humans are funny

Category: monks

  • Can’t someone just start a war over there or something?

    Remember when I said I hated the Vietnamese government and talked shit about them (here)? Well, they’re back to their old games, they are. Those bastards.

    Thich Nhat Hanh is a Vietnamese monk. And he’s not part of the government, so I like him. Even MLK Jr. liked him and nominated him for a Nobel Peace Prize. Visiting his monastery is what got me interested in meditation and sparked my interest in taking this very trip.

    But the Vietnamese government has hated him since the 60s. During the Vietnam war, he called for peace. This was speaking out against the government, so they kicked him out of the country. For good. For calling for peace! Then, years later, the Vietnamese decided they needed foreign investors and wanted off the US’s blacklist regarding religious freedom. Yes, even though they have museums dedicated to blaming the US for every Vietnamese malady in current civilization, the government wanted to be friends again.

    So…. Forty years after kicking him out, they invited Thich Nhat Hanh back to his homeland. He came, established Bat Nha monastery in the mountains, and began to give peace a chance. People flocked to him and his interpretation of what Buddhism should be (slightly less superstitious than the Buddhism the government likes). Soon he had 400 monks and nuns living there. He encourages people to stop when they hear a bell ring, take a breath, be thankful that they’re alive, and go find a flower. Of course he’s gonna have followers. The man lulls your brain into a peaceful trance at just the sight of his gentle eyes:

    “Uh oh,” said the Socialist Vietnamese government. “Young people have power, and most of Thich Nhat Hanh’s 400 monks are young and well-educated.” I can just imagine some 3-foot Vietnamese version of Glen Beck saying, “We can’t let those capitalists capitalize. They’re terrorists. They’re not even born in Vietnam. We better get ‘em.”

    Now, after Vietnam has been taken off the US religion blacklist, become a member of the WTO and attracted more foreign investment, they can send a group to destroy Thich Nhat Hanh’s Bat Nha monastery.

    And that’s what they did on Sept 27th. They busted in and tore Bat Nha to the ground.

    A mob 150 deep grabbed the meditating monks and forced them outside “like animals.” They kicked in doors, threw supplies and books into the rain, and tore up all monastic property. What did the monks do? They continued meditating. The nuns locked themselves into their hamlets, but the mob persisted, forcing them out with weapons. Most of the monastics are from 15-25 with nowhere to go.

    The Thich Nhat Hanh camp says:

    Our goal is not to condemn the instigators of violence. Experience teaches us that judging and demonizing are counter-productive. All human beings experience suffering and seek a way to attain well-being: some through power, others through spiritual pursuits. Without judging or imposing our point of view, we can legitimately affirm our need to live in peace and harmony and seek deeper understanding.

    For goodness sake, the man is a beacon of peace. I heard this story and wanted to go kick some dictatorial ass. I could too. I was taller than every man in that there country. What he’s asking is that we all stay informed at helpbatnha.org and spread the word. Also, since the U.S. has decided to remove Vietnam from the list of Countries of Particular Concern (CPC) regarding religious freedom, we need everyone to urge the U.S. to change that status! Please email Hillary Clinton directly; a sample letter is here.

    I will now go await a truck of small Vietnamese men who will surely be waiting for me with rice sacks the moment I hit ‘publish.’ Nice knowing you.

  • The best kind of squirt.


    I like Cambodia. I can be easily lulled to sleep by the gentleness in any Cambodian’s eyes. The culture is pure tradition, something an American will never fully understand. And the genuine curiosity for the human race is quite welcoming. I like it. But I love Laos.

    I instantly fell for Laos. It’s the demeanor that makes most people hand over their heart so easily to the country. Some Laoations might be as poor as Cambodians and make the average national income of $1000/year, but their attitudes about it differ completely. They are comfortable. And happy. And proud. And their opinion of foreigners puts us all on equal ground. The air of desperation I felt in Cambodia and Vietnam was detained at the Laos border. I was no longer a walking ATM in Laos, which was freeing. And comfortable. And made me unafraid to approach people. For this reason alone, I am head over heels.

    Luang Prabang helped seal the deal even further. Its buildings and skinny streets bare evidence of its old status as a French capital. But the people are still best. At the frequent markets that illuminate the streets with Christmas lights and lanterns in the night and spices and fruits in the day, they smile with pride at the passing tourists or monks. I think they have the right idea; it is impossible to bargain with a radiant smile.

    I was lucky to arrive in Luang Prabang for the Laos New Year, or Pii Mai, in April, with 9 of my closest friends. It was strange. I started alone, met a girl from St Louis in a tuk-tuk, picked up a British couple and a chick from New Mexico on a trek, and then met a South African teacher, a French guy, and two blondes, one from Sweden and the other from Australia. Then, out of nowhere, appeared Jersey Kim from Vietnam. We were an army of fun people, and it felt great to be part of a group of friends again. We met for dinner every night and had deeper conversations than the old “where are you from” routine. Plus, there’s nothing like celebrating a holiday with your friends. Especially the sort of holiday that involves warfare. You need everyone on your side.

    Basically, the Laos, Thai, and Cambodian New Year is all about water. For weeks beforehand, all three countries prepare for the world’s largest water war, gathering weaponry and making the necessary preparations. Because from the 14th – 16th of April, it’s on.

    The celebration is centered around an ancient legend and is more or less about keeping a God’s head wet. Sounds weird, but it’s not like Jesus’s resurrection or that whole heaven of 40 virgins idea makes me think any one religion is rational.

    A very long time ago, a man and wife were struggling to have a baby, so they begged the Hindu god Indra for help. She put them on fertility drugs and gave them a weekly lesson in the proper conceiving positions. Just kidding. She sent an angel to be born. This angel was extremely intelligent and blessed with the ability to communicate with animals.

    The Hindu god Kabillaprom wanted to test this angel so he gave him some trivia questions and a week to find the answers. If the angel answered incorrectly, his head would be cut off. If he didn’t, the all-powerful Kabillaprom would cut off his own head. The angel under question spent six days racking his brain. Right when he gave up, he heard some birds talking about the answers.

    The next day, he gave those answers to the god, and the god in turn cut off his own head. However, his power was so great that he couldn’t place his head in the sky or it would flood the world. He couldn’t place it in the water or it would dry up. He couldn’t put it on land or it would burn everything. So, he placed it in the possession of his daughters, the most beautiful women on Earth. They had the task of wetting the head every year to keep any catastrophes at bay.

    So, every year in mid-april, many Laoations head to Luang Prabang for a 3-day festival. The first part involves a beauty pageant, in which Miss Luang Prabang is chosen from hundreds of girls. It’s really a big deal because the winner gets to carry the god’s head in the parade the following day. Thankfully, they are not ashamed to make it a shallow beauty contest with no questions on foreign affairs, avoiding the chance for something like this to happen:

    The next few days of Pii Mai entail a washing of the many Buddha images all around town (and there are a lot!). They also build sand stupas, around which they pray and have mud fights. The Laoations are experts at combining tradition with the debauchery. I’ve never had so much fun praying before, throwing in a dance move afterwards, drinking beer with ice, and annihilating one another with buckets of water. Lots of water. Seas of water.

    Grannies reloaded their water AKA 47s and snuck stealthily behind big tourists. Giggling teenagers piled into the back of pick-ups and circled around the town for hours, hurling water on anyone they saw. Transvestites straddled motorbikes and just laughed when a tourist shot them in the eye, washing off mascara. The Laoations had no problem including us in everything. A rickety old man poured scotch down my throat, a pair of large women grinded their hips into mine, matching the beat of some Laoation rap song, all the while screaming ‘Sabaidee Pii Mai!’ Happy New Year! It was a big party. Everywhere you went, it was a big party. The most inclusive, raucous, daytime party. The kind of party that squirts you in the face and reminds you that you’re alive. And, thanks to tradition, that squirt lasts for three days.

    NOTE: Thanks to the owner of the Spicy Laos Guesthouse, we got to understand the true meaning of Pii Mai. He explained to us the legend, fed us traditional food, included us in the various ceremonies, and even procured a spot for us in the special parade. Best place to stay in Luang Prabang.

    Competitors in the Miss Luang Prabang competition. To me, they all look alike. Not because they’re Asian. Because they’re all wearing the same thing.

    Part of the tradition of Pii Mai.

    Buddhists place money and food in monks’ bowls. I hated myself for thinking it looked a bit like trick-or-treating.

    My face after day 1 of mud and water fights. Oh, and flour fights.


    A drunk local at an impromptu dance party in the street. Note the tallest Lao man in existence nearby.

  • shhhh….


    From afar we looked like a lifestyle ad for Sears outdoor furniture, an eclectic group of 25 educated adults sharing dinner on a large teak veranda. But up close we might have looked angry, no one smiling or talking. In fact, we weren’t even interacting with each other, too busy counting our bites, feeling our breaths, or noticing where our bodies exactly met the chair and where our feet graced the wood floor.

    All 25 of us, from different paths and provinces, came together for 10 days of silent Vipassana meditation. And 10 days of serious meditation did not allow for dinner time chatter. I didn’t know this when I arrived. I actually had no idea what to expect, only having read a few web pages about the practice before I landed at the forest monastery in Byron Bay on the East coast of Australia.

    Originally I started this whole 9-month trip with the hope of becoming less anxious and more confident. The advertising industry did a number on my self-esteem, and I thought a year of traveling on my own might repair it. I promised myself I would make the trip a spiritual one and not a party one. So it was a no-brainer to spend 10 of my 34 days traveling Australia in a forest with a monk. Silent. I can’t imagine telling my 18-yr-old self that I would one day give up parties to hang out with Buddhists.

    This being one of my first spiritual experiences, my stomach felt braided as I approached the monastery driveway. I was scared to be without music for ten days. And without the news. I really did almost cry when I found out I’d be in a silent state during Obama’s inauguration.

    Mainly I was scared of monks. Religious people make me nervous, I guess. Perhaps it’s because they believe in something so strongly, and I can’t relate. Or perhaps it’s because I feel like they can read my mind. I didn’t want any monk to know my thoughts. What if I happened to imagine a vibrator while in the company of a monastic?

    Thankfully, Pannyavaro, although a very opinionated man, happened to be a calm and welcoming monk. Upon arrival, I saw him in his short robe watering the flowers. His black socks pulled up to his calves made me smile. Plus, the place itself was instant calm. The tranquil green forest seemed to give Xanax to the butterflies in my stomach.

    I sat on my bunk bed in silence while the others bustled around and settled in. I found solace in the fact that everybody looked a bit nervous. Maybe everyone shared my fear of monks.

    That night, as we gathered in the meditation hall for the first of many times, Pannya spoke while we drank in his words as if they held some secret ingredient that could cure us of any ailment. I noticed we were leaning forward like sunflowers.

    “We clean out our closets,” he said. “And we clean out our nails. But we never clean out our minds.”

    He had a point, I thought. Over the next 10 days we learned how. It was a long process, much more complicated than I can explain here. But it was worth it. My brain feels lighter, the build-up scrubbed out by my meditative toothbrush.

    Basically, the practice enables precise attention to the body– where it’s exactly located, how it moves when it breathes, how the feet move during walking, etc. For example, if I am standing and I drop a pen, I will be saying to myself as I move slowly to pick it up: “bending, bending, reaching, reaching, feeling pen, feeling pen, grabbing pen, grabbing pen, retracting arm, retracting arm, standing, standing.” This is how we treat every action, every single action… for ten days straight. And then we follow those actions with the labels that bring us back to our anchor position: “standing, standing, breathing, breathing.”

    It requires moving and eating slowly. It requires hours of sitting and walking meditation. It requires an enormous amount of strength and willpower. The magic of labeling movements became apparent to me when I would catch myself thinking. At first I woudn’t notice my labeling had been shoved out of my mind by some sort of thought. But after becoming close with my body, I would notice a lack of movement in my stomach, a tightening, the manifestation of anxiety. Then I would realize that my mind had taken a detour, and I had let a wood carving in the yard remind me of a toy from childhood which then led me to think about my cousin from Indiana, which then led me to wonder whether or not she ever got divorced, which then led me to think about relationships which then led me to wonder if I’ll ever have one again and yada yada yada. That’s just what brains do… they wander. And if you don’t stop them, they can wander all day, formulating thoughts about the future and ultimately leading to worry or restlessness. It happens to most people, but most people don’t stop to notice. They do notice, however, that sometimes they’ve just driven to work or just eaten breakfast and they don’t even remember doing it. It was because their brains were off wandering about, causing them unneccessary grief.

    Vipassana is not just about clearing the mind. It gets much deeper than that. Supposedly, experienced meditators see their feet or torso become invisible (or I guess they don’t see it.). I spent time at the first stage, just becoming more and more aware of my thinking and catching it before it took off in ten directions. By catching it and not judging it, it stops.

    It sounds crazy and maybe it is. But it helped me tremendously. I feel empty in a good way. And more patient. In ten days of doing nothing, I was never once bored. Paying close attention to my abdomen rising and falling is something i can do while waiting in line or waiting for Catalina to finish curling her hair. I can already feel a new patience emerging.

    I have to admit that during day 8 I cracked and ate a piece of toast really really quickly without labeling my bites. And although I wasn’t supposed to be noticing the others, I had names for them like ‘loud snorer,’ ‘Mrs. Roeper pants,’ and ‘yellow crocs.’

    I wasn’t the best meditator, and I didn’t reach enlightenment. But my life has definitely changed for the better. I would recommend Vipassana to anyone and everyone. We’ve all got some brain crud that needs clearing.

    If interested, check out buddhanet.net
    Donate to Pannya and his wonderful forest monastery here.
    More Vipassana info here.