Year described in stories, mementos

By Donna Beth Weilenman
Staff Reporter

In the same room where she publicly announced that she was about to spend a year in South and Southeast Asia, Judie Donaldson on Tuesday described her adventures before a backdrop of beautiful, touching and even amusing photographs.

Standing in the Doña Benicia Room of Benicia Public Library, Donaldson described Thailand’s beautiful Festival of Lights celebration, the respect accorded the Thai monarchy and religious guides, and the influx of residents to that nation from many other countries.

She made the decision to go to Asia, primarily Thailand, in part to expand her study of Buddhism, because the country and that religion virtually are one.

She also is a student of the condition of women, and among her visits she went to the International Center for Buddhist Women, a monastery founded by a woman who is training other women — even those in their 80s — to follow a monastic path.

“I returned in April for the initiation of 40 women,” Donaldson said. Part of the ceremony was the cutting of each initiate’s hair, and the task was started by the women’s family members.

Donaldson said her trip changed her in many ways. “I packed way too much,” she told her audience. Learning to live more simply, even though she stayed in the trendy part of Chiang Mai, a major city, she shipped many of her things home.

In fact, faced with American overabundance once she returned to Benicia, she needed to remember a Buddhist precept that the two cultures are different, and that she shouldn’t judge.

Buddhism is ever-present in Thailand, she told her audience. Its monarchs must be Buddhist. Temples in Thailand are as prevalent as coffee shops are in the United States. And its precepts influence the Thai way of life with a perspective that’s often called “the Thai way.”

Buddhism values peace, so Thai people resist confrontation. The religion encourages compassion, so Thai people are friendly.

Such courtesy means that Thais don’t point, because that’s considered a rude gesture, she said. Softer gestures are substituted, and Thais greet each other with bows called “wei,” rather than the more intrusive shaking of hands.

Another Buddhist precept is karma, which Donaldson described as “you’re in charge of your own destiny.” Thai people express this by accepting with little drama both the good and bad events that occur in their lives.

Though like any modern nation they sometimes lack a sense of history, Chiang Mai and other cities are filled with the old architecture of palaces and temples, and rich stories from the past.

Three requirements of Buddhism, Donaldon told her audience, are to meditate, follow its precepts and to give. The first two are hard, she said, so many Thai Buddhists excel at the third. She observed some women go out every morning to assure that monks seeking alms got shares of rice. Another time, she saw miles of people lined up and sitting on a walkway next to a red carpet covered with flower petals. They were waiting for the passage of monks on a pilgrimage.

“I gained a new persective for the word ‘commitment,’” Donaldson said.

She was amazed at Thailand’s health care system, so inexpensive that some people fly to Thailand for operations, cheaper even with the airfare than having the procedures done at home.

She experienced the quality of that care firsthand after suffering a small fracture when she fell while standing on a chair.

The crime rate is low there, Donaldson noted. She photographed a handmade warning sign that announced non-Thai pickpockets were in the area.

She admitted she struggled with the Thai language. Preparing for her trip, she had taken classes, hired a tutor and tried the programs offered by Benicia Public Library, but the lessons didn’t stick.

Instead, she depended on helpful English speakers and her collection of flash cards of phrases and place names.

She attended several Buddhist retreats, three of which she described as “light,” “right” and “tight.”

The “light” retreat was an introduction to Zen attended by 25 women representing 11 countries. During that session Donaldson watched women assemble multi-room homes of supports they’d cover in mud.

The “right” retreat, which Donaldson attended while in Nepal at a site overlooking Kathmandu, was a study of the Tibetan form of Buddhism. Again, she saw people working, performing most of the heavy work manually.

At this retreat, attendees chose whether to remain silent or to speak. A New Zealand woman chose silence until her final day there. When she and Donaldson finally conversed, she explained that she was a midwife with Doctors Without Borders, working along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in areas where she wasn’t allowed to be outside except in an armored car.

Donaldson’s “Buddhist tight” retreat was in a monastery with cell-like accommodations and concrete beds. While attendees had mosquito netting, they were advised to have a flashlight with them and were reminded to catch any night creatures found crawling on their beds and put them into a pail so they could be released.

Besides Nepal, Donaldson also traveled to Vietnam, which still bears the marks of the conflict of the 1960s and 1970s. The tragedies of the Viet Cong aren’t noted, but those by America are, she saw. However, the Vietnamese expressed little ill will toward Americans, she said. “That’s in the past,” she was told.

She saw floating gardens in Myanmar, the country once called Burma. That land is recuperating from “an oppressive, brutal military regime,” she said. The new democracy has its own struggles, “but it’s improving.”

Once she was back in Benicia, Donaldson was reminded of the difference in the cost of living, particularly when she went to a Benicia restaurant and spent $25 on a single meal. In Thailand, she easily got by on meals that cost no more than a dollar, some of which had such generous portions she had leftovers for another day.

“I never cooked,” she said.

She also realized how accustomed she had become to eating Thai style. Instead of using forks as they’re employed in America, Thai style is to use them to put food onto spoons, the preferred eating utensil.

Donaldson said despite her reading, research and study prior to leaving Benicia, she realized once she got established in Chiang Mai that she had no idea what to expect of her year away from home.

“I had heard it was charming, but it wasn’t cutesy,” she said. “Some buildings had been painted — once. Sidewalks are crumbled. Pollution has become so strong, many people wear masks. Walkways are used as parking lots, and avoiding traffic while crossing a street is a hazard.

“But I grew to love it just how it was,” she said. “My view of the world has changed.”