I'm doing 30 things
After Bangkok I went to Ayutthaya for a couple days and caught the midnight train to Chiang Mai. The next day I wanted to tour a couple of Wats, Wat U Mong and Wat Ram Poeng. Great places and I learned when I was strolling the grounds of Wat Ram Poeng that on Tuesday, the next day, there was a meditation retreat that I could join. It was for 10 days and I have been rather stressed out with a couple things involving a rich sociopath so I thought meditation would be a good thing for me to learn.
I did not realize I was getting myself in for monk boot camp…seriously! There were 6 farang (foreigners and I mean the Caucasian ones) in the place.The first 24 hours, we were to start with 15 min walking meditation. For walking meditation, ideally to take step that is half as long as your foot, takes at least 10 seconds or longer if you can do it. Try it, it is difficult.
Walking meditation is immediately followed by 15 minutes of sitting meditation, 15 minutes walking then 15 minutes sitting again. Then you may take a 10-20 minute break at that point. Then you start all over.
Now all the other farang could sit lotus and had obviously meditated for quite a while, I was the only newbie of the group. However, at the end of 24 hours, I reported to the abbot after doing 9 hours total hours of meditation, feeling quite pleased with myself and he says ””not out of anger but out of compassion, do 20 minutes each now.”
Great. Okay. So I did.
But by that night, due to the extreme heat I presume and the sitting cross-legged and walking without shoes on stone, my feet and ankles had swollen to the size normally only seen after a 17 hour flight. Arg.
I was rather freaked out by that but persevered. Thoughts of some freakish tropical mosquito disfiguring disease came to mind but I kept throwing those out of my head. Finally went to the abbot and he said no more sitting cross legged for now and that in one or two days I should be good again.
Well that didn’t happen. By the end of the 5th day, when walking had become like walking on knives and feet were looking like I had a good case of elephantitis (by this time I was doing 35 minutes walking 35 sitting, 35 walking 35 sitting straight-legged and my legs and feet were becoming more agonizingly painful. Keep in mind that I was a beginner to all this only 5 days before with the exception of a little cushy American-style intro to mediation shortly before my trip.
Another rule was that we farang could not look at anyone in the face! We had to avert our eyes with a 45 degree glance (which is hard when everyone is a foot shorter and looking up at you asking “Where you from?”) AND no conversation at all, 24/7 except to ask the monk meditation teacher a technique question or to report to the abbot!
Practice started in our rooms at 4am til 6 when breakfast was served (no latecomers served) then at 8 start the day of meditation, initially under the monk’s watchful eyes and then to wherever we wanted to meditate. I tried to stay in the shade as much as possible though even the shade was hot enough to make your elbows sweat for goodness sake. I never knew elbows sweated before.
I did learn a useful lesson at this point.The lesson I learned was “It is hard to avert one’s eyes and watch out for low hanging beams!”
The beams outside the kitchen were quite low and while walking to wash my lunch dishes and frantically trying not to meet the friendly faces of people way shorter than me and am practically looking straight down and suddenly my forehead meets beam with a resounding “BONK!”
I hadn’t ever truly “seen stars” before but it was certainly a whole constellation going on at that point. I tried to share this little wisdom, a little bon mot with the abbot, but something was evidently lost in the translation!
Lunch was served at 1030 and that was it for food until 6am the next morning. The last couple of days I didn’t even feel like eating breakfast and skipped that altogether.
Time for reporting your meditation to the abbot varied in the afternoon and then after that, you were to meditate until 10pm. And absolutely no sleeping anytime between 4am and 10pm! I guess Richard, the guy from England, got busted for going to bed early one night but I don’t know the full story behind that.
And did I mention the heat… the cicadas started singing well before sun-up, never a good sign if one is hoping for a cooler day. The woman up above is dying from stomach cancer I guess and any chance of 6 hours of unbroken sleep went out the window with every painful moan… I just wanted to walk with my hands on my ears when I was mediating in my room and as for sleeping, her painful cries haunted me even in my sleep.
For shits and giggles, they placed the farang women by the (no walls) kitchen where they were crashing pans and chopping food at 3am. It was difficult situation, and I was trying my hardest because I don’t want to be a quitter at anything but between untranslatable answers to meditation questions and the physical hardships and total lack of sleep I was getting toward being a wreck. There were interesting experiences meditating but I could not get answers to my questions, the meh tee po teet (Buddhist nun) never seemed to get around to answering when translating for the abbot. I wanted to know if what I was experiencing while meditating was normal of if I was losing it, I have never done hallucinogenic drugs but I was thinking these experiences must be rather similar!
To finish the meditation formally you must have a closing ceremony. It is very, very rude to not do that. So after coming to the conclusion during one meditation that ””Pride must give way to common sense”” I go with painful, painful feet from my room to the office (you had to walk everywhere with the slowness of walking meditation which was really starting to bug me, especially when out at dusk and I just wanted to run screaming from the malarial or dengue mosquitoes (or potential to be so in this area) to the safety of the my room. No matter how I tried to not worry about it, the worry about mosquito disease was quite distressing to me and loomed large in my mind.
I clear out my room and scrub the thing head to toe, drag the linens (one slow step at a time) to the laundry, get my donation ready based on a 10 day stay and give the German woman who started with me some soy packets that we were allowed to add to the water in the 19 hours without food and explain that I cant walk anymore. I tried to give her a couple of packets of antibacterial handwipes that I hadn’t opened yet and she, with a start, asks “Vat?!!” “Vat is zis?!”
I was confused by her reaction but then realized that when she had read the English words on the packet, she had read the “Kills Germs!” as “Kills Germans!” I tried explaining but she wanted no part of them.
The other farang inmates had spoken with me the day earlier (and I was dreading the monk coming along and finding them speaking with me, I mean I was very worried) and expressed concern about the looks of my feet and that it was obvious to them that walking was hurting me even though as one said, “you totally look in the zone, you look totally done in.” It was funny that the men broke the no talking code first! The man who reported after me came up and asked “How many times have you thought of quitting?” And to be honest, and the end of the fourth day, it hadn’t been a thought I had allowed myself to have. Though worried about being busted for talking, I felt like a convict in a prison breaking the guards’ rules, I listened, volunteered little but everything he said seemed hilariously funny and I was practically howling (probably nearly with a dash of hysteria) with laughter at our situation.
That evening, doing my 35 minutes walking, 35 sitting, 35 walking, 35 sitting then break, tears are streaming down my face after 4 hours of this with the pain in my feet which is now affecting my knees. The woman is moaning in pain, I am so very exhausted I cant do anymore and miserably sit in my little room just waiting for 10pm to go to sleep.
The next morning, from the very first step I take getting out of my one inch mattress on a wood board, the painful stabs to my feet makes my decision that I will finish the required hours and finish after finishing day 5’s required hours.
My next two days would have no reporting but increased to 40 minutes and then 45 and there is just no way I can do anymore. I am worried about getting on the airplane and getting vein thrombosis. I am a total wreck by this point.
So I go and meditate in the monks office area while waiting for him to come back. He was all a-twitter about some high monk deciding to drop in and running around like a chicken with his head cut off. I finally got him to stop and I respectfully requested a closing ceremony, explaining I could not continue to cripple myself any further with having a long plane trip at the end of this week. He would not do the ceremony and
herded me back to my room!
Now I am not one to be intentionally rude and I was so culturally sensitive on my trip, so while my brain was trying to figure out how to make this Thai monk understand I DO NOT WANT TO BE HERE ANYMORE and that I have crippled myself and can do no more. I go (painstakingly slowly) back to my room, with him at my heels like a bloody sheepdog.
I say heck with that and go back to the office after a little bit and tell the teacher monk that I wished for a closing ceremony and that this is what I must do. Phra Chebodin then escorts me to the meh tee po teet who says “fine, special dispensation, just meditate in your room and don’t do the walking, you may stay here until you leave Chaing Mai.” Oh my god, I do not want to stay longer than the 10 days, I don’t want to stay 10 days, I want to leave now and be granted the closing ceremony like you are supposed to be given. I explained I needed cold air, ice and the ability to put my feet up to get them to unswell.
I then found that meh tee po teet AND Phra Chebodin herding me back to my room and actually are waiting for me to put my backpack in the room!
I figured they weren’t going to leave me until I do, so I throw the backpack back in the room, keeping my purse with passport and money with me in case I have to run. They leave and I see the German woman standing next door looking at me curiously. She sidles over and whispers surreptitiously “Vat are you still doing here? Vy are you here?” She couldn’t believe they refused to do the ceremony and says, after sneaking glances around, “I know a back way out!”“
So with her running reconnaissance, and me trying to sneak along (try sneaking along when you are a 5 9 blonde with a huge blue backpack on your back in a Thai buddhist monastery!) We make our way zig-zagging along with her getting water for my water bottle (bless her for that), then she would skitter ahead, looking, looking, looking and waving me forward! I am feeling very obvious and am trying to sneak along to catch up with her, never before have I felt so large and obvious!
We continue in this manner, finally making our way to the main gate. Our timing was good as many members of the monastery were excited about going to some celebration for some high ranking Buddhist and their numbers are greatly reduced after 1pm. I was very,very relieved at this notion and our timing. I hand her the envelope with the baht donation and the key to my room which was locked as if I was still walking around the monastery, meditating in one of the temples or beautiful courtyards.
Now there is one dirt road coming in and one going out, each a one-way lane. Tara, the German woman, points me to the going out road and I shake my head vigorously NO. She asks why and I say because there’s a guy in orange and I am afraid of men in orange now!” (Legitimately so, in my opinion, by the way.)
So she hugs me as I warn her she can’t be on this side of the gate so she had better get back in before she is found out and I traipse up the incoming lane. My heart was feeling lighter and lighter with each step as I got further away and closer to the highway.
Now keep in mind I have absolutely no flipping idea of where the heck I am but I am out of there!
I get to the main highway and see a Best Western up the way and figure to call a taxi from there. I am happy, happy, happy to have escaped…
when I see a car with black-tinted windows pull up next to me, driving alongside at my walking pace, and no matter how I ignore it, it drives slowly along adjacent to me, mindless of being on a highway. I move away from the car’s door range distances and stop, looking over warily in concern and confusion.
The blackened passenger window slowly glides down, down. and I see the beaming smiling face of the teacher monk-Chebodin! He has two other monks in the car and is wearing this wide, and at this point to me,maniacal smile (It was like the face of the Joker in the first Batman movie to me!) and is pointing at the back seat saying “Get in,Get in. Get in car, we go!”
Eeeeeeeeek!!! Hell no!
Needless to say I did NOT and told him there was no way and I was off to the hotel. but how bizarre was that!
So despite my best intents to be a considerate and thoughtful, I am now considered a rude, thoughtless farang who does not follow the rules of politeness. I tried to do the right thing but I was denied an honorable end to my retreat, so that is that. I sure as hell did not lose any sleep over it!
