cm das

So far there are no signs of trouble (and no signs of police) but it's not exactly comforting knowing that these folks have adopted my neighborhood as their rallying point.

LOL! It's been announced for days. And they're at the 700 year Stadium, just like at many events before this one.

(You didn't move in just recently right? In which case it's more of a case of you adopting one of their rallying points as your neighborhood. )

No, it's at the convention center this time. I've been past many times throughout the day & seen the crowds with my own eyes. I wish they'd opted for the stadium as before.

I moved to this area before there was a convention center. Of course that doesn't make it "my" neighborhood but it's still a drag that this quiet part of town by the mountain has become an epicenter for local protests. This isn't the first time the reds have gathered at the convention center and I'm sure it won't be the last. Meanwhile, the voices from the stage are getting more strident as the evening wears on.

I haven't seen this reported anywhere so I thought I'd post a heads up for anyone interested: I live very close to the new convention center off the canal road & there's a very big red shirt rally going on right now. Pick up trucks full of red shirts started arriving early this afternoon and by around 7 o'clock this evening there were hundreds of vehicles and thousands of people gathered at the convention center. Traffic flow in the area has been relatively smooth considering the size of the crowd. For the last 2 hours, from inside my house about 200 meters away I've been hearing the voices of speaker after speaker addressing the crowd. I can't catch what they're saying but the tone is loud & urgent (no surprise there). There are posters, flags and stickers all over the place with a slogan that translates something like "mobilize the people for democracy". So far there are no signs of trouble (and no signs of police) but it's not exactly comforting knowing that these folks have adopted my neighborhood as their rallying point. I don't begrudge people of any stripe their right to gather peacefully. Let's just hope that this is nothing more than that.

Doesnt sound like you even went, sounds more like youre making things up, just to bash a business for the hell of it.

And it sounds to me like you've spent too long on ThaiVisa!

As terminator confirmed, the sizes on the menu as of yesterday were small and medium. Maybe I just got really unlucky with my dishes. I'm actually glad to hear that nobody seems to be coming out as disappointed as I was. Never understood the whole "bashing for fun" thing.

I took my wife and daughter to Shanghai Lo'ng for dinner tonight. We won't be going back. The place looked clean - that's about the best I can say about it. I ordered orange chicken and water. Somehow they got my order wrong on both counts. (I ordered a medium sized plate of the chicken & was brought a small plate. And I asked for my water with no ice & it was served with ice.) Anyway, it turns out that I was lucky they brought a small plate of the chicken. The meat was really low quality - more skin and gristle than flesh. On top of that it was over-fried and drizzled with cheap, artificial-tasting orange syrup. That's it. Not a hint of any other ingredient or flavoring. At first I thought the orange chicken was edible if disappointing, but despite being seriously hungry I just couldn't bring myself to finish it. We also ordered shrimp wonton soup. Now, I hardly expected freshly made wontons, but these tasted like they were frozen some time in the 80's or 90's. They weren't spoiled, they just had that old freezer taste. Again, barely edible. Luckily, at least the water was ok! As we left I said to my wife that I could only hope our experience there was really finally over (i.e. we wouldn't suffer Shanghai Lo'ng's revenge in the middle of the night). I'm glad others have had better experiences there. For me it was one of the worst dining experiences I've had in Chiang Mai.

Hello C D.

His meditation method sounds interesting.

Could you summarize it?

The rhythmic hand movements are the basic method in this lineage but LP Teean taught that any repetitive movement - opening and closing the fists, blinking or breathing - can be used instead. Personally, I like the hand movements. I find that this kind of "active" mindfulness practice really helps in the all-important aspect of carrying meditation off the cushion and back into daily life.

I also like LP Teean's straight and simple approach to the dhamma. I've studied Pali and Buddhist philosophy so I have nothing against elaborate conceptual structures per se, but when it comes to applying, as opposed to simply contemplating, the dhamma, I like things simple. LP Teean is far from technical in his approach. Basically he talks a lot about rupa-nama. The idea is that we build up our awareness of physical sensations (rupa) through the rhythmic method. The more we are aware in this way the more we can see mental phenomena (nama) as they arise. And as we strengthen our awareness, we can apply it to knowing the nature of rupa and nama, and their relation to suffering. Eventually, this brings both insight and peace - LP Teean emphasizes the simple point that so long as the mind is filled with awareness, the defilements cannot enter.

This is of course but my own imperfect and limited summary of LP Teean's teaching. I don't see it as fundamentally different from other approaches to vipassana, but I do think it's got a different feel. I'd suggest getting the ebook of "Normality" from the website that sabaijai listed above. It's very down-to-earth and refreshing, in my view. By the way, I contacted the temple and it looks like I'll be going for a short retreat in early April. Maybe I'll have more to report then.

Anyone out there have personal experience with Wat Sanamnai in Nonthaburi? It's the main temple in the lineage of Luang Por Teean. I really like his meditation method and his teachings and would like to get further into the practice. Thanks.

The teargas was fired after the police were attacked. Yes, assailants who were initially protestors were injured. The reporters you allude to, at least the reporters who are not employed by pseudo news organizations aligned with the PDRC are reporting that the PDRC supporters initiated the violence. You may wish to check the unbiased news feeds before you engage in more revision.

Which unbiased news feeds are you referring to? The BBC website reports that the police fired teargas first and then people amongst the protesters opened fire. Reuters quotes National Security Council Chief Paradorn Pattanathabutr as stating that the police had no teargas with them and were armed only with batons, and therefore the teargas must have come from the protesters. Images on television clearly show police firing at protesters. So what source of information do you trust?

I brought a good sized survival knife to Chiang Mai from the US in checked baggage. No problems anywhere along the way.

The footage is nice to watch but I gotta say - I was enjoying a quiet morning on my farm in Chiang Dao a couple weeks ago when someone began flying one of these things over the valley, including a few passes over my land. The noise was pretty annoying, even from a distance, and I really didn't like the thought that someone was possibly filming me on my own property. I understand the attraction of this hobby but I think in public it can come across as selfish and intrusive. Please keep that in mind.

Nice choice of soundtrack, though

At the Suan Dok temple. They take the donations to poor people in Burma.

Where at the temple can you bring things to donate?

I dropped into Yamaha Square next to Kad Suan Kaew (Chiang Mai) today to see the Bolt in person. There were 3 of us drooling over checking out one bike while it was still being set up. Very nice looking. According to the sales guy they should have a test drive model in the shop next month.

I'm not sure whether this's a buddha quote...

but of cause, this is a good quote.

with some beautiful translation could be..

"ศัตรูที่เลวร้ายที่สุดของคุณ ยังไม่สามารถทำร้ายคุณได้มากเท่ากับความคิดของคุณเอง"

Thanks for this. I think I'll use it with my Thai in-laws! Often times when it comes to readily expressing Buddhist sentiments in Thai my language skills come up a bit short. The concepts are clear enough to me but I learned them through other languages and don't know the simple, tried and true Thai expressions that really bring the point across. Can you or anyone else recommend any collections of simple Buddhist aphorisms in Thai that I could use to improve my communication in this area & also practice my reading skills?

I second the recommendation for Dr. Chanakarn.

A red shirt rally with no noise,.........................chok dee.

Stepping outside I can hear the speeches now. That and music don't bother me. The roar of a fire-up red shirt crowd just down the road though... that's another thing.

I just did a quick loop around the 700 Year Stadium on my bike & can confirm that there are lots of red shirts gathered there and a steady stream of more still arriving. An estimate in the thousands sounds right to me. I live nearby and during big events like football matches and concerts I can usually hear the crowd noise from my house. I kind of hope it doesn't get to that point tonight.

If you were going to spend billions of Baht on a development project, wouldn't you want to get the promotional materials just right? Wouldn't you think to have English text & narration checked by a native speaker before sending them out into the world? Or would that mean a loss of face for someone in the marketing team? The mall itself looks ok to me as far as malls go, but I'm always surprised to see such tortured & error-strewn English being used to promote big money housing developments, condos and shopping centers in Thailand.

Yeah, the drive belt guard is pretty ugly but it's far from a deal-breaker for me.

I prefer the style of the Sportster/Bolt to the Vulcan. Still, a couple years ago I was considering getting a Vulcan but I was seriously turned off by the dealer in Chiang Mai. The sales girl told me that under no circumstances would I be able to test ride one - the fact that my bike at the time was a D-Tracker 250 I'd bought from the same dealer didn't matter at all. There's no way I'll drop nearly half a million baht on a bike without being able to ride it. I don't know for sure about Yamaha these days but a few years ago a friend of mine was able to take an FZ6 out for a test ride. That gives me more hope for the Bolt.

Masa is made from field corn, not sweet corn, isn't it? If anyone wants to start from scratch, I mean all the way from scratch, I've got about 2 rai of organic field corn growing up in Chiang Dao & I'd be happy to donate some or all of it for the benefit of my fellow tamale & tortilla lovers.

I only asked because I have studied Sanskrit and Pali myself, and I did graduate level research on the socio-cultural dynamics at play in the Ganges Plain around the time of the Buddha. Certainly there are Brahmin texts that describe a kind of orthodox ideal where Brahmins are unquestioned authorities on all things earthly and transcendent but whether this had any reflection in reality is highly doubtful. Even to speak of “Brahmin rule” would seem to be misleading. My understanding, from a variety of sources, is that things were much more fluid and tolerant. The Pali suttas themselves seem to bear this out.

Here is a sample of the flavor of life under Brahman religion which revolved around the caste system, reincarnation and eventually ascending into the house of Brahman:

In earlier days, it was customary to marry in the same castes. If anyone dares to disobey the rules of the society, he was confined to severe punishments

Whole community was barred from keeping any relation with the family where inter caste marriage had taken place

Customs and religions practiced were so strict and merciless that even sometimes the boy and girl were hacked to death by their own family members due to the pressures from the society.

Who so ever dare for the inter-caste marriage face the consequences in terms of violence, social boycott, family boycott and death of the boys and girls ( honour killing).

Caste not only dictates one’s occupation, but dietary habits and interaction with members of other castes as well. Members of a high caste enjoy more wealth and opportunities while members of a low caste perform menial jobs. Outside of the caste system are the Untouchables. Untouchable jobs, such as toilet cleaning and garbage removal, require them to be in contact with bodily fluids. They are therefore considered polluted and not to be touched. The importance of purity in the body and food is found in early Sanskrit literature. Untouchables have separate entrances to homes and must drink from separate wells. They are considered to be in a permanent state of impurity.

It suggests a very rigid world order in which every facet of life is pre destined and those who oppose it would be dealt with.

New ideas, including the Buddhas teaching that even Brahman himself was in Samsara, along with the rest of us, wouldn't have been taken lightly.

There are a few points I'd make in response to the excerpt you have given describing the caste system. First, we need to be careful not to confuse the terms caste (jati) and class (varna). The division of Aryan society into 4 classes or varnas (brahmin, kshatriya, vaishya, shudra) is a very old model and would have been relevant at the time of the Buddha. The caste system as most of us know it is a much later and more rigid system which was overlaid onto the varna system but does not correspond to it perfectly. So if we're talking about the society of the Ganges plain at the time of the Buddha, we should be aware of this distinction.

Second, there are many old Sanskrit texts full of very strict prescriptions and proscriptions regarding the roles and duties of each of the varnas. Some of these texts may even go back to around the time of the Buddha. But we should ask ourselves if there's any justification for taking these texts at face value. To paraphrase A.L. Basham, these texts were written by Brahmins and reflected their ideal world-view but we don't have any good reason to think that they were actually reflective of reality. In fact, many historians of ancient India use the Buddhist Pali literature as evidence to the contrary - that social interactions in reality were more relaxed than the uptight Brahmin authors would have liked. To put it another way, the Brahmin legal and social texts are seen as normative in nature, while the Buddhist texts are interpreted as more descriptive in their picture of society. You can argue over these interpretations but I think that the reasoning is fairly sound.

Third, there are geographical considerations to take into account. In the 4th & 5th centuries BCE, society in the area around Magadha (modern Bihar) was likely very different from that of the Aryan "heartland" in the Punjab. Classical Brahmin literature largely came from the more traditional, conservative culture of the northwest. Meanwhile, in the east there were different peoples, different cultures and different forms of government. The Aryan civilization was relatively new on the scene in this area. In this kind of frontier zone, old societal rules didn't apply nearly as strictly. There are even explicit references in the Brahminical literature that describe the areas to the east (i.e. the Buddha's territory) as not yet purified. So to paint a picture of life in Magadha based on texts from the Punjab might be like imagining life in Tombstone based on a portrait of 19th century Boston.

Anyone found to dispute Brahmanism was met with death.

Sorry to sidetrack this interesting discussion but I wonder what sources you have to support statements like this.

My initial source is from lecturer and Head of Language at Oxford University, John Peacock.

He specialises in ancient languages including Pali, & Sanskrit (used in ancient Brahminical times)..

Rather than accepting Buddhist translations found in the Pali Canon by past figures such as Buddhagosa in the 5th century AD, he is able to interpret for himself first hand what the Buddha may have been saying.

Let me come back to you on this.

I only asked because I have studied Sanskrit and Pali myself, and I did graduate level research on the socio-cultural dynamics at play in the Ganges Plain around the time of the Buddha. Certainly there are Brahmin texts that describe a kind of orthodox ideal where Brahmins are unquestioned authorities on all things earthly and transcendent but whether this had any reflection in reality is highly doubtful. Even to speak of “Brahmin rule” would seem to be misleading. My understanding, from a variety of sources, is that things were much more fluid and tolerant. The Pali suttas themselves seem to bear this out.

I’m not familiar with John Peacock’s work, though a quick search revealed that he is a lecturer in Buddhist Psychology at the Oxford Mindfulness Center, a somewhat different title than you gave him (I don’t doubt his academic credentials). Still, his historical view, as you report it, seems to be a markedly heterodox one. I would recommend the work of another Oxford scholar, Richard Gombrich, for some insight into how early Buddhist teachings fit into the wider religious-philosophical context of ancient India. An excellent example is “How Buddhism Began: The Conditioned Genesis of the Early Teachings”.

Of course, the whole idea of using textual sources to determine what “original” Buddhism looked like has turned out to be very problematic. Gregory Schopen is the scholar best known for questioning the overemphasis on textual studies in studies of early Buddhism. His book “Bones, Stones and Buddhist Monks: Collected Papers on the Archaeology, Epigraphy, and Texts of Monastic Budddhism in India” tears down many assumptions upon which earlier scholarship was based. Of course, there is as yet no extant “Buddhist” archaeological record of the earliest period, and so texts are all we have to go by. But still we have to be very careful in our assumptions and very provisional in our conclusions.

Sorry for taking this thread on a detour. If anyone wants to talk ancient Indian history or early Buddhist historiography maybe we could start a new thread?

Anyone found to dispute Brahmanism was met with death.

Sorry to sidetrack this interesting discussion but I wonder what sources you have to support statements like this.

Fortunately the branch up at the end of Suthep Road is still open.

"PC" in the ad was probably a misprint. "PG" stands for "pretty girl". Whether it's pc or not, that's a real Thai job description.