Smile, smile, smile

UNESCO Courier, May, 1991 by Marsi Paribatra

In the Far East people always look on the bright side, even when life's no joke

SERENITY is one of the salient qualities of the arts, religions and philosophies of the Far East. Far more significantly, it is also characteristic of the behaviour of people of all ages and social classes as they face the trials and tribulations of everyday life.

Visitors to Thailand often remark on the smiling faces they see all around them. Air hostesses, children in the streets, market traders, wealthy businessmen-everyone seems to be smiling.

It can be irritating. How many European visitors to Thailand feel exasperated when they are smilingly informed that their car has broken down, their flight has been cancelled or the hotel where they are due to stay is booked up. They think people are making fun of them, whereas what the Thais are really trying to do is soften the blow and get them to look on the bright side.

There is a large measure of conventional courtesy in this smile. It is a mask. Yet how could the Thai people keep smiling if the smile did not reflect their true attitude to life? A visitor who learns a few words of Thai is bound to notice that a certain expression turns up over and over again in conversation: mai pen arai.. ("never mind").

This formula covers all life's minor troubles. There's no need to get annoyed or fret over small inconveniences, there's no point in turning life into a drama. Mai pen arai. If people smile when they announce the death of a loved one, it is not through lack of feeling, but as if to say that what has happened was inevitable, to spare others from grieving and to avoid spoiling their enjoyment of life. There's no need to make a fuss. Basically, life is just a game.

This attitude, so characteristic of Thailand (in the early twentieth century Siam was known as the "land of smiles"), is found throughout the Far East, from Sri Lanka to Laos and from Ball to Japan. At the beginning of this century Lafcadio Hearn, the writer who introduced Japanese culture to the West, took Japanese nationality, even wrote a short book about the Japanese smile.

Everything passes: youth, beauty, love, life, happiness and unhappiness. Impermanence is the backcloth to human existence and the great game of the universe.

In Far Eastern cultures the art of living, and art itself, are based on the subtle effects of impermanence. Moments of happiness and beauty should be enjoyed precisely because they are fleeting, but people should not become too attached to them. As a Japanese haiku poem says: "The wave comes and goes/I wish to touch the water/My sleeve is damp" with tears, it is implied). The poet thus suggests that those who play with love may get hurt. The risk of suffering a little or a lot is also part of the game.

Perhaps all aesthetic feelings are based on the impermanence of things and lead to the "desperate joyfulness" so typical, for example, of Mozart's music. But this sense of impermanence is nowhere so apparent and so systematic as in the aesthetics of Zen Buddhism, whose influence began to permeate Chinese and Japanese art in the seventh century.

The cult of the passing impression was deeply rooted among the wider population as well as courtiers and intellectuals. Even today, at cherry blossom time, thousands of young Japanese spend the night in Tokyo and Kyoto parks watching the first flowers unfold.

True play is only possible when too much importance is not attached to the game. The ability to achieve detachment, to divert one's attention from oneself, is a source of wisdom and a source of delight in play.

Detachment and play

If the East is compared with the West, in spite of all the risks inherent in such sweeping generalizations, the stereotype of the Easterner as someone who is less self-absorbed than the Westerner is perhaps not entirely false. Outside intellectual and cosmopolitan circles, it is quite rare in the Far East to hear young people say that they are trying to "fulfil themselves". The Buddhist, for whom the self is an illusion, would not dream of doing such a thing.

Of course the people of the Far East, like people everywhere, assume all kinds of social roles, but they never forget that they are only roles. They probably act their parts with greater aplomb because they know that they are artificial. less importance we attach to the reality of the roles we impersonate, the readier we are to accept the masks that etiquette prescribes us to wear according to our sex, age or social status.

Less self-centered than Europeans, the people of the Far East do not draw a sharp distinction between man and the rest of the world, particularly between man and animals. We consider that we are different from other animals, but not to the point of being separate from them. We are not necessarily kinder to animals than Europeans, in fact sometimes we may be even more cruel than they are, but we are less distant, less haughty and more "polite" to our fellow-creatures. To realize this, one need only see how a child in a Japanese park makes a little bow when feeding bread to a deer.