Bangkok

3/10 Went to a buddhist talk at Wat Maha Tat, a Buddhist University right off the river in Bangkok, by the grand palace--My Rough Guide mentioned that every second Saturday they give free seminars in English about different topics relating to Buddhist practice. Todd had been using some breathing/meditating techniques that a therapist had taught him and was also interested in attending a talk. I've never had any desire to seriously study Buddhism, maybe like everyone else I have romantic notions about dharma bums and Salingeresque figures pulling existential hyjinks, Richard Gere foresaking Hollywood Babylon to cruise the Dalai Llama, but my interests were mostly as a tourist--show up, observe, maybe take some pictures to post on a blog. We took a water bus up river towards the royal palace--wasn't quite sure where to get off because few of the docks had an easily visible sign in English. After disembarking I took us on a wrong turn--names of temples indistinguishable to me, they're all named Wat followed by sometimes over a dozen consonants and vowels all running together, some poetic Sanskrit phrase parading around as a compound word. My mistake lead us too far south and we had to circle the collosal grounds of the royal palace. When we finally found Wat Maha Tat, we then had to find where the talk was being given--the rough guide said an outside plaza, but there were only construction workers repairing the temple eaves and mangy dogs lounging in the shaded alcoves between buildings (dogs always seem to have the right idea). We finally found a map of the grounds and found the instructional facilities, a bungalow where aspirants, mostly farang (Farang being the word for whitey, literally meaning guava, as in pale as the flesh of a guava) were learning how to walk with a buddhist sense of presence (left foot goes left, right foot goes right...) But this wasn't the talk we had read about, so we went and had some ice cream instead from a vendor we found on the temple grounds. We wandered back to the classroom in a stupor of heat and icy sugar; the walking class was just breaking up and an older farang couple happened to be looking for the same talk (the older man, who seemed the more invested of the two, looked like Locke the former-parapalegic and water-cooler-philosopher from the tv series Lost, and what I assume was his wife kind of had a put-upon, long-suffering look on her face, but maybe it was just too hot to smile, not to mention the probably two-hour long session they just spent shuffling around in an air conditioned room, staring at their tourist's bunions.) So we followed them around eating our ice cream (I thought I must have looked like an idiot-man-child in a Faulkner novel, ice cream coating my hanging lips) asking the monks where the talk was being given, the monks mostly responding with quizical smiles and verifying that we were indeed at Wat Maha Tat. When we finally found the talk, we were over an hour late; it was not in an open plaza, but in a small room, what looked to be graduate or administrative offices, crowded with cubicle dividers and desks, a group half of whom were farang gathered around a central table, phallanxed by a guy with a video camera and a few monks in some administrative capacity, passing out xeroxed handouts and little hermetically sealed cups of drinking water. The monk giving the talk at the head of the desk, a 50 year-old Thai man, his full lips and his swollen lower eyelids, along with the ready-to-wear aura of his safron robes gave the impression of a perpetual quite state of bemusement. After sweating like a snowball in a hot house for an hour, I was so glad to be in an air-conditioned room that the horror I would have had at joining mid-discussion, a smallish roundtable, was easily subdued (still I tried to grab a seat far from the table, but they offered me a seat instead just outside of the "inner-circle" two people away from the head monk. The discussion topic written on the agenda hands out said something like "Buddhism and Modern Day Concerns," but I noticed the older white woman in front of me had crossed this out on her sheet. The monk leading the discussion, was discussing something about like and dislike, his English a little less proficient than I would have expected, what with all the Western aspirants they must surely see. I surreptitiously glanced around at the motley gathering, the farangs included the older couple we followed around, the older woman in front of me who turned around not long after I sat down and gave me a wide welcoming smile, a 20-something maybe 30-something blonde boy--the hipster hierophant--that I sat directly behind of, wore a dark brown tracksuit jacket, and had a van dyke and wire rim glasses (Todd told me later he also had a stack of books, but he couldn't see the titles), another older white guy, a hoop earing in his right ear lobe--an interesting face, like a character actor from a Cohen brothers movie--possibly gay, possibly just an old yippie trying to tread softly in his dotage--the days of being mild. Their was a youngish Japanese boy, his tussled mop of hair, screaming more harajuku-style-council than seeker of inner wisdom, and the rest of the asians I surmised were all Thai. When the monk opened up the discussion for questions, the guy with the hoop earing asked a question confirming my suspicions that the the original topic about Buddhist practices addressing modern day concerns wasn't really addressed. The lady in front of me had begun writing a letter, the lines I spied included words of thanks and appreciation and towards the end something about a Bank of America account. The guy that looked like Locke asked about why he felt there was more power in meditating in a group rather than meditating on his own. The monk gave an incongruous response in his broken english, his calm and beatific deliviery of clipped phrases, a catalog of dual concepts: like and dislike, in and out, rising and falling, I thought I was grasping at least some vague notion of Buddhist cosmology and the spiritual efficacies of breathing from your diaphragm, but now I'm not sure what he was trying to say. I nodded anyway, and laughed when everyone else laughed. After the monk's rambling answer to Lockes question, the boy with the van dyke and track jacket spoke: Master I don't think you answered this man's question if you will allow me to repeat his question, at which point he broke into-- to my untrained-ears--effortlessly fluent Thai. The monk gave the slightest jump in his chair and his expression brightened as if someone had finally scratched an elusive itch on his back, he nodded and gave a much shorter, concise answer, something mundane like: it's best to first practice with much instruction before exploring on one's own, and the others in a meditation group can offer as much guidance as the teacher. Ta-Dat-Boom. The farang chimed in unison a sound of satisfaction at possibly the first clear insight of the 2-hour long talk. Locke mentioned something about how he had a number of scientist friends, who if they had no basis in the scientific method for understanding a phenomenon or concept (e.g., the human soul) wanted nothing to do with it. Locke wanted a scientific explanation for the feeling of connectedness in group meditations, he wanted what the string theorists, and cosmologists want: a GTE, a grand theory of everything. The woman in front of me offered some names about the so-and-so's at so-and-so university possibly having a response to his question. The guy with the hoop earing gave a clever answer about how even when we meditate alone, we are all interconnected and therefore always meditating in a group. The Japanese guy said that he detested meditating in groups because it made him overly-self concious, am I breathing correctly, am I maintaining the correct posture, egotistical even, am I gaining as much wisdom as the others--to which the monk replied that gain is the wrong word: we all have the same buddha nature, the same potential, it's a matter of uncovering it [I felt like a cynic thinking: gain/uncover, brainwashing/self-exploration, empty-mind/cognitive-breakdown, but this is probably all just semantics from which no true wisdom can be purchased--I'm no better than Locke's doubting Thomas friends]. What followed seemed to materialize from my worst fears. The monk said that for the time remaining we would close our eyes and practice meditating, using whatever method we felt comfortable. Then afterwards we would go around and share our observations and he would give us individual feedback. Oh my god, I've never meditated before, staring at the evening sun till it turned into a shimmering blue worm (something I did on long car trips as a child) probably doesn't count, daydreaming and procrastination, my mind if seldom stormy is a bumperboat in a carnival basin, careening haphazardly through oily hose fed waters, the brownian motion of free assocciation, I've seldom felt aggrieved by my restless mind, maybe denial is a stronger agent for quelling negative thoughts, I've never been able to sit cross-legged for very long, before my legs sometimes my ass falls asleep, they will expose me as a fraud, why don't you go hang out in Banglamphu with the birdshit farangs, the crusty party punks, the full-moon MDMA lotus eaters, don't waste our time with your half-interests, your passing curiosity, go lie with the dogs you shameless dilletante. It was an effort just to keep my eyes closed, feeling the strain in my cheeks, did the Buddha have epicanthic eyefolds, could he wink effortlessly without contorting the rest of his face? They are looking at me shake in my seat, my fingers and arms quivering, my head and neck twitching, they can see the unease in my breathing, my shoulders tensed and the flow of air irregular and choppy, through my eyelids I see the red flash of a camera--the monks are fucken taking pictures, the sweat is beading on my forehead and dappling my temples, welling in the cleft of my upper lip, can I wipe my brow, is this permissible, but it's trickling down my nose now, dribbling down my chin, they are fucken taking pictures of my discomfort, I feel heavy, torporous, this is torture, I feel very very heavy like my limbs are swelling, my head the size of an american watermelon, what am I going to say when it's my turn? DO I answer truthfuly: I don't know what the fuck I'm doing. I can't help opening my eyes for a second, just to make sure everyone else still has their eyes closed, make sure no one is watching me. I remember one of the techniques Todd told me about, you try and observe with all your senses at once, a collusion of five orthogonal planes of perception, a resounding affirmation of now now now now the ever-unfolding Now, towards a heightened sublime state of nowness. Foresaking my hooded sight, I hear a child yelling outside, the buzz of the AC and fan, the shuffle of chairs, bones settling, grunting, maybe snoring, I taste the coat of sugar from the ice cream forming into plaque on my teeth, I smell nothing much because I've been smoking too much, maybe if anything the smell of sun and sweat and dirt on my clothes, I fucken stink because I washed the shirt with bath soap in the hotel basin--no laundromats in the orient, I've been mislead all these years, an amalgam of dirt and mold from 5 different countries, I feel my weight bearing down on the chair on my ass bones, my stocking feet against the wood floor, I feel the heat of the bodies around me, my sweat begins to evaporate, someone's cell phone goes off, the sweat no longer beads, I am cooling off, I imagine the heat of everyone around me dissipating, the child's voice outside heats the air and this too dissipates, an old less chaotic order of the sun, handed down the gifts of light and heat to the vegetation and flesh of the earth, a history of calories burned, eating and shitting and recreating and adapting, calories burned in thought and breathing, the heat of the cosmos reaching out spiral arms, vortexes, and eddies, lost to ever expanding space, the eros of entropy, a single arrow shot after which all things follow, all energies lost to heat, the breakdown of all systems, the heat of words, the laptop overheating from the hour or so I've been here typing, the words burning into your retina from the monitor screen, everything everywhere a trickling down of energy through heat, words, lists, meanings disseminated, obscured, misunderstood, restated, information lost to magnetic storms, burrowed in telephone line insulation, refracted in fiber optics cables, once dissipated into heat the energy is intractable, becomes one with the swelling space of space, we are all burning, whether we are pinpoint embers slowly descending on the ends of joss sticks, whether we are the combustion of makeshift bombs strapped to torsos and bus seats dropped in proffesor's mailboxes, the heat of love, the cool radiance of empathy, the fire of murderous libidos, the uncontrollable raving of mad men and women, the long heat of suffering and hunger, the burning twin engines of pride and fear, the industrious and the stagnant, proliferating, procreating, proscilitizing, we are all turning and burning, and maybe a hundred ressurected christs communing with blood and flesh, a million sisters of mercy the healing warmth of their fingers and their cooing songs, a billion profligate princes turned ascetic preachers of love and peace, a trillion prophets singing enumerations, sacred names, with each name a spark of heat returned to the universe, each and eveyone helping us burn slowly, calmly, evenly, and irregardless of our will, our intentions, our evil souls, the world will end in fire and fire will end in the chasms of space the whole round of days will become one endless day, the whole relief of hills will become an endless plane* I hear Carl Sagan's voice, our cool sun too small to go supernova, but swelling and scorching the earth, eviscerating the atmosphere, all stars will burn away, turn into black holes--pools of chaos--or birth lesser stars, all the heat of the cosmos, cooling into the vibration of ever-expanding space, and the space will grow till there is only space, indifferentiable space, standing still or at the speed of light there is no difference, a massless sameness, but there is no same because there is no difference, time will trickle to a stop, no ashes, no fleeting causalities, no metaphors, time's diminished domain seized by the overspowering swell of space, and in this timeless indifferentiated space, maybe in all this homogeneity, meaningfulessness, a pinpoint inditermancy will arise, a quantum bubble, a desire to remember remembering,and with this most improbable probability arising starts a chain of difference, and the cycle repeats, and will repeat again, loops within, loops within larger descending arcs ad infinitum,seeking to light the shores of existence.
Todd told me later that it was only 20 minutes that we sat with our eyes closed. I felt cool and collected, the AC in full swing. So we went around and gave our two bits and the monk gave us back two bits, the blonde boy with the van dyke and track jacket said "I don't want to say too much, because it probably won't make any sense, but I've been meditating for many years now, and I don't have to focus on my breathing any more, I can just immediately empty my thoughts," thus spoke the white llama. I spoke after him, I said that I tried to focus on my breath, but I felt heaviness. I don't remember what the monk told me.
Outside puting on my shoes, I overheard the trio of the Japanese guy, the older white guy with the hoop earing, and the older white woman grousing about how uninformative the monk was, same old buddhist hardline they said. The white llama left alone, still wearing his track suit in the afternoon heat, I saw a streak of dirt on his back where shmutz probably adhered to a sweaty patch, maybe leaning up against a column in the skytrain station, he clutched his stack of books and didn't look back.
Later that evening Todd took me to a rooftop bar across the river with a commanding view of the Bangkok skyline, a far flung smattering of none-too-interesting buildings. Then we went to the street with the boy gogo bars, future boys, muscle boys, every flavor, peeked in Tawan--specializing in muscle men--for a minute but didn't want overpriced drinks and have to consort with a bunch of trolls, we passed through the street with the girl gogo bars, every few feet a tout showing us a list of sex acts which read like sundry items from a ninety-nine cent store. We ended up having a drink on Silom Soi 4 at the telephone bar, watching the parade of boys and farang, Todd flirted with the waiters, the rest of the evening all manner of defilement flowed through us and emenated from us like the heat in the night air.

*glass eye, endless day