Chaing Mai, Wat Ram Poeng, Thailand
I've decided to catch my flight to Australia on the 2nd afterall. I was thinking of trying to help in the relief efforts but the aid organizations are asking for unskilled volunteers (that would be me) to stay away and just give money. Please donate to one of the relief organizations listed below (or any that you see fit). Indonesia is virtually shut off from access at the moment and millions more may die from disease and starvation.
it seems a little self absorbed to write about my meditation retreat in the context of this disaster, but I wanted to get it out there before I forget the experience (my memory is so bad these days). So forgive me if it seems inappropriate. It's hard to gage what is appropriate in a situation like this where one feels kind of helpless and useless.
I decided to spend the holidays in Chaing Mai, near the border of Burma and Laos. I had heard there was lots to do there and wanted to take some classes in cooking, meditation and possibly massage.
The first day I was there I took a Thai cooking class from "Chilli Cooking Academy" which was conveniently there at the guesthouse I was staying in (Eagle House 2, run by an irish/Thai couple who also do "Eco responsibility" tours of the region). The cooking class was run my Mr. Soot who used to do political activism fighting government corruption in Thailand before before starting the cooking school. He took us to the market where we purchased needed ingredients and began cooking and eating and cooking and eating....and cooking and eating some more.
We learned how to make "morning glory" which looks like a simple plate of greens. It has a mysterious smoky flavor however. That mystery was soon resolved when he told us to heat the oil laced wok till it caught fire...then throw the wet greens into the wok so that it explodes with flames....He wasn't kidding. He later added that you don't want to cook this inside (luckily our class was outside on a porch). The English student screamed when she threw the greens in. I was covering myself in a corner to protect myself from the flames. The Thais are lovably and certifiably mad!!!!
The next day I decided to go to Wat Ram Poeng (http://www.palikanon.com/vipassana/tapotaram/tapotaram.htm),
a working Theravada Buddhist Monestary that offers 10 and 26 day vipassina mediation retreats. I arrived there and was greeted by a monk Par Kry who showed me to my room (which was immaculately clean and had an ensuite shower!!) I asked him how much the retreat was and he said it was no charge. It's all based on donation. Later that day I met my teacher Ajahn Supan, the Abbott Monk who let me know of my schedule for the 10 day Vipassina course. I would start out at 6 hours at 15 minute intervals of walking and sitting mindful meditation. We wake up at 4am to meditate. Have "breakfast" at 6:30 (which they provided free of charge), have "lunch" at 10:30am and do yet more meditation. Report back to him at 3 pm and guess what? Do meditation. Then go to sleep at 10 pm. For ten days we were instructed not to talk at all..no socializing. I didn't understand this till later. When you did talk with other meditators, it really screwed up your practice as you would start comparing notes and competing. Interesting that.
We also weren't allowed to eat outside of alloted times. But by far the hardest precept was not killing. Usually I wouldn't have a problem with this, except the monestary was infested with ants. They loved my bathroom and at one point there were thousands of ants all over my toilet and shower. I have to confess, some of them died when I created my own personal tsunami with the shower head and water fawcet. I hope I didn't somehow cosmically karmically contribute to the Asian tsunami disaster by doing so. One thing's for sure, I'm going straight to a boiling pot of oil in Buddhist hell.
All women had to wear this Rajneesh looking white outfit with a scarf covering their shirts where our breasts are. Men and woman were not allowed to go into either's dormitory areas. The men stayed where the monks quarters were and the women stayed where the nuns were. We were allowed to meditate everywhere else though including the main temple, the library and the outside shrines.
In the women's area was a dog named Tham. She was enormously pregnant and would walk around with a leaf in her mouth like it was a bone. She had that look in her eye that animals have when they have never been hit or abused. She was a very kind and wise dog...a buddha perhaps? Evidently she just showed up one day and began protecting the Nun's quarters, barking whenever a monk or man came into the area (interesting side note, there actually have been recorded incidences of monks raping and murdering women but this is not a common occurence). Most monks just don't interact with women at all. This is because Therevada Buddhism believes that women are below men in the cycle of rebirth (a monk is just below an enlightened being). I have personal issues with this aspect of the religion in that it is silly, but I was a guest and wasn't going to begin a feminist debate in a 500 year old monestary in Thailand. If you say hi to a monk, they are usually warm and friendly. But if you touch them , or their robe it is condisdered highly offensive. The nuns however are always exceptionally warm and sweet.
The entire monestary was wall to wall dogs..and cats, and geckos and of course ANTS. But dogs were everywhere; most were not like Tham and fought with eachother. You would hear dogs fighting and yelping throughout the day. When the bells would ring for morning alms or at breakfast or evening monk chant, all the dogs would start to howl in a cacophony that was deafening. There was no way anyone was going to sleep in at 4am (though I did try). On Christmas eve Tham had her puppies...seven in all. Mishi Siri (mishi=nun) came out of her 24 hour meditation and watched her with us. She would speak gently to Tham and leave food for her outside her den. "Same Same!" she kept saying. Most of the first born puppies were the same color. ("Same Same" is a typical Thai-English way of saying "they are the same".) For the rest of my stay, I would hear the puppies squeal for help, sometimes falling out of the den. I and Mishi Siri would go out to and help them and she would begin speaking in her gentle sweet thai voice to the family of critters before returning to her humble little room.
There were probably about 10 westerners and 30 thai (mostly women) on retreat as well as about 75 monks and nuns living there full time. Evidently, it's traditional for Thai women to go to a retreat or become a nun when they break up with their boyfriends. Most of the women I spoke to were there for 3 or 6 days.
On Christmas eve, Par Kry stood at my doorway holding a piece of chocolate cake with an enormous grin on his face. "Happy Christmas from Ajahn Supan" he said. Everywhere I walked that day, nuns and the other Thai meditators wished me "happy christmas". The reception office even had a christmas tree with lights. It was very considerate especially since Christmas isn't even a Buddhist holiday. I can't imagine going to a Christian monestary and the monks acknowledging "Budda day" or "Ramadan" or "Hannukah" for that matter. It says a lot about the tolerance, compassion and acceptance of the Buddhist religion.
At 10:30 on the 26th I was meditating in the meditation hall. It had a Buddha shrine, big screens with metal work of a man meditating and a lovely astroturf carpet. I was sitting and felt the ground rumble. I said "Hey..it's an earthquake" to the 12 other meditators, but everyone else was in deep meditation and ignored me. I thought nothing of it at the time as it didn't feel that big a....ahhh maybe it was just a small tremor like we have year round in California I said to myself.
That night we celebrated "Budda Day" which is every full and half moon. We went into the meditation hall with the astroturf carpet and sat in front of the monks. The women had to sit behind the men (Yes, sexism rearing its ugly head again). Then the monks began to pass out sippy juices and what looked like cans of spam (It was condensed milk). We all sat there drinking sippy juices in front of the monks and then began chanting. I couldn't stop laughing as it seemed so funny and absurd yet exceptionally sweet and innocent. We then walked around the main shrine three times and laid flowers and incense while making a wish. The shrine was about 10 meters tall. It looks like a giant brick christmas tree with buddha statues encased around it at incremental levels, representing the various realms of consciousness. The shrine was built in 1492 when the Wat was founded (same year of Columbus). It was very beautiful and I knew at that point it was the best way to celebrate the end of the year.
At report backs the next day, Ajahn Supan said "you are very lucky". I asked him why and he told me there was a tsunami that killed 3,000 people. His comment didn't register till days later when the actual numbers began coming in. I was going to head to Phuket to get my diving certificate had I not received one in Vietnam. Something kept me from the islands though, mainly because they were such a tourist trap. I was lucky indeed.
Ajahn Supan is a small framed man, in his 40's and very easy going. He laughs a lot, sometimes at things you're not sure of. At one point, he was talking, then stopped, then placed a bell on his wrist and gently scraped it to the table in front of him. "Mosquito". He pointed to the clear glass bell and indeed he had caught the mosquito inside it while it had been biting him on the wrist. His assitant then took it outside and set it free. I felt like a real shit for killing all those ants after that and made real effort not to kill things including mosquitos. Ajahn Supan's English wasn't super great so he had a translator, a nun Mishi Pornpit, who spoke so softly it was hard to hear her sometimes. She was exceptionally kind and mindful. A French monk named Andre also sat in the room during the reportbacks. He would smile and laugh a lot. I'm not sure why he was there. Maybe he's an assistant of some kind? I didn't like to take too much of their time and ask loads of questions. I noticed other westerners would go on about their life stories but the Thai folks kept it short and suscinct. It didn't matter ultimately, I think no matter what you told Ajahn Supan at that stage in your learning, he would say the same thing. "Acknowledge your distractions" and "give greater effort".
On the 27th, a 93 year old nun who had spent all of her life there at the monestary died. They held a funeral in the meditation hall where they left her casket. It stayed there up until I left. No one cried, no one looked devastated during the ceremony. Even though she had been there for over 70 years, it was a buddhist reaction to impermanence itself. Her photo was kept outside by the buddha statue, with flowers and candles. Her family stayed around the monestary (they were the only ones in black). The day I left (day 3), the monks and nuns were making what looked like a tinstled float to put the (I'm assuming) coffin on in some sort of procession so I think she was about to be buried or cremated.
The meals ranged from somewhat bearable to really good (but cold) thai food. One day the nun who normally began the prayer (which was in pali and about how we shouldn't be attatched to food) didn't show up. We waited and waited, patiently staring at our food. One of the older Thai nuns began the chant, but she spoke softly and our collective effort fell apart, most of us westerners barely knew how to pronounce the words. There was one Thai guy though who knew it by heart (this is a common prayer in Thailand I suppose) and went off on his own pace and tune to the point where he was the only one we could hear. The missing nun finally showed up and began the chant again (mind you, this chant takes 5 minutes) and I think she was a little peeved, because she made us do it all over again so that we REALLY KNEW we shouldn't be attatched to food. At the end of the entire ordeal it was 20 minutes into it, I was behind schedule on my 12 hour meditations and the food had flys around it. I WAS GETTING STRESSED! At a meditation retreat! Go figure. 12 hours is a long time to be thinking about nothing but your breath and how your body feels. I got a lot out of it and learned more about my self in those 10 days than I have in the last 5 years.
When I left last night, the hussle and bustle of modernity slapped me in the face like a wet towl. Everything seemed so intense and bright. I went for dinner and the food tasted differently. I feel so slow in comparison. Life there at the monestary grants a different pace. It also allows complete introspection which is so rare to find. Something changed in me. I hope it lasts.
it seems a little self absorbed to write about my meditation retreat in the context of this disaster, but I wanted to get it out there before I forget the experience (my memory is so bad these days). So forgive me if it seems inappropriate. It's hard to gage what is appropriate in a situation like this where one feels kind of helpless and useless.
I decided to spend the holidays in Chaing Mai, near the border of Burma and Laos. I had heard there was lots to do there and wanted to take some classes in cooking, meditation and possibly massage.
The first day I was there I took a Thai cooking class from "Chilli Cooking Academy" which was conveniently there at the guesthouse I was staying in (Eagle House 2, run by an irish/Thai couple who also do "Eco responsibility" tours of the region). The cooking class was run my Mr. Soot who used to do political activism fighting government corruption in Thailand before before starting the cooking school. He took us to the market where we purchased needed ingredients and began cooking and eating and cooking and eating....and cooking and eating some more.
We learned how to make "morning glory" which looks like a simple plate of greens. It has a mysterious smoky flavor however. That mystery was soon resolved when he told us to heat the oil laced wok till it caught fire...then throw the wet greens into the wok so that it explodes with flames....He wasn't kidding. He later added that you don't want to cook this inside (luckily our class was outside on a porch). The English student screamed when she threw the greens in. I was covering myself in a corner to protect myself from the flames. The Thais are lovably and certifiably mad!!!!
The next day I decided to go to Wat Ram Poeng (http://www.palikanon.com/vipassana/tapotaram/tapotaram.htm),
a working Theravada Buddhist Monestary that offers 10 and 26 day vipassina mediation retreats. I arrived there and was greeted by a monk Par Kry who showed me to my room (which was immaculately clean and had an ensuite shower!!) I asked him how much the retreat was and he said it was no charge. It's all based on donation. Later that day I met my teacher Ajahn Supan, the Abbott Monk who let me know of my schedule for the 10 day Vipassina course. I would start out at 6 hours at 15 minute intervals of walking and sitting mindful meditation. We wake up at 4am to meditate. Have "breakfast" at 6:30 (which they provided free of charge), have "lunch" at 10:30am and do yet more meditation. Report back to him at 3 pm and guess what? Do meditation. Then go to sleep at 10 pm. For ten days we were instructed not to talk at all..no socializing. I didn't understand this till later. When you did talk with other meditators, it really screwed up your practice as you would start comparing notes and competing. Interesting that.
We also weren't allowed to eat outside of alloted times. But by far the hardest precept was not killing. Usually I wouldn't have a problem with this, except the monestary was infested with ants. They loved my bathroom and at one point there were thousands of ants all over my toilet and shower. I have to confess, some of them died when I created my own personal tsunami with the shower head and water fawcet. I hope I didn't somehow cosmically karmically contribute to the Asian tsunami disaster by doing so. One thing's for sure, I'm going straight to a boiling pot of oil in Buddhist hell.
All women had to wear this Rajneesh looking white outfit with a scarf covering their shirts where our breasts are. Men and woman were not allowed to go into either's dormitory areas. The men stayed where the monks quarters were and the women stayed where the nuns were. We were allowed to meditate everywhere else though including the main temple, the library and the outside shrines.
In the women's area was a dog named Tham. She was enormously pregnant and would walk around with a leaf in her mouth like it was a bone. She had that look in her eye that animals have when they have never been hit or abused. She was a very kind and wise dog...a buddha perhaps? Evidently she just showed up one day and began protecting the Nun's quarters, barking whenever a monk or man came into the area (interesting side note, there actually have been recorded incidences of monks raping and murdering women but this is not a common occurence). Most monks just don't interact with women at all. This is because Therevada Buddhism believes that women are below men in the cycle of rebirth (a monk is just below an enlightened being). I have personal issues with this aspect of the religion in that it is silly, but I was a guest and wasn't going to begin a feminist debate in a 500 year old monestary in Thailand. If you say hi to a monk, they are usually warm and friendly. But if you touch them , or their robe it is condisdered highly offensive. The nuns however are always exceptionally warm and sweet.
The entire monestary was wall to wall dogs..and cats, and geckos and of course ANTS. But dogs were everywhere; most were not like Tham and fought with eachother. You would hear dogs fighting and yelping throughout the day. When the bells would ring for morning alms or at breakfast or evening monk chant, all the dogs would start to howl in a cacophony that was deafening. There was no way anyone was going to sleep in at 4am (though I did try). On Christmas eve Tham had her puppies...seven in all. Mishi Siri (mishi=nun) came out of her 24 hour meditation and watched her with us. She would speak gently to Tham and leave food for her outside her den. "Same Same!" she kept saying. Most of the first born puppies were the same color. ("Same Same" is a typical Thai-English way of saying "they are the same".) For the rest of my stay, I would hear the puppies squeal for help, sometimes falling out of the den. I and Mishi Siri would go out to and help them and she would begin speaking in her gentle sweet thai voice to the family of critters before returning to her humble little room.
There were probably about 10 westerners and 30 thai (mostly women) on retreat as well as about 75 monks and nuns living there full time. Evidently, it's traditional for Thai women to go to a retreat or become a nun when they break up with their boyfriends. Most of the women I spoke to were there for 3 or 6 days.
On Christmas eve, Par Kry stood at my doorway holding a piece of chocolate cake with an enormous grin on his face. "Happy Christmas from Ajahn Supan" he said. Everywhere I walked that day, nuns and the other Thai meditators wished me "happy christmas". The reception office even had a christmas tree with lights. It was very considerate especially since Christmas isn't even a Buddhist holiday. I can't imagine going to a Christian monestary and the monks acknowledging "Budda day" or "Ramadan" or "Hannukah" for that matter. It says a lot about the tolerance, compassion and acceptance of the Buddhist religion.
At 10:30 on the 26th I was meditating in the meditation hall. It had a Buddha shrine, big screens with metal work of a man meditating and a lovely astroturf carpet. I was sitting and felt the ground rumble. I said "Hey..it's an earthquake" to the 12 other meditators, but everyone else was in deep meditation and ignored me. I thought nothing of it at the time as it didn't feel that big a....ahhh maybe it was just a small tremor like we have year round in California I said to myself.
That night we celebrated "Budda Day" which is every full and half moon. We went into the meditation hall with the astroturf carpet and sat in front of the monks. The women had to sit behind the men (Yes, sexism rearing its ugly head again). Then the monks began to pass out sippy juices and what looked like cans of spam (It was condensed milk). We all sat there drinking sippy juices in front of the monks and then began chanting. I couldn't stop laughing as it seemed so funny and absurd yet exceptionally sweet and innocent. We then walked around the main shrine three times and laid flowers and incense while making a wish. The shrine was about 10 meters tall. It looks like a giant brick christmas tree with buddha statues encased around it at incremental levels, representing the various realms of consciousness. The shrine was built in 1492 when the Wat was founded (same year of Columbus). It was very beautiful and I knew at that point it was the best way to celebrate the end of the year.
At report backs the next day, Ajahn Supan said "you are very lucky". I asked him why and he told me there was a tsunami that killed 3,000 people. His comment didn't register till days later when the actual numbers began coming in. I was going to head to Phuket to get my diving certificate had I not received one in Vietnam. Something kept me from the islands though, mainly because they were such a tourist trap. I was lucky indeed.
Ajahn Supan is a small framed man, in his 40's and very easy going. He laughs a lot, sometimes at things you're not sure of. At one point, he was talking, then stopped, then placed a bell on his wrist and gently scraped it to the table in front of him. "Mosquito". He pointed to the clear glass bell and indeed he had caught the mosquito inside it while it had been biting him on the wrist. His assitant then took it outside and set it free. I felt like a real shit for killing all those ants after that and made real effort not to kill things including mosquitos. Ajahn Supan's English wasn't super great so he had a translator, a nun Mishi Pornpit, who spoke so softly it was hard to hear her sometimes. She was exceptionally kind and mindful. A French monk named Andre also sat in the room during the reportbacks. He would smile and laugh a lot. I'm not sure why he was there. Maybe he's an assistant of some kind? I didn't like to take too much of their time and ask loads of questions. I noticed other westerners would go on about their life stories but the Thai folks kept it short and suscinct. It didn't matter ultimately, I think no matter what you told Ajahn Supan at that stage in your learning, he would say the same thing. "Acknowledge your distractions" and "give greater effort".
On the 27th, a 93 year old nun who had spent all of her life there at the monestary died. They held a funeral in the meditation hall where they left her casket. It stayed there up until I left. No one cried, no one looked devastated during the ceremony. Even though she had been there for over 70 years, it was a buddhist reaction to impermanence itself. Her photo was kept outside by the buddha statue, with flowers and candles. Her family stayed around the monestary (they were the only ones in black). The day I left (day 3), the monks and nuns were making what looked like a tinstled float to put the (I'm assuming) coffin on in some sort of procession so I think she was about to be buried or cremated.
The meals ranged from somewhat bearable to really good (but cold) thai food. One day the nun who normally began the prayer (which was in pali and about how we shouldn't be attatched to food) didn't show up. We waited and waited, patiently staring at our food. One of the older Thai nuns began the chant, but she spoke softly and our collective effort fell apart, most of us westerners barely knew how to pronounce the words. There was one Thai guy though who knew it by heart (this is a common prayer in Thailand I suppose) and went off on his own pace and tune to the point where he was the only one we could hear. The missing nun finally showed up and began the chant again (mind you, this chant takes 5 minutes) and I think she was a little peeved, because she made us do it all over again so that we REALLY KNEW we shouldn't be attatched to food. At the end of the entire ordeal it was 20 minutes into it, I was behind schedule on my 12 hour meditations and the food had flys around it. I WAS GETTING STRESSED! At a meditation retreat! Go figure. 12 hours is a long time to be thinking about nothing but your breath and how your body feels. I got a lot out of it and learned more about my self in those 10 days than I have in the last 5 years.
When I left last night, the hussle and bustle of modernity slapped me in the face like a wet towl. Everything seemed so intense and bright. I went for dinner and the food tasted differently. I feel so slow in comparison. Life there at the monestary grants a different pace. It also allows complete introspection which is so rare to find. Something changed in me. I hope it lasts.
posted by Mr. Sophie at 6:57 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home