Breakfast in Nirvana

Today I'm leaving Indonesia and Islam and posting an article that I wrote for The Australian some years ago.

 Breakfast in Nirvana: 10 Days in a Thai Monastery

Are you the sort of person who really likes getting bossed around? Do you like getting up at 4am? How about eating a kind of tasteless vegetarian glue twice a day? Wooden neck-pillows? Serious lectures from virgins about the evils of sexual pleasure?
Wat Suan Mok monastery is about 70 years old and famous in Thailand and internationally for its vipassana (clear sight) meditation retreats. It is surrounded by rainforest, hot springs and rice fields. Bhikkhu Buddhadhasa, the founder of Suan Mok, is a respected figure locally and internationally. His monastery is said to reflect the form of Buddhism practised by the earliest disciples more than 2,500 years ago. I’m about to step off the train from Bangkok and take a trip back in time.

Not your standard tourist attraction, the famous retreats are silent (you can’t speak for ten days) and open to people of all or no religions. The retreats are run by the monks, with assistance from some volunteers from various western countries. I am personally not particularly interested in Buddhism. I’ve just come here because I really need some peace and quiet – but I’m prepared to keep an open mind and listen…..or am I?

Welcome to Day One
4am Rise on bell
4.30am Listen to a reading
5.30 – 7am Yoga
7-8am Breakfast (you can’t taste it at all)
By 10 am it definitely feels like bedtime. A very old, wise, lovely monk comes to give us a lecture. He is obviously an important and respected man and has among his credentials the experience of having lived alone in a cave for nine years. I think he probably has a lot of useful things to say. Unfortunately this monk taught himself English and I can’t understand one word he is saying. By Day 8, I’ll be literally shaking with boredom and frustration when he begins to speak (he speaks for an hour, twice a day). After the talk there’s meditation and another talk, and meditation, and another talk and meditation – and there’s another silent, gloomy meal in there somewhere. Everyone looking like dejected, red-eyed sheep at the table. The bed is a concrete slab and they turn the lights out and lock you in at 9.30.
I’m not sure I can do this.

Day 2
The same as Day One.

Day 3
The same as Day Two. Unless this is Day Two. No. I was wearing a different shirt. I am beginning to understand how a snail feels.

Day 4
… is definitely different. I’ve slept in and someone’s trying to get into my room.
“Please go outside.”
“I didn’t hear the bell.”
“You didn’t listen.”
Rolling off the concrete slab to confront the voice of trite authority is an ugly moment. I am suddenly wildly angry and realize that I’ve been getting bossed around and having my privacy violated and sleep interrupted for three days. I’m all hunched up like a baby bird and I’d murder a cup of coffee if I could get one. It’s pre-dawn in the forest – quiet and black. Stumbling down to the hall where the others are already sitting on their cushions on the concrete floor. I can’t find my cushions and I’m convinced that the smug German girl with the paisley headband has stolen them. This is a morning so unbearable and ridiculous that I can’t believe I’m not dreaming.
7am – Meditation – The sun is a huge orange disc over the coconut trees. Something has happened. I’m breathing and listening and watching and I can feel the golden roundness of every moment rising and falling away. My body is radiating and the morning is pure and beautiful. I can feel the exchange of energy between my body and the entire world, it seems. The rest of the retreat will be like this – one moment frustrated to fever pitch, the next profoundly calm and radiant. A human yo-yo.

Day 5
A cadaverous looking English monk comes to speak. He speaks English, which is a great relief, and he’s very witty and entertaining until he starts to talk about the dangers of sexual desire. (We’ve heard a lot about that already and as I’m only a week out of a torrid holiday romance, I’m not convinced.) He suddenly sounds angry. He gets a bit worked up and starts to sputter:
“Sex is for procreation only – otherwise it’s just like mutual masturbation – and we all know where that leads!!!”
Where does it lead, I wonder. To blindness? Diabetes? A nasty rash?
Then he switches the subject to food and suddenly I’m dreaming about sex and bacon and egg sandwiches.

Day 6
Reading – yoga – meditation - lecture from the incomprehensible monk - meditation - not bacon and eggs – lecture from the monk who doesn’t like us to have sex – red eyed sheep eating glue…
Day 7
Every evening we are asked to send loving kindness to the leader of our country. In fact sending loving kindness to any of the current political leaders is the tallest order I’ve had so far. Ok – I’ve promised not to read, write, talk to anyone, masturbate (alone or with a friend) , kill mosquitoes , wear perfume or use toilet paper. But you’ve got to draw the line somewhere.

Day 8
Today I actually jump the fence and escape into the forest. After a few minutes I come across two completely naked men in a hot spring. Their clothes and a packet of cigarettes are on a stone bench nearby. Could these people be the spirit elves of the forest? Or a mirage set up by the monastery to tempt me? I ask for a cigarette in tourist Thai and they answer just like normal, courteous men would if a mirage in mint-green meditation trousers stepped out from behind a tree an asked for a cigarette.
“Would you like to join us?”
“Better not.”

Day 9
Things are breaking down a little. Several people have left and there have been wild rains, thunder, lightning, some small fish throwing themselves out of the lake by accident and trying to walk back on their fins. There seems to be a message in there somewhere. Some people have already started talking and I want them to stop. Tomorrow is really there, although they keep trying to tell us it’s an illusion.

Day 10
I’ve made it. Today we can go. I’m walking down the lane with this bloke called Harry from Adelaide, who’s telling me about the current “situation” with his wife. It’s like exiting from a dream into a world of lost children. This whole thing has been such an incredible struggle with discomfort, tiredness, boredom, my own very strong dislike of being bossed around. It’s only when I get back to Chai Ya that I notice it. The quiet that I seem to have taken with me like an extra piece of weightless luggage, in place of a whole lot of angry noise left behind.

Some useful tips for meditators that I picked up on the retreat:

• If you find yourself falling asleep, beat yourself with a stick.

• You can overcome lust by looking at pictures of decaying corpses

• It is important to sit in a way that is both stable and secure, so that when the mind becomes semi-conscious, you do not fall over.