Monday, January 13, 2003   - Buying Karma (Part 2)

 

Continued from Buying Karma (part 1)

 

So there I was atop “Buddha Hill,” and believe me, I was not the only farang in tow this day.  The prah were splashing more than their usual quota of sweating foreigners who accepted this holy water more for its cooling refreshment than for its spiritual cleansing effects.

 

We were here for tam boon: to “do good” in hopes that our efforts might be recognized and rewarded somewhere down the line.  We were here to improve our karma.

 

At the front gate Jum purchased two birds that we were to later set free from the small wooden cage in which they were presently incarcerated.  This particular ritual was a recommendation from the aforementioned maw doo of Isaan.  By giving these caged prisoners their freedom we would receive chok dee in the year to come—though I had a sneaking suspicion that the winged pair was to be caught soon again and placed right back into the very cage that now held them.

 

While the birds waited as patiently as birds can for their release, Jum and I purchased some fresh and beautiful orchids, a candle, and some toop (incense)—three sticks each.  Kneeling on the hard, ceramic tile floor with my knees in constant protest, we each lit a candle and searched for an open space among several ornate candelabrum of distinctly Oriental design.  We carefully placed ours amidst a hundred other candles still aflame and the collected, hardened waxes of a thousand other past prayers.  We left our offering of flowers (and a few singed arm hairs) atop a heap of others that had also gathered, and then we lit our toop. 

 

The wafting aroma of toop is normally a pleasing one.  Pleasing enough to attract the attention of the spirits is the thought behind it.  However, in the quantity that now hung thickly in the air it stung the eyes.  As it rose in thick tendrils and piled up high upon the ceiling, I imagined that we all might have been asphyxiated if it hadn’t been for the relentless efforts of the rotating floor fans that swung their heads to and fro in what seemed a selective attempt to effectively cool and clear the air while attempting to preserve the tiny flames that burned our hopes into the heavens.

 

Holding the smoking joss sticks between hands in the shape of a prayer, it was now time to begin submitting requests to the lord Buddha’s help desk.  I looked around and listened to the barely audible whispers as the dozen-or-so pairs of Thai lips individually mouthed their most earnest entreaties.  The farangs, for the most part, sat with looks mixed of pain and impatience on their faces as they rubbed their aching knees and watched their money go up in smoke.

 

“Health and happiness,” I began too, internally voicing my succinct wish and desire. 

 

There was a moment of mental silence after which I opened one eye and looked about me to notice that everyone else was still rattling of his or her wish lists.  So I continued…

 

“A job I enjoy would be really nice, or actually just money.  Yes, gobs of it, please.”  I importuned.  Then followed yet another moment of quiet pause.

 

With just a little more time left, I tacked on a few more “honey do’s” for surely if one never asks… well, you know the saying…

 

“Healthy children, a second wife, and did I mention oodles of cash?”  I went on and on until it was my turn to stick my toop into the large urn of sand and ash along with that of the others adding to the raspy pall above this primitive, smoking antennae; emitting its signal upward and on toward the infinite, ethereal realm of the gods not so subtly seeking to attract their attentions, beseeching them to sanctify the source behind this smoldering haze.

 

As the ritual continued, a group of us knelt—oh my knees—in front of the prah and attempted to repeat a chant that is not only completely unintelligible for a farang, but being that it’s actually an ancient dead language from Bali, even the Thais can be heard to stutter and fumble at this sing-song mumble-jumble.  Making the challenge even more arduous—if it wasn’t already impossible—was the cockerel from hell that took up position just outside the nearest window.  It wailed and screeched with self flagellating passion in what seemed a direct competition between it and the two-stroke motorbikes for which could be crowned the most annoying sound in the universe.

 

During these chants aimed at improving our providence, a phra would dip a bunch of tied and dried reeds into small a water vessel and splash this nam mon (blessed water) in well-aimed shots upon those prostrating below.  Fully aware of my limited skills in Balinese mimicry, I was tempted to look around and take in my immediate surroundings rather than attempt to later untie my tongue from some Herculean knot of linguistics.  It was not with little surprise that I recognized the familiar profile of a bargirl of exceptional comeliness at my ten o’clock position.  Though deep in prayer and her attention drawn inwardly, she virtually glowed with sexual exotica.  My eyes were magnetically drawn to her beauty.  I was seduced by her mere proximity.  Splash!  The prah had shot his cleansing freshet straight to the mark.  He got me!  I’d been busted, or so I thought, as I wiped the drops from my eyes that had been forced downward in a brief moment of shame.  I gathered myself and with a quick visual check, my wife appeared oblivious in her prostrations at three o’clock, and my ten o’clock—recently dowsed herself—looked back to give me a brief, demure smile which I romantically took to be one of recognition and acknowledgement for an unspoken rendezvous to come.  What a silly thought!

 

Now fairly humbled, I surreptitiously surveyed the room once again to observe more than a few demurely dressed women in their twenties who seemed more contented here than their normal haunts along the glitzy streets and entertainments spots of Pattaya.  I pondered just how many of these girl’s sponsors realized the significance of how their money was being “invested” here, and if they knew enough to care just how many “shares of karma” were being purchased “over the counter” in their name as opposed to being siphoned off and sold on the black market in some far off land, called Isaan. 

 

“Mai pen rai.”  Never mind, I thought as it’s all fair in the game of love.

 

Our next stop at this park of spiritual enrichment was where we might have the opportunity to ask the Buddha to heal the material containers of our souls, our bodies:  Bodies that will inevitably fail us in this life—Life that is indeed suffering, ipso facto.

 

With our birds again in hand we ascended a long, outdoor length of stairs that led upward to the Prah Yai, or Big Buddha, at the temple’s highest point that looked down upon the urban tumble below and accepted the cooling breezes of the nearby sea. The staircase was protected on both sides each by a nine-headed naga, the serpent guardians of the Southeast Asian mythology.  They let me through.  In the shade of the Prah Yai, Jum and I together released our feathered captives and watched as they flew off in haste with their newfound—perhaps short-lived—freedom and into the great wide open.

 

We looked at each other, shrugged, and noticed that all that was left in the empty cage was some bird shit.  Perhaps, it was some primal, reptilian symbolism we held in our hands, but all we could do was laugh.

 

Dhit tong prah is a ritual that also involves burning toop—to get that signal going strong.  This toop when purchased, however, came with a few small sheets of paper between each was a flake of gold leaf about the size of one’s thumbnail.  Dhit means “stick,” tong means “gold,” and prah means—as we should know by now—“monk or Buddha.”  The idea here is that one can ask for the Buddha to heal our mortal, bodily ailments by sticking the gold leaf onto specific anatomical parts of a statue in the Buddha’s likeness.  Placing gold on these areas is believed to draw attention to the same area our body—for we are all of one infinite, eternal body in truth—and thus begin the healing process.

 

“Twenty baht, is a hell of a lot cheaper than my doctor back home—even with Medi-Cal.” I thought as I examined the statue before me so as to determine with Hippocratic precision the whereabouts of the Buddha’s—and through his my own—liver.  {stick}  Even if I’d had a medical chart with me at the time I would have been hard pressed to find a locale to identify with bone marrow.  So I went for the heart—literally. {stick}  There, that should fix the jai dahm (black heart) the bargirls have been complaining about.  And finally, as my brain is pretty much addled on a seemingly permanent basis, I aimed for the peripheral eye of the Enlightened One so as to speed my way as I wander blindly through the rye. {stick}

 

I felt better already as I creaked my old bones from the kneeling position and out of the smoky temple.  Once again in the shade of the Prah Yai, we happened upon our third and final destination on this day of tam boon.  From the far corner of a small, dark room filled with Buddha effigies, the bright eyes of the maw doo peered outward while his apparent wife lounged about in a beach recliner in the three simultaneous efforts of taking a nap, shooing flies, and attracting customers toward her husband’s burgeoning business of the Tarot.  This was to be a definite E-ticket ride.

 

Jum was hesitant at first; having already heard enough future talk, but she reluctantly acquiesced and soon became fully engrossed in her role as both my interpreter and Buddhist liaison.

 

Now, once again I’ll say that believing in all of this—the Tarot included—is not by any means a requirement for the enjoyment of these short stories; and I hope that as a devout Kimfucianist—as shown by you getting this far in your reading—that you might simply hope to enjoy the ride—more or less—whichever is to your liking.

 

Being the spiritual dilettante that I am, I can’t tell you how the Tarot came to Thailand or more than what the basic symbolism is behind the cards.  Furthermore, I doubt that even the maw doo can tell you these things either.  Though for 99 baht, he’ll tell you your future.  Why 99 baht you ask?  You see nine is an auspicious number in the East.  Therefore, when one pay’s the maw doo it is usually to the tune of 99 baht.  This starts off the transaction on a positive note.  Do not fret if you don’t have change, there’s usually a cup of one baht coins nearby since the maw doo has been waiting for you.  The future lies in his cards. 

 

Money exchanged and my birth date provided, he began his routine after a brief consultation with a dog-eared, maw doo reference guide that gave him all the necessary information so as to perform certain calculations:  subtracting 2003 from 2546, adding the remainder of 543 to 1968, and thus determining the year of the Buddhist calendar in which I was born, 2511.  I watched and listened to the practiced patter of this conjurer and bit my lip as he deduced that I was a monkey born on a Saturday.  What news!

 

He then instructed me to shuffle the Tarot deck seven times—exactly—after which I was to cut the cards into three piles with my left hand.  Having performed the one-handed triple-cut as directed, the maw doo then spread the cards before me from which I was to take seven cards—again with the left hand—one at a time.  Each card in turn was to provide an illumination or revelation to hopefully shed light and protect me on the journey through the wandering path of my life.

 

I didn’t have the heart to remind the maw doo that the lunar New Year begins in February, and that my being born in January actually made me a goat, so I silently proceeded with care selecting my cards with divine guidance seeking divine revelation.

 

The first card turned.  He looked at me then at my wife, and his eyes began to glow.  As he described the card’s meaning to Jum, I saw in her face the reason of her initial reluctance to engage the maw doo in his services:  bad news.  I’ve always thought it perverse to attempt know one’s future and this particular divination was particularly perverse.

 

“There are many ladies in your life.”  He grinned ear to ear, raised his eyebrows a few impish times, tapped the card before him, and laughed knowingly:  The Lovers.

 

“Duh!” I thought looking behind me at the girl I’d met previously at the notorious Buffalo Bar.  She was making her third and final attempt at lifting a 20-kilo Buddha over her 40-kilo frame.  Behind her was yet another girl I recognized from the Super Baby a Gogo who had an under bite that could put the fear of god into the ugliest of bulldogs.  He was right.   I was surrounded, but really to what extent was he alluding.  Not even I knew that.  In my moment of reflection, the Baby Bulldog and the Buffalo each took up position behind me to both wait for their turn with the maw doo and for a better view of the “watch the farang squirm” show.

 

There’d be none of that I decided and said to Jum that this hocus pocus, voodoo man was just being a troublemaker and that she shouldn’t believe everything she hears from this home-wrecking trickster.  I then selected my second card with trepidation, worried what this mystical instigator might have next up his sleeve—or robe as was the case here.  It wasn’t necessarily that he was wrong or right or that what he implied was necessarily good or bad.  He was just reading the card, and that’s the beauty of the Tarot—the selective interpretation from the vast, nebulous realm of arcane symbolism—all that for 99 baht plus extra if you wish to purchase a good luck charm carved from the husk of a rare, one-eyed coconut.

 

Well, I won’t go on with the entire routine of the maw doo’s seven-card shuffle, but I’ll provide interpretations for the interest of those who might care.  The following readings are straight from my wife’s angrily curled and pouting mouth upon translation. 

 

Having consulted a book on the tarot it seems apparent that the maw doo was doing a little ad-libbing for dramatic purposes.  For those with a deeper interest in the Tarot, the cards below are links to an on-line reference for the cards I selected each of which is jam-packed with esoteric imagery to be interpreted however one may.

 

 

 

After this somewhat traumatic ordeal with the sooth-saying maw doo, the only way to soothe the wife’s tormented soul was to be sure to have her get a new and improved fortune of for herself at the “shake a stick” on the way out.  She paid twenty baht, shook a can of sticks until one fell out, checked the number and ripped her fortune from the wall of pre-fab destinies. 

 

“These ones are always bound to be more propitious… or not,” I realized as she furiously crammed the crumpled fortune into her purse.  She’s a believer.

 

Through the ebb and flow of the tide of yin and yang, we sail on this Fool’s Journey in search of love and happiness.  Apparently, I’ve got more than my fair share of one of these according to the maw doo and his mischievous eyebrows.  Maybe this is why I’m drawn to these rituals.  Not only are they cheap entertainment, but also as in the Tarot there is no bad or good here: only dreams and love reign supreme though that old relic, Koichi, might interpret that last card as something more personally incriminating.  Perhaps, this ever shifting balance of the intangible gray is what allows me to shroud my quixotic romanticisms and Pattaya peccadilloes in a world of mysticism so that I might transcend the confinements of worldly emotions and filial jealousies in search of the ultimate bliss of enlightenment, or not.

 

Mai pen rai.