One hundred people surrounded me in the dark, but the only sound I could hear was that of my own breath.
Suddenly, a low voice swam through the thick silence and saturated all four corners of the open-air forest monastery where we sat in stillness:
“Right now, there is nothing you have to do or think about.”
The Thai monk’s mellow tone echoed throughout the wall-less Dharma Hall towards the ears of dozens of visitors and volunteers from around the world. I would hear his heavenly hum over the speaker every night but could only ever imagine the all-knowing expression that resided with it, since we kept our eyes closed throughout the routine.
“All you have to do…” he would continue with a lingering pause, “is focus on your breathing.”
As I prepared my breath to begin a forty-minute silent meditation, I savored the taste of the moment. I felt grateful to be in a special place, at none other than Northern Thailand’s Wat Pa Tam Wua Forest Monastery (abbreviated as Wat Tam Wua), absorbing the precious Theravadan Buddhist teachings from six monks.
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At Wat Tam Wua, visitors are welcome to stay for up to ten days to practice meditation in a beautiful forest setting comprised of rainbow-colored trees, streams, hidden caves and mountains. The monastery runs solely off of donations from visitors and organizations. Volunteers facilitate the space, organize activities, and provide visitors with accommodations plus two vegetarian meals a day.
Though I was a foreigner without a Buddhist upbringing, I felt completely comfortable during my week-long stay at Wat Tam Wua, as they welcome anyone with open arms who aspires to learn about Buddhism, meditation, or simply “become a more mindful, focused and happy human being,” as their website explains. Check, check, check for me.
After hearing about the life-changing retreat from my hostel roommate who had attended, I researched Wat Tam Wua and concluded it was a must-do experience that aligned with my solo trip goals. Why do we travel anyway, if not to become better people?
* * *
My mind and body dueled and danced with each other during our thrice daily meditations in the monastery Dharma Hall. I sat in a white plastic chair (white was for women, blue for men) in the back of the holy structure that consisted of an enormous flat slabbed ceiling supported by wooden beams and glossed with ocher-brown tile floors, all encircled by forest views.
Most students plopped down on the moss green pillows in the traditional way with one leg bent over the other while meditating, but I resorted to the chair after finding this cross-legged position too difficult to hold for such long periods of time (about five hours a day).
In the daytime, the structure’s ceiling provided shade from the scorching Thai sun, as the monastery is located near Mae Hong Son near the border of Myanmar. In the evening, the whining mosquitos joined us for meditation.
It is quite a magical feeling to close your eyes on a purple-permed night in the middle of the forest across the world, resounding in the silent presence of the sacred and the studious, with all one hundred beings inhaling and exhaling at the same vibration.
Getting There
The spiritual road is full of twists and turns. I hopped into a minivan leaving Pai’s hippie town that swerved through wavy mountains for one hour before the van driver halted to a sudden stop, dumping me in the woods of Mae Hong Son.
Another rider also got off the van to make the half mile walk to the entrance. She seemed less eager to chit-chat than me, which I didn’t take offense to since we were heading to a mecca for spiritual growth, not to make friends. Plus, I knew some visitors to Wat Tam Wua choose to remain silent during their stay (you can put on a Silent pin at any time), though not required.
What struck me first were two enormous golden mountains looming above like gods looking down over us, massively disproportionate to the rest of the landscape. They were greeters beckoning us in the right direction.
What would this spur-of-the-moment visit bring? What would I learn from the monks? These questions captivated me.
A Spellbinding Setting
Finally, the trees parted to reveal an arched entrance above a wide sand road leading towards a village of huts by the river. We had arrived.
Two friendly monks in orange robes spotted our lost faces and waved us down to point us in the direction of the reception. I was pleased we were already able to speak with the monks casually, because as women we must keep our distance out of respect.
On that note, the volunteer checking me in did mention that women must sit in the back half of the main hall for all lessons and meditations, far from the speakers. We also had to walk behind the men during walking meditation. The reasoning was “to not have any distractions from meditation,” which you can make your own conclusions about. Later, these gender rules ended up being a bit inconvenient as the lessons often started before the women returned from walking meditation. However, I didn’t let this damper my experience and I was thankful to be able to visit the monastery at all.
The kind-hearted volunteer explained a few other rules essential to showing respect. Do not sit with your feet pointing towards Buddha; do not hug your knees into your chest when sitting (this implies boredom); all visitors must wear white clothes (these are provided if you have none); yoga is not allowed outside your kuti (poses can be provocative); be sure to arrive early to all activities.
Most importantly, all spiritual activities are mandatory, from 6:30 AM to 8:00 PM.
After checking in, I plucked a mat, blanket, and pillow along with the white uniform from the laundry shed and trotted towards the dormitory, since all the private kutis were full.
Photo by Catalina Koe
The dorm was one large room with a screen door for insects and a creaky wooden floor that could probably fit about forty mats. During my stay, the greatest amount of people sleeping in the room at a time was near thirty.
I tossed my pack down and quickly changed into the loose lavender-tinted-white pair of sweatpants and unisex V-neck blouse, almost resembling scrubs, ready to jolt downstairs and arrive early to the mid-day food offering to the monks.
My quiet mate from the van was slugging into the dorm as I leapt out the door. “You look like a nurse,” she smirked at me.
A Full Schedule of Activities
Our daily schedule consisted as follows, with mandatory activities in bold:
05:00 Morning meditation in your kuti.
06:30 Rice offering to the monks.
07:00 Breakfast.
08:00 Morning Dharma talk, and meditation class.
10:30 Food offering to the monks.
11:00 Lunch.
13:00 Afternoon Dharma talk and meditation class.
16:00 Cleaning the area and helping in the monastery.
17:00 Free time.
18:00 Evening Chanting, meditation and Dharma talk.
20:00 Meditation on your own, or have tea, coffee, hot chocolate & relax.
22:00 Rest time.
Rice and Food Offerings
Every morning at dawn, we knelt in darkness to participate in the age-old tradition of offering rice to the monks. Each monk would hold an alms bowl while sauntering down the line of kneeling students, pausing in front of each student who would then scoop a spoonful of rice into the bowl. This was the breakfast offering, as monks only eat and drink what is given to them. Afterwards, a volunteers would bring the monks the rest of their meal to accompany the rice.
Photo by Catalina Koe
For the lunch offering, the final meal of the day, the process was slightly different. The female students would present the various dishes to the abbot (the head monk), bowing before him and raising the soups and salads and vegetable-potato-rice-filled dishes in the air before placing them down in front of him. The abbot would pick the dishes up with a receiving cloth (as to form a barrier between what the women had touched) and serve himself the food before passing on each dish to the male students that could offer them freely to the other monks.
The jolly light-eyed abbot would always make silly remarks that cracked me up, dissolving any seriousness at the monastery. He would laugh at his own jokes, too. For example, instead of instructing us plainly not to visit the dorms of the opposite gender, he would instead say “Tonight… no Thai massage!”. When recounting the story of a student who was afraid of a snake, he would acquire a high-pitched squeal, giggling as he mimicked the student: “Help me! Don’t kill me Mr. Snake!” as we all buzzed with chuckles.
Meals and Silent Area
For the lay-person meals (the students and volunteers), we would eat the same foods that the monks ate after they were served. We lined up for buffet-style breakfast and lunch, the latter around 11AM.
Having our final meal at normal “brunch” hours was not as big of a problem as you would imagine, given that we were rising and going to bed early. However, after the third ay I succumbed to my cravings and purchased snacks at the small store at Wat Tam Wua that sold items like cup of noodles, chips, some fruit, and sweets.
Why didn’t we eat dinner? From the Buddhist books I read at the monastery such as Ajahn Sumedho’s anthologies, they explain that while us lay people often surround our days around desirable foods and celebrate feasts, monks eat consciously as a utility. By only eating one or two simple meals a day, this limits food or other pleasures from becoming a priority over spirituality.
The dining area was split into two sections: silent and non-silent tables. Even though I chose not to wear a silent pin, as to have the freedom to speak if I wanted to connect with people, I still found myself sitting at the silent tables every meal, reflecting.
Chanting
What some people found tiring ended up being one of my favorite activities: evening chanting. We chanted uplifting credos in Pali, Thai, and English for forty minutes, and although I only understood the English, I treated the chants like songs, and belted them out loudly. After all, it was our only music!
Cleaning the Monastery
Voluntary cleaning usually consisted of raking leaves or sweeping around the monastery, although we were encouraged to help out at all times, from preparing food in the kitchen to washing dishes to tidying up the common areas. The hour gave me a chance to get some light exercise and chat with other students to find out how their meditation experiences were going. I even got a rare chance to speak one-on-one with the abbot (though we just made small talk).
Core of the Meditations and Dharma Talks
“Feel each part of the body. It is not your body. It is the body,” the monks instructed us during sitting meditation. “Feel!”
The monks detailed the distinction between the soul and the mind and the body — between observing and thinking and feeling. This body is merely a vessel for us to experience during this lifetime; not the same as the soul of our being.
“Notice the mind thinking. It is not your mind. It is the mind.”
We shall disassociate with the mind as self. We notice the mind’s mortal thoughts without judgment, like watching a cloud pass by. We do not try to stop or repress the thoughts, as they will disappear on their own once we are observant.
Our soul is the knower.
These acknowledgments laid the foundations for our meditation practice.
3 Types of Meditation
Each meditation session consisted of walking, sitting and lying down meditations.
Walking meditation? I always thought meditation was about sitting still.
Photo by Catalina Koe
We would shuffle slowly in a single file line through the forest, the utmost serene setting. One monk would lead the line, meticulously stepping his right heel down like molasses, followed by the ball of the foot, then toes, chanting the mantra “Bud” in his head. Then, the same thing on the left side, except chanting “Dho”. You can imagine how slow we were walking.
“Bud dho” means “the one who knows,” as we become the knower: aware of our thoughts, separate from the mind, rather than letting our thoughts run like a wild horse.
The point of each calculated step was to remain focused on one object, such as the soles of your feet, the inhale and exhale of your breath, or the mantra “Bud-Dho”. This is the essence of Samatha meditation.
Once we master Samatha, we may move into Vipassana meditation to reach a greater wisdom. Vipassana meditation involves moving the object of concentration into the background (i.e. your breath) and noticing how the mind wanders towards or away from that object, allowing the thoughts to become the foreground. Thus, in Vipassana meditation we notice both the object and the mind at the same time.
It was challenging to stay focused while woodlands of wonder preceded us.
We strolled by gorgeous gold and purple flower petals, the sparkling river, autumn-tinted leaves, mysterious caves, and a cute Chow-mixed dog named “Bui Dog” that would follow us around the monastery. I still think his name should be “Bud-Dhog”.
After almost an hour of walking meditation, we washed our feet and sunk back into a chair or cushion in the main hall to practice sitting meditation using the same fundamentals for another forty minutes. Finally, we reclined on the floor for a fifteen minute lying down meditation.
We repeated this triad in the morning and afternoon, with the evening session solely consisting of the sitting meditation.
It may sound like a lot of meditation for the beginner, but the way the sessions were broken up gave the day structure and made sense.
Personal Experience
Despite a week of studies, the greatest takeaway I left with was that truly understanding meditation comes from practice.
Each day of practice grew easier to focus and calm the mind. While the first day or two was challenging – to sit for hours, to stay present, and to find stillness – my experience transformed into pure bliss after breaking the ice.
Still, I felt quite lost at times. Am I doing the meditation correctly? My mind wanders less, but I don’t feel particularly wonderful, or like I am accomplishing anything.
I decided to borrow some books on Buddhism from the monastery library to aid my practice and fill in the blanks, and ended up reading five books during my stay. The books written by bhikkus and scholars explained concepts in depth, from the fundamental truths of Buddhism all the way to modern applications today, answering several questions I had. Here are just a few that may be useful to your daily life:
How often should we meditate?
Working all day and doing one meditation at night is not likely going to be able to cure all our learned mental patterns. Instead, focus on co-existing with these busy mental states throughout the day. Be kind and patient and aware. In other words, apply the constant practice of non-judging, non-attached loving kindness throughout the day to remain in a neutral state.
How do we get rid of negative thoughts?
Our arising thoughts and feelings are normal and should not be shut out, whether we think of them as ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Emotions are mortal states that we cannot repress. We simply absolve them by acknowledging them, which results in their naturally passing. Meditation allows us to remain neutral towards these emotions. In Buddhism, there are no mental offenses, no sins for certain thoughts, so long as we do not act upon them.
I am affected by the negative people / world around me.
We cannot control the world around us, and we suffer when we expect the world to bend to our satisfaction. Oftentimes, we blame society or our upbringing or other folks for our problems. It is true that other people behave in ways that are inappropriate, however we are still responsible for our own reactions and expectations. Their actions result in their own karma. The good news for us is that when we stop clinging to an outcome, we are able to let go and accept the world as is — freeing us from desire and suffering.
If we let go of desire, how can we still be motivated to do anything?
We can still be productive individuals and achieve purpose in our lives, without heedless desires. This comes from knowing things as they really are, through mindfulness. When we observe with an uncontaminated mind, we achieve clarity on what we are here to do, without intrusive desires or clouded judgment. For example, Buddha was free of desire but still remained a productive teacher. He did not become one in order to be a famous person, or to earn lots of money, or to find a wife — but because it was his calling. Neutrality through meditation allows us to make guided choices to understand what we need to do and what we need not to do.
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This unique week that I had the privilege to spend at Wat Pa Tam Wua Forest Monastery in Thailand was nothing like I expected but became everything I needed. I am eternally grateful to the extremely patient monks that dedicate their life to teaching others, answering all our outlandish questions in multiple languages, and giving us the tools for a lifetime. I thank the volunteers who pour their hearts into the monastery yet collect their plate of food last.
On the last day, I left my donation and crammed with ten others into the bed of a rustic metal truck that skirted out the cream-colored arched entryway. I looked back at the gods on the golden mountains as the sunny waters whispered to me, goodbye.
Gallery
An assortment of Spring memories not already pictured. Click each preview to view the full image.
