Bad Monk

Topic of the day: Cheeky monks

 

While at lunch with two colleagues today, we started on the topic of seeing monks in Asia doing stuff that's very un-monkly.  For example, stories of monks watching porn and being plastered.  For example, while in Southeast Asia this summer, my image of monks there were shattered when I saw smoking monks on several different occasions.  Anyway, there was one particularly funny cheeky monk story:

 

A few years ago, one of my colleagues was traveling through the Chinese city of Xining, Qinghai Province.  As I have mentioned in my blog when I was traveling through Xining this past October, the city has a great night food market.  My colleague also stopped by the food market one night while he was there and started eating some lamb kebabs and drinking a few beers when he started chatting to an Asian guy.  Turned out he was Japanese and was traveling as well, eventually making his way into Tibet.  While they chatted, the Japanese guy also ordered up lamb skewers and beers.  They were chatting along merrily when the Japanese guy revealed to my colleague that he was a monk.  My colleague looked at him and said, "aren't monks not suppose to eat meat or drink alcohol?"

 

The Japanese thought about it for a few seconds and then replied: "I'm a bad monk"