Chiang Dao

Went to Chiang Dao this weekend to visit a hilltribe village. Turns out this village isn't as poor as the others I visited. In fact there's quite a few fallangs (foreigners) staying there for touristic reasons. They're still pretty poor, don't get me wrong, but they're not really surpised to see us and they've already acquired more of the mindset of 'fallangs are a source on money!'. In the evening the women do a dancing show for us and we play games with the kids. That night, we sleep in a hut; collectively FROZE our ASSES off. During the day it is so warm, at night it is SO cold! Now I know what it is like to have to sleep out here in the cold and we HAD blankets! I can't imagine what it'd be like without them.

Next day wake up (which is saying that we slept; which we didn't due to the cold). See I never really knew that cold had the ability to wake people up, but it does. You're body goes like "Uhmm hello in there?? You might wanna prevent us (your body and you) from turning into an iceicle!". We get up; Erica's laptop is missing. Did the villagers take it?? After we came and brought them food and blankets?! The chief villager is alerted and all the villagers are highly distressed and a massive search party is set up. Soon a prime suspect is found. A novice from another temple.... he had been sighted near our camp and he left suspicously early and this kid had a bad reputation. The villagers are in hot persuit on motorbikes and everything! The novice is nowhere to be found. The police are alerted, which is in Thailand can mean a whole schale of things (they'll show up straight away with 20 officers, they'll take a week to proces the request, they'll come over and start asking us questions about why we're there, etc, etc). Then the news comes!: a laptop has been found! Is it Erika's though? We go down to the Police station and after a wait, it turns out that it is indeed HER laptop! She comes out and holds it up, as a roar of joy escapes the gathered crowd of villagers, novices and fallangs (I'm included in the last category). Turns out it WAS the evil novice. He has stoled before and is on amphetamines (which is a major problem in Thailand). Erika gets to talk to him and tells him she's not angry, but that he perhaps should take this opportunity to better his life. So yeah, the villagers turned out to be awesome, because without them, there is no way we would've ever gotten that thing back.

So great adventures over there, cool to be in contact with yet another ethnic minoritity (the Palong) and had a lot of fun with my friends and the novices.

Sadly, Damian, Erica and Amir left today and as there are no new arrivals I am left here by myself for the next week. I'll miss the fun (especially the evening chatting session), but this will free up more time for meditation. On the other hand, the novices are still here and so is Graham (the guy that takes care of the people staying at the monastry), with whom I get along really well :)

Meditation

Back at the monastry I have been putting the effort in furthering my meditation practice. I read in the mornings and meditate in the afternoon. I feel like progress has been made, but as is generally the case with progress; the more progress is made; the more the discovery is made that the road ahead is longer than anticipaed. I will not bore you with inadeqaute attempts to describe the realization that have at times occured. Or okay I'll give it a shot :P

- Thoughts merely occur, rather than you thinking them

- The more you (!) attempt to control things, the more you don't, since there does not seem to be a fixed entity of self that controls

- Everything is impermanent, this includes the body (and the whole 'outside' world), thoughts, what we conceive of as self, feelings (of pleasure, sadness or neutraility) and even memories

Throughout the day I try to be as mindful as possible, which (for laymen (actually I'm still a lay person too since I'm not a monk, but whatever)) means; I try to not think about stuff. Over the last couple of months I think I've had the realization about 5 times that thinking things over hardly ever has any benefits and only in fact messes up most things. Every time however, thought seems to sneak back in through the backdoor, by coming up with some kinda of cunning plan to improve myself. Here it is funny to note that the realization that thoughts are laregely useless, is itself, also impermanent! And hence it comes and goes in a wave-like motion.