When your brain dreams for the body, it desires bowl after bowl of fresh fruit—pineapple, durian, mangos, watermelon, papaya, melon, grapes, oh grapes!, strawberries, and a dozen fruits only Google knows.

When your stomach is honest with itself, it wants you to fill it with pastries made from fresh fruit, coconut fried dough balls, pies, cookies, oh how the stomach wants to be filled with cookies!, sticky rice, sausages, dried minnow chips (yes, they’re a real thing and they’re delicious), yogurts, pink spicy noodles, green not-as-spicy noodles, three kinds of bacon, baked fish, and eggs prepared and seasoned every which way.

Ask your tastebuds in Thailand, they want you to try tom yung goong, sour soup, chicken galangal, isaan soup, tom jap chai, coconut milk curry, massaman gai, and a dozen other dishes I’d never heard of either, but were delicious and up for grabs at the all you can eat monk buffet happening every morning at Bear Paw Mountain.

The daily alms collected in the early morning cumulatively amounted to a daily potluck of such an epic spread that it could make Thanksgiving ungrateful that it only involves a
turkey and all the fixins. I’d only had a granola bar the previous day, so was ready to get on with the feast I saw being laid out. The villagers truly knew how to hook a monk up.

Breakfast with the monks begins with the nuns separating the donated food into trays of like kinds and combining the take of rice into two massive bowls. The Westerner in me concludes that a meal made from 50 economically disadvantaged Thai households will fill me with 50 varieties of parasites, but my stomach tells the anxieties of the mind, “Shhhhh, I’m starving and no one will take this away from me!” Anyways, I remind by brain, we’re taking black walnut hull and probiotics, so we should be good to go.

After the monks file through, the novices, then nuns follow. We walk single file into a large building that looks sorta like a middle school basketball court where Buddha is the mascot. The monks sit lotus style on a raised platform on the left wall, the novices on the back wall, and the last in line, the nuns gather facing the monks from across the room on the right side. Had the Buddha been a woman, had Jesus had knockers, were Mohammad to have given birth, I don’t think the religions they kicked off would have made it past the patriarchy’s 10th-yard line. I wonder what important messages we’ve lost to time because of that? While the existence of nuns at all in Christianity and Buddhism is nice, girls don’t get to sit shotgun in many major religions.

These are my thoughts as the pre-meal chants are in progress. When they end, I become immersed in my bowl, filled with all sorts of delicious wonderful.

Eating commences and I try to scarf down quickly and mindfully. A paradox, yes, but I have a big bowl to empty and won’t get another for 24-hours, so it’s time to loosen my rope belt and pack it in.

In Latin America, they have the expression, “His eyes were bigger than his appetite.” And my eyes were the size of a personal panned pizza and thought my stomach capable of housing a five pound bowl of food. Japanese hotdog eaters train competitively for this sort of scarfage, and my bowl is still half full when I take a breather and drink my juice box of rice milk like a peewee soccer player benched after a half hour of play.

I shift my legs because they are lotus’d out. Then I look up and see every monk and nun eyeing me. Damnificados avocados! I’m the last eater still chomping. I push my bowl in front of me and fold my hands. I’ve not only held up the show, but now everyone knows my eyes are bigger than my stomach. Wasteful Farang! I imagine they are all thinking.Damnificados avocados! I’m the last eater still chomping. I push my bowl in front of me and fold my hands. I’ve not only held up the show, but now everyone knows about my big eyes. Wasteful Farang! I imagine they are all thinking.

Immediately after I push my bowl forward, the monks clap the lids on their baat bowls and post meal chanting commences. Every morning, this chanting entrances with the nuns answering in their higher register the melody sung first by the monks. Guyay is seated to my right and he’s my ally because he too is a fidgeter. While everyone else is zen enough to keep their lotus locked through the whole meal, we simply can’t deal and move our legs in and out of lotus. Though I can’t communicate with him, I imagine he is also grateful to have a fellow fidgeter in the meditation hall.

Unlike the other novices who spend their 9 hours of daily free time doing walking meditations or reading the Pali Scriptures, Guyay just kinda hangs out, sometimes sweeping, other times walking around like he’s practicing a silly walk, feet pointed outward, as un-zen as prank calling a priest.

Though I can’t talk to him, I invent a narrative of what he’s doing at the temple. He was still living at home at 40, idling away his best years on the rice paddy, too awkward and ugly for a Thai woman to so much as “Sawatdi Ka” him and finally his mother said the Thai equivalent of “Guyay, get your shit together or you’re going to live at the temple where the monks will straighten you out!”

As he and I are leaving, the nun from the office comes by and says something to us. I don’t know what she’s said, but she’s waiting for an answer. Apparently she thinks I’ve suddenly learned Thai in my sleep. I can tell her, “Okay” or “No.” I could also ask her “Where is the bathroom?” or say, “My name is Luke and I am 29 years old.” I could also say, “Listen to this!” but then would have no followup. My phrase book, written by Joe Cummings in the pre-Internet age, has also thought it important to equip travelers with this question, “Mii nang seu keh/lesbian khaai thii nai?” Do you know where I can buy some gay/lesbian magazines?”

Given my options, I simply say “Okay,” guessing she’s told us something like, “Stop fidgeting so much!” since her tone seemed reproachful.

It’s Mott to the rescue. “You and Guyay are to meet with the Abbot at 11am.” It seems we’ve both been called to the principle’s office. I assume it’s nothing too big, but when I go there find that if I’m to stay at the monastery, I’ll have to do the seemingly impossible by 5am tomorrow.

 

Read more from my series, “Being Buddhist in Thailand”