I had planned to do a meditation retreat somewhere in Asia. I was really glad to discover that the retreat at
Suan Mokkh monastery in southern Thailand would fit in very nicely between the job offer I received and my flight home.
My first contact with meditation a few years ago had been the book
Mindfulness in Plain English. I tried meditating with the book as my sole guide, but quickly gave up again - partly because they insisted that people sit cross-legged on the floor, which is not a comfortable position for me. A few years later, I discovered
Headspace. They offer a few free guided meditations, and have a comprehensive series of meditations on a very reasonably priced subscription basis (and they don't pay me to write this). They do away with all the religious connotations that often accompany meditation, and also explain that it's perfectly ok to sit on a chair to meditate. I followed their meditation programs for about two years, but recently felt that the meditations were a little short. So I was curious what the retreat setting and the long periods of meditation during the retreat would feel like.
The Participants
At the start of the retreat, there were 112 participants. Some of them were experienced meditators who had done more than one retreat already, but there were many beginners, too. The youngest participants were just over 20 (they were the first ones to leave though), and on the upper end there was more than one white-haired lady. Although I had read beforehand that many people drop out, I was surprised to learn that only 80 of us stayed until the last day. I was almost shocked when two girls who had been sitting in front of me in the meditation hall were the first to leave on the fourth day.
On the organising and teaching side, there were quite a few people helping. The most important ones were the monks giving all the talks. There was a German monk, Tan Sukkhacitto, who was a really kind and gentle person. The English monk, Tan Dhammavittu, had great stories and a wonderfully British sense of humor to sweeten his talks. There were also two Thai monks, Tan Medhi and the 81-year old former abbot Ajahn Po. Two lovely Thai nuns were responsible for chanting and loving kindness meditation.
The Rules
We had to submit to a strict regimen of rules during the retreat. In Buddhism, this set of rules is called the
Eight Precepts. Basically, the precepts forbid killing, stealing, sexual activity, 'wrong speech', intoxicating food/drinks, eating after noon and before sunrise, singing/dancing/music/entertainment, and perfumes/cosmetics/jewelry. I certainly wouldn't want to obey all of this in everyday life!
The Schedule
The day was divided into four blocks. The morning bell rang at 4 o'clock.
The first block started with the morning reading, where each morning a different participant read an inspiring or insightful piece of some sort. Then came a meditation session, followed by almost two hours of yoga practice. Since I didn't think too highly of our yoga teacher - for advanced people, she may have been good, but for inflexible beginners like myself, she was absolutely useless - I replaced yoga with a stretching routine, putting all I'd learned about stretching in Cambodia into practice. This was the only time of day I felt really awake. After yoga, there was another short talk by the monastery's abbot. I had great difficulty understanding his English, so these talks were rather useless for me. Then came another sitting meditation session. All the talks and sitting meditation took place in this meditation hall:
Between the first and second blocks was breakfast (boring rice soup, tea, and some sweet cakes), and a long break where we could do our chores, take a bath in the hot springs, wash clothes, or take a nap. My chore was to clean the toilets in the dormitory. The task itself was alright, but I was quite annoyed by the fact that the length of the chores was not distributed equally. For example, there was one girl who had to clean the footbaths in front of the dining hall. There were two of them, but only one was filled with water. Cleaning the footbath would take at most five minutes. In contrast, I had to clean four and a half toilets, empty the waste paper baskets and sweep the floors there. This task took me at least half an hour every day. Like with many other things in the retreat, it paid to arrive early for chore distribution, and in my opinion this just doesn't contribute to the atmosphere a retreat setting should provide.
The second block was the most difficult for me because I had difficulty to stay awake - no small wonder after a big breakfast and no time to take a nap because of the long chore that had to be done after breakfast. The block started with an hour-long dhamma talk. These talks, given by different people, consisted of meditation instruction in the beginning, and then changed to providing information about Buddhism. Then came a bit of walking meditation, and then another sitting meditation. The grounds we could walk in were lovely and provided plenty of shade:
After the second block, it was time for lunch. After lunch, I was so tired that I went straight to sleep on nine of the ten days.
The third block started with another talk, given by the English monk. This was the part of the day that I looked most forward to because I loved his British humor and the jokes he constantly made. He gave very thorough meditation instruction in the first few days, and then gave in-depth explanations of some Buddhist core concepts (more on this in the Buddhism section). After the talk, we did walking and sitting meditation, and then chanted Buddhist sutras for half an hour. If you can't imagine how Buddhist chanting might sound like, it is not unlike the songs you sing in Christian churches, maybe a little less varied to make the chants sound less like song. The lady who led the chanting was the kindest and gentlest soul I'd ever met. Since chanting was the only thing close to music we were allowed, the chants stuck to the mind like glue. I became so annoyed with this that I purposely tried to replace them with other songs in my mind. Finally, we did a guided loving kindness meditation.
Tea break was another event to look forward to because that's where they served delicious hot chocolate (or at least some sort of drink made from sweet chocolate-y powder). After drinking two cups, I either visited the hot springs or took another nap. Unfortunately, the hot springs were infested with mosquitoes at this time of day, so I switched to napping after three or four days.
The fourth and final block started with a sitting meditation. Then we did a group walking meditation. In group walking, everybody walked behind a leader, and the leader determined the pace of the group. They recommended walking barefoot for the meditation - but the leader was allowed to wear shoes, and thus her pace was much too fast for me to get anything like meditation out of the event. After group walking came another sitting meditation session, and then it was bedtime.
Living Conditions
To call the living conditions 'basic' would be a gross overstatement. We slept on a concrete bed, with a wooden pillow:
We also got a mosquito net and a blanket, and I padded my bamboo mat with an old yoga mat I found in storage and a towel. Still, the bed was extremely hard and I woke up several times every night with an acutely aching back.
The showers were Thai-style: a water pond and small bowls to pour water over your head:
Another element of Thai-style showers was that everybody was obliged to wear a sarong for showering. No underwear, no swimwear, only sarongs were allowed.
Outside of the shower, everybody was asked to wear 'loose' clothing to be able to meditate comfortably. At some point I noticed what the result of this policy was: it looked like everybody was in their pajamas for a slumber party!
The retreat center was a little more than one kilometer from the highway, and about six from the closest village, Chaiya. The silence surrounding the center was quite profound. The only sounds of civilization we heard were the planes starting from Surat Thani, about 50 km away, the trains passing about 6 km away, and the railway station announcement jingles in Chaiya.
The Food
On the first day, I thought the food wasn't going to be a problem. However, it turned out to be more or less the same every day, and unfortunately it wasn't too healthy. There were not enough greens and fruits for everybody - another thing where it was vital to arrive early, much to the detriment of the retreat setting, in my opinion. Aside from scarce greens and fruits, the food was pretty much cooked to death, and the only spice they seemed to have was a little chili. People with allergies weren't taken care of either: I noticed peanuts in the food quite often, and peanut allergies are both widespread and tend to be really bad.
Another objection I had to the food was the two-meal rhythm. If you only have two meals, you tend to eat more with any single meal. Food needs to be digested, and if you eat much, you need much time to digest. The result of this was that I regularly fell asleep during the meditation sessions after breakfast, and to a lesser extent also after lunch. In my opinion, several smaller meals would be much more beneficial for the meditation, at least physiologically.
This was our dining hall:
The Day-to-day
The first few days were kind of exciting because the daily routine was still new. The only major problem I had was waking up with back pain and the resulting lack of sleep.
Then, on day 4, I experienced a huge disappointment. At the end of loving kindness meditation, the nun sent us to tea break with the words "Enjoy your chocolate milk!" In the dining hall, we found out that the chocolate milk had been swapped out for soy milk - and it wasn't the kind of soy milk that tastes well. No doubt the swap was engineered to teach us not to be too attached to things and rituals, and maybe also to show us the emotion of disappointment clearly, but it took me more than just a few minutes to appreciate this. On the following days, we were back to chocolate milk, but there was always some apprehension, followed by relief, when I looked into the milk bucket.
In the dining hall, a few books on meditation were provided for those who had not understood (or slept through) some part of the meditation instruction. Along with the books, they also provided dictionaries. On day 6, I walked past the table with the books and suddenly felt a strong urge to sit down with one of the dictionaries to read it - just for the pleasure of reading again! I resisted, but it showed me that reading really is a huge part of my life.
On day 7, my mind felt incredibly dull and depleted. I held fast with the expectation of another of the English monk's talks on the next day - not knowing that I had already heard the last of those!
On day 9, there were no more talks. None. There was nothing but silence. My experience of the day was brutal. There were absolutely no more distractions, and only one meal to top it off. I survived thinking of day 11 when I would be free again.
Buddhism
I learned a lot about Buddhism during the retreat. What I found most fascinating concerned the concept of rebirth. As it turns out, Buddha never explicitly said what happens after death. Rebirth was already a common concept in his time, and is quite valuable as a moral teaching: the promise/threat of a next life keeps people on track in this life.
However, it can also interpreted as taking place during one's life. Whenever our state of mind changes, this can be seen as a rebirth of sorts. Being reborn as an animal can then be interpreted as taking on that animal's characteristic for a while (e.g. the greedy cockerel, the deluded pig, the hating snake). Training the mind in meditation can slow this cycle, and achieving enlightenment would stop it altogether - the enlightened being having full control over his mind. This interpretation seems to have been strongly supported by the founder of Suan Mokkh monastery, the well-known monk
Buddhadasa Bikkhu.
This is a painting that depicts the whole cycle of rebirth:
Even though I now know more about Buddhism and value some aspects of it, I'd never consider myself a Buddhist. In general, I wouldn't consider myself a disciple of any religion that classifies people as second class based on their gender (the Buddhists also have an issue with women, inexplicably).
Lessons Learned
So what did I take away from the retreat? I think I now know my own mind a bit better. I know that I can cope with silence well, and also with most of the other precepts - but not with the absence of reading, or the presence of too little sleep, or a bed that gives me back pain. I also learned a lot about meditation and Buddhism, which I am really happy about since I always love learning new things.
That said, I would think twice before returning to Suan Mokkh, but maybe consider doing another retreat in a few years time.
