It’s been a while since my last post.
It feels a bit like a Catholic confession writing that. Like when I was back in year 8 at Marymount and I had to tell some priest that I stole a pen from Kyle Lawson even though he had plenty of extra pens.
He shouldn’t be so attached to physical things anyway.
The Buddha said such attachments are the cause of our human suffering.
The Buddha also outlined 5 precepts to help you on the path towards enlightenment, or at least to being a better person.
I know the Buddha wasn’t Catholic.
I’m not knocking the Catholics. Confession can be somewhat liberating, but I gave up going to confession because I would repent with a few Hail Marys and then just go back to stealing pens.
I’m now much more of a Buddhist.
One of those Buddhist precepts is to: Abstain from stealing: Not to take what is not given.
By the way Kyle Lawson is not meant to represent an actual person whose dad used to go to Alcoholics Anonymous with my dad Roy, and who had a Filipino step-mum, and a little tinnie we used to take out on the Tweed river fishing. A tinnie we took out one night at the back of his dad and step-mum’s house, which was then attacked by a shark! Well the shark just brushed up against the side of the boat and made it lurch to one side, even though his dad, who was an ex-cop with a bad back, didn’t believe us.
His dad reckoned it was a turtle.
No way a turtle would have made a tinnie lurch that far.
I am afraid of turtles though, they kind of sneak up on you when you’re snorkeling and they are just there floating in the water munching on seagrass, like some evangelical angel floating in space.
I’m slightly more perturbed by sharks.
Another of the Buddha’s precepts is to Abstain from wrong speech: Not to lie or gossip.
With that in mind I’d have to say while ‘Kyle’ is a real person, just with a different name (Craig ‘Herbie’ Erbet), there was a girl at school called Kylie Lawson who I had a mad crush on who ended up moving schools in year 9 or something. Those catholic school uniforms were meant to be unflattering but it wasn’t much to deter my budding libido.
Moving onto another of the Buddha’s precepts: Abstain from sexual misconduct: Not to overindulge in sex or commit sexual offenses.
Now that I’m married, for the second time, that Catholic school day crush is well and truly over, and I really should move on. Having written that, I wonder when I’m old and wrinkly and heading towards death whether the crushes I had when I was at school will still be a memory?
While in Mexico, on our last trip, my wife, son and I got tattoos. My son got a sword with some scales on it. My wife got a libélula (dragonfly). I got a large Buddha on my right shoulder blade, which is a little hard to see because it is on my back. But if I get the right angle in the bathroom mirror I get a glimpse of it.
Since getting that Buddha tattoo, I have been abiding by another of the Buddha’s precepts: Abstain from intoxication: Not to use intoxicating substances that cause inattention.
This is something I only did on the odd day or two on my Mexico trip. I am in no way inferring that Mexico is a party place, but I do like their beer and tequila, and margaritas, and micheladas, and palomas, and jamaica, mezcal/ tequila cocktails.
There’s one more precept I haven’t mentioned yet, and that is Abstain from killing: Not to kill any living being, including animals. I’ve not been doing too badly adhering to that one either. At least directly.
I’ve been indirectly responsible for a lot of dead animals, because I like to eat them. Cows, lambs, chickens, fish, pigs and whatever animal sausages are made from.
I doubt that’s going to change anytime soon if I’m to be honest, which, if I want to follow Buddhist principles, I need to be.
Oh, and we did kill hundreds of ants recently as they had moved into the cupboard when a cyclone visited the Gold Coast and they looked like they were going to stay.
Sorry, but not sorry, ants.
So I have a Buddha tattoo. I gave the basic design to the tattoo artist which I sketched on the back of a receipt. I also sent the tattoo artist several photos of Buddha statues from my wife and my trip around South-East Asia – focusing more on the Laotian and Cambodian style Buddha statues we had photos of.
So I now have a Buddha tattoo on my back around my right shoulder blade which is a bit inconvenient that I can only see when I really twist my head and look into my bathroom mirror. I feel that might symbolise something like it requires effort to follow the path of the Buddha.
But it doesn’t really have to be hard following the path of the Buddha.
I’ve been reading Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh’s book The Buddha’s Teaching and he writes that following the Buddha’s path should be easy or enjoyable, or both. It should bring you happiness.
I can tell you, even though I sometimes crave one of the wonderful red wines we had in Italy when my wife and I were travelling, plus all those delicious Mexican drinks, I haven’t been drinking alcohol since I got that Buddha tattoo just before we left Guadalajara.
It was easy, and I’ve been feeling fine.
I think I only drank alcohol out of boredom and to ‘relax’ (literally in quotation marks to mark that I don’t think it really relaxed me that much). I’ve found drinking unnecessary.
Instead, I go for walks along the beach – apart from a few days last week when that cyclone I mentioned earlier hit the Gold Coast and it was too windy and wet and dangerous to go outside.
I sometimes play computer games – I’m trying out the latest installment in the Civilization franchise at the moment, Civilization VII, which I don’t understand much and which is heaps more complicated than Civilization VI, and often I think it a waste of my time, but not quite as detrimental as drinking alcohol. It also doesn’t really ‘relax’ me, so I might give that up to.
I brought an expensive bottle of tequila back to Australia that I bought in the actual town of Tequila in Jalisco Mexico. It’s a Cascahuin reposado. It’s been sitting on the shelf since we got back, unopened. I’ve hardly had any desire whatsoever to open it, though I may have a sip one day, who knows.
I really did enjoy the wine in Italy by the way. When my wife and I were in Salerno we went to a little restaurant that had a wine from a grape variety I’d never heard of in Australia and it was absolutely divine. The grape started with V or Z or something, definitely not a Cab Sav, Merlot or Shiraz.
So perhaps, when we return to Italy one day the country will persuade me to have a cup again.
Who knows.
Over my life I’ve tended to fluctuate from year to year from drinking, smoking weed – though the later much more in my early twenties. More recently I’ve just had the occasional joint in places where it’s legal, like in LA and Bangkok (see some previous posts on that).
Post COVID I started having at least one drink a day, just a beer or a glass of wine. It just became habitual, not overly damaging or anything and I’m certainly no alcoholic, though I am the son of one, as was Craig ‘Herbie’ Erbert. But, as much as I didn’t have a ‘problem’ with alcohol, or weed, I’m happy to not have any for the time being.
Since this is a travel blog I should maybe get back to travel stories. I promise you I’m not trying to groom you to become a Buddhist by first getting friendly with you through travel stories.
Spiritual journeys also involve travel though. And my recent return to Buddhism, strengthened by the Buddha tattoo on my shoulder blade I got in Guadalajara, has felt good. The actual tattooing was mildly uncomfortable at times, but my tattooist has a super magic touch!
My rekindled interest in Buddhism also relates to my travels. In the 50 year backpacker chronology my wife and I are now in Vietnam (which I may continue on with in my next post). It was in Vietnam where I saw a guy reading one of Thich Nhat Hanh’s books at a little cafe with little chairs down a little lane by our hotel in Ho Chi Minh – the city not the person.
I used a version of that joke when auditioning for the ABC TV’s Hard Quiz hosted by Tom Gleeson. You have to pick a specialist topic and mine was Ho Chi Minh, the person NOT the city.
I got through the first stages of my Hard Quiz application but I wasn’t successful with the audition and I’ve vowed to never watch Tom’s stupid quiz ever again.
But my mum, whom my wife and I live with at the moment as she has a big house and there is some sort of ‘housing crisis’ going on which means buying our own house is really expensive and renting on the private market is a really shitty and expensive prospect. Hopefully you are reading this is some future time when our AI overlords, or the electric car business oligarchs, have worked out how to house us all really economically, and you’re like ‘what housing crisis?’.
Back to Buddhism, one central focus of the Buddha’s teachings is that things are always changing.
You notice change everyday when you’re travelling, changing places, changing smells, changing beds, and changing cuisine, but even without travelling things are changing all the time. Every moment. Nothing – literally nothing – remains the same forever. It is always changing!
Our entire universe will at some point not exist, or probably more correctly exist in a completely different form to what we see today. We can see that now. We can look back to moments before the universe was created in the big bang to see what we have now is different to what we had 13.8 billion Earth years ago.
You, I, my mother, my wife, Tom Gleeson, and that leftover doner kebab in the fridge, will all be gone one day, or, more correctly, all the bits of all of those things will be changed and become part of something else in the universe.
Put something about that in your f*cking stupid “Hard” quiz ‘Tom’. One day bits of you will end up with bits of soggy, garlic sauce soaked kebab from the fridge. There’s not even any prize money on the stupid quiz so I’m not sure why I’m getting all stirred up about it. I just wanted to be on the show! Is that too much to ask? I mean my taxes pay for the bloody ABC TV, and supposedly nobody watches regular TV anymore, so why can’t you just put me on! I mean I’m a middle-aged man who lives with his mum, so give me a break!
Returning to the Buddha. He would say I should forget about my attachments to Hard Quiz, and everything else, as attachment will make me unhappy and unattachment (even though spellchecker says that’s not a word, it IS a word and I’m going to use it) will make me the opposite of unhappy, which is un-unhappy – hey we live in a world where Presidents of the USA make things up all the time, so I think we can be un-unhappy at times, or even happy.
Speaking of the USA, my wife and I went to Universal Studios in LA on the way back from Mexico to Australia. We were there on the day Trump was inaugurated, or close to it. I messaged my friend Kurt – who I’ve known since the early 1990s – in Australia and told him we were having a ball at Universal Studios in LA, and boy he started going on about ‘how can you be happy when Trump is in office?’ and ‘I’m never going to visit the USA again’ and his Yank friends are all going to move to Mexico – which is kind of ironic if you ask me as the Gringos seem to be able to freely pass the border going south.
My wife and I found that out in the town of Sayulita, Nayarit, Mexico, which is completely overrun by Gringos in golf carts paying too much for everything (a guy tried to sell me a single joint for 500 pesos – unbelievable! I used to get a whole bag for 200 pesos) and making loud observations about the most inane of things about coffee machines, and investments, and Karen and Kevin type things – but when my Mexican compadres, who I’ve adopted since marrying a Mexican (so technically on a kind of ‘white-ican’), come the other way they want to build a big wall and get all stressed even though half the USA used to be part of Mexico – Including Los Angeles where Universal Studios is.
So Kurt, who has also been somewhat of an anarchist back in the day in Berlin in the 1980s, was really stirred up about Trump and I was like, ‘that is ridiculous, I’m not going to stop being happy for the next four years just because Trump is in power’.
In fact, my wife and I found LA to be pretty cool this time around, and quite enjoyed it. We went to Maccas for breaky one day and had egg and bacon McMuffins with heaps of Latin Americans. It was awesome. We also had waffles at I Met Her at a Bar, this time I was not stoned (see earlier blog post for stoned version) which is legal there, both being stoned and having waffles. I had vegan waffles. They were delicious.
They do have a huge homeless issue in the USA – something President Volodymyr Zelenskyy tried to point out to President Donald Trump, which the latter didn’t want to have a bar of, saying we don’t need you to tell us our problems, and so forth and so on. I imagine that homelessness will just get worse with the oligarchy of tech billionaires and orange coloured elderly men running the show.
So the USA is A-OK. We met Optimus Prime at Universal Studios, and he said, With your help the universe will be fine!
So, I’ve given up alcohol for the last few months. I’m also trying to keep the other Buddhist precepts – though I really must say I do like on the Gold Coast, seeing women’s bums in those tight exercise pants. And anytime cleavage is waved in front of me I can’t help but peak. But it’s not my fault I have eyes! My wife’s bum and cleavage is highest on that list though (insert that cheeky face + the nervous emojis here).
Being happy is about being happy, not about certain circumstances that make you happy. I mean there’s some seriously crappy stuff happening in the world at the moment, thousands of Palestinians getting killed, Russia intimidating Ukraine, the producers of Hard Quiz inexplicably excluding contestants from their show because of some woke agenda (which is fair enough actually after years of colonialism etc, though Tom is the epitome of all things white and colonial – just saying).
All of these things will make us unhappy. Some with very good reason. But even the crappiest situation will change one day. World War Two is becoming a distant memory. The Jewish holocaust of World War Two is over, Stalin is dead, Pol Pot and the murderous Khmer Rouge were run out of power by the Vietnamese army in 1979.
With all the terrible things that have happened, and are still happening, in the world, it can be easy to lose hope. But, as Thich Nhat Hanh wrote: the ocean of tears cannot drown us if karuna (compassion) is there. That is why the Buddha’s smile is possible.
US politics will change one day, and anyway, ultimately we’re all going to kind of disintegrate and become part of the universe anyway and all of us will be mixed back into the giant cosmic cake mix, green, orange, white, black, Gold Coast exercise pant pink, and banana colour, will all just change into something else.
So that chance encounter with that guy reading the Thich Nhat Hanh in Vietnam has really changed my perspective on life. I was into Buddhism and meditation anyway and did like 8 or 9 10-day Vipassana meditation retreats, in the tradition of Goenka, in the 1990s in Australia, Britain and France.
But now that dude at the cafe in Ho Chi Minh – he was actually the cafe owner I think – has rekindled my passion for Buddhism. And after a few decades break, I want to go back and do another 10-day Vipassana retreat (Buddhist insight meditation for those who haven’t read my previous posts or my e-book – The Adventures of Kosio and Juanito).
I want to do something positive with my life besides building some civilisation (we spell it with an ‘s’ in Australia) in Civilization VII, which I seriously don’t even know how to play as it’s super, super complicated and seems to lack any coherent narrative.
That’s where I will find happiness.
There and at Harry Potter World at Universal Studios!
Of course I love travel – I am labouring my way through a travel blog as you may have noticed – so even though there’s plenty of places to do Vipassana meditation retreats in Australia, I’m hoping to convince my wife to go to Thailand sometime next year to do a course there with me.
My wife said I could go by myself but I would have to just go to the course and then return without further travel as she doesn’t want me marrying a Thai woman (or any other nationality woman for that matter) after she dies.
As much as I love Thailand and Thais – and my wife does as well just to be clear – I will have to respect my one day deceased wife’s wishes and not marry a Thai (or any other nationality) woman.
Speaking of South-East Asia, maybe, just maybe, the next post will progress the 50 year backpacker story a little more and try to get us started on Vietnam at least.
I mean I’ve still got to write about Hanoi, Hoi Ann – where our friends Scottie and Howie we just visiting, and Ho Chi Minh (the city not the person – Tom for god’s sake just let another middle-aged white man onto your stupid quiz to answer questions about a Vietnamese national hero) where our friend Fyyaz from Canberra and Bangladesh invited himself on the 50 year backpacker trip and travelled with us for a few days.
Then I still have to write about Phnom Penh, Siem Riep, Bangkok (again) for one night, before we head over to Vienna, where we stayed at a super awesome sustainable hotel and had a great hot dog under the bridge and some chicken paprikash. Then by train down to Venice, and the Tuscan cities of Florence, San Gimignano, and Sienna. Then off to Roma and the Vatican museum, Hadrian’s Villa and the last day of the Giro d’Italia bike race we saw outside the colosseum. Then onto the Island of Ischia off the coast of Naples, then Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Salerno.
Then down to Siciliy – Palermo and Catania, and across to Athens, the Greek islands of Ikaria and Samos, and then over to Türkiye (sorry for my ‘woke’ spelling that reflects how Turkish people actually refer to their own country) and Şirince, the ancient city of Efes (Ephesus), the actual Virgin Mary’s house near Selçuk, where she and my man John went into exile after Jesus was executed, and then off to Istanbul.
Before heading back to Mexico City and Guadalajara yet again (on a different trip than the one where I got my Buddha tattoo – that time I got a Day of the Dead style skull tattoo on my left shoulder around about where my deltoid muscle is, a bit above my bicep muscle where I can see it easily in the mirror!).
Writing about all those places seems like an effort some days, so maybe I’ll just call it a day here and say the 50 year backpacker blog is over.
Just go watch one of those shows like Ancient Greece by Train with Professor Alice Roberts, or one of those Michael Portobello travel shows, which often involve trains as well. My wife and I loved travelling by train from Vienna all the way down to Palermo.
I mean who reads travel blogs?
Oh well, my psychologist, and also Thich Nhat Hanh, say writing is a good form of reflection. So whether this is read or not, I still find it therapeutic.
Seeya.
As the Buddha, and my now dead vipassana teacher Goenka during meditation retreats would say: May all beings be happy.
J.R.A
Valpolicella! That’s the wine I really loved. I think!
