Monk bust
I must say this story rather surprised me:
Twenty-two Sri Lankan monks returning from Thailand were arrested on Sunday at the main international airport in Sri Lanka with a record 242 pounds of powerful cannabis, officials said.
A Sri Lanka Customs spokesman said the group, returning home after a four-day vacation in the Thai capital, had Kush — a potent strain of cannabis — hidden in their luggage.
“Each carried about five kilos of the narcotic concealed within false walls in their luggage,” the spokesman said, adding that the monks had been handed over to police. …
The monks were mostly young students from temples across Sri Lanka and had been on a holiday sponsored by a businessman.
I didn’t know monks went on vacation, much less on a vacation sponsored by a businessman – although perhaps these were actually student monks. Then again, this seems to have been something of a working vacation.
However, had I been keeping up with recent monk events, I probably wouldn’t have been quite as surprised by the drug bust:
In 2022, every single monk at a Buddhist temple in central Thailand was defrocked after they tested positive for methamphetamine. The monks were sent to a health clinic to undergo drug rehabilitation.
In 2017, police said a Buddhist monk was arrested in Myanmar after authorities found more than 4 million meth pills in his car and in his monastery.
Meth surprises me even more than cannabis. But both go against the monks’ general prohibition on the use of any intoxicants.
Judge Dee would be delighted.
Judge Dee! LOL! A classic!
Buddhist monks aren’t the same as Christian monks!
At least some Catholic monks have vacations. Might vary by order.
Ram Dass, former Harvard LSD researcher, converted to a Hindu student of Indian guru, Neem Karoli Baba. He recorded a number of the stories, often seemingly miraculous, of his guru.
Not a miracle, but one such story involved a a group of Western devotees to the guru. They had decided to make some money smuggling hash, told the guru about it and the guru got very interested, even excited about it.
At first they interpreted this as the guru’s blessing. But then they thought again. This guru was something of a trickster. It might be a harsh teaching on karma.
They thought it over and decided not to become smugglers.
Once, when I was driving to a shooting spot, I encountered a group who were broken down on their way to the Madre Grande Monastery. They included a Buddhist monk. I gave them a ride up towards the monastery, which is a hippie thing that participated in the Harmonic Convergence:
https://madregrande.org/history
Some Westerners, disillusioned with Western religions, turned to the East with great idealism, only to discover that Eastern spiritual figures, including Buddhist monks, were no better.
“Stripping the Gurus” by Geoffrey Falk is one-stop shopping for the abuses and corruption on that side of the ledger. Free:
https://www.strippingthegurus.com/ebook/download.html
A real eye-opener.
While in college in the early 1970’s I encountered numerous individuals who trafficked in cannabis from Southeast Asia. Many were Vietnam vets, others were hippie sojourners who had sought out Buddhist temples and monasteries in places like Burma and especially Thailand. They sung the praises of a particular strain called Thai stick, which monks would laboriously tie a strain of pot buds on a slender stick. Lots of stories about their sources of the monks in the temples.
I gather it has been a thing there for a long time.
@ Eeyore & Ladyhobbit – My very first reaction was: “This would not surprise Judge Dee at all”!
For the uninitiated:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judge_Dee
You have to get used to the milieu of the series, and van Gulik does a good job in his introductions explaining what that is, but the mysteries themselves are definitely in the Holmesian vein of cerebral detection based on shrewd knowledge of character and observation of details.
PS Ancient Chinese society was not overly prudish; you have been warned.
Some things I didn’t know before:
There was a recent Netflix release of a Chinese-produced series, which I have not seen.
At least one of the Judge Dee stories involved corrupt monks, as I recall.
The French novelist Marayat Rollet-Andriane (or her husband Louis-Jacques; their exact division of labor is still disputed) mentioned one of the ways Thai Buddhist monks work around prohibitions. At least one prohibition, that is, but the one that mattered most to her character.
@ Ladyhobbit > “Buddhist monks aren’t the same as Christian monks!”
True, but as I was going out today, I recalled that the esteemed friar Brother Cadfael (the 12th-century Benedictine sleuth) would not have been surprised to find some of his own colleagues doing something a bit shady ; because, of course, some of them did!
I found it interesting personally that my favorite detectives were both operating in ancient / medieval times.
Being a monk sound like great cover for drug smuggling.
Perhaps the tip of an iceberg?
I’ve heard that certain sects, cults, and various religous groups may practice the usage of psychotropic drugs like Ayahuasca and DMT; but usually those situations involve some sort of guided ceremony and the like. But I can’t imagine things like meth or hundreds of pounds of kush being used in that way.
But everything is illusion…
Ergo…
Why am I reminded of Charlie Sheen’s line from ‘Hot Shots Part Deux’: “These [monks] have taken a supreme vow of celibacy, like their fathers and their fathers before them.