7


Bhikkhu Bob
and Boomer Bhante
Gird Their Loins

IT WAS BREEDING SEASON for the nits. Before mating, the three-centimetre-long insects we called nits grew slender, flappy wings. They flew from their nests in a swarm at dusk when the nights were warm and dry. The long wings barely kept them aloft. Before they could mate, their papery new wings broke loose, allowing them to pursue each other on the ground. There was a saying in the region, “He is as clever as a nit. He can grow wings, but they soon fall off.”

At evening meditation a light is left glowing dimly in the sala, allowing pakhaos and laymen to follow the monks’ chanting in our Pali texts. Thousands of nits flutter to the light. Their bodies cover the floor beneath it. They fly in our faces. They batter themselves against the glowing white of our clothes. They flap crazily, desperately trying to knock off their fragile wings. They struggle and twist all around us, freeing themselves from the paper filaments which have given them flight. Once their wings are discarded, the nits chase each other, crawling everywhere through the sala. They wriggle down our necks, inside our sabongs, over the prickly fuzz of our skulls. Long wings whirl downwards in the dark air. They pursue each other in a frenzy between the rows of our mats, around and through the solemn figures of the monks. They climb on top of one another, struggling to mate. They fall like a living shower, crawling over our closed eyelids and indulging in an orgy of procreation while our chanting rings in the temple. It is as if the temple is suddenly bombarded by the flux of the universe, spinning between our still forms like a storm of unformed particles. The hum of wings blends with the rhythm of our chanting. The words of our Pali litany do not deny this flux. They affirm it:

Birth is suffering

Decay is suffering

Disease is suffering

Death is suffering

Separation from the liked is suffering

Association with the disliked is suffering

And longing for what we would like is suffering

I am of the nature of decay

I have not gone beyond decay

I am of the nature to sicken

I have not gone beyond sickness

I am of the nature to die

I have not gone beyond death

All that is mine, beloved and pleasing,

Will become otherwise, will be separated from me.

The Buddha did not offer us comfortable words. His teaching began with the problem of suffering. Extinguish desires and suffering will cease, he taught. The goal is to escape the wheel of samsara, to be free from the cycle of rebirth. Eternal death.

The Buddha meditated for six years before penetrating the illusions of existence. Although his solution to suffering seems pessimistic, it did not lead him to a samadhi-suicide. He lived and taught for forty-five years after his enlightenment as an affirmation of living, despite the human conditions of decay, disease and death. Suffering is caused by our refusal to accept these realities, he taught. Once a young mother brought her dead infant son to the Buddha, weeping and grieving. She pleaded with him to bring the child back to life. The Buddha told her he would raise the child, but first she must bring as an offering a sack of rice flour from a household which had not known death. The woman ran through her town from house to house but everywhere the answer was the same. A mother, father, uncle, aunt or child had died in every home. The woman returned to the master, declaring death was known to every family, so she could not bring the offering. “And so I will not raise your son,” the Buddha said. When one accepts death, there is nothing left to fear. Those who follow Buddha’s path describe it as a state of lightness and harmony with the universe. It manifests itself in the liberated person as compassion towards all beings.

“Do you know the best reason for a Westerner to be ordained in Thailand?” Richard asked me on alms round. “It makes it easy to get visa extensions from the government.”

It was a bad day for Richard. He said he had been constipated since his arrival in Pah Nanachat. This was no surprise. It was a common affliction. Eating only one meal a day seemed to justify cramming one’s guts full. Afterwards, sticky rice swells when one drinks water, corking up the bowels. Richard looked pale and wretched. He had asked Ruk if he could skip out on the morning rounds that day.

“Of course you can,” said the monk. “The rule is that if you don’t go on bindabat, you don’t eat. You are always free to fast.”

Richard had then hastily struggled into his outer robe as we departed. He still didn’t have the knack of wearing it properly. It takes practice. He caught up with us half way to the village, his robe loose and flapping about his knees. On a deserted stretch between houses, Richard’s bowl lid slipped and clattered onto the muddy ground. When he bent to retrieve it, his robe fell fully open. Ruk told him curtly to fix himself. Fortunately, nobody was watching.

“It’s not as if I’m doing it on purpose,” Richard said. “I need something to fasten the lid in place, that’s all. It just pops off every time I try to keep the robe from slipping.”

Minutes later, on the outskirts of the next hamlet, Ruk’s back stiffened as he heard the tinny clatter behind him again. I bent to pick up Richard’s muddy lid. The novice’s robes were slipping from his shoulders.

“We stop here and you put your robe on properly,” said Ruk. “It looks bad for all of us to have you so sloppy in the villages. Why don’t you practise?”

I had never seen my gentle monk so exasperated. Ruk had a cold. His eyes were bloodshot and he snuffled all through the walk. Despite the freshness of the dawn and the green shoots newly planted in the surrounding paddies, it was a miserable morning.

“It’s this stupid lid,” Richard said sullenly.

“Then perhaps we get a new bowl for you tomorrow,” said Ruk.

“Maybe I’ll go back to Sri Lanka after all,” Richard mumbled to me as we walked back to the monastery. “I need a break.”

A judgment had somehow been passed on Richard. He had good intentions and a good heart, but it was plain that his was not the spirit of a devotee. Those above him in the hierarchy considered him sloppy and ill-mannered. It was a surprise to see this come out in Ruk. Perhaps Richard’s problem was because he had come here wearing robes, but did not appear committed to a bhikkhu’s life. If he had started here as a layman, as Jim and I had done, he probably would have been better accepted by the sangha. The root of his troubles was that he behaved with complete disregard for the finer points of the rules. There was nothing of a monk in him. To Jim and I it was refreshing. Sometimes his nonchalance made the others appear to be hiding inside their costumes. Richard suffered for it. He was being ostracized from the pecking order. It made Jim angry.

“I looked around at meal this morning and saw all those faces staring into their food, everyone totally absorbed in feeding their faces. Is that supposed to be mindful concentration? They look like pigs at the trough. I don’t see much awareness,” he said to me at bowl washing one morning.

I soaped my bowl beside him and listened, eyeing the monks leaning back in the sun against the side of the sala as they watched their pots dry.

“Richard acts a little differently,” Jim continued, “talks a little loudly, forgets a few rules and they get down on him. It doesn’t seem very compassionate. They are exasperated because he won’t be a good little novice and quietly wash the Ajahn’s feet. Nobody cares about him at all. A few days ago Tan Casipo said to me, ‘Some people come here with so much dust in their eyes it’s unbearable to talk to them.’ What does that say about the monkhood? He can’t tolerate people with ‘dust in their eyes.’ All that these monks have developed here is a safe little self-centred world which they call holy because villagers bow down to them. Living in a forest and wearing a robe doesn’t make you better than anybody else.”

“Come on over to my kuti and let’s talk about it. I think we both need a little frivolous chatter,” I said. “Bring your cup and I’ll break open my best kettle of water. Sorry the fridge is empty and I can’t offer you more.”

Jim arrived with his tin cup and a spool of dental floss. We sat on my mat under the protection of the mosquito net and cleaned our gums. My twin resumed where he had left off.

“I met an American bhikkhu in Chiang Mai once who told me he thought following the two hundred and twenty-seven precepts was the mark of a noble being. Conceit! I could hardly stand it. Living here, it’s hard not to be noble. How can we break a precept when there’s nothing exciting to tempt us? There’s no stress, no push. It’s an easy life. We don’t kill, lie or steal, but it doesn’t do anybody else a bit of good. What’s the point of it? Look at Nimalo. I go with him on bindabat. I think he’s probably the best human being in the wat. He’s been a novice for three years. Do you know he only eats what’s put into his bowl on alms round? He never takes food from the bowls we pass at meal time. He’s patient, helpful, quiet. I sense in him a deep reserve of well-being. But I think he’d be pretty much the same outside a monastery anyway. Out in the world he would be able to do a heck of a lot more good than he does in here, washing the Ajahn’s feet. It’s been building up inside me for over a week now, Tim. This place reeks with the one thing I can’t stand. Complacency.”

“Remember Ajahn Chah said don’t look to the other monks or you’ll only suffer doubt and confusion. Look to your own practice. What do we know about the private meditation of the others?”

“Do you see monks on the path to liberation?”

“A Christian monk once told me a monastery isn’t a place for holy men, but for sinners. Monks feel they would be weak alone, so they live together for the support of the brotherhood. That’s a legitimate reason to be here.”

“Then why do we bow to them? Why do they set themselves up as holy, as models of virtue for the society? You’ll never see the Ajahn washing Richard’s feet. The monks believe in their holiness. Besides, if this place is a rest home for the morally infirm, what are you and I doing here?”

“Weak people following the precepts can be an example to strong ones trapped in samsara. We wouldn’t be here if we thought there was nothing valuable in it. I admit, there’s some complacency. Life is easy. But because there is no stress, we can really focus on meditation.”

“What good is that when stress is the condition of the rest of the world?”

“Here it’s like a training camp. That stress you talk about makes it impossible to begin a meditation practice in the outside world. Here where there’s calm we can develop something to take back into the world that can combat the stress we will be returning to. If some people decide to stay and train all the way to nibbana, good for them. They should become monks.”

“Is that what you see?”

“It doesn’t matter if the monks we see are complacent. We can still train.”

“I disagree. I can’t keep bowing down to people I don’t respect. These farang bhikkhus have a great scam going. I don’t have anything against Thai Buddhism. If the villagers want to support their own sons in extravagant temples, it doesn’t bother me. But when I put on these robes, I make-believe along with the others that we are very holy beings and that by giving to us, the Thais go to deva-realms in their future lives. Staying here I am participating in a lie.” He balled up his dental floss, reached under the net and threw the strand out the window.

“But Jim, the villagers aren’t supposed to be feeding relatives. They feed the robe. In many ways the monks here are more worthy to be fed than in other monasteries. In most other places the monks are really slack. You told me so yourself. There are lots of worse places to stay than Pah Nanachat. You are getting something out of all the sitting and walking, aren’t you?”

“Perhaps,” Jim admitted. “But what am I taking at the same time?”

After breakfast the Ajahn declared it a work day.

“All the leaves between the pathways in the compound should be raked together and dumped into the jungle away from the main buildings. Those leaves are the perfect place for mosquito breeding, especially with monsoon season coming on. It’s best to clean the area now. Already the bugs are getting bad around my kuti.”

It was a major task. Luckily five or six new faces had appeared in the wat in the past few days. Of the seven guests, four of them planned on shaving their heads and becoming laymen. There was Julian from Australia, a friend of Nimalo’s in his past life. Lorenzo came from Italy, Hal from America and Herman from Holland. I wondered if the Ajahn had noticed the additional mouths to feed and decided to take advantage of the large workforce suddenly at his disposal.

A senior monk named Tan Bodhipalo had also returned to the wat. He looked about forty years old and was the most dour-looking monk I had ever seen. Tan Casipo told me Bodhipalo had been living in a cave monastery in the far northeast for over two years. The community there practised severe self-discipline. They even followed the ancient ascetic practice of refraining from washing more than once a month. He didn’t want to come back to Pah Nanachat, according to the helpful monk. They had to send for him three times before they could pry him out of his cave. Tan Bodhipalo sat next to the Ajahn in the meal line, taking Tan Casipo’s place as the number two monk in residence. That morning, after our bowls were washed, he took Jim aside and asked the tall pakhao to help him clean the drains of the eavestroughs around the sala.

The rest of us raked until noon with great mindfulness. Our work disturbed many of the residents of the damp, matted leaves we were removing. We irritated millions of red and black ants, annoyed vipers, scorpions, giant centipedes and a few tarantulas.

“Tan Casipo!” I bellowed. “A huge, hairy spider!”

“Don’t worry. It’s just a tarantula,” he said with a smile. “They can’t kill you. Just watch out for the black centipedes with the red legs.”

“They’re deadly?” I put down a handful of leaves.

“The bigger ones the size of snakes could kill you. We’ve never had anybody actually die of a centipede bite though.”

“So people have been bitten?”

Tan Casipo gave me a small smirk. “We had one French monk here a while ago who used to search for centipedes and make them bite him. He said it was a meditation to observe pain. He didn’t last long as a bhikkhu. We disrobed him pretty quickly.”

The sun sparkled through the cover of the trees and giant ferns. By midday we were all glistening with dirt and perspiration. Mosquitoes ate their lunch. The Ajahn laid down his broom and told us to stop work. We obeyed gladly. I headed eagerly back towards my kuti. Jim was setting up a large aluminium ladder to reach the eaves at the corner of the sala.

“Do you want me to steady it for you?” I offered.

“Sure,” said my twin. “I’ll be up only a minute. Tan Bodhipalo told me to unplug this one eavestrough here where it drains into the main water tank.

“This is disgusting,” he said when he reached the top. “It’s jammed solid with black leaves and muck. It stinks—and it’s full of ants. This goes right into our drinking water!”

A tin pipe ran from the corner where Jim was working to the top of the main water tank. The tank was a large concrete cylinder about seven metres high and three metres in diameter. Jim began pulling out handfuls of muck. The debris scattered below him. Most of it fell on me.

“It’s plugged all the way through the pipe I think. We’ll have to clean the bottom end from the top of the tank and then rinse the whole pipe clean.”

“We?”

“Do you have other appointments in the next twenty minutes, Bhikkhu Bob?”

“Bhikkhu Bob? Where did that name come from?”

“It just seemed a good name for a Canadian monk. Nice ring to it. You don’t mind if I call you Bob?”

“Nobody’s ever called me Bob. Okay. You can call me Bob. But if this cleaning project gets too enthusiastic, I’ll start calling you Boomer. I have a meeting with samadhi scheduled in twenty minutes in my hut.”

I filled three plastic buckets with water while Jim used the ladder to climb the side of the water tank. While pulling filth from the mouth of the drainpipe he suddenly stood up and started shaking and dancing fitfully.

“Ants! Thousands of them!” he yelped. “And this crud is like fertilizer. We should all have typhoid by now, drinking water filtered through this.” He climbed back to the ground and wiped his hands on the side of the tank. Looking up I could see hundreds of little black spots moving frantically around the rim of the tank.

“Black ants?” I asked.

“The tiny ones. Lucky they aren’t the red monsters. I wouldn’t even consider cleaning the tank if we had to face those.”

“Cleaning the tank? You are a Boomer, aren’t you, Bhante? What about my meeting with meditation?”

Jim offered me his black fingers in reply. “You like to drink this, Bob?”

The two of us stripped off our robes and girded our loins with the bathing clothes we normally wore as slips beneath our sabongs.

“I’ve always wanted to work with my loins girded,” I said, passing buckets of water up the ladder. We had moved the lower end of the pipe away from the hole in the tank, then returned the ladder to the eaves of the sala. Jim started flushing the pipe clean.

“What work? I’m the one up the ladder with the ants, Bob.”

“You’re the Boomer, Bhante.”

When the water came through the pipe it ran down the side of the tank, black and full of sludge. Jim poured six buckets in the trough before the water turned clear at the lower end.

Sun Tin, the Thai monk with the lion tattoo and crooked smile, saw us. He stopped to watch us work. He spoke no English but understood Jim’s Thai quite well. He showed us how to drain the tank and led me to the tool house where I found two long-handled scrubbing brushes, a wire hand brush and a thick rope. Jim was sweeping ants off the top of the tank when I returned. He had removed the filter screen from the hatch.

“Ants all over the inside,” he told me. “The upper walls are black with them.”

We tied the rope to a nearby tree. Jim lowered himself down through the hatchway into the knee-deep water that remained in the bottom. I followed him into the murk. Sun Tin climbed the outside of the tank after us. He peered down through the little square of light, laughing. Inside, the walls were slippery with grey slime. The floor was slick beneath our bare feet. But the resonance in the tank was perfect for chanting.

“YO SO . . .” Jim intoned in a booming voice which reverberated through the cylinder.

“BHAGAVAN ARAHANT SAMASAMBUDDHASA . . .” we chanted in unison.

Above us, Sun Tin pulled up the rope, threatening to shut the lid and seal us in darkness. He grinned like a maniac. We shouted at him.

“That would be quite a spiritual discipline, three years in a water tank,” said Jim.

“It would make an arahant out of you, Boomer.”

“Not if I were locked in with you, Bob.”

“Boomer, have you ever met an arahant? Or a bodhisattva? A saint even? I was thinking of our conversation about the monks. You’re too cynical about religion. There are good examples.”

“You mean like Ajahn Chah?”

“I don’t necessarily mean a monk. Do you know anybody personally? I know one man, he’s not an arahant, but I think he may be a bodhisattva, even though he’s not a Buddhist. He runs a meat exporting business from Canada to Thailand and the Philippines. He spends about half the year in Asia. First he makes sure his customers are happy with their orders, then he goes into rural areas. He helps village communities set up fishing co-ops, dig wells and set up local industries. He has a talent for bringing people together, getting them talking and working out solutions to their problems. He supplies the capital needed to put the solutions into action and fades from the picture. He was a Baptist minister when I first knew him. But I think he’s found a more direct way of serving God through the meat exporting business.”

“If that’s what you mean, I guess I have a bodhisattva in my life after all. If I’m cynical about religions, this guy keeps me from getting absolutely hostile. He’s largely responsible for me being where I am. He’s my religious studies professor at Swarthmore. The man has definitely found something more than most people are looking for. He’s married with two kids in the suburbs, has a typical overloaded university schedule, gets frustrated in traffic jams. Yet even when he’s angry, I can sense this deep lake of calm inside him. He’s sort of a guru on campus, but aware of the dangers that leads to. My parents met him once. We’re a devoutly non-religious family. My folks aren’t the type to recognize spirituality. Even they were really impressed with him. He goes to a Presbyterian church, but his specialty is Thai Buddhism. He taught my course in Asian religions. I guess that’s how I ended up here.”

“What made you take a course in Asian religions? It’s hardly a typical requirement for law school candidates.”

“It was my sister’s advice. She’s good at telling me to do all the things she regrets she never did. Before my first year she told me to make sure to take something wild and exotic at university that I never thought of studying before. Now here I am, chanting at the bottom of a water tank. I should get ordained as a janitor.”

We scrubbed and talked for two hours. It was cool in the tank so we were able to work vigorously. Eventually I crawled back up the rope which Sun Tin had been persuaded to lower again. I threw buckets of water at the upper inside rim, washing down the ants. The poor creatures were too confused to bite. They ran in circles, carrying little white eggs in their mouths. Jim and I violated our first precept a thousand times over. Sun Tin filled buckets for me from the tap at the bottom of the tank which connected to another water storage tank in the jungle.

“Okeee,” the Thai called up to me with devilish enthusiasm. I hauled the pails up to the top by rope. When finally the ants had all fled or been washed away, I lowered myself back into the tank and rejoined Jim for a final scrub of the floor.

“Careful! Don’t step on the toad,” he said as I touched bottom.

“A toad? How could there be a toad in here? How could it get through the screen in the top of the tank?”

“How could it even get up to the top of the tank, Bob?”

“Maybe it was born here. Maybe this is his home.”

“We’ll have to evict him anyway,” said Jim. He called up to Sun Tin to lower a bucket. We began groping for the creature.

“More violence to beings. I don’t like it, Boomer. Maybe the toad was meditating? On its way to becoming an arahant?”

“He’ll be happier in the real world.”

We located the toad, a black lump in the murk. Jim scooped him into the bucket. He floated passively.

“Sun Tin, toad coming up on rope,” Jim sang out.

“And what about the ants?” I said as we emptied the last of the tank and began our own climb up towards daylight. “Where will they go?”

The tank was free of slime, free of toads, free of ants, sterile and lifeless. Sun Tin turned on the taps at the bottom and began to refill it with water from the storage tank.

“The water in the other one is probably as foul as it was in this one,” said Jim grimly. “At least now the tank’s clean.”

“We’ve been drinking the water all along without any problems.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s safe.”

That evening, perhaps as a reward for the day’s work, evening chanting was cancelled. We were all told to go to the Ajahn’s kuti instead for a taped dasana by the famed American monk, the first Ajahn of Wat Pah Nanachat, Ajahn Sumedo. He was one of the first Western disciples of Ajahn Chah. The teaching we were to hear had been given at his new wat in Chithurst, England. Sumedo’s name was revered. His picture hung on the sala wall. In his English wat the monks kept not only the Vinaya, but all the Thai traditions as well. Bindabat was a problem at first, according to Tan Casipo. Often the British bhikkhus would walk through the Chithurst countryside at dawn and not receive a thing. Fortunately, a father of one of the monks bought a house near the monastery. He was happy to give alms food to the bhikkhus every morning. Tradition was thus preserved without anyone actually starving.

Even the laymen were invited to the dasana. It was exciting to receive a teaching at last from a famous monk, even on tape. We sat in the dark on the Ajahn’s balcony. Sumedo’s voice sounded lethargic but contemplative, habitually stretching one syllable words as if he was yawning through them— “yeees.” It was tempting to follow his example. The dhamma talk was a disconnected ramble on the five hindrances to meditation: desire, aversion, restlessness, inertia and doubt. The theme was that the hindrances are not our enemies. By patiently enduring we can learn from them. Most of the talk dwelt on the problem of lustful desires arising during meditation. The most widely recommended antidote for desires of the flesh is for a monk to concentrate on the aversion which arises when the repulsive aspects of the human body are considered. Lust is neutralized by disgust. Sumedo said there was no need to make the body artificially repugnant. A close examination of it as it is was always sufficient.

“Take for example the five outer elements of the body, the hair of the head, the hair of the body, skin, teeth and nails. This is all that we see. Often we find these elements quite attractive, yeees. Long black hair brushed back over the shoulders, light golden hair on the arms, smooth warm skin, delicate white teeth and little pink painted toenails. All this is quite attractive. But now imagine all these attractive elements if they are just sitting in five piles in front of us. This pile for hair of the head, next one for body hair, third, a bag of skin, this small one for teeth, and here all the little pink painted toe and fingernails. It’s not very attractive any more, is it? So we must ask ourselves where was desire if it doesn’t lie in any one of these five piles.”

The teacher went on to describe another common practice for overcoming lust: meditation on corpses. Sumedo recounted his visit to a Bangkok city morgue. He was permitted to visit the room where unidentified corpses were kept.

“Inside they showed me a young man’s body. It had been found in the river. The corpse was bloated. The skin had turned black. It was hideous. The stench was so bad it was difficult to stay in the room, even for me. Finally, I touched the body, recognizing that it was no different from my own. I have not gone beyond death. This will be my condition too, some day.”

When exhorting the benefits of repulsion, the Ajahn spoke with ardour. He was nowhere more eloquent than when discussing the inner elements of the body.

“Take excrement. In the West we like to pretend it doesn’t exist. Unless you are a farmer you probably haven’t spent a lot of your time looking at excrement or handling it. It makes us feel uneasy, yeees. We don’t like to think that it’s part of us. Yet everybody in this room has intestines full of faeces.”

An especially apt teaching for those of us living on a diet of sticky rice.

“There’s blood in my stool,” said Richard to me the next day before alms round. He still looked miserable, but ate a full bowl of food at the morning meal. It was hard to fault him. There were over forty plates served to us that Wan Phra day. It was a big celebration. Families came up from as far away as Bangkok, bringing Thai delicacies with them. I had little restraint for the rich meat dishes, none at all for the sweets, the sticky rice and coconut milk goodies wrapped in banana leaves, the pressed dried mangos, or the sweet bananas in purple sauce. Even durian was becoming irresistible. There should have been a precept against sugar.

After such a meal, meditation was next to impossible. I sat down in my kuti with the heavy load in my belly, lolled sideways and began to doze. I tried to stand and walk it off. My legs dragged in the sand. Finally I decided to lie down for twenty minutes. Hours later, Jim’s voice called up at me from beneath my hut.

“Earth to Bhikkhu Bob, do you read me?”

“Bob to Boomer, roger, I read you. Presently orbiting the third jhana. Estimated re-entry in ninety seconds. Stand by.”

I straightened my robes and staggered groggily to the balcony. “So what’s the occasion, Boomer?”

“Bob, there’s a dozen teenage Thai high school girls who had me cornered in the sala . . .”

“Boomer, did you break your third precept? And I thought I had trouble resisting sugar.”

“Not on your life. That kind of samsara I don’t need. They said they wanted to interview me for their English class assignment. They have to ask farang why they became monks. It’s the sort of thing you like. Thought I’d invite you along.”

The half-dozen girls were shy. They sat in respectful sitting posture, waiting for us in the sala. As usual they looked about thirteen years old when in fact they were high school seniors. A male student with them ran the tape recorder while they took turns reading questions to us from their notes. Since Jim spoke Thai, they talked with him in their own language first. Instinctively they called him Ajahn. He turned red. When they sat down in front of us in the sala, they bowed to us three times. I laughed. Jim squirmed.

“Don’t do that!” he said to the kids with distress. “We’re not even monks. Just pakhaos. Damn it, Tim, don’t laugh.”

Thai young people display a discomforting amount of respect towards those they perceive as worthy elders, always preferring to err on the side of courtesy. High status foreigners in religious robes must have been doubly intimidating to them. They spoke so softly at first that their questions were inaudible when we played back the tape. We began again, after much fussing. They seemed frightened of offending us. Speaking in Thai, Jim gradually helped them relax. Still, they were easily flustered and mixed up the order of their questions. All six of the girls sat together in a cluster, protective arms on one another’s knees, half hiding, half supporting each other as they passed around the question sheet. Like many Thai women they were already tending a bit towards fat. Their teenagers cosmetics coated mild cases of acne. Four of them had dark Laotian complexions typical of the northeast. The other two were fair-skinned, from the central plains. The questions lacked inspiration. They were standard tourist questions. How many brothers? How many sisters? What did we like about Thailand? What did we think of the King? Jim was well informed and answered the questions in good detail. They seemed oblivious to our answers. Only rarely could we get a giggle out of them.

“What’s your favourite colour?”

“Red,” I said.

“Purple,” Jim said.

“Purple?” I said. “You like purple? It’s your favourite?”

“What’s wrong with purple? My college room is purple. It’s a lot more original than red, Bob.”

“Nothing wrong with it, Boomer. If you like purple you like purple. Really you like purple?”

The students played this section of the interview back three times. They were more amused by Jim and me laughing at ourselves than by anything we actually said.

Before they left, they bowed to us again. Jim sat through it as if he was in a dentist’s chair. To them we were worthy of respect because we wore robes and because we were farang. But they really didn’t seem to know why either of those things made us so worthy. It felt like a reflex from them, an instinct to seek safety in humility. It kept us at a distance and helped them categorize us so that speaking to us would not be unbearable. I wondered what would happen when this generation was in control of the country, after growing up in an age of plastic toys and Rambo movies. How long would unthinking obedience to tradition last against the demands of a prosperous, westernizing society?