From Hell to Heaven (meditation retreat)

Warning, very long! I do 10 day meditation retreat at WAT RAMPOENG. It was a life changing experience, but since I hardly spoke to anyone, I would write down all my thoughts and adventures, to be able to vent them later, which is what I will do here now. Synopsis: The beginning of the retreat is hell like I have almost never experienced before, but it slowly shifted to it's polar opposite. How can this be?? Heaven and hell, in the same place? You enthusiastically ask of me?! To find out, you shall have to patiently read on (which itself, is a sample of one of the lessons learned during this retreat).

It begins:

Say goodbye to Graham at monastry in Fang, get on VIP minivan to Chiang Mai, transfer to Tuk Tuk, get out; I'm at Wat Rampoeng. Find registration monk and the next adventure has begun. This monk certainly is a unique human being (of the kind I have never come across).  He's very bosy (do this, do that), slightly gay, seems disinterested into anything to do with you, yet somehow compassionate (perhaps not specifically for you, but for all beings), always busy and in a hurry, yet in a way also very calm. He's a waterfall of English words you do not comprehend. The sentences, which he uttered very often whish I would make out were: "Now.. you are meditato" (meditato meant meditator I think), "accepting, accepting, no expectations", "knowing... knowing... knowing" (which is the vipassana meditation's noting technique, which he in this case said because you should be noting it in your mind and I suspect also because he was noting it for hmself (since I caught him doing it on his own as well)) and finally "no yes sir, do!" (after someone said they would comply with one of his orders by giving him a "yes sir"). I didn't take offence to any of this, since like I said, he seems strangely compassionate and harmless in a way, plus I was still all chill from the former program. Oh at one point he's pointing at something for me to look at as he shows me around the temple and he finds my reaction to slow and he actually goes "watch the hand" :P And sometimes he would stop his rain of words all of a sudden and start meditating while standing there for 30 seconds, which I later found out, he was doing to show us how to do it . He also wouldn't remember our names, but refer to us by our country or room number: "no lifting your heels Vietnam!"

Hell begins

I have to hurry and change into white clothes, come back; we do the opening ceremony, where I'm put back on the 8 precepts (wich I had just got off of). I'm in a group of 5, we can't talk to each other though. We 'walk' into the abbot's office on our knees, almost completely unprepared for the ceremony and do all the bowing and chanting as best as we can. The Abbot is in Bangkok, so it's just a nun doing the ceremony, which is probably good, because it was stressful enough on the other's I think. We are told to do 6 hours of meditation training starting from then till 5pm the next day. I should do 8 however, since I was at another temple before :S. We report for meditation training and it's the crazy monk that received me doing it. This is where the hell starts. We're in a dark little office, while we're still not allowed to talk. The monk keeps giving us uncomprehensible orders. At one point I have my hand on the wrong knee and he just looks at me for a full minute pretty much. I stay pretty unreactive for the first 40 seconds, but then go "what???", after hearing some more uncomprehesinble sentences, I finally figure out what is wrong. We do 2 hours of group meditation. The walking meditation is not so bad, but the sitting!!! seriously, I don't know if you've ever tried to sit cross legged, without any support for 30 minutes while not being used to it; it is complete hell. It's like someone is sticking a thousand needles into your knees and like your back is about to break and the worst thing is that you have to sustain this position with your own muscular strength (to keep your back up), so in a way, you're inflicting the pain on yourself! So this was meditation for dear life, because if you concentrate hard enough, you'll enter a state where you can block out the senses and they just feel tingly and numb, but everytime you'd let your mind wander off to acknowledge one of the senses (which is very often when you're in such pain), you'd be back in hell. I did make it though.

Oh and when I arrived at the monastry, I saw all the people walking around like complete zombies (looking to the ground, not acknowledging anything and walking at 1mph). I'm like, pssh, look at these dorks; half an hour later; I'm one them. I seriously thought, wow, I have been assimilated by the Borg (Star Trek reference). But you are told to be mindful and that is what that looks like and I agree very much with the idea of mindfulness.

After meditation training I go to my (very sober room) and go to bed straight away (10pm), since the bell for waking sounds at 4am. I am woken at at this ungodly hour, after what seems to be 10 minutes of sleep and just hate it; really tired and nothing to look forward to but meditation. Meditate for an hour and then at 6:30 there is breakfast. Everyone again, is very mindful and quiet. You walk into the hall at 1mph, get your meal (usually rice or noodles, which were actually really good most of the times) and then we chant for 15 minutes, while sitting and watching your food whilst being insanely hungry. The chanting is about how one should not eat food for pleasure, beautification (not sure how that works btw), for gaining weight, etc. Then: eat food, wash your dishes, get back to meditation practice.

We have an appointment with the crazy monk for more training. We head over to the Bodhi tree, but this area looks more like a cemetary at this monastry. So we sit there and start another excruciating session. THIS TIME however, it's not just the pain... nope, we sit on these huge big old tiles, covered in moss and out from between the cracks, crawl out... the most nasty insects you can think of! Soon, I'm covered in (luckily black) ants and flies. Of course you shouldn't react, but this is very hard. It seriously reminded me of that scene in the last King Kong movie, where they're stuck in the trench with all the nasty insects and worms that start sucking on everyone's heads. So pain, insects and extreme fatigue... yeah... now we're having fun. Hell camp is officially in session.

Rules of engagement

• No talking
• No eating after 12:00 (you can have unflavored soy milk drinks)
• No erotic behavior of any kind
• No reading
• No computers, no cell phones, no TV, no Radio, no nothing
• Walk slowly and mindfully
• No eye contact
• No leaving the temple grounds

Daily routine

So every morning, I wake up at 4am, do my mindfulness prostrations (bowing to the Buddha as a warm up for meditation) and then do walking and sitting meditation till breakfast. It was hard not to look forward to breakfast, since I'd always be hungry from not having dinner (I'd have some soy milk when I woke up though). After breakfast, more meditation. When the sun came out, I'd do walking meditation outside around the stupa. Lunch at 10:30 was same routine as breakfast. More meditation after. I'd do sitting in my room, because I could use pillows and blankets to support my limbs to reduce the pain. 5pm: report to the Abbot's office, where you'd sit and wait (meditate) untill it was your turn to report to the Abbot about your practice. You'd tell the Abbot the amount of hours you did (which you worked hard to get to) and then after your nerve racking encounter with the abbot, you thought you were finally finished for the day (your deadline had passed), but nope, you started meditating to reach the deadline (usually more hours than the last day) for the NEXT DAY! I'd go to sleep at 9:30PM, absolutely exhausted. This was actually breaking the rules, since you couldn't go to sleep till 10pm.

Oh and somewhere between 3pm and 5pm, there'd always be an anouncement through the speaker system of the temple and I didn't understand a word, but it would always end with a super chill "satu....satu....................sa...tu" (satu is the Buddhist version of Amen). I really liked the way it sounded.

Reports (talks with the Abbot)
This man is the Abbot of a bigger and better known temple in a bigger city than the previous Abbot. Accordingly, the Thai people revere him even more like a god (which for a large part is due to their superstition). Again however, this person, I do believe deserves a great deal of the respect that he gets. His schedule is ridiculous. He manages his temple, he is a mayor figure in the city community, then he personally teaches almost all the Thai students and then in the evenings he takes out another 3 hours to teach all the foreigners and then probably heads straight to bed. He is also a person of great insight as far as I can discern and he speaks good English! I'll add a picture to my upload.

My first report: there is a very strict ceremony to the reporting. You enter the room on your knees, prostrate to the Buddha three times, prostrate to the Abbot three times, prostrate to the female monk three times, then you say "sawasdee krap Phra Ajahn Suphan?" (how are you monk Ajahn Suphan?) and smile, then you do the same to the nun (while using her name obviously :P). I know this now, but then I had all but forgotten it, but the cazy monk came and reminded me just before I 'went in'. I was a little nervous, but nothing compared to some of the others, who were dripping in sweat :P He asks about my stay at the other temple (he knows Dr Apisit (Abbot of other temple)), asks about my practice and how many hours I've done. I tell him my mind seems to have trouble with just practice and no results, since it keeps coming up with new ways to get to results faster. He simply notes, that the first day is not even over yet and that expecting results is not very realistic.

2nd talk: I'm feeling very happy from my meditation and am craving social contact, so I can't wait to talk to the Abbot! At this point I know that the Abbot is a very nice person, who takes things very lightly, so all the pressure on the reports and the officialness of it, starts to seem pretty funny and ridiculous. My mind keeps coming up with weird things to say to kind of mess with the situation, since I'm pretty sure the Abbot will understand my sentiments. Everyone is always all proud of the aount of hours they have done, so when reporting mine I go "8 hours" and proudly add "AND 5 minutes!" :P He laughs and notes it down. I then tell him that because of being tired, I found my mind that morning noting "right foot goes thus, left foot goes thus", while noting my breaths during SITTING meditation, we laugh at this for a while. After this talk I feel like me and the Abbot are friends, but in later talks he keeps forgetting who I am, so I might be wrong :P

3rd talk: Day before, I received the instruction: "less contact, more awareness" (just observe in a general way, rather then letting your senses make contact with material and mental objects). Now I had achieved this with great succes in the morning, but after lunch, my mind became EXTREMELY tired. Like my brain seriously felt like a sore muscle! I could not concentrate nor think any coherent thoughts anymore. The Abbot (or the Master, or the Teacher as people refer to him here) responds to this (in true Zen parabell style): "when you go to Zoo, you put monkey in very small cage, he want to get out! He try to grasp at many things! The monkey and the cage, become very tired" he continues "for example: when you with girlfriend, you happy no? You need nothing else... you can have this same feeling, with your ooown self! it is enough" and finally "so do, like marathon, not sprint! Slooowly....". Don't wanna be arrogant, but this was first time in a long time that someone taught me something completely new, that I had not heard of, nor could've figured out on my own.

4th talk: I tell him that I always get sweaty hands when I come to his office for report and add "why?" He laughs and explains that I should just note it "sweaty hands, sweaty hands, sweaty hands" and let it go. Then he goes on to add that sometimes with people, it's not just hands, it's EVERYWHERE, while he wildly gestures at his arm pits and other parts of his body, which is followed by more mutual laughter . "Do you ever get sweaty hands still?" I ask, Abbot: "sometimes", while being serious now.

Last talk (rest of them were pretty uneventful, though very insightful): I'm pretty sure he told me "you, good friend" and he asked me whether my mind still longs for results as much (it doesn't); so I guess he did remember who I was and perhaps we were kind of friends after all :) 

The gradual dawning of 'heaven'

I hope I have conveyed how hard the retreat actually is (many people quit after a few days), but I shall now turn to the slow appearance of positivity and happiness.

Friends without speaking
The first observation was that our group had a strong bond. We had not exchanged more then perhaps 4 words, but you could sense that we considered each other friends, even though we didn't know each other's name's or anything. This was later confirmed when I did talk to one of them.

Meditation as resting
The second morning while being really tired in the morning and almost falling asleep while WALKING, something dawned on me. My mind kept complaining about how tired it was and how ridiculous it was that I was up, but I then saw that the thing that was complaing, was also the thing that was tiring me: my thoughts. I simply put my thoughts to rest after that and just walked. I then found that after a couple of hours of this (which usually would've been spent sleeping) I was as well rested as from the sleep I would've done. This also proved to be a key way to further my meditation; simply rest your thoughts; no trying is better than trying (it REALLY is, but this is SO counter intuitive).

Effortless effort
As mentioned, I achieved good mindfulness on the third day, though the form I found, was REALLY tiring. It was like the super saiyan 3 state in Dragon Ball Z, which brings immense power and speed, but takes up enormous amounts of energy and hence can only be sustained for a short period. Whilst being mindful in this fasion I would go to lunch or the shop to buy Soy Milk and it was wonderful. Like, there is no destination in mind, there is only the present moment. You do not think or even know that you're going to lunch, you just observe your body and mind doing it's thing and then you suddenly notice that you've been to lunch, while you literally enjoyed every second of it. It is complete effortless effort. There is complete (or well, kinda) controle and serenity; the senses are not drawn out to distractions and one does what one needs to in complete calm. You know what to do, without thinking about it. In the end I found a way to do this without tiring myself so much.

Childlike vision
After having had the insight into just relaxing thought and not trying, I furthered this ability through practice. I noticed how this would put me in the present moment, where everything was calm and peaceful. While walking back from walking meditation one day, I somehow all of a sudden got 'a hold of' thought in general and was able to almost completely put it to rest, putting me in a somewhat stable / self sustaining state of awareness of my suroundings. Everything looked fresh a new.. and it distinctly reminded me of being a child. As a child I remember looking at trees and plants and them seeming fresh and vivid, but back then it was completely normal. I stood and marveled at the things around me for a good half hour, till the state passed away.

Pure practice breeds results
I realised that practice by itself brings results. The Abbot told me "we progress through doing, not thinking". You practice without trying and you can just wait till a new proficiency, insight or state simply happens, without needing to know how it did.

First Jhana?
In Buddhism you have Jhana's, which are spiritul states, which themselves aren't very conductive to progress or enlightenment, if I may believe the masters. I'm not really aware of all of them, but I know the first one is when you focus a still and concetrated mind on a pleasurable emotion or feeling and this creates kind of a loop which will send you into a state of 'ecstasy' / state of great pleasure. I wasn't looking for this at all, but after an especially good meditation session, I felt my breath being drawn upwards, which then propelled me into a state where I was indeed flooded with pleasurable emotions. Now I wasn't absorbed in it, or in some other realm, I could still think like "wow, I feel a ridiculous amount of pleasure". It was really nice and I stayed in it for about 5 minutes I think, but it's still just pleasure and not insight into things. I knew that if I'd start to like it too much, it would only ehance cravings and my sense of ego (which it did anyway, even after just 5 minutes).

Controlling moods
Towards the very end of my stay, I started shifting my meditation from noting thoughts and sense perceptions, to feelings and likes and dislikes. The insight into thought and sense perception is nice, but it is the cravings, and emotions that make us unhappy and makes us act in ways we don't particularly like. Controling cravings was still very hard. Some easier then others; food still is a craving, though less than before I think. At the end I was however able to observe feelings to a degree. During the retreat I had lapses of happiness, neutrality, and sadness, which more subtely would break down into: lethargy, frustration, confidence, arrogance, joy, anger, dispair, etc. I had observed these come and go and you start to see how ridiculous this is. One moment you're all happy and all is good and an hour later, everything sucks. At the end I saw the emotion I was in, and discenerned its impermanence (I knew it wasn't going to last) and it's non-self. I could to a degree see that it was a compound of me, but that it was not me. It remained there, but it slightly loses controle over you, since you don't act through it and it slowly starts to fade away. Theoretically this perhaps does not sound so special, but I found it VERY hard to do. And when I kind of did, it was like 'I' (thinking that there is an I is half the problem here) was altering the fabric of reality. Like I'd start to get angry and I could just go "nope, I don't like anger" :) It's not really like that, but you can interpret it like that, which subsequently leads to other problems haha :P But yes, there is no 'I am angry', there is only 'anger'.

Theoretical advancement
I found that after good meditation I was able to solve theoretical problems that I formerly couldn't. Meaning: insight and understanding are not developed by thinking, thinking is the expression of the insight, which comes simply through allowing it by stillness. As a master once said "the mind is like a forrest pool, when the surface is allowed to become still, you can see all kinds of pretty things beneath it's surface". I even think I solved two Zen koans in this manner: Koan 1: you know the sound of two hands clapping, but what about the sound of one hand clapping? answer: the sound is the same. Koan 2: "what did your face look like before your grandparents were born?" answer: there is no face. And also another personal insight: 'without perception, you do not exist' or 'the self is like letters carved into wood; actually, there is only wood'

Walking meditation races!
You'd be doing your walking around the stupa at a full 0,2 miles per hour, but then all of a sudden you would see someone coming up in the corner of your eye "seeing, seeing, seeing". They'd be racing along doing a shameless 0,3 mph and were obviously gonna beat you in your lap around the Stupa! What the....?! "anger, anger, anger", "speeding up,  speeding up, speeding up" and soon you find yourself engaged in a full on race doing a ridiculous 0,4 mph! Then it dawns on you.... the only way to win the race of meditation, is.... to stay behind and rest in patience, the moment, silence, calm and not self... you become one with your contender.. and rejoice in their happiness as well as your own :)

Breaking he rules
I think I was a good student. I observed almost all the rules and on my final day did 12 hours of meditation. I did break the rules though of course :P Like I said I went to bed early and I once got out of bed 20 minutes late. I know, shocking eh? At some point a Thai girl saw me at the shop while it was closed, SHE started talking to me :P She said I could have one of her yoghurts, she would not accept my payment. I could not resist the temptation to stay and talk to her, so I did; it was really nice. A guy from our group saw me talking to her and I mentioned to him "I'm gonna go to hell for that" :P Next day I talk to two other guys, one from our group (who indeed did turn out to be a really cool guy). It was really nice to exchange experiences and to finally talk about how crazy our teacher monk was and how hellish the beginning of the stay was. After I found however, that my meditation was filled with thoughts of the conversations. So last time I talked to the guys I told them I wouldn't talk anymore, even though I thought they were cool dudes to talk to. I didn't talk anymore, till the very end when I was leaving.

My worst enemies

I learned to ignore the ants and even let two mosquito's sting me to see if I could (Buddhism doens't say you should let them). There was however this ONE fly and it would come... and it would hover like a hummingbird around your head, it would find your eyes, hover infront of them and then dart at them! Like this creature was designed to mess with people's meditation practice!

There was one English guy and he was actually really nice, but he REALLY got on my nerves. All he would do was TALK. I once talked to him and he would not shut up. While trying to be mindful, I would hear him: at meals, while I was doing walking meditation outside, when I was waiting for my report with the Abbot he would be telling a 20 minute story to the Abbot (you are instructuted to keep your answers short) and when I was in my room he'd be on the phone in his room. He would always be talking about self-help and how practice is essential, but then I'd hear him tell the Abbot he only did 6 hours of meditation. So yeah, I told him to lessen the talking twice, but mainly I observed the feelings of anger, because really, it wasn't bad at all, it was my mind. There would always be sounds, but my mind chose this to turn it into an enemy. So actually I love this guy, but really I frickin hate him!, but actually I don't.

Back in Chiang Mai

As cliche as it sounds, it is quite depressing to be back in the 'normal' world, especially Chiang Mai. All I see are cheap temptations (fluorescent signs, tourist attractions, prostitutes, crappy food, drinking, nice cars, clothing, etc). This is accompanied by a lot of really delapetated European tourists. It is very easy to start to feel superior after my recent experiences, of course the Buddha teaches us compassion and modesty. It seems so obvious that this kind of lfe / society is not obtimal and you wonder why other's don't see it also, but at the same time I can feel old habits arising in myself and the environment's gravtiy sucking me back in. I end up getting noodle soup from an nice little empty restaurant. I ate the soup mindfully, carefully watching my cravings, while the world raced on around me. I told the woman who owned the shop in my best Thai that I thought her meal was delicious and thanked her for it and I'm quite sure I genuinely meant what said, in a way, not known to me before.

Satu....satu............sa...tu