" You will suffer."
These words of encouragement came from the Abbott after listening to my answers to his few brief questions: ” Do you want to learn to meditate?” (yes) “Do you have any experience with meditation?” (no) “Are you Buddhist?” (no) “Can you sit cross legged on the floor for ninety minutes? (no) At least he me some basic instructions on how to meditate, and a book to read on the subject.
I went to the meditation center, which is located near Moulemein, Myanmar, with my friend Htun Thein, with whom I had known in Thailand ten years before while I was working for MSF (Doctors Without Borders). We had often talked about going to the meditation center, and now he was eager to take me.
The day at the meditation center began at 3:30 AM with the pounding of a wooden drum. At 4:00AM the first of five ninety minute meditation sessions began. I was allowed to sit in a chair, but outside the main meditation hall so that my head was not higher than the heads of the monks who sat on the floor inside.
We ate breakfast at 5:45 AM and had lunch at 10:00 AM. We were not allowed to eat any food after 12:00PM. For each meal I walked through the long food line after the monks were served, holding my tray with a large metal bowl that looked like a dog food bowl. The food was bland but okay and there was plenty of it. Breakfast was noodles and vegetables, lunch was rice and vegetables, plus fresh fruit. Hot sweet coffee was served with both meals. We ate sitting on the floor of the covered walkway leading to the meditation hall. After eating we washed our bowls and returned them.
I found the meditation difficult to say the least. The first and last sessions were in the dark. During the evening session mosquitoes buzzed around my head. The first rule at the meditation center was that you are not allowed to kill any form of life, including mosquitoes. The monks sat under mosquito nets but I did not have one; my repellent kept them from biting me, but not from buzzing me.
The first time I tried to meditate the time seemed to go on and on, never ending. I kept telling myself that soon the gong would ring and I could stop, but it never did. When Htun Thein finally told me to stop meditating I discovered that I had been at it for almost three hours, and that there was no gong to mark the end of each session. Htun Thein is a very good meditator, very self disciplined.
My bed was a wooden platform covered by a thin mat. I did have a mosquito net which helped with the insects but prevented any breeze from reaching me. I slept poorly and in the morning I found that the bedbugs in my blanket had feasted on me, leaving 15 bright red extremely itchy spots on my body. If I could have found a bed bug I certainly would have broken the first cardinal rule. You may wonder why I needed a blanket. Well it actually did get chilly around 2 AM.
People at the meditation center were very friendly and supportive. They seemed genuinely glad to have me there even though I felt like a fish out of water. Would I go there again? Well probably not, but I'm very glad I went this time, if nothing else it makes for great journal fodder. And I am seriously hoping that I can learn to meditate, to control my untamed mind.
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