The Only Color in the World
I rode my bike across the Chinese countryside. The sky, like the earth, was a dull orange, and the village, behind a rise to the north, was still quiet this early morning. The roadside vendors I passed were still asleep, their still forms thickly bundled in grimy cotton quilts as they lay behind their wood-frame sheds along the roadside.
One old man was awake, his arms spread out and rotating slowly in his Tai Chi Chuan exercises. His face was without expression, and he did not in the slightest way acknowledge me as I wheeled past.
Climbing Mount Fuji
The day finally arrived when my Japanese friend Masahiro and I were going to climb Mt. Fuji. His family seemed a bit nervous, and even though I really did not know what lie ahead, I reassured them that we would be fine.
The Best Christmas Present
I’m always going to remember Christmas Eve of 2001.
My kids, who were 6 and 8 at the time, were sitting by the Christmas tree anxiously waiting to open their presents (our family tradition is to open our Christmas presents at midnight on Dec. 24th).
Travel Picks of the Week 9/28/2007
Two and a half billion people worldwide consume street food, per UN. Authentic taste, cost and convenience are reasons for its ever-increasing popularity. Here’s how to chow down street food safely.
Love Conquers All
Oh to have been a monk on that day! To have been a part of the hundred thousand, a drop in the saffron wave! With our heavy and mournful steps, all slowly plodding out the lament and sorrow of a nation. It was a march of wonder and compassion and, to sell it short, divine patience. Their ranks cut a swath into the very soul of those who choose to oppress them. Their cries were heard around the world and we watched bleary-eyed, wonder-eyed and hollow-eyed.
Then to our shock, the arresting started. The killings started. The kidnappings started. We shouldn’t be surprised– it was always likely– but we still hope, because it’s all we can really do. And somehow this time around, the glimmer of hope is a little stronger and the scorn of retaliation is that much darker. Distant, but very real, tides are shifting. This is a nation standing on the precipice.
Its fate rests once again on the thin shoulders of the monks. The society is indebted to them, just as they, as monks, are indebted to the laity. Buddhism is so thoroughly and devoutly saturated in the country, that the focal point of this, and all major protests in Burma is the Shwedegon Pagoda in central Rangoon. It is the most holy pagoda in the entire country—hence it is the most fitting and symbolic place for the collective yearning for peace by fifty million poor, heart-broken souls.
Almost every boy in Burma has served, is serving or will serve as a monk at some point in their life. Most will only last a few months. Some will last a few days. Others will last a lifetime. They will wake up every morning and ask for alms. So begins the cycle of goodwill, every morning of every day—the monks asking and the people giving.
They have no desire for power or wealth or fame. They simply want peace. They provide the country with services that the government crassly overlooks. There are no state run orphanages, for example, but the monasteries, despite limited resources, take in and nurture the country’s abandoned youth, many of whose parents were killed during previous uprisings. They provide schooling and medical care to people in need. They provide normalcy.
To deny a monk, or pass up an opportunity for karmic goodwill through alms giving is seen as the biggest sin one can commit. The most momentous act of contempt the sangha, the monks and nuns of the country, can show to this wretched government is to ‘turn over the alms bowls.’ This means that not only is the laity barred from giving alms, they are actually denied karmic restitution by the monks themselves. There is nothing more extreme in Burmese Buddhism than this.
The Conciousness of a Nation, The Tooth of a Leader
Burma is a land of chaos. While former British colonies have all responded differently to a remarkably changing world, Burma has languished. India is now a sprawling democracy and Hong Kong is an economic wonderland, but Burma remains the most ruined of them all, seemingly unable to remember how to stand on its own two feet.
Cyclically, it seems, ripples build into a cataclysmic wave as the common will of the people lash out against oppressive forces that condemn them to live a life of toil and misery. Always, and unfailing, they have had Buddhism, and their monks, to turn to in times of the most desperate and frantic sorrow. That glorious religion has been the thin veneer between a life of abject horror and a life of tumultuous perseverance.
Fall TSM Travel Writing Contest: Win $125!
Read The Current Travel Writing Contest Submissions
Trip to Hiroshima and Miyajima
Trip to Hiroshima and Miyajima During my spring break, I took a trip with my fellow IES students to Hiroshima and Miyajima, which is an island right off the coast of Hiroshima. Enjoy. Read more
Our Travel Picks of the Week 09/21/07
Here are our favorite links we’ve come across over the week.
September is here and Japan is all set for the centuries old traditions of tsukimi (moon watching) and koyo (red fall foliage). Whether you participate in the activities in Nishizawa Valley or by the lakes of Mount Fuji, here’s the bow-down on Japanese etiquette.
The Sad Reality About Thailand
The lure of the forbidden is a powerful force in travel. When you find yourself in a new place, surrounded by faces you’ve never seen before, faces so much unlike your own, personal identity somehow gets lost in the swirling ‘otherness’ around you. It’s kind of like perception/understanding vertigo. When we travel we can be anyone we want to be.
Our traveling selves are not our stagnant selves. We are more apt to try new things, expand our horizons, dive into sometimes hazy and circumspect situations. We are emboldened when we travel, no longer restrained by what our co-workers or neighbors or family might think. Thousands of miles away, they will only have the pictures to draw from.
It’s odd how the romanticized, antiquated images that all of us carry about the rest of the world somehow transform themselves into a quasi-reality that exists only on the collective will of those who hold it dear. Somehow the luxuriant opium dens and exotic, often forbidden beauty of the Far East have reemerged in the modern world—only now it’s a land of cheap drugs and cheaper sex.
