Not gonna lie, I'm completely drained. I really do love everybody on my trip, but I've been with people constantly for 3 days and I kind of just need time by myself. I don't feel like doing a full recap of my day, so the shortened version of my day was Chiang Mai Cultural Museum, small local temple, Chedi Luang, Umong Temple, Airport Plaza Mall, Concert, then going out to the old town of Chiang Mai for a late dinner.
I don't really feel like recounting the full events of today (although I'll probably do that at some point, as today has been amazing and I have so many pictures), so I just wanted to say this instead:
I feel like my trip so far has been constant action punctuated with enough time to gasp for air. Especially because I'm with a group this big, I feel a pressure to continually be doing something. Don't get me wrong- that's a great thing- I don't want to waste any time in Thailand, but it's still overwhelming sometimes. It's probably because of this that my time in the temples today was so striking. We arrived at the Great Pavillion (Chedi Luang) with Jar Jar (Jah Jaah?) saying we only had "45 minutes! 45 minutes, okay?!" And there was no question that we were going into the main temple first- it was huge and grandiose and obviously the important place to visit. We went from laughing and "Oooh take a picture of me next to the dragon" outside of the temple to a reverent kind of quiet on the inside. There was the initial wave of comments and pictures, but it came to a point where we were all just seated in front of the wall of golden buddhas, bowing completed and just hanging in time in a magnetic kind of unbroken quiet. I can't explain why it resonated so much with me, but there's something lovely about having 30 different people just absorbing the same atmosphere as you. I'm probably mis-remembering and exaggerating it, but it feels like we stayed that way for a solid few minutes before Jah Jaah came over and announced that we should "look around, yeah?"
Buddhism is not something I've experienced before in my life. Yes, there are little alters at the nail salon, but somehow, that doesn't really count. At the Chedi Luang temple, after marveling at the gilt, we were given the chance to sit and have a "Monk Chat" and just exchange ideas with him. It was kind of intimidating at first, because what in the world do you say to a monk? Where does that conversation begin? So we sat down and stared at him for a second. There was a moment of uneasy then he broke the tension with a "So, where are you from?" We laughed and eventually got over ourselves. I learned a lot about the roots of Buddhism and what monks do and their rules and role in society. I could probably do a "10 things I learned about Buddhism today" list, but that almost seems to cheapen the experience, in an odd way. We learned that the monk had just turned 21 two weeks ago and that he said he planned to be a monk "until he was finished." As someone who's about to be 21, I felt that even though this guy was only a month older than me, he was also much, much older than me, if that makes sense. He was at peace with himself and the world in a way I've never been. I'm not about to come back to the US a Buddhist, but I really appreciated a lot of what he had to say and it's definitely given me a lot to think about. So I leave you with this: Towards the end of our conversation, the monk said he believes "We are all born broken and we're just trying to put ourselves together so that we can be good in the end." I'm not sure that I'm broken, but I'm at a point in my life where I feel like I'm definitely putting myself together and I hope I'll be good enough for whatever "the end" is.
- Haley
I don't really feel like recounting the full events of today (although I'll probably do that at some point, as today has been amazing and I have so many pictures), so I just wanted to say this instead:
I feel like my trip so far has been constant action punctuated with enough time to gasp for air. Especially because I'm with a group this big, I feel a pressure to continually be doing something. Don't get me wrong- that's a great thing- I don't want to waste any time in Thailand, but it's still overwhelming sometimes. It's probably because of this that my time in the temples today was so striking. We arrived at the Great Pavillion (Chedi Luang) with Jar Jar (Jah Jaah?) saying we only had "45 minutes! 45 minutes, okay?!" And there was no question that we were going into the main temple first- it was huge and grandiose and obviously the important place to visit. We went from laughing and "Oooh take a picture of me next to the dragon" outside of the temple to a reverent kind of quiet on the inside. There was the initial wave of comments and pictures, but it came to a point where we were all just seated in front of the wall of golden buddhas, bowing completed and just hanging in time in a magnetic kind of unbroken quiet. I can't explain why it resonated so much with me, but there's something lovely about having 30 different people just absorbing the same atmosphere as you. I'm probably mis-remembering and exaggerating it, but it feels like we stayed that way for a solid few minutes before Jah Jaah came over and announced that we should "look around, yeah?"
Buddhism is not something I've experienced before in my life. Yes, there are little alters at the nail salon, but somehow, that doesn't really count. At the Chedi Luang temple, after marveling at the gilt, we were given the chance to sit and have a "Monk Chat" and just exchange ideas with him. It was kind of intimidating at first, because what in the world do you say to a monk? Where does that conversation begin? So we sat down and stared at him for a second. There was a moment of uneasy then he broke the tension with a "So, where are you from?" We laughed and eventually got over ourselves. I learned a lot about the roots of Buddhism and what monks do and their rules and role in society. I could probably do a "10 things I learned about Buddhism today" list, but that almost seems to cheapen the experience, in an odd way. We learned that the monk had just turned 21 two weeks ago and that he said he planned to be a monk "until he was finished." As someone who's about to be 21, I felt that even though this guy was only a month older than me, he was also much, much older than me, if that makes sense. He was at peace with himself and the world in a way I've never been. I'm not about to come back to the US a Buddhist, but I really appreciated a lot of what he had to say and it's definitely given me a lot to think about. So I leave you with this: Towards the end of our conversation, the monk said he believes "We are all born broken and we're just trying to put ourselves together so that we can be good in the end." I'm not sure that I'm broken, but I'm at a point in my life where I feel like I'm definitely putting myself together and I hope I'll be good enough for whatever "the end" is.- Haley
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