The Sun magazine has a humdinger of an excerpt of Andrew Boyd’s as yet unplublished book Pilgrimage To Nowhere, which details his spiritual exploits in Thailand. From the looks of the excerpt, there’s two things I can conclude. First, that the book is well worth a read. And second, that the concept of spirituality becomes warped as it crosses the oceans from Asia to the West. Before I put you to sleep with my thoughts on spirituality, here’s an excerpt of the excerpt.

For the drive up from Chiang Mai, the nearest city, I’d split a taxi with two young German women, one of whom was blond, cute, and sufficiently charmed with me to have more or less invited me back to the guesthouse where she’d be staying that night — the same night that I, in a cruel twist of fate, would be putting on the white robes of an apprentice monk and swearing an oath of celibacy.

That night I had a dream: I was walking with the cute German tourist, who was pushing a stroller, “practicing” for when she had a kid. She was trying to get pregnant, she said, and I listened politely as she described her fucking schedule and fertility cycle. Instead of a baby in the carriage, there was a little Buddha. - Pilgrimage To Nowhere, By Andrew Boyd, Sun Magazine

These two paras underline something which is quite important for every dim-witted Western tourist who lands up at an Asian monastry in search of peace, or whatever you want to call it. It’s not some magic potion or textbook study which you can inhale and watch your worries slip away. Point I’m trying to make here is that whatever benefits or awakening you experience, is simply the result of not focusing on everyday life - office chatter and Oprah and bikinis and fast food - And instead listening to what your mind is saying. Take away all these things and listen to yourself, and it sorts out your priorities real quick.

Finding Nirvanaland is an easy matter, if you can shut out everything else, and listen to yourself. So this whole concept of going to Asia to find enlightenment is a bit overrated, actually. You can do it in your own backyard, provided there are no cute German tourists hanging around who’d like to bear your children. If there are, well, you could always name your baby Nirvana instead of Gunther….

Posted on May 12th, 2008 by PLing
Filed under: Travel News