AIFF2022 - Saturday Review - Big Crow and White Crows and More

[After sleeping on this, I've added a few thoughts on Crows are White.  They are [bracketed]].

Got to the museum a little late (gave up trying for the 10am Children's program) and there was nothing showing in the auditorium.  They'd had a glitch and so we got to see most of Big Crow.  A lot of amateur footage, but it was edited together to tell a powerful story about a young woman who took her Pine Ridge reservation team to win the state championship.  Her death soon after brough lots of folks together and inspired lots of improvements for the reservation and relations off reservation.  Sad but inspiring.  

I was going to post a few short posts, but then the wifi no longer worked.  (Later I found out I could get it in the museum, but it was spotty in the auditorium.  

And I got hijacked by Crows Are White and I want to focus on that movie, but first a quick overview of the rest of the day, which all took place in the museum. 

The woman collecting the audience ratings of the films said that the morning kids program, really was very dark and the only thing kid about it, possibly, was that it was animated shorts.  

Big Crow I wrote about above.  I liked it.  

Then came three shorts made in Alaska.  The first Sabor Artico: Latinos en Alaska was about Latinos in Alaska.  Interesting, but not exceptional film making.  

Safe Enough  was a about the Sitka summer arts camp and highlighted a number of the young artists attending.  The theme seemed to be that this was a safe space where these artistic teens could actually be themselves and explore who they were.  It was safe, unlike the world they binomially live in.  It was uplifting, except that this escape only lasted two weeks.  I couldn't help thinking that it shouldn't be so hard to envision communities where people who had unique talents could feel comfortable.  And then I thought about how most people are just better able to conform, but that they too are denying who they really are to fit in.  A film that stimulates you to move your understanding of things further is, in my book, a good film.

And the third short in this program, Kakińiik was by Patrick Hoffman whom I spoke to and whose video I put up before I went to bed last night.  It's always tricky when you interview someone before you see their film.  Sometimes the film doesn't work for you and you have this connection, albeit short, with the film maker.  But that wasn't a problem in this case.  This was a beautiful film, made up of a series of talks by women getting traditional Inupiat tattoos and how the tattoos connect them to their ancestors and their culture.  There are also a couple of vignettes by the tattoo artist - talking about the styles of tattoos, traditional food and its relation to doing tattoos, and her own thigh tattoos.  Each vignette is preceded by a stylized screen, which confused some of us in the audience the first time who weren't sure if this was the end.  It wasn't.  And we weren't fooled the next time either.  It was like a book with several chapters separated by this artful page.  

Then we got to Crows are White, which swept me away.  Spoiler Alert:  I'm going to write about the film in ways that assume the reader has either seen it or won't be able to see it.  But in another way, it's the film itself that is what is so enjoyable and thought provoking and what I write shouldn't change that experience.

This was a film done in the style of a This American Life piece, with a narrator outlining the project and how things proceed throughout.   The filmmaker, Ahsen Nadeem, narrates in a voice and tone not unlike Ira Glass, but the story he's pursuing, turns out to be his own. There are so many aspects of this film that are both amazing and bizarre.  People who are noble and flawed.  The photography was exquisite as was the music. 

Crows AreWhite refers to a story someone tells about a monk who tells his disciples that crows are white, and while they all know this isn't true, they cannot contradict the monk.  They must say, yes, crows are white.  

My take is that the film is about people being forced to deal with contradictions to their understanding of how the world works.  Ahsen's basic contradiction is that he's fallen in love with a non-Muslim and he knows his parents will disown him if he marries her.  But we don't know this until after we've been set up to believe there are more general spiritual issues he's pursuing rather than answers to his very personal dilemma.  [A film version of the guy climbing the rocky mountain to ask the monk on top the meaning of life.]

Another contradiction is that as a Muslim, he searches for answers from a Buddhist monk.  But he learns that the head monk, Kamahori, he wants to pose his questions to has taken a vow of silence.  And these monks are the ultramarathoners of Buddhist monks.  They take a vow to walk a certain distance every day (something like 20 kilometers) and they have to do this until they've walked the equivalent of walking the circumference of the world.  And part of the vow is that if they miss a day, they have to commit suicide. 

Ahsen himself comes across as sincere and disarming not unlike ira Glass. But when you think about it, he's also so full of himself that he thinks he has the right to interrupt the lives of monks in this Japanese monastery with his film crew and persistence in trying to meet with the head monk.  He gets kicked out when his cell phone rings during a secret ceremony they've allowed him to film. [But you can also ask why did the monks give him permission to film them in the first place?  They are supposed to be focused on enlightenment and to not care about what others think. To indulge him?  To spread Buddhist wisdom? To get publicity for the monastery? To increase their income?]

That's when he meets Ryushin, a monk assigned to greet visitors and answer questions in the monastery gift shop.  Ryushin is probably the most honest and likable character in the movie.  And his life dilemma is not unlike Ahsen's.  His father and grandfather had been important monks at this monastery, but he really would rather be a sheep farmer in New Zealand, he thinks.  But while he professes to be unhappy, he doesn't obsess on the contradictions.  Yes, he's a monk, but he takes a drink now and then, loves ice cream, and goes to heavy metal concerts.  

Another character who is relatively normal is Ahsen's girlfriend and later wife.  I particularly cheered when she questioned Ahsen's taking cameras in to film his parents when he tells them he's been married to a non-Muslim for three years.  Seems crass to her. But she understands that this is necessary to complete the film he's spent so much time on.  

This could have been a mockumentary - a fictional documentary spoofing documentaries.  [Part of me was wondering if it was while I was watching and hoping it was.] But all the contradictions and conflicts between what people ought to do and what they really do and how they reconcile it is what makes this such a good movie.  And, of course the beautiful cinematography and the unexpected but perfect music. 

Everything together works to make this an outstanding film. 

And up through this point of the festival, all the films were about people who didn't quite fit in the societies they lived in - the nomads in Friday nights Last Birds of Passage, the Lakota reservation girls gaining self confidence and pride through basketball, the Latinos in Alaska, the campers in Sitka, and the Inupiat women regaining their heritage through traditional tattoos.

A Body Is a House of Familiar Rooms

The afternoon shorts program didn't impress me.  The one film that stood out - The Body Is A House Of Familiar Rooms  - did so because of the colors and patterns that were so striking. 

Also the paper programs are now available.  Here's the Sunday schedule.

And finally, there's You Resemble Me which rounded out the night and I'm still processing that one.  My biggest difficulty was subtitles when they weren't on dark backgrounds.  A truly heartbreaking film of Arab refugee sisters put into foster homes with a disastrous result in one case.  

AIFF2022: Busy Saturday Starts With Kids Program, Ends With Recommended French Film - All at Museum

I started thinking about the Anchorage International Film Festival late this year, so I'm not as organized as I have been in past years.  

My sense, from reading the online program, was that there are a lot fewer films, turned out to be correct.  Just 75.  But the positive spin is that none are shown in conflict, so you can see them all.  

Friday night's Turkish film The Last Birds of Passage, was a poignant narrative feature on a Turkish minority group that travels 400 kilometers with its goats and camels to the summer grazing grounds and 400 back.  The migration in the film is faced with lots of obstacles - from within the family and from changes in the landscape they have to cross.  The filmmaker was there for a charming Q&A by Zoom after the film and is scheduled to be in Anchorage Wednesday.

I haven't figured out how to find a page on the website that shows all the films for one day AND when they are playing.  So I've tried to  put that altogether here.  

But here's the Saturday lineup - all at the Anchorage Museum Auditorium

Saturday

10am  Shorts - Kids A Bonanza

Birthday Wish • 

Footprints in the Forest • 

Rain • 

Santa Doesn''t Need Your Help • 

Snowflakes • 

SPIRIT: A Martian Story • 

The Social Chameleon

12pm  Big Crow  -  

"Born in 1974 on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, SuAnne had become one of the state’s best basketball players by age 14. By the time of her tragic death in a car accident at age 17, her wisdom, leadership, and determination had made her a household name across the Great Plains. 27 years later, SuAnne’s legacy has proven legendary - everyone you meet on “the Rez” has a story about how SuAnne’s spirit continues to galvanize the Lakota in their fight to reclaim their language and save their culture, embracing what Su called “a better way”. From AIFF website

2pm  Shorts - Made in Alaska

Kakiñiit •  I talked to the director Patrick Hoffman at the opening.  His film is about traditional Alaska Native tattooing.

Sabor Ártico: Latinos En Alaska (Arctic Flavor: Latinos in Alaska) • 

Safe Enough

4pm  Crows are White - Museum

"For over a thousand years, a secretive Buddhist sect has lived in an isolated monastery in Japan performing acts of extreme physical endurance in their pursuit of enlightenment. In CROWS ARE WHITE, filmmaker Ahsen Nadeem is struggling to reconcile his desires with his faith and sets off to the strict monastery in search of answers. Ahsen is not immediately welcomed and the only monk who will speak with him is an outcast who prefers ice cream and Slayer to meditation. Together they forge an unlikely friendship that leads them to higher truths and occasionally, a little trouble. Shot over five years on three continents, CROWS ARE WHITE is an exploration of truth, faith and love, from the top of a mountain to the bottom of a sundae." From AIFF2022 site.

6pm - SHORTS: Different Kind of Love Stories

Burros • 

Honeymoon at Cold Hollow • 

Jelly Bean • 

Lead/Follow • 

Peanut Factory • 

Star-Crossed • 

The Body is a House of Familiar Rooms • T

oo Rough

8pm  You Resemble Me - Museum - This one got strong reviews from people I spoke to.

"Cultural and intergenerational trauma erupt in this story about two sisters on the outskirts of Paris. After the siblings are torn apart, the eldest, Hasna, struggles to find her identity, leading to a choice that shocks the world. Director Dina Amer takes on one of the darkest issues of our time and deconstructs it in an intimate story about family, love, sisterhood, and belonging."  From AIFF website.

Made It To Kamphaengphet Saturday In My Summer Anchorage Biking Trek

Back in May I described my itinerary - Chiangmai to Bangkok - 745 kilometers.  I'm doing this on the bike trails of Anchorage.  The original post gives a bit of background to this  way of giving me a reason  - beyond the sheer joy of being on a bike whizzing through the woods - for this technique.  Knowing how many kilometers I have to cover gets me out on days my body would rather not.  But once my feet are pushing pedals, I'm glad I'm out riding.  There's also a map showing the distances between key points.  

Kamphaengphet is kilometer 445, so I'm over half way.  That's good, because biking season  is also half over.   ( I have an old bike with studded tires for winter, but I don't do long bike rides when there is snow and ice)

This stop is particularly special because I spent two years in Kamphaengphet teaching English as a Peace Corps volunteer in the late 1960s.  Below are some pictures from that time - a world much more closely connected to the past than it's connected to the present.  

These are from an album I put together while I was there.  Black and white photos I could get developed at the local photographer shop. The place where people could get portraits done.  But Kodak and Fuji slides had to be sent to Hong Kong or Australia to be developed.  That was minimally a two week process.  I think of my grandkids who probably don't even know about film and are used to seeing the picture the instant it's taken.  (I checked with my oldest and she did not know.)

This picture seems appropriate - me on a bike on the road in front of the school with the temple ruins and the water buffaloes in the background.  My house was on the school grounds, up on stilts, with two other 'apartments'  for teachers in the same building. The soccer field was between my house and this road.  So I had a view of the old temple chedis.  Here's a great link that explains the names of the different parts of Thai temples. My bike was my main form of transportation, though my colleagues had motorcycles too.  Peace Corps didn't let us have motorcycles but at that time the current ban on even riding on the back of a cycle didn't exist.  Peace Corps says the ban came after they figured out that most Peace Corps deaths came from motorcycle accidents.  My experience would have been significantly different had I not been able to ride on the back of motorcycles.  (Sorry for the blur, I didn't take this picture.)

This was one of my students.  Soccer was a big part of school life and since the best soccer field was directly in front of my house, a big part of my life.  It was out on this field that I set up the portable record player/radio that I'd bought when we stopped in Hong Kong on the way and played records in the moonlight when my trunk finally arrived.  I also played soccer there and started my love of jogging running around the field.  And the chedi was always there in the background.  At that time you could walk over and climb up on it and sit and contemplate the world.  Now it's part of a National Historic Park and has a fence and admission fee.

A short distance from the school in the forest were several more impressive temples.  I used to walk or bike over to be alone with these ancient structures - about 600 or 700 years old.  The Buddha on the left was part of a temple called The Temple of the Four Positions.  This was the sitting position.  There was a standing Buddha, a reclining Buddha, and a less common walking Buddha.

The elephants surrounded to top of another temple more in the hidden in the woods, up on a bluff overlooking the River Bing. [Mae Nam literally means mother water, or river and usually proceeds the name of the river.  So sometimes you see names like Mae Nam Bing River.  Which is sort of redundant.]  I'm not sure how many elephants there were all around the temple (It was called something like Temple With Elephant Around it) but there were a lot.  The English book we used had stories in every lesson - stories from British history, US history, and Thai history, so I learned about Thai heroes of various wars against Burma, Laos, and Cambodia.  This temple looked out toward the mountains over which the Burmese army would have had to come.  

There was no television reception in my town.  So 'commercials' were live.  Here's the medicine salesman gathering a crowd with his microphone and cobra.  When enough people showed up, he'd get the mongoose out of the box and have a battle between the leashed mongoose and the well drugged cobra. And then he'd sell all sorts of medicine.  

And this is why I was here.  To teach English to MS 3 students at the boys' school.  MS 3 translates to about 8th grade.  They were fantastic students and we generally had a great time.  Our teacher training back in DeKalb, Illinois had been excellent.  We had 50 minute lessons for each chapter.  Each class would start with about five minutes of pronunciation drills.  There are lots of sounds in English that don't exist in Thai.  There are only about nine final consonant sounds in Thai.  Most English consonant clusters are real challenges for Thais because they don't exist in Thai.   Steve became Sateeb. (There's no v sound in Thai, let alone a final v.  The closest Thai has is a final b.  Other v's become w.)  Then ten minutes of vocabulary - lots of creative activities to get across the meanings without using Thai.  Then we had grammar drills, ideally using the sounds from the pronunciation drills and the vocabulary from that drill.  Then we'd read from the story and ask questions about the story.  Everything in English.  Thai not allowed.  Some of the things they learned best were classroom instructions that got used every day.  Stand up.  Sit down.  Louder please.  Stop talking.  Who wants to read first?   Open your books.  Repeat after me. 

About the kid with the bare feet.  No, it wasn't that he didn't have shoes.  Thais just take their shoes off before they go inside.  So outside the classroom would be lots of shoes.  

This is the old Burmese stupa and temple across the river.  On Buddha's birthday everyone went there and in the full moon, carried candles around the stupa.  It was a connection they had to their ancestors who had done the same thing for hundreds of years.  

So it was exciting Saturday knowing that I'd made it to Kamphaengphet on my summer biking adventure.  While I rode through cool birch and spruce forests in Anchorage, I was imagining the dusty roads, the wonderful people and their smiles, the delicious food, and the temples as they were back in 1967-69.  

This is just the tiniest peeks at my three years living with Thais.  Three years that dramatically rewired my brain.  The temple pictures are here because Buddhism wasn't really a religion, it was a way of life and permeated everything.  A good Buddhist doesn't even kill a mosquito.  And there was a tolerance for everyone.  There were, of course, economic differences among people, but even the king prostrated himself before the great Buddha statues.  I'm using the past tense here because I'm writing about that Thailand back then.  I've been able to spend time in Thailand since then and while the basics are still the same, the gap between the US and Thailand technologically has gotten very small.  Back in the 60s, Thailand was a different world, a different time, from the US.  No longer.  

Today I did another 16.5 km so I'm on my way to Nakorn Sawan.  This is the longer between stops and I remember the dusty red dirt road in the last three hours of my trips back from Bangkok.  Lots of rice and mountains that looked like growths on the mostly flat landscape.  I'd note that all these roads have long since been paved.  

A Little Zen From The August Sun

The August edition of The Sun came today.  Each addition has an interview.  This month's is with
Norman Fischer, the founder and senior dharma teacher at the Everyday Zen Foundation.  He's interviewed by Corey Fischer.  They haven't found any family connection, but they decided to use first names in the interview to avoid confusion.  Here's just a bit, which seems useful to think about these days.

Corey: If you were to distill Zen Buddhism to its most basic, core concepts, what would those be?
Norman: [Laughs.] Oh, boy. Maybe the simplest and truest thing to say is that Zen doesn’t have a basic core concept. Zen is just appreciating being alive. There’s nothing to it beyond that. But if I said only that, it would be a little silly and disappointing, even though it’s true. So I will say more. . .

"Zen Buddhism is interested in awakening through different ways of looking at the world. It doesn’t try to tell you what the absolute truth is, the way Western religion does. At a certain point in history people began sincerely thinking, “Well, if you don’t believe in Jesus, your soul is in jeopardy. So we should do whatever it takes to straighten you out. That’s an act of compassion because we’re in possession of an absolute, metaphysical truth.” Forcing religion on unwilling others turned out to be a terrible idea."

You can read the whole interview here.

[We've had a lot of nice days and today is one.  It's going on 10pm and the sky is blue with puffy white clouds and I'm sitting on the deck in shorts surrounded by trees.  The picture shows the magazine on the outdoor table next to my computer.  The white lacy thing is a cover to keep bugs out of the food.  It opens sort of like an umbrella.  The bugs haven't been a problem, but some young Steller jays have been coming pretty close before we have to shoo them away.]

Fathers And Sons: A Way Of Respectfully Resolving Disagreement

"Siddhartha said:  "With your permission, Father, I have come to tell you that I wish to leave your house tomorrow and join the ascetics.  I wish to become a Samana.  I trust my father will not object."
The Brahmin was silent so long that the stars passed across the small window and changed their design before the silence in the room was finally broken.  His son stood silent and motionless with his arms folded.  The father, silent and motionless, sat on the mat, and the stars passed across the sky.  Then his father said:  'It is not seemly for Brahmins to utter forceful and angry words, but there is displeasure in my heart.  I should not like to hear you make this request a second time.'
The Brahmin rose slowly.  Siddhartha remained silent with folded arms.
'Why are you waiting?' asked his father.
'You know why,' answered Siddhartha.
His father left the room displeased and lay down on his bed."

The father has trouble sleeping and gets up hourly and sees his son still standing arms folded.

"And in the last hour of the night, before daybreak, he returned again, entered the room and saw the youth standing there.  He seemed tall and a stranger to him.
'Siddhartha,' he said, 'why are you waiting?'
'You know why.'
'Will you go on standing and waiting until it is day, noon, evening?'
'I will stand and wait.'
'You will grow tired, Siddhartha.'
'I will grow tired.'
'You will fall asleep, Siddhartha.'
'I will not fall asleep.'
'You will die, Siddhartha.'
'I will die.'
'And would you rather die than obey your father?'
'Siddhartha has always obeyed his father.'
'So you will give up your project?'
'Siddhartha will do what his father tells him.'
The first light of day entered the room.  The Brahmin saw that Siddhartha's knees trembled slightly, but there was no trembling in Siddhartha's face;  his eyes looked far away.  Then the father realized that Siddhartha could no longer remain with him at home - that he had already left him.
The father touched Siddhartha's shoulder.
'You will go into the forest,' he said, 'and become a Samana.  If you find bliss in the forest, come back and teach it to me.  If you find disillusionment, come back, and we shall again offer sacrifices to the gods together.  Now go, kiss your mother and tell her where you are going."

These are not, of course, ordinary men.  Siddhartha went on to find enlightenment in the forest to become the Buddha.   But then everyone has the capacity to do extraordinary things.

The way they speak to each shows what true respect sounds like.  I particularly like the father's expression of displeasure:

 'It is not seemly for Brahmins to utter forceful and angry words, but there is displeasure in my heart.  I should not like to hear you make this request a second time.'

Just imagine our president saying these words to a New York Times reporter at a press conference.

This comes from the first chapter of Herman Hesse's Siddhartha.  Translated by Hilda Rosner.  You can read the whole book at Gutenberg.org , though it may be a different translator.

“In the name of the Great Teacher, we will stop at nothing to unleash a firestorm of empathy, compassion, and true selflessness upon the West,”

said Rinpoche, adding that all enemies of a freely flowing, unfettered state of mind will be “besieged with pure, everlasting happiness.” “No city will be spared from spiritual harmony. We will bring about the end to all Western pain and anxiety, to all destructive cravings, to all greed, delusion, and misplaced desire. Indeed, we will bring the entire United States to its knees in deep meditation.”
  

OK, this is a spoof from the Onion, and no good Buddhists would use imagery like 'unleash a firestorm.'

Thinking about this reminds me of how many Chinese deal with the difference between Western and traditional medicine.  The traditional medicine is important for every day maintenance of health and can be used to treat routine illnesses and injuries.  But for major, immediately life-threatening trauma, they turn to Western medicine, if it's available.

I don't think many Westerners are willing to give up using violence when their lives are directly threatened, though people tell me that Jesus said something about loving one's enemies and turning the other cheek.

As with medicine, when dealing with confrontation - whether it be with nations abroad or with citizens at home - our responses should be broader than sending in drones to bomb or having police draw and shoot their guns - we should consider the wide array of non-violent alternatives that are available.

[Feeburner wouldn't take the original, so I've tried to clean up the html and repost]

3 Jing Si Aphorisms by Master Cheng Yen

OK, I'm stalling.  I've got a couple of posts I'm working on but they aren't ready yet, so this is just to post something.  But it should be a relaxing and reflective break.

I'll share a little from a book I was given while on an overnight layover in Taiwan.  The link shows some pictures of the Tzu Chi Foundation temple I stumbled on where I was given this book, written by a Buddhist Nun.

"Master Cheng Yen has always led a simple and virtuous life.  In her frugality, she made candles and bean powder to maintain a living.  In 1966, she established the Compassion Relief Tzu Chi Foundation, and over the years this organizations has concentrated its activities in the major areas of charity, medicine, education, culture, international relief, bone marrow donations, community volunteerism, and environmental protection."

The book has the aphorisms in English, Spanish, Chinese, and Japanese.  Here are a couple:

To regard ourself lightly

is prajna (wisdom).

To regard ourself highly

is attachment. (p. 22)

El vernos a nosotros mismos con modestia

es Prajna (sabiduría).

El considerarnos altamente

es aferrarse a uno mismo.

We must carry out our tasks 

according to principles,

and not let our principles be

compromised by our tasks. (p. 38)

Debemos llevar a cabo nuestras tareas
de acuerdo a nuestros principios
y no dejar que nuestros principios
se vean comprometidos por nuestras tareas.

Each time we forgive others, 
we are, in fact, sowing blessings. 
The more magnanimity we show,
the more blessings we enjoy. (p. 182)


Perdonar una vez
es ser bendecido una vez.
Cuanto más perdonemos,
más seremos bendecidos.

The title of this post is the title of the book and there isn't Western publication information in the book.  However, there is a link to the tzuchi.org for those want to know about this Eastern humanitarian organization. 

I'm Dreaming of a White Songkran

This was Songkran two years ago in Chiang Mai.  It's a holiday in the hot season where in the temples the Buddha's are washed and in the streets everyone is washed.

This was Mt. Juneau yesterday from the State Office Building.

And here's the same view with a little perspective - the yellow building in front is the Juneau Douglas City Museum.  The brick building on the right is the Capitol.  We'd had snow, but what little stuck had melted.  These mountain views right smack in downtown are a reason Juneau's so spectacularly beautiful.

This morning from our window.  And below is a letter I received yesterday from the Thai Buddhist Temple in Anchorage.  This year's Songkran festival is Sunday.  We won't be back yet, but others who might be interested should go.  I know it can be intimidating to go to a religious ceremony you know nothing about.  But trust me, you will quickly feel at home.  Just remember that you take your shoes off before going into the Wat (temple.)  You may also be expected to sit on the floor.  And you should leave a bill or two on the money tree.  And you may want to practice the 'wai' putting your palms together at your chest and dipping your head slightly as you can see the people doing in the picture with the monk below.  Just copy the Thais and Laos there.  If you don't do it perfectly no one will be offended.  They will be delighted that you tried. 

I don't think at the Wat people will be splashing you with water.  It will be more solemn.  Here are a couple more pictures from Chiang Mai's Songkran in 2008. There's more explanation of the religious aspects of the holiday at the link. 

The Wat in Anchorage is on D just off of Fireweed.  If you live in another city that has a Thai Buddhist temple, check when they celebrate.  I promise you a very wonderful experience.  Just remember to take off your shoes when you go inside.  People will be coming and going all day, so it doesn't really matter when you get there.

Koun Franz on Compassion at Loussac

Last night we went to a nearly full Marston Theater to hear Anchorage's Zen Buddhist Priest talk about compassion.  The only other time I'd heard Koun Franz talk was at Cyrano's two years ago where he was on a panel of clergy from different denominations discussing Mark Twain's The War Prayer.  He made quite an impression on me then both by how he handled himself and what he said.  Last night he had the stage to himself - well, and a vase with two yellow flowers. 

He was wise, funny, compassionate, human, and having a good time.  My sense was that the audience too enjoyed the evening and went home with lots to think about.

On compassion, well, he said it is always there.  It isn't something we give, one way, to another.  But rather it is there, for us to be come aware of, to see the people around us a human beings who, like us, are trying to be happy.  In some cases, the way that they go about it may be unsuccessful (alcohol, drugs, etc.) in the long run.  When we have run-ins with others - he used the example of a tailgater - we should understand that they are human beings trying to be happy, and somehow, they see us as preventing their happiness by being in their way.  That doesn't mean we condone what they are doing, but we understand it at least.

He had us imagine that we had a bubble around us where we were safe and comfortable.  Then asked us to extend that bubble to include the person next to us.  Including someone in your bubble - accepting their humanity as I understood it - was another way he described compassion.

Ethics in Buddhism, he said, wasn't so much about right and wrong, but rather about skillfulness - developing skills for living right.

He said that in the monastery in Japan he learned to cherish every moment, including the 'down' time between what we normally consider the events.  An example was a note on the mirror where the monks brushed their teeth that conveyed the message

Whatever I'm doing right now
I'm not doing just for me
But for everyone

I only took a bit of video, and the best clip turned out to have a buzz all the way through, so here's just a snippet to give you a sense of the serenity of the talk. 



It's not easy to convey what someone else has said, so assume what I've said is a very rough sketch.  You can hear Koun Franz directly through podcasts on the Anchorage Zen Community website.  You can find information about their other activities available there too.

Red Shirts Yellow Shirts

[Wed. Feb. 25, 2009, 9am Thai Time]
Monday, E suggested we go eat at the Buddhist Vegetarian place. She'd passed it on the way to work and it was open. It had been closed for three or four months. We got there and the buffet didn't have much selection and there were only a few people there. But some friends of E came over to talk. I got the gist of what they were talking about but when they left I checked with E to make sure I got it right.

Saturday night there had been a gay pride parade scheduled for Chiang Mai. But a group of red shirts had showed up and told them that this was not part of Thai tradition and that they should pack up. They decided to listen to that and canceled the parade.

The reason the restaurant had been closed so long is that they had gone down to Bangkok to feed the protesters who had shut down the airport. So we were in a Yellow shirt place. The red shirt group supports former Prime Minister Thaksin who is trying to come back to Thailand and become prime minister again. The yellow shirts support the current government. Things were falling into place. When we had our anniversary dinner, some of the people were late because the street had been closed and there were people marching. Well, it turns out that was a red shirt demonstration. So far we haven't seen anything ourselves. But E only partially joking suggested that it might not be safe to eat at this restaurant because the red shirts knew it was a yellow shirt place.

In my experience, while there has always been a certain level of interpersonal violence in Thailand, this seems like a different sort of turn of events. I'm not sure. I've been more focused on other things.

There was also news of two different Westerners killed in the South recently, and just the other day a foreigner's head was found in a plastic bag hung from a bridge in Bangkok. I suspect that was grisly enough it made the US papers. But none of this, as I said, has been visible to us in our daily lives.
After lunch at this place, which is free if you only get rice and one other item, you wash your own dishes. E laughed as we were leaving and I noted that the foreigner in the top picture was wearing a red shirt in a yellow restaurant.

Two Different Nights, Two very Different Dinners

Thursday night J's Thai class had it's final dinner. I've been hearing about her class mates - a collection of mostly (13) Western men mostly of a certain age with either Thai girlfriends or wives. And five women. Some of whom had Thai boyfriends. And one of the best foreign language teachers Joan has ever had. And she learned a number of sentence patterns and vocabulary words and it's obvious she's got a lot more Thai now. I did talk to her teacher and asked about program for people like me who can basically get along, but with lots of gaps in terms of grammar and vocabulary.

The dinner was at a Thai buffet'barbecue' place. That means there are tables full of food which you cook over charcoal in little - I have no idea what they are called and I didn't take a picture, but they're aluminum 'pots' with a broth, but also in the middle an area you can cook fish or other things outside the broth.

You can see the vegies (to be cooked in the broth, but you can't see all the fish and shrimps and other things I don't even know waiting to be dropped into the broth.



And here are the pseudo Western sweets on the left and Thai sweets on the right. Those bright yellow ones, if I recall right are made with egg yokes and lots of sugar.



And here are some more Thai desserts. I'm not sure what these are, but I know them and love them. You get these noodley, dumpling like things, with a little coconut milk and some crushed ice on a hot night. MMMMMMMMMMMMM. So goood. We paid much, much more than we do for a normal dinner which can range from100-150 Baht ($3-5) for the two of us. I'm not sure what the buffet was, but we all got asked to put in 200 Baht apiece (which covered the drinks) or about $6 each.


These two guys are Australians. The one in the white whose face was blurred to protect him (actually there just wasn't that much light and he moved during the slow shutter click) was an undercover detective for 30 or more years. So I filled him in on some of the things going on in the Ted Stevens case. His reaction that some sort of fix was in. He also said he spent five, I think, months in Iraq to pay off his house. He had nothing good to say about what is going on. Well, he did say while there may be some issues with the Americans, their behavior is far more exemplary than that of most of the other players. But he was obviously upset when he talked about some guys he met early on who said they wanted the war to last forever. "Don't you care about all the people who are getting killed?" "Hell, we're getting $40,000 a month and we want that to go on forever." What would have taken him ten years to pay off working in Australia took five or six months in Iraq he said. Thanks to the American tax payer.

Let's see, the guy on the right in the orange is a Brit who lives in Hungary and is here teaching cricket to kids and a couple of orphanages. The lady on the right is a 20 year old Brit who has a Thai boyfriend. The woman at the end of the table - almost in the middle of the picture - is the teacher.

It was a loud and raucous dinner - Thai music coming from one side, televisions going as well. The group went to karaoke afterward, but we went on home.


Tonight was a totally different experience. We'd run into Mike on the street the other night and he emailed the invitation:

We are very happy to invite you to a Shabbat celebration to be held at the Blue Pearl Yoga Studio.

We hope this will be the start of a more regular format instead of the smaller gatherings

It would be great if you could come. The more the merrier and we encourage members of all faiths and paths to join us.

Friday, 20/2/09 at 18:45

As usual, the food will be Pot Luck - Please bring whatever you like to eat but strictly vegetarian

The handouts with the words for the songs called it a Kabbalah Shabbat. So, from outdoor (but under cover) the size almost of a football field on Thursday, Friday was in a Yoga studio.
And we had four Cambodian monks from Wat Suandoke there to join us. Unfortunately, Thai Buddhist monks don't eat after 12 noon.

Azreal led the short shabbat service - he's originally a Canadian but, if I recall right, he's lived in the US and Israel and now has been in Chiang Mai six months. In addition to Canadians and Americans, there were two Thais, some Brits, and Italian, a couple of Austrians, and a German of Philipino/Chinese origin. It was really a special night. I'm glad did't succumb to my thoughts of just staying home tonight and taking it easy.

We're Back in Chiang Mai

We made it back. It seemed fairly cool compared to the humidity of KL. We walked from the airport to the Vegetarian buffet place, but as I feared, it was closed because today is Macha Bucha, a Buddhist holiday. So then we flagged a song thaew home. We got here for this religious ceremony last year, so you can see the video from our closest Thai wat.

From DiscoveryThailand.com

One of the most important Buddhist celebrations - Macha Bucha Day falls on the full moon day of the third lunar month. Not particularly a festival, Macha Bucha is a Buddhist holy day and marks a point in history when 1,250 of the Lord Buddha's followers gathered to hear his sermon. Macha Bucha Day is a day when worshipers to walk three times around temples in a bid to make merit.

Since it's a holiday, they said no one would be in the office. I'm not complaining. But I do have to find out where we are meeting with the farmers to get the bus to Bangkok tomorrow night.

Hiking to Doi Suthep via Wat Phalad

Guidelines, a free tourist monthly in Chiang Mai, had an article in the December issue on the trail to Wat Doi Suthep, the temple on the mountain above Chiang Mai. I can't find the article by Oliver Hargreaves itself on line, but it was the encouragement and support we needed to find the trail and make it to the top yesterday.

The trail begins not far from our place so we walked Suthep Road to the end of the University wall and turned right, then soon, up the hill.
The trail itself starts near the TV station. You can just barely see the tower in the lower right where the arrow points.




We passed the back entrance to the zoo. Although it says entrance to the zoo, he said you couldn't come in this way without a ticket and the tickets were at the other entrance. But we continued up the road to the left.
On the right is the entrance to the tv station. You can just see the brown sign on the left in the greenery.



The trail goes up. The map in the Hargreaves article suggests a climb of about 600 meters and I'm guessing about 3-5 kilometers distance.
While it was cool in the shade, it was warm walking up in the sunny parts.


Ah, the power of concentration. J chose the safe way across. I had no problem where the log was on the ground, but when it went over air, I paused. It was silly, just concentration. I got across fine. We both walked it without any problem on the way back.

















Then I struggled through a sign in Thai that talked about a 100 year old bridge on the trail to Wat Doi Suthep. The log didn't seem that old. But then I looked up and there, right in front of me was the bridge. And we were now on the grounds of Wat Phalad. Clearly this temple has been recently renovated. A delightful spot along the creek in the woods. Almost no people - we did see a monk - and a few cats.

It's hard to figure out which leg is the cat, which is the shadow in the picture on the right.





















It wasn't clear which way to go past the Wat. I think there was a small road to the main road, but we tried the trail on past the Wat. Fortunately we met two guys coming down the steep incline who told us after we cross the road, there was a sign in Thai. The trail was on the right of the sign, not the left where the waterfall was. OK, that seems easy.




























After being in the woods, we were suddenly back in the world of cars briefly. I looked for a sign that said which way the trail went.








We found the waterfall, but the trail didn't seem to go anywhere. We went to the right, but I didn't see a trail sign. Then I realized that they meant the big sign warning about forest fires. Just a misinterpretation. I assumed that because they said the sign was in Thai, that they didn't know which way to go. But this had a big picture and was clearly not a trail sign and so I hadn't considered it to be 'the sign' they meant.











Here you can see the sign. The waterfall is to the left and the trail is on the far right where the little black arrow is pointing at J's feet.













The trail went up steeply at first, but there were steps, sort of, carved into the sandy soil. I would go on up ahead and then stop and listen to the birds and watch the butterflies and flowers until J caught up and passed me.











This second part of the trail (after crossing the road) followed a powerline. For a while, one of the lines dangled close to and then on the road. We passed another couple at this point. I think we saw a total of four other people on the trail over several hours up and down.


























We got into a thick forest.














This guy was hard to catch on camera. He did hold still a while but it was in the shade and holding the camera still wasn't easy and the first couple of shots were blurry and this one isn't perfect. There was another damselfly that had a yellow head and tail, but that picture is too bad to post.







I figured it would take three or four people to circle the girth of this tree.



































And then, after another short but steep climb, we were back into the world of traffic, just down the road from the entrance to Wat Doi Suthep.



















We were hungry and thirsty and enjoyed Khao Soy while watching people climb up the steps to the Temple. We decided we enjoyed the peace of Wat Phalat better.






There were no shops at Wat Phalat.


Going back was much faster. The black cat was still at Wat Phalad when we got back there.


And as we got near the trailhead, we could see Chiang Mai, bathed in the late afternoon sun that we had lost long ago climbing down the east side of the mountain.