Wat Pho

A child drops coins in to the alm pots at Wat Pho in Bangkok. Photo by David Lansing.

As we were leaving the temple of the Reclining Buddha, Ketsara handed me a small tin can—like an empty tuna can—filled with Bhat coins.

“What’s this?” I asked her.

“For you,” she said. “To make offering.”

She pointed towards the back wall where dozens of metal pots were lined up. A little boy was going along, carefully dropping a coin into each pot. Others were doing the same.

“Put coin in each pot,” she said. “Think about it when you do.”

“What do I think about, Kuhn Ketsara?”

“Think of being generous. That is why there is more than one pot. This help you achieve dana parami. That is number one enlightenment.”

I asked her what parami was.

“Parami mean perfection. The completeness of something. To become Buddha, you must have parami of ten perfections. This one number one. You ask me what are the other attributes of the Friday Buddha, Rumpueng. One is you don’t know as much about yourself as you think you do. That make it very hard to attain parami. Maybe this help.”

So I walked along the cool, dark wall of the temple, thinking hard on the parami of generosity and the giving of myself. I thought very hard indeed. And when I’d reached the last pot, I still had a number of coins in my little tin. I asked Ketsara what I should do with them.

“Put rest in last pot. Then make wish.”

I dropped in the coins. I made a wish. I didn’t tell Ketsara what it was. But I think from the look she gave me that she already knew.

The 150-foot-long Reclining Buddha at Wat Pho in Bangkok. Photos by David Lansing.

We are on our way to see the Reclining Buddha at Wat Pho. Steve and I have been bickering all morning. Like two young tiger cubs we snarl and claw at each other in play but sometimes one or the other of us gets a little too rambunctious and blood is drawn. Like a patient tiger mom, Ketsara has been silently watching us.

“What day were you born?” she asks me.

Friday, I tell her.

She nods. “I can see that.”

I ask her why she wants to know. She says for Thai Buddhists, there is a Buddha for every day of the week, depending on what day you were born.

The head of the Reclining Buddha. Photo by David Lansing.

“Your Buddha the Thoughtful Buddha, Pang Rumpueng. That mean Thoughtful. This Buddha is standing with arms crossed over his chest, like so.” And she shows me the pose of the Thoughtful Buddha. I ask her to tell me more about my Buddha. “This mean you see things many more don’t see. The world needs someone like you to create. You are a creator. Your color blue—like the King of Thailand.”

This all sounds lovely but I feel there is more to it than this. “What are the negative things about the Friday Buddha?” I ask her.

She doesn’t answer me immediately. When she does, she says, “Why you want to know bad things?”

“Because it’s yin and yang,” I say. “You’ve only told me the half of it. The good stuff. I want to know the rest.”

Ketsara, looking very serious, says, “I will tell you another time. When just the two of us.”

All of this talk has made Steve, who was born on a Tuesday, anxious to know who his Buddha is.

“You Reclining Buddha,” Ketsara tells Steve.

“Oh my god you guys, we’re going to see my Buddha!”

The Reclining Buddha at Wat Pho is so large (over 150-feet long) that it is almost impossible to take a single image of it. Steve keeps sticking an elbow in my ribs as we walk around the Buddha. “This is my Buddha,” he says gleefully. It is impressive. But perhaps there is an equally impressive Thoughtful Buddha somewhere in Thailand. We will see.