What Keeps us Whole

(I rode behind these dudes and snuck a shot...)

One of the cool things about early morning is seeing the people in front of their homes and businesses with food and gifts for the monks.  It’s something they hold quite sacred, this chance to give.  

This morning it seemed there were folks hunkered down with their little piles of offerings just about everywhere I looked, and long lines of monks with metal bowls slung on straps over their shoulders to catch their booty walking single file down the road.  (Though I’m thinking they probably don’t think of it as booty per se.) 

Truth told, I’m hard-pressed to imagine just how they do think of the offering, and the practice over-all, perception being filtered, as it is, through our own personal nets of experience.  What I might see as an act of charity quite probably plays in an entirely different light were I to have come of age in a Buddhist culture/country. And yet…it seems every single time I step out the door I spy a hole in that wall which otherwise sets us apart.  A look from some Lao dude on a mountain bike who’s out for a morning ride, followed by a big smile and a thumbs-up.  Isn’t this great?  Riding hard in the cool morning air? 

Last night I arrived at the hospital around 7:30 to pick up Rebecca.  It was dark but still quite warm.  My legs were tired from a long ride I took across the Mekong earlier that morning, plus I was hungry and thirsty.  You ready?  

We communicate via WhatsApp, and I confess to a growing impatience when I shoot a text and get no reply.  I’ll be down in a bit.  Well.  OK, then.  

The waiting area had maybe twelve or fifteen kids and adults hanging out and watching the flat screen TV, which was running a Disney flick I’m only vaguely familiar with. (There was no sound, Laos being low on the list of languages Disney translates, and so the room was eerily quiet, save for the shrieks of kids on the swing set next door.) The film involved a dinosaur (seemed to be a teenager) with a pack of primates on his back.  I can’t be sure, but the dinosaur  and primates were all kind of suffering first love trials and tribulations, and sort of bucking each other up through the hard stuff. I’m thinking the dinosaur was stoic and strong-if a little dumb. The primates (being animals that steal, bite, and hurl their shit at one another) had more of the wiseguy thing going on.  I liked the dinosaur, though. But I was fighting the urge to be impatient.  I’d pull out my phone every now and then, check the time, think about what could possibly be keeping Rebecca so long.  Probably hanging out shooting the bull.  Making plans to go do yoga…

Then I’d play at being a grownup and consider my surroundings.  Every adult in that room was there because some kid they love is sick or injured.  I’ve come to learn just how tough the Laos people are, and they don’t waltz off to the hospital for a scratch on their ass.  Also, Rebecca’s not a thoughtless bitch: she would make a line for the door if she could. Then, too there was the movie, which was getting kind of heavy…

Turns out a meteor shower was coming down, and all the dinosaurs and primates saw it as a lovely little light show: tinkling ribbons of light arcing gently down from heaven and landing off in the (also) tinkling sea.  They got brighter and brighter.  And more, too.  Until one whale of a meteor resulted in an atomic bomb-like explosion, and everyone died.  Kidding.  There was a big, atomic bomb-like explosion, though, along with a tsunami and, you know, hellfire, and panicked running.  Yadda yadda yadda.  Smaller animals getting crushed by bigger animals.  For a kid’s movie, it was pretty heavy stuff.  I looked around the room, and even the little dudes were completely transfixed by the images on the screen.  An old guy (probably my age) in front of me caught my eye and gave the slightest nod to the kids and smiled, as if to say, Isn’t it great? They’re lost in a different world.  Somehow he knew I would understand how important it is for children to sometimes get lost, and that I would see it for the beautiful thing it is. Even if that other world is one of pain and turmoil.  The primates clung to the big guy, the dinosaur did his best to keep them (and himself) alive. 

The dinosaur was a lucky guy.  Not because he lived in a time of mass extinction (to be fair, that extinction took a while…) but because he understood the gift of his circumstance: to be placed in a position of giving. 

I don’t pretend to understand the many ways the Buddhist faith has blossomed through south Asia and beyond, much less this branch of practice here in Laos.  But we’ve seen it before, this alms-giving—most recently in Myanmar—where one group subjugates themselves before another, and that other group sees it for the gift it is. I could be misinterpreting—seeing it for something entirely other than its intention, but still, this world’s crazy ways feels pretty right.