When Things Fall Apart

 

 

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Funeral relics are left unattended at the crematorium. People have been reincarnated. Having entered another life, they don’t need our attention anymore.

 

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Fang

 

I finally arrived at Wat SriBoonRuang in Fang, Thailand.

I was here four years ago.

They have a meditation center listed on their website. Four years ago it seemed like a good place to learn some meditation practice. Also, I wanted to  explore further into Theravada Buddhism in order to know more about its expanded view in the world – especially in Thailand.

From my travels four years ago, I wrote about my experiences and why I wanted to return.

You can read about the previous encounter here: Frenchmen – Chapter 5

 

We Forget

When you take the local bus from Chiang Dao up to Fang the scenery is spectacular. I had forgotten its beauty and the harrowing ride. The narrow highway curves and climbs repeatedly up through the tropical rainforest. Once it reaches its peak, it then swivels down into the valley where Fang is located.

 

 

The valley that extends out to the mountains along Myanmar is riddled with farms and orchards. Fang, a relatively small place near the Myanmar border to the north, is lined along the highway with a host of small businesses serving the community. Agricultural farming equipment, hardware stores, locally made floor mats and hats and brooms – oh my! Small Chinese herbal pharmacies, local markets and small restaurants.

 

Then there are glittering Wats [temples] every mile or so. They are all built on the west side of the road as they must face east to capture the rising sun. Their mirrored tiles, in an array of colors,  sparkle around the gilded-gold floral designs that swirl around every temple. They play into the remembrance of natures true value above that of our useless, observed suffering.

I told the bus boy that I needed to get off at Wat SriBoonRuang. As we approached the temple compound he remembered my request and yelled out,

‘Wat SriBoonRuang – next!’

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Travel – A Fickle Friend

Major events have transpired in the four years since I was last here.

Three years ago my father died. Two dogs I loved died. Two years ago may spouse and I separated. One year ago I crashed my bike and had a Traumatic Brain Injury.

All of this personal trauma made a cheap plane ticket to Thailand sound like a sure bet – something outside of my personal world and self.

I felt like I needed adventure.

So, I emailed the head abbot at Wat SriBoonRuang to find out if there was a chance of going back to the temple to help teach English at the school there. I remembered they ran an orphanage and took in hill-tribe kids from along the Myanmar border. They also took in kids who’s parents were poor and couldn’t afford good schooling. Temple compounds will frequently do this to help serve the society around them.

The boys enter as novice monks. After entering into a temple compound environment as kids, they often never have a social-worldly life that they need or want to adapt too. Many of them extend their monk-hood into their entire lives. They become ordained monks at the age of twenty.

I met a seventy year old monk who had been in the monastery since the age of five.

The current abbot at Wat Sriboonruang, Phra Maha Dr. Apisit, was born in 1972.  He became a novice [sāmaṇera] at the age of twelve. He was appointed Abbot at the age of twenty-nine. He’s a wonderful, busy man. While here four years ago he  ordained me, along with a frenchman, to the Eight Precepts we follow while here.

But that’s another story.

More about Phra Maha Dr. Apisit - http://vipassanameditation.asia/our-team/

More about novice monks - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samanera

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Transpire

About a month after I sent my email to the abbot I received a reply. It simply said,

‘Come to the Wat. You can help me.’

The reply came from a new foreign monk, Phra Clyde.

As I approached the compound, I could see some major changes where transpiring. They had nothing to do with those that had transpired in my brain since I was last here.

Thai temples are surrounded by walls and entrance gates. Here, along the northern road, half the wall had been torn down. Behind where the wall had been, a field of old trees had been leveled. Rising up from where the trees had been was a large, concrete extended floor level being worked on with a group of novice monks. And there, sitting on the new second floor level, sat a massive new statue of Buddha.

 

Time

Four years ago, none of this was in the world.

I walked in.

Compared to my previous visit things seemed a shambles. Around the road,  construction piles were stacked. The complex was littered and disorderly, a rare oddity for the systematically arranged Thai’s. The only people I saw were the novice monks who were busy wheelbarrowing sand into the constructed first floor.

There was no one in the Wihan, no one in the office, no one anywhere. I walked over to the school and some novice students, eager to test their English, saw me and yelled ‘Hello!’. I asked where I could find Phra Clyde. One of them ran into the school. A few minutes later he came back with an older monk who said to follow him.

We walked over to this two-story teak building that had been the meeting place on my previous visit. We went up the staircase where he knocked on the door. Nothing. He knocked again, more loudly.

‘Yah! Who is it?’

Heart of Texas

And the door opened. There stood Phra Clyde.

Phra Clyde is a big American man. A big Texan. Normally, this doesn’t play into my respect or disrespect but this situation had added interest for me. Here I was in a small, northern Thai city and across from me stood a large Texan in full orange monk-garb. He invited me in.

The monk that showed me where Phra Clyde lived took off.

Phra Clyde remembered the email I had sent to the abbot. He asked me to sit down. Fulminating for ninety minute about his Thai troubles, his life as a monk, was an exhausting time. During the entire talk he asked not a thing about me or my decision to come back to Fang. The more he talked the quieter I became. This often happens when things go awry. I would nod in agreement to things he complained about. I could not nod to his slightly racist notions of how Thai people handled their situations, and his.

I was astonished.

He had been in Thailand for over ten years, yet barely knew how to speak Thai.

His head and body constantly seeped sweat that he dabbed off with a box of thin tissues. His shaved head played out in contrast to the blond sprouts of hair covering his back, shoulders and chest. He didn’t look fat, but being over six-feet tall he looked large. Like me, he was in his sixties, so I tried to appease and understand his situation. At one point he complained about loosing fifteen kilos recently and I remember thinking ‘How is that possible?’.

Mostly he told me about his extended Vipassana meditation studies that gave him the authority to be a monk. With the certification he can claim some authority to live at a temple compound. I could tell that he was relieved that I had been there before. The meditation compound, when I stayed here before, had strict, daily instructions that he felt little reason or heed to back up.

He gave me a small Vipassana instruction book and told me that If I had any questions, the pamphlet would answer them.

When We Want to Help

When I reminded him that I showed up hoping to help teach English to the novice monks, he gave me the bad news.

Recently, he had, more or less, been kicked out of the English program. Then he complained  about the teachers involved. The head Thai English teacher later told me that there had been problems with Clyde in the class. With his inability to speak Thai or communicate with the students and help them excel, he was asked to leave.

After my initial visit I only saw him once again at a small street cafe. He was eating some food before his food intake-time ended at noon.

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Left Alone

When his talking ended, he called a helper who showed up with a pick up truck. The driver was elated that at least I could speak Thai to him. We threw my bag in the back of the truck along with a bicycle and he drove me out to my meditation kuti.

With rules applied over the centuries, a kuti is a specifically sized room or building. Within the temple compound, they are the rooms where monks live. The ones here were built about a kilometer from the compound. People coming to study meditation, to learn about the entry into Thai Buddhist temple life stay in these. There are about fifteen of them.

This time, I was the only person there.

Four years ago every room was taken. It was full of foreigners. They had come to learn about personal steps into deeper thinking, or no thinking at all. There were even three foreign monks.

The truck driver took me to room No.3, gave me a key. As I went to flip the bike out of the truck he confronted me with my old-age stamina so, of course, I insisted on doing it. He smiled and laughed. As he prepared to leave I asked if there was meditation at the temple that evening. He said no. He thought there might be some chanting in the morning, but he didn’t know.

He got into his truck and left.

Though no one told me the rules or what to do there this time, I understood some things from my previous visit. One is supposed to meditate six to ten hours a day. A Scot named Graham was the head teacher when I was there before. He kept a strict lookout on what was happening.

Now it was just me.

 

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Walking

I walked around to see where I was at, what had transpired over time.

In Vipassana meditation there is an entire side of walking meditation. They had built a sanded area where you could walk back and forth as long as you liked. One of my fondest memories was watching the head abbot,  Phra Ajahn Dr. Apisit, as he slowly walked on the sand. The next day I went out and purchased a rake. Above all, I wanted to keep the sand level and, of course, to add beauty.

Due to the passing of four years, this time the walking meditation area felt abandoned. Half of the ceiling canvas had been torn off. Bamboo poles were strapped across the roof pipes. They were strung with clothes-line rope. Some washed blankets flapped in the breeze.

 

 

 

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Sitting

Not knowing the complexities of temple compound life for the monks, I didn’t understand that the last time I was here it was Vassa. In English it is referred to as Rains Retreat and is often described [though inaccurate] as Buddhist Lent.

Vassa begins on the first day of the waning moon of the eighth lunar month. Consequently, it had already started the last time I was here. It occurs for the three months during the monsoon season. For the duration of Vassa, monastics remain in one place, typically temple grounds or a monastery.

Now I understood why the last time I was here there were three foreign monks staying at the compound.

During Vassa, the monks practice intense meditation and do Pali chants both mornings and evenings. The lay people in the community join in during this time.

Suddenly, I understood why things now seemed so vacant and unattended.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vassa

 

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Reasons

Over the days I thought about my reasons for coming here. After seeing all of the unfamiliar aspects of what things at the temple had become, I kept thinking about

My father’s death

My dogs death

My breakup

My brain injury

They crept into my hours of meditative time. As a result, they became a revelation of sorts. All of it started to match along the lines of change and the absolute attentive powers that the past and future can hold.

Then, there it was. All I had was this present moment. Or, as Vipassana practitioners call it – Insight.

Through some relevant change, things suddenly gained clarity. The familiarity of the past became insignificant, more like the leftover decorative figures at a Thai crematorium. Similarly the future, though nearly impossible to transcend, becomes nothing but an irrelevant dream.

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No Control

I have to admit that this all came across as some craziness that I had no control over. As a result, there were perspicacious moments that I had never had access to. Even though things are still more deviating than any type of absolute, clear-consciousness, time has narrowed. At times, time appears clear.

You refrain from feeling hurt by death, love and injury.

You leave your country and you are enchanted by another. Beautifully raked meditation sand becomes a place to hang clothes. A temple filled with chanting monks and lay people, now empty, becomes a place filled with silence. Cut down trees become a space where novice monks create a large, crazy statue of Buddha. An elderly Texan monk walks away and, inexplicably, changes your wants and needs. 

Nothing falls apart. Everything changes.

 

 

___________ Fang, Thailand __________