Temple of the Golden Buddha

Well, I did it, I'm done, I completed my two year contract in Thailand. My last day of work did not exactly go as I had hoped--namely, it entailed my boss screaming at me for not a terribly good or logical reason (I mean, really, is there ever a terribly good reason to scream?) and me bursting into tears when my calming breaths ceased working--but then the next day we hugged and mended fences, so no bridges were burned (a mixed metaphor, that).

I'm really excited about the various programs that I built from scratch, and I am very happy with the work that I'm leaving behind. There were many moments where the job was pure bliss, and I really feel like I did something productive and worthwhile. But as a whole, it was a gut-wrenching experience that took several years off of my life, and I would never voluntarily put myself through something that emotionally trying again. That said, I will never throw the baby out with the bathwater. I learned a lot, more than I would have if my work experience had been smooth from start to finish, and I'm so grateful for that.

I'm currently writing this from Vietnam. Peter and I arrived in Hanoi last night and we are headed to Halong Bay in about an hour. I'm so excited--I've had many dreams about Halong Bay, and I'm really looking forward to finally seeing it. I've spent the past four days in a hotel in Bangkok, being a tourist in the city where I've lived and worked for the past two years. I've loved exploring without having to worry about time limits, and I've absorbed every fascinating detail of this city.

I visited Wat Traimit--a.k.a. Temple of the Golden Buddha--and I wrote this while I was in there:

There is something about sitting in a temple in Asia that is unlike any other space. The aesthetics of prayer, and the thick, tactile nature of the wishes and desires are different from those uttered within the angled walls of churches. Devotees sit on the ground, waiing, prostrating, feet pointed away from the kind eyes of the Buddha--the Buddha, this gigantic screen, absorbing projections and bearing secrets, smirking in its joyful knowledge. I often find churches to be like secret clubhouses, where only the anointed, the repentant, the devoted, the judgmental can access the deep wells of calm and quiet and knowing within the jeweled glass of its speech, its dogma, its bearded truths. But temples--temples have aromatic breezes, fluid gasps of incense, and it houses an organic flow of pray-ers and visitors and beliefs, its chambers pumping in welcome like an open human heart. Monks and devotees look at me strangely as they watch me wai three times--once for the Buddha, once for the dharma, once for the monks--my blond head bobbing up and down, and then they smile, offer blessings, ask the standard question: "Where you come from?" Peaceful eyes, peaceful hearts. Bells twinkling blessings in a white hot breeze, candles carrying prayers skyward, eyebrows furrowed in fervent hope, lips mouthing questions and gratitude and requests. I received a blessing from a monk today--water sprinkled from a bundle of straw, a simple white string around my wrist, and two simple words: Good luck. This is where I come to feel empty, free, devoid of worry and self-congratulations and criticism and judgment and even passion. This is the color of bliss, of knowing without computing and analyzing, this is having a heart like a breeze, a mind like a bell, a soul within a soul within a soul, a simple white string connecting the purple throbbing veins of humanity's fibrous mosaic. Incense induces tears and garlands thicken the air with offerings. There is the flavor of silence in the back of my throat and my chest fills with presence. I don't want to leave.