The Gods Drink Whiskey

by Asma, Stephen T.

• ISBN13: 9780060834500
• ISBN10: 0060834501
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publications

Summary

Buddhism, Booze, and the Four Noble Truths

Table of Contents

A Preface on Pop-Buddhists and Academics	ix
Introduction: Getting My Hands Dirty	1	(14)
The Ring of Gyges	15	(34)
Living in Cambodia with Impunity and Hedonism
Reason for the Few, Magic for the Many?	49	(35)
Monkey Gods and Penis Worship
``My God Can Beat Up Your God''	84	(36)
Missionaries
``Britney Spears? Never Heard of Her''	120	(30)
The Virtues of Being Uncool
Karma and the Killing Fields	150	(33)
Seeing a Man Get Shot to Death	183	(34)
Lessons to Bring Home	217	(24)
Transcendental Everydayness
Notes and Further Reading	241	(10)
Glossary	251	(4)
Acknowledgments	255	(2)
Plus	257

Excerpts

The Gods Drink Whiskey
Stumbling Toward Enlightenment in the Land of the Tattered Buddha

Chapter One

The Ring of Gyges

Living in Cambodia with Impunity and Hedonism

One of the main ways Khmers in Phnom Penh practice their Buddhism is by subjecting themselves to traffic. The constant near-misses, last-minute swerves, precarious balancing acts, and obstacle-course road conditions would put the average person into a stress seizure. Yet the locals remain unperturbed, which is why the no-system traffic system works. If you can get across town in full possession of your calm demeanor -- your peaceful state of equilibrium -- then you are the Buddha.

The "roads" can only be charitably described as ditches. The streets are dirt pathways with potholes big enough to lose whole cars, and almost all transport is done by motos (minibike scooters, the drivers of which are called moto-dups) or cyclos (bicycle rickshaws with the passenger seat in front). Everyone travels by moto, and it is not at all uncommon to see whole families precariously perched on a single bike. Walking down to the Foreign Correspondents' Club for a drink, I saw a little motor scooter, made for two, with a one-year-old baby balanced on his father's lap while the mother and two more children sat cramped together behind him on a ten-inch seat. The record number that I witnessed was six family members, but after a few months even this failed to register with my acclimated senses.

The good thing about traffic is that you can go from one end of town to another on a moto for about two thousand riel, or fifty cents. The bad news is that every time you get on one of these you get a serious I'm-not-fucking-around brush with your own mortality. The only time I ever enjoyed my moto adventures was when I was inebriated, which happened more than I should admit, but there it is. On those occasions, the paralyzing fright was transformed into exhilaration.

There are no traffic rules in Cambodia, and there can be hundreds of motos at any one time moving on one city block in the capital. If you have to turn left, you just drive straight into oncoming traffic and hope everyone sees you. If the oncoming traffic doesn't get you, the giant potholes and rubble will. There are some nasty accidents in Phnom Penh, but fewer than one would imagine. The dodging and weaving of the relaxed drivers, seemingly drugged on their own natural phenobarbital, makes for a successful rhythm of mutually accommodating motion.

I ordered a Mekong whiskey at the Foreign Correspondents' Club, and pulling up a seat at the balcony, I watched the action below me in Sisowath Quay. The view extends over the Tonle Sap River, and I watched the fishing boats troll downstream. A table of British reporters and photographers were attacking huge steaks next to me, seemingly relieved to be eating something besides rice and fish. Down below me, young saffron-robed monks meandered in a small group. A little girl who looked no more than four years old was begging unsuccessfully, and when she turned in my direction I saw that she had a newborn baby (undoubtedly her sister) strapped around her body with a wrap cloth. One baby carrying another baby. This kind of thing never ceased to affect me, and it was especially troubling because, as I came to understand later, this child's mother, and countless others like her, had put her child out on the street because the sight of a child's misery was more financially rewarding in these expatriate parts of town.

Having been to Cambodia once before, I naively thought that I was somehow "ready" for it this time. But you can never really be ready for Cambodia. It's sort of like seeing a really good punch coming at your face, bracing yourself as best you can, but getting knocked senseless anyway. The poverty in Phnom Penh is truly profound -- it makes American urban ghettos like Cabrini Green in Chicago seem like plush utopias by comparison. Unlike America, where poor people suffer from obesity, poor Khmer people actually suffer from having no food.

I noticed a little Khmer boy, about five years old, who was causing mischief with every hapless passerby. This was Bunly, a kid I had met the week before when he asked me to buy an old copy of the Phnom Penh Post that he had fished out of a gutter. Bunly had acquired excellent English by simply living in the streets around the barang businesses on Sisowath Quay. The week before he had worked every grifter's angle on me, until I finally acquiesced and bought his tattered newspaper. I was sad that a kid this small already had the makings of a swindler, and I felt that dumb luck had put his birth in a place where childhood would be so short-lived.

On the northern side street, a sixty-something crippled man teetered across the street on a homemade cane that he'd fashioned from a kitchen mop handle.The poor guy's head was disfigured and partly covered too. One sees a lot of the land-mine survivors begging here, and it is truly heartbreaking. There are approximately five hundred land-mine injuries per month in Cambodia, the legacy of decades of civil war and conflicts with outside nations. My friend François, who fashions prosthetics for the Red Cross, assured me that all the land-mine victims near the Correspondents' Club have excellent artificial limbs that they deliberately leave home so as to garner more sympathy dollars, but that fact is still very cold comfort. When the man hobbled by, Bunly got in line behind him and began an elaborate impersonation, limping and tottering in melodramatic fashion. The kid was so delighted and amused by this, each step a more grotesque improvisation, that my moral indignation waned and I found myself smiling. This was followed by waves of guilt. And then more smiling ...

The Gods Drink Whiskey
Stumbling Toward Enlightenment in the Land of the Tattered Buddha. Copyright © by Stephen Asma. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

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Excerpted from The Gods Drink Whiskey: Stumbling Toward Enlightenment in the Land of the Tattered Buddha by Stephen T. Asma
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.