Post #5 - Naga, Buddha, Myths & Monsoon
The Naga on Alex’s chain glints—the river guardian, serpent of the in-between. Myth isn’t separate from the Mekong; it braids into the current like hyacinth roots.
The Naga is often depicted alongside the Buddha. Shortly after we left Luang Prabang, the boat stopped at the mouth of the Nam Ou. There one finds the Pak Ou Caves tucked into limestone cliffs. They hold hundreds of Buddha statues. I climbed the steep stair to the upper cave, where darkness pressed close and rows of Buddhas, many with their Naga’ protectors, glimmered in the half-light—standing, sitting, reclining, hands raised in blessing or pressed at the heart, a posture for every day of the week. The cave felt eerie and tender at once. Offerings and breath hung heavy in the cool air.
Buddhism here is never alone. It mingles with naga myths, with animist spirits, with Brahmanic echoes. Theravada practice folds all of it together. A memory drifts back: my last evening in Luang Prabang, I stumbled upon the evening prayer at a temple in the old town. Its steeply pitched roof shelters a large golden Buddha before a row of saffron-robed monks. I sat on the tiled porch outside the red-and-gold hall listening in, allowing their song to envelop me. Their chanting filled the air, held in the evening breeze like tea in a ceramic cup, soft, warm, and reassuringly ancient.
Further downstream, the rapids churned, water coiling against rock. The captain steered with instinct, as if he knew each stone by name. Thin fishing lines stretched across the shallows. Small boats with tall hooks waited. I remember dry season is fishing season. When water is low, fish retreat from the floodplains into the main channel, gathering in deep pools. Somewhere in the murk, the great Mekong catfish—half myth, half memory—still lingers.
I thought of Andrew Johnson’s Mekong Dreaming:
“Time, for fishermen, is based upon the great river’s rise and fall, a movement that indicates when actions—fishing, farming—will be efficacious and when they will not. Reading and responding to the river is a vital part of living with it.”
Johnson reminds us that Buddhist time, fishing time, farming time, and monsoon time are entangled. The flood pulse begins in June, peaks in September, and recedes by November. At its height, the Mekong swells nearly tenfold, expanding the world of the fish, then withdraws, leaving fine silt for crops and drawing fish back into the main stream. This rhythm is inscribed not only in nets and fields but in Buddhist calendars, in the traditional festival that calls down the rains, in donations to temples and sacrifices to river beings made possible by the season’s abundance, in celebration of thanks at the end of the monsoon.
Naga, Buddha, fish, plants, flood. All relational, all entangled, all part of the same current
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Johnson, A. A. (2020). Mekong dreaming: Life and death along a changing river. Duke University Press.
Precipitation Data from https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/orthographic=101.09,13.06,659
Animation of Monsoon, Buddhist, and Fish Time by Tami Banh