Pretty, huh?
by Mike
Outside my hotel room in Petchaburi there were 18 monkeys at one point. They jumped on ledges and swung on wires and were generally destructive in the little courtyard. “It’s a good thing these animals don’t have any political power,” I thought. During the heat of the day they stayed in the trees on an enormous hill that rose from the center of the city, but in the late afternoon they’d come down and terrorize the locals. One restaurant gave me a pellet gun to shoot at the monkeys if they chose to perch above me and, maybe, shit on me. (read more)
I didn’t have to use it, of course, that was just a teaser to get you to click through.
So the monkeys moved back to the hill as night fell and passed, and when morning broke monks descended from their temple on the top of the same hill. At 5am townspeople were waiting on the street with food, water and money to give to the monks as they passed by in a procession, both parties saying a little prayer to the other. It is a beautiful thing. The donor gets to practice helping, the monks get to be humble. Buddhists are supposed to be content with a simple home, dress and food, and in the case of food it means accepting that whatever food is donated is enough.
This beautiful thing happens every morning, all over Southeast Asia.
Young monks collecting at the JJ Market in Bangkok
Dressed in orange, Buddhist monks are ubiquitous in Thailand. As I mentioned in my email, at 20 all men are required to serve for either six or twelve months in a temple, learning about kindness and how to help people. Sounds like a good social plan for a country. (In fact, I met a criminal attorney who complained about the low crime rates.)
For good reason, monks are treated with reverence everywhere they go. On buses they get preferred seating next to the elderly and/or pregnant. On the train to Petchaburi a nearby monk was visited by the humble, food-bearing conductors.
Wats & shrines dot every Bangkok neighborhood, acting as spiritual and educational centers. Unlike most of our churches and synagogues, Wats are outwardly beautiful & engaging.
Wat Pho, which clever readers might recognize from an earlier post.
I’m struggling to understand something, though – I’ve always thought of the art in the Vatican as a gift that rich men gave to other rich men in order to secure political preference. Maybe that’s cynical, but whatever. When I see Wats with a similar magnitude of beauty, I wonder if they’re the result of similar political pandering – or is the political system of Buddhism different from that of Catholicism just as the spiritual practice of Buddhism is not religious?
That same wat, pictured with a bold cat.
Didn’t we banish vertical photos?
Published on December 8, 2009
at 3:30 am.
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