My mom’s friend wanted to show me around Buddhist temples in Thailand. I welcome the opportunity to see something new in Bangkok and to meet one of my mom’s old friends. We visit various temples that are beautifully decorated as they all are. I was thinking to myself that I must have seen a dozen temples during my trip already. The Thais are really devout Buddhists and superstitious when it came to good luck and blessings. E (aunt in Thai) is what I called her, it’s a common name given to family friends that are older than you are. The most memorable moment of the day’s escapade was when she took me to her personal Buddhist temple where she trained under a monk that travels around the world preaching Buddhism to westerners. Her mentor was not present at the time, but I walk around the compound. This particular temple housed the Lucky Buddha, a large gold enshrined Buddha that supposedly granted your wishes. It was legend that every woman unable to conceive would pray and touch the Lucky Buddha and be able to have children after that. All the temples sold amulets of Buddhas. I bought a few to be distributed to some friends interested in Buddhism back in the states. The tiny figurine of the Lucky Buddha is to be taken seriously, the thought of it touching the floor and not revered is a sign of disrespect and consequentially bad luck.
I then sit in the back of the room where a monk is also sitting. He begins to talk to me about Buddhist principles. The first one he mentions is awareness. You should always be aware of your surroundings and live in the present. When your mind wanders to the past or the future, you lose sight of what is in front of you. This particular message strikes a chord with me since I have a huge tendency to daydream or keep my attention span. When I was in 4th grade, my teacher mentioned to my parents during a parent-teacher conference that I was often daydreaming. As my mind was wandering to how I don’t pay attention and how I often even involuntarily fall asleep in class, I realize that I’m doing the opposite of what the monk was saying. He continues on about how every step you take and even when you are in traffic, try to clear your mind of thoughts and just be. I try for a split second to not have words scrambling all over my brain as thoughts. Its quite difficult. He then hands me a book to take home to the U.S. It’s title is about dealing with anger. I like this little book since I’ve been recently finding that inner peace is such an important thing to have and anger completely sours that. He gives me some more copies to hand out to friends. I felt completely inspired by our little chat and wondered how he knew to lecture on the right topics as they pertained to me. Over the next few days as I read the small anger management book, I find some of the ideas eccentric (since of course you have the factor in Thai culture) but also true that anger and rage lead to regrettable decisions and negative health consequences. There is a lot to learn from wise monks.
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