Mae N.'s flowers ...

Sawasdee Khrup, TV CM Friends,

Since we seem, lately, to be affecting some of our esteemed members like "an itching rash that can't be scratched," we thought we'd make nice, and offer a true story, which, now that several years have passed, we think can be told without any compromise of privacy. Nothing in this story was "told to us in confidence." Names of my lady friend, and the elderly Buddhist Nun have been abbreviated to a single character. One name, of a Temple, has been removed. And we don't feel there's anything in this true story disrespectful of any Thai institution, or Thai Buddhism.

You'll note a fair amount of detail in the story that those of you living here long-time are very familiar with: this detail was for friends abroad who have not lived here, or visited here.

Hope you enjoy the story, and that it evokes some interesting responses. best, ~o:37;

Mae N. at 80 : how to lose your heart, your umbrella, and a measly twenty baht to a very special smile

Today I went on a journey to the wood-carving community of Ban Tawai near Hang Dong, taking the road that runs almost due south from Chiang Mai to Hot. Hang Dong is about 20 kilometers from Chiang Mai, Ban Tawai another five or six kilometers. I went out to pick up some custom wooden bases for Buddha images that a craftsman is doing for me; they were not ready as I expected, but that's to be expected in the Kingdom of Smiles, and it is always fun to go out to Ban Tawai and go down some street you haven't explored before, and come across some strange shop specializing in gilt jackdaws, or cigar store wooden indians of the American wild-west variety.

It's also a good place for me to see the wooden Buddha images arriving from Burma where they are being produced and artificially aged, to keep my eye on the ball, as it were, on the changing face of the "new old" Buddha game. The better quality wooden fakes are made using genuinely very old teak wood, perhaps from some collapsed temple; then they are beautifully carved, colored, gilt, artificially aged, sandblaseted, charred, etc., using chemical treatment, and decoupage techniques, and finally make their way to the Night Bazaar and, farther afield, to Bangkok, Singapore, Hong Kong, and onto the internet, etc. Bronze fakery is another "ball of wax" literally, and best we keep our mouth shut about what we know in that arena.

A few months ago I was asked to give an opinion by e-mail from an American friend on a Buddha image being offered for US $4500 in Hong Kong : it was one of these "designer" Shan style made-in-Burma artificially-aged Buddhas; very well done, with a collage of visual "quotes" from several different periods of Thai style. My estimated cost of manufacture for that Buddha in Burma was US $50. Assuming the Hong Kong dealer was not Thai, and bought it at some shop out in Ban Tawai, they may have paid US $200 or so, and shipping costs. Nice little mark-up there from Thailand to Hong Kong, I would say. Luckily the person, American, decided not to "rent" that Buddha after hearing my opinion. Of course: they may have missed their chance at enlightenment by so doing !

Needless to say I would never render such an opinion in Thailand where I would be getting "between" a Thai dealer and a potential customer: that's a ticket to "Red Queen Chess," and "off with their heads."

F., my lady friend, and I went to the Chiang Mai Gate (the south gate of the old walled and moated inner city) and caught a yellow samlor (pickup truck with two rows of seats in the back for passengers). The yellow samlors form a queue near Chiang Mai Gate, and the one at the front of the queue waits until they have at least four or five passengers and then takes off. Fare from Chiang Mai Gate to Hang Dong is only 20 baht per person (about US fifty cents).

Our samlor was packed like a well-stuffed sardine can.

Just as the samlor we were in was about to take off: a red samlor (free roaming truck-taxis of Chaing Mai) stopped, and I could see a very old woman with shaved head, dressed in white robes, struggling to get down out of the back of the truck. She had a very large bundle of flowers with her and had a medical device to help her keep her balance while walking (of the type with a small square platform with four legs at the bottom and a central pole running up to a hand-hold).

I went over to her, and took her flowers, and helped her ... literally helped stuff her in ... get in the samlor with F. and I. Not one Thai person packed in our samlor, many of whom were young Thais, paid the slightest attention to this old woman's difficulty, or tried to help her get in the samlor. From the moment we all were in, she was looking at me directly in the eyes, and smiling the most beautiful smiles of great joy ... or was it senility, I wondered.

A woman who becomes a kind of "Buddhist Nun in Minor Orders" is called, in Thailand, a Mae Chi. There are fully ordained female Theravadan Monks in Thailand, but they have to go to Sri Lanka, Taiwan, or another country offering Theravada, full ordination to women, and then return to Thailand where they will, then, be recognized by the Sangha, the administration controlling the Buddhist religion in Thailand. The story of how an international group of women Buddhists, including Europeans, collaborated to trace the ordination authenticity in Taiwan back to ancient times in Sri Lanka ... thus enabling the first full Theravadan ordinations in Thailand of women ... is another story: and a fascinating one.

We began talking in Thai. Her name was Mae N. (one possible meaning of the name 'N' is a fragrant flower of the region, but that's assuming that "N" is a nickname (chu len) not a contraction of a longer name like 'Nipaporn'). She is 80 years old, and has been a Buddhist Nun for twelve years. She was married but had no children. Her husband has been dead over twenty years. She has no living siblings.

I noticed her teeth were pretty bad, and her feet swollen in her sandles. She kept grinning at me, and her eyes were lighting up as she asked me, in Thai, where I was from, how long had I been in Thailand, what was my religion, what was F.'s religion, how did know F. Her questions were interspersed with laughter that seemed to come straight from her heart. When I told her I was "trying" to learn about the teachings of the Buddha, but had no "sassana" (religion), she laughed in a particularly beautiful way. Her mind seemed sharp and present.

F. and I had some fruit and fried sweet potato we had purchased from the vendors while waiting for our samlor to be ready; I offered some to Mae N. She politely declined explaining that she followed the rule of no eating after 11am in the morning. By the way that is the stricter rule, usually followed only by the much smaller order of Dhammakaya Monks (dark red robes), and, to my knowledge, most Thai Monks (the larger Nimanakaya order, orange, saffron robed) follow much less strict dietary rules. Most Thai Monks are not vegetarian, by the way, and are eating meat, fish, etc. every day.

Eating what is offered by laypeople (prakern) is a "ritual moral duty" in Theravada Buddhism, and it exists in the context of ritual alms-rounds, and in the context of the Buddha's teachings. The tradition (wattanatham) has it that the Buddha's last meal was a pork dish offered by a metalworker, and the Buddha ordered the other Monks gathered with him at the metalworker's house not to eat it. He died of dysentery related to the meal, and before death, again according to tradition, asked his disciples to help the metalworker not feel guilt that his last meal came from him.

I asked her what she was going to do with the flowers, and she explained that tomorrow they would have a special service at the Wat that she wanted to give them for (this type of action is called 'tamboon,' or 'making merit'). I found myself thinking of the selflessness involved in an 80 year old woman with mobility problems, and undoubtedly physical pains, spending probably at least 3 hours on several different samlors to get to Chiang Mai, go to the flower market down by the Ping River ... all to buy a 50 baht bundle of beautiful flowers picked fresh at 4 am in the morning and trucked-in to Chiang Mai first to the wholesale market, and then to the public market.

The thought never crossed my mind that she may have enjoyed the excitement of a trip to town, and seeing people, and the markets, and talking to farang lunatics on the samlor

The flowers travelled toward Mae N while Mae N travelled towards the flowers while the river kept on flowing the same direction ?

The temple she is associated with (has a woman only living facility for Nuns) was much further south than where F. and I were going, and I really regretted parting from her. Just talking to her and looking in her eyes was like some kind of gentle massage of the heart ! I had some similar experiences in India a long time ago with wandering sadhus.

She seemed to be looking for something at some point, and I asked F to ask her what she was looking for. F talked to her, and Mae N said that she lost her umbrella. Well I happened to have an umbrella I had just bought the night before when Chiang Mai had its first serious heavy rain, and flooding of the late monsoon season.

And rain, heavy, looked like it was coming again this day.

"Ouch," I am ashamed to report that I thought: "there goes a 100 baht umbrella."

How to say goodbye to Mae N ? How to thank her for that cosmic smile and those sweet eyes ?

How to honor someone who ignores her own pain and physical discomfort for hours to travel a long way to play a small part in creating a moment of temporary beauty in a ritual.

One umbrella and twenty baht for her samlor fare ? Okay.

I think it was too small an offering.

It was not enough to honor the gift of being present for a little while with someone truly present.

And these words are not enough, either.

Edited December 19, 201015 yr by orang37