WANG SAPHUNG, Thailand – There are many reasons I’m not a Buddhist monk, chief among them being I like to do a lot of the things Buddhist monks are not supposed to do, like have sex, eat something other than other people’s leftover rice and partake of mind-altering chemicals.
Granted, Buddhist monk or not, I’m not about to start openly watching porn while riding public transportation — although, I’ll admit, I might be more tempted to do so if I walked around wearing a loose orange robe that is perfect for concealing surreptitious monkey-spanking.
As I read about the outrage over an unidentified monk’s viewing habits, I also had to ask: Why is it less objectionable for some holier-than-thou student to secretly film and subsequently narc on a monk?
Even the kid who shot the video and squealed on the bawdy Buddhist seems to acknowledge it’s a bit dicey for him to judge in this context.
“I wanted to confront him but I didn’t have the courage to do that,” said Wittawat Wonghajuk, the smartphone-equipped snitch in question. “This is a monk and I’m just a young student. But I filmed it instead so I have proof.”
So, just to recap, you didn’t have the balls to confront an avowed pacifist in real-time, but you feel comfortable globally porn-shaming him on social media after the fact?
Who did you think this monk was, Kwai Chang Caine? If you had just politely asked him to turn off the smut, what was he going to do, throw his Buddy Holly glasses at you like they were bifocal shuriken?
I’m not arguing a monk watching porn is in keeping with the ideals of the Noble Eightfold Path. I’m just saying even Buddha himself probably stroked it every so often during those long, lonely stretches beneath the Bodhi Tree.
(I know, I know: it’s deeply offensive to suggest the Buddha occasionally choked his chicken, but seeing as how it would be a major violation of the principle of Right Conduct to kick my ass in retaliation, I can afford to not give a shit.)
In my book (which, as I’ve told my doctoral thesis advisor several times over the past two years, will be done any day now), this nosy, sanctimonious kid has behaved in a way that is even more objectionable than the Nhat Hanh of nookie he filmed.
I don’t know what sort of student Wonghajuk is, but for his sake, I hope he’s not studying to become a monk. After all, as the saying goes, “snitches get stitches” — not Thiches.
None of this is to say the ass-focused ascetic in the video has done nothing wrong. At the very least, he should have worn headphones and kept the screen of his phone low enough in front of him it couldn’t be seen by other passengers.
On the other hand, thanks to the pixilation present in the video, the only real proof I have this monk was indeed watching porn is a brief series of moans and the say-so of a Peeping Thai who should have been minding his own business to begin with.
Given the incomplete evidence at hand, how are we to know this monk wasn’t watching simulated sex in the context of a popular mainstream show, like some hitherto unknown Thai version of Jessica Jones, for example?
For me, this all boils down to one of Buddha’s sayings, a nugget of wisdom the young Wonghajuk would be wise to heed: “If with a pure mind a person speaks or acts, happiness follows them like a never-departing shadow. But if they self-righteously post videos to social media of fellow bus passengers watching porn, they’re just a whiny little bitch who will never reach Nirvana.”
OK, so I might not have the quote exactly right, but I bet the real Sid Gautama would agree, were he here to help separate the idolized myth of his life from its more mundane human reality.
