Phra Oat on the road.

The Thai word for a Buddhist monk's title is Phra.  So for now, Om's nephew is known as Phra Oat.  Actually, one title for addressing a Catholic priest here uses the same word 'Phra'.  So I could be called "Phrasong" ('holy teacher')

Part of the week for Phra Oat and the 200 other boy monks at his temple was to go on a day trip to visit a temple outside Bangkok.   As you can see from the picture, there was something special about the trip as it featured visiting a hill with a figure of the Buddha on it. 

Life is a journey even for a 13 year old Buddhist monk.  He looks happy but I wonder what sense he makes of this experience.  Om remains the proud uncle.  It reminds me somewhat of my going to the seminary 40 years ago.   Oat will remember this for years to come but who knows where he will end up in life.  Who knows where any of us end up in life?

On Saturday, I returned from visiting Oat at the temple with Om to find that someone had jumped in my building and killed himelf.  His body was there lying on the concrete below the door to my room which is on the fourth floor.  he had jumped from the sixth floor past my room.  I didn't know who he was but discovered that he was French, in his mid 50s and had lived alone in our building for a few years.  I met him in his sad death and wondered all sorts of questions.  Who was he?  Why did he do this?  What was going through his mind at the time?  Did he reach out to anyone?  Could I have reached out to him? 

On the same day, Oat and Chris, this French guy, were at different ends of life but they both made me ask about life and the journey we share.  As I reflected and tried to make sense of life, it struck me that what matters the most on this journey is that we reach out to each other.  After all, we are sharing the same journey and it is far too difficult to go it along.  May Oat and Chris both share in the same peace we all strive for. 

This will make you a man

Om with Oat just after helping Oat to dress as a monk for the first time.

When I was 13 and at school, we had the army cadets and the idea was that being in the cadets would teach you discipline and make a man of you.  I am not sure it achieved that purpose in my case as I just took it as something you had to do and never enjoyed it.  I can still hear the brother, who was a Colonel in the corps, yelling at me for not being able to march in step. 

Well, in Thailand, while the army may be big and there is conscription, no one I know wants to go into the military.  Here, if any institution serves the purpose of initiation into manhood and of teaching boys disciplne and moral values it is the monkhood. 

I saw this firsthand this past week when I went with my mate, Om, to see his 13 year old nephew, Oat, become a monk.  Yes, at the age of 13, he became a Buddhist monk but only for two weeks during the school holidays. 

For us, this may seem a strange practice but this is part of life, religion and culture in Thai society.  It is the way it is here.  Still, even after living here so long, I had to ask myself what this was all about.  I found I could give a rational explanation but still it seemed different.  It was in going to the temple for myself that I gained an insight into what this was all about.  My first eye opening experience was on my arrival at the temple and seeing that Oat was one of over 200 boys doing the same thing.  So many of them!

I saw that temple was in a totally different part of Bangkok and that it was a big temple with a big school in a simple and out of the way street.  My question of how this temple was chosen as the one was answered on meeting a friendly monk there, whom Om told me was from their village and a monk to be admired.  There was the connection. 

As my time at the temple progressed, I was just amazed at the number of people there.  They were the families of the over 200 boys hovering to see the whole process of their sons' initiation into the monkhood unfold.  The boys were dressed in white and set apart as a big group.  Monks gave talks.  There was chanting and times of just sitting and being quiet for them.  They ate separately and in a big group, being watched by their families.  That was the Saturday. 

I returned on the Sunday to see the big event - the boys being robed as monks.  I wondered how they would do that and discovered that it was quite simple.  They were each given a set of robes and all were sent upstairs to the dormitories to change into their new robes.  They were accompanied by their fathers and monks to help them robe for the first time.  As Oat is here in Bangkok away from his family, he had Om and me to help him.  I found sharing this experience to be enlightening and a great honour as I was watching something special happen in Oat's life and a part of it. 

Oat went up as the young boy and came back down as part of the whole group as a monk. 

To make sense of this, Oat is fully a monk as is any monk while he is a monk.  You can be a monk for a life time or a short time.  It all depends on why.  You could become a monk because someone close to you has died, as part of growing up, as part of initation into society or as pure commitment to the ideal of being monk.  For Oat and the other 200 boys, it was something they wanted and their families wanted.  It was taken on proudly and with a sense of this is part of being a Buddhist.  There was also the sense of the army cadets for me when I was a boy.  It was about learning disciplne and good values and becoming a man, about growing up.  It is part of a programme of life in Thai society that happens in a boy's life.

I wonder what happens in a girl's life?   



Oat, the proud monk.

Challenging, bizarre and chaotic

Last week, I renewed my Thai driver's licence.  I had had my first licence for one year and now it was time to get my permanent licence for five years.  Well, I had done all the hard work, I thought, when I went a year ago to apply the first time for a Thai licence.  Not to be so as it was to be a repeat experience of tests and paperwork for which I was totally unprepared.  What transpired was a three hour ordeal at the hands of Thai government bureaucracy. 

On finally getting my licence and having a sense of achievement, I victoriously posted this comment on Facebook. 
"I am no longer a P-Plate driver in Thailand.  I am now Permanent with a five year licence.  The process for getting it is challenging, bizarre and chaotic.  It reminds me that once you go beyond Darwin you enter a different world." 

As I read this later, I realized that I was reflecting on much more than just getting a driver's licence.  I was reflecting on my experience of living here in this culture.

Life is so different once you go beyond Darwin.  From there you enter a different world or should I say different worlds.  Yes, you enter Asia but an Indonesia is not a Thailand while both are so different from Australia. 

Your world here is full of people and activity around you all the time.  It is life lived at close quarters and at very intense levels.  The way of dealing with people and issues is different.  They do not like confrontation.  Actually who does?  What this means here though has real consequences for they do talk or act directly with each other, or that is the general rule.  Rather you deal with issues by not dealing with them or by being accommodating.  Or else you just go around instead of facing the issue head on, as we do, and so by that more circuitous route arrive at a different and more desired result. You do find your ways of making your point when needed but in different and less direct ways from back home.  As a strong westerner, I find it frustrating but what can you do as you have to learn to act so as to get the best results where you live among the people with whom you share your life.

One rule I keep is to never compromise my integrity. 

So as I go for my licence, I do the silly tests required for getting it, not asking any dumb or logical questions about why we are doing this.  I go for my medical certificate, knowing that the doctor does not even look at me and what he is about is signing certificates to get money.  I wait and wait with many others, being corrected on which forms to complete and which documentation to copy, while just acting to stay patient.  I remain amazed that they never check if I can read Thai as the road signs are in Thai.  Little do they realise in this government ministry that I can read it better than I can speak it.  It struck me that the whole process was not about assuring that you could drive safely in Thailand but about completing a bureaucratic process with all its hurdles and anomalies that gave a prize - your driver's licence.  Just one thing do not question it and do not try to change it. 

Life is so different beyond Darwin but maybe that is part of the attraction of being here.

Boundaries

Back home, there used to be a lot of talk about personal boundaries.  As I was growing up, it seemed to be a life issue that was assumed but never named.  Then later on in my life, it became a central topic in professional circles in the 1990s, or that is my take.  In my Bangkok, I don't see any such talk among the same sort of circles.  Maybe it is more subtle here or maybe it is just not talked about in a society that is highly controlled and structured within a strongly hierarchical model. 

Anyway, I have had some dealings lately with local farangs ('farang' is the local name for westerners) which have led to my getting upset a couple of times with ones during an encounter or on hearing a statement.  I have been wondering what is going on.  Am I overworked and stressed?  Am I tired?  Am I too precious? 

No.  I have come to name it as over the past 20 years I have become aware of my boundaries, have named them, have come to respect them and have tried to healthily defend them.  Here I am often dealing with guys who lack any sense of personal boundaries.  So they cross the line without even being aware while I naturally respond by putting up my defences to protect my boundaries, or this is my sense of what is happening. 

Personal boundaries are so obviously and openly broken here so often.  Last night, I get into the lift in my apartment building and share the ride to my floor with a guy I have never met before.  Within the short travel time of only going four floors, he tells me that he is living here alone on business and how he just loves being near the bars with those girls.  He speaks knowingly and with a glint in his eye as if I agree with him.  Fact is he doesn't even know who I am.   That he felt so free to divulge such information with me, a complete stranger, just amazes me.  In this case, my expressed response was amazement and quiet, and not upset.  This  was probably my respecting my own boundaries as I was with a complete stranger.  I notice my pattern is that I verbally express my personal upset when in a relationship and with ones I know.  

Yes, I would say my neighbour's boundaries appear to be incredibly loose.  That makes me then ask how he values his own self which will accordingly have an impact on how he values and accordingly treats others. 

This brings me back to where I started.  A lack of boundaries leads to dangerous interpersonal activities and interactions which can have unwanted or disastrous consequences. We can't just treat ourselves or others as if nothing matters.  When something matters, we build firm foundations to give long life and boundaries to protect what matters.  When people matter, we show dignity and respect - even in the bearpits of a Bangkok.  But first we need to show that to ourselves.  As the old addage says, "We treat others as we treat ourselves".