Suan Mokkh is a Buddhist forest monastery in Surat Thani province, just down the road from Chaiya town. They have been running 10 day silent retreats for ‘farangs’ for over 20 years now and are featured in the Lonely Planet (a dubious accolade most seasoned travelers will tell you).
The retreat runs from the last day of each month until the 11th of the following month; July 31st – 11th Aug in this case. Before registering you have to read a 20 page booklet that spells out what to expect and asking you to put aside whatever beliefs you have until the end of the retreat i.e. keep an open mind. After a short interview you receive a room key and directions to the dorms – men and women are segregated.
I was in room 216 in a dorm with 50 odd rooms laid out around a square courtyard. The room was 10 feet by 6 feet with a concrete bed, wooden pillow, mossie net and candleholder. The similarities to prison were unsettling at first.
The daily schedule ran like this:
Day 1-8:
04:00 Rise and Shine
04:30 Morning Reading
04:45 Sitting Meditation
05:15 Yoga (Hata variety – prepare for sitting cross-legged all day)
07:00 Dhamma talk and Sitting Meditation
08:00 Breakfast and chores
10:00 Dhamma talk
11:00 Walking or Standing Meditation
11:45 Sitting Meditation
12:30 Lunch and chores
14:30 Meditation Instruction and Sitting Meditation
15:30 Walking or Standing Meditation
16:15 Sitting Meditation
17:00 Chanting and Loving-Kindness Meditation
18:00 Tea
19:30 Sitting Meditation
20:00 Group Walking Meditation
20:30 Sitting Meditation
21:00 Bedtime
21:30 Lights Out
Note: The start of each activity is signaled by the ringing of a bell.
Schedule for days 9-11 would be given later in the week. As you can see from the schedule, the emphasize is very much on meditation specifically ‘mindfulness of breathing’ (An-a-pan-as-it-i), or using the breath as an object of concentration.
On the first night I got very little sleep. The concrete bed and wooden pillow ground flesh against bone and I rose at 4am to face a 17 hour day with 2 hours sleep. Despite this I was eager to find out what was in store for the next 10 days.
So, we would be learning:
- Dhamma
(a) the state of nature as it is,
(b) the laws of nature,
(c) the duties that must be performed in accordance with the laws of nature, and
(d) the results that are derived from the fulfillment of such duties
- Chanting (Praise to the Buddha and teachings of same)
- Sitting and walking meditation
An-a-pan-as-it-I requires hat you identify the in-breath and out-breath points i.e. the tip of the nose and the navel (or there abouts) and visualize a tube running between these points. Once this is achieved oyu simply ‘chase the breath’ between these two points – you can physically feel the breath at the tip of the nose on the in breath and the movement in the stomach when you chase the breath in. Again you can feel the breath on the tip of the nose on the way out.
And what’s the point of this you may ask? Well that brings me to the Dhamma. The Buddhists believe that most humans are ignorant. (I know one or two like that says you!). That’s not an insult in their book though, merely a fact. To clarify, we are lead by our feelings and desires causing internal suffering (greed, ill-will, delusion were the grouping of defilements/pollutants). This comes from the idea that of ‘me’ and ‘I’ or the human ego. You must control and remove the ego to achieve Nibanna/Nirvana- the aim of the monks.
You do this by controlling the mind turning ignorant contact into wise contact.
To illustrate this:
Johnny Ignorant and Johnny Wise are both sitting on the couch and wondering what to do for the evening. Their minds are bored and need entertaining. So Johnny ignorant looks up movie listings, calls the girlfriend and then goes to one that interests him (and her!) and pops in for a pizza on the way home cause he has a hankering for pepperoni. He has a whiskey night cap to relax the mind and heads off to bed. The keys words here are 'bored' and 'hankering' or craving.
The 5 senses and the mind make contact with the world and feeling arises making us want things – sensual pleasures (also ill-will, lethargy/fear qualify here).
Johnny Wise however has trained the mind and studied mindfulness, leaving him no time for a girlfriend. He thinks of the movies and pizza and identifies it as a craving feeling -unwholesome greed, so he ignores it or throws it away, there by stopping the cycle of greed (I need/I want). Also his mind is calm because he doesn’t have past memories or thoughts of the future running through his mind – happiness is this moment not a goal for the future. He meditates a lot and is mindful of everything he does (did I mention he doesn’t have a girlfriend).
But wait, it gets better. Once you start to get rid of the illusion of ‘I’ or ‘me’ i.e. your ego, you then get rid of the labels you put in the world. A mountain is no longer a mountain- you see the world as it truly is. I don’t fully understand this as apparently it has to be experienced for understanding but let me give you this to ponder:
The wind was flapping a temple flag. Two monks were arguing about it. One said the flag was moving; the other said the wind was moving. Arguing back and forth they could come to no agreement.
Zen happened by. “Howru Boss, what do you thing?”
Zen said "It is neither the wind nor the flag that is moving. It is your mind that is moving."
There we go, clear as muddy water.
But back to the first step to Nirvana – mindfulness of breathing. Step 1 is to do as I’ve said before and chase the breath. This is usually grand for the first few minutes and then the mind breaks in with a thought: “Sh*te, I think I left me room key in the jacks” or “”I wonder what’s for dinner” so you get distracted. Don’t get upset they tell you, just go back to the breathing. Like a baby who is eating, they get distracted then look back and see the spoon and just think “food”. Just go back to it and think “Breath-in; Breath out”.
So you go back to the breathing for another 5 minutes but the mind is getting bored now and throws “I love a pint right about now" at you.” You finally after hours of practice manage to push these distracting thoughts from your mind and concentrate for a full ten minutes and are very happy with yourself. You congratulate yourself in your own mind and think it was like the time you got an 8 letter word in Countdown; on a day you skived off work. Actually you had been on a savage session the night before and couldn't be bothered going in. What was the word again?....hold on…NUTS!...Breath in Breath out. And so on, with the mind getting ever creative in distraction because you are boring it to tears.
Of course for the lads – some more then others – one of the biggest distractions is sexual thought. Studies suggest that nearly all men, 91 per cent upwards, fantasize (I looked that up on the web-I used to be and IT professional don’t you know!). Once thoughts are under control images start flashing in the mind to distract you. This can be hard to control but Indian sages had a great way of dealing with it in the last century. Contemplation on decaying dead corpses. Severe but apparently effective. (As an aside, the Suan Mokkh spiritual centre has the skeleton of a former Miss Chiang Mai on display. She donated it to them to show the impermanence of all life).
Ill-will is another favorite distraction. Anger about a past argument or unfinished business from past events will settle in the mind and are buggers to get rid off. I think this is probably because these memories tend to harden over time and become the scar tissue of our memory. The solution – loving kindness meditation (no guffawing down the back!). This type of meditation was thought to us by a Chinese lay woman who must be one of the sweetest people on earth. She taught us to forgive our enemies, forgive ourselves and to spread loving kindness to the world’s people and all its animals. Then to love the whole of the natural world. This type of meditation produced a surprising amount of strong feeling of well being and calm and did seem to soften the hardened feelings of ill-will.
Of course you had to be careful to thread softly the whole time so you would upset the monkeys in the tree – an analogy for the mind. More on this in Part 2 tomorrow.
I’m going for a beer now. Maybe two.
With Loving-Kindness,
M.
"The thought manifests as the word
the word manifests as the deed
the deed develops into habit
and the habit hardens into character.
So watch the thought and its ways..."
the Buddha
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment