I decided to make a web page so that I could share with you some of my times that I spent with very poor families in Thailand and Burma while I was a Buddhist Monk.
At a very young age I wanted to always help other people. Then at the late age of 49 I was asked to become a Thai Buddhist Monk.
With the great support of my wife Diane who has helped me do so many things in life I was ordained as a Buddhist Monk in Thailand. When I was a Buddhist Monk I was able to go and see what real suffering is for mankind.
I will post many new stories on this web site but must warn you that some of the stories and photos are not nice and should not be view if you are affended by death and poverty.
My goal with this web site is to show the world what is happening out there as most of us close our eyes and turn our backs when we see or hear about other human beings suffering.
For most people life is very good but for many others it is hell on earth for them. I hope this web site will open your eyes so next time you see or hear of some one suffering you won't turn your back on them.
I am now back in my home town which is Perth Australia and have disrobed from the Monk hood. My job now is to publish news about Burma and Thailand.
I hope you enjoy this site and as I am new to making a web page I would love to hear your comments on anything I put up here.
Thank you,
Nigel Rains,
Email. perth072@yahoo.com.au
The following photos are all copy right and all credit
goes to Dr Alongkot Dikkapanyo.
Thai Buddhist Monks at Wat Phra Baht Nam Phu chant
for a young Thai girl who has HIV and now stays at the
temple.
Another patient dies and his body waits in the reusable
coffin in front of his bed before he was taken away and
cremated
Patients comes to hear the Monks talk
(...) The 'after death room' is served by a large glazed door. It allows a good perspective on the arrangement of the corpses. One evening it was wide open. Inside four monks fumbled with a lamp so they could tinker with something on the wall. The shadows of both the monks and the bodies sometimes reached outside to caress the gravel.
Seated on a parapet, not far from the door and illuminated from time to time by the moving light, a boy looked at the monks and the glass coffins. In a month, or a year, the orphan would be stark naked in one of those strange aquariums. He knew it too. He was too young to oppose it. He was accepted in this village because it is clear that dead children are more fascinating than adults. The boy saw that there were already two little girls there, but not yet a young boy. They were waiting for him, he knew. He knew. He knew. Some imbecile had even had the tactlessness to mention it to him.
I was gripped with terror. He saw me looking at him from afar, in the shadows. He recognized me and turned away and I knew that, for him, I symbolised death. I am the one that he never saw, apart from in the room where people suffer and never come out alive. He had been brought to the temple three times, by force, so that he could be treated for one or more of his illnesses.
He would always scream in terror.
He was called Thonn.
Once, only once, when I was outside of the ward, did he come and attach himself to me. For maybe thirty seconds, no more. During those thirty long seconds we exchanged something inexplicable that still gives me goose pimples if I think about it. For thirty seconds, no more, I experienced an absolute closeness. I'd like to be able to relive it, because for me it was a delight. Yet I despise myself for this pleasure; I despise myself for the delight, because it is an enormous risk, and it frightens me.
This was not the first such episode in my life. Sometimes I emit something which provokes this queerness. Some years ago in Bangkok the same thing happened.
It was when I was a Monk and went to a village where very sick people stayed until they died.
A beautiful girl, a little younger than Thonn, was in the street and came immediately to me, only to me. She didn't know me at all. She glued herself to my legs until I held her in my arms and we exchanged this ineffable and powerful something. Those assembled were intrigued and confused, seeing that this was not a question of a cuddle. I don't know how to cuddle.That child was also HIV-positive. At home that evening I was perturbed by the memory. I had the feeling that the event was charged with a premonitory sense that I was unable to decode. I've thought of it often and always try to translate it. It worried me.
When I first came to the hospice there would be dogs waiting for me every day by the entrance of the ward. Since the first day, the dogs loved me. One bitch made it known particularly clearly. Smelling my arrival from afar, she moaned. She cast herself at my feet and demanded I hug her. When I released her, the bitch jumped up to glue herself to my leg in an obscene fashion. Those present, all women, rather than laughing, watched me blushing in silence.
Now that I have turned to ice, these dogs fear me.The world seems to want to confound me by the complexity of its plot. That half minute of fusion with Thonn, who would be naked in a coffin of formalin a few weeks later, is absolutely the only thirty seconds that contains anything miraculous since I became tough.
A child dying in the middle of the ward called for a massage. It was Thonn.I wasn't able to massage him, and he died a few hours later, pulling me out of my stupor as he did so. By some law of alchemy that I ignore a cerebral transmutation occurred. I observed at last, with the appropriate fright, the deleterious power of fear. Then, the deleterious power of sentiment.
Thonn died in horrific conditions.God almighty! Enough! It was too much !(...)
A aids patient pays respect and prays to the Lord Buddha
These two aids patient comfort each other after both
being inffected by their husbands
Dr Alongkot Dikkapanyo talkes to one of his patient
who is to weak to stand or get out of bed
The ward for full blowen aids patients at Wat Phra Baht
Nam Phu Thailand
A patient close to death
The children with aids, they never done anything wrong
but they have to suffer so much before they die
The ashes of patients are sent to family but most are
always returned to the temple as the family think they
could get aids buy keeping them
The 'after death room' is served by a large glazed door. It allows a good perspective on the arrangement of the corpses.
The crematorium at Wat Phra Baht Nam Phu
