Wat Songdhammakalyani and the Venerable Dhammananda Bhikkuni: Part 2

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“Uh, wee, weelough?” She said in her heavy accent.

“Yep!” I don’t bother to try to correct people when they say my name with an accent. It’s pretty simple, and its just two sounds that I can understand even with the heaviest of accents. “You’re from Poland, right?”

“Yes, and where are you from?”

“America.”

“Ah, okay, and how long have you been here?”

“In Thailand, or here?”

“Ah, just, here, why. You stay here?”

“I just came here today actually. I wasn’t planning to stay but I wanted to join the meditation in the morning and the Bhikkuni offered to have me stay, so I decided to stay the night here.”

That totally confused her, and I spent a good five minutes trying to explain that I was a student, that I studied at Mahidol University, and will be staying for only one trimester. That I had heard about this place and set up a meeting with the Bhikkuni who had offered to have me stay and so I agreed. She told me that she was doing a documentary of the monastery and was going to start recording in the morning when we went for Alms with the monks. She had been in the Philippines before coming to Thailand, where she had been staying with and filming some shamans. She wasn’t actually a filmmaker or student, but she wanted to be. She actually wanted to study filmmaking in Asia and this was her first step into that part of her life. I never asked, but I would say she was probably about 30 or so.

“Are we... there is supposed to be work? I was told at 4:30 we would be doing work?”

It was now 4:50 and we hadn’t really seen anyone.

“Yeah, I’m not really sure where…” Two sisters walked by hauling a wheelbarrow full of branches. We saw them and stood up and walked over to them. When they saw us, they pointed behind them. Down the driveway we saw two more sisters leaning over some branches in the middle of the drive and walked that way.

As we walked up, one sister was chopping up the larger branches with a machete, something I never thought I would see and it kind of made me chuckle inside. A female monk wielding a machete… Just picture that.

As we walked up, a dog that was chained up at the end of the driveway was barking like mad at us. I wondered why this dog was chained up while the rest of them were roaming free. I felt sorry for the poor thing, but then Dhammananda Bhikkuni saw us and warned us not to go any closer.

“She is our police dog,” she said. “We let her out at night to guard. You are strangers to her.”

Oh, well that made sense. I can accept a dog being chained up if it still has a job to do. At least she was let out at night.

Dhammananda Bhikkuni was sitting on the side of the driveway, directing the work. She hadn’t looked very old when I first saw her, but she had mentioned to me that she had a condition that made her dizzy whenever she turned quickly, so it made sense that she couldn’t really work with us. But seeing her sit on the sidelines, wrapped up in her red robes and directing the work, I noticed how old she really was. Although her skin was still smooth and young, she had to be about 65 or 70. {She actually just turned 70 last October}. She told Gersha and I to wait until the sisters brought back the wheelbarrow and then to put the branches in it.

“Her branches were getting too long,” she talked about the tree. “They were reaching over too far so we had to trim them down.” She looked at all the flowers on the branches on the ground before her, but then said, “You see just over there?” She pointed to a smaller tree next to the large tree whose branches were before us. “Underneath there you see fruit?” Gersha and I bent down a little to be at her level and we saw just on the other side of the small tree, two small yellow fruits.

“Oh yeah! What are they?” I asked.

“Ohh!” She exclaimed and shut her eyes. I knew that look. Whenever I asked a Thai person what a type of food or fruit was called, many times they couldn’t name it in English.

“What is it in Thai?” I asked.

And she answered me quickly with the Thai name. “She only has one fruit this year, so we give her more sun.” The tree whose branches were lying before us must have been shading this fruit tree too much and it could only bear fruit on the side facing the sun. I still didn’t know what the fruit was called, it looked familiar to me but I couldn’t name it in English either. Maybe it would come to me.

The sisters brought back the wheelbarrow, and we helped load the branches into it. All the rest of the branches fit in the wheelbarrow and they motioned for one of us to go with them as they took the branches away. Gersha was closest and so she went with the sisters, holding the branches into the wheelbarrow as they walked away. Dhammananda Bhikkuni got up and picked up her chair.

“You sweep up this to the side, and then come join us in the back. But go around, don’t get too close to her-dog.”

A sister handed me a broom and I started sweeping up the flowers and sticks off the driveway and over to the side, and they went and walked into a back part of the monastery grounds I hadn’t noticed before. So I was sweeping up flowers and sticks by myself for a while before the older sister who had helped find me clothes before, came over and handed me gloves. I was grateful because my hands were actually already starting to hurt. She pointed to a pile of leaves off to the side of the driveway, and indicated that’s where I should sweep everything up to. So I did.

When I was finished sweeping, she said Khapkhunkha and offered to take the broom from me. She turned around and started doing her work, but I still had the gloves on. I took the gloves off and stood awkwardly behind her for a few seconds until she turned around and I held out the gloves and shrugged. She pointed to a ladder under a tree, so I just sat the gloves down on one of the ladder rungs and headed into the back.

In the back they had already cut down more branches, but this time from a bush. Dhammananda Bhikkuni was sitting in her chair on the sidewalk while the sisters pulled branches out from the bushes and bent over them. She told me that the flowers on this bush were Cananga, and that you can put them in your room and make your room smell really good.

“These used to grow all over Bangkok, but now Bangkok is too much concrete,” she said sadly. “Used to find them all over. They are climbing plant but this one grew too wide. So we are cutting it so that we can make it grow tall.”

She instructed me to pick off all the yellow flowers and to put them in one of the large dried banana leaves that were all over the ground. I felt so, tribal or something, picking flowers and putting them in a dried leaf as my basket, it was fun, and the flowers smelled so good! {They’re actually called Ylang-Ylang in English}. Gersha and the other sisters returned with the wheelbarrow right as I think we had gotten all of the yellow flowers from the branches. We helped load the branches into the wheelbarrow and they hauled them to the very back of the complex and dumped them in a corner. When all the branches were removed, the sisters started hoeing at the grass and clearing a space for more planting. Gersha and I followed behind them with a rake and picked up the grass that they pulled up and put it in a basket. The older sister handed me back the gloves. I laughed a little and thanked her. I should have just kept them on.

“It’s a little awkward isn’t it?” I said to Gersha as we stood there waiting for the sisters to hoe up enough grass so that we could rake it up. The sisters were all laughing and joking in Thai and Dhammananda Bhikkuni was talking to them and telling them stories or something.

“What? Awkward? I don’t know.”

Great, now I’m going to have to explain what awkward means… how much more awkward could it get? Lol

Finally we had gotten up most of the grass and at about 5:45 the sisters announced that we were done.

“You can go shower if you wish, and change, and then there is dinner at 6:00,” said one of the sisters to us.

“Dinner, in the upstairs?” Gersha asked.

“On second floor, above the bookstore. Dinner will be ready at 6:00.” Confirmed the sister.

We walked back to the main part of the monastery complex and Gersha and I went to our green building.

“I think I’m just going to take a shower and then head to dinner, are you going to shower?” I asked her.

“I took a shower before, if I had known we would do such hard work I would have waited to take a shower until after.”

“Yeah, I think I’ll just rinse off. I didn’t bring any soap or anything with me since I hadn’t planned on staying.”

“So I think, I will wait for you and then we can go together?”

“Okay! I’ll just be a few minutes, it won’t take me long.”

“Alright. See you.”

“See you soon.” And we entered our rooms; mine, number 11, and hers, 13.

I stripped off my brown robes and laid them out on the empty cot. The shower was cold, but that was nice because I was so hot and sweaty from working in the garden. There was half a bar of soap in the soap dish that I used to wash my pits and other important areas, and ran the water over my hair but didn’t have anything to wash it with. I was grateful that the sisters had given me a towel when they gave me sheets for the cot.

I went to put on the white clothes the sisters had given me. They told me that I could wear either the white, or the clothes I had on before, to the chanting, but not to wear the brown clothes. That made sense now since the brown clothes were dirty and sweaty, it would be rude to wear them to chanting. But the white shirt was almost completely see-through. I knew we were all women here and everything, but I was sure it would be rude also to have either my nipples or my bright blue bra showing through the shirt. So I decided to put on my clothes that I had worn when I arrived.

As I was struggling with my shirt (I had turned it inside out, when it was right the first way), there was a knock on my door and a sister told me that dinner was ready.

“Yes, thank you, I’ll be right there.” I called back.

I finally figured out my shirt, grabbed my phone, which was almost dead, and headed out. I stopped at Gersha’s room and knocked and called to her, but she didn’t answer and I assumed she had already went down for dinner.

There were four dogs lying in the parking lot as I walked across to the building with the bookstore and dining area, and right as I passed by them, there was a loud pop and a bang from the highway as someone’s tire popped. The dogs got startled and jumped up barking, saw me, and ran up to me snarling. I stomped my foot towards them and said “HEY!” very loudly. They stopped charging but stood there still barking. One took a step closer to me and I responded by taking a side-ways step towards him with my arm in a bracing position out in front of me and “Shht”-ing him. He stopped coming forward and the barking was slowing down when a sister behind me called to them and they all stopped barking and looked at her. Before they had even moved towards her, I confidently walked through them and continued on to the dining hall. Once they were a good distance behind me and I was sure they weren’t following me, I relaxed and took a breath, and giggled to myself. That was close! In the moment I hadn’t thought at all that I was about to be attacked by these dogs. I knew they were actually really good dogs, I had walked by them, through them, and over them many times that day already, and they only came after me because they were scared, and I was right there. But also, I knew what to do, and I was willing to stand there until they gave up on me if the sister hadn’t called them.

I walked up the stairs to the dining hall and was surprised to see it empty except for Gersha sitting at a table by herself. I walked up to the table and sat down across from her. A woman came out from the kitchen and gave me a fork and spoon and said something to me in Thai. She wasn’t a monk and she wore a plaid shirt and jeans. She must be the cook, I thought.

There was so much food on the table before us! There were two huge plates of noodles, a bowl of soup, and a giant soup pot full of steamed rice. Was this all for us?

“I’m surprised no one else is here, I thought the sisters would eat with us?” I said after we commented on the huge amounts of food.

“They don’t eat dinner,” she said. Oh yeah! “They don’t, they don’t eat after, past…”

“They don’t eat past midday,” I filled in for her. “I forgot about that. So is all this for us then?”

“I think so.” So much for a simple dinner the Bhikkuni had told me I would have.

“There’s no way we can eat all this. I wonder if we can take some back with us?”

“Yes, we can, we can have some to take to our room?”

“I wonder if we can ask the cook to give us bags to take the food back with us.”

“We could just take a bowl, or a plate back?”

“I’m not sure they would let us take the dishes back with us, we could just ask for her to put it in a bag for us?”

“A bag?” She sounded confused. “Then how will we eat it? We eat out of a bag?”

Oh, that’s right. She was staying here for three days. I meant to put it in a bag so that I could take it back to Salaya with me tomorrow. I have dishes in my room.

The cook came out with two little bags of stuff. Gersha asked her if the sisters were going to eat the left-overs tomorrow and if we could take it back with us to our rooms. The cook looked utterly confused. She said no, and yes a few times. Those were the only words she knew. Somehow Gersha took that to mean that the sisters were not going to eat the left-overs and that it would be wasted food if we didn’t take it back. I had a strong feeling that the cook had no idea what Gersha was saying and just answered with the few English words she knew. The cook then held out the bags to us and spoke some words in Thai. We looked at her confused, and then she repeated herself. I caught the word “Wan” which means sweet, and something that I thought meant dessert although I couldn’t remember exactly what the word was.

“Oh, it’s dessert!” I said to Gersha. “Kha!” I said to the cook, meaning yes please.

She went away and came back with two little bowls. She opened the first bag and poured in these green noodle-looking things into the bowls. I picked at one of the pieces in the bowl closest to me and it just tasted like a soft, gelatinous, noddle-like thing. I couldn’t figure out what it was. The cook told me “mai wan,” and then poured the sauce over top of the noodles saying “wan”. The noodles themselves weren’t sweet, but it was the sauce that was like coconut syrup, it just tasted like super sweet and concentrated coconut milk and it was delicious! She took the bowls away and put some ice in them.

“Oh, no,” said Gersha, picking the ice out of her bowl when she brought them back to us. “I can’t eat ice. It hurts my teeth.” The cook looked sad and confused.

“It's okay,” I said to the cook cheerfully. “Aloi, Khapkhunkha!” It’s delicious, thank you. And she nodded and left.

“Why can’t you eat ice?” I asked Gersha.

“Because my teeth, I have big teeth,” she said smiling at me. Her teeth were very crooked in her mouth, but they weren’t very big looking.

“They aren’t very big,” I said nicely.

“They are too big for my mouth,” she said. “I need to uh, I need to have…”

“To see a dentist?” I said jokingly.

She laughed. “Yes, dentist. I need to have teeth removed. I have too many teeth for my mouth,” she finally said. “But I am excited, I get teeth out when I get back.”

“You’re excited?” I asked. I’d never heard anyone say they were excited to have a tooth pulled.

“Yes!” She smiled. “For each tooth I get six weeks off work!”

“Oh! That’s nice!” Lucky Polish.

“And I get four teeth pulled!”

“So you get a bunch of time off work!”

“Yes, I hope to use that time to put together my documentary.”

Then she said something and I didn’t understand so I asked her to repeat herself.

“Oh!” She laughed and shook her head. “I’m sorry, I was speaking Polish. I don’t know why I did that.”

I laughed and smiled, “That’s okay!” She probably hadn’t had this long of a conversation with anyone in a while, having been in the Philippines and then in Thailand. The people she came across who spoke English probably didn’t speak it that well, or if they did, she probably didn’t have very long, drawn out conversations like we were having. She got so comfortable speaking with me that she reverted back to her native language. So interesting, languages.

We finished our dessert talking about her travels to the Philippines and what she had seen there, how we liked Thailand and what she thought of Asia.

“When I was in the Philippines, the translation was very strange sometimes.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, when they would ask if I was alone, they would ask, ‘are you one person?’ And at first I was like, ‘of course I am one person’!”

When we were done with the dessert, we got up to leave and Gersha put some noodles into her bowl and covered it with a plate. The cook came over to start clearing the table and Gersha asked one more time if it would be okay if she took the food to go. The poor woman, she tried so hard to figure out what we were trying to say to her but she had no idea. She finally said, “No,” and pointed to her ears. She couldn’t understand a word we said. We said it was okay, thanked her for the food, and Gersha took the food anyway.

Just as we were leaving we heard the bell ring that signaled it was time for evening chanting. As the bell reverberated and the sound filled the hall, the dogs in the complex all began to howl at once. We walked out of the building surrounded by the ringing bell and howling dogs. It was just about dark out now. Gersha went back to her room to put away her food, and I followed a sister into the building next to the library. The sisters stood in a line facing the Buddha statue in the room, and gestured for me to stand next to them. I made the wai to the Buddha and when they looked at me confusedly, I knew it wasn’t about the wai, they wanted to know where Gersha was. I said Gersha would be right back, and they nodded and started to walk up the stairs.

There were two sets of stairs, one for the monks, and one for other people, so they ushered me to the second staircase. At the top of the stairs was an open area, and to the right was a shrine of some sort, but to the left was a room separated by a sliding glass door. In the room were about a dozen church-benches set up facing images of the Buddha. The benches were clearly separated for the monks and for lay-people. The benches for the sisters were a stained dark wood, and the ones for lay-people were simple plywood. I sat in the back and one of the sisters handed me a booklet that had the chantings in the Latin alphabet so that I could follow along.

Gersha entered just after they started. One of the older sisters in the front would lead the chanting, and the rest would answer her. She would say something in Pali and they would all answer. It went on like this for about ten minutes, all the while the fans were blowing, and the open windows let in the sounds of the highway. Again I was reminded how un-peaceful it was here. About ten minutes in there was silence and then the sister that was leading the chanting said, “oh!” and continued. They all giggled a little, but a younger sister on the left was overcome with giggles! She could hardly help herself and kept holding her book of chants in front of her face and wiping away tears on her robes. She would sigh, and bring the book down, look at it for a minute, and then the fits of giggles would take over her again. It cracked me up to watch her just dying, but trying so hard to be a good Monk and not laugh.

I thought at first that the older sister who led the chanting was Dhammananda Bhikkuni, but about halfway through the chants, I realized that the Bhikkuni was sitting in the back with her eyes closed and her feet propped up on a pillow. She wasn’t chanting but had her hands up at her chest in the wai. I wondered why she didn’t chant with the rest of them. After a while I realized I was hearing chanting coming from behind me, and when I glanced, I saw the cook sitting in the back, with her hands at her chest in the wai, chanting along with them from memory. It surprised me that the cook new the chants, but the sister overcome with giggles still needed her book to follow along. I wondered how long the cook had been a part of the monastery.

After about thirty minutes of mesmerizing chanting, they ended and stood up. A sister told Gersha and I to head upstairs. On the third floor was another large room with images of the Buddha to the right. There were red fabrics covering the ground and thin brown cushions set up on the floor. As the sisters turned on the lights and the fans, one of them told Gersha and I to go into the back and pick out a mat for ourselves. There was a large pile of the brown cushions in the back, I handed one to Gersha and we placed them behind the sisters’ mats and sat down.

Dhammananda Bhikkuni sat in a chair at the front, facing all of us. For as good as she had looked this morning however, the Bhikkuni looked sick in front of us. She could hardly speak and was whispering into her microphone, constantly clearing her through and wiping her nose with a tissue. Had she been sick before? I hadn’t noticed. She told Gersha and I that this would be meditation for anyone, and that we did not have to be Buddhists to meditate.

“Tell yourself that you will be sitting for thirty minutes without moving. Cross your legs so that you are comfortable and place your hands in your lap with your right hand on top. It is okay to have thought, but as soon as you notice you have a thought, focus on that thought, and then send it away. Focus on your breathing. Feel the breath come in and out your nose, and think about the space between your upper lip and your nose. Think about the air coming in and out, how it must touch that area for it to go in and out. Focus on just this small area and let all other senses go. If you should feel pain, focus on that pain and then let it go. It is just sensation. Just focus on the small area around your nose, and feel the air as you breathe in and out.”

And then she was quiet. She spoke quietly to the sisters in Thai a few times. And then we sat in silence for the next thirty minutes.

My mind went wild. I couldn’t focus on my breath because the fans were blowing air across my face and I couldn’t feel the gentle air coming in and out on the space between my lip and nose. But nonetheless, I felt peaceful. I felt even sleepy. I knew that meditation was about controlling your thoughts, and in a way, I was aware of my thoughts. I could control what I thought about, but I couldn’t control thinking in general. And then I started to get uncomfortable. I started to rock back and forth and lean this way and that, but I refused to readjust. I felt my feet start to tingle, and then the sensation carried up my calves, until the timer went off and I uncrossed my legs. My feet flopped at the ends of my ankles. I couldn’t feel a damn thing.

The sisters all changed positions and sat on their knees with their feet behind them. I started to go that way, but I couldn’t feel my feet and any pressure I put on them hurt so bad, I was afraid I would break my ankles because I couldn’t tell how my feet were positioned. So I set them out to my side and tried not to think about how much they hurt as the sensation started to come back. Dhammananda Bhikkuni was saying some things, maybe in English, probably in Thai, but all I could think about were my feet.

Finally, when we were done, I could feel my feet and when we got up to put our mats back, at least I could walk. A very tall and large sister whom I had not seen before came up to Gersha and I and told us that we were to come with her to pay our respects. Okay.

We followed her downstairs to the second floor where the shrine was. We kneeled in front of the shrine and the sister told us that this was the Venerable Grandmother. She was Dhammananda Bhikkuni’s mother, and the woman who started this monastery. She told us to tell the Venerable Grandmother our name and surname and why we were here. To thank her and to promise to maintain all good merit that we gain here and to always speak kindly when we speak of this place. She said we could say our words internally and then wai three times.

Thank you so much Venerable Grandmother for allowing me to stay in your home. My name is Willow Sequoia Dietsch, and I am more than blessed to be here. I promise to do no ill will towards you, the sisters, or this monastery and temple. I promise to carry the merit that I gain here with me for all of my life. This is more than I could have ever asked for and I am so grateful that you have allowed me into your lives. And I bowed to her picture with my hands at my head three times.

When we were done there, she sister took us out to the spirit house for the monastery. She told us to say just about the same thing to the spirit house, and to hold seven sticks of incense and a candle. But she could only light the incense for Gersha before the lighter got too hot and she couldn’t hold it to light my incense. She tried to light the candle but the wind would blow it out.

“You can just to it together,” she finally said.

So Gersha held the incense, and I simply put my hands to my chest and thanked the spirits for letting me stay. I told them my name and surname, and that I will not disrespect the merit gained by staying at the monastery and thanked them for letting me stay. I gave the wai to the shrine, and Gersha sat the incense in the pot.

The sister asked if we had water. Gersha did, but I hadn’t brought my water bottle.

“Would you like some?”

“Yes please!” I had been thirsty just about all day.

We followed her to building just behind the shrine, where she told us to wait outside. Just outside this building was a table and a few benches where a spotted dog had been sitting all day. I walked up to her and she started wagging and looked up at me. She really wanted to be pet so I came over to her and started scratching behind her ears. She was really fat! She wasn’t pregnant though because she didn’t just have a big belly, she had a big body, she was all rollie pollie and really cute!

I started scratching behind her ears and she leaned her head into my hand. When I went under her chin she lifted her head and looked at me, grunting in approval. Then I started scratching her chest and she starting grunting louder and her back leg started going crazy. I was cracking up and telling her how she was cute doggie when the sister came back out with two little cups of water for me.

“She is too adorable!” I said about the dog as the sister handed me the water.

The sister smiled. “She’s dalmation and dachshund, that’s why she has so many spots. Her name is dot com.”

I laughed. “Dot com! That’s so cute.” I scratched her behind her ears again. The sister handed Gersha a flashlight.

“You can take this with you tonight, but don’t... try not to come out past 9:00. You can come out, but that’s when we let our police dog out. If she comes up to you just stand really still, don’t run from her, or she’ll chase you.”

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Photos

Sweet stuff
I learned later that the noodle things are basically just flour and water - kinda like a spaetzle i guess