TIGER CAVE TEMPLE

By the Temple Gate
macaques lie in wait.
They squabble and fight,
like chickens, for the bananas
offered by northern Europeans.
They snatch
bags and cameras
and are happy to scratch
and bite
the hands that feed them.

An enormous limestone hill
three hundred metres high
towers above the temple.

A small staircase leads
up and over the rocks,
then down into the Khiriwong valley,
lush ancient lowland forest
with giant dicterocarps and fig trees,
their flared buttressed roots
offering comfortable back rests.
It is encircled on all sides
by steep overhanging cliffs.

The mountain is riddled with caves
which penetrate to its heart.
These are used by meditating monks.
There are also small wooden kutis
clinging to the rock face,
some of them too small to lie down in,
and cleared walkways.

Thirty years ago the Venerable Chamnean
came here to meditate.
A tiger walked into the cave,
but did not interfere with him.

Because of this, a temple was erected here
and Chamnean became its Abbot.
Now there are over three hundred monks
and nuns and also lay people collected here.
Chamnean is a famous Meditation Teacher
and his present cave
is a large modern building
in its own compound
with air-conditioning
and stainless steel decorative metal work.

The dell is unchanged, quiet and listening.
The macaques do not come here.
Outside one of the caves
someone has painted
in red letters Snake Cave;
and on an inside wall,
in faded white Thai script,
I am Buddha, in Pali.

We asked Chamnean whether
the story of the Tiger was true.
He said it was.

There is a Guardian Deva.

There are also washing machines in the dell.
And overhead lamps on the walkways as well.

*

SURVIVORS AND INHERITORS

Caves, like palaces,
hotels, churches
(and shoes),
outlive their tenants.
Tigers came and filled the caves
with snarling and roaring.

After the atomic bomb fell on Hiroshima,
more than a hundred Japanese soldiers retreated here.
Most fell on their swords in accordance with custom,
grasping the hilts with both hands,
pulling and falling into an exploding sphere of pain.
The rest cut open their stomachs
and died more slowly, but just as surely.
Their flesh was eaten by tigers and dogs,
their bones mingled with those of prehistoric men
and the residue of earlier tiger feasts.
Thirty five years later, Buddhist monks came,
Japanese, Thai and Chinese,
and chanted mantras
for the salvation and reorientation
of the Japanese spirits,
who returned to Japan.
The earthly elements they left behind
were collected by the Japanese Embassy
(who also took the swords).
The caves were cleaned.
The tigers stopped coming.

Like deserted Indian Temples,
the caves were left to monkeys,
who jabbered and squabbled
with the sounds of enraged chickens.
Dun, as a boy, came here with his friends,
when they were bored with fishing,
to fight the monkeys for their territory.

Now the worn limestone caverns
are empty, silent, echoing,
teeming with images in parallel worlds,
waiting for the next arrivals.

Tonight one old monkey
sits motionless.

From Bamboo Leaves by Brian Taylor

INTRODUCTION TO BAMBOO LEAVES

                                                                                        Floating market, Bangkok

Early morning street markets. Mists and half darkness.

Portable charcoal stoves flare up and mix their smoke

with the smells of pork and fish and sewers.

Monks carry begging bowls, blind musicians donation boxes

to lighten their darkness.

Cobblers display their boxes of tools.

A man with a treadle sewing machine mends anybody’s anything.

Stalls are piled high with fish, twenty different kinds of fruit,

sticky rice, steaming pots of vegetables.

Brooms, clothing, lottery tickets, buddha amulets, shoes, bicycles, motorbikes.

Buyers, sellers, beggars.

Policemen with revolvers at the hip. Dogs, cockroaches, rats.

A fortuneteller has spread out a brightly patterned cotton cloth, her cards neatly laid out.

Waiting. 

A multilayered world.  Disabled beggars with plastic cups,

black Ferraris and a snow-white Bugatti Veyron;

a swimming pool which is filled with ice

to celebrate every New Year's Day;

westernised nose jobs and eyelid surgery; massage parlours;

gold and silversmiths, emeralds, rubies and star sapphires;

ladyboys and budget sex changes;

ghosts and Spirit Doctors;

mediums offering lunch to the spirits that possess them;

body snatchers lurking below motorway bridges;

menus with one-day dry pig and son-in-law's testicles.

Everywhere, temples thunder their disenchanting message that all this teeming world, its glamour, excitement and misery, is impermanent, not-self and suffering.

Here, the lives of men and women are rounded not with a sleep but a silence.

There is a bareness to their lives, an ordinariness, which is itself extraordinary.

There is poetry (and humour) in everyday happenings even without poetic language.

They reveal dimensions and levels of being of which we are usually unaware.

Because we don’t believe in them.

We believe what we see.

But we tend to see what we believe.

There is poetry in Thai, Pali and Chinese names,

in their meanings

and the music of their sounds.

The people and incidents are recorded as they were.

The perspective and tone varies.

BAMBOO LEAVES (opening poem)

From the sun’s fierce heat,

the bamboo grove offers much relief.

Each leaf is uniquely made

and all are quite the same.

The whole provides a living shade;

why give each leaf

its individual name?

The mind is such

a lonely, fragile thing,

so easily afraid

of what it can’t believe in.

Yet every time we make-believe,

belief is truly made.

Brian Taylor

BAMBOO LEAVES (closing poem)

Their leaves of grass* emerge and fade;

with windblown rustling tongues converse.

The grove has grown throughout the universe,

spreads everywhere its pleasant living shade;

creating north south east and west

(the fierce, unending struggle to be best);

relentlessly growing.

The variety is unimaginable,

the sameness unknowing

and unknowable.

The grove is all its roots and culms and leaves,

yet every leaf contains the whole,

every living thing that breathes

and all its universes, as well.

All things are perfect

in their subatomic details

and reach out blindly to direct

networks of rhyzomes and roots 

carrying new, all different, identical shoots

to every part of infinite space

until the chain of being fails.

And every leaf has a human face,

and every culm is a human heart.

At the end of a kalpa,

the grove gathers its energy

in an explosion of mass flowering;

an outward showering

of fruit and seed.

The clones wither and die,

the culms dry

and disintegrate

and crumble into food

to fulfill the eternal need

as a new regeneration germinates

and the whole grove reincarnates.

* Bamboos are part of the Poaceae, The Grass Family.

Brian Taylor

ECONOMIC CRISIS

BE SMILE DENTIST advertises down on

Soi Anuman Rajadhon.

Next door Anglo East Surety Broker

insures diamonds and gemstones.

Having struggled with the world’s economic crisis,

faced with a shortage of government bailout schemes,

Anglo East has decided on a fundamental solution

and invited ninety-nine monks to come and chant

in this microcosm of pollution.

Here the open sewers allow scavenging rats

to escape the tooth and claw of ravening cats.

The one way street is choked

by two way traffic.

Pavements are blocked

by plastic chairs and tables,

charcoal stoves and washing bowls.

Food-sellers tap into the water mains

and empty refuse and dirty water down the drains,

adding to their universal smell

charcoal smoke, grilled fish, pork and chicken.

It is a jostling compost heap of life

serving everything from bankers to bacteria.

Last night the residents closed the street

and washed and scrubbed it.

In the early morning barriers were erected.

At one end an awning protected

ninety-nine white chairs.

At the other end, another awning covered 

tables dressed with white and saffron

along three sides of a square.

Over five hundred people converged

and piled the tables high with offerings;

cooked and uncooked food, new robes,

bananas, sugar, coffee, cakes, tea,

tinned milk, incense, soap and pastry.

Ninety-nine monks filed in

and filled the chairs

with an early morning blaze

of brown and saffron robes.

The faithful knelt or squatted

on pavement and road

to receive the precepts of morality

and listen to the chanting.

By the power of the Buddha

may you all be happy.

By the power of the Dhamma

may you all be happy.

By the power of the Sangha

may you all be happy…….

The monks then filed towards the tables

and made a circuit

around the inside of the square,

while lay people filled their begging bowls

from the other side.

As fast as they were filled,

attendants emptied them

into the large black plastic bags waiting there.

Round and round they went

until at last the tables were completely bare.

The monks returned to their temples.

The people returned the street to the municipality,

rats, cats, bankers and bacteria.

The awnings, chairs and tables

went back to the hiring company.

The monks had received donations.

The people had made merit.

The owners of Anglo East Surety Brokers

had made ninety-nine merit.*

The demons of economic crisis

had been exorcised.

*Why ninety-nine monks? There is a play on words here. In Thai the word kao “nine”, with the same tone but a different spelling, means “a step forward” It therefore acts as an intensive. So if feeding one monk makes merit, feeding ninety-nine monks makes twice as much merit.  No doubt if the road had been more than a back street, we would have seen 999 monks – even more merit and, perhaps, a serious and timely economic upturn.


From Bamboo Leaves by Brian Taylor

FLOWERS OF THE HUMAN SPIRIT

Bangkok Royal Temple Guard

A woman looks up
from her place
among the dirt and pollution
of Silom Road and joins
her palms together in salutation.

Someone has put two one-baht coins
in her plastic cup
(without looking at her face).

One hundred yards away,
The British Club is going to cool
their swimming pool
with ice for a Polar Swim
at 11.00 a.m. on New Year’s Day.
“Free of Charge. Free hot mulled wine.”
(There is a double crash barrier
with uniformed security guards
to protect would-be polar swimmers.)

At the Bangkok Motor Show,
an as-white-as-snow
Bugatti Veyron is à la carte,
escorted by swirling girls
in white satin evening gowns.
253 mph top speed,
turbocharged, all souped-up.
To squeeze out
all its growling sounds,
you will need
to take 165 million baht

out of your plastic cup.



From Bamboo Leaves by Brian Taylor

DANCE OF THE SPIRITS

Thai Temple Guard

The invitation is in elegant sepia Siamese script
on very pale pink card with embossed borders.
“All disciples and honourable guests
are invited to join
in paying respects
to the Teachers.”
The teachers are unusual though:
Great Teacher Rishi
Grandfather Wealth
His Royal Highness Love Flower
Chao Poh Dhamthamin
Chao Poh the Black and Ruthless
Chao Mère Golden Champa.
All of them are dead
but they will be there
for they are spirits.
His Royal Highness is a son
of King Chulalongkorn
who drowned, when he was ten,
in the sea near Bangsaen.
These spirits are devoted to helping people.

Pranom’s mother had been their medium.
When she died, they moved to Pranom instead.
On Sunday, at the House by the Temple Wall,
breakfast for the monks is at seven,
respects to the Teachers at nine,
lunch at twelve.

Downstairs, under the house,
fifty people are waiting
and excitedly talking.
Are you going up?
“Oh, no. Oh no!”
They laugh.

Upstairs, fourteen mediums,
including Pranom (The Conciliator)
are changing into costumes.
There are six musicians,
with a ranard, two big drums,
one small drum and brass chings.

Along one wall are shelves.
On the top shelf is a large effigy
of Great Teacher Rishi,
hair tied up, long grey beard,
wearing a tiger skin robe.
Under him, tiers of images, mostly male
with some small children.
These are all tutelary spirits
who possess the bodies of the mediums.
The lowest shelf has an elaborate decoration
of banana leaves and flowers.
On the floor, a big smouldering,
clay joss stick holder.
Behind it kong wai (offerings)
of cakes, drinks and fruit.
Along the opposite wall, the monks
have sat, eaten their breakfast,
chanted a mantra bestowing merit
on the donors and departed.
About twenty “disciples and respectable people”
are watching the mediums change.
Pranom is local, the rest from other districts.
One dresses all in red, two in gold.
An old man appears as an Ayudhaya soldier.
He speaks entirely in rhyming verse.
Most are in white, old-fashioned Thai style.
Many are plump and middle-aged.
One girl, all in red, is in her late teens.
She is the medium for Sung Thong
(The Golden Conch Shell). *

Pranom begins. She takes one joss stick
and concentrates her attention on it.
The musicians play, two of them chant
mantras which evoke spirits.
Pranom is sitting cross-legged.
She starts to sway round and round
violently and erratically
like an unbalanced top.
She stops swaying and sits erect
before jumping eighteen inches straight up
and falling back on her plump
haunches with a great thump.
She is fat and bounces,
bang, bang, bang.
Her movements get wilder
as the musicians play louder
until she flops down on her face.
Great Teacher Rishi has arrived.
She takes seven candles,
holds them tightly together and lights them.
The flames flare up like a great torch
which she plunges into her mouth.
This is the signal
for the other mediums.
They sway demonically,
bounce incredibly
high on their middle-aged haunches,
and finally flop forwards or backwards
when the spirits come.
They light candles. They swallow flames.
All the joss sticks in the clay pot are alight
and, with the candle smoke,
create a thick haze in which the mediums
dance round the room
in time to the boom-boom
of the musicians,
stopping every few steps
to pay respects to each other.
The crashing, the banging, the noise
confirm the fears of all those beneath the floor
who had not dared to come up
but could not bear to keep away.

Pranom receives the first believer,
an old man with a half-crazed look.
Great Teacher Rishi’s voice grates out,
“You cut trees down didn’t you?”
The man nods humbly.
“Don’t you know that in those trees
there were devas?
That’s why they’ve made you mad.
You saw two men standing there, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Get them a spirit house.
Then you will be all right.”

A big man, from another province, is next.
“You got what you wanted, didn’t you?
Boss of the Coca Cola Company
in Rayong now, aren’t you?”
The man smiles and bows.

Suddenly, one of the mediums
calls out that the Cripple is coming.
She crouches and writhes
(and swallows fire.)
The other mediums come and pay their respects.

All the mediums are receiving devotees
But the music is so loud
it is impossible to hear what is said.

By now the Prince
has replaced the Rishi in Pranom.
she comes over and a child’s voice asks,
“When are you going back?”
I don’t know.
“You have an advantage over lots of people,
living in two countries.
May you be well, happy and rich.”

After two-and-a-half hours,
the spirits leave.
The mediums start to change
into ordinary clothes.
We go over to a warrior in red,
an attractive girl in her mid-twenties.
She is smoking
two cigarettes at once
which she is holding
between the index
and middle fingers of one hand.

How does it feel?

“That is too broad a question.
Be more specific.”

Who are you?

“Many: Brahma, Siva, Naraya.
Our purpose is giving
without expecting anything in return.
Give with the giving heart.
To do this you need
to be well established
in morality and Dhamma.
Those who drink alcohol and smoke
cigarettes are not wrong.”
Really?
No answer.

We went downstairs.
Lunch was beginning.
On our way out,
we were given five bags
of food and fruit.

At half past four,
lunch was still being eaten.
Late in the evening,
music could still be heard.
 

* In Indian Legend, a Queen gave birth to a conch shell. The king's minor wife was jealous of this and bribed the court astrologer to say it was a bad omen. It was banished by being thrown into the river. Later, a Prince emerged from it who, after many adventures, became king himself and ruled wisely and justly. The story is told in a Thai poem written by King Rama ll.

From Bamboo Leaves by Brian Taylor

CHINESE NEW YEAR

Chinese New Year

always comes in February.

(Usually.)

This is the last

of the twelve year cycle;

the Year of the Pig.

Processions, dragon dances,

fireworks and smoke,

cymbals and drums.

The Chinese close their shops,

do not sweep their houses

and pay respect

to the Ancestors.

They put a spray

of cream and purple orchids

on car radiators.

They put peacock-eye feathers

in the Spirit House of Chao Ti.

This year

a thin woman

hung up her baby

by its left ankle.

She let it bob and scream

as an entertainment.

A silver coloured bowl

collected offerings.

The string broke.

Someone caught the baby.

Muslims exploded bombs,

killed an army major,

burned Buddhist schools.

Someone stole our telephone wire.

(Copper is making a hundred baht a kilo.)

LOTUS POND MARKET

Looking neither left nor right,

a proud and sensitive Chinese face,

here by the Lotus Pond Market,

seems a little out of place.

Straight back, head held high,

adjusts her hair with manicured hand;

red panung, blue-and-white print shirt,

manouvres with care her sandalled feet,

as though she has stepped down from a higher band

into the squalor and dirt

of Chumporn Street.

But, as she passes the open shop,

something makes her stop

and look up where

she sees the fat Chinese,

above the street, at her table there.

The Chinese gestures, the girl hesitates,

thinks to walk on, stands and waits;

then steps up with an embarrassed smile

and sits down in the other chair.

The Chinese gives her a deck of cards,

talking all the while,

which the girl shuffles with surprising skill

and hands them back.

Without looking, the Chinese cuts the pack

and deals them professionally,

mostly to herself, occasionally

one or two to the girl, who looks carefully

at the cards she collects.

The Chinese gathers up her hand,

fans them face down

and invites the girl to select.

Hesitating, she takes two

and adds them to her own.

She watches the Chinese who

touches the girl’s cards, talking in a monotone

suddenly broken by a sharp question.

The girl raises her eyes in surprise

and starts to reply,

stops, looks down again

and pronounces one word.

Slowly, she begins to speak.

An eddy of excitement

spirals up and straightens her back.

She points to this card and that

and taps them with delight.

She slaps her knee.

She bangs the table.

She stamps her feet,

bounces up and down on her chair,

laughing and flushed.

The Chinese watches her

with a slowly flowering smile.

The girl chatters on

and, with a final slap,

puts her head back and laughs.

Then she counts out thirty baht

for the Chinese, scrapes her chair

and walks on down Chumporn Street,

looking neither left nor right.

CONFUSCIUS HE SAY...

You see them striding everywhere
from where there’s here to somewhere there

with a box made of two shallow trays

which open out like a folding table,

like those in which a lepidopterist displays

dead butterflies each pinned down with its label.

The old Chinese has sat all day long

on that low wall in Surawong

with his box, staring intently

at the lottery tickets laid out neatly.

He takes a 1000 baht note from his pocket

and touches each ticket

stroking it thoroughly but gently.

Is he trying to magnetise them

to draw in a man who comes and (sometimes) buys them?

FOOTPRINTS ON THE MOON

Blue shorts, stained white shirt,

street market playground of dust and dirt.
Without the moral imperative of must

and the enforced need to understand,

he dances in a circle,

holding a yellowed bodhi leaf in each hand.

With all the self-assurance of thirty inches high,

he has no need to wonder how or when or why.

From 'Bamboo Leaves' by Brian Taylor

TWO TREES

Muslin wrap round a Bodhi Tree in Thailand

Khun’s house stands impermanently
by a large and ancient Bodhi tree.
This has lent him its shade
since the house was first made
and has spread its branches comfortably.
Under such a tree was Buddha enlightened.

Hundreds of birds come here
to nest,
to rest,
to watch the night fade
and the dark sun appear.

Khun has heard of chicken flu.
Seeing all those birds, he fears
that he might catch it too.
He drew the Council’s attention to it.
He wanted the tree cut down
and the Council to do it.
The Council refused,
said no, declined, demurred.
But Khun was not so easily deterred
and hired a local man to do it for him.
But first he knelt down on the ground
(Suchit saw him).
He put his hands together
in a gesture of submission
and asked the Bodhi tree’s permission.

I do not know
what the tree had to say
but I do know
it was chopped the very same day.

Opposite Wat Krathum,
a large and ancient banyan tree
has been blown down by the wind.
A Medium says the deva
has been complaining it is homeless.
On Sunday the old Headmaster (eighty three)
announced in the Temple
that local people had collected
seven thousand baht
for a large Spirit House to be erected
next to the stump.

(Note: In Buddhist Southeast Asia it is not unusual for tree devas to be seen, resulting in a large, red, green or yellow muslin-type cloth being wrapped round the trunk of the particular tree, to indicate that it should not be cut down. Offerings are then made to it (the deva) such as lighted joss sticks, rice and fruit.)

THE MEDIUM

Last evening a heavy crunching
on the gravel drive
between here and the river.
Ang and Dek are dragging a spirit house
through a moonless night.

What are you doing?

“Can we throw this
into the river in front of your house?”

Why?

“It is empty. Manit has bought a new one.”

Why bring it here?

“We can’t leave it by the road.
Bad spirits move into empty houses
by the road and cause accidents.”

Drop it in the river by your house.

“The bank is wrong.
It goes straight down.
Here the bank slopes.
It will slide down.
The river devas will take care of it.
There will be no danger.”

Tong Dee is thin
wears a yellow shirt,
has short hair.
However she puts her body,
it is uncomfortable.
For six weeks she has been a medium.
When she speaks,
it is with the voice of a spirit drifting
between death and rebirth,
trying to communicate with the living,
grasping at mother earth
with de-atomizing fingers.

It is making Tong Dee ill and thin.
Wek, her grandmother,
has invited a great Deva
to stop the spirits getting in.

Today, Tong Dee’s mouth complained,
“They have taken my house.
I have nowhere to go.”

AMISAPUJA

“Ah Koh Lai was my Grandmother.
She was a great devotee
and kept back the best
fruit for the alms round.
She hoarded up her money for the Temple.
When the rice plants
were pregnant with milk
in the young grains,
she would cut strips of plain white cloth.
She dyed them
in turmeric and water.
She tied them
on bamboo poles
and made yellow banners.
She planted one in each rice field.
She stuck a post in the ground
with a plate on top
and piled it with food and fruit.
Then she would light jossticks
and respectfully invite Mère Pho Sop *
to come and receive her offerings.”

* The Rice Goddess



JUNGLE GREEN

Trees calm the brain,
absorb the poison
of its thoughts
and return them
clean again.

Gong is the Land Guardian
of this place.
Old Chinese face,
Chinese hanging shorts,
pointed Chinese hat
of palm leaf and bamboo frame.
He sits with his back to the river
by the tumbledown remains
of his spirit house,
which has endured all of thirty years.

From ‘Bamboo Leaves’ by Brian Taylor