Living with a Buddhist
I’m a fan of Buddhism. It’s very easygoing, it seems, but I don’t know a lot about it. I was born and brought up as a Christian, but I don’t know a lot about that, either. Of the Ten Commandments, I can only recall the one about not killing and that other one about not coveting your neighbor’s wife. The first one seems reasonable enough, but the exceptions to this rule must have been chiseled elsewhere. And I can’t help wondering if the second one implies that it’s okay to covet the 18-year old daughter.
Past kings, as well as the current one, are closely associated with Buddhism in Thailand. It’s been that way since King Ramkhamhaeng the Great embraced Theravada Buddhism in the 13th century. This photo shows a little ritual of sorts that goes on every Tuesday in our rented house. I asked Ting a reasonable question: “Why Tuesday?” After some hesitation, she replied, “I think birthday King, maybe. I’m not so sure.” The king in the photo, by the way, is Rama V. This, however, was claimed with little confidence. The photos came with the house, as did the obligatory ritual (we never had to do this before).
I’ve lived with a few Buddhists. I’ve tried both Japanese and Thai versions. In a way, Buddhism is like an open-source operating system that was begun more than 2,500 years ago and allowed to evolve on various platforms. This was made clear to me once in Japan when, drinking with friends, a friend of friend showed up. He was a professional Buddhist priest. He wore designer robes and drove a Mercedes. He smoked Lucky Strikes, which stuck me as being a bit non-conformist. Buddhism in Japan comes bundled with accounting and marketing software. It uses cutting-edge technology. For a mere $10,000 the programmers can provide just the right posthumous name to guarantee passage to heaven, which, strictly speaking, Gotama Buddha never mentioned. Despite anti-cartel legislature, Buddhism in Japan has an unwritten agreement with Shinto, the indigenous religion, in which it gets all the lucrative business dealing with human mortality and Shinto is stuck blessing your car.
Thai
Buddhism, on the other hand, is quite a back-to-basics thing. In fact, Gotama
Buddha must have written something into the code that the Thai people weren’t
able to hack. This is maintaining close contact with the people. And what
better way to do it than to walk by their homes in the morning and allow
anyone to “make merit.” Ting is the first seemingly devout Buddhist I’ve
lived with. She’s certainly never tried to convert me. It would be impossible,
anyway, because like most other Thai Buddhists, she knows very little about
it. That doesn’t keep her from being happy, though, or from being Buddhist.
Since I’m exiled here without a movie channel, I tend to sleep early enough
to wake up and witness this merit making. The monks are fairly predictable,
walking past our house at roughly 6:20 every morning. Preceding their arrival,
you’d think this was a typical home, the housewife busily preparing breakfast
for the kids, husband, cats, etc. The prepared meal, however, is an offering
to the monks. Being a typical male, I usually feel determined to compete
with the monks, and cats, for attention, demanding my coffee even before
rising. I usually get it after the cats get fed and the monks are long gone.
A few days ago, armed with our new digital camera, I forced Ting out of bed earlier than usual, hoping to photograph the event so that those in less privileged countries could appreciate how lucky I am. I photographed the food first, which as you’d expect, is a pretty silly thing to do. My rare interest in the monks inspired Ting to produce coffee before they came, but only after the cats got fed. The coffee, however, inspired my bowels to revolt at the very moment the monks were approaching. Though I settled the matter quickly, I had only an empty plate to photograph when I returned. A few days later I managed to photo the elusive monks.
A lot of tourists come to Thailand with great expectations about seeing Buddhism first-hand, only to ask each other, “Are these people really Buddhist?” I assure you that they are. In a BBC TV production in 1980, in reply to a question about how it is that Buddhism in Thailand seems to be such a mix, a Thai replied: “I would say, you know, as regards Buddhism in this country, although we are Buddhists—we believe and have faith in the Buddhist philosophy—our way of life and by way of our culture we are more Hindu than Buddhist. . . . So Buddhism is just a philosophy. . . . Let me compare this—I hope it won’t be taken as sacrilege. . . . Had we only had Buddhism without Hinduism, Buddhism would not be able to make a start. [The Hindu beliefs] satisfied the weaknesses in our nature. The teaching of the Lord Buddha is supreme and absolute truth—we all know that. . . . It’s like a dry martini. You call it a dry martini; wash the glass out with martini [vermouth]; wipe it dry; and then just drink the gin.”
Thai Buddhism, however, doesn't answer the important questions regarding our daily lives, like why are there five bars of soap disolving in the soap dish, and why am I driving a Hyundai instead of the Ford Ranger I wanted?
For more information on Thai Buddhism, I suggest http://www.thaibuddhism.net.