisite work of art. A lot of love and thought has been devoted to this room.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">In the chair, alone, without two hundred others meditating around me, I try once more to empty my mind. I think it is starting to work … no Mount Kailasa, no flashes, but a pervasive calm.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Morning chapel is an ordeal, still. I wonder why “arthritis” is not among the list of diseases they interrogate you about in the ceremonial inquisition before you become a monk. After all, they ask you if you’re a leper. Today, we know that leprosy is only infectious amongst a tiny percentage of the genetically predisposed. They also ask if you’re a cripple. That would never fly in politically correct America. Asking whether you’re human or not — well, that I can understand. You never know what kind of demoniacal being might want to seek refuge in a monastery.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Had they asked me, in Pali, about arthritis, I could have answered with a snappy “ama bhante” and ended up with a medical release from monkhood. But no.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">So here I am, with my romanized manual before me, last monk on the far right in the back, chanting up a storm. The chanting begins with standard phrases about Buddha, Dhamma, and Sangha, but then enters unfamiliar territory with long sections chanted half in Thai and half in Pali. The Thai is supposed to be the translation of the Pali, so it is hard to understand why a single Pali word can be followed by an entire sentence of Thai. Presumably it because Pali is one of those languages in which a little utterance can mean a lot — ancient languages all seem to share that characteristic. I remember from struggling through Ovid in school.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">The odd thing is, much of the Pali chanting bears a certain similarity to Latin. (Sanskrit, I understand from a brief look at a few textbooks, is somewhat more like Greek.) Pali has the rhythms of Latin, with the verbs chiming in at the end, with the cases, persons, numbers, and tenses lined up in neat little rows with their endings all matching; it’s almost like Latin with an Indian accent.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">The chanting is addictive, hypnotic even. But I notice that attendance at morning chapel doesn’t seem to be that strictly enforced. Monks wander in and out, and seem automatically to glide into their proper place. Behind the monks, the novices are supposed to sit, but only one has shown up, and another is drifting in.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">It’s not really polite to stare at the spectacle around me, but I can’t help myself. I force myself to resume chanting. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Suddenly, a high-pitched, boyish treble voice joins in the chanting. Whoever it is knows the words perfectly, chants with utter confidence, his voice soaring above the others, adding a bell-like resonance to the masculine bass that roils about the chapel. I glance behind my shoulder and see that the Littlest Novice has finally shown up — the one who wanted to create a video game and monks battling demons with weird martial arts.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Now, inside this sacred place, he is a completely different boy. The chant flows from his lips as from the lips of an angel. He is transported. This place does change people. The street urchin has become divine.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">As I prostrate myself, later, before the Guru in readiness for the morning meditation class, I thank him for teaching me the wherewithal to see the vision of Mount Kailasa.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">“Ah,” he says, nodding knowingly. “That vision was a <i>nimit.”</i></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">What he means by that is that I did not see the true Mount Kailash, but an image manufactured in the depths of my unconscious mind. He tells me that <i>nimits </i>can be both beautiful and dangerous, and if I find myself distracted by one, I must act as though it isn’t there. He sends me back to my chair, and proceeds to address the subject of death.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Death, along with love, is what human beings are most preoccupied with.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">What is death? This is what the Guru chooses to discourse on, at length, before the daily meditation begins. We learn that the flesh is inherently degenerate, that our body is a graveyard for the corpses of pigs and chickens. We listen to an enumeration of the thirty-two unpleasant parts of the body, spending as much time on excrement and mucus as on prettier organs such as skin and hair. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">We learn that death is the very definition of life, for what is a living thing but a piece of earth that has somehow fended off death for a few brief moments of existence? Well, this is all very depressing, and I understand why some people think Buddhism is overly pessimistic: nothing exists, we’re all going to die, the best thing we can hope for is go out like a candle instead of being endlessly reborn and suffering … a few thousand lifetimes can really get on one’s nerves. So, when we reenter the inner world to begin the morning’s meditation, I am not a happy camper.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">And yet … today’s journey into the unconscious is a roller coaster ride. Yesterday it was all effort, and my reward was a momentary glimpse of the abode of the gods; today, I slide right in, my mind draining instantly, like a colander of fresh spaghetti. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">First, in the darkness, there is a face. I see the face dimly at first. It’s dark, but its outlines radiate a certain energy. There’s the faintest hint of a moustache, and great brooding eyes. The chair I’m sitting in faces the left side of the great golden Buddha that dominates the vihara; on either side, there are huge statues of arahants, their gaze permanently fixed in adoration of the great master. The face in my mind’s eye seems to match the faces of these arahants, faces I have never seen because the statues have their backs to me, because they are gazing upward at the Lord Buddha. The face’s features are somewhat Indian, I think to myself, wavering in the shadows. Is this an ancient sage, or is it again a <i>nimit, </i>a figment of my imagination? I sink deeper into the meditative trance. I see pagodas shifting in the mist. I see stone ruins, minarets, walls covered with bas-reliefs. In niches and nooks, tiny stone devas are frozen in elaborate dance gestures. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">A kind of warmth steals over me. An inner warmth, different from the heat that pervades the vihara, intermittently alleviated by a turning electric fan. This warmth has a color to it as well, a deep red, and begins with a glow at the tips of my fingers and toes, works its way up the limbs, seems to center itself on a spot somewhere in the middle of my forehead. This must be what mystic call the Third Eye, what others refer to as the pineal gland. This is the spot where Hindus traditionally place those caste marks that have caused some in the west jeeringly to refer to them as dotheads. This dot is positively glowing, radiating energy.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">And growing, too. The dot becomes a circle. It shifts from red to white, from lukewarm to incandescent. I can barely keep my eyes closed, there’s so much light. And then, within the light, I begin to make out the silhouette of some ancient personage. It is someone sacred. I am sure of it. I am certain that if I can let go just a little bit more, I will even hear this personage speak. It is not the Buddha himself — I do not think so — though the apparition stands serenely, his hair spiraling upward as though aflame, one hand reaching out, palm forward, as if to bless, to touch —</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">And then there is a touch. On my shoulder.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Startled, I open my eyes. It is the Guru, who has left his preaching chair and has been wandering around the vihara, looking over his charges. “Your posture,” he says mildly. “A little straighter. That’s it, that’s it.”</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Was it the Guru that I sensed, hovering in the circle of light within my inner world? He is standing exactly where the ancient personage seemed to appear in my vision. Is this some kind of cosmic joke, or did I somehow have a brief encounter with the Guru’s spiritual essence?</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">All I know is that I have been jolted out of the meditative state. I struggle to suppress a certain irritation. After all, I was about to be addressed by some ancient sage, only to find myself being curtly spoken to by an earthly guru. Clearly, however, this is another lesson in humility.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Later, it is lunchtime, and a little huckster stand outside the vihara does a brisk business in the Guru’s self-help books as I, the Intellectual, and the other new monks enjoy a simple but abundant meal of honey-roasted pork, duck, satays, Chinese pasta, and exotic fruits. Well, they are exotic to me, at least. You can’t find a decent mango in America.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">After we eat, all the monks chant a prayer of extraordinary beauty — the <i>yatha varivaha. </i>It is only later that I realize just how beautiful it is; at the moment it is mere nonsense syllables, and it seems that even to many of the new monks, they have little meaning save for the hypnotic quality of the sounds themselves.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">But later I am to learn the meaning of this blessing, chanted by monks, somewhere, every single day in Thailand in every single place where monks are being served by laypersons, a blessing so commonplace that children can repeat it word for word like parrots, a blessing whose translation few people know. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i>As the rivers full of water</i></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i>flow into the great ocean,</i></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i>so let the merit you have made </i></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i>benefit the dead; </i></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i>may what you have wished</i></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i>come quickly to pass,</i></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i>may your wishes grow to fulfillment</i></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i>as the moon that waxes on the fifteenth night,</i></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i>as the jewel that grants desires.</i></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">The monks chant enthusiastically, and I, knowing neither the words not their meaning, feel ever an outsider, ever an alien.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">But then, that afternoon, there comes the payoff. The Guru has added another five minutes to the clock — bringing the total to thirty minutes of concentrated breathing — a longer span than I have ever imagined I could do. But this time, the visions come immediately. The circles of light, the arahants gazing on their Lord in eternal adoration, whirling about, circles within circles … all these images drift through my mind with renewed clarity. The irregular movement of the electric fan, the beading and coalescing of drops of sweat on my brow, the sighs of an elderly gentleman as he wheezes through the breathing exercises … yes, I have become aware of all these things. And then, without warning, I push through to another level. The circles of light spin ever faster, and then, all at once, there are waves of light, breaking across my consciousness, torrents and tides of blinding whiteness. And fireworks! Coruscating, scintillant rainbow rivers spiral and twist and whirl. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I am lost in wonderment, lost in an ecstasy that far exceeds that of any hallucinogenic experiment I may or may not have undertaken in the 60s (which if I did, I surely can’t remember now!) So this is what it’s all about — this is the psychedelic symphony of light described by such mystics as Coleridge and Blake. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Abruptly, the little beep-beep-beep sounds, signaling the end of the thirty minutes. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">“Come out of the meditation slowly,” the Guru’s voice cautions over the vihara’s speaker system. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Slowly, slowly, the vision subsides.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">The Guru warns us not to be seduced by the beauty of visions. They are <i>nimits, </i>he tells us … sometimes they can mislead … entrap.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">And yet, I know I am on the verge of something big.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>#</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">The evening is a bit of party night. My nephew, a music student at Mahidol University, drops by; my parents pop in for a visit; and as the sun sets, the Seer, surrounded by a small congregation of my relatives, decides to tell us inspiring stories from the life of the Buddha; his memory is limitless, his narrative technique worthy of an ancient bard, singing tales at the dinner table of a Viking chieftain or a Mycenaean King.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">One question has been bothering me since I stumbled across it in my English language manual, the one that gives all the translations of these quaint Pali texts. “Why, Lord Seer,” I ask him, “am I agreeing that I can only bathe every fifteen days?”</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">My mother says, “Oh, nonsense. How could the Buddhist texts possibly tell one to refrain from bathing? The ancient Buddhists weren’t dirty.”</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">The Seer laughs. “Well, yes, there is such a prohibition,” he tells us, “and it came about because, one day, the Buddha was preaching in a remote place, in which there was only one small stream available for bathing. The members of the nobility who had come to hear the sermon couldn’t get back to their city before the gates closed, and the stream was clogged with the disciples of the Lord Buddha. Out of consideration for the supplicants, the Buddha created that rule … but you see, it only applies in that one location, in that particular circumstance.”</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">It seems, then, that the monastic regulations are a sort of mishmash of precedent and custom. Rather like the English common law, they have grown over time and developed into a rather complex, even hairsplitting code. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">It calls to mind a discussion that the new monks were having over lunch. The Guru, you see, was telling the faithful supplicants that there are certain loopholes in the Five Precepts which all Buddhists are asked to observe. (Contravening these precepts is not sin in the Judaeo-Christian sense, but it may lead, perhaps, to a negative progression in one’s karmic journey.) “Let’s suppose,” the Guru has been telling us, “that you are sitting in a room, and the mosquitoes are starting to become a nuisance. You desperately want to slap a few, and eventually you open fire with the old aerosol, leaving a dozen dead souls on the floor. And so you’ve destroyed a dozen lives just because of your momentary annoyance. But what if you didn’t <i>intend </i>to kill them — what if you offer them a way out? Let’s say you leave a window ajar, and instead of letting fly with the airborne poison, you just spray a bit here, a bit there, like a delicate sort of farting? You will have annoyed the mosquitoes, and most will choose to depart through the window … and those who do in fact end up whizzing, openwinged, into the embrace of the fumes, well then it’s their own karma, not yours, since you did not spray to kill, but simply to … influence their choices a little.”</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">At lunch, I have been saying, “Yeah, that may be a loophole, but some of those insects are just as dead as in the other scenario. And no matter what you <i>say </i>you intend, you’re still trying to get rid of them and you still have a bit of the executioner’s motives clinging to your mind.”</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">A monk I have not yet met, tall and pale, somewhat older than the new monks, says, “There are really three different levels of moral law. The first is the law as laid down by humans, the most imperfect. The second is the law embodied in the precepts or silas, such as that we must refrain from taking life … but what you say brings us to a third level of moral law: the law of dhamma, which allows even less wiggle room than the others.…”</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>#</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">At eight o’clock comes the special late-night meditation in the vihara. And now, something <i>really </i>weird happens to me.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I try to repeat the success of the afternoon. At first it seems easy enough. I slip quickly into the state I was in just before the big fireworks and the tides of light. It’s about ten minutes or so in, I guess. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Then yes — again — that blinding incandescent light —</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">And then — complete emptiness.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I know nothing until I hear the beeping, telling us that it is time to come slowly forth from the inner world.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I know I was not asleep. I <i>know </i>this. After all, I have woken up several thousand times in my life, and now what it is to have just slept. This was not like that. This was not a state of sleep. It was <i>nothing. </i>Nothing at all.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Was this, in fact, at last, the momentary Nirvana so rapturously described by the Guru the previous day? If so … why can’t I remember anything at all?</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">It’s like that poem by Keats. You know, the one where the knight meets a gorgeous elfin lady who takes him to her grotto and seduces him until —</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i>And I awoke, and found me here,</i></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i>On the cold hill’s side.</i></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Is that one of the attributes of the state of ultimate nothingness — that the nothingness is so absolute that nothing can remain even in the remembrance of it?</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I do not know.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I resolve to try a fresh tactic tonight. In the Guru’s instruction manual, of which I have an English-language copy, there are four postures of meditation: sitting, standing, walking, and … sleeping. We have not yet tried the sleeping style. It doesn’t look like the Guru is going to cover the sleeping meditation in this seven-day course.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">And yet, there comes a time in any journey when one must leave one’s guide behind and take a few tentative steps alone. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Tonight, I decide, I’m going to try it for myself.</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7313069753393877260.post-3898701857645390922013-05-09T13:46:00.002+07:002013-05-09T13:46:17.090+07:00Bruckner - Last Night....<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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What an enjoyable concert last night ... in only its second concert, the Community Orchestra showed itself a truly viable player in Bangkok's musical scene....</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7313069753393877260.post-73291215970236899192013-05-07T11:49:00.000+07:002013-05-07T11:49:23.674+07:00 Why Bruckner? Reasons to come to Mahisorn Hall this coming Wednesday<div style="text-align: center;">
Siam Community Orchestra •</div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; line-height: 19.5px;">The Siam Community Orchestra, on its second outing, is tackling one of the biggest, most monumental works in the symphonic repertoire, and one that has never been played in Thailand ... Bruckner's Ninth Symphony. Apart from the "because it's there" answer, I ought to explain why. </span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; line-height: 19.5px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; line-height: 19.5px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; line-height: 19.5px;">I created this orchestra because I wanted to bring together people from across all segments of society in Bangkok who yearn to play BIG music - those pieces that they would never normally get a chance to play unless they were already part of a major symphony. And so that audiences would get a chance to experience these BIG works - live, played by people who are of the community, sharing their enthusiasm. </span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; line-height: 19.5px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; line-height: 19.5px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; line-height: 19.5px;">I've been overwhelmed in rehearsal by the passion with which these people have imbued Bruckner's Ninth Symphony. </span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; line-height: 19.5px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; line-height: 19.5px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; line-height: 19.5px;">Richard Wagner once said that Bruckner was "the only composer who can stand beside Beethoven." That is a wild claim to make when so many great composers exist, but when you listen to the Ninth, you can believe it. There are indeed a lot of connections between Beethoven's Ninth and Bruckner's Ninth apart from being in the same key ... the numinous, shifting beginning that seems to gel out of chaos into a tremendous unison statement of an elemental theme seems to portray the very act of creation ... not a wave of the hand sort of creation but the birth of a universe out of darkness and terror. Both symphonies follow with a scherzo that is savage and vehement and pounding. And then a slow movement of incredible depth, fashioned out of two alternating themes, one a little faster than the other, and the heavens opening up to the sound of trumpets ...</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; line-height: 19.5px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; line-height: 19.5px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; line-height: 19.5px;">You can see that one ninth is modelled firmly on the other. And then there is another Ninth to come - Mahler's, which also has connections to this one, most clearly in the Adagio movement. </span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; line-height: 19.5px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; line-height: 19.5px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; line-height: 19.5px;">What's different about Bruckner's Ninth is the sense that block by block, stone by stone, a cathedral is rising around you, and your ear is inexorably drawn up and up toward what can only be the voice of God.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; line-height: 19.5px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; line-height: 19.5px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; line-height: 19.5px;">I have lived with this symphony for about 45 years now and I had always felt that the work was "complete" the way it has been left to us. In the Adagio, in particular, Bruckner builds up on two occasions times a powerful and sweet crescendo which climaxes in what sounds like the very heavens opening up and us seeing the face of God ... first in incredible splendor then a second time as though veiled, "through a glass darkly" as it were. The third time this music comes, there is no climax, only a dying away into music that sounds like distant church bells, sinking into nothingness. </span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; line-height: 19.5px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; line-height: 19.5px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; line-height: 19.5px;">In the past my interpretation of this was always that Bruckner wanted to show us that God dwells behind veils of impenetrable darkness ... that we can never catch more than a glimpse of the Holy Grail, and the more we approach it the more elusive it becomes.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; line-height: 19.5px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; line-height: 19.5px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; line-height: 19.5px;">Yet, I've recently listened to the reconstruction of Bruckner's last movement, which has now been done to what seems to be just this side of perfection after years and years of controversy. </span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; line-height: 19.5px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; line-height: 19.5px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; line-height: 19.5px;">And I see now that Bruckner didn't mean to hide God from us but to save the blinding revelation for the final movement. This finale changes everything and makes every note of the first three movements have a completely different meaning.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; line-height: 19.5px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; line-height: 19.5px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; line-height: 19.5px;">On Wednesday we will play the symphony with the old meaning attached. But it is my hope that in 2014 the Siam Philharmonic will give the Thai premiere of the other version, with all the meanings turned upside down. </span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; line-height: 19.5px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; line-height: 19.5px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; line-height: 19.5px;">Meanwhile please show your support for Thailand's passionate musicians by coming to our concert on Wednesday the 8th at 8 pm, Mahisorn Hall. Pre-book by emailing tickets@bangkokopera.com, or just show up.</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7313069753393877260.post-77085507241177999752013-05-06T10:41:00.001+07:002013-05-06T10:41:57.979+07:00Nirvana Express Day Two — Walking Meditation
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<span class="s1">Day Two: Walking Meditation</span></div>
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<span class="s1">The second day of my monkhood, I rise even earlier than the 5 a.m. “official” wakeup time. There is no bell, no alarm; a Thai monastery doesn’t operate by enforcing time constraints. People are expected to get up of their own volition. I do have an alarm clock, but I don’t use it today.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">I then spend about an hour trying to put on the robes.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">One might think that it can’t be that difficult to get a yellow bedsheet to stay put, but it’s quite a process. The robes come in various sizes, and the Seer has ordered a large one for me, since I’ve got a bit of a paunch. But it’s decidedly long, and wrapping in becomes rather unwieldy.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">You see, the first thing is that there is, in fact, an inside and an outside to this contraption. You can tell from the seams, for a robe is stitched together from precisely 32 pieces of cloth, which symbolize the 32 unpleasant parts of the body which are used for the meditation on the impermanence of the human form.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">In ancient times, robes were literally made from castaway material, even dead people’s shrouds, sewn by the monks themselves and then dyed this simple yellow for the sake of uniformity. Some of the 227 regulations for monkhood include detailed instructions about the needle cases monks may possess, what materials they may be made from, and so on. These days, with robes being off-the-rack, as it were, the regulations are seldom cited.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">You must envision me, alone in my room in this strange place, learning all over again, in my late forties, how to get dressed. I am like a toddler, helpless, but I struggle. First, you find the little square of sewn cloth that tells you where your neck goes, thus making sure the robe is on right-side-up and not inside-out. Then, you wind it around yourself — not symmetrically, but the left side <i>over </i>the shoulder and the right side <i>under. </i>You join the ends, and begin twirling them together, much as you might roll a poster into a mailing carton. Grabbing the top end of this roll, you hold it as high as you can with your left hand; then, you wrap a flap that seems to appear out of nowhere over your left shoulder and around the arm. Then, bunching up the twisted roll with your right hand, you twirl it some more, at the same time lifting it to make sure the hem of the robe clears the ground. You then toss the twirl over your left shoulder, catch the end in the left hand, and pull, so there is a sort of handle under your arm with which the robe can be tightened, hitched up a little, and otherwise prevented from falling off.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">There is a prize for anyone who understood the preceding paragraph. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">I do not understand it myself, nor am I certain I will ever accomplish what it describes in my short time here. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">All I know is that I spend something like two hours experimenting with the robes, and by the time I descend to the Seer’s audience-chamber (which is also his breakfast nook) I still haven’t figured it out, and must humiliatingly ask for help from the Littlest Novice, a 13-year-old Southern kid with a disarming smile.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>#</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Over breakfast, the Seer tells me how he became a monk, but I am still in a sort of miasma. Sometimes I don’t understand what he says. “In my youth, I became a monk in front of a waterbuffalo,” is what I keep hearing, but it’s because the Seer still has a trace of a provincial accent, and he’s really telling me he became a monk “before the flames” — he was referring to the custom of entering the monkhood to honor a dead ancestor at a cremation ceremony, the monkhood lasting only as long as the funeral pyre itself. It is with great confusion that I hear his tale while attempting to eat rice gruel with the decorum that is required of a monk — chewing loudly, with one’s mouth full, and other impolitenesses are all against the 227 regulations of monkhood.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">The Seer’s tale continues. He tells of having two options in his youth: the monastery or the military. He decided on the monastery, way down in the remote rural South of Thailand, and after a while, his preceptor tempted him with an offer: if he could pass his religious exams, he would send him to Bangkok. “Bangkok, in those days,” says the Seer, “might have been an alien planet. Boy, I sure wanted to see the big city. And it turned out, I was the only one to pass the exam.”</span></div>
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<span class="s1"> Eating breakfast as a monk — my first real meal as a monk — is quite an experience. There is a lady who keeps presenting us with food as the conversation progresses, but I may not receive food from her directly because she is a woman; I must first place a yellow cloth on the table, and, holding on to one edge with both hands, allow the dish to be placed upon the cloth; I then place the dish with the others and am free to partake of it. Alas, if the lady should accidentally touch the dish after I have already received it, she must present it properly all over again.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">I expect morning chapel (my first experience of chapel as a full-fledged monk) to be as taxing on the knees as the ordination ceremony, but it is mercifully short. As a monk, I can’t hide in the very back, sidling up to the wall to rest my weary back; I have to take my correct place, which is in fact as the very last monk in the very last row of monks, yet not as far away as the novices, of which there are about two. To my relief, chapel is much shorter than I think.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Everyone stares because I’m peering at an English-language chanting manual, with transcriptions of the text. A senior monk up front begins with a little intro, and we’re off, chanting our way through the praises of the Buddha, Dhamma and Sangha, pausing now and then to fall to the floor in the five-point-prostration, a very precise positioning of the body so that the knees, elbows, palms, and forehead are all perfectly aligned in a sort of pyramid.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Then, with barely a ten-minute break, comes a full morning’s worth of meditation. The Guru is in the midst of a running a seven-day intensive meditation workshop, and now, it seems, I am to learn the meaning of some of the things I was attempting the previous night.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">When I arrive, the main vihara is crammed with eager meditators. All are dressed in white, all but one monk, who looks almost as old as me, and decidedly as uncomfortable. He is seated on the upper platform, leaning against one of the square columns, ornately frescoed with decorative floral motifs against a lapis-blue background. He turns to smile at me, and I realize that this, too, is a new monk; there are rumors that among the crop of young monks, there is another my age, who, like me, has decide late in life to begin his inward journey.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">“So,” he whispers, as I crawl up the steps of the stone platform and seat myself on a flat yellow cushion in the monks’ area, “I am not alone anymore — there’ll be two of us aging monks struggling our way through this ordeal.”</span></div>
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<span class="s1">“Are you all right?” I whisper.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">“Well, this sitting position is hard to take,” he says. “I’ll have to remember my muscle relaxant spray tomorrow.” My thoughts exactly.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">I will refer to this new old monk as the Thinker, because later it will transpire that he is constantly analyzing the teachings of the various gurus in the temple.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">I turn to the images of the Lord Buddha and perform the prostration to the Triple Gem. The Guru is already seated on his preaching chair, facing the meditation students who are clearly in awe of him. I have arrived a little late, and the lesson is in full swing. To my astonishment, even though the students are sitting very still, very respectfully, and without seeming to strain to maintain their phabphieb position, this is not a somber group at all. The Guru is telling them about controlling the breath, interlacing the rather dry narrative with anecdotes about India, many of which seem to have to do with either excrement or body parts.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">The Guru instructs us to breathe slowly and rhythmically, to use the sound of the word <i>buddho</i> as a focus: <i>bud </i>for breathing in, <i>dho </i>for breathing out. <i>Buddho </i>of course is a Pali word, a title of the Buddha, and it essentially means “he who is awake.” <i>Awake, </i>so much more homely a word than <i>enlightened, </i>is perhaps closer to the original sense of what Buddhism is about: seeing past illusion.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">It is only nine in the morning, but I have been awake since four — in itself a startling innovation, as I have risen before my customary bedtime. The light that streams into the vihara from windows, bordered by gilded shutters with fading gold leaf designs, is bright, warm; the heat that suffuses the vihara is intermittently mitigated by standing electric fans that turn this way and that, an incongruous intrusion of technology.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">And now, the moment of truth: we are to meditate for twenty minutes. I try the <i>buddho-buddho </i>thing several times, but it is, to say the least, abortive. I begin to fidget. I open my eyes a few times, and it reminds me of a certain episode of <i>The Twilight Zone — </i>wow, this is really dating me, isn’t it? I mean the one where (if memory serves me) the character ends up trapped in a space-time warp where time is moving a million times faster for him than other people, so they all seem to be statues to him, and is a blur to them.…</span></div>
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<span class="s1">How to find the inner stillness? It does not come. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">The jangling of a dozen unsynchronized grandfather clocks tells me that it is now long past eleven o’clock, the lunchtime of monks, and that the magic hour of twelve, after which no solid food may pass a monk’s lips until dawn of the next day, is fast approaching. When we emerge from our meditative state — well, when <i>they </i>emerge, for my state has been that of bewilderment — it is 11:30, and naturally I’m starting to get worried — especially when the Guru immediately launches into one of those numerical expositions that seems to be such an important feature of the more theoretical aspects of Buddhism. What I mean by these numbers is this: there are groups of ones, twos, threes, fours, and so on: four types of <i>brahmavihara, </i>eight sides to the <i>eightfold </i>path, and so on: I could show you an entire book of numerical lists. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">The Indians have always been masters of lists. As a musician, I am astonished that only Indian music has divided the octave into 66 divisions or <i>srutis, </i>while poor old Western music has a mere twelve, and Thai or Indonesian music even fewer. The Buddhist scriptures, which came from India, have more lists than you can shake a stick at. I think that the lists are important to those who are in love with lists, but perhaps, for those who wish to journey to the heart of Buddhism without stopping to admire the view on the way, the Four Noble Truths might be enough.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">As the expounding of lists proceeds, my friend the Thinker turns and whispers to me, “I think we’d better prostrate ourselves and leave, or we’ll miss lunch.”</span></div>
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<span class="s1">The Lord Buddha did not believe in self-torture. Indeed, after tormenting himself in fakir-fashion for some time in order to try to attain enlightenment, he realized that mortification of the flesh wasn’t the way to the truth, and began eating and drinking like a normal human being. He was much reviled by his associates for this; but later on he convinced them that his was the right path, and they, too, ate.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">In my own small way, then, I am reliving this significant episode in the life of the great Teacher. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">We prostrate ourselves to the Guru (who, being deeply involved in his exposition, barely acknowledges our departure) and make it to the lunch pavilion <i>just </i>within the threshold. Having seated ourselves and begun, we are safe from <i>apati. </i>But there is some ceremony yet, for this is a lunch that is being presented to us by the faithful, and some other monks have kindly joined us to keep us company — all of them new monks — fresh boyish faces, unlike my companion and myself.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">To my wonderment, I discover during lunch that I’m no longer this writer-composer with the millstone of celebrity hanging around my neck. Along with my hair have gone many other outward trappings of my life. The young monks question me about America and about why I have to follow the chanting with a romanized textbook, but they do not know anything about me. And this is very liberating. It is actually possible, at this late stage in my existence, to become once again an unwritten page, a born-again virgin.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>#</span></div>
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<span class="s1">After the lunch, I brace myself for another session of wrenching sitting positions and useless meditation, but it then occurs to me that the Guru <i>did </i>tell me the previous evening that some people do meditate in chairs. I wonder whether I should interrupt the abbot’s lecture to ask him for permission to do so.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Then, in a flash of understanding, it occurs to me that this isn’t like being at boarding school in England. No one is making me torment my muscles. No one has forced me to become a monk. If I get up, and stagger over to one of the many chairs that line the outer vestibule of the vihara, no one will try to stop me, nor will I be summoned to a stern lecture from some bespectacled schoolmaster brandishing a cane.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">It’s another liberating moment. Not that it would do to just get up and stalk off to a chair. A monk must be gentle and reflective in his movements, must not raise his voice or attract attention to himself. So I sort of unobtrusively slither, while still in a sort of semi-prostrate position, behind a huge green frescoed column, feeling somewhat like an overweight caterpillar as I do so.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">The chairs are these one-piece plastic things, the stackable kind you find at picnics and beaches. Their very homeliness, amidst the massive gold Buddhas and the brilliant primary colors of the murals, are a reminder of the vainglory that underlies the splendid edifices we have built for ourselves.<span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">This would be an uncomfortable chair back in my world of L.A. conveniences, but suddenly it is the greatest blessing on earth to be relieved from the physical contortion of the lotus position.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">At that moment, the Guru begins an oration about Nirvana. He says something that makes me sit right up. “Nirvana isn’t necessarily something remote, something that you will never achieve at all in this life. There is the great Nirvana, the complete and permanent cessation, the utter peace that has no boundary … but there are also momentary Nirvanas … brief glimpses of the great Nirvana. Do not forget that. Those brief glimpses can come at any time, and they are just as valid, for time and space are themselves illusion, and a moment can be eternity.”</span></div>
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<span class="s1">This is a startling revelation to me. I have always believed that Nirvana is a sort of theoretical, unattainable pot of gold at the rainbow’s end; that one’s lot in life is to be aware of the rainbow at least, and not to worry to much about the destination. I resolve to close my eyes and try for such a fleeting glimpse, but all around me, I hear the sounds of people getting up from their various sitting positions. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">It is time to practice another style of meditation, called <i>jongkom </i>in Thai, <i>cankama </i>in Pali. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">Basically, this means walking around.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Well, back home, we’ve all walked for AIDS, we’ve marched for dimes and other noble causes; why not walk for self-illumination? The Guru begins to regale us with the five (yes, another list from India!) benefits of the walking meditation. One of these benefits is improved performance of the digestive tract. You see, Buddhism, unlike many western religions, cares about such things as regularity in bowel movements. </span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">I am, as a typical product of these harried times, of course rather skeptical that walking can lead to <i>piti, </i>a state of ecstasy born out of meditation; but I am willing to give it a try, and an aged monk leads me out of the vihara into the cloister, where about a hundred men and women, clad in white, are already walking around.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">The spectacle resembles a cross between <i>Agnes of God </i>and <i>Dawn of the Dead. </i>What am I doing in the midst of this zombie movie? But soon, the Wise Old Monk explains. “Stand perfectly still,” he says, “breathe deeply … deeply. Then, set forth … first your right foot, then your left. Feel the ground beneath your feet, be aware of every speck of dust, every kink and rill in the surface of the stone. With your right foot, think <i>bud—. </i>With your left, think —<i>dho</i>. Go deliberately, carefully for about twenty-five paces, then stop … stop completely … reflect. Then turn. <i>Bud —. </i>Right foot, 90° angle, left foot, turn again … <i>dho. </i>Now you are moving in the opposite direction. Slowly … slowly … right foot first … <i>bud —. </i>Then left foot … <i>dho. </i>That’s all you do.”</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">All? I think to myself. I never knew that mere walking could involve such a complex coordination of thought and movement. I try it. Slowly, I become aware of the texture of the flagstones. Each step seems to stretch out forever … becoming an adventure in itself. </span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">I walk. I stop. The cloister, aside from being filled with zombies, is lined with life-sized golden Buddhas, and the ashes of the dead, whose faded black-and-white photographs stare back at me from the statues’ pedestals. The oddest thing is that, each time I stop to turn, I seem to be face to face with a different Buddha, and each Buddha seems to wear the face of a significant person in my life … my life outside the walls of the monastery, which is only two days behind me and which already seems remote, untouchable.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">My mind seems to detach itself from the body a little: I see myself as a robot, a walking automaton; as my spirit ascends more, I see a pattern emerge; these white-clad meditation students are participants in a cosmic ballet, weaving in and out of each other, always subliminally aware of one another’s rhythms, swerving imperceptibly to avoid collisions. It is a beautiful thing. But who is the choreographer, who is the orchestrator? </span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">In the center of the cloister stands a gilded pagoda. I imagine myself at its summit, looking down at the shifting patterns. It is, in microcosm, the dance of the universe: the planets, the moons, the stars, the galaxies. It is stately; it is beautiful; yet I still experience no catharsis. For I have not yet emptied my mind. I am still burdened by the weight of my own thoughts.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">Am I trying too hard?</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">I groan when I hear that next we will sit in meditation for twenty minutes. (It seems that five minutes will be added for each day of the course, until, by Sunday, we shall be able to go off into a self-induced trance for an hour or more.) I long for release, and yet the very intensity of that longing is preventing it from happening.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">Still, the chair helps. I am not in agony.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">As I close my eyes and concentrate on the breathing, images of the past distract me. The week before my ordination was, as I’ve said before, one of exhilaration and turmoil. It haunts me all at once — from lapping up the enthusiasm of the opera fans in San Francisco to my sense of violation at the vandalizing of my home in L.A. — from exciting news about new book deals to betrayals by close friends. </span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">“Forget the past.” I hear a voice, gentle, full of concern.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">It is the Wise Old Monk. He has been standing in front of me; with my eyes closed, I did not even sense his presence. How did he know that I was being tormented by memories? His apparent ability to read my mind has startled me so much that I obey him without thinking, and for a moment, my mind is emptied of all remembrance.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">There is nothing at all.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">And then, forming out of the nothing, there is a mountain peak capped with snow. Drenched in sunlight. The sky the brilliant blue of a Ceylon sapphire, the snow so white that it burns like the very sun. I am sure that I know this mountain: it is Kailasa, the legendary dwelling place of the Gods — the Indian Olympus, somewhere in the Himalayas. This isn’t just a mental image. I can feel the chill of the mountain wind. It is real. </span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">Slowly, it fades.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">Is this the momentary Nirvana that the Guru has been describing? I do not know. And yet, on emerging from my meditative state, I find that I have been weeping.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>#</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">In the afternoon comes a visit from my mother, the first visit since I bade farewell to my family and was reborn as a symbol of the Sangha. It is strange to have one’s own mother prostrate herself, and yet there is a deep pride in her actions; she is acting out a role in an ancient drama that has been played and replayed for twenty-five hundred years.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">My mother wants to know whether I need a “luksit”, an assistant to fetch and carry, to spend the night in the monastery and walk behind me when I go out with my alms bowl of a morning. I had worried about this; in Thailand, persons of a certain position in society never fetch and carry for themselves, and of course my relatives have been concerned that I won’t be able to fend for myself in this alien, harsh environment. But I tell her that the environment isn’t particularly harsh, and that I am perhaps more used to fetching and carrying for myself than my relatives. After all, living in the west, one does one’s own laundry and dishes. Or at least, machines do. I am sure I can make do without the help. </span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">My mother attempts to pick up and straighten out, but her chauffeur, who once spent time as a novice, warns her that she cannot touch any of the articles used by a monk — the blankets, the towels, and so on. To do so would accidentally involve the monk in an apati. Recoiling in horror, my mother retreats and allows the driver to fold the blankets. I can tell that she’s itching to restore the <i>kuti </i>to her own well-ordered vision of how a room should look, but now that I have ascended to this higher plane of existence, she can’t. It’s very strange to see this go-getting woman suddenly stymied by my karmic ascent.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">Next, there is the evening chapel; I am getting a little more used to those knee-jarring positions of prostration now, but the evening session is generally a lot longer than the morning, and parts of it are not covered in my romanized Pali manual, but are chanted from a big, fat, somewhat forbidding-looking tome. When Pali is transliterated into Thai, the rules for pronouncing it are quite different from those of Thai, so I flounder around and from time to time am forced into what used to be called, in my days in the Eton College Chapel Choir, the “goldfish trick.”</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">On my way back from the evening chapel, I am faced with a moral dilemma, the first serious one of my monkhood. For, blocking the steps that lead up the outside of the <i>kuti </i>to my chamber, there stands a street person — a bum. This is the sort of panhandler one finds aggressively hovering at the entrances of Hyatts and Hiltons in downtown San Francisco, refusing to go away and calling one names until bribed with a dollar bill to bother the next person down the street. The sort of homeless person who accosts one in a parking lot demanding to clean one’s car windows even if they are spotless; the kind of person where you turn to whoever you’re with and say, “Oh, he’ll only spend it on booze.”</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">Such a drunken creature stands in my path now, in the half-dark, his breath stinking of alcohol. “Luang poh,” he says, calling me <i>holy father, </i>which I still find a little unnerving, “have compassion on me. Please help me to alleviate my karma. I cannot bear my inner torment any longer.”</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">I ask him if there is some moral problem I can help him with, remembering all the times I spoke dismissively to the homeless in my secular days. </span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">He says, “I just need my train fare home so I can take care of my family problems.”</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">I say, “I am a monk. How can you ask me for money? Monks may not even touch money; how could I even lay my hands on some, let alone give it to you?”</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">It is true. To lay hands on gold and silver (and by extension, on any means of commerce whatsoever) is a violation of not only the 227 rules of monkhood, but even of the mere ten regulations of a novice. There is simply no way I can do as he asks, even though a monk must always be compassionate, even towards those whom he has difficulty feeling compassion for. I am perplexed and lost, and as the bum continues to badger me, I begin to retreat, up the worn stone steps, toward the security and comfort of my airconditioned <i>kuti.</i></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">All the while cursing my own hypocrisy. After all, Prince Wetsandorn gave away his own <i>children </i>to a beggar; why couldn’t I find a way of giving the man something? There’s always a chance he isn’t a drunk really, or that this one donation will be the turning point in his life that causes him to go back to his wife and kids.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">Later, I come to learn that there is a small drawer of money somewhere in the <i>kuti </i>for such karmic emergencies, and one can, in fact, ask one of the laypersons serving in the temple to take care of mendicants. So I guess this kind of thing happens frequently enough to require a solution.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">The little exchange torments we for a while. I have not yet learned one of the great lessons of Buddhism, the art of <i>ubheka, </i>of letting go of that which cannot be helped.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>#</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">In the evening, the Littlest Novice sneaks into my room because he has heard that I have a laptop. “Can you go online?” he asks me excitedly.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">“No,” I tell him. “Well, I could, but I left my internet access codes back in the outside world. I didn’t want email to impinge upon my inward odyssey.” He looks at me with cocker spaniel-like eyes, and I realize that this excuse must sound quite pompous to him. He cheers up, however, after I offer him a soda from the huge stockpile of offerings that relatives have been leaving for me all day.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">“Do you have any video games?” he persists.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">“No,” I say. It’s for the same reason; I left all those disks behind to avoid being distracted from the great quest.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">“How about VCDs?”</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">“No. Same reason.”</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">“I have a VCD.”</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">“Well, get it, and you can watch it if you like,” I tell him, forgetting for a moment that watching a movie might conceivably constitute an <i>apati. </i>Oh well, I tell myself, maybe it’s a documentary. “What video games do you like, anyway?” I ask him as he sits politely on the floor at my feet in one of those positions of extreme politeness and physical agony that I find so difficult to achieve.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">“Streetfighter II,” he responds instantly. </span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">I’m a little alarmed at such a love of violence. I wonder whether there’s any video game with a more Buddhist flavor.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">“You should invent one,” he says. “Something about a young novice going around beating up demons and sending them back to the underworld.…”</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">I smile. The yellow do not, it seems, change human nature, or boyish high spirits. He tells me he will bring his VCD to try out, but at that moment, eight o’clock arrives and it is time to return to the vihara for evening meditation.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>#</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">The evening meditation is only for those meditation students who are sleeping over, not the “day students”. There’s a dormitory where they are housed, and also a nuns’ quarter. I don’t know where, and I don’t ask; there seems no compelling reason to visit those places. In any cases, the meditation students are swarming all over the vihara when I arrive. </span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">I am apprehensive that the Guru will appear; surely, I think, five or six hours’ worth of lists of Pali terms is enough for one day. But he does not come down from his <i>kuti, </i>and the practice meditation is led by the Wise Old Monk who helped me earlier. All the new monks are there, and all are already seated, lost in their inner explorations. Using the chair, as I did earlier today, I do not experience any visions, but I am at least not suffering physically.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">For the walking meditation, we are told that monks may actually ascend to an upper level of the pagoda in the central atrium, where laypersons are not allowed. And so we do so. But the steps are surely made for gods, not men. After some effort, I manage to reach the platform. The pagoda glitters; for though the city’s noise pollution is barely audible, Bangkok by night is never dark; the night sky glows with light that has bounced from cloud to cloud, that permeates the very air. There is a breeze up here, a few yards closer to the gods, a godsend after the stifling heat of the day. </span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">Slowly, I walk. I try to cast my mind back to the afternoon, to the vision of Kailasa. The vision haunts me, but it does not return. I walk. The marble flagstones are smooth, warm; all day long they have been sucking up sunlight, storing up heat. I walk. <i>Bud — dho, bud — dho,</i> I repeat with each breath.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">I still remember the image of the divine mountain, but now that a few hours have passed, I must admit that Kailasa has become a confused with the Paramount logo. Trying too hard again, I’m afraid. Yes, I’m acutely, vibrantly aware of the stones, the wind; but no, I am not visited by any visions.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">Before I go to bed, I speak on the phone with a friend — it’s the first time I’ve deliberately communicated with the outside world since entering the temple. My friend, a distant cousin, actually, is a well-known Thai journalist who also reads people’s tarot cards, and once performed a goddess ceremony for me in my back yard. So she is not unacquainted with the supernatural.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">I tell her of the afternoon’s breakthrough … and the evening’s disillusion.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">“Don’t worry,” she tells me. “Seeing a mountain means good news is on the way.”</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">I cling to this idea until dawn.</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7313069753393877260.post-1877321673263934542013-05-06T01:03:00.002+07:002013-05-06T01:03:38.166+07:00Nirvana Express: Day One
<br />
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">continuing to excerpt my 2001 diary of my very brief monkhood....</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">****</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Day One: Angel who Walks the Earth</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">The day of the ordination is complex, and fraught with ceremony; I do not have time for doubts. An air-conditioned hall has been set up for my relatives. The Seer is nowhere to be found today; he has gone on one of his many missions to help the needy, leaving me feeling a little lost. </span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">In the morning, I go through the Pali text I must recite. Nervous for a moment, I leave the text aside and go on the internet, where I encounter my hermit friend Sharon. She says to me, “I have a feeling that I, too, am going to the monastery. I’ve had a dream-vision where I was in all sorts of temples — and my head was shaven.” I ask to speak to Tomm, her “entity”. I type, “Will you be at the monastery too?”</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">“Of course,” he types back. I wonder what form that will take, and whether it will terrify me. The truth is, what unnerves me most about the inward journey I must undertake is that I have always had an image of myself as a consummate rationalist. I have been able to write about the fantastic and the supernatural, indeed, made money at it. But to actually <i>look </i>into the heart of these things … the prospect has always made me panic.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">Sharon’s Tomm will, it turns out, have something of a rôle to play in the unfolding story of this inward journey.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">I am sitting in what will become my room — it is not exactly a cell, for though spartan, it has air-conditioning and a gorgeous antique chair inlaid with mother-of-pearl — going through the text one more time. It cannot be that hard, I keep telling myself. After all, millions of guys go through this every year.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">That is, after all, one of the things I’ve missed out on, growing up far from the mother culture, far from the things that are taken for granted in this country. During the <i>khao pansa </i>season, the three-month “period of seclusion from the rains,” young Thai men everywhere become monks, pledging to remain for the duration of the season. Are these men impelled by inner voices? Perhaps. Tradition tells us that a man’s duty is to seek the yellow robe for a time, in order that his parents may be reborn in a celestial realm. Perhaps there is some pressure from elders involved. Perhaps it’s simply the thing to do. This is not a decision that can be forced on a person, however, which is why a monk-to-be must ask — three times — in an ancient tongue — to be admitted into the Sangha. And although the decision is, indeed, reversible, and one can leave far more readily than one can join, the words of the ceremony contain frequent references to “the rest of one’s life.”</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">The Guru has told me that he won’t accept a three-day monkhood — although I am later to learn that one of the new monks did in fact leave on the third day, unable to handle things — or even a seven or nine day monkhood. “This isn’t a holiday,” he said to me. “You must actually embark upon a real voyage of toward the truth. I will allow you to remain here only if you do so for a minimum of fifteen days. After all, His Majesty the King himself, despite all of the affairs of state, was able to sacrifice fifteen days of his life to live among the Sangha. You can do no less.” </span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">Fifteen days, then, or a little longer, since the time of leaving a monastery must be accurately defined, to the exact minute, by reference to astrological charts, is the time I shall be within these walls. This will be the fast track, the express train to self-discovery. </span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">A <i>Maha, </i>who has been a monk for fourteen years and is an excellent drill sergeant, helps me. He is a small man, slender, very delicate in his movements; my mother mistook him for a <i>samanera, </i>one of those young boys who often take up the yellow robe for a while and who are asked to observe only ten precepts rather than the 227 that monks must obey. She was astonished to discover that he is already working on his master’s degree at the Buddhist University. The Maha<i> </i>has been ordained since the age of twelve.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">The Maha sits on the mother-of-pearl inlaid chair in my room, acting the role of the Upajjhaya who will accept me into the monastery. I manage to get through the text, if haltingly, and he smiles. “Don’t worry about a thing,” he tells me. “A lot of people botch it up far more than that. And if you stumble, someone will prompt you.” </span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">So much for my fear of flunking the entrance exam.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">Since the ordination is to take place at 4:15 p.m. my family is afraid that I will starve to death afterwards — because, you see, a monk may not eat after noon. And this temple is very strict; some sects would consider, for example, a banana in a blender to be a drink, not food, but here it is a no-no. So, there is the obligatory last meal — quite a feast really, for there is a hole-in-the-wall restaurant down the street that is famous throughout Bangkok for its moist, firm-textured roast duck.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">On a balcony that separates two residential sections of the kuti, I sit in a plastic chair while the Maha supervises the shaving. There is ceremony involved here, too. Once one has become a monk, one may not touch a woman — the lightest tap is considered an <i>apatti, </i>or offense, and entails ritual purification — but the cutting of the hair is always begun by the senior female relatives — first my mother, then assorted aunts. The scissors are a little rusty — no one thought of bringing a pair from home — but once the first cuttings are collected into a glass bowl, later to be laid on the family shrine, the Maha continues the job with a sharp razor. He’s clearly used to doing this; in no time at all I’m completely bald. The eyebrows too, of course. </span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">I take a look in the mirror. I am not yet a monk, and monks are not supposed to look in mirrors.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">“What about shaving?” I ask, alarmed.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">“You can look at a mirror for that,” the Maha tells me, “because that’s a practical reason. You just can’t go staring into mirrors for the purpose of admiring yourself, or beautifying yourself. That would be <i>apatti.”</i></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">It is also, it seems, an <i>apatti </i>to wear black sandals, and the previous day we have hastily purchased a pair of brown ones from the nearest department store.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">Out of nowhere comes a torrential monsoon shower, which just as suddenly ends. The sky continues to be overcast. A moist wind blows. These are good omens for an ordination.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"> Now it is only an hour before the ceremony. I put on a white dress shirt, and around my waist I wear a large white piece of fabric that resembles a tablecloth; it folds back and forth in the front and then is tied with a sash-like belt of the same material. It is a sort of sarong. Monks, I am dismayed to discover, do not wear underwear. </span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"> The waiting room has begun to fill with relatives. Even though the decision to become a monk was sudden, and I only told my parents, word has begun to leak out. A <i>Buat Naak </i>ritual is not unlike a bar mitzvah. There are the beaming parents, the fussing aunts, and the bar mitzvah boy sweating over whether he’s going to screw up the chanting. There is a table laden with offerings, for all the monks who officiate at the ceremony must receive gifts of the prescribed type. </span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">And now I put on over my white garments a lace and gilt surplice. It is because of this stunning piece of embroidery the pre-monk outfit has come to be known as the “angel who walks the earth” costume. Wearing it, one does feel remarkably angelic. As if one is clothed in light. I try walking a few steps. I even feel lighter, more ethereal. </span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">My aunt has readied a tray of coins, which I will, before crossing the threshold of the chapel, cast out onto the pavement, symbolizing my rejection of the material world. </span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">And now we emerge from the waiting room. There is to be a ritual promenade around the chapel, three times, clockwise, the candidate for monkhood in his glittering gold and white apparel leading the way, the relatives following. It is a beautiful chapel, the stone of the walkway worn down, indented from a hundred years of such processionals. We do not proceed in straight lines as there is an occasional pile of doggie-poo to circumnavigate. Buddhist temples do not deny protection to <i>any </i>needy souls … always, there are the stray dogs. Later, I will learn that even faeces have their place in the monks’ daily contemplation of the impermanence of the universe.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">At the threshold, I pause for a moment. With one gesture I fling away all the coins in the tray. Later I learn that I was supposed to sprinkle them hither and thither, but it seemed somehow more right for me to cast off all venality at once.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">Then, my mother carefully grasps the hem of my angel surplice. Each of the relatives holds on in turn, so that we become links in a chain of humanity. This symbolizes the fact that I will dedicate all the karmic merit of my monkhood to others, who will climb to heaven by clinging to the edge of my robe.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">And so it is that I step inside the chapel, and am face to face with the earthly representatives of the eternal Dhamma, the law of cause and effect that governs the cosmos.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"> Beneath a tall image of the Buddha seated in meditation, there are about fifteen monks. Some I know: the Guru is there, as is the Maha. Others I will come to know. Prostrating myself three times before this august body, I begin to chant, in Pali:</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><i>Reverend sir, </i></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><i>I go for refuge unto that exalted one,</i></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><i>Though he has long since attained nirvana….</i></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><i></i></span><br /></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">I am kneeling, holding a set of robes in my forearms, as I struggle through two pages of text; occasionally the Guru intervenes to correct my pronunciation. It is not kind to my arthritis, especially once it is over, for the Guru proceeds to preach a mini-sermon. </span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">“The Buddha,” he says, “actually existed. He actually did achieve Enlightenment. You would not be here unless you believed these things.”</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">At length, he commands me to depart, and in the corridor outside the chapel, several monks help me to change from the angel costume into the simple ocher robes of monkhood.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">Alas, they are not that simple. The outer robe is a rectangular piece of cloth, but the human body is not a rectangle. Later, I will practice, and practice, and practice, but for now, it takes three monks, and another to hold my arm in place, and yet another to tie the thing down with a length of saffron cloth to prevent it from undoing itself in the midst of the proceedings.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">I return, feeling a little self-conscious. I prostrate myself before my parents, because I am bidding farewell, in a very real sense, for all time; when I return to the world, I will not be the same person, I will have been reborn. </span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">And then it is my parents’ turn to present me with my begging bowl, and to prostrate themselves before me, for I am no longer their son, but a living embodiment of the dhamma, in an unbroken chain of discipleship that extends twenty-five hundred years back into the past, to the ones who first sat at the feet of the Enlightened One himself.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">I am interrogated, twice, in the Pali language, about my qualifications for the Sangha. Am I a leper? Am I exempt from military service? Am I a fugitive? Most people answer these yes-no questions by simply remembering that the first five are <i>natthi bhante </i>(no) and the rest <i>ama bhante </i>(yes). Since I have worked from a romanized text that has an English translation, I have the advantage of understanding what has been asked.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">By now, my aging body is a wreck from having wrenc</span>hed itself so long into the formal position of respect. The Guru, sensing my discomfort, tells me, “Well, it’s done; you’re a full <i>phra </i>now. But I must recite the <i>Anusasana</i>, the words of instruction to the new monk. It will take about five minutes. Instead of kneeling all the way down, you can sort of stand on your knees, if you like.”</div>
<div class="p3">
<br /></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">He then races through this lengthy Pali text with Donald Duck-like celerity. I am amazed at how he can memorize so much and say it all so quickly, missing nary a beat. My gratitude is as boundless as my excruciation. And afterwards, with much snapping of photos and presenting of offerings to the temple, I emerge from the chapel, ready for the next stage of the journey.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>#</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">Finally, I am alone in the room. I know that I may not eat until dawn, but for some reason there is no hunger at all. It is something to do with the yellow robe I am wearing. I do not feel the same, but as yet I have no clue as to what will happen next.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">At around seven o’clock, the Maha shows up with a small ceremonial tray with candles, a small arrangement of flowers wrapped in a banana-leaf cone, and a glass of water.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">“You must go now,” he says, “and formally present yourself to your Upajjhaya, the abbot.”</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">I move through empty courtyards in the gathering night. The air hums. Here, in this crowded metropolis that teems with noise and pollution, though I do not know who I am and where I am going, I feel strangely free from care.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"> There is a brief interview with the Guru. He insists that I sit in the <i>phabphieb </i>position, with my palms folded in supplication, which is the proper deference to show one’s guru. </span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">He says to me, “Well, you made it through the ceremony. For someone who has spent his whole life abroad and can barely read Thai, even that is an accomplishment.”</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">I thank him for speeding through the Anusasana, but be brushes off my gratitude, presenting me instead with a pile of books which he wants me to read in a certain order. Many are in English; most have been written by the Guru himself. </span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">“Normally,” he said, “I would require you to render daily services to me as your guru, such as washing my robes, and bringing me water to drink in the evenings; however, since we are not living in the same kuti, I shall not ask that of you; only that you read the books. Now, return to your abode and rest.” Abruptly, the interview is over.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">It is only eight o’clock, but I feel extremely worn out after a day that began at five in the morning. As I lie down, though, not quite daring to remove my robes for fear I may never be able to put them back on again, there comes a knock at the door.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">It is a monk I do not recognize. He says, “The abbot requests that you go to the <i>vihara </i>to practice meditation with the other meditation students,” he tells me. “You won’t have any idea what is going on, but he wants you to go along with whatever’s happening, try to get the hang of things.”</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">Once more, I set off into the night. And it really is night; the sounds of the city seem immeasurably distant as I cross the courtyard, pass one pagoda, traverse the grounds of the chapel where I was ordained, and enter, through a worn wooden portal, an inner world within the inner world. A cloister, completely lined with life-sized standing Buddha images, surrounds a central atrium from which rises a gilded pagoda. </span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">A dozen women, dressed in white, are walking back and forth in the cloister with great deliberation, staring at the ground, measuring each step. They are, I assume, meditation students. When they see me, or rather, when they see my yellow robes, for I have not yet found the “me” inside those robes, they bend low, place their palms reverently together; I am unused to such obsequy; it is yet alien to me.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">Carefully, I go up the steps to the great <i>vihara. </i>Inside, a great image of the seated Buddha towers over dozens of others; there are images of Thai kings, of holy men turned to face the great teacher; the columns are intricately painted with floral motifs and panels depicting the Buddha’s life, and every inch of the walls is covered with images from the Jatakas, the tales of the Buddha’s previous incarnations. There is a whiff of incense in the air. There are grandfather clocks on every wall, and not a single one is synchronized to any other; constantly, they jangle. Time has no meaning here.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">Columns set off an upper platform where monks are sitting on padded squares of cloth. They all seem to know exactly what they are doing. One motions me to sit beside him. </span></div>
<div class="p3">
<br /></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">There comes a voice on a loudspeaker: “We will all now sit in meditation for twenty minutes.”</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">I cannot achieve a partial, let alone a full lotus position; I wriggle as I try to warp myself into what seems to have come so naturally to the other monks. They sit, hands resting on their laps, eyes closed, gazing at some inner center; while for the next twenty minutes, a seeming eternity, I struggle with aching joints and nervous tension. I know I’m supposed to do something with my breath; I try different things; but I can feel is the pain.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><i>Fifteen more days of this? </i>I ask myself. What of the glorious hero on his quest? Will I just end up wallowing in arthritic agony? </span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">I try to think of my comfortable bed at home in Los Angeles, complete with 300-channel digital cable, climate control, huge DVD library, instant internet access, and thirty-minute home delivery of any ethnic cuisine. The strange thing is, the memories refuse to surface. I want to ask my inner voice why I was sent here, but those inner voices never answer when you want them to.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">I grit my teeth. Next time, I will remember to apply the muscle relaxant spray and rub in some ointment before venturing forth to meditate. </span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">When fighting the dragons of career and love in the world outside, one expects a little exhaustion. I am now learning that the journey within, too, is not without physical torment.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">But then again, tomorrow is another day.</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7313069753393877260.post-40312865504041307902013-05-04T10:27:00.000+07:002013-05-04T10:27:22.181+07:00Nirvana Express: Day ZeroDuring my brief monkhood in the year 2001, I kept a diary of the experiences there. I recently rediscovered it, and I've decided to post some excerpts from it over the next few weeks.<br />
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I have been going through severe emotional strain over the last year which is why this blog has been remarkably silent. However, I am getting ready for a new outpouring. The serialization of this diary over the next months may open the door a bit towards new material....<br />
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<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Day Zero: Inner Voices</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">The path from birth to death is a journey without a road map. Destinations, geography, and weather conditions are all hidden from us. There are no signposts save those we have erected in our own minds, no tourist brochures save those we have ourselves manufactured with the tools of imagination.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">This is not a story I have ever dreamed of telling. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">It begins, like Dante’s <i>Divine Comedy,</i> though far less poetically, in the middle of the road of life … more precisely, the Sacramento Freeway, an endless-seeming expressway that arrows its way through the parched hills of Western California.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">It is a Friday morning in San Francisco, the morning after one of the most thrilling experiences of my career — a reception to launch my opera <i>Madana </i>in the United States. It has been an amazing night, a artsy loft party crammed with music enthusiasts and fans as well as potential sponsors, getting to rub shoulders with opera directors and famous philanthropists — being lionized.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">The next few weeks are sure to be full of exciting things. I have just made contact with a new publisher who is enthusiastic about a possible new novel. The British producer of a film based on my novel <i>Jasmine Nights </i>has just attached a brilliant director to the project. There is talk of new operas, new horizons. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">But an hour after I wake up that morning — on the drive home to Los Angeles — something very strange happens. I decide to become a Buddhist monk. Less than twenty-four hours later, I am on a plane to Thailand. A week later, I am having my head shaved and preparing to utter the first of a string of long phrases in an ancient language I can barely understand.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">No one expected this to happen, least of all myself. I am very much a person attached to the physical world; I am deeply involved with worldly things. I love to party. I stay up all night discussing fine music and great literature, or pounding away at one of my computers. I devour films, plays, and gourmet cuisine. In fact, the notion of monks not being allowed to eat after twelve noon has always frightened me; that’s about when I would normally wake up; I’ve always felt that if I had to live as a monk, I wouldn’t be able to eat at all since I would never be awake at times when one is allowed to eat.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"> My lifestyle is very remote from what one thinks of as Buddhism — renunciation, detachment from desire, meditation, inward journeys. Though born in Thailand, I left when I was six months old, and was barely able to speak the language as a child; even now, I am at best semiliterate in it. In the moment that I hear the inner voice, I probably knew far more about the religions of the west — and even about Hinduism — than about Theravada Buddhism as it is practiced in Thailand.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">And yet, that Friday morning, comes the inner voice. “You must go to Thailand and enter a monastery.” It startles me, nodding off in the back seat of my friend’s van, as we race down the freeway through the hills of California … hills the same deep ochre that you find in the robes of Buddhist monks.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I am not one to obey inner voices — or even to hear them. Yet this urge is so powerful that within moments I take out my cell phone, telephone my travel agent in Los Angeles, and book a flight for the next day. That evening, I send a fax to my parents, who live in San Francisco but are on an academic summer break in Bangkok, letting them know that I intend to become a monk.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">My life has been a quest without a grail… a relentless journey from country to country, gathering data, spewing out books and, sometimes to great acclaim, sometimes simply into the void … an odyssey of sorts. Perhaps I have finally arrived at the mid-life crisis I have been avoiding for so long. After all, at my age, I am still playing at being the <i>enfant terrible, </i>rather than the <i>eminence grise. </i>Perhaps it is time to change roles. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Truth is a sudden thing, like lightning. I know with an unparalleled clarity that it is time to embark upon a more difficult journey, to explore that which I had never yet dared explore. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">At the time, I have no clue about what Buddhist monks actually <i>do. </i>I know that my parents will be pleased at my decision, but I don’t really know why. I know that monkhood is a rite of passage that millions of Thai men, from the King himself all the way down to the poorest peasant, have gone through; that monkhood is a cultural bond that goes beyond the elaborate class system of Thai society. But I have never felt the need to be a part of that bond.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I know that monks walk around at dawn with begging bowls, but I have no idea what else they do. I know they sit around chanting those hypnotic Pali texts, but have no concept of what the texts mean, or who wrote them. I don’t even know how one goes about becoming a monk; does one simply show up at the front door of the temple with a shaved head and a bag of robes? Had I known, I would perhaps have hesitated. Ignorance, indeed, is bliss.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I have a friend named Sharon who lives in a mountain hideaway in Georgia. Though she seldom ventures from her home, she speaks to dozens of people daily through the magic of the internet. She is a psychic. Not a professional, in that she doesn’t answer questions for money; but she is noted enough to have been asked by the police to help locate a murderer … successfully. Sharon goes into a trance and speaks (or types into her computer) in the voice of an entity named Tomm. Twice a week, she gets together with an online group of psychics, and she has what amounts to a convention, in which people sit around at their computers channeling in tandem.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Of course, one doesn’t really know whether “Tomm” exists, or whether he has been created by Sharon’s own perfervid mind. And yet, whatever belief system one subscribes to, Tomm always seems to have something eerily prophetic to say. She describes his messages as extremely vivid images.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">For months, Sharon has been seeing an image of me. From time to time, she has been telling me about it. It’s me standing beside a lotus. The lotus keeps coming closer and closer. The lotus is, of course, a Buddhist symbol, but she doesn’t know this. I have told her so, but I do not see its relevance to my life. Buddhism has been the farthest thing from my mind, until this sudden epiphany.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I decide to telephone her now, from the car. “I’m going into a monastery in Thailand,” I tell her.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">“I know,” she says. “I saw it yesterday.”</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Psychics can be really smug at times.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>#</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">It is Sunday midnight when I get to Bangkok, and on Monday morning I go to see a very famous Jao Khun (Venerable) at one of Bangkok’s most respected temples. Since I will not disturb anyone’s privacy in this memoir, I will not use the name of any monk here, nor will I name the temple itself. It is not one of those huge tourist temples, but it is in the heart of old Bangkok, bordered on one side by one of the few canals that still has water; other, more celebrated tourist attractions are not far, and Khaosan Road, where the backpackers gather, is a few minutes away. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Built by the most learned of all the kings of the Ratanakosin era, the temple is reached through a labyrinth of alleyways. A solitary gilded pagoda rears up above the pointed eaves, richly tiled in crimson and viridian. The Jao Khun’s kuti, or dwelling place, is a few steps away from an unpretentious noodle stand; a swinging metal gate is a secret entrance to the complex. I am destined to enter the inner world through a back door.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
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<span class="s1">This particular Jao Khun has gained fame as an astrologer, and so I call him the Seer. He has dedicated his life to the monkhood since his early twenties; now in his seventies, he has created quite the fiefdom within the monastic world. He has done so by obstinately refusing to accept money, unlike some other well known clerics in Thailand; when people ask to donate large amounts of cash to his charitable projects, he tells them to keep the money in their own name, letting only the interest be used for the charities. As a result, he sits atop a towering pyramid of resources, and has endowed scholarships for poor children, built Thai temples in the U.S. and Scandinavia, and has created a temple with an accompanying school for young novices outside Bangkok. As senior monks go, he is considered something of a saint.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">The Seer holds court in a modest chamber; he sits on a low bed surrounded with cushions, and lined against the walls are chairs which actually appear to be recycled car seats. It’s very ecology-conscious. The Jao Khun is as large and rotund as a Chinese Ho Tai or Laughing Buddha statue, and he seems to have been expecting me. “It just so happens,” he tells me, “that, even though we never take in new monks at this time, your room is ready and waiting.”</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Since the Seer is well known for predicting the future, this should not, I suppose, surprise me. Then the Seer says, “Well, all you have to do is memorize the ritual for admittance into the monkhood — it’s only a few pages long — and we’re all set.”</span></div>
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<span class="s1">This is my first indication that becoming a monk isn’t simply a matter of ringing the bell at the temple gates and shaving one’s head. It seems there is a complex ritual involved, and I must formally ask, not once but three times, to be admitted into monkhood … and that I will be officially interrogated as to my qualifications by two senior monks. The language of all these exchanges is Pali, a language of ancient India.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">The Lord Buddha didn’t want to use Sanskrit, the language of the Hindu scriptures, as the language of his revolutionary new philosophy, because twenty-five hundred years ago this was already an ancient language. The idea of using Pali was that it was, at the time when Buddha walked the earth, a spoken language which people could immediately understand. The situation is somewhat analogous to the use of Latin in the Catholic Church up until the middle of the Twentieth Century; the Latin translation of the bible was called the “Vulgate” because it was in the vulgar tongue, that is to say, the language of ordinary people. As the centuries passed, these “common languages” became more and more uncommon. And thus it was that I found myself staring at a lengthy and enigmatic text, wondering when I would have it committed to memory enough to gain admittance to the inner world.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">My next hurdle is an interview with the Lord Abbot of the Monastery, who wields great power within the walls of that world. The abbot is a stickler for tradition; he is also an extremely famous meditation guru, whose 7-day meditation course has earned him enormous attention in this country and even abroad. Here I shall call him the Guru. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">The guru is gruff at first. He complains about my posture, my manner of performing the five-point prostration, a traditional gesture of respect towards the Buddha and his living representatives; and he tells me he won’t put up with becoming a monk just for a lark. “I want you to take Buddhism seriously, and I want you to enroll in my seven-day intensive meditation workshop starting on day one,” he tells me. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">I explain to him how the insistent inner voice sent me on this journey, and how I really know nothing at all about what I am about to experience; my mind is a blank page.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">He says, “Well, such a voice could be one of your ancestors, crying out for a descendant to put on the yellow robes to ease his lot in the afterlife.”</span></div>
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<span class="s1">He then launches into a fascinating story about his student days in Benares. He tells me how deceased children and sages are not cremated there, but are tossed bodily into the Ganges; sometimes they float, and the birds of prey swoop down and have at them as they bob up and down in the river. “I was sitting by the river, eating my curry,” he says, “when a little piece of small intestine landed — plop — right in my dish!”</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Only later do I realize that this grisly tale is intended as a prelude to the formal meditation on the impermanence of the physical body.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">“I’ve been studying the Pali text I am supposed to say,” I tell him, “but I think I probably need a couple of days.”</span></div>
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<span class="s1">“Nonsense,” the Guru tells me, “if your heart is ready, you can learn it in a jiffy.” He then sets my admission ceremony for two days hence. “And by the way,” he continues, “we don’t pronounce our Pali the same way as in other temples. Here, we attempt to pronounce it exactly as it was pronounced during the time of the Lord Buddha himself — retroflex consonants and all.”</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Then, sensing my despair, he teaches me a trick for sitting in the awkward <i>phabphieb</i> position. At my age, and never having had to sit in those positions, it’s weird, but to my astonishment, the guru’s trick actually succeeds in allaying my discomfort for some minutes. I begin to suspect that beneath his punctilious exterior he is a compassionate soul, full of tenderness and concern.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Nonetheless, the Pali text, with its lilting rhythms and strange consonant clusters, almost makes me give up. As the dreaded day approaches, and my relatives all get in on the act, worrying about what I shall wear and who will supply the robes and begging-bowl, I become decidedly conflicted about the whole thing. I try placing the text under my pillow, thinking that perhaps I will absorb its contents while I sleep.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Just before dawn, I awaken from an astonishingly vivid dream. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">I’m already in the temple in the dream, in a foyer or entrance hall, which is suffused with an incandescent light. Someone is exhuming a corpse, and when the coffin is opened I see the remains of flesh being stripped away until nothing is left but bones. And I hear a voice: “It’s ready to be cremated now.”</span></div>
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<span class="s1">The bones are being tossed over the threshold, in a heap on the ground. Then I too cross the threshold. Inadvertently, I step on the pile of bones, and I hear the crack of a thighbone. I flinch, thinking to myself, “How disrespectful, I’m stepping on the dead.” </span></div>
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<span class="s1">And the voice replies, “They are nothing but old bones. They mean nothing. Let them go.”</span></div>
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<span class="s1">As I awaken, I realize I am no longer afraid. I have been told, with an absolute clarity, that I must incinerate the past, that I must go forth into this unknown world. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">“Let them go.” The dream teaches me the first and final lesson of Buddhism. The easiest to say, the hardest to put into practice. I must allow all those bones to crumble into dust … not just the fear and the emotional turmoil, but even the good things, the successes, if I am to undergo this special kind of rebirth. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">And so it is that I begin the journey, leaving behind all the familiar landmarks of a convoluted life, Although it is only for a few days, I must give up all my possessions, even my identity. The time will be short, but it will encompass a life’s arc of experience, from birth to epiphany to death to rebirth. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">It is time. We have parked at the back gate of the temple. I am dressed in white, the color of an unwritten page, of new beginnings.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">The gate begins to creak open.</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7313069753393877260.post-30717622617237845212013-01-02T08:37:00.000+07:002013-01-04T08:39:18.630+07:00A Princess' Vision<br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Today is January 2nd, the anniversary of the death of HRH Princess Galyani Vadhana. I've been sad for months about personal things but today I am more sad in a way, and also more hopeful.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Princess Galyani on many occasions told me how she wanted the kingdom to experience a renaissance of creativity through classical music. It's a vision I have always shared and which led me to give up a fairly lucrative (and certainly less stressful) career in the U.S. to return to Thailand — something I thought I would never do. Without her encouragement I would not have done this.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">At the moment, I had seriously engaged in keeping the promises I made to her. One is that one day, orchestras in Thailand would be able to play all the Mahler symphonies. We are close to that goal now ... only two Mahler symphonies haven't been played in Thailand ... and I'm scheduling them. But in a sense it's not the Mahler symphonies themselves that are the issue. It's what it took to make it happen … the establishment of an entire infrastructure and a whole new generation of young people who are passionate about music and who come to the art as individuals, not as parts of some mechanistic system.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In the last year of the princess's life on earth, I was the victim of inside manipulation, and as I result I received, out of the blue, a letter from the palace informing me that Her Royal Highness had been told by her doctors that she was now too ill and had to curb her activities … including having to resign as patron of the Bangkok Opera Foundation. Faced with such a message there was nothing I could do except sympathize. I only learned as the princess slipped more and more into illness and inaccessibility that this letter to me was the result of politicking in the inner circle, false accusations against me made without giving me the opportunity to defend or even know about them, and maneuverings from those who, perhaps, hoped to control the agenda after the princess's departure from this esrth.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">As I have striven over the last four years to create the world the princess dreamed of — which is also the world I dream of still — I begin to understand more and more than we cannot place our blind trust in institutions to bring about this artistic revolution. In the years that have passed since the princess died, many things have been organized in her name. Indeed, the name of Galyani Vadhana has been used to sell many projects that are perhaps quite far from what the princess had in mind. All this was foretold to me in a dream.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">For in November of 2007, shortly before the princess died, I was visited by a dream so powerful and in parts so terrifying that it has never left me. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In the dream, I am walking by the side of a canal. I think it's Amsterdam but only later do I realize it's Thailand ... because when the big limousine pulls up beside me it's driving on the left. The princess herself is driving. "Get in the car right <em>now," </em>she says to me. I do so and she is fulminating. "You can't let them do this to me," she says. (She says other things in the dream too, but they are perhaps not suitable for a public discussion.) In a while the car reaches the princess's home, Le Dix Palace. This is where a remarkable thing happens. I follow the princess into the palace, but she began to shrink and shrink and by the time I reach the entrance she has vanished to a point. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">As I entered I saw that the house had been taken over by children and they were all watching a Woody Woodpecker cartoon. The princess was nowhere to be seen. I heard a voice say "Come on, it's better upstairs." I went upstairs (in real life, I had never been there) and there was a big cocktail party in progress. A jazz singer was singing the blues and many well dressed people were having the time of their lives. Again, the princess was not there. I felt strangely out of place until I saw a portrait of King Rama VI hanging on the wall. As I gazed at the portrait I heard another voice whisper, "your father, your father." And I woke up.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The meaning of the dream is so obvious that I didn't need to consult a dream expert or psychoanalyst. A house represents one's self, one's physical body, one's earthly abode. The princess in my dream was telling me that though her physical self still existed, others were taking over. She was telling me not to let it happen … to help her to continue to live on in her vision and the fulfillment of her hopes for the future.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The presence of King Rama VI in the dream is not surprising: he is the spiritual father of Thai artists and he and I (as well as many of Thailand's most important living artists) share the DNA of Thao Sucharit Thamrong, the ancestor of my family clan and of many of the living royals in this kingdom.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Because of this dream I started to write the <em>Requiem for the Mother of Songs, </em>which took me three years and in which I had to reinvent a new synthesis of Thai and Western music. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In those years I saw many things done in the princess's name ... institutions set up, concerts organized, and so on. Yet as time passed I saw what my dream foretold — that in those things done in her name, often times the princess's ideas, so far ahead of her time, were not the main priority. Indeed, much of the time the name of the princess was being used as a mantra for personal advancement. Sometimes it would make me angry and frustrated … or depressed.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Today, five years later, I am coming to terms with this. I understand now that what Princess Galyani dreamed of is not to be found in buildings, institutions, or establishments. What she dreamed of <em>is </em>happening, faster than we imagine, and not in the way that we thought it would happen. It's in the passion of our young musicians. It's in the way audiences are flocking to our concerts and listening to the most intellectual music with new understanding and concentration. Can I have an absolutely packed 2,000-seat auditorium for a <em>contemporary</em> opera in Europe and will I feel the same sense of wonder, the same uplift, the same empowerment through music? Were Thai kids ever able to play Austrian music before an all-Austrian jury in an international competition in Austria's Musikverein and win first prize? </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Something has changed here. There is a new spirit. I think it is simply this: our kids now know that this is no longer about experts from Europe coming to bring salvation to the benighted savages of their cultural wasteland. Classical music may have come from the west, but — like cinema, like television, like shopping malls, like cutlery, it is now <em>our</em>heritage too. These kids know they have something to say, and they have new perspectives and new interpretations — and they know they are not here only learn from the west, but also to teach the west.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">This is what the princess foresaw, and the reason she was able to persuade me to give up everything and move back to Thailand — a thing I never dreamed I would do. When I was discouraged at the horror of music politics in Thailand, when I was besieged by those who were terrified that the status quo would end and they might actually be forced to become <em>artists</em>, she would always tell me not to be afraid. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I miss the princess very much. She was an incredible comfort and an inspiration. And what I want to say to the all of the music community, especially the young people who may not have been lucky enough to be personally touched by her inspiration, that the princess's vision of a creative, innovative, un-stuffy, joyful and vibrant kingdom of music will not come about through paternalistic planning or through micromanaged bureaucratic systems or "methods". It will come about when all of you are emboldened and empowered to unleash your imaginations. So have something to say, and be willing to acquire the technical proficiency with which to say it — and then really say it. Art is truth. The princess knew this, and deep down, so do you.</span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7313069753393877260.post-84344620377319305682012-08-25T12:31:00.001+07:002012-08-25T12:31:35.882+07:00Gustav's Angels - Appealing for No. 10<iframe frameborder="0" height="429px" scrolling="no" src="http://www.indiegogo.com/project/211732/widget" width="224px"></iframe>
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