Travels in South-East Asia - Line Begby
A selection of some emails sent home from Line Begby
JANUARY FEBRUARY MARCH APRIL MAY
May 12 2003
I'm free, I'm free!!!
No, just kidding. But I have now finished my ten days of silence in the meditation retreat. Or actually, it was ten and a half days, including the day of registration and the day we left. So how was it, you may ask. The first surprise I got was the number of people there. I had expected perhaps 20 people, but in the beginning there were more than 130 people there!!! It was an area two kilometres away from the actual monastery, and the only non-foreign people we saw were the monks and the nuns who came to talk. (So no flirting with the monks, he he!) The men and women were segregated in different dormatories, but we just had each side to stick to in the dining hall and in the meditation hall. The rooms were quite spartanic. It was a concrete room of 2.5x4 metres or thereabout, with a wooden bench to lie on. And that was it. Very luxurious. The first nights were incredibly painful, but in the end I actually started to get used to it! Amazing what you can get used to, I suppose.
For me, there was really not that difficult to keep the silence. If there had been complete silence all the times, it probably would be difficult, but we had instructions of meditations, dhamma-talks, and the people organizing it talking to us sometimes, so even though we were silent, other people talked. To my great frustration, I wasn't able to keep the silence inside my head! I was constantly making conversations with myself, and heard all kinds of songs being played over and over again. Very annoying!
The schedule started with the bell waking us up at 4 o'clock in the morning, and at 4.30 there was a person who had a morning reading. This was followed by 30 minutes of meditation, and then 1,5 hours of yoga. Then we had 1 hour of dhamma-talk (explanation of the buddhist teachings), and breakfast. We were all doing different chores, and I think I had one of the easier ones. I swept one of the meditation halls, and was done in 5 minutes. Then we met again at 10, to have another dhamma talk, and then 2-3 hours of meditation, followed by lunch at 12.30. At 14, there was more meditation and dhamma talk, and chanting, and at 18 there was time for tea, and afterwards we could use the wonderful hot springs in the area. One for women, and one for men. At 19.30 we did some more meditation, and at 21 we went to bed again. Or something like that. Already the second day the monotony in it made me wonder how the hell I would get through ten days like that. But I figured I just had to stop thinking, and JUST DO IT! (A small commercial for Nike, there...) And I started to look forward to the small bright spots during the day. The yoga, the hot springs, the dhamma talks with the english munk...
The chanting was killing me. Really. Yawn, yawn. And the meditation was sometimes really, really hard. But then you suddenly had a wonderful meditation-experience, and then everything was just perfect again. It wasn't just the fact that you had to do many hours of meditation each day (even though there was sitting, standing and walkin), but you also had to practice mindfulness. That means that you constantly have to be aware of what you see, hear, and sense in any way, the reactions this stir in you, your feelings of it, and your reactions, and every movement you do. You really have to be 100 prosent consentrated about the present all the time. I could do it for a minute or two, and then suddenly I would think about something else. It was very demanding. Several times I was tempted to leave, as many did each day, but I didn't want to give up, and decided to stay a bit longer.
I had some deep moments where I really evaluated my own life and my motives and beliefs, and looked into myself and thought about all kinds of questions about life and death. I thought about impermanence, non-self, suffering, rebirths, love, craving, and stuff like that.
On day 11, it was time to leave. Finally. Day 10 had got on everybody's nerves, and in the morning, we could finally start to talk to eachother. It was a very strange experience. People you had seen for 10 days, and smiled to, but didn't really know, you now had the opportunity to talk to. And it was weird to suddenly hear all those buzzing voices again. It wasn't noisy or anything. Just strange. And almost everybody had experienced one revelation of some sort or other about their own lives, futures and so on. Unfortunately, we just got a few hours together before everybody went in opposite directions. We got a small tour on the main monastery-area and the gallery there, and after some exchanges of e-mail adresses, we were off. I went to Surat Thani to pick up the trainticket I had bought the day before I registered, and then I went with the night train to Bangkok.
So how do I feel now? Very proud of myself. I don't know how many times I was temped to turn on my cellphone just to check if I had any messages, and how many times I craved chocolate!!! But the strangest thing was that when I finally got that chocolate, and listened to music, and read e-mails and newspapers, and talked, I could stop up and start thinking: "But I actually don't need this, do I?" And I didn't enjoy it as much as I thought I would. It was just empty, in a way. I suppose I have understood the buddhist meaning of detachment. But I don't know how long this feeling will last, though... Anyway, on the train I got a quite good, soft bed, and I realized I had a hard time falling to sleep in it! Perhaps it was because of the sounds and bumps, but mainly I think it was because it was TOO soft!
So now I am in Bangkok again. I thought it would be painful and brutal to listen to all the trafficnoise again, see all the people moving around quickly, and just get back into the real world after 11 days of silent isolation. But it hasn't been that much of transition. And it does feel good to do normal things again. Go where I want to go when I want to go there, and so on. But I must say I am really, really glad I went there and stayed for the full 11 days. In the end I think there were about 80 people left there, and it was worth staying the whole time. Perhaps I want to do it again, but then probably with a smaller group of people. But I must say I recommend it to everybody. Actually, this retreat was easy compared to other retreats that last for 30 days, with more rules, and with up to 12 hours of meditation each day. But this was hard enough for me! I kept the rules during my stay as well. Or... OK, then. I killed a mosquito or two, but I'm not proud of it!
I'm staying in BKK for two days, and then I go back to Norway. I don't know if I feel happy or sad about it. Mostly sad, I think. I have actually thought about just changing my plane-ticket, take my savingsaccount-money, and continue on to India. But you know me. I have things to do back home, and that would mess up all my previous plans. But what can I say?
This trip has been so amazing. It feels as if I have been away for at least 6 months, and all the things I have experienced! Diving, snorkelling, kayakking, riding on elephants, being offered a marriage, shopping, trekking, going on boat trips and cave-discoveries, lying on the beach, swimming, shopping, meeting so incredicbly many nice people (Thanks to all of you!), lying sick with fever, riding motorbikes, riding jet-skis, having massage more times than I can count, crawling around in small tunnels underneath the earth, bargaining, checking in and out of all kinds of guesthouses, eating strange food, riding buses for hours and hours, just walking around looking at the different places, reading 15 books, and so on, and so on. I must say I feel very lucky. No wonder I don't want to go home, huh? I love this sense of feeling when I'm travelling. But I guess India, Japan, Tibet, Africa and South America have to wait till some other time. But how I look forward to eat norwegian food again! Nutritious, delicious bred, cheese, melkesjokolade, Go' morgen yoghurt, salt and salmiac snacks... Mmmm...
This is hereby my last travel-letter to all of you. For those of you who missed some of them, you can find them on the Funky Traveller. It's a web-page I heard about through one of the lovely persons I've met, and here you can also find other travel-letters from other parts of the world, tips if you want to travel, and it's absolutely free, you lose weight, gain confidence, and maybe find the love of your life! :-)
So I suppose that's it for me then. To all of you who patiently have read through my letters: I admire you greatly! I don't think I ever would do that! I guess I'm done for now. You have been a great audience. Thanks guys, I look forward to hear from you and see all of you again!
CIAO!!!
