Buddhism only looks good on the outside

 "I'm making merit", my Thai girlfriend used to say, before a job interview or some life-changing event that was about to come up. I never realized how central that phrase was to Thais, even a secular Buddhist like her. She was a harsh person, often accusing me of doing things that I did not, like cheating, often finding the worst aspects in me and playing them up to make me feel small.

Karma literally means "action." It's a concept that predates the Buddha. In like manner, making merit includes doing some work-based or ritual-based activity like walking around a shrine seven times and bowing before the Buddha and making a donation to the local monks. 

 She was accepting of my low status in life - I was 34 and had very little to my name but an English teaching post - but I had to be perfect in many other aspects or she wouldn't accept me at all. Aspects of dress and looking good in the public eye were so crucial that they would decide whether we'd go out or not. Aspects like which shirt I wore, or whether my hair was too long or short would be decisive in whether we'd have a good or terrible evening.  

This play a part in working culture as well. If you aren't offering a perfect service without the slightest signs of clumsiness or insecurity, they play these up. They make them so front-and-center that you begin to doubt yourself. If you're a westerner and not used to this, it can be devastating. I imagine that the problem of suicide has much to do with this too. There is a lot of suicide here, and I think it comes about in a similar way. 

Maybe you're a student, a girl-student here and thing goes wrong in your life, and some old lady of the beady eyes starts prodding and poking you over it. Maybe you got an A- instead of an A+ for math or everyone expected you to be top of your class but you couldn't quite manage it because of other things going on in your life. Instead you came second. Maybe someone - another girl at your school starts saying you're ugly, and the idea catches hold. Maybe your dad shouts at you too much for having the wrong friends or something in your personality that he hates because he doesn't have enough self-reflection to see it in himself. And then one day you find yourself on a bridge over a busy highway threatening to jump with cops rallying around you and the public staring on. 

I'm a teacher in Thailand and there are many here who sense insecurity and begin to peck mercilessly at it. I worked at a summer camp recently and this happened to me.  I suppose Buddhism is open to interpretation because its texts vary so much, and for that reason it is a religion with the potential to be very cruel and very kind as well. 

At this summer camp I was subordinate to the British bosses' wife for a while and made one or two startling errors that she couldn't overlook. The first was not cleaning the house where I was staying on the summer camp and leaving the AC unit on while I was at the school. This happened once, but she happened to see it. This basically ended me. After that she was always in a mood around me, always finding fault, always teaching my classes for me and making me feel small and incapable of teaching, never giving me a chance to say anything to the students. It was like I was useless. The British boss hopped on the bandwagon and became cold toward me. 

This is the way of Buddhism. The dark, unknown side that comes after all the good appearances have had their say. If you disagree, then tell me this: Why is Thailand - apart from the natural settings - so ugly? Why is it that, despite the impeccable manners of the people, they can't maintain a decent-looking city without ruinous buildings and without mould-eaten walls in every street? Why is it that hardly anyone smiles in Bangkok, despite it being the land of smiles? What accounts for the gnawing need for more cars and more luxury malls and more apartment blocks while the squalor continues like a sprawling tumor? If Buddhism really worked, why is this the outcome of it? The reality is different on the ground. It's a cold and dark country when you see it that way, and it all comes down to the unsustainable pursuit of perfection rather than willingness to see intent.  Which is something Thailand becomes further and further removed from attaining the more it insists on attaining karma.