Balance Your Mind, Balance Your World

After my ten days of international travel, I had about 48 hours of down time in the apartment by myself before embarking on the final part of my fall break adventure: a meditation retreat at Wat Prathat Doi Suthep. You may remember from an earlier post that it is called Wat Prathat because the relic instead the gold chedi is from the actual Buddha. Pretty cool stuff. Anyway, my friend and I caught a song taew taxi from the front gate of Chiang Mai University up the mountain. It had started to rain as we arrived, so we were eager to find the Foreign Meditation Office and check in.

After filling out some paperwork, we traipsed a little ways back down the other side of the mountain, on a footpath that wove through trees and small buildings that may have been where the monks lived. We were joined by a man from Munich who planned on staying for a full 21 day course instead of the 3 day "sampler" course that was all we had time for due to classes beginning on Monday. I went back and forth on whether or not I wished I could have stayed longer - maybe you can help me decide at the end of this post!

Our first day was a Thursday, so we got a quick tour of the meditation center facilities (3 meditation halls, 4 buildings with rooms for people to stay in, the office, and the kitchen). We bought our white meditation uniforms (very basic pants and shirt) and were instructed to change and meet back at the main hall for the opening ceremony with the teacher.

One of the most important aspects of the retreat was taking 8 precepts. These are rules that are very important to different communities of Buddhists. Lay people can take 4, novices must take 10, and full-on monks take 227! We were pretty lucky with just 8, I guess. They were:

1. Abstain from killing living things. Not hard to follow, unless of course there's a mosquito on your arm or a spider on your wall! Not allowed to smack 'em.
2. Abstain from stealing. Generally I rule I try to follow every day!
3. Abstain from sexual misconduct. Although this means abstain from unhealthy relationships to lay people, for us it meant men and women sleep in separate buildings and to keep the focus on the meditation.
4. Abstain from false speech, i.e. lying. Also easy to do since we were instructed to keep silent as much as possible to eliminate distraction, but I guess it also meant being honest with the teacher when he asked us about our meditation experiences.
5. Abstain from alcohol, drugs, smoking. This is to avoid intoxicated, unnatural states of mind.
6. Abstain from eating at the forbidden time (i.e. after noon). I got really hungry the first day or two, but by the third day I realized my body didn't need all the sugary snacks I was so fond of.
7. Abstain from singing, dancing, playing music, attending entertainment performances, wearing perfume, and using cosmetics and garlands (decorative accessories). This one was actually pretty hard, not the no jewelry and make-up part as I left them at home, but the no entertainment part. I love my iPod so not having music to listen to at night was hard, and not being allowed to read or write either was really difficult when I was feeling bored with meditation!
8. Abstain from luxurious places for sitting or sleeping, and overindulging in sleep. We were to sleep only from 10 pm to 5 am, which is enough to stay healthy, but naps were not allowed! And our beds were harder than the ones at school, which is saying something.

So what did I do all day? Let me give you a break down of the typical day at Doi Suthep. The first day was different because of our brief opening ceremony at 4 pm when we lit candles and made flower offerings to the teacher while chanting in Pali. The closing ceremony on the final day at 8 am was similar. But here's the usual schedule:

5 am: Wake up. It was still dark at this time, and I had my own alarm clock so I could roll out of bed, wash my face, and brush my teeth.

5:30 am: Dhammatalk. The dhamma is a really broad word for the Buddhist teachings. Since I'm Christian, it helped me to "translate" the dhamma as maybe "the Word" or "the Good News." The Buddhist equivalent of the Bible is called the Pali Canon. The teacher, a monk, would tell us a story, not necessarily a Buddhist one, and relate it to our daily lives with plenty of advice on how to find balance and peace of mind. He loved to talk about the progression of science from Sir Isaac Newton to Albert Einstein, and how amazing it was that we could be so globally connected these days with just the phones in our pockets. With this information overload, it becomes all the more important to know yourself and train your mind so you don't get lost!

7 am: Breakfast. Prepared by lay people, breakfast was something simple like fried rice or noodle soup. We ate in silence, being mindful of each bite as we slowly chewed and swallowed, then washed our dishes. The point was not to enjoy the meal, but to acknowledge the necessity of food for survival.

At this point I would usually go to the walking meditation hall, which had several long carpets laid out as well as plenty of cushions for sitting. The method of meditation we followed called for equal time in walking and sitting meditation - beginners like me started at 15 minutes of each at a time, but I moved up to 20 minutes by the end of the retreat. For walking meditation, you only take 10 steps at a time, then turn around and take 10 more, etc. for 15 minutes. You focus only on the act of lifting and moving your feet. I actually found it to be easier than the sitting position.

The sitting meditation is motionless, as you sit on a cushion with your legs folded (right leg on top) and your hands palms up, right hand resting on left. You focus on your breathing - rising and falling - and the act of sitting. If your thoughts wander elsewhere, you acknowledge them, then try to get back to following your breath and sitting. It was so hard for me as after just a few minutes my legs would fall asleep, my back would start to hurt, and my thoughts would be all over the place. They don't say, "Practice makes perfect" for nothing, though, because the more I meditated it did get a little easier each time.

11 am: Lunch. Much like breakfast, the food was usually rice with a couple different kinds of vegetable or soy protein dishes. The food was all vegetarian, which was perfect for me! Mindful eating, always.

Sometimes I would go to the porch of one of the sitting meditation halls and just stare out and the trees. I wasn't meditating, I was just taking a break and thinking about my life, memories, or random things. It was like the special treat I awarded myself for being disciplined about meditating in the long mornings, afternoons, and evenings.

1 pm: Report to the teacher. The monk was so friendly and animated that it wasn't intimidating. He'd ask me a couple simple questions, then give me the next step of the techniques for sitting and standing. I didn't get very advanced in the techniques, being only there for a couple days, so I finally understood why people stayed for 21 days to really dig into the methodology and to get really good at meditating. It is a skill that requires much practice and is often the path to enlightenment for Buddhists. Not being Buddhist, enlightenment wasn't my goal, just spiritual re-connection as I feel that I've been letting so many other things get in the way of that aspect of my development as a person.

Afternoons were the longest block of time for meditation, and I would stake out "my" carpet and cushions in the walking hall. Although the claims were unspoken, each person in the handful of those who used the walking hall regularly had the place where he or she liked to practice. I think it established routine and a sense of comfort and familiarity, which ultimately helped with the practice as you wouldn't be distracted by a new pattern of sunlight on the carpet or new lump in the cushion. I would do my meditation set - 15 or 20 minutes of walking followed by 15 or 20 of sitting - using my phone as a timer. Each completed round meant a 5 or 10 minute break to stretch, drink some water, or go to the bathroom. I would do this for hours. It was a little nuts.

6 pm: Chanting. Buddhists chant in Pali for many ceremonies, and the daily chanting pays respect to the Buddha, the dhamma, and the sangha (Buddhist community). There was a translation for us as well as the pronunciation in booklets, but the point was not to pray but to practice deep breathing and meditate on the tonal qualities of the chanting. The teacher assured that it would not "interrupt our religion" as Buddhism is generally pretty open-minded towards other religions (hence why I could attend the retreat in the first place). I believe that you can respect and participate in someone else's religion without spiritually compromising your own. I really appreciated the opportunity to experience such a central aspect of Thailand's culture in a personally meaningful way.

10 pm: Bedtime. After a few more rounds of meditation practice, I'd take a quick shower in the tepid-at-best water, brush my teeth, and hit the hay. Our final instructions were to do 5 minutes of laying meditation in the form of focusing on breathing and relaxing. If I wasn't already tired (from sitting around all day!) it would have been really calming. A good trick to remember for those hectic days when my mind doesn't want to go to sleep even when the rest of me does.

Our final day (Sunday) we went to the closing ceremony with the teacher where he left us with the central message of "balance your mind, balance your world." The whole point of this is mental training so that you can control your thoughts to best handle any situation life throws at you. If you achieve balance in your mind - not focusing on negativity, pointless worrying, or unproductive wandering - you can achieve balance in everything you do. People so often take so much care of the others in their lives (family, friends, coworkers) that they forget to take care of themselves. The teacher encouraged us to try to do a round a meditation every day. "I say try to do, not have to do or must do," he clarified, acknowledging that life gets busy and we can get forgetful or lazy. That's the aspect of  this experience that I took to heart: I don't have to be perfect in my practice, the main thing is that I'm trying.

I recently read on the lifestyle blog "A Beautiful Mess" that this time of year is a good time to make "4 Simple Goals" to meet before the new year. I'm taking the writers up on this challenge and making one of my goals to do something meditative (in my loose interpretation) - walking, journaling, yoga, or a sitting meditation - every day for 20 minutes. I'm hoping this will give me some more balance between classes, teaching, friends, and other Thailand experiences and make the most of my remaining six (eek!) weeks here.