I found the Middle East a dangerous place to travel in. The people are so warm, and the cultures so ancient, rich and diverse, that it’s an easy region to fall in love with. But it can also cause you heartache because many of the corrupt governments, feeding off their land’s natural resources, hoard the wealth. They do little to improve schools and infrastructures, and they keep most of their people poor. I was there in 2007, a bit before the Arab Spring’s hopes for change, and the subsequent difficulties that new governments have had cohering. Instead, old political status quo’s have often asserted themselves more violently than ever. While I was in my hotel lobby in Amman, Jordan, a video played on the TV with a plea for peace. Understanding it can help heal this region and bring it back to its better nature.

A young man stood alone in the desert. He was smiling and singing, looking up to the clear sky which beamed with the sun’s radiance. His long white gown and the sands he stood on looked pure.

The scenes then changed to soldiers in combat, then to a family quarreling vehemently, and then to a business meeting of dour men that I wouldn’t  buy a used car from.

But the three scenes were then shown in reverse, as though all people, with their divisive mentalities, were being brought back to their most basic roots.

The scene changed back to the man singing in the desert. Now all the other people were walking towards him in separate lines. They converged on him, became one group, looked up to the sky and sang together.

I found the video so powerful that I was fighting back tears in the crowded lobby. It blended several currents that are common in the Middle East.

1. Though Westerners often think of the desert as a remote and exotic place, it often stands for purity in many Middle Eastern cultures. Nothing is between people and the sky, with the all-powerful sun, and God, who created it all. Mosque architecture expresses this sensibility.

2. The human community together, enjoying intimacy between family and friends, and extending it to travelers–including me.

This blend of simplicity, unity, glory and the closely knit human community is a key aspect of Middle Eastern culture. Today’s desperate economic situations (The Economist magazine warns that Egypt might be on its way to becoming a failed state–the government lacks money to buy enough wheat for its people) and history of exploitation make it easy to forget the ancient roots of this region and focus on the divisive present–mainly a gift from greedy governments and American and British oil hogs and arms sellers. But these currents engendered the Bible, the Quran, and the Mishnah, and one of the world’s most fertile and influential  cultural landscapes.

Will this vision of unity, glory, sacredness and human intimacy be realized by all in the Middle East? That depends on how many people appreciate the ancient ideals–please remember them and share them.

The play’s the thing. Hamlet said this as he concluded that the way in which his uncle would watch a play would show whether or not he was guilty of killing Hamlet’s father. In Shakespeare’s time, the word thing meant a subject for discussion in a public assembly. Its original meaning in English was a judicial or legislative assembly (Iceland’s parliament is still known as the Althing). After Shakespeare’s time, the word thing was generalized into any object. The single object has been such a strong center of gravity in Western thought and perceptions that it’s often taken for granted as basic reality, and other ideas easily get pulled into it like orbiting satellites.

But in Laos and many other Southeast Asian cultures, the thing’s the play. Come and explore a different way of thinking about the world.

The above photo is of the altar in Wat That Luang, in Luang Prabang. Most of the public assembly halls in the dozens of Wats in Laos and the hundreds of wats in Thailand that I explored had an altar with a main Buddha statue surrounded by a multitude of other objects.

But they’re not just ordinary objects. These statues, candles and banners flicker and glow. They’re not to be examined in detail–they radiate.

The statues in Luang Prabang’s Wat Monorom (pictured above) also seem to mesh into a field of glowing colors and graceful forms that bestow benevolent energies on people who come to worship.

The Sukhothai style statue in Luang Prabang’s Wat Monorom is also surrounded by many other statues. They’re in different styles. The one in the middle is a Phra Singh copy–this style came from the northern Thai kingdom of Lan Na, which was centered in Chiang Mai.

When you slowly walk around the altar, the statues hide behind each other and reappear, like these in Luang Prabang’s Wat Mai.

I’m behind Wat Mai’s altar in the above shot. These statues’ forms aren’t static, like an ancient Greek temple.

The ancient Greek temple is a perfect distinct entity–the perfect thing. It’s complete and independent, and its forms are linear and proportioned, like the temple of Neptune in Paestum (above). But the statues in Laotian temples have kinetic appeal–as you amble around them, their curvy forms and radiant colors glimmer together, and they make you feel like your part of a stream of graceful energies.

This aesthetic is widespread in Southeast Asia–you can savor it in any country, including Vietnam. It mirrors its natural environment. Both express abundance that’s irreducible to any single form. The world hangs together through harmony between all forms. If you’ve read a lot of my articles on Thailand, you’ve already seen this perspective. Why am I sharing it again?

1. A large and diverse region of the world has embraced this way of seeing, and its people have expressed it in infinite varieties.

2. I find it incredibly beautiful–this is one of the reasons why Southeast Asia is one of my favorite regions. Every variety expresses joy and abundance, and its blend of many forms is a great model for world harmony.

Lots of other people feel the same way. In the above photo, I’m celebrating Laotian New Year 2012 in a temple in Silicon valley, which was formerly a house that the Laotian community had bought and converted. The crowd and the offerings of food blended into a general feeling of civility and prosperity.

The altar also has the vibrant mixture of forms that altars in Laos do.

I think these blends of objects that seem to flow together like rippling energies are some of humanity’s most beautiful creations. They’re not studied in most schools–I feel sorry for their students for missing them. But they’re in every Southeast Asian country, and they’re spreading all over the world. Anyone who discovers them is blessed.

Wat That Luang, in Vientiane, has a lot of enchantments besides its impressive outer form.

Most visitors miss the its historical depths and the many beautiful art works around it. We’ll explore them here.

Part One on Wat That Luang explained that Lan Xang kings moved their capital from Luang Prabang to Vientiane in the 16th century when Burmese forces were rampaging through Siam. King Setthathirat began to build this grand monument to fortify his new capital by connecting it with nature’s main powers and the Buddha’s compassion–and by making a political statement about Vientiane’s legitimacy. But things went badly at first.

In 1571 Setthathirat disappeared in mountains in the south, on his way back from an expedition to Cambodia (Angkor’s uplands are in the above photo–an easy area for ambushes or falls into ravines). Lan Xang lacked a strong king for the next 60 years, and the Burmese took it over for a while.

But King Sulinya Vongse took the throne in 1637 and ruled until 1694. Many historians consider this Laos’s glory period. Burmese and Thai forces had bashed each other enough to need a breather. So Laos’s two western neighbors concentrated on their own domains, and it enjoyed a peaceful period. Sulinya Vongse was able to build many temples and commission art in his capital. Vientiane became known as a hub of Buddhist learning, and it attracted students from Cambodia, Thailand, and Burma.

Western travelers were impressed by what they saw. We can only imagine–Thais destroyed almost everything in Vientiane down to the last brick in the 1820s–That Dam (pictured above) is one of the few constructions in Vientiane that predate the invasion. Its form is graceful, but it seems like a matchstick when compared with what writers described.

In 1640 an Italian Jesuit named Giovanni-Maria Leria wrote that Sulinya Vongse’s palace was so big that people could think it was a town. An enormous number of courtiers and servants lived within its symmetrical enclosure. A magnificent gateway fronted the king’s apartment, which consisted of a great hall and many splendid rooms. They interiors and exteriors were covered with gilded reliefs. Sulinya Vongse’s home rivaled the older Khmer royal palace at Angkor.

We can only wonder about most of Vientiane’s grandest monuments, but it was also full of little enchantments.

Small shrines, Buddha statues, and ordinary wats (monasteries not built by the king) bejeweled the city. They blended different cultures’ forms. The shrine in the above photo has a lot of Khmer influence, and the ones in the shot above it are crowned with Burmese-style gables.

This stupa is Laotian style.

So is this Buddha. Its broad forehead was probably influenced by statues from the Thai city Lopburi. But the combination of the long ears, big nose, small mouth and wide fleshy crown on the head is Laotian. Like many Laotian Buddhas, it has a quirkiness that makes it look more like folk art–and like someone that ordinary people can relate to.

Many people dream about exploring ancient Angkor and Pagan, but Vientiane was a great site in its own right. Sadly, its glory didn’t last. Its strength was also a weakness. Laos was landlocked and thus sheltered enough from international competition to focus on Buddhist studies and beautiful art. But it was also distant from international trade, and Vietnam and the Thai state Ayutthaya outgrew it. Laos needed a strong leader but was plagued with succession crises after Sulinya Vongse’s death. Siamese armies invaded and occupied Vientiane and Luang Prabang in the late 18th century. They destroyed Vientiane so thoroughly when Anuvong spearheaded a rebellion in the 1820s that people there were still living in tents 40 years later. Wat That Luang was destroyed and left in ruins until the French restored it in the 1930s.

But Vientiane is still well worth exploring. Its reconstructed wats, preserved Buddha statues and warmhearted people gave me enough echoes of the good old days to make me wish I could have stayed longer. I hope their days keep getting better.

Many Laotians consider Vientiane’s That Luang to be their national monument.

But the Insight guide that the Discovery Channel published called it strange and exotic. We’ll take a closer look at it and delve into its mysteries.

When ancient Laos’s Lan Xang kingdom strengthened itself in the early 16th century, its royal family began to build large shrines in Luang Prabang, which was the capital then. One of the first, Thakmo (pictured below), was modeled after the massive stone stupas in Sri Lanka.

It surely impressed the locals, but Lan Xang had close diplomatic and commercial relations with the states in northern Thailand. It adapted the Sukhothai Buddha statue.

And it built monastic assembly halls in the Lan Na kingdom’s style, which was based in Chiang Mai. Luang Prabang’s Wat Xieng Thong (above), with its cascading roofs, is one of the best examples of Lan Na architecture anywhere.

All over Thailand stupa forms were becoming more narrow, tapering and indented. Laotians were doing the same with their shrines, including the above ones in Wat Xieng Thong. Thais and Laotians (Laotians are a Tai ethnic group, but they like to consider themselves independent from Thailand, which savagely bullied them, as we’ll see in the next post) have felt that shrines have supernatural powers. So their graceful forms seem as though nature’s power is benevolent.

Lan Xang’s political situation intensified in the 16th century so that the kingdom needed benevolence. Burma was expanding and its troops were advancing through Thailand. Laos’s King Phothisarat and his son, King Setthathirat, moved their court down to Vientiane, which was farther from the western tiger. Smart move–the Burmese took over Lan Na without a battle and ruled it for more than 200 years, and they conquered the most powerful Thai kingdom, Ayutthaya (in the south; its capital presided about 50 miles north of modern Bangkok, which was founded in 1782).

Setthathirat ordered the building of Vientiane’s Wat That Luang. Most Thai and Lao stupas taper smoothly, as though the Buddha’s grace is cascading from the heavens. But I felt that I was in two incongruent worlds at That Luang. The Insight guide said that it’s like a fortress, and it’s easy to agree.

It was built on the opposite side of Vientiane from where the Mekong River flows, so its area was open to invasions from land. Maybe Lan Xang’s king thought that That Luang would give his state’s elite monks physical shelter and his capital magical protection.

But Wat That Lang has an equally strong spiritual personality. Both of the above photos show a line of lotus petals along the protecting wall. Since the lotus grows from the bottom of a pond and blossoms on the water’s surface, it symbolizes purity and the soul’s liberation according to Buddhist beliefs.

Its central  tower and the surrounding spires rise so suddenly and sharply that they add oomph to the desire to connect with spiritual realms. The builders of That Luang seem to have had mixed feelings. The mid and late 16th century was a stressful time in Laos and Thailand. The Lao king needed to assert his dominion over Lan Xang lands. People in Laos felt that it was necessary to have the land’s spirits and the Buddha on their side in order to enjoy political security. Wat That Luang covers all bases by making strong appeals in both worldly and spiritual directions.

They worked for a while. The next century was one of the best times in Laotian history. Europeans who wrote about Vientiane were very impressed. We’ll see how Laos was special in the next post, and how she fell on hard times afterwards. Wat That Luang still expresses reality for many Laotians.

The kings of Laos’ Lan Xang Empire unified their realm by importing Indian traditions, like Buddhist monasteries and court dances that dramatized the Ramayana. But Laos quickly added its own cultural wealth to these currents and created a landscape that was (and is) both vibrant and beautiful.

The public assembly hall of Wat Mai (above) was finished in 1788 or 1794, and it housed the Phra Bang Buddha statue from 1894 to 1947–the most honored religious image in Laos, which protects the country. The royal palace (the national museum since the 1975 Marxist takeover which ruthlessly deposed the king) presides next to Wat Mai. So key royal and Buddhist rituals were coordinated. The hall’s graceful stack of five roofs is a Lao design, which added soft touches to the grand rituals. But most fans of Laotian and Buddhist art think that Wat Mai’s greatest treasure is the veranda in front of the entrance.

The golden bas reliefs around the entrance were made in the 1960’s.

A close look at them brings you into a perspective of the world that blends regal splendor with folksiness.

The friezes include images from the Ramayana and the Vessantara Jataka (the story of the most recent prior incarnation of the Buddha), and each tale includes palace scenes. Elegant courtly images on Wat Mai reinforced its role in Laotian palace rituals. But–

just under the palace are casual images from daily life, and under the bottom row of people, animals and foliage blend with each other. There are no sharp divisions between domains–the kingly, the common and the natural seamlessly fuse. The Buddha’s compassion embraces all, and all life-forms have their own dignity.

The Vessantara Jataka integrates both worlds very well. Vessantara was a prince whose neignboring kingdom was suffering from a drought. He gave it his state’s white elephant because it had mystical powers to bring rain. The people of Vessantara’s country were so angry that his father, the king, was forced to banish him from the realm. In the above photo, he, his wife and children wander through the countryside.

The countryside is very attractive and realistically shown.

And it takes up much more space in the friezes than the court scenes.

And common people are given as much as dignity as the royals. Village women gather fruit in the above photo, and some seem to perform a fertility dance.

The annual recital of the Vessantara Jataka has been one of the most important events in Luang Prabang’s ritual calendar for untold centuries. But on Wat Mai, the story is immersed in happy village life. First rate elegance and folksiness together–is there a better perspective of the world?

Northeren Thailand also mixed both in many art works. So did Yunnan. This general area is one of my favorite parts of the world. Several kingdoms flourished for many centuries and traded goods, arts and ideas with each other. This region is full of some of the world’s finest cultural treasures, which are little-known.

When Laos’ Lan Xang kingdom’s political power peaked in the 16th and 17th centuries, it was one of the main states in mainland Southeast Asia.

Its kings built monasteries and coordinated Buddhist and court rituals. Monks and ornate assembly halls became common symbols for the world’s order.

As in many other Southeast Asian states, stories in the Ramayana became the subjects for elegant dances at court. The children in the above photo attest that this is still a living tradition–and very pleasant to watch.

So when ancient Laos became a large state, its royals used ideas and arts from India to help unify itself. Khmers and states in Thailand, Burma and Indonesia did too. But all these kingdoms added as much inspiration from their own traditions. Every country is a cultural feast, so here we’ll get in step with the Laotian variety.

My article on Ancient Laos Part One explains that Buddhist monasteries and stupas were built, rituals were established and scriptures were translated. These are the things that you’d expect kings to do when they wanted to consolidate their power with the growing faith.

But Laos’ own cultural wealth quickly grew into the patterns from India:

1. The Ramayana was translated as the Phra Lak Phra Lam, which was modified to fit Laotian contexts. John Clifford Holt, in Spirits of the Place, wrote that the Laotian version focused less on the Sanskrit epic’s sweeping perspectives, and was more centered on the immediate family. Instead of the vast metaphysical background of the dharma which royal power’s supposed to be based on, the Phra Lak Phra Lam focuses more on how to arrange marriage proposals and conduct familial relations.

Holt felt that this is because Lan Xang’s kings married into other Thai states to give themselves more diplomatic clout. If Keith Ferazzi, who wrote a business networking book called Never Eat Alone, had lived in Lan Xang, he might have written Never Sleep Alone. The Phra Lak Phra Lam portrayed the hero, Rama, as the heir to Lan Xang’s throne. He exemplified Buddhist merit and royal etiquette.

But theater was staged in towns and villages too. Like all Tai ethnic groups, Lao had been living in cozy riverine valleys and uplands, in small communities that stressed harmony with nature and its spirits. Their epic’s focus on the family resonated more than the vast cosmic landscape in the Indian versions did.

2. Monks in Luang Prabang translated another huge literary tradition from India and Sri Lanka–the Jatakas. They were stories of more than 500 of the Buddha’s past incarnations. Luang Prabang’s kings especially focused on the Vessantara Jataka, which was about the last reincarnation before the historic Buddha. The above photo is of an illustration of it inside Wat Xieng Thong’s public assembly hall. Vessantara was a prince  who gave away everything he owned. In Thai traditions, each of the most popular Jatakas illustrated one of the Buddha’s virtues (parami). The Vessantara story exemplefied his generosity.

Holt says that the Vessantara Jataka was ritually recited in wats all over Laos every year and that this ceremony became the most important occasion for merit making. Though the story’s more ideal than real–Lao and Thai kings often battled each other and their own lords–the focus on giving resonated with ordinary Laotians. The Vessantara story brought the vast perspectives in Indian texts down to the cozy village.

3. Buddhist and Hindu cosmologies saw Mount Meru as the center of the world, and many Southeast Asian cultures transposed this idea to their own lands. Khmers saw Angkor Wat as a model of Meru, and the Thai Sukhothai kingdom probably saw its Wat Mahathat in the same terms. A hill in the middle of Luang Prabang called Phousi (above) rises in the center of town. The royal palace is in the bottom right of the picture, so it was built at its foot. Ideas inspired by the vast Himalayas were thus grafted onto Luang Prabang’s environment of undulating hills and rivers, and tropical monsoons. The locals retained their geography of serpants who protected different regions of Luang Prabang.

So every major idea and tradition that was imported from India blended with Lao cultural patterns. India’s vast panoramas were balanced by the centrality of the local world of the family and village. And ideas that reflected the enormity of India’s natural environment fused with the Lao worlds of narrow riverine valleys. You can’t reduce Laos to one system. Lan Xang’s kings tried to unify their realm with ideas from India, but in the process they added yet more variety to their inherantly irreducible land.

In the next post, we’ll discover vareity that the kings tried to expel. Laos’ land and people have too much spirit to be constrained.

I had a wonderful time in Laos last year, and I’ve been looking forward to writing a series of posts on the Lan Xang kingdom.

When its political power peaked in the 16th and 17th centuries, it was a fascinating cultural crossroads. It imbibed influences from India (like the Ramayana, being performed above), several Thai states, Yunnan and Sri Lanka. But it was no copycat–it mixed local cultural patterns with them. This lively kingdom fused lots of thought patterns within its beautiful natural landscape–a very under-appreciated society that will reward anyone who studies it.

But it didn’t go so well after its founder, Fa Ngum, unified the local lords into one kingdom, and his son and successor, San Saenthai, centralized court administration and Buddhist practices. The next kings don’t seem to have had their ability–there were several quick royal successions.

A new king, Chakhaphat, was stronger–he reigned from 1442 to 1479, and he appointed his six sons to key political positions, and strengthened Buddhism. But the new Le dynasty in Vietnam invaded the capital, Luang Prabang. The Lao expelled them in a very costly war. But Lan Xang’s star was about to rise.

King Visoun reigned from 1501 to 1520. He centralized the court and began Lan Xang’s glory period of building monuments and monasteries. Wat Thakmo (above) was built in 1504 or 1514 by Queen Visounnarat. The current shrine is a reconstruction from the beginning of the 20th century–armies from Yunnan destroyed the original when they sacked Luang Prabang in the 1880’s.  Its style is mainly Sri Lankan. It stresses mass more than Thai art does. It must have appeared very stately to Visoun’s followers. His successors would develop Lan Xang’s own style in their monuments.

Wat Thakmo was full of Buddha images before the Chinese invaders carted them off. According to John Clifford Holt, in Spirits of the Place, Visoun and his son and successor, Photthisarat (1520-48) greatly strengthened Buddhism in Lan Xang, and they integrated it with the royal court. Fa Ngum had carried Laos’ most sacred Buddha statue, the Phra Bang Buddha, from the Khmer court when he advanced north to found his empire. Visoun built a monastery that stored it, Wat Visoun (some historians think Photthisarat constructed it). The image is still considered so sacred that it’s now sheltered in the national museum–photography wasn’t allowed when I was there. The above Buddha is the principle statue in Wat Xieng Thong, which was also built in the 16th century (most people consider it Laos’ most beautiful building, and it will soon grace a separate post in this blog).

The above picture is of the 1898 reconstruction of Wat Visoun’s assembly hall–the original was torched during the Yunannese invasion. Traditionally Lao and all other Tai cultures have believed that a crowded community of spirits called phi, and serpants called nagas protect their land and communities. The Phra Bang Buddha now took over this function, and Photthisarat outlawed the old spirit cults. Like Thailand’s Emerald Buddha, the Phra Bang Buddha protects the whole kingdom. Lords pledged their loyalty to the king in front of it.

Lan Xang’s two great kings built more monasteries and invited the most scholarly monks to live in Luang Prabang and copy sacred texts. Monasteries became centers of literary culture.

They also held services that became centers of Luang Prabang’s ritual life. Buddhism became integrated with the centralizing royal court, but it also spread to the people. I took the above picture in Luang Prabang’s Wat Mahathat during a service which the monks held for the community every afternoon.

I took the above photo while facing the other direction (with the zoom on). The abbot and an assistant took turns chanting scriptures. The abbot then lectured in a deep voice. The women in the row behind me were nuns and the people behind them were locals. After the roughly hour-long service we left, and–

monks started to fill the hall for their own service. By crowding together and chanting they supposedly conentrated the Buddha’s protective power for the neighborhood, as phi and nagas had. So royal power and Buddhist orthodoxy from Sri Lanka and India spread in Lan Xang like this as it became a major Southeast Asian state.

But I was just as impressed with the nuns and lay people behind me. The crowd I sat in had a vibe that was very gentle and giving. Burning candles in that sister’s dish kept falling as their wax melted, and everyone kept reaching out to reattach their bottoms. As I looked at everyone’s bowl of offerings, it felt good to be surrounded by nothing but benevolence.

Buddhism may have been pushed from the top-down in Laos, but it was also embraced from the bottom-up. Buddhism in Laos has many dimensions which are interwoven with its rich folk cultures and family life.

But a wealth of other influences came from India and Sri Lanka–including the Ramayana and its stately dance performances. All blended with each other and with local cultures into a vibrant landscape which you’ll never forget if you immerse yourself in it. We’ll explore more of it in the next post on ancient Laos.

The Buddha statue is one of the main art forms in Laotian culture. Graceful figures blend with the abundant foliage and with rivers, mountains and temples into a landscape that enchants every visitor.

Laotians developed their own style of Buddha sculpture shortly after they formed their Lan Xang kingdom in the 14th century. Please come inside and see a little magic.

Lan Xang’s founder, Fa Ngum, was raised at the Khmer court, and he brought a Buddha statue from there when he trekked north, defeated local lords and established his kingdom in Luang Prabang. His son and successor, Sam Saentai, strengthened Buddhist practices by founding monasteries. But he followed a different cultural tradition.

He brought the Sukhothai Buddha style into Laos. The above statue, in Luang Prabang’s Wat Monorom, was cast from bronze in the 1370’s–during his reign. Luang Prabang’s elites built Wat Monorom to house Sam Saentai’s ashes, and this 20-foot-high statue was installed there. The Sukhothai style was developing then, and it became Laos’ most influential.

This is no surprise because the Khmer empire was declining in the 14th century–it had lost a lot of land to the growing Thai states, including Sukhothai. Laotians comprise one of the Tai ethnic groups (it’s spelled “Tai” to refer to people of Tai descent who live outside of Thailand and who don’t consider themselves to be Thai nationals). They had a much easier time communicating with Thai states because their languages were similar.

And people in northern Thailand resonated more with the Sukhothai statue’s forms, which gracefully curve. Khmer Buddhas, like the above one at the Bayon at Angkor, are usually more squarish and sturdy looking. They project the unmovable strength of the elites who built and ran this great empire.

But Laotians did their own thing.

They varied the Sukhothai Buddha’s forms a bit. Like these novice monks taking a break from their studies in Luang Prabang, a lot of Laotians are direct. Many people  in Thailand avoid showing intense emotions. On average, I’ve found Laotians more willing to show how they really feel. The husband and wife who own a Laotian restaurant I recently ate in snapped at each other right in front of their customers.

All of these four photos are from another one of Luang Prabang’s oldest wats, Wat Visoun. The statue in Wat Monorom was made when the Sukhothai form was developing. When it matured in the 15th century, it became  pure elegance. It’s beautiful, but it’s so idealized that it seems to be in its own rarefied world. Most Laotian Buddha statues are more folksy.

They still have the Sukhothai statue’s elongated forms, curving features and soft smiles–they’re still gentle, so they won’t crank at anyone in a restaurant.

But they all look more casual and a bit quirky. They’re graceful, but not perfect. The influences from folk art allow ordinary people to feel that they’ll hear their prayers.

The above statues are in a pose that’s particularly popular in Laos. They’re calling for rain. Laotian legends say that the people were suffering when a drought had settled in. The Buddha used his merit and powers to ask the spirits in nature for rain so the people could grow enough food to eat.

Laotian art has a lot of human sides. Communities have bonded closely in this land of towering mountains and small valleys. People, art, and nature in Laos bestow an infinite variety of delights on anyone who travels there.

When the great Lao kingdom of Lan Xang was founded in the 14th century, its first king, Fa Ngum, brought the Buddhist faith from the Khmer court at Angkor, where he had grown up.

But this was Laos–things get funky there. Its landscape of diverse valleys and its Tai cultural roots blended with Buddhism in cool ways.

People in Lan Xang already had a wealth of local spirit cults. They called spirits Phi–folks in Laos still do. John Clifford Holt, in Spirits of the Place, and Yukio Hayashi, in Practical Buddhism Among the Thai-Lao, wrote that people in Laotian villages populate their environment with more spirits than cars, tuk tuks and motorcycles on Bangkok’s roads.

Some of the most important are the phi sia–spirits of the deceased father and mother. They protect the family and reside in one of the house’s pillars. Several traditional cultures in Indonesia also held this idea. Roxana Waterson, in The Living House, wrote that this idea might have formed around the Yangtze when communities began to farm rice before 5000 BCE. They later migrated into mainland and island Southeast Asia as their populations grew.

Parents living in one of your house’s pillar–it’s an attractive idea if you all got along, but not for a man or woman with a nasty mother in law. Fred Flintstone’s worst nightmare!

But this is Laos, not Bedrock–its natural and spiritual landscape is much more lively. Lots of other spirits are supposed to hang around Laotian villages:

Phi ban–village spirits, who look out for the whole territory.

Phi fa and phi thaen–celestial spirits and sky spirits.

Phi Tonmai–spirits of the trees. Phi pa are spirits of the forest–they’re untamed. Phi thammasat are spirits of the natural environment in general. With Laos’ abundance of foliage, rivers and mountains, it’s no surprise that imaginations have cooked up many beings who energize them.

There are also phi hai and phi na–spirits of the rice fields, who empower and guard them.

Spirits with bad attitudes abound too. Phi taihong are spirits of people who died violently; phi borisat are anonomyous evil spirits, and Phi ba are crazy spirits.

Most cultures all over Southeast Asia have imagined an abundance of spirits in their surroundings. Their worlds have been pluralistic–no single spirit dominates nature to the extent of rendering the others insignificant. No Yahweh or Allah towers over everything and insists, “Only me!”

But a lot of cultures that embraced Buddhism brought the spirits into a hierarchy under the great teacher. John Clifford Holt saw this in Sri Lanka and modern Thailand. All the spirits are in their current existences because of karma from past lives. So a murderer becomes an angry ghost. All the different types of spirits were thus rationalized into a system–each one’s in his place because of the law of karma. All depend on the Buddha’s compassion for liberation.

But Holt found Laos to be different. With the exception of the 16th and 17th centuries, when the Lan Xang kingdom reached the height of its power and political centralization, Buddhism and spirit cults have usually been two coexisting systems. People visit the local wat (like Luang Prabang’s Xieng Thong in the above photo) and respect local phi without integrating both belief systems into one framework.

Holt thinks this is because royal power has usually been relatively weak in Laos. Mountains divide it into riverine valleys, and different cultures thrive in their local traditions. This fosters a cultural landscape that’s as vibrant and diverse as the natural one, and it makes Laos a very enjoyable place to explore.

In the next post, we’ll see that when Lan Xang grew in the 16th century, it  still retained a lot of  old beliefs–multiple ways of seeing the world  still existed side by side when Laos was most centralized.

There’s no escaping coolness for long in Laos–in ancient or modern times. I hope its people prosper more, and I hope to go back.