The programme for this week took us to Ayutthaya (a UNESCO World Heritage site) where we learned more about Thai history amongst the ruins of Thailand's former capital. The Burmese destroyed it in the 17 th C CE, the culmination of a long series of battles & wars between Thailand & Burma. The stories of rape & pillage by the Burmese still seem to rankle in the Thai psyche.
The city had covered a huge area, with so many temples that the gilt decoration was said to dazzle up to 3 miles away. There were 1 million people living there in 1685, mainly on house boats on the 140 km network of waterways. The heart of the city was a 4km wide island where the Lopburi, Pasak & Chao Praya rivers meet. When the city was abandoned, the architects of the new capital of Bangkok replicated Ayutthaya's layout in every possible way We wandered through the ruins, which were tilted at odd angles due to a subsequent earthquake, trying to imagine how it looked in its heyday. The strangest sight was the serene head of a stone Buddha nestled firmly in the grip of the roots of a bodhi tree - very appropriate since the Buddha himself found enlightenment under just such a tree.
We also visited the palace complex of Bang Pa In, about 20 kms away, which was originally occupied in the 17th C CE, abandoned a century later & then reoccupied in the 19th C CE. It's a fascinating mix of European, Thai & Chinese architecture, set in pristine landscaped parklands. The most stunning & gorgeous building is the Palace of Heavenly Light, a fantastic red & gold mansion which was presented, with all its contents, to Rama V by the Bangkok Chines Chamber of Commerce in 1899.
Ayutthaya has traditionally been associated with elephant training (originally for warfare) & we went to see the elephant village on the edge of town. There we saw young boys using elephants as a diving board in the river, met some month-old elephant calves, their mothers & assorted friends & family. Finally we had dinner on a terrace overlooking the Chao Praya river.
At the heart of Thai culture is Buddhism, so inevitably the week included insights into the monkhood, a 200,000 strong body dedicated to showing by example how to live the Middle Way. We got up at 5 a.m. to participate in giving food to the local monks on their daily alms round. This practice is seen as an opportunity for the donor to gain merit. It is not to be thought of as a benefit to the receivers & one should never entertain thoughts that the monks are begging!
Our education continued with an overnight stay at the Wat Songhipong, near the town of Sonburi. It wasn't the most beautiful temple - in fact, it was positively run down & had a very plain hall for worship. The only thing of note was the glass case containing the skeleton of the present abbot's father, who had also been a monk! That's one of the surprising things that we discovered - a male can become a monk at any time in his life & is not precluded from so doing by being married & having children already. Men can also go on to be husbands & fathers after they have been a monk too. Being a monk is not necessarily for life & most Thai men have been ordained as monks at some stage. You can be a monk for as little as a day& it still gains merit! We witnessed the ordination of a young married man of 24, with a small daughter, who was going to lead the monastic life for 3 months. (We shouldn't be surprised since the Buddha himself was married & had a child before he gave up everything in search of the path to enlightenment & the end of suffering.)
We were kindly invited to join in the celebrations surrounding the ordination by the novice monk's family. We all traipsed off to another temple nearby, which was more aesthetically pleasing, to watch a service which was a strange mix of formal & informal. The family were all dressed in their workaday clothes & lounged about on the temple floor & steps chatting, some even on their mobile phones, while chanting & formalities proceeded. All the monks, even the most venerable, stopped at regular intervals to sook up their Pepsis through straws from the bottles! At one stage, all the men present, including Howard, were required to shuffle forward on their knees to present gifts to the monks, the gifts being plastic pails full of packets of soap powder, sponges, towels, cloths, tinned foods, biscuits, airmail letters & other such practical stuff. These pails are on sale everywhere particularly near temples. There must be millions of them! Not very eco-friendly - we don't think they are biodegradable & they are all wrapped up in vast amounts of cellophane & ribbons. It somehow seemed incongruous to see such ordinary, everyday offerings in such an ornate & exotic setting. In India & Thailand it has made us smile every time we've seen fantastically ornamental shrines bedecked with cans of fizzy drinks, tins of tomatoes, packets of crisps, bottles of sauce & the like.
Apart from the happy accident of witnessing the ceremony, we were generally disappointed with our temple stay. There was a lot of hanging about doing nothing, both with no purpose & in learning to do sitting & walking meditation. We did have an audience with the abbot but that was a little frustrating. We would ask a question through our translator, listen to the abbot speak in Thai for at least 5 minutes & then get the translation "Must try to do good in your life to a drain peace, no desire"! Sometimes we got answers to questions that we didn't ask, so we think much was lost in translation both ways. None of it led to the spiritual experience which we had hoped for. The abbot was very congenial though. He spoke little English & we spoke little Thai but he was just back from a month of training monks in Germany & was thrilled to discover that we could understand his pidgin German. He would suddenly burst out with "Wie gehts?" or "Es is gut, es is gut, ja? Speak German!" at odd moments.
The other disconcerting German intervention which really ensured that it was a less than spiritual experience, was to discover that another of Greenway's guides was an ex-member of a Bangkok gang who was proud to display his SS tattoo & declaim that Hitler was a great leader! There was a group of young medical students from the USA there with us at that point, several of whom were Jewish, & you can imagine the shock & offense that we all felt. It was not a pleasant incident!
We were at Wat Songhipong at the start of the festival to celebrate the Buddha's birth, death & enlightenment but apart from the fact that the locals brought alms to the monks rather than the monks going out to receive them, there were few signs of any special activities. We did end the day, however, back at the Temple of the Reclining Buddha, where we participated in a triple perambulation around the enormous statue following a company of monks to the rhythm of hypnotic chanting. (Most of these monks were young boys. We were told that young criminal offenders or even those that are felt to be going off the rails & keeping bad company are sent to monasteries very often, to get them back on the straight & narrow.) On this occasion we did feel part of a joyful atmosphere & came away feeling uplifted.
Our cultural week concluded with a stay at a spa resort. It was really just a reasonable hotel with a swimming pool, small gym & a hut where massages & facials could supposedly be had (had there ever been anyone there!). It was pretty low-key but it was air conditioned, comfortable & relaxing. What more could we ask? An easy going experience, which probably sums up much of the Thai approach to life.
The city had covered a huge area, with so many temples that the gilt decoration was said to dazzle up to 3 miles away. There were 1 million people living there in 1685, mainly on house boats on the 140 km network of waterways. The heart of the city was a 4km wide island where the Lopburi, Pasak & Chao Praya rivers meet. When the city was abandoned, the architects of the new capital of Bangkok replicated Ayutthaya's layout in every possible way We wandered through the ruins, which were tilted at odd angles due to a subsequent earthquake, trying to imagine how it looked in its heyday. The strangest sight was the serene head of a stone Buddha nestled firmly in the grip of the roots of a bodhi tree - very appropriate since the Buddha himself found enlightenment under just such a tree.
We also visited the palace complex of Bang Pa In, about 20 kms away, which was originally occupied in the 17th C CE, abandoned a century later & then reoccupied in the 19th C CE. It's a fascinating mix of European, Thai & Chinese architecture, set in pristine landscaped parklands. The most stunning & gorgeous building is the Palace of Heavenly Light, a fantastic red & gold mansion which was presented, with all its contents, to Rama V by the Bangkok Chines Chamber of Commerce in 1899.
Ayutthaya has traditionally been associated with elephant training (originally for warfare) & we went to see the elephant village on the edge of town. There we saw young boys using elephants as a diving board in the river, met some month-old elephant calves, their mothers & assorted friends & family. Finally we had dinner on a terrace overlooking the Chao Praya river.
At the heart of Thai culture is Buddhism, so inevitably the week included insights into the monkhood, a 200,000 strong body dedicated to showing by example how to live the Middle Way. We got up at 5 a.m. to participate in giving food to the local monks on their daily alms round. This practice is seen as an opportunity for the donor to gain merit. It is not to be thought of as a benefit to the receivers & one should never entertain thoughts that the monks are begging!
Our education continued with an overnight stay at the Wat Songhipong, near the town of Sonburi. It wasn't the most beautiful temple - in fact, it was positively run down & had a very plain hall for worship. The only thing of note was the glass case containing the skeleton of the present abbot's father, who had also been a monk! That's one of the surprising things that we discovered - a male can become a monk at any time in his life & is not precluded from so doing by being married & having children already. Men can also go on to be husbands & fathers after they have been a monk too. Being a monk is not necessarily for life & most Thai men have been ordained as monks at some stage. You can be a monk for as little as a day& it still gains merit! We witnessed the ordination of a young married man of 24, with a small daughter, who was going to lead the monastic life for 3 months. (We shouldn't be surprised since the Buddha himself was married & had a child before he gave up everything in search of the path to enlightenment & the end of suffering.)
We were kindly invited to join in the celebrations surrounding the ordination by the novice monk's family. We all traipsed off to another temple nearby, which was more aesthetically pleasing, to watch a service which was a strange mix of formal & informal. The family were all dressed in their workaday clothes & lounged about on the temple floor & steps chatting, some even on their mobile phones, while chanting & formalities proceeded. All the monks, even the most venerable, stopped at regular intervals to sook up their Pepsis through straws from the bottles! At one stage, all the men present, including Howard, were required to shuffle forward on their knees to present gifts to the monks, the gifts being plastic pails full of packets of soap powder, sponges, towels, cloths, tinned foods, biscuits, airmail letters & other such practical stuff. These pails are on sale everywhere particularly near temples. There must be millions of them! Not very eco-friendly - we don't think they are biodegradable & they are all wrapped up in vast amounts of cellophane & ribbons. It somehow seemed incongruous to see such ordinary, everyday offerings in such an ornate & exotic setting. In India & Thailand it has made us smile every time we've seen fantastically ornamental shrines bedecked with cans of fizzy drinks, tins of tomatoes, packets of crisps, bottles of sauce & the like.
Apart from the happy accident of witnessing the ceremony, we were generally disappointed with our temple stay. There was a lot of hanging about doing nothing, both with no purpose & in learning to do sitting & walking meditation. We did have an audience with the abbot but that was a little frustrating. We would ask a question through our translator, listen to the abbot speak in Thai for at least 5 minutes & then get the translation "Must try to do good in your life to a drain peace, no desire"! Sometimes we got answers to questions that we didn't ask, so we think much was lost in translation both ways. None of it led to the spiritual experience which we had hoped for. The abbot was very congenial though. He spoke little English & we spoke little Thai but he was just back from a month of training monks in Germany & was thrilled to discover that we could understand his pidgin German. He would suddenly burst out with "Wie gehts?" or "Es is gut, es is gut, ja? Speak German!" at odd moments.
The other disconcerting German intervention which really ensured that it was a less than spiritual experience, was to discover that another of Greenway's guides was an ex-member of a Bangkok gang who was proud to display his SS tattoo & declaim that Hitler was a great leader! There was a group of young medical students from the USA there with us at that point, several of whom were Jewish, & you can imagine the shock & offense that we all felt. It was not a pleasant incident!
We were at Wat Songhipong at the start of the festival to celebrate the Buddha's birth, death & enlightenment but apart from the fact that the locals brought alms to the monks rather than the monks going out to receive them, there were few signs of any special activities. We did end the day, however, back at the Temple of the Reclining Buddha, where we participated in a triple perambulation around the enormous statue following a company of monks to the rhythm of hypnotic chanting. (Most of these monks were young boys. We were told that young criminal offenders or even those that are felt to be going off the rails & keeping bad company are sent to monasteries very often, to get them back on the straight & narrow.) On this occasion we did feel part of a joyful atmosphere & came away feeling uplifted.
Our cultural week concluded with a stay at a spa resort. It was really just a reasonable hotel with a swimming pool, small gym & a hut where massages & facials could supposedly be had (had there ever been anyone there!). It was pretty low-key but it was air conditioned, comfortable & relaxing. What more could we ask? An easy going experience, which probably sums up much of the Thai approach to life.
No comments:
Post a Comment