Chiang Mai: 07.00 hours: The alarm rings…. it takes a moment to recognize I’m in Chiang Mai, arrived last night. Heavy curtains over the window; a darkness I’m not used to. It’s quiet here, the sound of monks chanting anumodana on the edge of hearing. A motorbike whizzes by in the distance, nothing else. Senses are alert, listening, feeling, searching for a way to ‘become’ something that will establish ‘me’ in this place and time but I can’t, I’m distracted by these new surroundings and keep returning to the narrative associated with interesting objects.

Walking across the room, bare feet on cool floor tiles, flip flop, flip flop, a sense of empty rooms, as yet uninhabited; space/time occupied with the moving of its integral parts – chapters from a book about furniture being moved into a new apartment, the ending hasn’t been written yet and the beginning is a continuation of what happened before that. Future time slides into present time, tomorrow becomes today, and ‘now’ becomes yesterday – here we are in the awareness of this moment, the means by which we arrive at this point in time is forever the mystery.

I go over to the window, slide open the curtain. A blaze of colour, five monks in varying shades of orange robes and a group of kneeling Thai tourists from the hotel opposite. (The original post is dated Christmas Day 2012.) In Thailand, 25th December is just an ordinary day, kids go to school, people go to work, government offices are open, mail gets delivered, transport systems are normal, it’s all open for business, same as usual. Yet there are Christmas decorations everywhere downtown, Christmas carols playing in all the malls and the season of goodwill has a place here even though the population are 95% Buddhist, 4% Moslem and only 1.2% Christian. It’s because Thai society is joyful; they like to share everything. They like playfulness – the word in Thai is sanuk (fun), everything has to be sanuk and if it’s not, it’s mai sanuk (seriously boring) and that’s very bad style.

 And there’s a lot I could say about consumerist schemes embedded in our lives in the West that has resulted in our losing so much of our inherited cultural traditions. The Christmas festival is layered over with the maya (illusion)of santaclausisms and it’s as if the essential part of our spiritual truth got forgotten along the way and consumerism came along in its place.

But this is getting too serious, not in accord with the principle of sanuk, so no more about that. Another important part of Thai culture is tamboon. It t refers to the act of giving. This is a core Buddhist practice involving good deeds like offering food to the monks, donating to temples, chanting, meditating.

So, Christmas Day fits perfectly with the Thai love gift-giving and festivals making any event fun. [Adapted from an original dated December 25, 2012]
Merry Christmas friends and fellow bloggers ~ December 25, 2025

“Through our eyes, the universe is perceiving itself. Through our ears, the universe is listening to its harmonies. We are the witnesses through which the universe becomes conscious of its glory, of its magnificence.” [Allan Watts]

“The vastness created these human circuitries in order to have an experience of itself out of itself that it couldn’t have without them.” [Suzanne Segal, Collision with the Infinite]