dhamma footsteps

OLD NOTEBOOKS #39: Chiang Mai: Coming up to Chiang Mai from Hat Yai was done in two stages, with the stopover at Bangkok, as we did going down. It was the same thing, the other way round. Everything already seen, but occurring in reverse order and the hassle and stress we experienced on the way down got cancelled out on the return journey. Like an old videtapeo on fast-rewind, it stops at the…

OLD NOTEBOOKS: Bangkok: Sravasti 2012: There’s a presence about these statues and Buddhist ruins, sunk deeper into the landscape than they were in ancient times. The seasons revolve around them; rainfall, heat, sand storms and the centuries come and go. People come to visit, pray, bow, apply gold-leaf, string garlands, light incense, show reverence and take pictures of their friends standing next…

OLD NOTEBOOKS #289: Chiang Mai: It’s all coming to an end here, I go back to Delhi tomorrow and today is the 5th of November… remember, remember the fifth of November. Scary things, monsters and Halloween coming to an end too, for my Thai niece M aged 13 who is not interested in it any more. Not interested in witches hats and dressing up – dressing up maybe yes, interested. Or dressing down, torn…

OLD NOTEBOOKS #253: Chiang Mai: A short flight to Bangkok to see the needle man for the last attempt to anesthetize the head pain I’ve had for more than a year. Back to Chiang Mai the same day and it feels like it never happened, except for the pain where the needle went in – the scritch-scritch sound when needle point scratched the skull. I’m thinking maybe the pain is gone, walking through a…

OLD NOTEBOOKS #84: Delhi: Eight thirty in the morning, coming into town from the airport, great rivers of traffic and car horns hooting and tooting like flocks of geese in a poultry market. Shym is driving, I’m in the back… an opportunity for me to consider how difficult all this could be. Confrontations up-front and in-close brinkmanship… give-and-take becomes push-and-shove, not enough space,…

OLD NOTEBOOKS#220: [First Published August 26, 2016] Chiang Mai: A long story short is that I fell. Gravity got me, it gets us all in the end. Friends took me to a Chiang Mai hospital – “flactured lib,” the X-Ray man said, with dodgy pronunciation of the /L/ and /R/ sounds. They took me home, but later that night I was having such an awful time struggling with pain, family members took me back to…

OLD NOTEBOOKS:  Valentine’s Day 2013: ‘All you need is love, love, love is all you need…’ The problem is if you love that person, you can’t love that other person as much. So, you have to manage all the likes, dislikes and unlikes; friend and ‘unfriend’ too. The stormy weather of loving one thing completely and other things not at all – but how can we love everything? The practice of mettā holds…

OLD NOTEBOOKS: Chiang Mai:I met somebody in a coffee shop the other day and he was saying, it’s all just words, isn’t it? We were talking about the difference between the Advaita Self and the Theravada Buddhist no-self. I was saying no-self is a deconstructed form of Self. The man in the coffee shop wouldn’t say yes or no to that (it’s all just words). Theravadin Buddhism is about seeing through…

OLD NOTEBOOKS#43: Chiang Mai: It’s been a long-extended morning, awake before dawn. Jet-lagged, my day began at 3 am – not a day, a night… correction, not ‘a’ night, just ‘night’, no defining characteristics. Night, as in: ‘the state of night.’ Night as an abstract noun, the darkness that envelops all beings in sleep, including a few birds, head-under-wing, perched on small branches in the…

OLD NOTEBOOKS #232: New Delhi: Awareness expands to include landscapes of President-Elect Donald J. Trump’s hate/fear, bully/victim and finding the middle ground in these conditions of duality is not an option these days, it’s absolutely necessary. Urgency of the imperative; ‘I’ have to find a place of equanimity here; mindfulness is a requirement, awareness rather than ignorance (ignoring). I am…

Chiang Mai: Went down to Bangkok with Jiab and our niece M, aged 12, for the New Year get-together with family, which was happening in the house where we used to live. Strange familiarity of furniture and objects seeming to jump out and call to me… M’s old toys abandoned here and there – a childhood almost gone. The next day, she went back to Chiang Mai with her mum, Jiab set off for Wat Poo Jom…

OLD NOTEBOOKS: A VILLAGE NEAR HAT YAI: JULY 24. 2012: Silence all around in the heat of the afternoon, save for the sudden ‘crack’ of roof tiles expanding in the high temperature. Birds and insects for the most part quiet, an isolated single syllable: ‘chirp’ sound, then quiet again. I look up, anorexic chicken is standing in my open doorway because it sees me sitting inside. It’s thinking maybe…

OLD NOTEBOOKS Bangkok-Delhi flight: A glance around the departure area at Bangkok, the gate for the Delhi flight, and there are children running around. It’s a weekend flight; plane is going to be full of kids. Okay, ready for boarding, I have a gold card (frequent flyer) and can board early. It gives me time to get things stowed away and squeeze into my seat. Not a lot of room in economy class.…

OLD NOTEBOOKS: Chiang Mai: Stuck in a tuktuk at the intersection, a huge volume of traffic coming the other way. We’ll have to wait 10 minutes maybe. Driver switches off the engine, leans back and it’s suddenly quiet. This brings me some ease; mind is racing, I’m on the way to the computer repair shop with my laptop in the bag – no control of the cursor… can’t do anything. Frustration, and this…

OLD NOTEBOOKS: Bangkok: The Thai new year came and went and it happened I had to go for a medical, nothing important I thought, but the doc said my blood pressure was a bit high and gave me some pills to take. Anyway, when M got to hear about it, she had to have the term blood pressure explained to her and I became her patient – she’d arranged something on the porch, a comfortable chair and low…

OLD NOTEBOOKS: The Delhi to Bangkok journey: TV drama going on as I’m packing, I see it, stop and watch: intense dialogue, close up on faces, directors’ exercise in portraiture. Carry on with my packing, gathering things from here and there – then the TV catches my eye again, sit to watch, and the credits come up… is that the end already? But it’s not the end it’s the beginning. An extremely long…

Delhi/Chiang Mai (Skype call): The whisper of a felt-tip pen on paper: shashee shashee shoo shoo shoo… otherwise, silence in the room. M is drawing a picture, colouring in, and this is a Skype call to Thailand – the picture and sound quality so good, it’s almost real. Sadly, though, it’s not real and you’d expect more animated conversations from a 10-year-old girl, but that’s not how it is right…