Escape from a Meditation Retreat...

So I had this crazy idea of going on a meditation retreat.  Doi Suthep - one of the most beautiful temples in Thailand - has a Vipassana Meditation Centre right beneath it. Perched 6000ft above sea level on a tree-covered mountain, it's far away from the hustle and bustle of the city. The perfect place for some quiet contemplation. I had a bit of a niggle, and thought it might help.  I’d got my happy on since moving to a tiny island on the West Coast of Scotland.  Not a drum-bashing kazoo-toting kind of happiness.  More of a quiet contentedness.  Chiang Mai felt like the source of all contentment, but I was happy in both places - why uproot at all?  Bit of a first-world niggle, admittedly, but seeing as Vipassana meditation is about finding clarity amidst the chaos of our thoughts, I figured it was worth a try. The rules of the centre were as follows:

• No talking (not with anyone, for the full duration)
• No food after 11am, except for milk
• No alcohol, drugs or smoking
• No reading, no phones, no music
• No killing of any animals, including mosquitos

I liked camping, didn't mind losing some comforts. How hard could it be?

Day One:

The day began at 5.30am with a Dharma (teaching) talk. Between the monk's thick Thai accent and the rain pelting down mercilessly outside, he was difficult to understand, but his enthusiasm was infectious and carried us along. Breakfast followed, with boiled cabbage stew and rice.  With everyone dressed in white and eating in total silence, it was a little like a scene from 'One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest (silent version).  I did my best to eat mindfully and practise gratitude for food.  Maybe tomorrow... Shortly after, I sat down in the meditation room, dimly lit by little lotus lamps, with the musky smell of the damp cushions wafting up in pungent waves. Everything here was damp due to the humidity and vegetation. I closed my eyes and focused on my breathing.

Burst Piñata

Then it happened.  Perhaps in the absence of conscious thought, my head recognised the 'empty' and threw a party; like a giant burst piñata, it spouted a rainbow of random mental candies in every direction, and all I could do was sit and watch the show. 'God these pillows smell rank. Would Buddha and Jesus have got along? I'm hungry. How do they get their robes so clean? I wonder what monks do for fun...' Do they have orange jammies?'  It wouldn't stop. Whilst all this was going on, the others sat like stone statues in the soft light, getting their Nirvana on until the lunch bell went, 4 hours later.   With the last meal of the day (it was 11am) a concoction of rice, tofu and vegetables, I realised I was going to be very hungry that night.  I noticed one woman, the same age as me and the only other Western female there, heading back to her dorm, and wondered if she might be struggling like me.  The code of silence made it unlikely I’d ever find out. Chanting next, and after a full 6 hours of meditation, it was a welcome change.  ‘Tang kho pana Bhagavantang evang kalyaano kittisaddo abbhuggato...’.  We all tried to keep up, but it was really just a fabulous rabble, like church-goers mumbling their way through the bits of sermon nobody remembers.  That said, it kept you focused and meditation was easier after it. Then night came.   The retreat was run by donation only, so I was grateful to have a bed in my empty cell.  I had expected insects, naturally - it was the jungle after all.  I arranged my small towel over the not-so-clean bedsheets as best I could and lay on the blow-up neck pillow I had brought with me for travelling.  My skin was crawling.  Through the night, the deafening sound of the cicadas rose and fell every few minutes like 1000 tiny buzzsaws in unison,  and the insects inside the room crawled, flew and bit at will with no insect repellent to stop them. I lay awake until sunrise, listening to the rain, trying to decipher between water running down gulleys outside, and the strange hiss I would hear now and again which sounded like a snake in my room.  Real and imaginary insects continued to crawl over me all night, with exhaustion leaving me unable to tell one from the other.  

Day Two:

Finally, my alarm went off at 5am. I shook out my clothes and got dressed. A fat, hairy moth the size of a mini-Bounty Bar flew out of my trouser leg, bopping its head repeatedly off the ceiling in an effort to escape. I was too tired to care. I got dressed and headed out. For the ten hours that followed, I tried my best to focus on breathing and observing my thoughts - but most of them were of the impending sleepless night to come, the dampness I felt in my bones and a growing hunger.  As the light faded, I realised that I had left my torch in my room and would have to walk down a dark, slippery, algae-covered path in the dark to get my dorm.  Heading home in the pitch dark, unable to ask anyone for a loan of their torch, I felt around with my inadequate sandals for a non-slimy bit of path. Perched at the top of a mountain, a careless slip at this retreat could mean being found years later by enthusiastic archaeologists. Just then, the woman I had noticed the day before at lunch held up her torch and lit the way for me.  I smiled - unable to thank her - and she smiled back.  The first human connection in 24 hours and it felt good. Back in my dorm, I made a trip to the toilet area. I switched on the bathroom light and all hell broke loose;  thousands of tiny black beetles and ants scattered into the corners of the cubicle, revealing a massive slimy brown millipede about the size and girth of a Cadbury’s Finger on the toilet seat. (hunger had converted my measurement of scale to chocolate treats). The fat grub made his way more slowly down the side of the bowl ...as if aware that no-one was in a hurry to sit on him.   As I watched this in slow motion, every orifice sealed up involuntarily - and I snuck back to my cell. I wasn’t feeling much Buddha love, as I spent a second night wide awake playing ‘what’s that on my forehead?’. I told myself to suck it up, and did my best to focus on my breathing until sunrise.

Day Three: planning my escape...

The next morning, twitching and itching, I went to the Dharma talk.  It was about perceived luckiness - the more we detach ourselves from suffering, the ‘luckier’ we get.  A little light went on.   In terms of my current suffering, this place was it.  I found the loophole my ego needed.  Time to detach.  I grabbed my stuff and handed in my room key to the guy in the office. Both still bound to silence, I had to assume that my face told him all he needed to know.  But just to be sure, I gestured a look of abject horror and pointed to the door. I think he got it. Despite my relief, I felt pretty dejected, having failed to stay the course.  I walked up to the temple to enjoy one last sunrise before heading back to the city and think about the last few days. 

Conversation with a Cool Monk

Just then, one of the temple monks appeared who had passed me on the way up that morning.  He sat down across from me and started chatting.  Dressed in white clothing at 6am in the morning, dishevelled and with a rucksack on my back, I think he made his deductions that I had gone AWOL from the retreat. Several hours went by in a flash, as we talked about Buddhism, his life, my life and about the pursuit of happiness.  Contentment, Suriya told me, doesn’t mean complacency and we should always strive for new lessons, following the principles of Buddhism. He talked about two kinds of happiness - inside and outside.  We could have a sense of inner contentment from learning non-attachment of the things that makes us unhappy, but we still need to engage with the world outside and learn our lessons there.  There was also the well-known adage that nothing is permanent, so there’s little point in getting your knickers in a twist about anything.  I’m paraphrasing, of course. Live in the present, live well and love others - in a (teeny tiny) nutshell. Suriya had been a monk for 23 years, having decided to become one at 14.  He explained that he could leave at any time, get a job and do his own thing.  He had been a teacher at the Meditation Centre for 5 years, but had now completed his Masters degree and wanted to travel Europe, spreading the teachings of Buddha.  He was happy inside, but that didn’t stop him from looking for new experiences; it just meant that he enjoyed his journey from a deeper place of contentment, without the attachments that cause us suffering; pride, greed, anger, jealousy, etc. ‘Will you always be a monk though?’ I asked. ‘I can’t know that’ he smiled. Oh yeah, impermanence.  Good answer. Eventually, we said our goodbyes and I headed down the serpent staircase of the temple to a waiting Song Thaew; a little red bus with two benches in the back which seats about 10 people.   As I approached, a woman poked her head out of the bus window and lifted her sunglasses with a huge grin.  It took me a moment to recognise her as the person who had lit my path home to the dormitory.  ‘You escaped too?’  Annette had been stoic enough to endure 6 of her 21 days before swapping enlightenment for the return to a clean bed and some decent Pad Thai.  We exchanged stories, and laughed about the good and the bad of our Celebrity Jungle experience, which seemed all the more unreal, the further we got away from it.

Not everyone's cup of Lotus tea...

Thing is, whilst some who come here are seeking the trophy of enlightenment; many are just looking for a way to calm the stormy, judgemental, crushing seas that make up Western life.  That's hard to do with insects scurrying over your bum cheeks in the night. So I would say if anyone is thinking of a retreat in a working monestary, be prepared for a modest stay, but potentially rewarding journey for those who can handle it.  Retreats vary wildly, but if you need a good sleep, a wash and 3 meals a day, you might want to look for somewhere that sacrifies authenticity for western comforts. That said, I realised later that, indirectly, my journey and the events around it did give me an answer of sorts to my first-world niggle. The isolation, lack of food and of sleep was clearly not for me, but it taught me a lesson; partly of gratitude and humility for how blessed we are - but also what an utterly miserable bugger I am without my creature comforts.  

And for the curious amongst you, Thai Buddhist monks apparently don't wear pyjamas, orange or otherwise.