Reasons to be cheerful

There are a lot of monks. They smoke, they listen to i-pods, they text each other, they hang around in groups, shaven headed, wearing the same gang colours, some even have tattoos. In fact I'm afraid of Thai monks. I worry that one day I'll turn round and see eight of them chasing me, in some horrific twist of Dom Joly's Trigger Happy TV. Nirvana'd to death by a mob of enlightened skinheads.

I never thought that I'd be scared of Buddhists. After all I've lived with a life-size buddha (and several smaller ones) for over ten years now. I'm sure they're mostly harmless, but I can't help thinking that it points to a deeper malaise. Thailand's a buddhist country. It calls itself the land of smiles. The tourist police's motto is "Serving and protecting with a smile". You think it'd practice some loving kindness.

So I was a bit surprised to learn that the Thai prime minister visited Myanmar (Burma) the other day and said that he "respected" the leadership there - because he's met the generals, and found out that they meditate.

Well that's alright then. Maybe it's not that hard for practicing buddhists to also be genocidal dictators. After all, if you believe that all existence is suffering, and all suffering is caused by ignorance, then what odds if you kill a few illiterate farmers?

I'm probably being a bit naive though. I expect that a buddhist travelling in the west would be amazed that christian countries could fetishise war, or ignore the poor, or vilify immigrants for that matter (that's the problem with Samaritans - coming over here, taking our jobs...)

But I probably need to be careful what I say. Apparently the "Civil Serf" blogger was from DWP. Hope they don't close down Mr Tony's Adventures too...