Hardwood

I prefer hardwood floors to carpet.

In woodworking, we classify wood as hardwood, softwood or exotic wood.

"Marko, are you just back from meditation at your Thai temple?" "Yeah, it's so cool with hardwood floors and candlelight." "Wow, it sounds fancy!"

"Jack, at the Thai temple, we meditators use a big empty hall with a hardwood floor. At night, we use candlelight." "What a romantic setting, Sam!"

The interior of Wat Yanviriya, my Thai temple in Vancouver, was a spacious hall with hardwood flooring, where meditators would sit. A Buddha shrine was in front.

Visiting Victoria, BC, my cousins, uncle, aunt, and I lodged in an ancient bed and breakfast owned by a Chinese family. The floors, walls, and ceilings were brown hardwood.

Back in 2002 and several years thereafter, I regularly attended meditation sessions at Wat Yanviriya Buddhist Temple in East Vancouver, BC. I came to know the Thai culture more because of it. Pāli chanting, moon festivals, relics viewing, et cetera were part of my life then. I remember a spacious hall with hardwood floors and a Buddha altar in front. In summers, the doors would be open to the sunny green outside. In the wetter seasons at night, candles would be lit in the silent darkness inside. (I wore a black Australian Outback jacket then.) Omnipresent was the Ajahn Bhoontam in orange robe, he conducting the rituals. Our saṅgha or congregation was medium-sized and multiethnic. A real saṅgha full of Thais allowed us to share the rustic building. The two groups met at different times.

Don and I discussed religion on many occasions. We both generally agreed that neither of us really liked what we called "shrink-wrapped" religions. Those religions were packaged deals created by other humans. Those religions came right "off the shelf" in the Religion Store. We both thought that religion should be a very dynamic and individualistic pursuit. Hong Kong-born Don had some past ephemeral experience with a Christian sect, probably Fundamentalist, which irked him. He knew that I was exploring Buddhism, but he found it too difficult to gulp down when I tried to explain it to him. I showed him to my temple where my fellow meditators sat on a hardwood floor and meditated in the dark spacious hall with only candlelight. He was a bit scared. At the restaurant, he wanted me to explain the different branches or types of Christianity. And so I did. But Don still preferred, I thought, Star Trekky freedom over religion.

During hot summer days in Ibaan, we kids would be sitting on the cool hardwood floor of the guestroom to listen to radio broadcasts of fantasy stories in Tagalog.

His boots smacked on the hardwood floor.