Reflections from a Saigon bar
I have been here before. A month ago - same bar, same table at the pavement. Probably the same chair. Drinking the same kind of coffee.
Then everything was new to me. The stream of motorcycles, the sellers (some of them are the same) and the thin men with their cyklos. A lot of guesthouses and travel centers.
It's in the backpackers area and the guests in the bar is also about the same: Young westerners sipping Saigon red, the local beer. An open Lonely Planet on the table, planning their next move:
Cambodia? Mekong river? Phu Quoc?
I have just visited the two last places and even stayed some days at a friends place in Bien Hoa, a smaller town an hour on bus north of Saigon.
A smaller town means about one million, in Saigon there are at least nine million inhabitants; as in the whole of Sweden.
A month in this country is of course a too short time too understand it.
I'm just a visitor, a stranger - living in a country that has not seen war for 250 years.
Of course I'm kind of lost in translation, feeling a bit alienated. But its okay here... (I can have the same feeling at home - that not OK)
Here the last war ended 1989; the border conflict with China, but that was only the last in a series of conflicts.
I'v learned that the US used an airport in Bien Hoa and stuffed a lot of Agent Orange there.
The land and the lakes around there is still heavy polluted by the poison.
So the wars have not really ended. I must still influence the people here. But how? I can read about this and maybe talk to some older people about it. But I have heard that people here want to forget about the wars and look forward.
And just here, looking forward means; open a hotel or bar for the budget tourist or sell things like bread, nuts, books or cigarettes to them in the street.
Another perspective of the war is too look at the history in Europe. Not long ago ongoing wars were
more normal than peace there too. But now we have had an unusual long period of peace,
That's maybe the reason why the reaction to the terrorist deeds, for instance the one at Charlie Hebdo,
is so strong. We are not any more used to such violence. Everything must be seen in a contrast, or in relation to something else.
But just hundred years ago the reaction would probably not have been so strong.
If Thich Nath Hahn is right we all have memories from wars inside of us, inherited from our ancestors. We can all act violently if we are forced to do it.
In that view I have much in common with the people living here.
It has been hard for me to practice mindfulness here. Too much new things to look at and to take in.
It's first now, after a month in this country, that I can look at people as individuals. It's not hard to imagine the struggle for food and shelter that makes the cyclo- man trying to get passengers, though
most of the tourists nowadays prefer a motorcycle taxi or a car.
I want to understand as much as possible and I definitely don't want to talk with the other westerners in the bar. I don't need their perspective as it's probably near mine.
If I focus on the things we have in common it's more easy to understand the people here. Maybe the many smiles is a reaction to previous suffering? Or maybe it't just in the culture to be friendly---
Another view is the one presented by the Theoretical Physicist Carlo Rovelli in this discussion with three philosophers at iai tv:
http://iai.tv/video/heraclitus-dream?utm_source=Institute+of+Art+and+Ideas&utm_campaign=69900ff386-IAI+Weekly+Newsletter+05%2F02%2F15&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_33593fe9fa-69900ff386-47036449
The discussion is about reality. Is for instance a rock or a table what it seems to be?
Yes, says the philosophers, no says Rovelli. For him everything is in an interacting process, including himself.
I don't know if he has read Buddhist scriptures, but as I understand it this is exactly what Buddha meant:
A table is not an independent thing, it depends on the tree, the sun and the rain and the minerals that was necessary for the tree to grow, and it also depends on the carpenter the carpenters tool and so on. And in postmodern words, the table is also dependent on the context we use the table in; we call it table, we use it as a table and so on....
Another extreme is to say that the table doesn't exist, but that is not what Buddha and Rovelli says, they both use the middle way.
The philosophers don't say that Rovelli is totally wrong (or crazy), but they claim that it is about different levels.
Buddha named this two levels conventional and ultimate truth. But still the ultimate truth, about the interdependent process, is more important and closer to reality.
So, as I sit here on the bar in District one in Saigon, all I see is ongoing and interdependent processes.
The bar is dependent on the backpackers. The sellers are too.... and we are dependent on them, as I sit here with my third cup of coffee and just have bought a little plastic bag full of cashew nuts from one of the street sellers.
Even the whole country is in a process - maybe this city in the future even officially will be called Saigon and not Ho Chi Minh City. For certain even more people will live here...
Maybe I too have influenced some of the people I have met here; the nuns and the orphans that I met on a pagoda and who I gave some money too. Maybe some of the kind Vietnamese people who showed me to the pagoda and told me about the children and the pagoda.
Maybe I too some degree has influenced the family who invited me to stay at their home at the end of my journey. The calm surroundings there and the dogs in their yard has influenced me. Maybe they will remember me for some time.
I hope their hospitality will be rewarded one day. . And maybe I will see them again. I hope I can talk some more Vietnamese then.
But they will have changed then. As the process is going on all time.
For sure Vietnam has influenced me a lot, and some of the people I have met here are now a part of me...
Then everything was new to me. The stream of motorcycles, the sellers (some of them are the same) and the thin men with their cyklos. A lot of guesthouses and travel centers.
It's in the backpackers area and the guests in the bar is also about the same: Young westerners sipping Saigon red, the local beer. An open Lonely Planet on the table, planning their next move:
Cambodia? Mekong river? Phu Quoc?
I have just visited the two last places and even stayed some days at a friends place in Bien Hoa, a smaller town an hour on bus north of Saigon.
A smaller town means about one million, in Saigon there are at least nine million inhabitants; as in the whole of Sweden.
A month in this country is of course a too short time too understand it.
I'm just a visitor, a stranger - living in a country that has not seen war for 250 years.
Of course I'm kind of lost in translation, feeling a bit alienated. But its okay here... (I can have the same feeling at home - that not OK)
Here the last war ended 1989; the border conflict with China, but that was only the last in a series of conflicts.
I'v learned that the US used an airport in Bien Hoa and stuffed a lot of Agent Orange there.
The land and the lakes around there is still heavy polluted by the poison.
So the wars have not really ended. I must still influence the people here. But how? I can read about this and maybe talk to some older people about it. But I have heard that people here want to forget about the wars and look forward.
And just here, looking forward means; open a hotel or bar for the budget tourist or sell things like bread, nuts, books or cigarettes to them in the street.
Another perspective of the war is too look at the history in Europe. Not long ago ongoing wars were
more normal than peace there too. But now we have had an unusual long period of peace,
That's maybe the reason why the reaction to the terrorist deeds, for instance the one at Charlie Hebdo,
is so strong. We are not any more used to such violence. Everything must be seen in a contrast, or in relation to something else.
But just hundred years ago the reaction would probably not have been so strong.
If Thich Nath Hahn is right we all have memories from wars inside of us, inherited from our ancestors. We can all act violently if we are forced to do it.
In that view I have much in common with the people living here.
It has been hard for me to practice mindfulness here. Too much new things to look at and to take in.
It's first now, after a month in this country, that I can look at people as individuals. It's not hard to imagine the struggle for food and shelter that makes the cyclo- man trying to get passengers, though
most of the tourists nowadays prefer a motorcycle taxi or a car.
I want to understand as much as possible and I definitely don't want to talk with the other westerners in the bar. I don't need their perspective as it's probably near mine.
If I focus on the things we have in common it's more easy to understand the people here. Maybe the many smiles is a reaction to previous suffering? Or maybe it't just in the culture to be friendly---
Another view is the one presented by the Theoretical Physicist Carlo Rovelli in this discussion with three philosophers at iai tv:
http://iai.tv/video/heraclitus-dream?utm_source=Institute+of+Art+and+Ideas&utm_campaign=69900ff386-IAI+Weekly+Newsletter+05%2F02%2F15&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_33593fe9fa-69900ff386-47036449
The discussion is about reality. Is for instance a rock or a table what it seems to be?
Yes, says the philosophers, no says Rovelli. For him everything is in an interacting process, including himself.
I don't know if he has read Buddhist scriptures, but as I understand it this is exactly what Buddha meant:
A table is not an independent thing, it depends on the tree, the sun and the rain and the minerals that was necessary for the tree to grow, and it also depends on the carpenter the carpenters tool and so on. And in postmodern words, the table is also dependent on the context we use the table in; we call it table, we use it as a table and so on....
Another extreme is to say that the table doesn't exist, but that is not what Buddha and Rovelli says, they both use the middle way.
The philosophers don't say that Rovelli is totally wrong (or crazy), but they claim that it is about different levels.
Buddha named this two levels conventional and ultimate truth. But still the ultimate truth, about the interdependent process, is more important and closer to reality.
So, as I sit here on the bar in District one in Saigon, all I see is ongoing and interdependent processes.
The bar is dependent on the backpackers. The sellers are too.... and we are dependent on them, as I sit here with my third cup of coffee and just have bought a little plastic bag full of cashew nuts from one of the street sellers.
Even the whole country is in a process - maybe this city in the future even officially will be called Saigon and not Ho Chi Minh City. For certain even more people will live here...
Maybe I too have influenced some of the people I have met here; the nuns and the orphans that I met on a pagoda and who I gave some money too. Maybe some of the kind Vietnamese people who showed me to the pagoda and told me about the children and the pagoda.
Maybe I too some degree has influenced the family who invited me to stay at their home at the end of my journey. The calm surroundings there and the dogs in their yard has influenced me. Maybe they will remember me for some time.
I hope their hospitality will be rewarded one day. . And maybe I will see them again. I hope I can talk some more Vietnamese then.
But they will have changed then. As the process is going on all time.
For sure Vietnam has influenced me a lot, and some of the people I have met here are now a part of me...
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