Insight Meditation

On Tuesday, September 25, we had a three or four Rotary Club get together hosted by my Rotary Club. All four exchange students in Lampang were there, so we had a lot of fun. While sitting together eating dinner, this little pamphlet was being passed around about Insight Meditation. I saw the word meditation and was like WOAHHH that sounds like so much fun! I have always wanted to do that! I thought it would be such perfect timing because I had many things on my mind, so I would have plenty of time to think about everything because the meditation would be ten days long. What do you think of when you think of meditation!? Please, take a moment to think about it and then keep reading. An exchange student from California living in Lampang was planning to go and his host mom was going to drive him up to Chiang Mai on Friday. School holiday was starting Friday after school, so I wouldn't be missing any school. By the end of Tuesday night I decided that I would talk to my host family because I didn't know if they had any plans or not. Through a series of phone calls, I got a phone call on Wednesday asking if I was going to be attending. At this point, I wasn't sure if the timing was right for a few different reasons, but by the time I finished the conversation it was decided that I was to go. I talked with my host mom about going to get all of the things on the list, and we were planning to go shopping Thursday after school. I get a phone call around 11:00 p.m. on Wednesday night saying that we would be leaving for the camp Thursday morning at 8:00 a.m. All of my family was sleeping for the night, so I had to tell them in the morning. Let alone the fact, I had nothing on the list of what we needed. I also needed two passport photos which I didn't have because we planned to get them done on Thursday. So there we went, snapped a picture of me as I am almost ready for bed, and sent it to the exchange boys mother and she printed it off because I don't have a printer at my home. So passport photos, check! Never mind the fact that I didn't have my passport because it was with my first host family! Good grief right!!! So, Thursday morning rolls around, and my host mom comes into my room at 6:00 a.m. to shut off the air conditioning, and I am trying to explain to her using my very little Thai that I am leaving at 8:00 a.m. this morning and I will not go to school today, and that my passport is at my first families house! WOW! So, I got my bag packed within a matter of fifteen minutes and was set to go, we set off for my first family’s house and she called them along the way, got my passport, and went to the boys house because that is where we planned to meet and bam, we were there just about on time. The things my families have to do for me, I can't thank them enough!

 

We got to Chiang Mai and all I knew was we weren’t allowed to talk and that I would be doing meditation for ten days, which doesn’t seem like a long time if you are excited about something. I also knew we weren’t allowed to keep a journal, use our phones, no reading, and so on. Here is what I wrote down for pre meditation: “Very confused about everything!!!! Hope to clear my mind and see how this works! I am sure I will be even more confused than before I went. My classmates had exams on Tuesday and then today and Friday, hope they do well. Talk to everyone when I get back. Xoxox Always, chok dee na ka (Good luck in Thai)

So, apparently looking back now, that is how I was feeling about my ten day journey, figured I better write something down before I can’t write for ten days. I get there, registered, and got a pillow, blanket, bed sheets, and so on to get my room all set up. He collected my phone which I was planning to use as my timer, so he gave me a little timer to time myself, well I had no idea what I would use for an alarm in the morning, but took the timer and said ok! We went to my room and notice many bugs, spiders, webs, etc. The Monk who showed me my room said that they were sorry that the room wasn’t cleaned as well as the others, the last person to stay there was from Laos and they had some translation problems. I said no problem, put down my things, and we went on our way. Ok, anybody who knows me, knows that I am totally not a bug person and scream when I see spiders. At this point, I am thinking to myself, wooooow! This will be such a great experience, to be sleeping with all of those bugs, believe me, I couldn’t wait to go to bed that night! I tell you! At night, I began to do a check of all the spiders to make sure they were in the same spot as before, I then said goodnight to them and told them they were not allowed to move until morning!!! Then, everyone in the meditation group was supposed to meet in the office thing, so when I get there, I realize that I am the only girl in a group of about 9 men, ages ranging from almost 60 to early twenties, and the boy I drove there with. Wahhh! At this point, I am wondering to myself, is this ok for me even to be staying here?! I just felt a little uneasy, and it doesn’t help the fact that in meditation, you can’t talk or smile, you aren’t even supposed to look at other people, so that didn’t help the fact! It was really awesome though, the people come to this temple from all over the world. The people in my group were from Australia, the United States, Norway, Latvia, Lithuania, Holland. Once we got started, they showed us around the temple and we started our first practices. We were able to go into our rooms around 10:30 that night.

Let me take a minute to tell you about the daily routine and how it worked at the temple I was staying at. Wake up is at 4:00 a.m. and then we practice. I will tell you later what it means to practice. From 4:00 a.m. until 6:30 a.m. we practice. At 6:30 a.m. is breakfast and we go practice again until lunch which is at 10:30 a.m. After 12:00 (noon), there is no more eating allowed until breakfast the next morning at 6:30 a.m. (Ok, I totally did not know this when I signed up!!! Hahah) After lunch until 4:00 p.m. we would practice again and at 4:00 p.m. we would go to Reporting. Reporting is where we go into a room individually with “the teacher”, otherwise known as the head monk, and we would tell him about how our practice went that day and how we were feeling. We told him how many hours we did and he would tell me at the end what my new practice would be for the next day. (I say we because that is what everyone at the camp did, but I did all of this individually.) Then after Reporting, we go practice again until we hear a bell around 5:30 p.m., which meant that there was a warm beverage waiting for us if we would like it. I had absolutely no idea what I was drinking, but some nights it was warm soy milk and drinks like that. This warm beverage time was my favorite part of everyday. Honestly, I looked forward to it every day, even if I didn’t so much like the drink, I drank it anyway. But, we were only able to sit down for five minutes because “if we sit for more than five minutes, our mind begins to wander!” So, there I went, setting my cute little timer for five minutes, but I enjoyed every part of those five minutes. After warm drink time, it was practice time again until 10:00 p.m. I took my shower and then went to bed, preparing to be up around 4:00 a.m. the next day! Yahhhhooooo! I set my cute little time for 360 minutes (which is 6 hours) and hoped that it was loud enough to wake me up every morning!

Alright, now let me explain what practicing means. So there are two types, walking and sitting. After the first day, we practiced alone, in whatever location we wanted, as there were a few different options. I tried out all of the places throughout the first day, but soon found my favorite to be indoors at the library. As much as I wanted to practice outside, the bugs just loved me way too much. Bite, after bite, after bite. It didn’t take me long before I realized I needed to practice indoors! Anywho, so sitting and walking!

Sitting, it like it sounds, you sit, cross-legged, which was very interesting for me. It is so, so, so painful for me to sit cross-legged because my knees aren’t the best after playing basketball for so many years. But to sit cross-legged, my legs became numb and I can’t even describe how painful it was. Everyone got a mat to sit on, so I sat on that cross-legged. The first day, everyone started with 15 minutes, but at the end of my ten days, I was up to 40! Please, imagine me sitting still for 40 minutes! Good grief, right!? The whole purpose of this was to concentrate on your breathing, so I say to myself every time I breathe, rising, falling, rising, falling….and on that note, within my first three days, sometimes I fell asleep doing this exercise! I would feel my head fall down, and whoop, bring it back up girl! Haha! But near the end of my days at the temple, my teacher gave me points to focus on, so I began saying rising, falling, sitting, thinking, and during the sitting, thinking part, I would focus my mind on different parts of my body. Woahhh, this is very hard to explain in writing! I hope you all are able to understand what I am trying to say! But, for my first few days, my mind would wander all over the place and sitting was very hard for me. I have always had such a go, go, go type of lifestyle where I am always so busy, to sit for 15 minutes straight was very hard for me. I had some of the weirdest thoughts pop into my head, I have no idea where they came from. Let me just say this, everyone says that the first three days of meditation are the hardest, and once you can get past them, you will start to see a different side of it. So, I would say the first five days were very hard for me, but once I got to that sixth day, I felt amazing. I could totally see a difference in the way my sitting went. I felt at peace and calm and I actually loved sitting! I noticed this huge change from when I got there to when I left in my breathing and my ability to sit. At the beginning, I was restless and I didn’t want to sit still, I hated it. It was so uncomfortable, I was so sore, and I couldn’t focus. But, once I left myself enjoy this misery, I enjoyed sitting, and it became so peaceful, and tranquil.

Walking was my favorite of the two. So for walking we first started with just watching a technique and following it. But soon, it became much like the “rising, falling” idea where I would focus on the words, except for walking it was rising, putting, and then as the days went on, rising, lifting, moving, putting. I can’t even explain to you how slow I walked. It is not even walking. When you step, your next step is half of your foot, so during the first couple of days, I felt like I was crawling and I didn’t’ understand why I needed to walk so slow. But soon, it became very calming and relaxing, and I LOVED IT! It was so great, and could much more easily focus my brain to concentrate than sitting. I will write more about a quote “the teacher” told me about my difference in walking and sitting. With walking, I started at 15 minutes as well and worked my way up to 40 minutes.

Now that you know what sitting and walking are, practicing means, at the beginning doing 15 minutes walking, 15 minutes sitting, 15 minutes walking, 15 minutes sitting and so on. By the time I finished my ten days, it was 40 minutes walking, 40 minutes sitting, 40 minutes walking and so on. For my first day, I got 9 hours, then the next day I got 9 hours, and the next day 8 hours and 45 minutes. After I reported with my ONLY 8 hours and 45 minutes, the teacher told me it wasn’t good enough and that I need to try harder. I couldn’t believe it. I was absolutely exhausted, sore, and my mind was still getting used to this idea, I was hungry, and I was very tired from the amount of sleep I was getting. He told me I needed to get 10 hours for the next day. Me, being me, then did 10 hours and a half to show him that I was committed to what I was doing. He said that it was great and the next day maybe I could do between 10-11 hours. I was expecting a “well Sarah, you have been doing great maybe only 8 hours tomorrow or something like that, but no!!!” So for the next day I did 10.5 hours again, and the next day 11 and for my final day, I ended up doing 12 hours! Ok, in case nobody knows this, 12 hours is half of one day. I spent half of my day meditating! Now, let us all think about this. There are 24 hours in one day, and I did 12 hours, so that leaves 12 hours left. We sleep for six, so that leaves six hours left. Two of those hours are spent eating, and roughly another two hours are spent between Reporting and the warm drink. This leaves two hours, let alone time for a shower, using the restroom (and when we walked to go anywhere it took like 10-15 minutes because we had to walk slow because we were being mindful). So, I hope putting the time on things really puts this into perspective for you all.

 

On one of the nights, it was Buddha day, so we had this “celebration” where we each got a candle, incents, and a rose. I just followed what the other Thai people were doing, and we walked around the Steeple (I am not sure how to spell it) three times and when we finished, we set the candle on the steeple and the rose and set the incents into a jar that held sand. This was really awesome to be able to take part in such a ceremony and I learned a lot about the Thai culture. Once that was finished, everyone lined up to ring this gong, and one of the kind Thai ladies helped me out and told me to hit it three times, so I hit it three times.  

This meditation was not about enjoying yourself my any means. You are supposed to be tired because of the six hours of sleep, you are supposed to be hungry because you only eat two meals and can’t eat past noon, you are supposed to be sore and hurting because of the way you are sitting, to be curious about what is going on in the outside world because you are not allowed to leave the temple and you have no cell phone or computer, to feel absolutely lonely because you aren’t allowed to talk…the purpose of this type of meditation…is to suffer. To be absolutely miserable, and find no pleasure. But that is just it, once you can find the pleasure in all of this, once you can find the pleasure in suffering, you can find the pleasure in anything. It is all about what you make of the situation, and how you use your mind to focus on what you are doing. I can’t tell you how many life lessons I got out of this camp. I am not sure if that is a good description of what this meditation is supposed to be, but at least for me, that is the purpose I got out of the meditation.

 

Believe it or not, I learned a lot about friendship and about myself.  After five days, the boy I came with went home, so I was at this temple in Chiang Mai, which is in Thailand, which is halfway across the world from my home, not knowing a single person, all by myself. I am 17 years old, and this camp taught me a lot about growing up. I went through every emotion while meditating, I felt angry at times when I couldn’t concentrate, and I got very sad within my first few days because I was thinking about everything, and I felt very happy when I successfully completed my first 10.5 hour day, and I felt on top of the world, the night before I left. I felt this inner peace that I have never felt. I truly wish you could bottle up feelings into a jar and open up the jar when you wish to feel like that again. But that is one lesson I learned throughout this, is impermance. Everything is always changing, each minute, each second brings about new feelings and new emotions. The teacher was absolutely amazing and gave me wise advice almost every day. I wasn’t allowed to write it down while I was there for ten days, but you better believe when I finished the camp, I wrote down everything. I will share with you what I have learned. I tried to remember one thing or two things from everyday so here is what I will share with you:

September 28: This was during reporting and I was explaining to him how much I loved to walk and how hard sitting still was for me. He said it is much like driving a car, when you are physically driving the car it is easy because you are focused on what you are doing. But, once you get to a stop light or you stop driving, then all of your thoughts come about what you need to do next and you can concentrate on remembering the past and the future and you aren’t as focused on the present, but while walking, you are more so focused on the present. I thought this was very interesting advice, an example I never would have thought of.

September 30: This is the day, I learned the most about impermance. He was explaining to me how life is like a big tree, the tree grows every day, but we never notice it because all we see is a big tree. But, each and every day it must have changed, because it is a big tree now. This advice was very fascinating,  because I have thought about this before, but who would have ever thought I would think about it again during meditation.

October 4: Today was the first time I sat for 30 minutes without moving one single bit. I was so content and I sat through my leg pain, but when I finished, I felt so accomplished and that I could do anything in the world that I wanted. Also, on this day, I realized what one single compliment can do for someone. It came time for reporting, and I went into the room, and I had this giant smile on my face that I couldn’t control! The teacher said, when I see you smile, it makes me smile. This comment meant more to me than he will ever know. This was roughly my halfway point of my meditation, and I had become so happy and peaceful, I didn’t even realize how happy I was on the inside, and I guess it just shone through.

 

October 5: On this day, I learned so much about kindness and friendship in ways that I never knew were possible. Yesterday, the food was very spicy as it was everyday, so I was only able to eat the rice. I wish I could get used to the spicy food here, but it doesn’t sit well with my stomach. I have learned that through experience here, and I didn’t want to get sick while I was trying to meditate, so I just ate the rice. However, the breakfasts here I loved, loved, loved! But, for the lunches, we got rice, and two curry dishes. Anywho, so I just ate rice most of the days and one of the ladies at my table had a kanome (Thai word for candy or snack) and this kanome was a piece of bread with some things on the bread. She kindly gave me the piece of bread without saying a word. I mouthed the words, kapkoon mak, mak ka, which means thank you very, very much. Then, the next morning after breakfast, I was walking to go practice, and she grabbed my arm and pulled me to where there was a line of ladies standing. They were getting ready to give offerings to the monks. I followed along with what they were doing, and she gave me things to put inside the Monks’ bowls. This was an experience I will never forget. I somehow could tell that she would be leaving after this, so I again, mouthed kapkoon ka (thank you). I wish I could have talked with her and told her more about how I was feeling, and yet, I knew words weren’t necessary. Through gestures, eye contact, and a simple smile, we both knew that we had formed a friendship without saying one, single word. Actions truly do speak louder than words. I knew I would never see this friend of mine again and I never even knew her name and yet, I will never forget her kindness and her truly caring gestures. It is the moments like this that I live for, the knowing that she has touched my heart in a way that I will never forget her. She was a very kind lady, and I will be forever grateful for having the opportunity to meet her. It was amazing, I made friends from all around the world, without saying a single word.

 

At the end of my ten day experience I have learned countless things about everything, life, myself, friendship, and a completely new way of thinking. When we did eat, before we ate we said these things, everyone had a sheet, and it was along the lines, of I will not eat for pleasure and fun, only to keep my body going so I can live. I would like you all to take a minute to think about what that means…what if everyone in the world only ate what they needed to to survive. Just think about how much leftover food we would have to give to those who have nothing at all to eat, that die because they are starving to death. I learned what it meant to be hungry, and I had two meals a day, I can’t even imagine not having anything.

 

My first day out of the temple, I had a hard time adjusting myself back to what we consider a normal life. I forgot how to turn on my phone when they gave it back, I thought it was so weird to be eating past noon and not sitting down while drinking water (that was another one of the rules, was we had to be sitting down while drinking water or those warm beverages), seeing a car was very strange for me, and going into a mall that is filled with things people don’t need was very hard for me. For the past ten days, I had been learning to connect with myself and eat only what needed to be eaten, and sleep only the hours I needed to keep my body going, I closest thing to bare minimum I have ever known and I am still surviving. So why do we need all of these other things? I was on top of the world, feeling so happy about myself and who I was after those ten days, and I had none of those outside world things. I took freezing cold showers, I slept with the bugs, worms, and spiders in my room, and I survived. I had a bed to sleep on and a blanket to keep me warm at night, I can’t imagine those who are sleeping on hard ground with nothing to cover them. Here, at the beginning I was worried about a few spiders, and now I realize that I had it amazingly great at the temple, I had food, I had water, I had a room to sleep in…there are people around the world who have none of that. I am very, very fortunate to have experienced something like this. It truly has opened my eyes to a whole new level. Would I recommend it?! YOU BET I WOULD, but you need to know going into something like this, what it is all about. It is one of the hardest things you will ever do, because you aren’t competing with other people to get into college, you aren’t trying to get that job that everyone else wants, you are up against nobody but yourself. Through this experience, I have beat myself, I am mentally tougher than I ever knew possible. It was very interesting, I had dropped my timer a few times throughout the ten days, and right after the closing ceremony, it stopped working for some strange reason. The label on the timer said “Times Up.” Please don’t worry, I gave him money for a new timer, but it was very interesting timing because my time with meditation was up, and now it was up to me, up to me to use what I had just learned in the past ten days throughout the rest of my life. I will leave you with this quote that was on the back of the pamphlet that I first read when I heard about this camp and it made absolutely no sense to me, but now, now it means more to me than anyone will ever know.

“ One may conquer a thousand men in thousand battles. But the person who conquer just one person, which is one’s self, is the greatest conquer.” -Buddha