Chiang Mai: Shutterbug Monks

Chiang Mai, Thailand

Last weekend the class traveled to a small Karen village's small temple complex built by Wat Sri Soda as part of the Dhamma Jarika (“Walking Dharma” or “Walking Buddhism”) project sponsored by this Chiang Mai foundation. I learned about Wat Sri Soda and this project 3 years ago when I visited Chiang Mai while setting-up the course. It is a unique temple in that it has made an effort to reach-out to hill tribal peoples in Northern Thailand who practice animism. Originally a effort to reduce opium growing and use, the project educates hill tribe boys at its monk school and then integrates them into their communities. The were very excited to take us to show us one of their exemplary projects.

Four hours outside of Chiang Mai we stopped in a pretty typical small Northern village. There we sat on floors to take our meals. We slept on mats under mosquito nettings last night. When we peed, it was in Asian squat toilets. While there we hiked to a hermitage, we joined a chanting ceremony dedicating a family’s new house, and we meditated in the wat. This morning after a fabulous breakfast we tutored and taught American school-yard games to the 30 or so Karen children who came for their Sunday morning Buddhist ethics class.

In a wonderful reversal of philosophy, it was my students who were wreathed in the simple pleasure of the moment. The monks who accompanied us were snapping photos all around them.

“I think they have 5 photos of us for every one we have of them,” Savannah speculated. At least 5.

I smiled remembering that an in example of cultural insensitivity and “essentializing” during one of my leadership preparation courses was photographing monks on their alms begging rounds. This very morning the monks changed the alms routine for the sake of photographic composition. They changed from two lines of students flanking their procession in front of the temple to a single line cascading down the front steps of the temple because that was easier to photograph. This isn’t some media-dependent political organization; these are record-conscious monks in a small hill tribe village moving foreigners around to make a better picture.

"Eyes and ears and mouth and nose. Head, shoulders, knees and toes."

An earlier posted ended by recounting a Facebook exchange with my colleague, Rich Lee, about the encroachment of the West in Thailand. My students, too, are impressed with the Westernization of much of Thailand, and particularly, of course, urban Thailand. 7-11’s aren’t special – they’re so densely integrated into Thai street life that 7-11 is the default recommendation of Thai receptionists when one needs to pick up anything from an ice ceam to toothpaste. That’s not to mention the other brands on billboards and store shelves. Skin whiteners are so prominent they give me the heebeegeebies. I’ve had more than one encounter where a woman – usually a woman – has compared her arm to my post-Minnesota-winter-white arm and, with a smile, asked to borrow my complexion.

“Why?” I finally asked.

“Because its so beautiful,” one woman replied, completely unaware of how odd that sounded to the complexion’s owner. White is eerily good.

Still, I distrust arguments that derive primarily from the apologist position of cultural colonialism. In short, these arguments are at best incomplete, and at worst quite misleading and even solipsistic (self-centered) if they portray the culture in question in a largely passive roll unable to resist (as if they wanted to) the creeping hegemony of Western products and attitudes. I am increasingly of the opinion that the first question about adopting a foreign view or practice is why do they want it? Why do these monks want all these pictures of foreigners visiting their remote temple? Why do Thais want 7-11's? Only after the first lines of explanation that deal with animal spirits have been factored out can the truly weird stand in stark relief-- like the cult of whiteness. In this vein I hope some enterprising student has studied Asian people's toilet preferences, and the encroachment of the commode: are sitting toilets merely a status symbol, or do a significant proportion of the population now prefer to sit rather than squat?