Meditation Retreat Days 6-8: I Think I'm Getting Somewhere

I woke up on Day 6 with a lot of sadness about BE leaving. It turns out I haven't made that much progress with the whole "letting go of attachments" things as I had thought. Which sucks. That morning after breakfast, VW (the quirky, German volunteer organizer) gave a talk to the group and made a remark about how he had to kick one of the girls out for talking. Huh. Maybe she didn't decide to leave after all. Somehow this makes me feel a little... less sad about it. On the guys' side, everyone has been so respectful of the rules and really good about not breaking the silence. Apparently, that hasn't been the case on the womens' side because this isn't the first time VW has made mention of issues in the womens' dorm.

Around day 7 after lunch while I was washing my dishes, I accidentally dropped my plate into the water and splashed the guy next to me in the face. I felt so bad about it, and I couldn't even say sorry. He was already clearly having a rough time here and he just had this look of "...ugh, this too?" on his face. He kind of looks like the main guy from the show The Shield, but a little bit stockier, so picture that guy making that face and that's what I was seeing. Oh well. Later that afternoon we were in the hot springs together, just the two of us, and I'm pretty sure he peed in it right as he got out, so... yea. As it turns out, the next day he ended up leaving the retreat. I like to think that if anything, I helped him reach a decision he was going to make anyway.

Antsy guy from our morning Tai Chi sessions is getting antsier by the day. Whereas before I found him to be incredibly distraction, disrespectful, and annoying, I've now come to feel a lot of sympathy for him. Can you imagine how difficult this whole experience must be for him? Eight days later, he still can't sit still for a second. He must be struggling so much right now. As an aside, one time I was walking through the streets of San Francisco with my friend KC (the same friend who had done this retreat a few years ago) and we passed a homeless person on the street, who was very clearly on a lot of drugs. As we passed, the person either said some inaudible phrase or just made some really awful noise and I remember not really giving it much more thought until my friend KC remarked, "that person must be in so much pain." Just those few words were such a reality check. This wasn't just some homeless person like the many others we had surely passed already on our walk. This was a person. Period. A living, breathing, thinking, feeling human being. Anyway, I digress. I really, truly want antsy guy to make it through the 10 days, he's fought so hard for so long already.

On a completely unrelated side note, the night sky here is beautiful and has a lot of stars to see. Having said that, to be honest, I was expecting to see more. When I was a kid, I visited Guyana and remember the sky being flooded with stars. I've never seen anything like that since. I chalked that up to the fact that Guyana wasn't very developed, so there wasn't much light pollution (or any pollution for that matter) to get in the way. So I was expecting the same thing from this random place in the middle of nowhere Thailand, but I guess not.

A wonderful thing happened around day 7 or 8: my back stopped hurting. I guess once you sit upright for long enough, you build up much stronger back muscles. It made it a LOT easier to concentrate and to sit still for a much longer period of time when my back wasn't hurting. It's really hard to keep your concentration if you are shifting positions every three minutes but now I can go for a good half an hour in the same position with no problem at all.

I was also able to repeat that rolling sensation on my chest a few times over the course of days 6-8. But another crazy thing started happening too. During his first talk way back on Day 1 or 2, VW mentioned a whole bunch of benefits of meditation, most of which I wrote off as total BS. Things like curing cancer and diabetes and a whole host of other medical ailments. Cancer? Seriously? You're telling me that I can just think my way into getting rid of those pesky genetic mutations causing uncontrolled cellular replication? Right. BUT, one thing happened that totally blew my mind. One time after I was able to maintain my focus for a good 15 or 20 minutes, I opened my eyes and I kid you not, I started seeing more clearly. Not in the figurative "the answer is right in front of me!" sense, but in the physical "I can literally see the world more sharply" sense. As if I had just put on a new contacts prescription for the first time and hadn't realized how fuzzy things had been until now. The scientist in me wants to be completely skeptical and can think of a million other reasons as to why this might have happened. Maybe it was a coincidence. Maybe I was just more aware of my surroundings because I more mentally focused. Maybe my eyes had time to rest so my eye muscles weren't tired and were able to focus better. I can't say exactly what the cause was but regardless... I saw more clearly. It only lasted for a few seconds before things went back to normal, but man, it's awesome when your body can surprise you in a good way. And I was able to repeat it a few times over days 6-8. And it wasn't just because I was closing my eyes for a while, because other times when I've kept my eyes closed but haven't been able to focus, there wasn't an improvement in my vision. In fact, things are usually blurrier when I first open my eyes when that happens. Just... crazy. These positive externalities are an interesting and pleasant side effect, but the real joy is that they seem to be physical manifestations of what is happening in my head, namely that I'm actually making some progress on clearing my mind. Which is awesome.

STAY TUNED for the next installment!

Meditation Retreat Day 5: Breakthrough and Sadness

Day 5 was an interesting day on many, many fronts. First off, after lunch I headed back out to the hot spring for a little R&R. As I was walking out there, I saw there was only one other dude in there and right as I got to the hot spring, he jumped out of the water and looked liked he had just seen a ghost. When he saw me approaching, he shook his head and wagged his finger to very strongly warn me against going into the water. I assume he saw a cobra (we had been warned that there is the occasional cobra here) but I wouldn't be able to know for sure until after the retreat because he had no way of verbalizing it to me. Luckily there are two hot springs, so I went into the other one instead. I'm so curious! I hope he makes it all the way through the 10 days so I can find out what he saw. And for his own personal growth, etc. etc. obviously...

Up until this point, I've been really struggling with the meditation. I just feel like I haven't been able to clear my head at all. But something totally unexpected happened on Day 5 that really turned things around for me. It was the afternoon meditation session, the last one before our evening hot chocolate time. I finally got to a point where I was able to concentrate for more than a few minutes. As usual, I started with my deep breathing. Deep breath in. Deep breath out. Deeeeep breath in. Deeeeep breath out. And after about 10 minutes of this, I started to feel this sensation, as if someone was rolling a really long pencil across my chest. The sensation stayed in the same spot, but as I continued to breathe and continued to focus, it because more and more intense. What was this?! I wanted more. I continued to breathe, continued to focus, and allowed my mind to explore how this sensation felt. And then, just like when you're having the most amazing dream ever, the chime sounded, dragging us out of our meditative state and telling us it was time for hot chocolate. It's pretty safe to say this is probably the only time in my life I would have preferred to postpone hot chocolate. Nevertheless, I finally felt like I was finally getting somewhere with my meditation.

This evening there was a table with some small books and pamphlets that were available for us to read if we wanted to. You may recall that we aren't allowed to read anything while we are here. This is the one exception. These are all about Anapanasati, our meditation method. So during/after hot chocolate, I started reading one of the small booklets that went into more detail about the different steps to the method. The first few steps are all about different forms of breathing and what the book refers to as "knowing your breath." This basically means understanding the full sensation of the breath, not just on your nose, but on how your whole body moves with each breath, how your chest or stomach expands and contracts, the sensation at the very beginning and end of each breath, how your mind feels, and everything in between. The first step is doing that with deep breathing. The next step is doing that with quick, shallow breaths. Which seems counter-intuitive because usually that kind of breathing is associated more with panic than with calm. It's also apparently why this method has a lot of critics. The third step is that eventually, your body turns that quick breath back into a normal breathing pace.

After that, things get a little more complicated, but the gist of it is that you're supposed to see an image with your "mind's eye." Something like a simple geometric shape or a star or something like that. When that happens, you shift your focus away from your breath into that image, and then use your mind to manipulate the image however you'd like. Move it. Stretch it. Zoom in on it. Whatever. The point is that you're focused enough that you can do whatever you want with the image. At that point, you reach the first stage of what some of the monks here have referred to as a euphoric sensation, basking in the glow of your mental accomplishment. When my friend KC told me about her experience at the retreat, I remember her telling me about a time where she experienced something euphoric, so I assume this is what she was talking about.

That evening as I was leaving the dining hall after hot chocolate, I saw my friend BE talking to someone in the office and I thought to myself, "...oh no." And then I saw her walking side-by-side with another girl from the retreat and that's when I knew that she had decided to leave. Though she and I didn't talk at all during the retreat, it still made me kind of sad to see her go. It was nice to have a friend here. As I was walking to the evening session at 7pm, I saw her sitting on the steps so I walked a little out of my way so I could walk past her. It turns out I was right because she gestured to me that she was leaving. We waved goodbye to each other from afar. And that was it. I debated going back and giving her a proper goodbye, but I think she got it and it was better this way anyway. Looking back, I'm glad I didn't let myself take me away from the meditation session. After all, that's the whole reason I'm here, right?

CONTINUE ON to Meditation Retreat Days 6-8: I Think I'm Getting Somewhere

Meditation Retreat Days 2-4: Silence is Easy. Meditation is Not.

The next three days got progressively more and more difficult. But by the end of Day 4, I felt like I hadn't made any progress. I couldn't focus for more than a minute or two at a time, despite the insane number of hours we had dedicated to meditation. My back was aching. I couldn't sit still. And the mosquitoes. Oh man, those mosquitoes. If you can't get your mind to sit still, try doing so with the ominous buzz of a mosquito constantly in your ear, just waiting to suck your blood at any second. With the amount of prophylactic bug spray and bug cream I absorbed on my skin, you would think my blood would be poisonous to mosquitoes at this point, but try telling that to the countless mosquitoes for whom I was breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a mid-afternoon snack.

VW had told me in my initial interview on registration day that people hit "rock bottom" around day 3 or 4, though everyone is different. Something really rubbed me the wrong way about how he so cavalierly used the phrase "rock bottom." When I picture someone who has hit rock bottom, I think more about someone who is addicted to meth sleeping in a box on the streets, only eight teeth left to their name, having just sold their last cd (Sublime's 40 oz. to Freedom) for their sixth hit of the day... and it's only 11am. Not someone who is having a rough time at a meditation retreat. I never really felt like I hit "rock bottom" at this place: it was hard, yes, and it got harder, yes, but at no point was I ever like, "I need to get out of this place, this is the worst possible thing that could happen."

We had the opportunity to schedule a brief "chat" with one of the monks if we felt like we were struggling in particular. It was hard to admit that I might be struggling more than other people, but this wasn't a time to be proud, this was a time to make sure I got everything I possibly could out of this retreat. So during one of the meditation sessions in Day 4, I headed over to the dining hall and sat down with the Tai Chi instructor to talk about why I was having a hard time. The chat was... less than inspiring. It basically amounted to me telling him something along the lines of "I'm having trouble concentrating" and him telling me that "you're having trouble concentrating because you're unable to clear your mind." Thanks, guy. So that was kind of a bust. But to be fair, what was I expecting, really? Some magical answer that was going to make everything okay? Nope. This isn't going to be easy, and I definitely get it and I'm ready to get back out there.

Every day there are a few more empty spaces in the meditation hall in the morning. Fewer people at Tai Chi. Fewer people at meals. People who for one reason or another have decided to leave. As sad as this is to say... you can kind of tell who is going to drop out next. There is certainly a spectrum of calmness here. Some people are SO zen, it's incredible. And others are so antsy, it's amazing they've made it this far. Still though, it's sad to see a new empty coconut sack on the ground where a person used to sit. Despite all the time we've spent together, I'll never really know who that person is because... well, I probably never looked them in the face to begin with, even if they were sitting right next to me.

The silence has been a really interesting facet of this whole experience. It has turned out to be easier than I thought it would be to maintain. I don't really feel the urge to speak at all. I'm pretty committed to trying to clear my mind while I'm here and, rules aside, you just can't do that if you're talking to people. But it goes beyond just talking. Pretty much all non-essential communication like hand gestures or greetings are all gone. All physical contact of any sort was completely gone. And for me, I wanted to avoid even the temptation to interact with other people, so I made it a practice to not look at anyone whenever possible. This usually meant keeping my gaze at the ground. And I religiously avoided looking over at the women's side of the meditation hall (or any other halls for that matter) because no good could come of that. The interesting thing about not looking at people is that I felt like each day I would stumble upon someone "new" who I had NEVER seen before, but not because they were actually new, just because I didn't look at anyone's face. Sometimes I would come close to slipping up, like if I almost bumped into someone or something and would instinctively want to say "sorry" but I never actually did say anything. Normally, this kind of behavior would be seen as completely anti-social, but everyone here totally gets it and many of them did the same. Some people would smile if you happened to catch each other's gaze, but only briefly before you both looked away. Some people would give no facial expressions whatsoever. I went back and forth between the two. But everyone understands. There's no judgement, no hard feelings.

My friends FL and BE are both still here, though I can tell BE is struggling. About once a day we'll catch each other's eye and give each other a sort of knowing smile. She's the only one I'll let myself keep eye contact with for more than a second, but even at that, it's a maybe three- or four-second indulgence before I break myself away. It's comforting to have a friend here. Which is probably a bad thing.

In the afternoon on Day 4, I finally tried out the hot spring. There are a handful of natural hot springs around the grounds, two for men and one for women. They are here to help us relax and we are free to use them during any of our breaks, but up until this point, I pretty much always just went back to bed and slept more. Most people go either after breakfast or after hot chocolate when it's not so hot outside, but I opted to go after lunch so there happened to be no one else around. It was actually really nice. Like a giant, stone hot tub. And hot but not too hot. Very relaxing.

Tai Chi in the mornings has been interesting. I've been looking forward to these sessions if for no other reason than they help me wake up a little bit in the morning. I had always thought of Tai Chi as this really cool martial art, but this was far different than I had pictured. There were a lot of funny names for the moves we performed and it felt more like a dance than anything. But then one day our instructor showed us what we were actually learning. It was sort of the equivalent to how you learn that F=ma in high school physics and you're like "ok, I get it, this isn't rocket science" and then someone is like, "and here's how we apply this to get rockets into outer space" and you're like, "WHOAAAAAAA, THAT'S what I was learning?!" He gave us a little demonstration of what Tai Chi looks like at full speed and I'm pretty sure he actually flew at a couple of points in the demonstration. It was one of the coolest things I'd seen... ever.

There's also another retreat participant who cannot for the life of him sit still during Tai Chi. Literally. He is constantly in motion. And is rarely doing whatever exercise the instructor is leading. And it's super distracting. I'm here to calm myself and you're making that really difficult. Come on, guy, get it together!

The Metta meditation is starting to get easier. I'm getting used to the concept of directing positive feelings toward myself. And I'm thinking less about who I need to direct positive feelings to when we're doing that for other people. I'm coming to realize that it's less important who specifically those feelings are directed to and more just the fact that I'm doing it. Also, Little Monk is HILARIOUS. Who knew monks could crack jokes like that?

Speaking of which, there's this English monk who is probably the funniest one of them all. He's super pessimistic (which is kind of ironic), tells it like it is, and it's really funny to hear him talk. You can tell that he "gets it" because, well, he's Western. He's a welcome change of pace from the rest of the Thai monks. I kind of feel like you need a guy like that at these retreats aimed at Westerners or there would be a cultural bridge that's missing.

I've noticed a big change in how I've been going about my daily chore of sweeping around the meditation hall. Whereas on the first day, I used two brooms and was making huge sweeping motions to blow the dirt and grass away, now I'm using one broom, much more calmly and mindfully. It's just as effective, takes less effort, and certainly more in-line with the whole ethos of this place. It wasn't really a conscious change, it just kind of happened.

The food here has been pretty consistent and in my opinion pretty good. It turns out that breakfast is basically the same thing every day: rice soup, bananas, cucumbers, lettuce, and palm-infused water. Lunch is pretty similar to the first day as well, with a curry or two, all of which I find to be really tasty. Thai people know how to make some goooooood curry.

A few days before coming to the retreat, I kind of re-injured my ankle again. I think what did it was when we spent an hour walking around Koh Phi Phi in flip flips and a huge backpack trying to find a hostel. Thank you, mysterious Norwegian girl. So while everyone else here is barefoot and wearing flip flops, I've been in shoes and socks because it feels way better on my ankle. It's annoying because I have to take off my shoes every time we enter any hall. Plus, out of 80 people, I'm the ONLY one wearing shoes. But whatever. I'm not here to impress anyone. If I need to wear shoes, I'm going to wear shoes. (...I definitely still feel a little self-conscious about it.)

When I got into my room at the end of night #2, I found a huge lizard crawling on the wall inside of my room. By huge I mean HUGE. Like... at least a foot long. We looked at each other for a minute and I made a mental pact with him that as long as he doesn't eat any of my stuff, we were cool. I'm pretty sure he understood. And to be fair, it was probably me who was in his room and not the other way around.

Six more days to go!

CONTINUE ON to Mediation Retreat Day 5: Breakthrough and Sadness

Meditation Retreat Day 1: A Day In The Life

Ding ding ding ding dingdingdingdingding..... Ding ding ding ding dingdingdingdingding......

The monastery bell. Small. But mighty.

The sound of a huge bell woke me up at 4am. It was a lot more pleasant than you might think. It's not a jarring bell; rather, it's soft, but still loud enough to wake everyone up from quite a distance. We have 30 minutes to get ready and make our way over to the main hall. It's pitch black outside. I'm pretty excited to start the day. Snoozing isn't really an option here, but you wouldn't want to anyway because you'd never get out of bed. Someone rings that bell for 15 minutes straight, through a series of loud bangs that each gently taper off with progressively smaller and smaller bangs. I'm pretty no fuss when it comes to sleeping arrangements so the wooden bed really wasn't all that bad for me. The wooden pillow wasn't the most comfortable (as you can probably imagine) but I'm not giving up on it yet.

The daily schedule over the course of the next eight days is as follows (Days 9 and 10 are slightly different):

4:00am 30 mins Wake up

4:30am 15 mins Morning Reading

4:45am 30 mins Sitting Meditation

5:15am 105 mins Morning exercise (yoga + tai chi)

7:00am 60 mins Buddhism talk

8:00am 120 mins Breakfast, chores, break time

10:00am 60 mins Buddhism talk

11:00am 45 mins Walking / standing meditation

11:45am 45 mins Sitting meditation

12:30pm 120 mins Lunch, break time

2:30pm 60 mins Meditation instruction and sitting meditation

3:30pm 45 mins Walking / standing meditation

4:15pm 45 mins Sitting meditation

5:00pm 60 mins Buddhist chanting and Loving Kindness meditation

6:00pm 90 mins Hot chocolate, break time

7:30pm 30 mins Sitting meditation

8:00pm 30 mins Group walking meditation

8:30pm 30 mins Sitting meditation

9:00pm 30 mins Go to bed

9:30pm Lights out

In case you were wondering, that's 7 hours of meditation, 5.5 hours of food/chore/break time, 2.25 hours of meditation talks, and 1.75 hours of exercise each day.

The path from the dorms to the main meditation hall.
...in the daytime.

After getting up, I followed the rest of the crowd over to the main meditation hall. Though it's pretty hot and humid all day long here, at this hour it's actually a little bit chilly, so I took my jacket with me. It's still completely dark outside, so I had my flashlight to guide the way. The sky is filled with stars, though to be honest, still not as many as I thought there would be, given that we're in the middle of nowhere. It's about a three-minute walk from the dorm to the meditation hall. When I got there, I found my spot and sat down on my bench + cushions.

Right at 4:30am, a tiny bell was rung three times, and the Morning Reading began. The Morning Reading is when someone sitting on the stage in front of us reads a passage related to either meditation or Buddhism. The only light at this point is a small candle to allow the person reading to see. The reading was very short, only a few minutes, and after that we transitioned directly into our first meditation session.

The first morning meditation was really hard. It's dark out. My eyes are closed. And it's still around 4:45am. Plus I'm sitting down. Which of course means the bigger battle I was fighting wasn't to clear my mind, but to stay awake. I kept nodding off, which was both frustrating and a little embarrassing. Not a great start to the next 10 days.

My Tai Chi instructor. He wore this shirt EVERY day.
...I probably shouldn't be one to talk.

At 5:15am, the tiny bell was rung again three times, which signaled it was time to move onto our next activity, Yoga / Tai Chi. We walked over to another hall about two minutes away. When we arrived, we were greeted by a rather small Thai man who instructed us to grab a mat from the far side of the hall. The mats are pretty thin, just enough to give you an ever-so-small cushion from the cold, concrete floor. It turns out that the Thai man is our instructor. I'm not sure what his story is, but he reminds me a lot of the Dr. Seuss book Green Eggs and Ham. He doesn't use a lot of words. He repeats the five phrases he has over and over. But he very effectively gets the point across. The phrases "not too serious" and "with 'lil bit smile" said in a thick, Thai accent will be forever etched in my memory. We started our exercises with a stretching routine and then moved into the Tai Chi portion. I've never done Tai Chi before, but I've seen old Asian people do this in the park in front of City Hall in San Francisco. I never really understood what they were doing until now. Our instructor began by teaching us the first in a series of very, very slow moves, almost like a choreographed dance. Each move is controlled, precise, and deliberate. It reminded me a lot of when I took karate as a child, where we learned sets of moves called katas. Except here in Tai Chi, all of the moves flowed together in one fluid motion. I'm learning Tai Chi!

After almost two hours, it was time to head back to the main meditation hall for our first talk, given by VW, the same guy who interviewed me yesterday. It turns out he is not a monk, but a volunteer from Germany that helps run this retreat. He's been doing it for a while, apparently. VW spent the talk going over a few more logistics as well as giving us our first introduction to the meditation method used here, called Anapanasati, which is a word from the ancient language Pali (the language in which Buddhist scriptures were originally written), and translates roughly to "mindfulness with breathing" and it is exactly that. The method is rather simple (at least to start out): you focus on the physical sensation of breathing in and out. And nothing else. When thoughts come to your head, which they inevitably do, all you have to do is recognize that you are thinking about something, then put the thought aside and return your attention back to your breath.

In theory, this sounds simple enough. In practice, I think might actually be easier to travel back in time to prevent a post-apocalyptic future from ever happening. I found that I could focus for a few seconds at a time before my thoughts would wander off somewhere. Eventually I would notice, shelve my thought, and return my focus to my breathing. Only to catch myself thinking about something else 10 seconds later. Okay, three seconds later. But that's fine, though. A key part of all of this is that you can't get mad at yourself for having thoughts because that just makes it even harder to focus. The important part is just to recognize that you're having thoughts, and then put them aside to refocus on your breath.

To get a better sense of what I mean, I encourage you to try this very simple exercise right now. It'll only take a minute, I promise, but I think it'll give you a much better understanding of what it was like to be at this retreat. Ok, so set an alarm to go off in 1 minute (or try it without an alarm if you're reading this at your desk right now and don't want to disturb the people around you). Sit down and take about 10 seconds to just relax. Then start your timer and close your eyes (err... wait until you finish reading this paragraph though). Start breathing deeply, counting 1 2 3 4 5 breathing in, a split-second pause, then 1 2 3 4 5 breathing out, all through your nose. Focus just on the sensation of your breath on your nose. You'll have thoughts that pop into your head, maybe you'll hear noises around you, and your brain will inevitably start paying attention to these things. When that happens, recognize that your focus has shifted to that new thought, move that thought aside, and refocus your attention to your breath. Stick with it for the full minute until your alarm goes off (or if not using an alarm, until you feel about a minute has passed).

Ready... go.

How did that feel? Was it easy? Hard? (Of course it was hard, are you kidding me?!) Did you find yourself being inundated with thoughts completely unrelated to your breath? Did you find yourself getting frustrated that you kept thinking about other things? Did your brain feel like a million monkeys were on the inside trying to reproduce Shakespeare but only creating nonsense? Did you feel like stopping before the minute was over? Did one minute actually feel like five? Did you feel like you needed to get back to doing something "productive" before your brain exploded? Are you ready for me to stop asking leading questions?!

At 8am, the bell was rung signifying it was time for breakfast. We all headed over in silence the two minute walk to the dining hall (the same place where BE, FL, and I had slept a couple night earlier; as we all learned later, it's suuuuper taboo for people to sleep in public in Buddhist culture... whoops! Sorry, Buddhism! It was unintentional, I swear!). Just like the main meditation hall, men sit on one side, women on the other. There's a two rows of tables (...one for men, one for women) in the middle of the dining hall where the food has been set out for us. At the beginning of the line, we each take a bowl and a spoon. All of the meals during the retreat are vegetarian. Breakfast today consists of a thick, rice soup (which one of the monks later described as gruel), lettuce, cucumbers, and bananas. The beverage is hot water steeped in palm... hearts? leaves? unclear, some sort of palm-thing which gives it a very faint palm flavor.

We all take our food and sit down on our respective sides of the dining hall. Before anyone eats, however, we must all recite as a group the Food Reflection. Each of us is given a small, laminated card with the words printed on it. This is one of the few instances in which we'll speak over the course of the 10 days. Passing out the Food Reflection cards and leading the group in its recitation before each meal was another one of the chore options, so this is led by one of my fellow retreat participants. It hasn't even been that long since we've been silent, but it still feels weird to say words aloud. It feels like I'm taking my mind out of the silence mindset which feels... wrong. But this is part of the program so I'm going with it.

Food Reflection:

With wise reflection, I eat this food

Not for play, not for intoxication

Not for fattening, not for beautification

Only to maintain this body

To stay alive and healthy

To support the spiritual way of life

Thus, I let go of unpleasant feelings

And do not stir up new ones

Thereby, the process of life goes on

Blameless, at ease, and in peace

I ate this first meal particularly slowly, and really thought about what went into the food on my plate. I can't remember the exact chronology (whether this happened before the first meal or a later one), but one of the monks mentioned in their talk about being mindful of what food really contained. For example, a leaf of lettuce is not just a leaf of lettuce. It is the sun and the soil that helped the lettuce grow. It's the farmer who watered the lettuce every day. It's the parent's of the farmer who raised him to know how to grow lettuce. It's the chef who washed the lettuce and carefully arranged the leaves on a tray. One could go on and on about what went into creating this lettuce and what led it to be in my food bowl this morning. But the broader point is that lettuce isn't just lettuce. And knowing that, and really understanding that, completely changes the mindset with which you eat your food. Food doesn't get scarfed down here. It is respected and appreciated.

Despite not looking all that appealing, I found the rice soup (and everything else) to be pretty good. When I finished eating, I went to take my bowl, spoon, and cup to the back to wash them out. The washing process consists of five stages. First, any last remaining food scraps are dumped into a bucket. Second, you sponge clean the dish/spoon in one sink. Third, in the sink next to it, you pass your dish/spoon through the water to get the majority of the soak off. Fourth, your pass your dish/spoon through one last sink full of "clean" water to get the last soap off. Fifth, you put your dish/spoon on a rack upside down so it can air dry. You repeat this whole process for your cup in a different set of sinks. The whole thing takes about one minute from start to finish. Still kind of feels like I'm washing dishes with soapy water but... whatever. Clean enough.

The hall I swept every day. Also the water tank where we got water.

With my dish clean and my stomach full, I for the first time went to do my chore: sweeping the walkway surrounding one of the meditation halls. I walked over to the hall and found two small brooms propped up against the wall and went to work cleaning the stairs and the walkway around the hall. I worked with one broom in each hand and was swinging both pretty hard to get some help from the air currents as I swept. I did a very thorough job, that place was as clean as it was going to get by the time I was finished. We were told the chores were supposed to take only 15 minutes maximum but of course I sign up for the one chore that takes half an hour. Which is fine. The chores do help to keep the place running, but the point of them is not to put us to work; instead, it's to give us an opportunity to be mindful. As it turns out, I had actually done two people's jobs this morning because the front steps are the job of someone else. Which I didn't realize until after I was finished and I saw someone else cleaning the steps again. Whoops!

This first break of the day is two hours long, so even after eating breakfast and doing my chore, there was plenty of time left. I decided to use this time to catch up on sleep. I was exhausted and trying to meditation while falling asleep is useless. I headed back to the dorm, crawled under my mosquito net, and took a much-needed power nap. At 9:00 in the morning.

I was woken up by the big bell at 9:45am and headed back over to the main meditation hall. At 10:00am sharp, our first talk began. It was delivered by Ajahn Poh, the head monk at Suan Mokkh. He's very old and very well-respected. His command of the English language is somewhat... lacking, however. It was to the point that even with laser-focused attention, I couldn't for the life of me understand what he was saying. Throughout his talk, I kept hearing him repeat the phrase "beedin in, beedin ou" which took me waaaaay too long to figure out actually meant, "breathing in, breathing out." Needless to say, I did not get much out of his talks, which is a complete shame because he's the head monk, incredibly wise, and everyone there spoke so, so highly of him.

So these lines of ants are made of mostly of normal-sized
ants, but then every so often along comes a dude who is
like... 10 times a big! Crazy!

Ajahn Poh rang the tiny bell on the stage at 11am, signaling the end of his talk and the start of our first standing/walking meditation session. We could choose whichever one we wanted and I opted for walking. Whereas with the sitting meditation we are focusing on our breath, during walking meditation, the focus is on taking (very, very) slow, deliberate steps. The walking meditation had either a 3-part or 5-part method. The three-part method is 1) lift foot, 2) move foot forward, and 3) plant foot. Repeat. Complicated, I know. As you may have guessed, the 5-part technique is the same motion but broken out into 5 parts. We could choose either method, depending on our preference and I opted for the 3-part method because I found the 5-part one to be excessive. For walking meditation sessions, we were supposed to spread out on the grounds to wherever we would like, and find a 5-10 meter long straight path to follow that didn't cross anyone else's path. Along this path, we walked until we got to the end, turned around and walked back. Rinse and repeat. On the whole, I was not a huge fan of the walking meditation. I found myself being really easily distracted. Most of the paths are gravel or sand and there are ants everywhere and (nerd alert!) I'm fascinated by ants (...and pretty much anything alive, says my inner biologist). Plus the place is beautiful so there's a lot of nature to distract me.

The large bell was rung to signal all of us to return to the main meditation hall for our next sitting meditation session. More breathing. More thoughts constantly flowing through my brain.

Also... meditation is painful. I mean physically painful. We're supposed to sit still for the whole time. Which is fine. But we're also supposed to sit up straight the whole time. And if you are not used to kneeling or sitting in some form of the lotus position while also keeping a straight spine, you come to find that both your knees and your back start killing you. For those not familiar, the lotus position is one that you'll find often in yoga. The full lotus is where you cross both legs on top of the opposite thigh and is definitely not for beginners. The half lotus is where you cross one leg onto the opposite thigh and the quarter lotus is where you cross one leg on top of the opposite calf. I cycled through kneeling, quarter lotus, and when I was feeling adventurous, the half lotus. I'd have to switch positions every few minutes because... it hurt, which makes it really difficult to concentrate. I also felt bad for my neighbors because I felt like I was making so much noise every time I switched positions, which must be frustrating for them as well. And I can't even say sorry because we can't talk! In between all of my switching positions and body pains, I still managed to continue to nod off repeatedly. I guess my nap didn't help as much as I had wanted it to.

Lunchtime! Finally! The food is surprisingly good. We've got a couple of Thai curries, a vegetable platter of lettuce and cucumbers, and something sweet for dessert. The beverage is hot water, just like at breakfast. After lunch I headed back to my dorm for yet another much-needed power nap. I was awoken at 2:15pm by the big bell, telling me to head back to the main meditation hall for our next session. This session went even more in-depth on the meditation technique, followed by more walking meditation and then another sitting meditation session. Though I'm not a huge fan of the walking meditation, it does provide for a little variety in the day. Otherwise we're doing sitting meditation for waaaay too long for beginners.

At 5pm, we have our first Buddhist chanting / Loving Kindness meditation session. We are given the option not to participate and instead just do more individual meditation because they don't want to force people to do the chanting. Those who opted out stayed in the main meditation hall and everyone else headed down a 1-minute footpath to another hall. I too felt a little personally conflicted about doing religious chants for a religion that wasn't mine, but I wanted to experience everything this retreat had to offer, so I chose to join the chanting session, but to not say aloud anything that made me feel uncomfortable.

The Buddhism chanting was really interesting. The chants are in Pali, the language of the original texts of Buddhism. There are also basically three notes, so it has that "chant-y" sound to it as well. There's a non-trivial part of me that didn't want to chant because I didn't want to break the silence I had worked so hard to maintain, but I let that go because I knew all of this had a purpose to it.

The monk that led this session was from Russia and he was awesome. He was really funny and because he was from Russia, you got the sense that he sort of understood the challenges faced by Westerners in a way that the Thai monks really couldn't. It turns out he's not a full-fledged monk yet, but is in the process of becoming one, so they call him "little monk."

This meditation session ends with a few minutes of Loving Kindness meditation, or Metta meditation, which I find fascinating. Basically the idea is to spread love and good feelings. It's silent, but the Little Monk led us through it. First you start with yourself by giving love to yourself. What that means is basically thinking good thoughts about yourself and sending good vibes to yourself. Then you move on the someone you really love. And then to your parents. And then to someone neutral, like the person who gave you your change the last time you bought something. Then on to someone who has hurt you in the past.

This all turned out to be surprisingly much, much more difficult than I thought it would. I can't remember a time, pretty much ever, when I've looked inward and actively focused loving feelings on myself. It feels... weird. Unnatural. Selfish, almost. But I'm really glad I did it. Once I got past the initial weirdness of it, it did feel a little empowering and uplifting to say good things to myself about me. I admittedly had a difficult time trying to figure out who to direct my attention to for the "someone you love" part. I have a lot of love for a lot of people but... someone? I have to pick one person? It felt like I was being forced to broach a conversation I didn't want to have with myself. But the decision had to happen in an instant, because really, we were only doing each one of the steps of the Metta mediation was only for a few seconds so there wasn't enough time to ponder the complexities of my social web to find the "right" person each time. Hopefully this will get easier over time. I'm sure it will.

Metta meditation ended at 6pm when the Little Monk rang the little bell. We all walked our cushions back to our respective spots in the main meditation hall then headed over to the dining hall for "tea time" aka... hot chocolate time! Which I, of course, love because I'm actually five years old. Tea Time is 90 minutes, so my cup of hot chocolate was followed by, you guessed it, more sleep. I'm so tired.

In the evening, we started off with more silent meditation and then did our first group walking meditation. Unlike the individual walking meditation where we each have our own spot and walk very slowly, in the group walking meditation we all walk in a single-file line (gender-separated, of course) and you focus only on the person in front of you. We walk at a decently slow pace, but we are certainly walking. You keep a 0.5-meter distance so if your distance varies dramatically from that, it means you aren't focusing. We walked around a square lake on the grounds. I also wasn't a huge fan of this kind of meditation either because I again found myself getting distracted by things more easily. This time around it was the characteristics of the person in front of me, or being too conscious of how much space was between people, though none of that should have mattered to me. I will say that I did like it more than the individual walking meditation.

As a group, we made our way back to the main hall for one last bit of sitting meditation. This one feels a little bit different than the others. More calm. It's totally dark out again. A little bit cooler. Everyone is a little bit more tired than the rest of the sessions. But of course my head is still full of thoughts. I guess it's still only been one day. We headed back to the dorms at 9pm for bed. There is no socializing, no doing anything really, just getting ready for bed followed by sleep. I was exhausted and for sure ready to pass out in my bed. Today was definitely an adventure.

CONTINUE ON to Meditation Retreat Days 2-4: Silence is Easy. Meditation is Not.

Meditation Retreat Day 0: The Silence Begins

We woke up around 6:45am when we heard the first hints of other people around us. It took us a few minutes to figure out what was going on, but it turned out that registration had already begun and some other overzealous retreat-goers had already showed up. I walked over to the registration table in the back of the dining hall and read over some information posted on large whiteboards. It all just had to do with logistical information, nothing too crazy.

After reading things over, I walked up to the woman sitting behind the table and told her I wanted to register for the retreat. She handed me a small packet of information and said that when I was ready, I needed to have an interview with one of the monks. I read over the packet, then waited for someone to be available for my interview. Eventually, I was beckoned over to another table where I met VW, a rather... odd human being. He was white, spoke with a German accent and an unusual cadence to his speech, and had these sort of bugged-out eyes that just make you feel a little uncomfortable. This was certainly not the monk I was expecting. If not for the fact that we were in a monastery, there would be no doubt in my mind that this dude was cracked out on something. Nonetheless, we continued with went on with a short five-minute interview. He asked me some basic questions about why I was here and he laid out the expectations for being here. The point of the interview seemed to be to make sure that participants understood the challenges of the retreat and that they were fully committed to spending the next 10 days here. Which I absolutely, 100%, without a doubt am.

The rules of the retreat are pretty much what your would expect:

1. No talking throughout the duration of the retreat
2. Stay within the physical boundaries of the retreat center
3. Follow the "Eight Precepts," or practices that monks follow, which include:
• Don't kill anything (particularly hard with all of the mosquitoes around)
• Don't steal
• Keep your mind and your body free from sexual activity
• Don't harm others with speech
• No drugs, alcohol, or smoking
• No eating between after noon and before dawn (more details on this later)
• No dancing, singing, playing, listening to music, watching shows, wearing jewelry, perfume, or makeup
• No sleeping or sitting on luxurious beds and seats
4. No reading or writing (more details on this later)
5. Everyone has a chore to perform

After the interview, I signed some papers, handed over my passport, my phone, my book, and some other valuables for safe-keeping, and received a key to my dorm. I also signed up for a chore, which I would have to do each day of the retreat. Each chore had a short explanation of what it meant and I don't think it really mattered all that much, so I chose to sweep around one of the halls. Other chore options included cleaning out the foot baths (?), cleaning the bathrooms, and burning the trash (...?).

This dorm probably doubles as a bomb shelter

With the logistics covered, I walked the couple minutes over to the Men's Dormitory. The men and women each have their own dormitories which are located in buildings right next to each other. Each dormitory building is a large, rectangular building with a huge, central, grassy courtyard. There are rooms on three sides, with the bathrooms on the fourth side. Each corner of the courtyard has a water well.

My room for the next 10 days. Lots of natural light.
Insulated walls. Every monk's dream dwelling space.
If they ever had desires for anything. Which they don't.

In the dorm, I went to a storage room to pick up my blanket and mosquito net. Then I headed over to find my room. The rooms are about as simple as they come: a concrete room with a wooden bed, wooden pillow (yea, I didn't know that was a thing either until this very moment), and a clothesline. There's a light switch by the door, but the electricity is only on for a few hours at night, before lights out at 9:30pm and in the morning when we wake up. It might seem pretty austere (and it is), but it felt... perfect. This room couldn't have been any more ornate or it would have felt out of place and unnecessarily luxurious.

I set my stuff down in the corner, gave the room a good sweeping, and went to work getting my mosquito net set up. It turns out I've never used a mosquito net before but I know enough to know that it's not something you want to mess up, so after trying on my own for about three minutes, I enlisted the help of the very friendly guy next door. He had that sucker up in no time.

Wooden pillow. It's glossy coat gives it the
rustic look you crave with the splinter-free
feel you need for a good night's sleep.
Also pictured: my "mattress".

With my room settled, I headed over to one of the main halls where I was supposed to pick up a small bench and some cushions. I was told these are what I would be sitting on for meditation. The benches are tilted slightly forward, which I found out later makes it easier to sit on. I also got one large, thin cushion, a smaller and fatter square cushion, and an even smaller and even fatter third rectangular cushion. I brought all of them over to the main meditation hall next door and picked out a spot. The main meditation hall is a huge, open-air, covered space that is covered in sand. There's a small stage at the front, which I assume is for the monks. Men sit on the left of the hall, women on the right. There are these coconut sacks spread out on the ground, neatly ordered, each one signifying a space where someone could select their spot. Your spot was your spot for the duration of the retreat. I set my stuff down about 1/3 of the way back from the very front, which I figured would be close enough to see the monks at the front, but not so close to the very, very front.

With my room settled, I met back up with FL and BE, and the three of us popped back into "town" for a little bit, backtracking our route from last night. There's an internet cafe there, where I shot off one final email to the family to let them know that I had arrived, I was alive, and that they wouldn't be hearing from me for the next 10 days. Then we walked down the road to a restaurant where I tried to order some non spicy food and ended up getting one of the spiciest meals of my life. Also what blew my mind is that the ice cream they had was from San Francisco too! What's up with Thailand's obsession with San Francisco ice cream?!

The little flower that could

We headed back to the retreat center around 3pm. The road was a lot less terrifying in the daytime. Someone made a video of the journey from the main road to the Hermitage, so if you want to see for yourself what the place looks like, you can check it out here. As we were walking back, I saw this single plant blossoming in a field of nothing. Something seemed so poetic about it but I could quite put my finger on what exactly.

My wonderful strangers-turned-friends
travel companions FL (left) and BE (right)

Back at the Hermitage, there's a little store there that sells some essentials so I bought some mosquito spray and powdered laundry detergent. I have this super strong mosquito cream that my dad gave me from REI but I hate the feel of it, plus it apparently ruins synthetic clothing, which is basically all I'm wearing, so I figured it would be good to have an alternative.

At 5pm all of the retreat participants got together for the first time for a quick walking tour of the facilities. There are about 80 of us here, split pretty evenly between men and women. The place is beautiful. The grounds consist mostly of large, grassy areas, gravel paths connecting various buildings (meditation rooms, dormitories, dining hall, etc.), and a few man-made lakes. After the tour, we headed back to the dining hall for "tea time" which actually means hot chocolate time! In case you didn't know already, I have the palette of a five-year-old, so there was pretty much nothing that could have made me happier at that moment. It's kind of a weird vibe at tea time. People are kind of chatting but not really. There's a lot of nervous energy among the participants. Understandably so. I think a lot of people here, myself include, don't really know what they're getting themselves into.

In the evening, we headed over to the main meditation hall and took our seats at the spots we had all picked out earlier in the day. This talk mainly covered logistics for the retreat. At 9:00pm, they rang a small bell, which signified the official beginning of the retreat and the beginning of the silence. We were dismissed to our dormitories, and everyone walked back. In silence. After climbing under my mosquito net and carefully tucking it back under the mat on my bed, I lied down for the first time on my wooden bed and wooden pillow. It probably would be more comfortable without the pillow at all, but I figure, it's here, so I might as well give it a try. If I'm going to do this, I'm going to go 100%, wooden pillow and all.

By 9:15pm, we were all in bed and it was lights out. I was exhausted but it was still hard to fall asleep with all of the nervous excitement. I have no idea what I'm in for but I can't wait.

CONTINUE ON to Meditation Retreat Day 1: A Day In The Life

So What's All This About a Meditation Retreat?

I made it! Here's my "before" shot.

I've hinted about the fact that I planned on going to this retreat in earlier posts, but I haven't really discussed at length what it is or why I'm doing it. The explanation never really seemed to fit in anywhere until now.

A few years ago, a very good friend of mine, KA mentioned to me that she had attended a 10-day silent meditation retreat in Thailand and that it was a really positive experience for her. At first (as I'm sure is the case with everyone when they hear about something like this) my reaction was, "you couldn't talk for 10 days?!" Impossible. Just... impossible. Can you imagine? But listening to her talk about what she had experienced and learned was fascinating to me. At that point in my life, however, the idea of traveling to Thailand was so far out of the realm of possibility that I never really thought twice about it. I had barely done any international traveling. The little that I had done was to Canada (which doesn't count), or with family/friends on vacation to nice, resort-y places, or for work. Plus I was in this great job and I'm not a planner when it comes to personal things so big vacations just never happened for me.

Fast forward a few years and I've decided to defer business school for a year to do... anything I want. And I knew at the very least that I wanted to do this retreat. No, I needed to do this retreat. Not a ton of people know this, but the last seven months or so I was at Google was one of the most personally difficult periods of my life. My best friend, who I saw pretty much every day, very precipitously became not my best friend in kind of a messy way. There were some non-ideal aspects of my work environment. I wasn't really involved in any extracurriculars because I had been spending all of my "spare" time slogging through essay after essay after application after application after interview after interview with business schools. And throughout the whole thing I was coming to terms with the fact that very soon I would have to leave the city I love, the company I love, and the friends I love to move into the next phase of my life which honestly, I just didn't feel ready for. All of this meant that while on the surface I kept a big smile on my face (Google is great! I love San Francisco! I'm excited to go back to school next year! Everything is rainbows and sunshine and puppy dogs!), in reality I was going through one of the most severe depressions of my life. And it just kept dragging on. And on. And on.

What made it all the more difficult is that, well, on the surface, my life actually was awesome. And I will absolutely be the first person to admit that. I lived in one of the greatest cities in the world, I worked for one of the greatest companies in the world, I had graduated from one of the greatest schools in the world, I had a family that loved and supported me, I had tons of friends that loved and supported me, I was financially stable, I was young, I was healthy... honestly, everything kind of was rainbows and sunshine and puppy dogs. Which made it all the more difficult to deal with something like this because it's sort of like, "cry me a river, your life is so hard." I felt guilty for not feeling happier when I had so much going for me already. But I just... wasn't happy. I was stuck.

Surat Thani Province, Thailand
(map courtesy of Wikipedia)

When I thought back to what KA had told me about how the retreat had helped her, I knew it was something that I needed to do because living life like this, putting up this front, just wasn't sustainable. And I'm sure the people closest to me could see that too, even if we never talked about it. When I found out that the business school I had decided on was going to let me defer for a year, this meditation retreat became the number one priority on my agenda. It was the whole reason I came to Asia in the first place. And it's why I'm so excited to be here right now. I hope that after these 10 days, I'll be in a place where I can let go of all of those things that I feel have been constantly weighing me down and start to enjoy life again. It's. Been. So. Long.

The retreat takes place at the Suan Mokkh Buddhist monastery in the Chaiya district of the Surat Thani province in southern Thailand. More accurately, the retreat is organized by the monastery but takes place down the road at the International Dharma Hermitage and is run by a mix of Western volunteers and by monks from the monastery. The retreat is designed specifically for Westerners and all talks are delivered in English. It starts on the 1st of each month and lasts for a full 10 days. The website for the retreat states that, "The retreat allows us to withdraw from our usual activities to a quiet and secluded place and devote our time to study, contemplation and meditation." Secluded is right. We are literally in a forest. Which is the perfect place for something like this.

CONTINUE ON to Meditation Retreat Part 3: Day 0: The Silence Begins