'The Sayings of Buddha'

Review by Alexander Turner

This is supposed to be a book review column covering books about Thai nightlife so what the hell am I doing reviewing a book called The Sayings of Buddha ?

Good question. I wish I had a good answer. I have a bad one. That it reminded me of a fragment of a conversation I once had with someone in a Bangkok bar. It reminded me of a view of Bangkok and its nightlife and how it can play to the best and the worst of us.

When I was younger I thought it would be Buddhism and philosophy that drew me to the East rather than its women. There was a metaphor of what Buddhism meant that I came across in a book subtitled something like "A Christian Scholar looks at Buddhism and the East". The metaphor went something like this :

Life is a whirlwind of emotions that batter us. Living can be like listening to a radio tuned into a million stations at the same time while our mind chatters away like a mad monkey. We might think we have some control over ourselves and our lives but as long as we submit to rage and lust and ambition and greed and vain ideas about our importance we are buffeted around like the objects caught up and carried into the storm of a tornado. There's no way to win out over ourselves while we are hanging on to our egos being whisked around in pain and confusion. The only possible solution is to quieten the mind and let these emotions quieten. If we can calm the mind and calm the soul it is possible to step into the eye of that tornado and sit in that central point in silence watching the wild passions swirl around us while remaining untouched by them. Occasionally we might still be struck by misfortune but we will see this as an event beyond our control and not be consumed by it. As long as we see clearly and with a still centre we can live in the tornado of life but avoid having a tornado in our hearts.

Well I was young at the time. I was impressionable.

I picked up The Sayings of Buddha in Asia books on Sukhumvit Road. The one about half-way between Foodland and the Soi Cowboy. I still love that shop. The way old and new books vie for shelf space. It had that smell of new print. A smell I have loved since I was a child. You could walk around it's shelves and, reading a chapter here and a chapter there, catch glimpses of whole new worlds. The reason I picked out The Sayings of Buddha was partly because, at ninety five baht, it was probably the cheapest book in the shop, and partly because I just wanted to read something that was sacred to someone. I wanted to lie down in my room and read from cover to cover a book which might remind me what I was doing in Thailand in the first place. This feeling would come over me sometimes. I would find myself questioning this or that. Especially when I met someone who reminded me of what I really didn't want to become.

Tilac. December 1992. Soi Cowboy. Bangkok. Beautiful dancers danced their dances. Most in two piece bikinis. Some in one piece bikinis. The occasional daredevil going topless. There were pretty dancers who hardly danced at all, just hung on to their poles as if they were on the number two bus flying over a potholed expressway. There were less pretty dancers who sometimes danced like erotic goddesses come to earth to revive sleeping loins. There were wild, gleaming eyed, temptresses who spun around poles and showed off with gymnastic agility. There were drunken angels who knew they were never going back on the farm and circled the room looking for tickets to a better world. There were some who were purely professional with some perfect agenda to be rich at 25 with the ability to live wherever they damn well pleased. And all this took place against the sounds of the age. Snap. Yello. That Swedish Nigerian dental surgeon who sang "It's my life." and "No Coke". Occasionally the odd bit of Tik Shiro or Phumpuan might play too. Andy, the German boss who has yet to look a day older than when I first met him, must have been laughing. In those pre-Long Gun days his bar was the number one on the strip. Every night it was busy. Every night the beer flowed like water. Every night was somebody's birthday. Huge cakes would appear and expensive imported whisky's would flow usually paid for by the well heeled bar girls who worked for him. Every night was party night and most people seemed happy to work there.

1992 was my favourite year. During my months away from Thailand I'd worked at coming back. I'd saved enough money to stay four months. I'd learned the language well enough to be able to hold my end of a conversation up with anybody, well, anybody who worked as a cabbie or a bargirl. And the Soi Cowboy had this wonderful intimacy. If you'd been a regular there for over a month everyone on the Soi seemed to know your name. I loved it. Had I won the lottery I would have bought a flat over on Soi 23 and lived the rest of my life there. Closing time for every go-go was 2 sharp but then life would just spill out to other places. The restaurant between Tilac and Black and White, Love Scene would be packed upstairs and down. Out on the Soi a hundred vendors set up outside the bars to serve hungry bargirls. You could buy just about anything. After eating, some girls, the ones who didn't have anything else set up for the evening, would head off to the Thermae or grab a taxi and hit Kings Lounge on Patpong. They were all relatively clean and sane. Heroin hadn't really caught on yet, not on the Soi Cowboy anyway, and ya ba didn't exist. There was regular speed and slimming pills of one type or another. But the main drug for everyone was alcohol, maybe a bit of dope, and those little green pills you could get from the chemist that had the same effect as alcohol (ya mao), but nothing available seemed that heavy or that serious. I hung around on Patpong sometimes, especially King's Corner. I hung around occasionally at Nana or Buckskin Joe's. But the Soi Cowboy was different. The Soi Cowboy was a neighbourhood.

I didn't screw around much. It wasn't about screwing around. Not as I saw it anyhow. It was about being in a place where everyone seemed to be having fun. Most of the time I was with one girlfriend or another and but for the occasional slip most people I knew seemed to play it that way. Yet maybe in our hearts we were all playing the conqueror and we were all a little fucked in the head. I suppose it was Gary who really hit me with just how fucked in the head we might be. Gary was a thirty-seven year old Brit who ran a company that exported fabrics from Thailand to Australia. That's what he said anyway. Who knows what people really do ?

One evening I was drinking with Gary and David. David was black and got all the shit that black guys get from the Thais from being called chocolate man to ay dam but he still loved Bangkok and everything about the place. It was his second home and he used his charm to overcome most of the racism he encountered, both from Thais and the white farang. The beers came, and then came again. Life was entering that half reality that alcohol brings. I'm an affable drunk and I laughed as David and Gary took the piss out of me over my, then, girlfriend Eey. I won't say how I wound up with Eey as it's a weird story and would go on for pages. She seemed quite attached to me. I didn't quite know why she was as attached to me. She was beautiful. Very dark. Dark skinned, dark eyed, strong and exciting. When she wasn't dancing she wore smart black suits. She made good money from the men she went with and I'd gone past the point where such things bothered me. The reverse was not the case. She had a tendency to burst into other bars on the Soi Cowboy and catch me out in one way or another. She wouldn't say anything. She'd just stand there and looked pissed off. I figured this just showed how much she liked me.

"You want to watch that one. She's really getting her hooks into you." Said David.

"You're definitely getting in too deep." Said Gary. "The more time you spend with her the worse it will get. I've seen it happen to lots of guys."

"Yeah." Said David. "Before you know what's what you'll be queuing up outside the embassy with her. I can see her packing her cases. All happy."

"Well," I said. "Che sera sera."

"Yeah," Said David. "You won't be feeling so Doris Day when you're sitting like some sorry son of a bitch in the UK watching her get all fat and nasty watching TV eating bangers and mash."

"I don't see it happening." I said. "But it's probably better than sitting eating bangers and mash on my own."

"I'll tell you the truth," Said Gary. "I see a lot of myself in you. I really do. You've got to take this place lightly. Not get involved. All this is a game. You have to see that. You don't come here looking for a girlfriend."

"Maybe I'm just playing a slightly different game."

The truth was I really liked Eey but I knew the storm clouds were already gathering. Not from her side but from mine. There was someone else. That too was another story but the more Eey seemed attached to me the more I felt guilty for leading her on. Maybe Gary's game was a lot nicer in the long run. Yet when Eey smiled it was like the sun shining through rain clouds. It was going to be hard shaking her loose and there was a part of me that didn't want to.

"When I was a young man," Said Gary. " I looked for truth in the world. I read up on religions and philosophy. I studied Yoga and transcendental meditation. But all it adds up to is a big fat nothing. I'll tell you what I believe in and worship. You know what I believe in. I'll tell you... I believe in pussy. Yes. Pussy is God. Look into the face of a perfect ripe cunt and you're looking into the face of the divine."

"You're a sick man," Said David.

"I'll tell you something else. All that matters in this world is to screw as many of these whores as possible. That's all. If you don't realise that you have no reason being here in Bangkok because that's what Bangkok is all about. I know you," He said looking in my eyes. His eyes were red rimmed and looked kind of soulless. "I used to be just like you. But you're still kidding yourself. These women are just here to be used. To be fucked. They're not interesting. Their cunts are interesting but they're not. They're stupid ignorant empty headed country girls. How many do you think have read a single book in their lives. Not because they can't read but because they don't care. They don't want to read. They don't want to know anything. Just fuck as many of them as possible. Forget about any feelings you think they might have. Just kiss their beautiful ripe cunts. That's all the fucking religion you'll ever need."

He held a stare on me for a bit too long and then went back to his beer muttering something to himself.

David spoke quietly to me "And that's why when Gary comes around we hide the whisky."

The slightly more conventional religion of Buddhism was founded sometime around 540BC by the former Prince Siddhartha Gautama. He lived in a palace grounds and was your regular spoilt prince until, on a sneaked trip outside the palace walls, he realised that the world was not comprised solely of beautiful healthy shiny happy people, endless sex and rounds of kabbadi. He decided that he had to work at understanding why suffering existed in the world so he left the luxuries and nubile slave girls of the palace behind and wandered as a penniless Saddhu for many years. One day by the side of a river he saw the futility of living in this way and took a meal of rice in condensed milk from a young village girl. He left the deprivations of life as a Saddhu seeing them as just as far from facing reality as life in the palace. Instead he meditated under a Bodhi tree allowing no illusions to overwhelm his mind. After a long period of struggle the illusions of lust, fear, anger, greed, and hunger fell away and he was able to perceive the world as it really was without opinions and distractions. This state of mind called awakening or Buddha-hood and was something he spent the rest of his life trying to pass on and teach to his disciples.

This collection The Sayings of Buddha is really just a compilation of highlights from the Buddha's many speeches and discourses. Clear and precise messages about the world and life and enlightenment as perceived by the historical Buddha. Theravada Buddhism, the type of Buddhism practice in Thailand, is passed down from the words of Buddha directly through the disciples or priesthood known in Thailand as the Sangha. From this we might glean that the words of Buddha have a direct effect on most Thais' religious experience. In reality, however, Thailand is a country so rich in spiritual beliefs that it is impossible to make any realistic association between the words of the Buddha and the lay followers of Thai Buddhism. Most Thais believe in the spirit world. Most Thais believe in the sanctity of the Royal Family, especially Rama 5. Most Thais believe in figures from the Hindu pantheon and make offerings to Brahma shrines, Ganesh shrines, and Kuan Yin shrines. Some of these shrines are even within the grounds of famous Buddhist wats. This would be a bit like having a shrine to Thor in Canterbury Cathedral. But Thais never seem to recognise a problem in this.

This means that although in essence, a book on the speeches of Buddha should give you an insight into the spiritual and religious life of Thai people it does so only in a very partial way.

Thai society thrives on paradox. You often find that two opposing ideas can be believed in equal measure by many Thai people. This often seems troubling to a Westerner but this acceptance of paradox has led to Thailand's history being noticeably free from religious persecutions. Scientific discoveries have never been rejected on religious ground as they were in the West for centuries. Heresy seems an alien concept to Thais because they all believe in things heretical to the teachings of Buddha and, although there are warnings in the speeches by great monks like the venerable Buddhidasa Bikkhu against superstitious ideas, in a broad way these ideas are always tolerated. Reverence is expected but as far as I can figure it out no-one has ever been killed or maimed for not aligning themselves to the church in Thailand. Maybe that's why the religion has not been shaken in recent years as religions in the West have.

Paradox is an interesting thing to live with too. If you have a Thai girlfriend ask her where she thinks the spirit of a deceased relative resides. Heaven, here among us as a wandering spirit, or reborn in a new body ? Chances are, if my wife's beliefs are anything to go by, she'll believe all three. And maybe all three are true. Maybe as I write this I'm also in another realm dreaming that I'm writing this and, at the same time, wandering as a ghost in a land where the dead are the living. Maybe in some strange realm there is even a race of super intelligent vaginas who are trying to communicate with humanity through my friend Gary. Then again maybe not.

The Sayings of Buddha won't solve the ineffable mysteries of the Thai character or change your life, but it does, at least, give you a source book of Buddhism that is short, easy to read, from the Buddha's own mouth, and considerably cheaper than a couple of drinks at one of those underground secret drinking bars that might be the way of Thai nightlife in 2002.

The Sayings of Buddha 62pp
Toppan/Peter Pauper 95 baht

Review Alexander Turner 2001

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Here is a link from ThailandStories.com for readers to see and buy this book reviewed here by JagoTurner:

http://www.biblio.com/browse_books/catalog/700940/82665.html