We embarked upon this trip to grow and change, increasing our knowledge and satisfaction, helping to set the compass for the second half of our lives.
In Japan, we visited many temples and shrines, but it seems that the much of the religion is just that --the shrines and temples, and not particularly visible or important in the daily life. In Thailand, Buddhism is much more important. We wanted to experience it. After a quick search through the Internet, we found a monastery that accepts foreigners, teaches in English, and doesn't attempt to replace Judeo-Christian beliefs, but just adds to them. The ten-day retreat is held at the beginning of each month. We were off to the Wat Suan Mokkh.
The monk at the Buddhist temple Wat Suan Mokkh is an unusual Monk. He is thoroughly schooled in all of the world's religions (he even startles Judeo-Christian theologians by knowing more of those traditions than many western religious leaders at world conferences). He has a strong passion to bring people together, believing that diverse religions can unite instead of divide people.
He founded Wat Suan Mokkh many decades ago to help bring people together. Today, this has spawned the International Dhamma Hermitage, which holds a monthly meditation retreat for 120 westerners every month. The focus of the retreat is meditation practice. The Buddhist belief is people must experience their religion, not just read it in a book or hear it in a sermon. Buddhists experience their religion through meditation.
The daily schedule at the retreat is to rise at 4 AM and intersperse five hours of meditation with lectures, chores and exercise. The cement dormitory is designed to resemble sleeping in a cave (the best place for monks), with a mat on a cement bed and a wooden pillow. Attendees keep silence the entire ten days. Only breakfast and lunch are served, with fasting all afternoon and night. For younger people fasting was a challenge, but we have only been eating two meals a day anyway, so it just moved our mid-afternoon meal a couple of hours earlier.
The attendees include people in their twenties, thirties, forties and fifties. There are people from every walk of life. The sitting and exercise was more of a challenge for our older bodies. They don't flex like they used to! The meditation sessions are sitting or kneeling without a chair back. It is important to have a very straight back when meditating, and the sitting postures are quite difficult for westerners. The yoga helped loosen up the old bodies and felt quite refreshing. (We might continue yoga after the retreat.) Our bodies were sore the whole time, but got better at the end. (A Thai Nun quipped that with the increase in the use of chairs in Asia, within twenty years the Thais will not be able to sit and meditate comfortably either.)
The timing is good. We have spent two years simplifying our lives. We feel much better without all of the stuff, both the possession and the daily torrent of tasks.
The meditation technique taught is the anapanasati meditation, which is concentration on the breath. By focusing on the breath exclusively, you learn to concentrate your full mind. Meditation, at least at the beginning, is mostly about clearing the mind and retaining focus. Western minds are so cluttered. We are accustomed to a constant storm of noise and interruptions. We have created a world that is very difficult for many to live in --I wonder if the number of children on Ritalin is more an indication that our environments are over stimulating rather than that the child is hyperactive. It took several days for us just to slow the mind down and concentrate.
The basic technique is to initially capture the mind's attention on the breath by making it exaggerated, and to eventually reduce it to a very subtle level. The mind initially wanders so easily it is quite difficult to corral it. The first stage is to breathe in and breathe out in long breaths, and to focus the mind on chasing the breath as if there were a long pipe from the nostril to the navel. With each breath in, the mind follows the breath from the nostril to the navel, and with the breath out it traverses back. With practice, you can capture the mind and stop it from wandering. Then you can reduce the breath to shorter breaths, and eventually just focus on the air coming and going at the nostrils. With 10-20 hours of practice we were able to capture the mind and cease most of the wanderings. At that point, the mediators begin insight meditation. Once concentration meditation has quieted the mind, insight meditation is possible. Insight meditation is simply focusing the entire mind on one thought completely. It is a fundamental part of Buddhism.
Another form of meditation is walking meditation. The concept is to completely focus the mind on walking, such as by moving slowly and observing and controlling every lifting, moving, and dropping of the foot. Rod had just partial success with walking meditation, but can relate it to swimming. For weeks, he has been swimming in the ocean. Rather than swimming for exercise, it has become instead a discipline of swimming for form. Swimming properly requires full concentration, shutting everything else out of the mind. Swimming form (at least mine) is never perfect, so the mind is constantly observing and tuning. I have gotten so I can swim several miles without feeling any tiring, since my emphasis is on making the form better. The downside is that swimming is no longer a very good exercise, since it neither makes me breathe hard nor works the muscles hard. But if I step up the pace, I lose the form, and I have found the concentration on the form to be the most enjoyable part. It's kind of like dance I suppose. Anyway, that is what walking meditation is supposed to be like
Here comes a one-minute synopsis of Buddhism for those of you not familiar with it (I apologize to those who are --this oversimplification is pretty horrible).
Buddhists believe that change and impermance are the laws of Nature, and that humans suffer because we resist it. We attach ourselves to possessions, and are troubled when they disappoint. We also resist the fact that our bodies age, become sick, and die. A fundamental Buddhist truth is that everything is in fact impermanent, and we will only suffer if we attach ourselves to it. Fortunately, we can overcome this cycle of cause and effect. The key point is that whenever we take the natural ebb and flow of the natural world and attempt to define it as "mine" or even "me", then we are attaching ourselves to things that will change and perish, and we will suffer. Instead, we need to transcend that thinking to be more universal, beyond just "me", and accept the entire world as a natural, changing process.
So what is a Buddhist supposed to do? A key point is to achieve purity and develop concentration of the mind, to be ready for action when needed. The vast majority of our daily lives is just distractions and should be ignored. The key is to keep the mind very alert and concentrated on what is right, and take actions accordingly.
An example? When our bodies sense something, we quickly develop a reaction. For example, a foul smell may cause us to judge something or someone bad. But since we are all one connected entity, it makes no sense to judge another bad. Instead, there is simply a smell. That's it. Now, if the smell tells us we should take action, such as empty the garbage, then we do it. We do not think about who made it dirty, why we have to clean it, how horribly unsanitary it is. We focus the mind to filter out many thoughts and perceptions before they develop, allowing us to concentrate the mind on what matters. Especially, we filter out those thoughts that divide the world into "me" and other objects, and all of the resulting judgments about good and bad.
Another way to understand Buddhism is to look at Westerners through Buddhist's eyes. Buddhists avoid over stimulation, which cloud the mind. Clear concentration is critical to right living. Westerners, on the other hand, do not seem comfortable to be quiet. We avoid facing the true nature of the world, including aging, sickness and death, by over stimulating our minds, seeking constant entertainment and pleasure. But since the objects of our attention are changing and impermanent, we unavoidably are disappointed and want more. We get caught in a cycle, refusing to recognize the basic laws of nature, spending our time in denial seeking new experiences to replace the ones that have disappointed us. A monk described Consumerism as the religion of the west. When we have an unsatisfied need or want, we buy something. We overeat and are obese. We think we can run away from unpleasant things, and keep pleasant things. Neither is true. We have such noisy, chaotic lives that we cannot see the simple truths, and are caught in a vicious cycle of becoming attached to our possessions and our thoughts and beliefs. Instead, we need to purify our mind, concentrate our mind, and see that such things will never be satisfying.
Thai Buddhists also view the Westerners as using competition to define how people interact with each other, with disastrous results. Competition is alienating and dividing. This further increases our feelings of "self" versus everything else, preventing us from being at peace.
Buddhism is 2500 years old, while competition and consumerism is just 100 or 200. The west is an extreme example of the excesses that the Buddha warned against, and is suffering from those excesses.
Regardless of whether you agree with Buddhism, on a practical level there is some wisdom to be gleaned. It is certainly the case that much of the world's problems (and our own) comes from worrying too much about "me" and "mine". We get our feelings hurt, we protect our egos, and we defend our pride. Nothing good comes of this. Learning to disassociate ourselves with the initial instances that give rise to such feelings allows us to live much more peaceful lives, both internally and externally. Maybe you cannot accept the Buddhist notion that in fact there is no "self", but on a practical level we certainly can all live much better if we develop the skill to remove our "self" concerns from our actions and reactions to the world around us.
"An effort to reform society which is not coupled with an equal effort to develop one's spiritual self cannot bring about lasting results. It is like trying to cool a pot of boiling soup by merely stirring it, while ignoring the blazing fuel underneath." --Buddhist parable.
