Saphron Deceptions

Buddhism often seems to be the only 'pure' religion when we're thinking about it from our place in the West. We elevate this religion, or 'way of life' above all others. Its not surprising, because when we look at pictures of Buddhist Wats (temples) and monks, everything seems so peaceful and perfect. And its so easy to take pictures to portray that (see below).

Yet theres something about being around the monks that will totally dispell that idea. Maybe its seeing a monk wearing an iPod. Or maybe its talking to one, who then suggests that since I didn't bring my girlfriend with me, I should just get another one here. After all, as he says, the Thai girls are very beautiful, and theres no way my girlfriend will ever find out... For some reason, I dont think that that suggestion fits in with the eight Buddhist Precepts (the Buddhist equivilent of the Ten Commandments), one of them being 'Right Thought', aka don't think about doing something you shouldn't. But I don't think I should be that surprised. Unlike Christianity, monkhood is not confined to those who wish to fully devote themselves to the religion for the rest of their lives. Instead, most Buddhist men are ordained for a time, usually three months, as a right of passage. So it means that the monks range from being children and teenagers, all the way up to old men (there are also the Buddhist equivilent of nuns, but it is a relatively recent addition to the religion, and they are mostly confined to cooking for the monks). So given that there are many teenage monks who may not be totally devoted to the religion, I'm inclined to believe a story one of my friends told me that he heard while he was in Thailand. We were talking about the waterfall I had mentioned in one of my previous posts, and he said that when he was there a number of the trees had saphron robes hanging in them. Apparently some monks would come down there, get changed into street clothes in the forest, go out and have a night on the town, and then the next morning would return, get changed, and walk back to the Wat as if nothing happened.

I managed to visit a few more of the Wats in the city today, so here are a few pictures of them.

One Wat had this cool wooden carving of an elephant. If you look closely, you can see that his other ear fell off, and is sitting against one of his legs.

For those of you who don't know anything about Chiang Mai, the old part of the city is surrounded by a moat, and there used to be a wall around the city as well. It is really cool to look at from Google Earth, because there it is nearly a perfect square of water in the middle of the city. Below is a few pictures of the moat, and some of the remaining sections of the wall.

In other news, I went to see a play the other night. It was completely in Thai, so I didn't understand much. I did get that they started making fun of me though. At one point they were picking on audience members, when they realized that there was a 'farang' (foreigner) in the room. People had a good laugh, although I couldn't tell you why...