Bun Kaithin - Day 2

Tahsang Villager Places Sticky Rice Offering Into Monk's Bowl

Sunday, 25th November, was the day selected for Tahsang Villagers to celebrate Kaithina with the Monks at the "Outside" Wat.  The previous day, the villagers had celebrated the festival by making money trees to offer to the Monks in gratitude for all that they do.  Following the procession through the streets, 6 of 7, of the village, everyone returned to their homes for the night.  Some women prepared food to offer to the Monks the following morning as part of the daily merit making ritual.

Other women, such as my wife, chose to get up early on Sunday morning to prepare food for the Monks.  Duang woke up at 3:45 A.M. to prepare fresh food for our scheduled 6:00 A. M. departure for Tahsang Village.

We stopped at Duang's house in the village to pick up our Grandson, Peelawat, and my mother-in-law to drive out to the Wat.  Our truck was enlisted to transport many of the money trees, banana stalks, and decorations from the civic pavilion.

Villager's Offerings For the Monks

The partially completed Bot was decorated with the banana stalks, pennants, and colorful decorations.  The middle of the section where lay people participate in the ritual was filled with all the money tree as well as other offerings such as sahts (woven reed mats), mons (pillows), religious decorative bowls, artificial flowers, and handicrafts.

The religious celebration commenced as a typical merit making ritual where people make offerings to the Monks.  A Shaman leads the people in a ritual which offers the food to the Monks.  The ritual involves lighting of small candles, chanting, and presenting a small dish with the lit candles and some leaves to the Abbott of the Wat.  The Monks then perform their portion of the ritual by chanting.  One part of this ritual involves the lay people pouring water from a bottle or special metal container into a bowl as they and the Monks chant.  The water in the bowls is then carefully taken outside of the Wat and poured at the base of various plants or trees in another private ritual.

After that portion of the ritual was completed, the Monks ate while the lay people watched and prepared to eat after the Monks.  The Monks only take what they can eat,  After they have eaten, the remaining food is consumed by the lay people.  There is always a surplus of food.  On special days such as Sunday, there is a great deal of surplus of food as well as variety of food.  The eating of the surplus food sustains the very poor of the community.  My wife and her children were nourished by this arrangement many years ago.  The eating of the surplus of food also serves as an opportunity for the community to socialize. Each morning and especially on festival days, there is a sort of pot-luck meal for the people.

Nong, Peelawat, and Tey Playing in the Dirt

Nong of Tahsang Village On Ok Phansa Day - 30 Oct

After they finished eating, the Monks left the Bot.  The lay people took their time to eat their meal.  After finishing their meal, the people gathered up their money trees and other offerings.  They assembled outside near remnants of an earlier structure and chedi at the site.  By this time I had been surrounded by several of my little friends from the village.  My Grandson, Peelawat, likes to hang around me even though we can not talk about too much.  One of my new favorite models, Nong, likes to hang around with Peelawat , Tey and me.  She is 20 months old and likes to be one of the "guys".  Sometimes being one of the "guys" can be difficult and carries a price.  Last week Peelawat ran her over with his bicycle - not intentional but he was unable to stop in time or to avoid her.  Nong had a cut on her head and a scrape on her arm.  She has recovered fine and is back following Peelawat around, and doing whatever he or Tey does. Whenever I take a photograph, she runs up to me so that I can show her the result on the monitor.  The day before, she was seated in the back of a pick up truck.  I took her photograph and showed her.  She smiled and then pointed up in the sky and said something.  I looked and saw nothing.  She pointed again and repeated her words.  Again I was unable to see what she was trying to show me.  She insisted and repeated her gesture as well as words.  This time I tried very hard and saw a helium balloon floating away just about out of sight.  I have to admire and love the persistence of children!  I thanked her for sharing.

Villagers Assembling For A Procession Around the Wat

The villagers commenced their procession around the Wat.  I stayed ahead of them so that I could take photographs of the procession.  Peelawat stayed with me along with Tey and Nong.  The procession was lead by some men with long brooms, sweeping the ground ahead of the villagers.

As is the case in other religious processions, the people walked three  times around the remnants of the Wat.  They walked and danced to ethnic Lao music as the circumambulated the old chedi.  Everyone was smiling and very happy.

As the villagers were finishing up their third circuit of the chedi ruins, I broke off followed by 8 of the children.  I could not help but think of the story of the Pied Piper.  Anyhow, I removed my shoes and climbed the stairs to the area where the Buddha used to be kept, as I started up the stairs I looked back and motioned for the children to remove their shoes and sit down.

The Wrong Place At the Wrong Time

The Monks were inside the worship hall adjusting their clothing.  After awhile of taking photos, one of the Monks let me know that the ceremony was at the other hall.  I exited the hall and found all the children right where I had left them.  Together we all crossed the yard to the proper location much to the amusement of the assembled villagers.

Monks Commence Ritual to Accept Robes (Kaithin)

In the new Bot, there was a special ritual for the offering of the robes (Kaithin).  The Monks rather than the usual single line configuration, were set up in a semi-circle.  They all took turns chanting rather than the usual Abbott and one other Monk.  Chanting was first performed over the robes that were in a plastic shipping bag.  The robes were then removed from the bag, a braided gold colored belt was wrapped around the robes, and additional chanting was performed as Monks held on to the ends of the belt.

After the Monks had accepted the robes, the people took their money trees apart.  The process was done very deliberately and carefully - the bills all had to be facing in the same direction.  The  stack of bills were folded in half and secured with an elastic band.  The wad of cash was then placed into a plastic envelope and brought up to offer to the Monks.  The Monks gave special religious pennants to each family that donated.  The pennants are to bring good luck.  After all the offerings had been made to the Monks, the Monks passed out cardboard boxes that contained a religious statue for the people's home.

The offerings were counted and announced to the people - 109,127 Baht ($3,637 USD) which will be spent to finish the new Bot.

Once again I had the privilege to participate and document a unique event in the Lao Loum culture here in Isaan.  Be it a religious celebration, a funeral, a wedding, or the ordination of a Monk, the community bonds in Isaan are strong.  These bonds start developing at a very early age with babies and toddlers participating in all the rituals.  Some people would say that these are poor people but don't tell them that.  They think that it is all about being happy rather than what you have.  Personally I call the people very fortunate.

16 December 2008 - Fifty Billion Dollar Fraud

Fifty Billion Dollar Fraud - Numbers, Numbers

I have been busy the past couple of days. After a very concerted, perhaps obsessed, effort, I have completed editing and cataloging the photographs from our trip to Laos. In one week 1,563 digital photographs were reviewed and processed. Each one had to be opened from its RAW format, viewed, adjusted, and saved in jpeg format. This proccess takes about 2 minutes a photo to complete - 52 hours total for the Laos trip.

I did not spend all my time on this daunting task; we ended up going to three different night concerts in the park. Two of the concerts were very good - Lao music. The third concert, we left early. The musicians were very good but they were more of a comedy troupe than band. The music that they played was an integral part of their slap stick comedy routines so I don't believe that a single song was completed or played straight up without some nonsense. Since I don't understand the languages, I found it very irritating. No problem - it only cost $3.00 USD each to get in.

I still need to write about the return trip from Laos and to fill in some details that I forgot to mention in previous blogs. These will have to wait until later. Today I have been watching, reading, and thinking about the fifty billion dollar fraud being exposed in the USA.

$50 Bn, $50,000,000,000, fifty billion US dollars ... I find it difficult to comprehend or to gain an appreciation for that amount of money. It is kind of like the first time that I saw the Grand Canyon in 1976. I drove north up to the Grand Canyon from Flagstaff, Arizona. After driving through the mountainous pine forests of the Flagstaff, the road just seemed to disappear as it opened up to the Grand Canyon. There were not much advance indications of the drastically changed topography. Today it seems like we were driving along, crested a slight rise in the road, and then were confronted with the Earth dropping away into the Grand Canyon. It was awesome - beyond description and comprehension. It was overwhelming. On this trip we were headed to a new home in Northern Alberta with a 3 month old baby so most of the touring was driving along the rim road with an occasional stop to peer over the side..

I was not able to appreciate the magnitude of the Grand Canyon until years later when I was able to walk along the rim of the Canyon for a good distance - experiencing the sounds, sights, and feel for the Canyon. Years later my appreciation grew when I walked down into the Grand Canyon in November of 1986 shortly after a shower had dusted the canyon with clean white snow.

Whenever I talk about prices of things, Duang always asks "How much in Thailand?" This fifty billion dollar fraud is no exception. I had to convert it into Thai baht. The Thai baht is currently 34 to the US dollar so the fraud is one and a half trillion Thai Baht. It boggles the minds - or at least ours.

For some reason, I decided to try to put this in some context that would give a better perspective and appreciation for what amount of money is being talked about.

The late Senator, Everett Dirksen, is famous for the following quote from the 1960's "A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking about real money"

Fifty billion in 2008 is still talking about real money. How much money?

I checked the CIA's "The World Factbook" updated as of 4 December 2008 and discovered that $50 billion US dollars exceeds the GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of 145 countries!

GDP is the value of all goods and services sold in a country for a year. The list of countries with a GDP of less than $50,000,000,000.00 includes:

Bolivia $13.19 billion

Cuba $45.58 billion

Ecuador $44.18 billion

El Salvador $20.37 billion

Iceland $20 billion

Syria $37.76 billion

Yes indeed, we are talking about some real money here.

On CNN they showed an old couple, who were stated as having invested a million dollars, saved from carpet sales, with Bernard Madoff. This was apparently their life savings. They have apparently lost it all. These people appeared to be in their mid-eighties so they cannot realistically go back to work to earn money for their remaining years.

One could make an arguement that these people are not ordinary people. They had saved a million dollars to invest in a scheme that everyone now says "Looked too good to be true". It would be easy to dismiss their plight by delving into class warfare. This would be wrong, unfair, and not just.

They like Stephen Speilberg, HSBC Bank, and many others were victims of a crime. Their losses of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions and hundred of millions is no less a crime than the victims of armed robbery of their wallets on any street in the USA.

In some aspects of this crime is worse in that life savings were stolen from them rather just what they had in their wallets.

The perpetrator of the crime is no better or deserving of leniency than the minority gang member that robs an old lady on the street of her social security check.

We may shrug off this situation by saying "It doesn't matter. It was rich people. I wish that I had a million dollars to lose in a stock fraud."

What does it matter that some rich people lost money - real money? Plenty. Besides our belief of equality under the law of the land there are economic impacts that we are yet to realize from this fraud. A crime is a crime no matter the sex, age, religious beliefs, social status, or orientation of the victim. The perpetrator of a crime is no better or deserving of our consideration if they are educated, have social status, elderly, have political connections, or possessed an excellent reputation than a member of a disenfranchised class to commits a similar crime.

At one time, there was a philosophy of "noblese oblige". I have written about it before. "Noblese Oblige" was a belief that people in privileged positions and situations were duty bound to help those who were not so fortunate as them. This was some of the motivation that sent so many Ivy Leaguers into volunteering into the First World War and the Spanish Civil War. Today the blessings of rank and privilege, for some, are only advantages to be used for increased personal gain. Rank and privilege are assets which they believe justify preferential treatment or makes them immune from accountability for their actions.

This fraud smells very much like the situation of earlier this year with people not being able to pay their mortgages - people who should never have been allowed because of their economic condition to buy a house in first place. They defaulted on their loans. Soon banks were failing. Soon insurance companies were failing and needing bail outs. Soon investment firms followed suit. Now the automakers are begging for money because they cannot borrow from banks. So now we add a 50 billion dollar hit to some of these aforementioned institutions across the world. I suspect that we are only starting to know about this fraud and only later will we appreciate the impact on our lives that it will have.

Unfortunately, I have no faith that the perpetrator of this crime will receive the same treatment and sentence for his crime that the inner city gang member that commits an armed robbery on the street.

The perpetrator of the crime is guilty of "WHITE collar crime" - somehow that is viewed as other types of robbery. He is educated. In my mind this perhaps should precipitate harsher sentencing because he had other options to earn a living and definitely should have known better.

The perpetrator of this crime was apparently a generous person and gave millions to charity. This is irrelevant to the crime. The crime was robbing people. What he did with the money makes no difference. The fact that he gave a small percentage albeit large dollar amount that he stole to charity should make no difference in his treatment and sentencing. The treatment and sentencing should be the same as the gang member who might buy drugs with the money that he stole.

When the perpetrator of this crime is convicted of their crime, they most likely will go to a prison for "white collar criminals" i.e. Danbury or Lompoc. It will not be the same prison that the other felon would be sentenced to for sure.

It seems that there are more and more of these white collar crime stories coming out. It appears that regulation and oversight are not sufficient deterrence to prevent these types of crime. The death penalty is not applicable to these cases either although it is in China. Perhaps if the convicted white collar criminals had to serve their sentences in regular prisons it would deter some of the crimes.

I doubt that the perpetrator of this crime will be held fully accountable for his crime - it is not fashionable anymore for people to be held responsible and accountable. America seems to be wallowing in the cult of victimization. Almost everyone is a victim and now there will many more to add to the roll. The focus will be on plight of the victims.

The focus of news coverage on the man who committed the crime will be related to the tragedy about how a good man went bad. There will be stories about all the "good" things that he did. There will be stories about the business pressures and family pressures that led him to become a criminal. There will be articles about how current laws and regulation were not sufficient to prevent him from going astray. These stories will somehow intimate that perhaps he too is a victim - the government did not do enough to protect him from himself etc etc. Add another name to the roll of victims.

All this points out and reinforces the need for each of us to trust in our own abilities to manage our lives. It is in our individual best interests and happiness to take responsibility and accountability for our lives.

If you don't understand and after researching you still don't understand, then that should be all it takes for you to not become involved.

Let the mistakes in your life be your mistakes not someone elses.

I feel better - next blog will be about happier things - Laos