November 2: Heavy Duty Nirvana
November, 1943,
Hintok Camp
We moved camp and Arthur died. He didn’t survive the journey, though we tried to save him. My wish for him to be taken early was not granted. He died painfully, as expected and as have many. I am empty. I would like to cry and to feel what it is I should feel at the loss of my dear friend, but I am empty.
I must bury him. I must dig a grave for Arthur. I cannot let him be thrown on the pyre with the heaps of other bodies. Death has lost its dignity for the men working in the cremation party. They have become callous and mechanical. So many dead, so many young bodies thrown away. The men tell stories of corpses acting like chimneys in the fire, smoke funnelling up through rib cages still covered in flesh, flames filtering up through eye sockets. They roast wild sweet potatoes in the embers, use a spare bone to retrieve them and toss back any nuisance toe or finger that mistakenly finds its way into their meal.
I will bury Arthur. I will give him dignity, if it's the last thing I do
*****
November
Wat Pah Chatanan
I used to think Chatanan was quiet but having spent time at the Poo Jom Petch retreat, it feels like a busy train station in comparison. We’re back at Chatanan now. Back to the old routine of early morning greetings from Gecko, early morning meals and teatime meetings in the Guest Villa with the boys. And today we had someone new for tea too. She’s a Buddhist nun. Called Susan. And at first she scared the living daylights out of me.
Susan, an Austrian, is the only other western woman who has visited the monastery since I’ve been here. Her bald, stark appearance, married with her brusque, staccato accent, was very intimidating. Women shave their heads and eyebrows too when they become a nun and the result can look fierce. I wasn't sure I wanted to get to know her. She looked so scary. She arrived this afternoon with Amaro, Tikaro and Antony, who for once hadn’t done a disappearing act into town with the Abbot.
"I will sit here, ya?” Susan announced with a nod. “I think this would be best, ya?”
She made me nervous. Antony hadn’t warned me he’d invited her and I immediately switched into being extremely polite and very English and began worrying if the house was clean enough for this visitor who kept ordering me about.
“It is very good you invite me for this tea with you,” she told me with a nod, scuttling determinedly across the tiled floor of the Guest Villa, swishing her white robes out of the way very bruskly and perching herself very precisely in one of the wooden chairs by the coffee table in the middle of the room. Knees together, shoulders back, bolt upright.
“It is very good for me to have another western woman to speak English with, even though of course, English is not my first language. Still it is less difficult than to speak Thai."
So glad to be of use.
"You speak Thai well?" I asked, not sure if I was meant to ask questions.
"Of course. Why not? I have lived here for two years."
How very stupid of me not to know that.
Then, she was silent. I waited for her to elaborate, expecting more after her rat-a-ta-tat entrance, but no, she just sat there, still, like the others who had now joined her. No one said anything for a very long time and I fell into a panic about being a useless host and was sure that people weren't enjoying themselves. Should I make conversation? What should I say?
I heard Gecko scamper up the mosquito screen and it made me smile. That’s right, mate. Run away.
"Would you like some tea?" I asked them eventually, not having a clue what I'd do if they said no.
"I'll give you a hand," offered Amaro, smiling and he got up and followed me to the kitchen. It was so good to see him again.
"You're so English, you little Pommie," he teased me once we’d escaped and I leant against the kitchen wall, breathing a sigh of relief at having got out of the painfully silent living room.
“Is it me, Amaro, or is all this weird?”
"It’s just different,” he said, his tone affectionate and reassuringly. “Don't worry about the social chit-chat bit, it doesn't work like that here. If someone's not got anything to say, then silence is very appropriate. There's no need for embarrassment. We're so used to filling the gaps with fluff, it just takes a little time to get used to."
"Amaro, I'm not sure I want to get used to it," I replied, and I only realised the deep truth of what I’d said as the words left my mouth.
Amaro, god bless him, stayed silent. When we returned with the flasks of tea and some sweets on a tray, Susan was deep in conversation with Antony and Tikaro. Susan was visiting from nearby monastery, Wat Nong Pah Pong, where there was a big community of Thai nuns. Unlike the monks, they all wore white robes and as far as I could see, they definitely got the raw end of the deal because, from what I was hearing from Susan, they also tended to do a lot of hard grafting. They did the cooking for the whole monastery, chopped wood and charcoal for the fires and generally kept house and home together. Keeping that white robe clean must have been a nightmare.
"Susan has asked if you'd like to go with her to visit Wat Nong Pah Pong,” Antony informed me. “It’s where I was ordained and you'd get a chance to see a proper Thai nun's community. It'll be a good experience for you."
Antony had slipped into his let's-educate-my-younger-sister-in-the-ways-of-Thailand-and-improve-her-cultural-awareness role and I had to stop my knee-jerk reaction of telling him to piss off. I was convinced he was trying to convert me. Even so, a visit to see a women's Buddhist community did sound interesting.
"You can stay as long as you like,” added Susan, smiling.
"Stay? You mean overnight?"
They all laughed.
"It's eight kilometres away, over the fields, and no buses," explained my brother. “If you go, you’ll have to stay at least one night.”
Susan had lived for three months at Wat Nong Pah Pong where the nuns community was sixty women strong, all Thai except for her. The monastery was run by the top man, the Ajahn Chan, before he died and as far as this particular tradition of Buddhism went, it was the bees’ knees. A chance to visit, and to stay, was rare indeed for a western woman.
"You come for tea at my kuti tomorrow," ordered Susan, "And we can talk. Thank you and now I must go. I wish to hear the Ajahn speak this evening."
Abruptly she came, abruptly she left.
Mae Li hovered in the dust at a distance. She smiled beamingly at me and bowed to Susan as she passed. And then Mae Li shuffled in her Wellington boots over to the outside closet to collect some water.
Tikaro had been quiet the last few days, ever since we’d returned from Poo Jom Petch. Since my arrival he’d relaxed and got quite animated during our afternoon tea conversations but of late he chose to be present in person only, sitting patiently, sucking his teeth every once in a while and polishing his glasses. Occasionally he chipped in but it was usually only to make a sarcastic dig at the faith which his robe told everyone he belonged to. Something was bugging him but he chose not to share it with us. Antony told me that the other evening, after he and Tikaro left the Guest Villa, they had sat in the dark on the footpath between here and the monastery, talking until two in the morning. He didn't elaborate on exactly what they were talking about but clearly, since they had to get up an hour or so later, it must have been something important. Was it something to with the row I’d witnessed between them at Poo Jom Petch, I wondered.
Darkness had fallen by the time Susan, Tikaro, Amaro and Antony had all left so I sat alone in my palace, the warm breeze gently whispering through the mosquito screens, the silhouette of Mae Li sat by a glowing fire outside her hut and Gecko keeping me company. War and Peace was getting surprisingly gripping.
I was getting increasingly impatient about going to the River Kwai. After all, that was why I’d come to Thailand in the first place. If it hadn’t been for Uncle Erno, I wouldn’t be here, wouldn’t have got to spend time with my brother and to get to know him again, even if it was in this weird and wonderful place. Travelling to the River Kwai with Antony to scatter Uncle Erno’s ashes was going to be great. Yes, there would be sadness but it was also going to be one of the most unique and special times of my life. My stay here meant that I was beginning to have a sense of family again after long, lonely years on my own and I wanted to hang on to that feeling and treasure it a while longer before returning to my life at home.
But, while we remained without any fixed plans to leave Chatanan, Uncle Erno rested on the table next to the shrine upstairs, waiting.
*****
November
The Nun’s Community,
Wat Nong Pah Pong
This morning Susan and I left Chatanan early to travel to Wat Nong Pah Pong to help prepare the meal. A meal prepared every day for over a hundred people. I can't believe the regime here. I thought I'd got used to all this Buddhism stuff but now, something new and unsettling was being thrown at me. The women do all the fetching and carrying for this monastery and then they aren't even invited to the party. The kitchen shutters are closed, locking the women inside when the monks line up to collect their food so that the men don’t lay their eyes on the women. The nuns then have to stay in the kitchen while they listen to the main ceremonies going on in the Sala through a loud-speaker system.
“What kind of woman could carry on like this and keep her self-respect?” I threw at Susan, insultingly and ignorantly, when we were alone.
"You look at it only as western woman,” she retorted. "For these nuns it is very different. For them, to serve gains merit and that helps them on their path. It isn't subservience."
"It's bollocks, Susan!” I shouted, annoyed and walking so fast that Susan had to nearly run to keep up. “You told me you'd been to Antony's ordination here. You didn't say you had to listen to it through loud speakers because they wouldn't let you in!”
I was flailing my arms about in disgust so much I think I nearly swiped her on the face by accident. I saw her duck out of the corner of my eye.
“What's it all about?” I carried on, regardless. “Are we supposed to accept that men are higher spiritual beings than us? That we can't make the grade and we should be happy cleaning up after them because that's as near as we'll get to the real thing? Is that it?"
"I know to you it must seem very, what is the word..."
"Crap?" I offered, slightly more calmly, but not much. I knew I had to stop from shouting too loudly. Nobody shouts in the Thailand I was visiting, nobody except big, white, fat, female Farangs.
"No,” replied Susan. “I mean patriarchal. At this moment in their cultural history, this is how it is for them. It is a good way to live. "
"Susan, it is pre-historic shit! I can't believe you want to live here. How do you manage it?"
She paused. She’d been really enjoying having a lively chat in English and a naughty grin began to appear beneath the stern, formal surface.
"I have a doctorate in anthropology,” she explained. “It helps."
We both relaxed and laughed.
“You talk like an anthropologist,” I teased her. “A German one.”
But at that, she stopped laughing.
“Austrian,” she corrected me sternly, and for a few moments the air between us was a little chillier than it had just been. Then, having forgiven me my blunder, she continued.
"Really, this is a good place and the women like to serve. For them it is like to meditate, a tool to help gain deeper understanding, to help ease inner suffering. It is only because to you it seems subservient that it upsets you."
She pointed over to two nuns who were passing us, shyly dipping their heads.
“Look,” she said. “They are not upset.”
She was right. They looked content. Not happy in a sense that I knew, but definitely content and anyway, what did I know? Maybe their type of happiness was longer lasting than mine.
Then Susan looked at me wryly and, in her clipped, sucking and by now endearing, Austrian accent, she added,
"Then again, it could all be crap."
*****
November
Wat Pah Chatanan
Back at Chatanan today, having escaped from the Nun’s Community with the aid of a lift from one of the lay people, I took the path that led to the Outside Sala, heading away from the main monastery and out to the edge of the trees. As I approached the gap in the forest where the Outside Sala sits, I saw a monk standing in the centre of the polished wooden floor. He had his back to me and was wearing a simple robe, like the one Amaro had on the first time I met him. It left his arms and one shoulder free.
The monk faced the statue of Buddha, the sharp morning sun filtered by the trees falling on the floor behind him and the breeze playing quietly with the leaves as if singing. He slowly began to lift his arm in a very gentle, calm sweeping circle, his hand following the arm, pulled upwards wrist-first, finger-tips trailing the air. He stretched the limb as far as he could from his body and then allowed the other arm to be lifted and the same, slow, mesmerising arc. Once his hands were resting high above his head he locked his elbows, cocked his wrists and began to lower his arms simultaneously, his palms facing out to the side, his arms straight and powerful. He turned his head to the side, away from me in a slow, deliberate movement and lifted one leg to start a sequence of movements, which carried him silently on a self-contained, physical and spiritual journey. The sequence lasted for about twenty minutes and I watched this vision of golden-brown as he danced with his own energy, surrounded by light and the singing breeze.
He finished by returning to the original arm sequence, his hands high in the air until he gracefully drew them to him and knelt down to bow three times towards Buddha.
When he stood, and turned to leave the Sala, I saw the monk’s face. It was Antony and I hadn’t recognised him. He didn’t see me as I rested in the trees, covering my presence with the branches.
It was Antony I saw, but it wasn't my brother. This wasn't my teenage biking hero, whose dream of heaven had been a loud, greasy Harley-Davidson roaring across the Golden Gate Bridge. This wasn't my big brother who swatted scary wasps that terrorised his little sister and who punched the school bully who’d tried to tease her. This wasn't Antony. This was a monk. This was Thanavaro.
“Gets to you don’t it?” A soft voice said, making me jump.
It was Amaro. He’d crept up behind without me hearing, on his way to ring the eight o’clock bell over at the tower next to the Sala. My brother had gone and Amaro thought I’d just been sitting admiring the view and I didn’t realise, until he pointed it out, that I was crying.
*****
November
Wat Pah Chatanan
I killed Gecko this morning. My poor little, adorable Gecko. I can’t believe what I’ve done.
He'd been living in my bathroom where it was warm and wet and every evening when I came home he'd be there to croak hello and every morning he'd scurry out from behind the pipes or wherever he's been resting to greet me. I didn't feel alone in the villa because I had Gecko. He listened attentively as I brushed my teeth or chatted to him. He’d stay clung to the wall as I asked his opinion about things and his silent wisdom helped me in a strange and foreign land. It was only once I'd finished talking and the sound of my own voice trailed away, that Gecko would flinch and choose to wander further up the wall or shoot off down to the tiled floor below.
This morning I didn't see him in the bathroom. He didn't appear from his overnight hiding place to greet me and I'd assumed he'd simply slept in or was in a grump, so I trundled off to the main Sala, half awake.
He wasn't there when I returned this evening and I began to be concerned. I began looking for him. It wasn't like him not to be around.
I checked the bathroom again, this time turning on the overhead light and as the door swung open, I found him. He'd taken to resting in the door well, clinging to the inside of the frame where the hinges open and close. As I'd absentmindedly closed the door, I'd killed him. He was still clinging there, his body rigid and intact. Shock hit me as I took in what I’d done.
The tears came and disjointed anxieties set in. Buddhists aren't supposed to take the life of a living creature and I'd killed Gecko in a Buddhist monastery. What karmic effects would that have on me? What price would I pay in my next life?
I projected all my feelings onto Gecko. I hadn’t realised how much I’d been missing home. What the hell was I doing here anyway? Why was I in the middle of the jungle in Thailand staying in bloody wooden huts with no one to hug me when I could be at home with friends, by the river with a drink in my hand? I could feel the heat in my face rising and my head began to pound with a million hand-drums beating a heavy, angry bass against my temples.
My tears stung as I collapsed onto the bed. There was no-one here to listen to me, no-one I could turn to for emotional support, no-one who really understood how difficult all this was for me.
At that moment, I hated these monks and this monastery with its stupid bloody rules and its stupid routines and those stupid bloody robes! I’d had enough. I hated pretending to be calm when actually I was feeling like I'd just swallowed rocket fuel. I hated being rational. I hated not being allowed to do things just because I was a woman. I hated having to offer things formally, why couldn't they just bloody take it? I hated not having a TV. I hated not being able to phone anyone, not being able to run downstairs to see if any mail had come for me, not being able to call out to Molly The Cat. I hated being here in this villa on my own when my brother was just around the corner and couldn't even come and visit me without a bloody chaperone.
But mostly, I hated remembering something Amaro had told me the other day, that one of the most difficult things for a human being to do, is to return love for hate and I began to feel very small. Very small indeed.
When I looked up, I saw that the bedclothes were in a complete mess. I was sweating and still angry.
My iPod was by my bed, so I picked it up and disappeared into an hour of heavy duty Nirvana.
Load up on guns and bring your friends.
*****
November
The River Kwai, Thailand
I can’t believe all that’s happened since last I wrote. I don’t know what Uncle Erno had in mind when he asked me to come here, but as far as I’m concerned, this trip has descended into hell.
Hintok Camp
We moved camp and Arthur died. He didn’t survive the journey, though we tried to save him. My wish for him to be taken early was not granted. He died painfully, as expected and as have many. I am empty. I would like to cry and to feel what it is I should feel at the loss of my dear friend, but I am empty.
I must bury him. I must dig a grave for Arthur. I cannot let him be thrown on the pyre with the heaps of other bodies. Death has lost its dignity for the men working in the cremation party. They have become callous and mechanical. So many dead, so many young bodies thrown away. The men tell stories of corpses acting like chimneys in the fire, smoke funnelling up through rib cages still covered in flesh, flames filtering up through eye sockets. They roast wild sweet potatoes in the embers, use a spare bone to retrieve them and toss back any nuisance toe or finger that mistakenly finds its way into their meal.
I will bury Arthur. I will give him dignity, if it's the last thing I do
*****
November
Wat Pah Chatanan
I used to think Chatanan was quiet but having spent time at the Poo Jom Petch retreat, it feels like a busy train station in comparison. We’re back at Chatanan now. Back to the old routine of early morning greetings from Gecko, early morning meals and teatime meetings in the Guest Villa with the boys. And today we had someone new for tea too. She’s a Buddhist nun. Called Susan. And at first she scared the living daylights out of me.
Susan, an Austrian, is the only other western woman who has visited the monastery since I’ve been here. Her bald, stark appearance, married with her brusque, staccato accent, was very intimidating. Women shave their heads and eyebrows too when they become a nun and the result can look fierce. I wasn't sure I wanted to get to know her. She looked so scary. She arrived this afternoon with Amaro, Tikaro and Antony, who for once hadn’t done a disappearing act into town with the Abbot.
"I will sit here, ya?” Susan announced with a nod. “I think this would be best, ya?”
She made me nervous. Antony hadn’t warned me he’d invited her and I immediately switched into being extremely polite and very English and began worrying if the house was clean enough for this visitor who kept ordering me about.
“It is very good you invite me for this tea with you,” she told me with a nod, scuttling determinedly across the tiled floor of the Guest Villa, swishing her white robes out of the way very bruskly and perching herself very precisely in one of the wooden chairs by the coffee table in the middle of the room. Knees together, shoulders back, bolt upright.
“It is very good for me to have another western woman to speak English with, even though of course, English is not my first language. Still it is less difficult than to speak Thai."
So glad to be of use.
"You speak Thai well?" I asked, not sure if I was meant to ask questions.
"Of course. Why not? I have lived here for two years."
How very stupid of me not to know that.
Then, she was silent. I waited for her to elaborate, expecting more after her rat-a-ta-tat entrance, but no, she just sat there, still, like the others who had now joined her. No one said anything for a very long time and I fell into a panic about being a useless host and was sure that people weren't enjoying themselves. Should I make conversation? What should I say?
I heard Gecko scamper up the mosquito screen and it made me smile. That’s right, mate. Run away.
"Would you like some tea?" I asked them eventually, not having a clue what I'd do if they said no.
"I'll give you a hand," offered Amaro, smiling and he got up and followed me to the kitchen. It was so good to see him again.
"You're so English, you little Pommie," he teased me once we’d escaped and I leant against the kitchen wall, breathing a sigh of relief at having got out of the painfully silent living room.
“Is it me, Amaro, or is all this weird?”
"It’s just different,” he said, his tone affectionate and reassuringly. “Don't worry about the social chit-chat bit, it doesn't work like that here. If someone's not got anything to say, then silence is very appropriate. There's no need for embarrassment. We're so used to filling the gaps with fluff, it just takes a little time to get used to."
"Amaro, I'm not sure I want to get used to it," I replied, and I only realised the deep truth of what I’d said as the words left my mouth.
Amaro, god bless him, stayed silent. When we returned with the flasks of tea and some sweets on a tray, Susan was deep in conversation with Antony and Tikaro. Susan was visiting from nearby monastery, Wat Nong Pah Pong, where there was a big community of Thai nuns. Unlike the monks, they all wore white robes and as far as I could see, they definitely got the raw end of the deal because, from what I was hearing from Susan, they also tended to do a lot of hard grafting. They did the cooking for the whole monastery, chopped wood and charcoal for the fires and generally kept house and home together. Keeping that white robe clean must have been a nightmare.
"Susan has asked if you'd like to go with her to visit Wat Nong Pah Pong,” Antony informed me. “It’s where I was ordained and you'd get a chance to see a proper Thai nun's community. It'll be a good experience for you."
Antony had slipped into his let's-educate-my-younger-sister-in-the-ways-of-Thailand-and-improve-her-cultural-awareness role and I had to stop my knee-jerk reaction of telling him to piss off. I was convinced he was trying to convert me. Even so, a visit to see a women's Buddhist community did sound interesting.
"You can stay as long as you like,” added Susan, smiling.
"Stay? You mean overnight?"
They all laughed.
"It's eight kilometres away, over the fields, and no buses," explained my brother. “If you go, you’ll have to stay at least one night.”
Susan had lived for three months at Wat Nong Pah Pong where the nuns community was sixty women strong, all Thai except for her. The monastery was run by the top man, the Ajahn Chan, before he died and as far as this particular tradition of Buddhism went, it was the bees’ knees. A chance to visit, and to stay, was rare indeed for a western woman.
"You come for tea at my kuti tomorrow," ordered Susan, "And we can talk. Thank you and now I must go. I wish to hear the Ajahn speak this evening."
Abruptly she came, abruptly she left.
Mae Li hovered in the dust at a distance. She smiled beamingly at me and bowed to Susan as she passed. And then Mae Li shuffled in her Wellington boots over to the outside closet to collect some water.
Tikaro had been quiet the last few days, ever since we’d returned from Poo Jom Petch. Since my arrival he’d relaxed and got quite animated during our afternoon tea conversations but of late he chose to be present in person only, sitting patiently, sucking his teeth every once in a while and polishing his glasses. Occasionally he chipped in but it was usually only to make a sarcastic dig at the faith which his robe told everyone he belonged to. Something was bugging him but he chose not to share it with us. Antony told me that the other evening, after he and Tikaro left the Guest Villa, they had sat in the dark on the footpath between here and the monastery, talking until two in the morning. He didn't elaborate on exactly what they were talking about but clearly, since they had to get up an hour or so later, it must have been something important. Was it something to with the row I’d witnessed between them at Poo Jom Petch, I wondered.
Darkness had fallen by the time Susan, Tikaro, Amaro and Antony had all left so I sat alone in my palace, the warm breeze gently whispering through the mosquito screens, the silhouette of Mae Li sat by a glowing fire outside her hut and Gecko keeping me company. War and Peace was getting surprisingly gripping.
I was getting increasingly impatient about going to the River Kwai. After all, that was why I’d come to Thailand in the first place. If it hadn’t been for Uncle Erno, I wouldn’t be here, wouldn’t have got to spend time with my brother and to get to know him again, even if it was in this weird and wonderful place. Travelling to the River Kwai with Antony to scatter Uncle Erno’s ashes was going to be great. Yes, there would be sadness but it was also going to be one of the most unique and special times of my life. My stay here meant that I was beginning to have a sense of family again after long, lonely years on my own and I wanted to hang on to that feeling and treasure it a while longer before returning to my life at home.
But, while we remained without any fixed plans to leave Chatanan, Uncle Erno rested on the table next to the shrine upstairs, waiting.
*****
November
The Nun’s Community,
Wat Nong Pah Pong
This morning Susan and I left Chatanan early to travel to Wat Nong Pah Pong to help prepare the meal. A meal prepared every day for over a hundred people. I can't believe the regime here. I thought I'd got used to all this Buddhism stuff but now, something new and unsettling was being thrown at me. The women do all the fetching and carrying for this monastery and then they aren't even invited to the party. The kitchen shutters are closed, locking the women inside when the monks line up to collect their food so that the men don’t lay their eyes on the women. The nuns then have to stay in the kitchen while they listen to the main ceremonies going on in the Sala through a loud-speaker system.
“What kind of woman could carry on like this and keep her self-respect?” I threw at Susan, insultingly and ignorantly, when we were alone.
"You look at it only as western woman,” she retorted. "For these nuns it is very different. For them, to serve gains merit and that helps them on their path. It isn't subservience."
"It's bollocks, Susan!” I shouted, annoyed and walking so fast that Susan had to nearly run to keep up. “You told me you'd been to Antony's ordination here. You didn't say you had to listen to it through loud speakers because they wouldn't let you in!”
I was flailing my arms about in disgust so much I think I nearly swiped her on the face by accident. I saw her duck out of the corner of my eye.
“What's it all about?” I carried on, regardless. “Are we supposed to accept that men are higher spiritual beings than us? That we can't make the grade and we should be happy cleaning up after them because that's as near as we'll get to the real thing? Is that it?"
"I know to you it must seem very, what is the word..."
"Crap?" I offered, slightly more calmly, but not much. I knew I had to stop from shouting too loudly. Nobody shouts in the Thailand I was visiting, nobody except big, white, fat, female Farangs.
"No,” replied Susan. “I mean patriarchal. At this moment in their cultural history, this is how it is for them. It is a good way to live. "
"Susan, it is pre-historic shit! I can't believe you want to live here. How do you manage it?"
She paused. She’d been really enjoying having a lively chat in English and a naughty grin began to appear beneath the stern, formal surface.
"I have a doctorate in anthropology,” she explained. “It helps."
We both relaxed and laughed.
“You talk like an anthropologist,” I teased her. “A German one.”
But at that, she stopped laughing.
“Austrian,” she corrected me sternly, and for a few moments the air between us was a little chillier than it had just been. Then, having forgiven me my blunder, she continued.
"Really, this is a good place and the women like to serve. For them it is like to meditate, a tool to help gain deeper understanding, to help ease inner suffering. It is only because to you it seems subservient that it upsets you."
She pointed over to two nuns who were passing us, shyly dipping their heads.
“Look,” she said. “They are not upset.”
She was right. They looked content. Not happy in a sense that I knew, but definitely content and anyway, what did I know? Maybe their type of happiness was longer lasting than mine.
Then Susan looked at me wryly and, in her clipped, sucking and by now endearing, Austrian accent, she added,
"Then again, it could all be crap."
*****
November
Wat Pah Chatanan
Back at Chatanan today, having escaped from the Nun’s Community with the aid of a lift from one of the lay people, I took the path that led to the Outside Sala, heading away from the main monastery and out to the edge of the trees. As I approached the gap in the forest where the Outside Sala sits, I saw a monk standing in the centre of the polished wooden floor. He had his back to me and was wearing a simple robe, like the one Amaro had on the first time I met him. It left his arms and one shoulder free.
The monk faced the statue of Buddha, the sharp morning sun filtered by the trees falling on the floor behind him and the breeze playing quietly with the leaves as if singing. He slowly began to lift his arm in a very gentle, calm sweeping circle, his hand following the arm, pulled upwards wrist-first, finger-tips trailing the air. He stretched the limb as far as he could from his body and then allowed the other arm to be lifted and the same, slow, mesmerising arc. Once his hands were resting high above his head he locked his elbows, cocked his wrists and began to lower his arms simultaneously, his palms facing out to the side, his arms straight and powerful. He turned his head to the side, away from me in a slow, deliberate movement and lifted one leg to start a sequence of movements, which carried him silently on a self-contained, physical and spiritual journey. The sequence lasted for about twenty minutes and I watched this vision of golden-brown as he danced with his own energy, surrounded by light and the singing breeze.
He finished by returning to the original arm sequence, his hands high in the air until he gracefully drew them to him and knelt down to bow three times towards Buddha.
When he stood, and turned to leave the Sala, I saw the monk’s face. It was Antony and I hadn’t recognised him. He didn’t see me as I rested in the trees, covering my presence with the branches.
It was Antony I saw, but it wasn't my brother. This wasn't my teenage biking hero, whose dream of heaven had been a loud, greasy Harley-Davidson roaring across the Golden Gate Bridge. This wasn't my big brother who swatted scary wasps that terrorised his little sister and who punched the school bully who’d tried to tease her. This wasn't Antony. This was a monk. This was Thanavaro.
“Gets to you don’t it?” A soft voice said, making me jump.
It was Amaro. He’d crept up behind without me hearing, on his way to ring the eight o’clock bell over at the tower next to the Sala. My brother had gone and Amaro thought I’d just been sitting admiring the view and I didn’t realise, until he pointed it out, that I was crying.
*****
November
Wat Pah Chatanan
I killed Gecko this morning. My poor little, adorable Gecko. I can’t believe what I’ve done.
He'd been living in my bathroom where it was warm and wet and every evening when I came home he'd be there to croak hello and every morning he'd scurry out from behind the pipes or wherever he's been resting to greet me. I didn't feel alone in the villa because I had Gecko. He listened attentively as I brushed my teeth or chatted to him. He’d stay clung to the wall as I asked his opinion about things and his silent wisdom helped me in a strange and foreign land. It was only once I'd finished talking and the sound of my own voice trailed away, that Gecko would flinch and choose to wander further up the wall or shoot off down to the tiled floor below.
This morning I didn't see him in the bathroom. He didn't appear from his overnight hiding place to greet me and I'd assumed he'd simply slept in or was in a grump, so I trundled off to the main Sala, half awake.
He wasn't there when I returned this evening and I began to be concerned. I began looking for him. It wasn't like him not to be around.
I checked the bathroom again, this time turning on the overhead light and as the door swung open, I found him. He'd taken to resting in the door well, clinging to the inside of the frame where the hinges open and close. As I'd absentmindedly closed the door, I'd killed him. He was still clinging there, his body rigid and intact. Shock hit me as I took in what I’d done.
The tears came and disjointed anxieties set in. Buddhists aren't supposed to take the life of a living creature and I'd killed Gecko in a Buddhist monastery. What karmic effects would that have on me? What price would I pay in my next life?
I projected all my feelings onto Gecko. I hadn’t realised how much I’d been missing home. What the hell was I doing here anyway? Why was I in the middle of the jungle in Thailand staying in bloody wooden huts with no one to hug me when I could be at home with friends, by the river with a drink in my hand? I could feel the heat in my face rising and my head began to pound with a million hand-drums beating a heavy, angry bass against my temples.
My tears stung as I collapsed onto the bed. There was no-one here to listen to me, no-one I could turn to for emotional support, no-one who really understood how difficult all this was for me.
At that moment, I hated these monks and this monastery with its stupid bloody rules and its stupid routines and those stupid bloody robes! I’d had enough. I hated pretending to be calm when actually I was feeling like I'd just swallowed rocket fuel. I hated being rational. I hated not being allowed to do things just because I was a woman. I hated having to offer things formally, why couldn't they just bloody take it? I hated not having a TV. I hated not being able to phone anyone, not being able to run downstairs to see if any mail had come for me, not being able to call out to Molly The Cat. I hated being here in this villa on my own when my brother was just around the corner and couldn't even come and visit me without a bloody chaperone.
But mostly, I hated remembering something Amaro had told me the other day, that one of the most difficult things for a human being to do, is to return love for hate and I began to feel very small. Very small indeed.
When I looked up, I saw that the bedclothes were in a complete mess. I was sweating and still angry.
My iPod was by my bed, so I picked it up and disappeared into an hour of heavy duty Nirvana.
Load up on guns and bring your friends.
*****
November
The River Kwai, Thailand
I can’t believe all that’s happened since last I wrote. I don’t know what Uncle Erno had in mind when he asked me to come here, but as far as I’m concerned, this trip has descended into hell.
posted by tricia walker at 3:04 PM
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