Monks...

I think some of the most memorable moments of my trip came from simple conversations with Buddhist monks in various countries. In my experience they’re invariably friendly people, always keen to stop for a chat with someone from a foreign country, whether to practice their English skills (which were nearly always impeccable) or just to find out about another country and its culture. You can see them in certain places in nearly every town, receiving offerings of food from local people at dawn, who receive blessings in return. This practice dates back around 2500 years to Siddhartha Gautama, whose teachings founded Buddhism. After spending years in the wilderness, he renounced his ascetic ways and subsisted on offerings from the villages and towns he passed through.

     
     It’s a beautiful spectacle to watch lines of lines of monks receiving their alms, silent except for the chanted blessings they impart. Even in Luang Prabang in Laos, where it seems to have turned into something of a human zoo, with some tourists getting disrespectfully close to the ceremony.

     The monastic order seems to be a social welfare system of sorts in Laos, where those who are unable to afford an education can join a monastery and be given food and board as well as a decent education, for free. A great education in fact, I spoke to a 20 year old monk in Luang Prabang who could hold a conversation in 10 different languages, learning partly from speaking to tourists and partly from his teachers. I was amazed to watch him have a conversation in fluent French – he had been learning for 2 months and was better than I after learning for 8 years.

     Another great memory was from a Zen Buddhist monastery in Da Lat, Vietnam; where I got chatting to a senior monk who asked me if I would help him with a Vietnamese to English translation of the history of his order. We spent an afternoon drinking green tea with ginger and making alterations to the text he had written. In return I was taken on a tour of their private quarters, meditation and ceremony halls, where tourists aren’t generally allowed. The whole place had a kind of hushed grandeur to it and a sense of solemn awe. In the evening he let me stay behind to watch their evening chanting and prayer session. Beginning with cryptic chants over a speaker system, set to a rhythmic BA-BOOM on a huge drum and clangs on an equally huge bell, the monks, novices and laypeople entered the temple hall. Each chant was led by a senior monk and picked up by the others, increasing in rhythm and fervency, soon the frogs and crickets joined in their own chants as the whole thing reached the pulsing, vibrating roar of some epic lullaby. I realised I was the sole observer of a ritual that must date back hundreds of years; something esoteric yet entirely familiar, intangible but intensely personal. An illuminating experience I’ll never forget.

     

     The monks seem to embody what I and millions of others love about Buddhism: they’re always accepting, ever thoughtful, contemplative and compassionate. If only everybody knew a few of them!