Monks and Silent Mindfulness

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We picked up a leaflet about a Buddhist meditation retreat in a wat the day before we went trekking. It looked like the kind of thing that would be really interesting to do, but that we'd never get around to doing. So we made a snap decision right there and then to do it.

We met with a rather short saffron-robed student monk, along with about a dozen other traveler types at about 2pm at the same wat we picked the leaflet up from. We were presented with free books on the machinations of karma and given a brief seminar on the nature of Buddhism. Shorty (or Phra Weerachai - the 'Phra' is like 'Brother') was a bit nervous as it was the first time he'd done it himself - he usually watched his teacher, who was elsewhere helping out at a Burmese refugee camp somewhere in Thailand (not sure on the specifics of the refugees or anything there, ignorant buffoon that I must be).

After a short 40 minute drive out to the new education facility they'd had built, I was given a comfortable but Spartan room with a couple of other guys. White robes lay neatly folded on the bed. We washed and donned them, and a while later the dinner bell rang. The dining hall was also comfortable, clean and Spartan. For a moment I thought the tables had reservation plaques on them, like you see in restaurants all the time at home, but then I realised that they said SILENCE instead.

We were presented with badges bearing the same legend. At one point, a monk said that we had plenty of opportunities to know others in life, but it was also important to know ourselves, and that was why silence should be observed. Makes sense, really.

The meditation itself was tough. Easy to get distracted by the spreading numbness in your feet, a mosquito buzzing past you ear, the flash from the camera as the "tech handler" monk walked around taking pictures of us. The senior monk (the teacher, returned from his good-karma-accumulation trip) told us it's like riding a bike, an analogy that stuck with me long enough to distract my concentration - every time I achieved a decent level of concentration ("taming my monkey mind", as the monks said) I had an image of myself managing to balance on the bike for a moment... and lost it as the image came up, of course.

Second day was easier, though that might have been fatigue after getting up at 5am for yoga and more meditation before breakfast at 7am. I enjoyed the second day more (but not the yoga, that was agony) because I was getting a bit more success. I was given a meditation bracelet (the senior monk called it a rosary, but I thought that was just Catholic - it could have been a translation error, they made a lot of them). Counting the beads is definitely the easiest way to concentrate my mind in meditation.

All in all, I had a really interesting couple of days, though I came out of it really tired. It was relaxing after the trek, but hard work as well - in an entirely different way.

The pictures are up on www.monkchat.net, which is the site covering the scheme. You can click this link to see the full picture gallery in all it's poor-quality glory.


Take Care!

Sam

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