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