Wat Songdhammakalyani and the Venerable Dhammananda Bhikkuni: Part 3

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“Yeah. Okay,” I said nodding. I didn’t need to be told what to do around charging dogs, but maybe Gersha did. She looked nervous and I knew she just wasn’t going to risk coming out past 9:00.

The sister told us goodnight, and that the bell rings at 5:20 in the morning for morning chanting at 5:30. She walked away to her quarters and Gersha and I walked up to our building. Gersha’s room was closest so when she went in she told me goodnight and handed me the flashlight, even though my room was only two doors away from hers.

“See you in the morning!”

“See you.”

And I went in my room. It felt hotter in my room than it was outside. I decided to sleep naked because I knew it was going to be horribly hot that night. I opened all the windows to get a cross breeze and turned the fan on high and got in bed. They had only given me one sheet and a thin blanket. I had put the sheet down to cover the cot, so I only had a blanket to cover myself with. I was either too hot, or too cold all night.

It was around 8:30 when I got in to bed. I laid there thinking about my day, how I was so grateful for everything that they had done for me so far, and so grateful that I was able to be a part of their ceremonies and daily life. I sang a little song to the Venerable Grandmother to put me to sleep. I was so tired from all the food I’d eaten at dinner and then the meditation. I fell asleep pretty quickly.

Around 10:30 I woke up to barking dogs. I was so sweaty hot and sticky, I had the blanket on top of me. I threw off the blanket and turned over on my good ear so my deaf ear was to the world and fell back asleep.

At 12:00 I awoke again to barking and howling dogs. This time I was a little worried. Was there someone on the property? Was there an intruder? Why were the dogs barking so much? Did the police dog think there was someone here who shouldn’t be here? I was cold so I brought the blanket back over my middle leaving my feet out, rolled over and fell back asleep.

At 1:20 the dogs woke me up again. Or maybe it was because I was hot.

At 4:30 the barking dogs were right outside my window. Did the police dog smell me? Did she think I was the intruder? Was she going to come charging through my window? Or was there someone right outside my door? How could the sisters sleep through this? Did this happen every night or was this strange? More dogs barked in the distance and the barking of the dog right outside my window grew fainter, and eventually I fell back asleep.

Howling dogs woke me up again. They weren’t barking like they had been doing all night, but howling, like when they howled at the bell for evening chanting. I checked my watch. 5:20. The bell had rung but it wasn’t the bell that woke me up, just the howling dogs.

I moaned and groaned and rolled around in the bed for a few minutes. I leaned out to the end of my bed and turned the light on. At least they would know I was awake. The sister had also told us the night before that someone would come get us once they had put the police dog back up so we didn’t come out while she was still out.

I went to the bathroom and then started to get dressed. A knock on my door, and a sister called to me. “I’m coming, just a sec.” I answered.

When I left my room, Gersha was putting her shoes on so we walked over to the chanting building together.

“Did you sleep well?” She asked me.

“Not really. It was so hot!”

“It was very hot,” she agreed.

“And the dogs woke me up just about every hour.”

“The dogs?”

“Yeah the dogs were barking all night.”

“Oh, I didn’t notice.”

“You didn’t hear them? They were howling all night long!” I protested.

“I think I am used to it.” She shrugged. “In the Philippines dogs barked all night and the sound of the highway was very loud.”

“You’re lucky then, I hardly got any sleep.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Eh, It’s alright. I’m excited to go do the alms with them.”

“Me too! I will start my filming today. I am excited too.”

When we started walking up the dark stairs to the second floor where the sisters would do their chanting, I realized we must be a little late. The chanting had already started, and as I walked up the quiet stairs in the dark towards the sound of chanting, it occurred to me that… I could definitely get used to this. We sat in the back of the room as the sisters chanted. There were only eight sisters this morning, and Dhammananda Bhikkuni was not there. The warm air mixed with the cool breeze from the fans. The sound of the highway was less than the night before, and it seemed a lot more peaceful this morning. I think the sisters were more tired as well, their chanting had less vigor than it had the night before, and it was more calming, and soothing.

After the chanting, we were told to go upstairs for meditation. Gersha and I looked at each other, confused for a moment because we thought they would do the alms after morning chanting. We shrugged and went upstairs with them. We got out our mats and sat behind the sisters. Only five of them now. They said a few chants or something in Thai and then were silent and Gersha and I tried to meditate. I don’t think either of us were successful though because we weren’t really sure what was going on. After about five or ten minutes, a sister came up the stairs and whispered to us that it was time to go for alms now.

We put our mats back away and headed back downstairs. Two sisters were standing by the main gate, and another woman in a green apron stood behind them with a cart. Apparently only a few sisters go for alms, and the rest meditate in the morning. That still left three sisters unaccounted for, and Dhammananda Bhikkuni, but no one seemed concerned and we didn’t ask.

They opened the main gate, and we followed them out. As the woman in the apron closed the gate, two dogs squeezed through and ran out in front of the sisters. No one seemed concerned and they actually seemed to know where to go. One dog stood at the corner of the street and looked back at us. When we started to walk that way it wheeled around excitedly and ran down the ally. He knew the monks daily routine already.

We walked down the ally in quiet, taking in the morning as the sky was slowly brightening to a navy blue. We walked for about ten minutes, passing walls and fields and over a canal, until we finally came to a neighborhood. We passed a lot of houses and people starting to prepare food at the their food stalls for the day but none of them came out to greet the sisters and the sisters didn’t stop by them. I didn’t know how this alms thing worked. Did the sisters just walk through the neighborhood until someone came out to offer them food?

Then we turned down another street and came up to a family preparing their food stall for the day. The sisters turned down their driveway and stood there waiting patiently until an older woman came out with a bowl of rice. The older woman’s other family members, probably daughters and granddaughters helped her put the rice in the sisters’ alms bowls. One of the monks motioned for me to come closer, so I stood next to the cart. When the old woman had placed rice in their bowls, the younger women handed the monks bags of food, or pieces of fruit and placed it on top of their alms bowl. The sisters turned to their right, and the woman in the green apron grabbed the food from their bowl and placed it in her cart.

The sisters said a prayer over the women who had given them food, and the woman with the cart put her hands in the wai position at her chest and closer her eyes as they prayed. So I did the same. Gersha set up her camera a little ways away and filmed the interaction, and then we walked on.

The next place we stopped was also preparing food for the day. The same sister motioned for me to come closer again, so I stood sort of next to and behind them on the left. When the sister closest to me got a bag of food placed on her alms bowl and turned to her right to have it taken away, the women in the green apron motioned for me to take it from her. I grabbed the bag and placed it in the cart. I really wasn’t sure what I was doing or what I was supposed to be doing. But when the sister had another item of food placed on her alms bowl and turned again, the woman in the green apron told me to take it again, so I did and placed it in the cart.

The sisters said a prayer again, and then we started walking back the way we came.

The next place we stopped I went to stand on the left of the sisters, but the woman in the green apron grabbed me by the shoulders and walked me to stand on the right side of the sisters. So this is where they wanted me to stand. When the sister on my left turned to her right, I took the bag of food and handed it to the woman in the green apron and she placed it in the cart. The next sister down the line turned to her right with a bag of food and the woman in the green apron pulled me over to take it from her.

You know what? I was totally fine with being dragged around. How else was I supposed to figure out what they wanted from me? She figured out that I didn’t understand from hand motions, so she resorted to simply placing me where she wanted me. And that was okay with me!

The next sister in the line turned to her right and I took the food and handed it to the woman in the green apron. She placed it in the cart and then pointed me back to the right side of the sisters, where the sister on the end had more food and was turning to the right. I hurried to her side and picked up the bag of food, handed it to the woman in green and she placed it in the cart. It went on like this a few more times; the place we had stopped had a ton of food to give to them.

We stopped at one more place before we were almost back to the monastery. This time I immediately went to the right side of the sisters, and walked down the line as they were handed food, picked up the bags or bottles of water or pieces of fruit off their alms bowl and handed it to the woman in the green apron who placed it in the cart.

When we were walking back, the cart was absolutely packed to the brim! I couldn’t believe we had only stopped at 4 or 5 places and had acquired so much food! Being a monk is awesome! I walked behind the cart a little ways and then the woman in green turned around to me and held her hand out for me. When I reached her she pulled me next to her and had me help push the cart.

Somewhere along the way we had lost one of the dogs. Well not lost probably, but only one dog was following us now. And actually, that dog wasn’t following as much as it was leading. He would walk ahead of us and look behind him to make sure we were still following, stop and pee on something, and then run off ahead of us again, tail held high. The cart-woman next to me said something in Thai and pointed at the dog.

“Khow Chu Arai Kha?” I asked pointing at the dog. What is his name?

She answered with a Thai name I had never heard before, and didn’t quite catch it.

“Khun chu arai kha?” I asked her next. What is your name?

“Pen!” She explaimed.

“Pen?” I repeated.

“Pen. P – E – N.” She spelled.

“Pen!” I confirmed. “Chan chu Willow Kha.”

“Huh?”

“Willow.”

“Weelow?” She asked.

“Yep! Willow.”

She pointed at Gersha and asked “Khun Chu Arai Kah?”

Gersha shook her head and looked at me.

“What’s your name?” I translated.

“Gersha.”

“Gersa?”

“Mhm. What is your name?”

“Pen,” Pen and I both said. Pen must have understood what Gersha asked. Maybe she spoke a little bit of English.

We arrived next to the back gate by the garden we had worked in the day before. It was a big blue iron gate with high concrete walls on either side of it. Pen left the cart with me and went to open the gate. I attempted to push the cart through the gate but it was damn heavy! I moved it a little bit and then Pen came to help me push it inside the gate. We left the gate open for the sisters, and took the path on the side opposite the police dog, and I helped her push it up the little bit of a hill.

When we reached the top of the hill, we were behind the green building that Gersha and I slept in. Pen took over the handle of the cart and told me thank you.

“Are you sure? You’re good?” I called as she took the cart away from me. She nodded and waved, and I followed.

Gersha and the sisters were a bit behind us still, and I didn’t necessarily want to go back to my room. I saw Pen heading towards the ramp that led up to the second floor of the bookstore building, towards the dining hall. And I ran to help her push the cart up the ramp, knowing how heavy it was. She thanked me again and we put our backs into it and pushed it up the ramp.

“Tsank” she brokenly said to me.

“Mai pen rai!” I said. Don’t worry about it!

“Ah! Mai pen rai!” She repeated excitedly. Thai people are always impressed when foreigners say mai pen rai I’ve noticed.

I followed her into the dining hall and then left towards the stairs and went back outside. It wasn’t quite time for breakfast yet, and I wanted to take some pictures of the grounds since I hadn’t really gotten any good pictures the day before. So I walked around with my phone and took some pictures until Gersha found me and asked me if I was going to breakfast. It was about 7:00 now, and we had been told that breakfast was at 7:15. Close enough. So we headed to the dining hall.

There was food set out on a long table and the sisters were crowded around it filling their bowls with the food. I understood why we had been given a giant pot of rice the night before, about 80% of the food they had been given for alms was rice! Oh Thais and their rice. One sister who spoke English came up to Gersha and I tried to tell us something. She said a lot of ums, and ahs, and closed her eyes and put her hand to her head trying to think.

“I don’t know how say in English,” she finally admitted. I didn’t know how to help her because I didn’t know what she was even trying to say. So I stood there smiling, trying not to make her feel uncomfortable.

“It’s okay,” I said.

“Uhm. We will eat. And then we say chanting, and then you can taste it.”

“You eat first and then we eat?” I confirmed.

“After we chanting you taste it.” She said again.

“Okay,” I said. I figured I would just wait until someone told us we could eat. That’s how things seemed to go around here. Just stand around until someone tells you what you can do.

Gersha and I sat down at the table we had sat at for dinner.

“What do we do?” Gersha asked me. “When do we eat?”

“I think they eat first and then we eat after they do chanting?”

“Oh,” Gersha said disappointed. I could tell she was hungry and wanted to eat now. “So we wait for them to eat?”

“I think so.”

“Okay.”

The sisters sat down at a long table on one side of the huge dining hall. Once they were all seated, they said a prayer over their food and then began to eat. When the chanting was done, Pen came up to us and motioned for us to come eat. Oh, so they just had to say a prayer over the food and then we ate. We didn’t have to wait for them to finish eating first, that would have been kind of unfair anyway.

There was a lot of food for breakfast. We were given metal plates with multiple spacers in them where food was to be placed. There were a couple different types of noodles, vegetables, fried tofu, some pastry-like thing, some fruit and something steamed in a banana leaf, and of course, rice. I got a little bit of everything. There were some pink, pickled noodles, stir fried with a few vegetables and fish sauce, and then some crunchy, sticky, almost sweet, but kinda fishy fried noodle thing. The fried tofu was with a sweet pineapple sauce and was absolutely amazing, and the vegetables were good too! I really like how they do stir-fried veggies here, the sauce is really subtle but full of flavor. The fried pastry thing had the texture of a Thai donut, but didn’t have any sort of sweet glaze or anything on it. But the best thing I ate that morning was whatever-the-hell was in the steamed banana leaf. I have absolutely no idea what it was, but it was a flavor I recognized, just a flavor I don’t have very often and couldn’t even begin to describe it. Maybe there was some coconut flavor to it? Probably, everything here has at least some coconut milk, cream, water, oil, or something in it. But it was like tapioca, or something, fried around some sort of fruit or nut paste, and it also had some nuts in it… I really have no idea how to describe it but it was so good! They also had dragon fruit and bananas out, but I just grabbed a banana and decided against the dragon fruit, it’s good but it’s not really one of my favorites.

After breakfast, we took our plates around to the back and washed them off and set them out to dry in the drying rack, and headed back out to the dining hall. An English-speaking sister came up to Gersha and I and told us that if we waited in the sitting area under the green building, Dhammananda Bhikkuni would come to us and we would do meditation.

Yes! Finally! What I stayed this entire time for!

Gersha and I went and sat under the green building, where I had met with the Venerable Dhammananda Bhikkuni the day before, where all of this started. We sat at the stone table this time and waited for the Bhikkuni. I told Gersha about how I was going to write a paper for my class on Feminism in Thailand and she asked if she could read it when I was finished. Of course she could! I would be happy to let her read it! So we exchanged Facebook profiles and email addresses.

Dhammananda Bhikkuni showed up only after a few minutes and looked in much better health than she had the night before, at meditation. However, she informed us that she had a meeting this morning and actually wouldn’t be able to teach us meditation.

“It is actually a good thing you are here,” she said to Gersha. “Or you would be meditating alone!” She said to me.

Wait… so it was just going to be the two of us? I thought she taught a class, like, for the public, which was why it would be taught in English.

Dhammananda continued. “Even though I will not be there, I want to tell you about the five things that can occur when you are meditating. One, is distraction from outside. Like a dog barking, or the sound of a car horn, or anything like that, something from your surroundings that distracts you. Two, distracting thoughts. So it is okay to think, but when you get a thought you have to just recognize that thought and then send it away. Third, is sleepiness…”

“Yes! That is my problem!” Announced Gersha.

“When you get sleepy there are three things you can do, first, you can open your eyes, focus on something in front of you, or you can turn your head slowly from side to side to wake up your mind. Take a deep breath, let the oxygen into your brain, wake up your brain, take a deep breath in. Or you could visualize a sunrise. Picture a bright sun in front of you. If those do not help, you can stand up and do walking meditation.

“The next distraction is pain.” This is my problem. “If you have pain, just know that pain, recognize it, and then send it away. It is only sensation. Try to find a position that is comfortable for your back. Always make sure your back is straight.” Gersha and I both instinctively straightened up at her words. She smiled.

“And always focus on the small part around your nose. Just above your top lip and below the nostril. Just focus on the air coming in and out, that is all you need to worry about. This is the first step, to just focus on your breath and your breathing.”

She paused for a minute. “And the last distraction is impatience. You must tell yourself when you first go in to meditation that I will sit for half an hour. Or twenty minutes, or an hour, or how ever long you will meditate. Tell yourself that you will not move for thirty minutes. You can imagine you have a heavy stone, or something heavy, pulling you down into the ground. It will keep you in that place until your time is up. If you get impatient, just imagine this heavy thing pulling you down.

“And that is all. I am sorry I cannot be with you this morning. But if you walk back to where we worked yesterday, there is a building there. The door is closed but it will not be locked, and in there you can turn the fans on. Okay? I have to get to my meeting now. After you are done meditating, at 10:30 I will hold a ceremony in the chanting room, and you can join me there.”

She left Gersha and I to find this building. We walked towards the back and Gersha said to me, “It’s a good thing you stayed. You may have been disappointed if you came back in the morning and she was not going to teach meditation.”

“Yeah,” I snorted. It was a good thing I stayed, I guess.

We found the building she mentioned, and walked up the stairs. At the top, the stairs were covered in plastic, and the plastic was covered in pigeon poop. We had to step carefully once we took our shoes off. When we walked in it was very hot and I immediately went to turn the fans on, but not before I noticed the immense, golden Buddha draped in blue robes before us. This was probably one of the more grand images of Buddha I had seen in the monastery yet! It was gorgeous. But I was hot. I went and turned a fan on and Gersha plugged in the one on the other side of the room. We grabbed mats and a pillow from the side of the room, sat them in front of the Buddha and sat down.

“It is just us?” Gersha asked.

“Yeah, I guess so.” So much for a public class taught by the Bhikkuni.

“So, do you want to meditate for twenty or thirty minutes?” I asked. I didn’t think I could do thirty minutes. My mind wasn’t really in the right place, and I was getting antsy from all this sitting around and being quiet.

“Maybe we just do twenty minutes.”

“Yeah, good plan.”

I got out my phone and set a timer for twenty minutes.

“You setting alarm?”

“Yeah, twenty minutes. Okay. Go.”

Great way to start meditation right? Go! Like it’s a race to see who can sit still the longest. As I had feared, my mind really wasn’t in the right place. I was immediately uncomfortable, and when I closed my eyes, I felt myself starting to fall asleep. I don’t even know what I thought about, but I couldn’t push thoughts away. As soon as I did, another one would creep up. I thought about how much my back hurt, how much my knees and ankles were killing me. My feet were bound to fall asleep again. I was full from breakfast, and thirsty from lack of any substantial amount of water. I wished I had brought a water bottle with me so I could refill it and have more water to drink. I wished that I had slept better, and I wished it wasn’t so damn hot. But most of all, I was kind of annoyed at how this had turned out. I was so glad I hadn’t left and decided to come back in the morning. But everything that I went through, all the sweat and lack of sleep and no real shower or toothbrush, was really for nothing. I hadn’t even really gotten to talk to the Bhikkuni. She hadn’t even remembered my name. When we worked in the garden the day before, she had asked Gersha for her name, and then asked for mine again. I was of so little consequence to her that she couldn’t even remember my name. I had spent the day uncomfortable and awkward, and the night with no sleep, and all so I could sit in a hot room, totally uncomfortable, with a woman who had no more desire to be there than I did.

When the alarm went off, I stretched out again, laid back and looked at the ceiling. Well, that was fun.

“Meditation would be good way to fall asleep.” Gersha commented as I stretched.

“Yeah. I was about to fall asleep there for a little bit.”

“Yes. I had a very hard time meditating. She told us all of these distractions, but I don’t think she told us what to do about them?”

“I think she said just to focus on our breathing, the space around our nose, to forget about those distractions.”

“It’s just hard. I have meditated before, but there was incense and chanting. I have never meditated in such silence, and it is much harder. It is a lot easier to meditate with all of your senses. And here, you use no senses. It is very hard to clear my head.”

I nodded. “Well, I think I’ll probably get going then.”

“Yes. I thought there would be more people here, no?” She said as we got up to put our mats and pillows away. “I thought there would be people from the village. She taught in English, I thought there would be more public here.”

“I did too. The way they talked about it made it seem like she was teaching a meditation class, and that there would be others here.”

“Yes, exactly.”

We turned the fans off and headed back out through the pigeon poop. We walked back to our rooms.

“Are you going to pack now?” Gersha asked.

“Yeah I’m just going to get my things together and then I think I’ll ask at the office if they can help me figure out how to get back.”

“Okay, well I think I will come with you. I would like to know the best way to travel from here too.”

I went in my room and took the sheet and blanket and pillowcase and towel and my brown and white clothes and folded them all up. As I started getting everything together a wave of relief washed over me. I could never do this for an entire ten days! I thought. I was so happy to be leaving. I was ready to take a shower, I smelled so bad, and my breath was disgusting, I wanted to brush my teeth! But more than anything, I wanted to walk, I wanted exercise or something, and I was so done with sitting and being quiet.

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Photos

Leaving the Monastery Grounds
This was the corner the dog was waiting for us to go around. I thought I caught him in the picture, but he must have bounded away just as I took it

Steamed coconut tapioca nut thing that was delicous!
I got called out by a sister for taking pictures of my food though.
"Food for eating, do not take photo..." Oops

Fruit from the alms
I think those are kumquats right?! That's the orange fruit that was growing on the short tree in the garden. Wish I could have tasted it!