Embracing Samsara

The Peasant Dance, Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1568)

Bruegel celebrated life in his paintings, although he occasionally descended into demonic realms like his major influence, Hieronymus Bosch. While both were under the spell of the otherworldly Christianity of the Reformation and its fascination with hell, Bruegel could find beauty in everyday life. This is my practice as well.

Son lights his father's funeral pyre

All religions create scenarios of the afterlife probably because their major task since the beginning has been to make sense of death.  As I learned during my long apprenticeship as a Roman Catholic, this infatuation with the future can result in a denigration of the present.  Despite the emphasis on love of neighbor and the Gospel call to feed and clothe the poor, Christians in my experience are too focused on the possibility of reward and punishment after they die, on Judgment Day when they meet their Maker.  They seek the good not out of compassion for the sufferings of others but because it is defined by God in their scriptures and teachings, and the penalty for disobedience is the Devil's fiery furnace.  This argument was never persuasive to me.

Buddhism, I thought, was different.  There is no god, the teacher is not divine, and his teachings offer a treatment for suffering that can be individually tested rather than needing to rely on assurance by authority.  At least so it seemed to me when I first encountered the Westernized Buddha back in the U.S.  Living in a Buddhist country for the past five years has opened my eyes to other aspects of the 2,500-year-old religion.  Good and bad deeds have consequences not in a heaven or hell (although Buddhist artists have their own interpretation of hellish realms) but in the next life.  Although strictly speaking, there is no "self" in Buddhism, something non-physical is apparently transfered after death to another being in a womb waiting to be reborn.  Tibetans have developed an elaborate methodology to find and verify the identity of reincarnated tulkus.

To me this is otherworldly Buddhism.  And although I'm curious about the metaphysical beliefs of Thai Buddhists in spirits and ghosts (some see this as a holdover from animistic practices), the otherworldlyness of reincarnation is a put off.  Some prefer to interpret it symbolically as a playing out of the drama of cause and effect which Buddhists term kamma/karma.  There is even a Thai TV program that dramatizes karmic effects from bad actions that occur in this life (it pretends to be a "reality" show).  But there is no doubt that all Thais look forward to rebirth and hope that it will be fortunate.  The primary practice of Thai Buddhism is tam boon, "making merit," and it involves everything from charity toward beggars to feeding monks on a daily basis during their morning alms round, even on Bangkok streets.  Accumulated merit is believes to guarantee a good rebirth.

Buddha instituted the sangha of monks, and the robbed acolytes with shaven heads can be seen in all Asian countries, and are present in token amounts at Western Buddhist monasteries.  Their goal is to renounce the pleasures of everyday life, samsara, to follow the 8-fold path and pursue nibanna.  Thailand accepts temporary monks who ordain for specific short-term purposes, like obtaining merit for a parent or relative, or getting an education.  But many remain monks for life.  Only the forest monks renounce everything rigorously, and I'm reading a fascinating history of them in Kamala Tiyavanich's book, Forest Recollections: Wandering Monks in Twentieth-Century Thailand.  These guys are spiritual athletes, wandering through the jungle without purpose, sleeping in caves, and depending on the charity of villagers who sometimes have never seen a monk before.  The Buddha set down rules of conduct for all monks in the Vinyaya and they can be (but not always) very strictly interpreted (it doesn't stop my monk students from owning mobile phones, computers and TV sets with DVD players).  No matter how you slice it, monks are top dogs in the Buddhist universe and renunciation of samsara is the rule.

Samsara, in my view, gets a bad rap.  Buddhists believe it is beneficial to be born a human being, given the alternatives, but that living in the world brings suffering, from birth to sickness, old age and death.  The endless wheel of birth and death is particularly painful and the goal set by the Buddha is to stop the train and get off.  Different buddhisms describe the end of the process different, but the word "enlightenment" comes from the Pali word to extinguish the flame.  Many early students of Buddhism in Europe saw this as pessimistic and nihilistic.  There is certainly none of the "God created everything and called it good" attitude to be found in Buddhism.

At the last BuddhistPsychos meeting, held at a French restaurant in Silom, I tried to sir the pot by arguing that Buddhism seems to aim at transcending the world rather than affirming it.  I quoted Donald K. Swearer, the leading academic on Southeast Asian Buddhism, who writes that, "From its very beginning some 2,500 years ago there has been within Buddhism a tension between the this-worldly and the other worldly."  I mentioned Bhikku Bodhi's 2007 challenge to Buddhists to "stand up as an advocate for justice in the world, a voice of conscience for those victims of social, economic and political injustice who cannot stand up and speak for the selves."  He was promoting the now established movement of Engaged Buddhism which comes down decidedly on the side of this-worldly practices.

But the discussion failed to take off because my fellow Psychos were Westernized Buddhists who practice meditation for stress-reduction and attend Buddhist retreats to practice mindfulness and the possibility of becoming an arahant (enlightened being). They do this in the midst of a busy life in which sitting and retreating help them maintain their worldly balance.  Their teachers are often monks who advocate the mini-renunciations lay people find possible but do not claim their privileged role is the purview of all.  Engaged Buddhism, co-founded by Thailand's own Sulak Sivaraksa along with the Dalai Lama and Thich Nhat Hahn, would be a mystery to the average Thai who feeds the monks and visits the local temple regularly to make merit with flowers, candles and incense.  In Mahayana (northern) Buddhism, there is the idea that one should renounce full enlightenment until all beings may be enlightened; but in southern (sometimes alled Theravada) Buddhism, this charitable gesture is not supported and individual enlightenment is promoted.

My Buddhist-tinged goal is to love life and live it to the full.  As a Catholic, I flirted with the idea of becoming a monk and living at the Hermitage in Big Sur, California, with its high hillside view of the Pacific Ocean.  Later I was attracted to Shantivanam, the Catholic ashram in Tamil Nadu, India.  But, to tell the truth, I was never quite ready to give up passion and sex.  The monks I met and admired were either teachers, out in the world trying to help the spiritually adrift, or academics, like the secular renunciates I had met in the university, professor who lived in an Ivory Tower of ideas with little thought for their families or personal hygiene.  Every time I contemplated a withdrawal from the world that often battered and bruised me, something pulled me back.

The Buddhists are right when they say that living involves dukha, sometimes translated as "suffering" but also as "anxiety."  We are animals with a large brain that somehow resulted in consciousness and what we call "mind" (neither of which is been properly explained by the philosophers or scientists).  We remember, often poorly, and we can imagine both possibilities and impossible fantasies (which are sometimes conflated).  Our bodies are wonderful machines with obsolescence built in; it hurts when they age and break.  Our minds let us imagine that we can avoid pain and prolong (forever?) happiness, but we fail again and again.  Friends and lovers rejects us, or die.  The news is full of tragedy.  The power of positive thinking seduces us into believing that optimism and health and productive, when, in fact, it is little different from pessimism.  Samsara sucks!

And yet, I love it.  My body and my mind have brought me endless wonders.  Even the tragedies invariably contain hints of humor and transcendence.  I treasure the memories (and photographs now) I have of witnessing momentous events and beholding physical and natural beauty beyond compare.  Every encounter in love has left an unforgettable tattoo on my metaphorical soul.  The drama of my life has been a movie in which I've starred as both the hero and the bad guy.  Even the failures bring ah-ha! moments, lessons in living.  Pema Chodran teaches us to "lean in" to our pain and suffering, for this acceptance, and even encouragement, is far more enlightening than running away from what ails us.  Meditation is difficult for me for many reasons, not the least the regret I feel for checking out of the lifestream if only for an hour or so, and the fear that I might miss something wonderful.

Nietzsche had an idea that he called "eternal return."  As I interpret it, this means to live in such a way that you would repeat your life endlessly, not because it was perfect but because it was your life. In The Gay Science, he wrote:

What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more' ... Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: 'You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.'

Another way to look at this is to love your fate.  Nietzsche explained:

My formula for human greatness is amor fati: that one wants to have nothing different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely to bear the necessary, still less to conceal it—all idealism is mendaciousness before the necessary—but to love it.

Samsara, the source of all our trials and tribulations, is also the source of beauty and wisdom.  I have no desire to leave it until it's my time, and then I hope to depart with grace and dignity.  The only rebirth I expect is in the memories of those I love.

When I Grow Up (yeah, right)

Until I was in my 40s, I didn't feel like a grown up. It didn't last long. Now that I'm in my second childhood (don't call it senility), I'm much happier.

Today I turn 73, and I still want what everyone else wants when they grow up: love and sex without complications and wisdom and enlightenment without renunciation. One out of two isn't so bad.

I've taken hundreds of pictures out my window where I watch the sun rise daily.  My apartment is on the 9th floor of a condo with a spectacular view of Bangkok.  Now it's the monsoon season and I can watch the storms as they move across the city, dense black clouds split by lightning and thunder that rattles the windows.  Down below, the deluge barely disturbs the shirtless workers at the glass factory playing soccer.  This is my life.

A friend writes on Facebook: "Picking and choosing is the mind's disease," and I get it.  Writing a blog is an exercise in pathology. Posting and linking on the internet is evidence of the last stages of a terminal illness.  "We will all go together when we go," sings Tom Lehr.  But expounding and bloviating is a habit difficult to pacify.

Another bad habit of mine has been the urge to change, but I think I'm about over it.  Much of my life I've wanted to be different, someone better, more appealing.  I've tried most of the legal self-help techniques, like dieting and exercise, making bread, meditation and yoga, reading science fiction, recreational sex, jogging, raising a pet, reading books, and travel to foreign lands.  These days, besides the exercise of walking down the street, the only vestige of the urge to change is an almost daily swim in my building's pool.  After 10 laps, I dry off while reading. But little Billy remains, albeit a bit older.

A while back, I resolved to give up making plans (except for our upcoming excursion to Korea in December).  I try to say yes to the past, present and future.  Often this gets me in trouble.  Asked to speak to a group of graduate students in a "Communicative English" (is there any other?) program, I accepted, and then struggled mightily for a week to craft an humorous and inspiring speech.  Now they want me to teach a class next semester and I agreed.  In a few months time I will agonize over the syllabus and lesson plans, as I do now for the graduate linguistics class I am currently teaching.  Am I qualified for this? Retirement does not seem to be an option for the ever optimistic.

On the mornings when I commute to the campus in Wangnoi near Ayutthaya, I am the only farang on the bus which carries mostly kids in their two-tone uniforms to school.  Traffic is backed up at 7 AM and the sidewalks are packed with pedestrians.   It's a joy to be up that early and surrounded by the smells and hubbub of the city: street peddlers selling limes, newspapers roasted fish, rice in bamboo, lottery tickets, crispy chicken feet, sandwiches, not to mention the many beggars missing limbs and suckling babies.  Each big intersection has a troop of traffic cops wearing face masks and holding walkie talkies.  I stroll by them in my shirt and tie carrying a heavy pack past the KFC to the big pink university bus in the Makro parking lot that will carry me to school.  On the bus I listen to podcasts of Democracy Now and The Partially Examined Life, and when we arrive I eat breakfast in the dining hall with the other teachers and lay students (the monks dine upstairs).  I teach only one day a week at the big suburban campus but it's always an adventure.

When I was growing up, I wanted to be a white hat in the black-and-white cowboy movies starring Roy Rogers and Hopalong Cassidy.  In these western morality plays the good guys always won.  But I was also attracted to righteous outlaws like Jesse James and the Lone Ranger.  As the optimistic 50s turned into the rebellious 60s, my role models darkened.  The war heroes and sheriffs were replaced by loners and inarticulate losers who battled the System: Marlon in "The Wild One" and James Dean in "Rebel Without a Cause."  Most of all, I wanted to be Sal Paradise, the alter ego of Jack Kerouac, traveling on that road, listening to jazz, and having lots of free sex (actually I think it was his talkative pal Dean Moriarty that got the women).  I wanted to be an outlaw because, as Lee Clayton sang, "Ladies love outlaws like babies love stray dogs."  It was obvious that outlaws -- the beatniks and the hippies, the yippies and today's occupiers -- got all the interesting women.  And something to write about.

Today it's hard to tell the white hats from the black hats, the good ones from the bad.  After five years of living as an expat half the globe away from the U.S., I still manage to get incensed about the political and cultural nonsense "back home."  The right wing lunacy, Obama's sellout to the bankers, the obsession with celebrity gossip and fake "reality," not to mention the tug of war between "terrorists" and the Empire which only produces more of the former, all continue to make my blood boil.  I spend uncounted hours surfing the web news sites and posting links to those stories that strike my fancy and comments to show my revolutionary outlaw credentials.  I'm beginning to see that this is yet another bad habit, like picking one's nose.  More evidence of the mind's disease.

And yet...(did you know that yet is the Thai word for fucking?)...all this blathering just shows that I'm still trying to change, trying to grow up.  This realization, when it comes, is humbling.  At the last meeting of the BuddhistPsychos we talked about the unequal relationship between master and disciple, and I confessed that I've never been able to accept the authority of anyone pretending to be a guru (for I feel that we're all in this mess together and spiritual evolution is largely an illusion).  The nasty truth, however, is that I've always wanted to be a guru with wisdom to share (and perhaps to sell in books), but I've never even come close.  Perhaps now that I'm a teacher of English, and can strut with a microphone in front of a class of Asians eager to learn what I know and speak like I speak, this is something akin to it.

One of the benefits of aging is that it effectively dissolves ambition.  I'll never play sax in Stan Kenton's  orchestra, write for the New York Times, date a movie star, or publish a book hailed either as "the great American novel" or recipient of the Pulitzer prize.  So it no longer makes sense to wish for these things, or to despair over missing the brass ring.  Becoming a teacher this late in life, one whose students seem to benefit, is a terrific consolation prize in the race of life.  And finding a wonderful woman to love who returns my affection is a blessing I never deserved.  Whatever the future may bring, I am content right now.

The Kids are Alright

Sometimes, I feel I gotta get away

Bells chime, I know I gotta get away

And I know if I don't, I'll go out of my mind

Better leave her behind with the kids, they're alright  

The kids are alright

--Pete Townshend, The Who

But are they?

At the root of my feeling of incompetence (last blog post) is the certainty that I have failed as a parent.  When my boys were young, I listened to the chiming bells of rock and roll and had to get away from the family and a wife who constantly berated me for my selfishness and lack of attention.  Ultimately I walked out and left her with the kids because i told myself they would be better off.  I was wrong.  My oldest son became a workaholic, a successful one, and his brother an alcoholic who died several years ago at the age of 43.  Certainly their mother's neurotic parenting played a role in their upbringing, but I blame myself for abandoning them at an early age. Alternate weekends with Dad on bunk-bed cots in a Venice Beach apartment never made up for the loss of an in-home father.

I tried to be the doting father with my next family.  When my daughter was born I felt like I'd won the lottery.  We had a wonderful trip across the country together when she was five.  Because my wife felt it was damaging to be an only child, we created another.  And even though I'd never grown up imagining that I would be a father (girls play dolls, boys play soldier), I loved my third son as much as the other three and tried to right the wrongs committed first time around.  But when my wife withdrew as a lover to become a full-time mother, I distanced myself from the family and indulged my intellectual passions in university study. This self-centeredness brought trouble and a form of abandonment that took long for my family to forgive.  My father had been a man of discipline and silence, and I emulated him, thereby earning the enmity of my daughter.  She and I took adversarial positions and stubbornly refused to relent.  In our family I felt like the odd man out.

I was raised on "Ozzie and Harriet," the TV family ideal.  But we were nothing like the Nelson family (whose youngest, Ricky, became a rock and roll star). My father was a big man, a salesman, who liked sports.  I took after my petite redheaded mother, loved movies, music and art, and wanted to be a musician or an actor when I grew up.  My asthma kept me away from most sports.  Just like on "Leave it to Beaver," "Life with Father," and "Lassie," my mother ruled the kitchen and depended on Dad to keep order.  He did, at a time when spanking was socially acceptable.  When I dyed my hair blond against his orders, he cut it all off.  I was an angry child and a juvenile delinquent, a "JD" in the slang of the times, and couldn't wait to get out of the family home.  I fought with my younger brother and probably terrorized him.  Now, even though we are alike in many ways, whenever we try to talk, we end up arguing in a manner that is painful to me (he's a lawyer). When I finally went on my own, I hardly ever told my parents about my what I was doing.  I tried to phone them dutifully once or twice a month to check in. They rarely called me, I believe because my father thought parents should never interfere in their child's life.  We were all the victims of misleading expectations.

Having an idealized view of the family and the relation of children to parents is a problem.  But I am envious of my friends who tell me of the wonderful, close relationships they have with their children as well as their grandchildren.  Since we're in Thailand and most of their families are elsewhere, they exchange emails and even chat regularly on Skype.  Some have children who come to visit.  Their walls and web sites feature photos of former domestic bliss.  My younger two came to see me several years ago. This Father's Day my three surviving children sent me brief email and Facebook messages and even included photos of us together.  But however loved it made me feel, it wasn't enough.  On days that are not holidays, my progeny usually ignore my emails, SMS messages and Facebook attempts to connect.  They are not curious about the life I lead here in Thailand and have had nothing to say about my third marriage to a woman younger than all of them (of course this may be the reason).  They offer so little information about their own lives that it is impossible me the to say with The Who, "The Kids are Alright." I just don't know.  And, because of the guilt that I feel as having been a lousy father, I do not feel I have the right to ask.

The easy explanation is that it's my fault because I left them by moving to Thailand, another abandonment on top of all the others.  But it it didn't seem much different when I lived within driving distance of my two sons and daughter in California.  After the divorce, I spent considerable time with my eldest son and his wife at their home with a spare room over the garage.  They, however, never came to see me.  I often felt like The Man Who Came To Dinner and tried not to overstay my welcome.  Unfortunately proximity does not always produce intimacy.  I was never able to feel very close to my father, so perhaps I never learned how the dance is done.  Sometimes I think it's just as difficult for  children to learn how to relate to fathers if the early imprinting did not take.  We stand on each side of an unbridgeable gulf.

In Thailand it's very different.  As Richard E. Nisbett points out in The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently...and Why, children in the west are taught to be independent and self-sufficient.  Parents feel they have succeeded if their children can survive and prosper once free from the parental sphere of influence.  Asian children, however, are taught to be dependent on their parents forever, even when they are supporting them.  Westerners think of themselves as individuals, while Asians are taught that interdependence is primary.  The elderly are respected and even revered in Thailand (a major reason for retirees to move here) while in America they are shunted off to the old folks home as soon as they begin to drool and forget their children's names.

I know that my children love me.  I just don't know what that love entails.  I am not more uncertain of anything than of this.  My youngest once told me that it was the responsibility of the parent to keep in touch with the child.  He said this because his mother is on the phone to him and his sister daily or weekly.  That's what mother's do once the brood has left the nest.  On the other hand, my oldest son hasn't spoken to his mother in years, so I should feel lucky. I was taught not to impose on children who were busy living their lives.  It isn't seemly to beg for news.  So I piss and moan to myself and my much suffering spouse that my children don't care about me, and, in fact, find my neediness and very existence embarrassing.  I burned my bridges to them long ago when I was a selfish and absent father.

Pete Townshend's "The Kids are Alright" was included on The Who's first LP, "My Generation," in 1965, and it became an anthem for the disaffected youth, the Mods and the Rockers, in Britain's post-war generation.  It's been challenged in numerous covers, including "The Kids are Not Alright" by the Offspring and "The Kids are All Wrong" by Lagwagon.  By all reports, Townshend had a comfortable middle-class upbringing; his father was a saxophonist and his mother a singer.  But a few years ago Townshend was arrested and accused of accessing child pornography internet sites.  He claimed it was to research a book to support has campaign against such sites, but he was made to register as a sex offender nonetheless.  The Sun in London reported that Townshend admitted being abused as a young boy, "probably at the hands of a male guest of my maternal grandmother when I was living with her while my parents tried to work out a marriage problem." His daughter Emma, a Cambridge Ph.D., described her childhood to The Independent as normal and loving, if "extraordinary" (she was an infant at Woodstock). Not all families are alike.

It doesn't help that it takes the internet or the phone to connect and this distance and technology can perhaps dilute warmth and affection.  Social networking has made it possible for me to feel close to people long gone out of my life, people whose roots never ran as deep as those in my family, however infertile the soil.  I lead a full life these days, performing a service to my students by helping them with their English, loving a woman by offering her opportunities not possible for a single Thai from the country, and pursuing my curiosity into a number of subjects like Buddhism and the politics and culture of Southeast Asia.  I wish I could share my successes and even failures with my children.  But too many "mind-forg'd manacles" constrain us.

How'm I doing? Fear of Failing

Ever since I can remember, fears of incompetency have tripped me up. Of course, touting successes, like showing this photo, is a typical way to compensate.  What you can't see was the egg on my face when my PowerPoint presentation on "Big Tent Buddhism" went over the time limit and I had to dump several crucial concluding slides.  At previous Day of Vesak conferences organized by my university, I had chuckled at the academics struggling to time their erudition to an unyielding clock, and this year it was my turn to fail.

Proposing a paper on Buddhism was an act of hubris.  I am not an expert or even a scholar of Buddhist Studies, and my meditation practice lapsed long ago.  Here I was, included with notable Buddhists from around the world, professors of Pali, founders of retreat centers as well as leaders in academic associations devoted to uncovering the foundational teachings and geographical spread of early Buddhism.  But in addition to fearing that my incompetency will inevitably be exposed, I possess a foolish sense of bravado, the vain expectation that following my curiosity will somehow be recognized and appreciated.

At the end of my truncated presentation, a monk stood and directed a question at me.  Because of my poor hearing and his accented English, I barely understood him.  I think he wanted to know if, in my understanding of changes in Buddhism to accomodate modernism, I considered Theravada Buddhism, the nominal practice in Thailand, to be modernist.  Most Thai Buddhist believe their religion to be the real deal, what the Lord Buddha intended.  So to argue that it's historical and has changed over time is akin to heresy.  I didn't want to offend, and I wasn't sure of his intentions, so I mumbled a completely inane response.  Incompetent!

More than 2,000 monks and lay people from 80 countries attended the Day of Vesak celebrations that took place at my campus and at the UN headquarters in Bangkok.  For some reason it was billed as the 2600th anniversary of the Buddha's enlightenment, although the Thai year now is 2555 in a calendar which begins 543 years before Western dates (and the same anniversary was marked last year as well; perhaps this will be the 26th century of his awakening).  If you want to download my obviously inadequate [insert ironic gesture] paper, click here.  If you want to read a pdf of the entire book of papers presented in my panel on "Unifying Buddhist Philosophical Views," download by clicking here.  You can check out other publications from the Day of Vesak 2012 conference at this web site.

So what is it about incompetency?  When I was a boy, I was lousy at sports.  In order to hide my incompetence, I sat out the games.  I loved music and played the clarinet and alto sax, but feared I could never be as good as the musicians I admired, so I sold my instruments and gave it up.  As the married father of two children, I refused to go camping with my family because I feared that I would be incompetent in the forest, unable to build a fire or erect a tent successfully.  I quit jobs I was good at because I knew that eventually I would be revealed as a pretender.  In school I took a seminar in environmental issues with Marxists sociologists who trashed my naive enthusiasm for a spiritual ecology, pointing out my ignorance and confirming my feelings of incompetence.  Going for a Ph.D. in my 50s was idiocy and the dissertation I produced, although accepted, was clearly incompetent.  What was I thinking?  Let me be clear:  I have been incompetent at many things in my life, most notably relationships with those I love.  Failing for me is no fantasy.  I'll save many of the details for my posthumous autobiography.

There are more than enough explanations for feelings of incompetence: lack of self-esteem, a tyrannical inner critic, fears of the judgment of others, ad nauseam.  It's an inside job.  The obviously self-confident people I meet daily could well be faking it.  You never know.  If you think you're not good enough, no amount of awards, compliments or praise (not to mention certificates like the one given me above) will suffice.  You're always trying to please an irrational taskmaster.  One defense against inadequacy is to be merciless in one's judgement of others, a trait I struggle to suppress.  It's reported that the Dalai Lama could not understand what Westerners meant by the problem of self-esteem.  My Thai wife finds this topic puzzling.  She says I think too much, and too much of my thinking involves worries.  Mai pen rai.  Chill out, dude!

Dance!



My goal is to be less like the hesitant Basil (played by Alan Bates) and more like the fearless Zorba (played by that magnificent non-Greek Anthony Quinn) in the film version of Nikos Kazantzakis' wonderful novel, "Zorba the Greek."  Zorba, you may recall, was the master of failures.

I can at least report that as I hurl down the slick slide of aging, it has become easier to thumb my nose at the fear of failing.  What people think of me -- and isn't that at the root at the feeling of incompetency? -- is less important.  I'll never be that handsome devil, the intellectual giant or the author of paradigm-changing work.  It's all over but the shouting, and the dancing.  And that's just fine.  Hubris is a human thing.  We reach beyond our capabilities and most of the time fall flat on our face.  I can handle that.  The important thing is to go for it, to conquer our greed, anger and delusion as the people here are doing by shooting at symbols of what holds us back, according to Buddhist teaching.

The big news at the end of May was that I finally renewed my work permit for a fifth year after four arduous trips out of Bangkok to the Ministry of Labour office in Ayutthaya near my university where they carefully scrutinized my documents and found errors.  The Thai bureaucracy is Byzantine to the max.  The nearly three-month summer vacation has ended and the new 16-week term began last week, but only 4 of the 28 enrolled students showed up.  Good thing, too, because some of the classrooms were missing desks and chairs and a woman was mopping the floor in one where my afternoon class was to meet.  Working in a Thai university requires infinite patience and flexibility, something I'm slowing learning.  The term schedule is not yet fixed and students last week had not been told what classes they were taking (which partly explains the absences). There are no projectors for PowerPoint and video in the rooms I've been assigned so I was told to take another (not sure if the other teacher knows this).  I'm still waiting to hear if I'll be teaching graduate students in linguistics on the weekend closer to home, or when their term begins (not all students have the same dates).

Last night Nan and I celebrated the 3rd anniversary of our first date.  She wanted mashed potatoes, and we found them at the new location of Bourbon Street Restaurant & Oytster Bar near Ekamai bus station. She had lamb chops (not common in Thailand) with her potatoes and I had salmon with pasta. On our first date, after coffee, we went to Sizzler's because she said she liked farang food.  Sometimes she makes me an "American breakfast": scrambled eggs with cheese and bacon or sausage (hot dogs), with toast and jam.  The atmosphere at Bourbon Street was conducive to our celebratory mood, with classic rock and soul on the sound system.  Outside the soi was jammed with Friday night traffic and it took us over a half hour in the taxi just to get to the next major street.

I've quite been busy lately; besides the Vesak conference, six months in preparation, I met with members of the Buddhist Psychos to resurrect the discussion group which hasn't met since last September, watched an excellent Argentine film, "Un Buda," at the International Buddhist Film Festival being held this weekend at Central World, and attended a meeting on "Lese Majeste, Rhetoric and Dissent" at Sulak Sivaraksa's center which featured the revered engaged Buddhist, historian of nationalism Benedict Anderson, columnist Pravit Rojanaphruk, and "zenjournalist" Andrew MacGregor Marshall via Skype.  Video of the evening is now on YouTube.  The room at Sulak's compound was packed with mostly young Thais and a sprinkling of expats.  The Psychos are planning to meet later this month at a restaurant in Silom where the topic up for discussion with be the relationship between Master and Disciple, or teacher and student.  Nan's summer school ends with a final exam tomorrow and during her week off we're planning three days of relaxation and sun (rain permitting) on Ko Samed, our favorite getaway destination.  I don't expect the issue of my incompetence will arise at all.

And finally, a photo of my university where the instructional schedule might be late but the new rock garden looks great.

Soi Dog Days

These are the dog days in Thailand, summertime, when fans and A/C run constantly. It was so named by the ancients who believed Sirius, the Dog Star, was close to the sun and responsible for hot weather.  Now we are much wiser and know it has something to do with the trade winds.  Southeast Asia has three seasons: cool (hot, really, though the Thais usually wear sweaters), hottest and rainy.  In Bangkok, "dog" is usually paired with "soi," as in the countless mongrels that live in and around the many streets and alleys that branch off the main boulevards.  Many of them are mangy and maimed, and survive with no fixed abode or owner (although they seem to exercise territorial rights).  People write letters to the editor to plead that they be cared for, and there is even the Soi Dog Foundation to assist in that worthy goal.  The other day when I went looking for dogs to photograph, few could be found, probably because they're smart enough, unlike me, to find shade out of the heat.  But I did wonder briefly if a Vietnamese butcher had snapped up the few fat ones.

The dog above is obviously healthy, but so cute I snapped him up from a Buddhist site where it was said he lived in a temple.  Whereas this dog is healing from an injury that apparently took one of his back legs. I like the red shirt he's wearing, which I suspect has seen a political rally or two, given him by the motorbike taxi drivers he lives with. While he's tied up, there is another three-legged puppy frolicking nearby, oblivious to his own missing limb.  There are probably as many ownerless cats as the numerous dogs, but they usually stay out of sight.  A friendly white cat can frequently be encountered on the sidewalk in front of the nearby S.D. Hotel, eating rice that some kind soul has given it.

I don't mind either the heat or the humidity, but I do miss the comforting discipline of the school year.  Since the last term ended in early March I have searched to fill the void.  There was a Ko Samed weekend and the book fair in March, and in early April we spent several days at the Cera Resort, a brand new hotel on the coast between Hua Hin and Cha Am that we loved.  Later that month. I holed up in the apartment to avoid getting soaked with water during the festival of Songkran while Nan went to visit her relatives in Phayao.  She returned with her 9-year-old cousin Edward who stayed with us for two weeks, swimming in our pool, watching Transformer videos, and playing games in the iPod and with toy soldiers we bought him.  We spent a day with him swimming in the huge pool at Siam Park and a half-day at the Dusit Zoo where he was mostly interested in crocodiles and the pedal boats on the lake and not much else. I wanted to take Edward to see "The Avengers" but before we could work out a time, he had to go back home with a relative who was driving.  So Nan and I went to see it childless, wearing 3D glasses at the IMAX theater.  It was terrific.

Dogs never seem to be frustrated, but we western expats do.  It's in our cultural nature to fret over difficulties.  The Thais call everything from frustration to anger jai ran and Nan must constantly urge me to cultivate patience, a cool heart (jai yen).  My annual visa and work permit expire at the end of this month and getting the proper documents to apply for renewals has been an arduous two-month process.  The visa was no problem, but the Ministry of Labour in Ayutthaya where my university is located has been nit picky, requiring several trips, frantic pleading, and anxious phone conversations.  Hopefully it will be resolved tomorrow.

Next week is the Day of Vesak celebration and conference at MCU and I will deliver a paper written for a meeting in October that was postponed because of the flood. There are 110 speakers on June 1 from all over the world and I am allotted 10 minutes for a PowerPoint presentation based on my 24-page paper (which will be published in a volume with other essays).  Trying to make my argument about "Big Tent Buddhism" in such a short talk is virtually impossible, and editing has never been my strong suit; I'm a splitter, not a lumper.  I did a test drive for my monthly political discussion group and it took an hour.  Friends were sympathetic and full of suggestions but I was chagrined.  Back to the drawing boards, and the clock is ticking.

Each morning I awake as the rosy fingers of dawn creep over the Bangkok cityscape outside my 9th floor window, drink orange juice and make a big cup of coffee.  How did I ever live without the internet in the morning?  Oh yes, I used to read newspapers with my coffee and a Danish.  But that's a quaint memory now.  I check my two email accounts, twitter, and then see if anyone has commented on yesterday's Facebook posts and links.  Then I look at overnight news from my now over 500 "friends," watch the YouTube videos they've suggested, and read stories they've recommended.  After that, it's time to check Google Reader which keeps track of dozens of sites I find informative and interesting.  I wish I could kick the addiction to U.S. news and focus solely on global events.  I'll probably never return or vote in another American election.  But Google News doesn't have a universal edition in English yet, and what's happening in England and Australia is even less interesting.  I'm weary from reading about the lunatic fringe putting limits on contraception, abortion and gay marriage, and the endless wars on terror and in Iraq and Afghanistan make me sick.  California is going broke and the poor can no longer afford to get a degree (or pay back loans if they already have one).  The object of the Vatican's latest Inquisition are the nuns who have made the Church relative for the modern age.  And finally, famous people are dying constantly, not only in America but all over: Levon Helm, Maurice Sendak, Duck Dunn, Adam from the Beastie Boys, Doug Dillard, Ernest Callenbach (Ecotopia), Donna Sumer and Robin Gibb.  How can one keep up with it all?

Many of my friends either hate Facebook's intrusiveness too much to even sign up for an account or once they have one, complain frequently that social networking is destroying face-to-face communication and ruining culture in general.  I disagree.  I've collected people on Facebook from every phase of my life, nearly 60 years, and we relate in a way that was never possible before.  For example, I play a Scrabble-like game on my iPad with my oldest son, a woman I knew (intimately) in junior high school, a British folk singer I met in London in the 1960s who has been an expat in Germany for many years, friends who worked in the music business in Hollywood, and people I knew at the beginning of my 30 years in Santa Cruz as well as a few I met towards the end.  Each morning I have moves to make in almost a dozen word games.  There is even more variety in my friends list which includes fellow teachers and students in Thailand, current and past; Bangkok and Thailand contacts, some whom I've never met in person; a large number of people I worked for doing publicity or on magazines, and a handful of high school friends (most of whom have conservative political opinions).  Google Street Views lets me link to my present address in Bangkok and the house in La Cañada where I spent my teen years and show them both on Facebook.  I've worked on my Timeline to make it a virtual autobiography with important events and photos (my ex-wife objected to me linking her with our marriage), and I "like" whatever strikes my fancy.  Keeping current requires a good 2-3 hours every day.  But then, as an almost retired person, I have the time.  Right?

What I haven't devoted as much time to is this blog.  I can barely manage two posts a month these days.  Each blog post, which I consider a riff on a theme in the manner of a jazz musician (with sometimes a sour note or two), takes 3 or 4 hours to put together.  Lately I've used much of the space to write about religion as I try to sort out my thoughts for the conference talk on modern Buddhism, east and west.  And I continue to try and come up with a clear argument for the abolition of "religion" as a category in favor of describing what people do and say as aspects of culture, and resources for myth making to create sense of one's experience.  The thoughts remain murky and unconvincing to those whom I corner and take my stand.  Maybe in the next lifetime I'll be more articulate.  There's plenty about politics here and on Facebook.  As for sex, well, I'm a happily married man and, as my father used to say, it's a sin to kiss and tell.