Happy Thai New Year Temple Style

Today, I was lucky enough to spend the afternoon at an amazing temple and celebrate Songkran with the monks and rest of the Sangha. I'm sorry I don't know the name of it now, but it is the temple of the late revered teacher Achaan Chah who was Jack Kornfield's teacher among others. He taught in the Thai Forest Tradition and was the main inspiration for Theravada Buddhism traveling to the west Anyways, my teacher Herman is the doctor to the head monks at this temple and brought me there along with O, his wife, and kids. We chanted a bit and then got in line to do the 'monk soaks layman' ritual.

Basically, the monks are all seated in a row and the parishioners get on their knees and knee walk down the line. In front of each monk they pour some water on the monks hands as a sign of respect and then the monk responds by pouring cups, bowls and sometimes buckets of ice water on their head and back. They will often lift the back collar of the persons shirt to make sure a healthy dose of ice cubes makes its way down their back. It's a breathtaking 15 minutes, literally. And of course, me being the lone farang, they had an especially good time with me, sometimes pouring their entire bucket on my head, shoulders and back. Everyone was laughing the whole time. It was a whole other side of songkran, that's for sure.

It was funny watching people all dressed nice for temple and getting soaked top to bottom. And the fact that young and old could walk on their knees down the whole line. Not something you would see in the western world, that's for sure!

I ended up going home on the back of Songtao which was full so I had to stand on the back (meaning a ledge on the outside of the bus). I was the sole target for buckets of ice water and waterguns. The employees at the local Shell station, completely geared up in their Shell uniforms, wailing on sitting ducks like me was a pretty funny sight. I got home shivering and happy. And headed for a hot shower!

Violence in Bkk

Last time I was here, less than a year and a half ago, the yellow shirts (characterized as mainly urban intellectuals) took over the airport and forced the dissolution of the ruling party. This year, the red shirts (characterized as mainly rural laborers) are possibly doing the same thing. Last year, the yellow shirts protested 192 days before the government walked, this year, it's been about 30 days, though 30 days in 100-110 degree heat in the shade (and much of the time there is no shade!). Thousands of boiled brains and a generous serving of hot chili peppers Thai style, makes for one spicy somtom (a favorite dish of the Thai people consisting of crunchy strands of green papaya, raw green beans, dried shrimp, fish sauce, peanuts, palm sugar, lemon juice tomatoes, and of course lots of little red and green chiles). Throw in a healthy dose of 24/7 firey speechifying blasting through the streets of Bangkok as well as TV's and radios throughout the country, a group of mainly rural people who feel like they are getting a raw deal (though are doing quite well on the 1000 baht a day they receive to join the protest!), an ubber-wealthy, fugitive, ex-prime minister pulling strings from some secret location, a questionable military consisting of mainly rural folks themselves (many are called watermelons - green on the outside, red on the inside) and again, that somtom gets even spicier.

The above picture shows the consecutive headlines of the Bangkok Post from April 7 (There'll Be No Force)-today, the 11th (The Battle For Bangkok). Hmmm.

The picture is so very Thai, with the red shirts putting monks on the front line against the oncoming line of soldiers with shields. It would be very unlikely for anyone to cross a monk here in this devoutly religious Buddhist country. So, the military had their women go to the front lines. Since monks can't touch a woman (if they do, a very involved purifying ceremony must ensue), the monks retreated. Score one for the government.

There have been many strange moments like this in the stalemate leading up to yesterdays confrontation. People here are praying for peace. A lot of fingers crossed (actually they don't know what that means - I asked today), or the Thai equivalent.

There are no problems in Chiang Mai. Chiang Mai is a predominently red shirt town. There have been no protests, no violence. Everyone happy happy, sabai, sabai. No prom-plem. Life goes on as normal. Songkran will go on as normal and people will celebrate and have a good time in the way Thai people do.

The only problem is in a small section of Bangkok, so even Bangkok is not a problem as long as you stay away from the protest sites. As horrible as yesterday was, it's magnified a million times by the media making it seem like the country is on fire. Maybe a millionth of the country is on fire. Something like that. And hopefully they come to a resolution shortly and move on. Time will tell. Let's all hope for a peaceful solution so all the protesters can come home to a dry shirt and some red pork and rice and take a little rest from the somtom!

Happy Thai New Year!

It's the year of the Buddha 2553 this week and time for the most insane holiday of the year in Thailand; Songkran. Basically, the whole country takes off work and plays with water in the street for a week. It's been 105 degrees for a week now and will be going up the next few days. So it makes complete sense. Everyone is fair game, whether you are in a suit and tie or shorts and t-shirt. You can't walk down the street in the center of Chiang Mai without getting soaked by a grinning kid with a supersoaker complete with backpack water canister or an old lady with a garden hose or a young man with a gallon bucket. Most Thai's love it, though there are plenty of detractors as you might imagine. It's dangerous on the motorbikes, when someone throws a bucket of water in your face at 30 miles an hour. And the roads can get pretty slippery too. A friend of mine had a bucket of ice water thrown at her while she was riding her motorbike at last years Songkran and took a spill. Anyways, I will be sure to wrap my bag in plastic tomorrow before I venture out to study!

My New Teacher

Meet Herman. I met him about 3 weeks ago and from pretty much the first day, I knew that I wanted to study with him. After the second day, I realized two weeks wasn't going to be enough, so I extended my trip a couple of weeks to get more time. He's Chi Gong practitioner and well as a practitioner of Traditional Chinese Medicine. However, he doesn't really like either of those titles, and prefers to think of himself as a person who helps people on their healing journey.

He is the most thoughtful, intelligent, solid teacher I've ever had. His understanding of energy is deep and vast. It is connected with reality on it's most fundamental level. We were doing one pose the other day and I asked, should my legs be completely straight or slightly bent. "Wrong question" he said. It's not about do you straighten your legs or do you bend you knees, but, where is the energy most flowing, where is there both strength and relaxation. Where is there groundedness and stability? Where is there energy connecting your upper leg to the lower leg?

There are rules in is Chi gong practice, though all of them point in the same direction and are based in the chinese concept of harmony and balance, yin and yang. Chi Gong takes these principles and applies them to the body, to the positions. Yesterday he said, the dhamma is the nature, yes? The law of nature. You can find he dhamma when you write, when you draw, and here, we are finding the dhamma in the body; in our bodies expression.

I work with him one on one 4-8 or even more hours a day. Sometimes we work on the Chi Gong forms, sometimes he teaches me about Chinese Medicine. Sometimes we talk about the nature of suffering or reincarnation or metta. He encourages me to question him. And I do so often. Whether it be reincarnation or western vs eastern medicine, we have healthy discussions. Yesterday we talked for an hour about metta. What it is and what it isn't. And the importance of choosing wisely where you give, and to whom you give and what your true intention is while giving. Just giving is not enough, in fact, sometimes it is wrong. You have to be intelligent, he says when and when not to give.

We talk about how to protect our energy and what that even means in a very real sense. We learn how to fall, how to catch someone falling, how to move the body when a car is heading for us and the importance waiting and not just reacting. We talk about how to work with someone with a painful back, modifications of the chi gong movements, teaching me and then other people the incredible subtleties of the breath, what it sounds like at the beginning, middle and end of a exhale and where the holding is, or the overexertion is, or the underexertion that loses energy.

I practice massage with him and he is teaching me how energy gets lost when my thumb is positioned in a certain way and how that energy bounces back into me and helps me clue into the tension it creates. We talk about how to walk and how to move from the Dantian and how when I kick up my knee, the difference between moving from the Dantian and moving from the joint, thereby stressing the joint and causing more problems.

You can see how this is a powerful practice that is directly connected to my massage practice as well as learning how to heal the body. In a way, I've been looking for a practice to compliment the Thai massage. I've been shying away from yoga for a number of years now, but haven't found a way to really work with people to help them heal themselves. Because no matter how good our bodywork sessions are, if people go back to their life and fall into the same old habits and have no tools with which to make real changes in their body, then the next time they see us, they will be in the same place they were previously.

I look forward to sharing these teachings when I return and into the future, as I slowly incorporate this practice into my body.