The Master

“… And wherever he lives,
In the city or the country,
In the valley or in the hills,
There is great joy.”
                -Dhammapada

 

I have the great fortune to be almost anywhere I like.  That’s partly true.  Recently, I have been staying in a small village on the banks of Nam Ou in Laos.  On the surface, one will identify what we in the west call poverty.  There are no screens on the windows, “running” water is actually a rain barrel and a hose.  Electricity comes in dull two hour increments each night.  Children play flip-flop toss in the street, their shoes serve as shoes and cushions and toys and weapons and whatever other practical use they can find.  Adults draw from the river their sustenance and mend their nets in the heat of the afternoon shade.

Every once in a while, I can peer past these attributes and see wealth.  Out of the corner of my eyes across the rice paddies children play in the sun and laugh carefree.  Do I see Eden out there, in the corner of my eye?  Not everything is perfect.  Life can difficult here, too.  Some times the stakes are very high – life or death.  But is this really different than anywhere else? Maybe we have removed ourselves so much from the basics of being human that when we see it in full force, it appears as poverty and high risk.

In this place, I can hear my thoughts more clearly.  I can feel the rising and cresting and sinking of the sun.  I can smell the sappy dew of incoming rain.  I can taste the broth of endlessness and immediacy stewed together to make the feast of today and tomorrow.  It is just like being back in Brooklyn.

Exactly like Brooklyn except there are no cars, no horns, no film crews banging outside my window at 5 a.m.  It is just the same as any city, except there are no flashing lights or rumbling sounds of shopkeepers’ metal gates slamming their merchandise into safety for the night.  There are no loud noises and no pushing people an no irate customers and no very busy, very important, very overwhelming people high on the fumes of the social status machine.  Yes, where I am now in Laos is exactly like anywhere else.  Just a little different.

Behind the noises of the street, beyond the thunderous approaching airplanes, just below the roar of the subway, there exists everything that exists here on the banks of Nam Ou – happiness, serenity, joy.  Sometimes it takes a trip to a place like this to realize it.  Sometimes people get confused and think they need to be here to listen to the sound of joy.