Monk Chat

Thursday 4th February 2010, 10pm, Rathwiki Street Bar - Chiang Mai

Apparently after my redeeming morning at Wat Xieng Thong in Luang Prabang, I'm a bit of a temple nut-job these days. Chiang Mai boasts a population of nearly 300 of these structures and today I have made a dip in the ocean dent in this number by visiting 4 of them. Even a newly appreciative Lanna architecture fan such as myself has to draw the line somewhere, and this line, this battle line actually, was drawn at Wat Chedi Luang, temple numero cuatro.

Chedi Luang was always on my hit list. Reading up on the town when I first arrived I was thrilled to learn that this temple hosts daily 'Monk Chat'; a portion of each day where visitors can sit in the garden and talk to the monks who live there about their lives and about Buddhism. Well, I thought, I like chatting, I like monks (they have so far been amiable and full of surprises - one I met at Angkor Wat asked if he could add me on facebook), and I know next to nothing about Buddhism, why this is the ideal afternoon activity for me! So I took myself along. I sat with Champa, a monk who has been living in the temple for 14 of his 23 years, and who is due to graduate from his degree, and from monkhood, this July. The conversation was vast and varied and in avoidance of being dull I couldn't possibly go into everything we discussed here. I will tell you what he told me about Buddhism.

The principle, ignoring the intricate and peculiar eccentricities of it, is very simple. Live the best life you can, be good to others, be generous and forgiving and peaceful, never think about tomorrow for it is only today that matters, rid yourself of greed, hatred and desire. Essentially - make love not war. All of this I can happily get to grips with, but then I asked him about the afterlife, about the prospects of heaven and hell. There is no hell, Champa told me, there is re-birth, and there is no heaven, there is enlightenment. During one lifetime we can accumulate positive or negative karma, karma being the reaction to our actions. If you lead a wholesome existence then you earn merits and in your next life will be reborn in to a more fortuitous future. If you are unwholesome then your soul, after death, will find itself lamentably in a lesser being, such as a mosquito, or a tree (and don't even ask me how a tree is meant to lead a wholesome life, we never got to the bottom of this. Be a welcoming home for nesting birds perhaps, don't drop fruit on people's heads?). You will only ever reach enlightenment, the emptiness of Nirvana and the freedom of the soul, when you have lived the perfect, blameless life.

At a fundamental level I acknowledge the ethical equation of this, it's fairer than the world we live in because it decrees that eventually, bad deeds will get their comeuppance. Where did this battle line spring up then? Inquisitively, and expecting a slightly more convoluted answer than the one I received, I asked Champa then if this meant he believed that poor people, or say, the disabled, did something in a previous life they can't remember which would warrant this punishment? "Yes" he said, "they have built up bad karma". And this is the point where my burgeoning love affair with Buddhism abruptly ended. Yes, the morals are admirable, but not exclusive to Buddha and his disciples - Christianity, Hinduism, Islam at it's grassroots - all centre around the concept of Goodness, of loving thy neighbour. But I'm afraid I am light years away from being converted to a religion that believes people living in poverty, the sick, the destitute, the depressed and even the disabled, did something to deserve it.

Sensing my growing distrust and indignation, my monk changed the course of our chat. Unfortunately for him, he didn't do himself or the widening gaps in his religious argument any favours. He began to talk about his excitement at leaving the monastery this summer, of becoming a tour operator in Vang Vieng - overseeing the sin-pit that is the tubing industry, of his wish to have a girlfriend, his hope to taste beer for the first time and to know how it feels to be drunk. Oh hypocrisy, how I love to argue with thee. I nonchalantly pointed out that all these things he mentioned were laden with greed, desire, of looking forward to tomorrow when he'd previously said we should only live in today (although I guess not thinking about the next day is how you end up living in a temple for over a decade, he just never made plans to leave).

Yes, I yielded, all these things he wants to try are part of my life, joys and sins of the flesh which I embrace. But I'm not a monk, nor do I preach to being anything other than fun-loving and flawed. I also added that I didn't think it was healthy for him to not allow himself these pleasures - he is after all, just a human being like the rest of us, and in my mind, entitled to desire and fulfilment if it is at no one else's expense. He shrugged guiltily, and could only acquiesce that he guessed he had many more lives to live before he emulates his Buddha and achieves enlightenment. Well then, I retorted, he best ensure he's not too ill-behaved when he's released on Vang Vieng, he wouldn't want to end up in a disabled body next time he returns after all. My irony didnt quite leap the culture divide I think.

I suggested to Champa just before leaving him that Christianity and Buddhism have many similarities - the focus is on leading a moral existence, Jesus was a perfect man, Buddha was a man who in his 500th life as an Indian Prince achieved perfection, both have firm ideas about punishment and reward. He looked at me like I'd said something offensively sacrilegious and his only contribution to this argument was "No. We are not the same." Indeed we are not, my confused, naive little monk, and thank my God for that.