Dealing with Kneeling

The last couple of days have been quite quiet, as I’ve mainly sequestered myself in my room and have been avoiding people. This is actually a bit difficult to do since if I want to eat I have to go to the gathering in the morning (or go to town and buy something) and that tends to mean running into lots of people with suggestions of things to do or talk about or places to go. I went to the garden the other day and did a stint for a couple of hours hoeing pineapple plants. It actually felt kind of good to be out there and to look back and know I’d done something when I was done. (It was awfully hot though, and I felt a bit like a wet dishrag when I was done) There’s a very large field of pineapples interspersed with rows of trees. The rows seem very long – maybe 300 or 400 meters and there’s not a lot of help out there so some of them are pretty overgrown. It’s hard to find the poor pineapple plants sometimes. Anyway, I’ve not been back yet despite saying that I would and have been hiding out in my room instead.

I’ve actually been really really tired for some reason, and feeling very antisocial. There’s been a bit of a flue or cold bug or something going around and so maybe my body is fighting that. Whatever the reason, here I am. (Note: I wrote this two days ago. I'm not still in my room, and I did go back for another stint in the garden...)  :-)

This morning however, while attempting to avoid being asked to go anywhere, I was invited to a lunch that a woman was putting on for her son’s birthday. Usually when I’m invited to lunch it just means me and a couple of other people having a small social gathering. Today I arrived to the sound of chanting (which was actually quite nice) and found about 20 monks arranged on the floor around two big plastic mats, with food piled in the middles. They finished their chanting and the eating started – monks first as is the custom here, served by the nuns and laypeople. There wasn’t room for two groups, so we brought food to the monks, and waited for them to be finished. I didn’t help much and mostly tried to stay out of the way, but at one point I was handing out some dessert custard and one of the monks said quite nicely “please sit”. At first I thought he was inviting me to join him, which was strange because it was kind of a formal dinner situation and I wasn’t a monk. Then I realized he was saying I shouldn’t hand food to monks by just bending over and giving it to them, I needed to kneel down and then hand it to them, and he was instructing me in his culture.

Well, I understand that this is Thai culture and I know that Thai people learn to kneel and bow to monks and royalty from birth. I also understand that it is a way of showing respect and that to Thai people it is showing respect to the role of the monk as much or more than to the individual person. It is part of what makes Thai society work and it is a good practice in letting go of some parts of ego. It is also a sometimes helpful contrast to the lack of respect that we have for authority in the West – a lack of respect that renders being in charge of things an often very difficult and thankless task.

So, I know all of this, but I still found myself gritting my teeth about being asked to kneel to give some frigging dessert to these guys. I’ve been doing pretty well with the kneeling and bowing at the morning gatherings. There’s quite a bit of it sometimes, but it turns out to be quite a good stretch routine and kind of helpful for the knees and back, so when I get uptight about it I just make it into exercise. The combination of being asked to kneel (however politely) to serve food though kind of pushed my tolerance level a bit.

It all went OK of course. The monks finished and left and the rest of us ate what was left (there was plenty), and the day went on.

It generally doesn’t help to resist things very much I suppose, but sometimes it just comes up and there it is. What to do about it? Just notice it I guess and don’t get too concerned, like with anything else that comes up. I doubt that my resistance to kneeling is going to make a lot of difference in the world as we know it anyway. I’m not even sure if it’s called for – respect is an important part of a social system. I would have to say, though, that I’m officially against indiscriminate kneeling and postures of subservience, and if there’s an anti kneeling and postures of subservience group in existence somewhere I would be a card carrying member, except that I’m also somewhat resistant to groups organized for the purpose of resistance...

So there…   J