Buddhism from the Farang's Perspective

Tomorrow is my Buddhist Institutions final exam.

I feel like a failure because out of all my classes, this is the one I'm doing the shittiest in. I guess I am the typical "cradle" Buddhist that just follows rituals and traditions while my classmates are like those convert Buddhist that know so much more than me . . and hence, are doing better in the class than me.

Aside from my frustrations from being really sucky at Buddhist Institutions, while I am the only Buddhist in the class . . I've also been really frustrated with people who have expressed their "disapointment" in Thai Buddhism.

Apparently, a lot of students came to Thailand with these perfect images of Buddhism as the purest and most wonderful religion in the world. Therefore, they were expecting to find wonderfully faithful Buddhists citizens and amazingly holy monks in Thailand.

However, when they got to Bangkok, they found (among other things) crazy drunk teenagers partying it up in clubs on weekdays and weekends, prostitutes galore, Thai girls with really right and short uniform skirts, monks smoking and talking on cellular phones . .

Apparently, Bangkok hasn't lived up to their expectations as a Buddhist society which has led them to think that Buddhism is as corrupt and "just another religion" like all the other western religions in the states.

I'm not really quite sure how to respond to this. Part of me wants to justify all these failings and say, "Well, Bangkok isn't exactly the best representation of a 'good' Buddhist society." Then I would go on and on about how Bangkok is different because it's so consumer driven with their "High-So" population and most people like my relatives that live up north in the villages are deeply and much more purely Buddhist.

However, the other part of me doesn't even want to address the matter of purity of Buddhism in Thailand. Part of me looks and sees a bunch of western people, coming over from their countries, and placing their assumptions and standards on an entire society that they cannot possibily understand. It is so like us westerners (I say "us" because, yes, my experience here in Thailand has made me so much more conscious of how western I actually am) to look at other cultures and societies through our own lenses.

We are so Euro/American centric.

It disgusts me because it seems so anthropological. With the superiority implications of: this is us, that is you, and you are definitely not like us.

But then again, what do I know? I'm just another American farang born Buddhist that has probably gotten better grades on past exams on Christianity then on the present exams on Buddhism . .