Reincarnation and the Ultimate Geography

I got up early and had a big breakfast and several cups of coffee and then headed out into the light drizzle to find the Sky Train and the route that would take me to the end of one line, just a block or so from the Chao Phraya River. I had in mind taking one or more long boats up river to see the Wat Soi floating market, which lies on a main canal that meanders into the old part of Bangkok.

When I got to the end of the line at Saphan Taksin I walked not toward the brown water of a rather small river but back toward the city and then into clotted streets and pinched alleys chockablock with fruit vendors, key makers, fish sellers, and a happy fat-faced man without eyebrows who had a large offering of old Thai currency that I stared at for long minutes, thinking perhaps that I should get some of the coins for my son.

I couldn't keep the camera away from my eyes as the rain came intermittently and I could taste the heavy air; this, I could see clearly, was a very different and more enticing Asia than the Philippines that I began to explore for the first time a short two months ago. There's much more that's exotic to my Western eyes in Thailand, all very much a new kind of eye candy for which I have yet to find the right words, in short a marvelous piece of Asia that these days I am regretting having not gotten a good taste of many years ago.

At the river I found a long boat that would take me down river and then swing around through a mazeway of canals that has led people over the years to refer to Bangkok as the Venice of the East. Like the excitement of the morning markets that I could not get enough of, I felt as though too much was coming at me too quickly to begin to absorb all this newness: the strings of shacks hanging over the water, the boatman on his water's edge porch refinishing with a small knife the bottom of his long boat, the woman paddling down the canal selling a miscellany of throwaway tourist carvings along with Thai beer and Coca Cola, and the dozens of Buddhist temples with their elaborate gold and red and yellow carved roofs and walls--big ones, small ones, some in ruins, a few under construction.

I kept returning to a sense of regret, wondering why I had not been tempted to find Asia at a much younger age. I thought of my son Cole and his eagerness to stay close to home and how I should yank him out of school next year at this time when I'm not teaching and give him a daypack and say, Let's go, I've got to show you a little bit of Asia so you can see it now while you're young and impressionable.

I jumped off the long boat at the floating market, Wat Sai, one I'd thought earlier would be the highlight of the day. It was  disappointing, a minor gathering of no consequence, hardly "floating." After taking a few shots memorable most of all for the immense wat in the background, I began aimlessly wandering.

All of a sudden it occurred to me that I had little idea where I was. Not eager to lose the long boat that had brought me this far, I looked for something familiar. My eyes fell on a small wat with two openings. Now I must confess that I have no idea about the etiquette of entering uninvited into Buddhist temples, and I wasn't sure I would; and then when I got to the first entrance and a large dog inside rose to his feet and let me know I'd be best to continue on I did so. But shortly, a mere ten paces or so farther on, I saw a monk seated in the darkness just inside the red-framed opening. I could make out the distinctive saffron robe. He was bald, and I judged he was at least fifty, perhaps older. He seemed to be deep in contemplation.

I stared for several long minutes, and then he invited me in and asked me to sit down. I took off my daypack and put my white and red USC cap inside and crossed my legs. I sat there in front of this monk for the longest time in silence. I said nothing and he said nothing, and perhaps it was this way for a good half hour, or longer. I really don't know, I lost track of time. This is unusual for me.

A half hour and then some into this silent standoff, my legs began aching as I cannot remember them ever doing so. I also felt unusually hungry, and this surprised me.

The monk startled me when he suddenly asked if I was privy to any "special" (this was his word) Thai cell phone numbers.

I found this an odd question. No, I said. I have no idea what one even looks like or how long it is.

Give me the number, he said. (He said "the".)

I wanted to laugh. How was this possible? I thought.

He repeated himself. Politely but insistently. Then he said--and I wasn't sure I'd heard him correctly--The number is more important than you can possibly know this day.

Yeah, sure, I thought, the skeptic in me welling up in my throat. I again wanted to laugh.

Several minutes passed and he said nothing and neither did I. It occurred to me that I should get up, take his picture before he told me not to, and then quickly leave and find my long boat. But something held me back, a kind of magical force, I hate to say, since I do not believe in such things.

More minutes passed, and then I found myself giving this monk who I knew nothing at all about a string of numbers. The numbers were: 09-5837604.

He folded his hands and brought them to his head as he bowed at me, and then he said, Good. Good indeed. You have given me  exactly what I have asked for. There was a long pause, and then he said, Not many are chosen.

So, I thought, I have to fly for more than sixteen hours and with nary a wink of sleep to hear this kind of nonsense.

He now said, You are special. He smiled. All sweetness, true to the well-known words about Thailand: Land of Smiles.

Yeah, sure, I thought. I am special, but not in ways you want to know about.

He put a hand between his legs and came up with a shiny pink cell phone and handed it to me. He said, Make the call.

Call who? I said, not having the slightest idea what he was talking about. And for what reason? I added.

Questions will get you nowhere, he said. Do as I ask and you shall be honored.

I thought of the Beatles and I wanted to howl and tell him I was the reincarnation of John Lennon, and he'd know as much if he looked carefully at my nose, one of those big Western noses that so many Thai seem envious of. Then I thought of the bad time I'd given my younger brother over the years for being a Buddhist and believing in reincarnation and a lot of other things that struck me as silly, everything I could not possibly believe in.

Honored? I said.  I was holding my tongue better, much better, than I would have imagined possible.

You have a unique chance, he said.  It's all in the numbers you were given. You can now call and it will all come to pass when you are-

--reincarnated, I cut in, and added, Yeah, I walk on water too, I do it better than Jesus Christ ever did it. I held back the snicker. I did not, as I wanted to, make fun of this man and the tens of thousands in this country exactly like him who daily go out with a bowl in hand asking others to feed them while they spend all their time contemplating their navels.

On my saying the word reincarnated the monk put his eyes on mine and would not remove them, and I found that I could not take my eyes off of him either. Once again we sat there for the longest time, in utter silence, something that I find very hard to do. I have a compulsion, I hate to admit, to talk or hear the voice of someone else. I am, yes, very much a social animal.

I suddenly found myself dialing the number I had pulled out of thin air for the benefit of this monk. And what surprised me completely was that I did so without having to ask him the number. I had somehow remembered it, and further more I knew exactly what to do with this cell phone I'd never seen before.

I had no more than put my finger on the Send button than I heard this voice say, And what will it be in your next life? I could not tell if the voice was male or female.

Well, you don't want to know, I thought, laughing. It all started to seem like some outsized joke, like I might get in a dream after a night of having too much to drink. But I liked the joke; its absurdity held me captive.

What will it be in your next life? the voice repeated. You can be anything you so desire. You deserve it for your exemplary behavior in this life.

I smiled and I turned and I saw that the half dozen or so joss sticks at the door that I'd noticed on entering were on fire. I swear to god they were. The fire reminded me of a large, very large, bouquet of premium Ecuadorian roses. The smoke from the fire began to fill my nostrils. I felt dizzy, and happy.

This is what I remember saying. I swear that I did say what I am here revealing, and it all happened in this wat on a tributary of the Chao Phraya River, and I had not been drinking either before this happened or in the hours since it happened and I began to write what you, the reader, are now reading. And now no doubt are laughing at what you imagine to be a fiction of someone who has truly lost his mind. Ho, ho, ho...it finally came to pass!

I said that in my next life--this is after all, reader, about reincarnation--I want to live to be fifty and that in one respect all of these fifty years will be the same and in another respect they will all be different. In each of my fifty years in my next life I will have the mind of an intellectually mature and worldly fifty-year old and the body of a very vigorous twenty-five year old. I will be fifty and twenty-five in the first year of my life and in every year thereafter. I will be different in that in each of the fifty years of my next life I will live from year to year in an utterly different culture. One year I will be an Aymara Indian in Bolivia, the next I will be a Mongolian herdsman, the next I will be a Thai rice farmer, and so on.

But this is putting the matter too narrowly, and not quite right. For not only will I spend each of my fifty years in a different culture, but in each of these societies that will be one and only one year of my life in which I will have a truly intimate knowledge of all that goes on,  and yet my identity and what I do will change as I go from society to society. In one I will be a farmer, in another a herdsman, then a businessman, then a drug dealer, and in another year a Sri Lankan intellectual.

I will live, and know intimately, the world as no one before or since has ever known it. I will be the ultimate geographer living the ultimate geography!

After this was outlined, this person who I had come--in my own small mind--to see as the Buddhist God (I know that putting it this way sounds odd but I was raised a Christian) wanted to know how I wanted to fit marriage and family and such matters into all of this.

I said, I don't know all the details at the moment, though I am of the opinion that it will be possible to measure each of my years as if it were a full lifetime, and that in the fullness of each year's experience all of the best and most memorable of what constitutes a marriage and children will be evident, and all the rest will simply be forgotten in the very special way in which my next life and years will be measured. Time expansion, time compression--the former which I have been experiencing for the last two months, the latter what we all feel in the quotidian days that just go on and on and of which so many seem to be the same.

That is very good, he said. For the first time the voice on the other end showed emotion. But beyond this I could tell you nothing then or now about this voice-this person--that had me in its hold.

I have to ask something important, I said.

You must wait, he said.  Wait until we talk the next time.

When will this be?

When you again have a right number.

A right number? How will I know when I have again come upon the right number?

Remember what happened last night, the voice said.

I could remember nothing of the previous night.  I looked over at the joss sticks. They were no help whatsoever. But why did I think they would be? Maybe I just didn't know how to read them? I did notice that the flame was not only out but there was only smoke and it was fleeing through the rectangular opening through which I had come some hours earlier. Fleeing as if caught in a great sucking vortex.

Think hard, the voice now said. It was an experience like none you have ever had before.

I could still remember nothing, and to this moment, as I write these words, I cannot tell you what happened last night.

Look in your little black moleskin notebook, the voice said, and all will be evident.

I opened the front pouch on my daypack and the notebook was not there. I looked everywhere in the daypack and could not find it, and I thought, Oh shit, I've lost yet another notebook. What has come over me? The first two trips in my life when this has happened, and they are back-to-back trips in Asia.

I turned back to the phone, but it was dead. I looked over at the monk. He smiled, brought his folded hands again to his face and bowed. And he said, You must go.

*

I found the long boat without difficulty and we were soon on our way and before long we were back in the main channel of the river. I felt numb all over, and as much as I wanted to laugh at this midday happening that extended into the dying light of the day and that I was certain could not have happened--as much as I liked the idea of what I would get in my next life, I just could not laugh. Something told me that this had not been any ordinary experience.

I had a simple meal and a beer and then, feeling exhausted, I returned to my hotel room. And to my complete surprise, as I came through the door and the light came on when I put the key in the wall slot, there was my moleskin notebook lying in the middle of the large double bed. I felt a chill run up and down my spine. I was certain, as positive as one can be, that I had not left the notebook  in the room.

The anxiety was more than I could handle, and I found myself racing through the pages I had written on. I had to assure myself that that number that allegedly put me in touch with Buddha could not possibly be in the notebook.

But there it was!  At the very top of a page that followed my last set of notes. And it was, I was certain--my memory is exact on this critical point--the very number that I had plucked out of nowhere and had dialed to get Him on the line and establish what I will be in my next reincarnated life.

Beside the number was the word Wan.  But I know no Wan, have never met someone named Wan--to my knowledge. I must confess that as I write these final words of a story that I myself find hard to believe had it not in fact happened this very day, I have never once come across the name Wan. I do not even know whether in Thai culture Wan is a male or a female name.

And this needs to be noted. The handwriting is not mine. Nor do I have the slightest idea who put the telephone number in my little black moleskin notebook. Yet it's all there. The evidence. Yes, the evidence. Is there anything more telling than evidence in an experience of the sort I have just related? One, surely, that seems preposterous if not just down right laughable.

Korski

© Korski. All rights reserved by the author.

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