January 12, 2003
Greetings from Thailand, dear friends! I flew out on
Christmas Day and got here on the 26th. I spent a few
days in smoggy, teeming Bangkok, and then headed down
south to Chaiya, where, on New Year's Day -- at 4am --
I began a 10-day silent meditation retreat at a
Buddhist monastery in the forest called Wat Suan
Mokkh. No talking, no reading or writing or emailing,
no dinner (just evening tea), no sleeping on anything
except a concrete platform -- just lots and lots of
meditating. The retreat ended yesterday morning.
Wow.
Is. Pretty. Much. All. I. Can. Say.
Talking seems weird. Using this computer seems weird.
Everything pretty much seems weird, including eating
after noon and waking up anytime after 4am. (I never
did get used to the
dump-a-few-bowls-of-heartstoppingly-cold-water-over-your-head
shower method, though.)
The retreat was amazing. Difficult at times -- a lot
of physical pain in the back and legs from so much
sitting (and from the sleeping accommodations), my
mind always wandering away from the present, always
fidgety, struggling with my discipline and
concentration.
But wonderful as well. Lots of intense insights.
Learned so much about my body, my mind, my ego, and so
on. Started to really grasp No Self (one of the only
absolute truths in Buddhism, along with Everything's
Impermanent and Everything's Suffering) for the first
time. I opened my eyes and I saw the Connectedness of
Everything. (I'm not kidding.) It was like the end of
The Matrix, when lunkheaded ol' Keanu finally becomes
the One and sees everything as the Matrix for the
first time. That's what it was like. (My apologies, by
the way, for illustrating this profound insight with a
reference to a violence-drenched piece of pop
culture.) Everything -- me, the other people, the
clouds, the sky, the ponds, the birds, the trees --
was all Clumps of Nature, these beautiful bunches of
Stuff.
And the next day, after watching a bunch of ants
pretty intensely for about an hour, I got the Oneness
of Everything. For the briefest camera-flash of a
moment, I saw as clear as day that everything, from
the tiniest atom to the largest galaxy -- and ants and
cars and humans in between -- works in exactly the
same way, subject to the same laws of Nature, and that
all these bunches of Stuff were just bubbles of the
One Big Bunch of Stuff that is the Universe.
I'm not kidding.
I may just have to write a book about it. If I do,
I'll call it:
STUFF
A Handy Guide to Everything in the Universe,
Including You
What else? Oh, so much. Every leaf on every tree
becomes a lesson, and a blessing. How much more you
can taste when you carefully note what's on your
spoon, put it in your mouth, put the spoon down, close
your eyes and actually chew. How I actively seek
evidence to judge others with. How, after 10 days of
lots of breathing and not talking and slowing down the
mind and never looking into a mirror, you can sort of
loosen the grip on the Self -- or its grip on you. How
quickly, upon being asked to talk publicly, the Self
tightened its grip again. How the big stalks of
lettuce contained these ever-smaller Russian-doll
copies of itself. How peas in sugar-water actually
make a nice cooling dessert. How you can breathe your
way through intense physical pain by just watching it
go through your body. When you heard a weird sound, it
was more often produced by something in nature rather
than a cell-phone or a car alarm. How my appetite
decreased as the retreat went on, to the point where
one small meal at 8am and a glass of tea at noon and 6
was totally okay. My fingernails are longer than
they've ever been. The delicate beauty of the 6:15am
sunrise in the meditation hall, the mist over the
ponds, the stars at night. Every other person, every
other being, an opportunity for inspiration or
compassion, or both. Seeing impermanence everywhere,
especially in my own roller-coaster emotions. Getting
in touch with these insights so full that your body
can't contain them, and then not being able to get
there again the next day because your butt hurts, or
because of something somebody completely silent didn't
say, or because you're just cranky, or because, of
course, Soul-Filling Insights don't just come along
every day.
And the ants! The ants are incredible! They build
these highways! They've got these teeth!
Anyway, I'm going to stick around for a day or two in
relative seclusion (in the men's dormitory across the
road) and write down as much as I can before I regain
my sanity. Then, I'm off to chill with some folks on
the beautiful island of Koh Chang.
I hope you are all well, dear friends. Do send news
from home, no matter how trivial.
Happy 2546,
Andrew
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