“Cancelled due to volcano.”
“Cancelled due to volcano.”
“Delayed due to volcano…”
I stood in the Bali airport, staring in astonishment at the flight information board as flight after flight switched from “delayed,” to “cancelled due to volcano.”
In a brief moment of levity, I chuckled as I wondered who had it worse – the people whose flights were cancelled, or the people whose flights were delayed because their pilots thought, “ok, I know it’s a literal volcano, but hold my beer, I think we can make this.”
After the childish thought passed, frustration set in as I realized that an actively exploding volcano on Komodo island was projecting ash and shards of glass 9 kilometers into the air was grounding nearly all flights between Bali and Australia. The once in a century eruption coincidentally took place the same day I was due to travel to a meditation training at a temple in northern Thailand.
Mount Lewotobi Laki Laki actively erupting, grounding flights to and from Bali, and keeping me from my next adventure (Image courtesy of The Star)
I’d been waiting 7 years for the opportunity sit in silence for 10 days and learn the Buddhist approach to mental strength at a specific monastery. But, now one of the most violent possibilities on earth was preventing me from finally having one of the most peaceful experiences on earth.
The irony wasn’t lost on me, even in the frustration of that moment.
I spent the next three days switching cancelled and delayed flights, sleeping in airports, and booking trains last minute in an attempt to reach the meditation center before the deadline for my reservation. This adventure of dancing around a volcanic eruption was, at the least, a test of patience and sleep deprived mental strength.
Part of me thought, perhaps this was a way for fate to put me through a taxing little adventure before some easy, pleasantly quiet time in the temple’s meditation center. Looking back on that thought now, two weeks later, I laugh.
If fate could have showed up at that moment with an honest preview of things to come, she would have said, “you think an impromptu volcano is wild? Wait until I show you the inside of your mind!”
And this, is the story of the adventure of my “journey into self.”
Chapters of this Story
- Adventure Theme #7: Into the Mind
- The Monastery: Check-in, settle-in, and hang on for the ride
- Day 1: This is easy…
- Day 2: Throw me in the garbage
- Day 3: Switches get flipped and volume hits max
- Day 4: The Mind tunnel
- Realization: It’s easy to find peace at the top of the world
- Day 5: Fireworks
- Realization: Decay and aging are natural parts of life
- Day 6: Nothing. Thankfully
- Day 7: Into the deep…
- Day 8: Being the void
- Day 9: Time
- Day 10: Rage
- Day 11: My true teacher
- The hardest part of my journey
About This article: Partly story, partly sharing the experience of 10 days in silence at a Vipassana meditation training
The article that follows is an odd mix of writing that, in admittedly bad practice, aims to achieve three different goals. To share my Vipassana meditation training experience with the goal of enlightening anyone interested in what meditation training is and why it is great, to share my motivations for going and how my expectations were perfectly satisfied, and to share this all with the little “travel story” writing that adds color and entertainment to recounting adventures.
Meditation, and the target state goal of “Vipassana” (the state of seeing things clearly, inside and outside) are, in my opinion, amazingly powerful tools that are either unknown, misunderstood, or poorly described by most people. Even in my research to figure out what happens during a traditional Vipassana meditation retreat, information was sparse or dry at best.
In this article, I aim to share the perspective of my experience in a 10-day Vipassana meditation training, why it is rightly regarded as a powerful experience, and what happened as I fell into the depths of my own mind.
After the story, I’ll share everything that answers the questions I would want answers to, knowing what I know now.
Spoiler alert: At the end of 10 days, I walked away from the center and leaned against a tree alone in tears. This 10-day period of effort was possibly the most impactful and valuable 10 days I’ve ever invested in myself.
Now, back to the story…
Travel Adventure Theme #7: The journey into the mind
A few years ago, I presented an idea called the “Adventure 8.”** Eight adventurous themes for long term travelers to add a bit more meaning, depth, and color to their jaunts around the world, to enhance travel just a bit.
Though travel and living abroad is an amazing experience, you can only see so many temples and cathedrals, do so many walking tours, and do so many pub crawls before the elating buzz of travel starts to feel like Groundhog’s Day, repeating endlessly and with less emotional impact over time. However, if you’re traveling or living abroad and you’re not enjoying yourself, not making yourself more interesting, or not becoming better, you’re doing something wrong.
My personal solution was to make the primary experience in each country or travel period revolve around one of eight “travel themes” I’d realized many places offer in a quintessential way:
1. Wildlife (Life of the Wild)
2. Into the Sea (Life of Water)
3. To the mountains (Earth to Sky)
4. Life on Wheels (two or three wheel adventures)
5. Giving Back (Volunteering)
6. Journey into the Mind
7. Food
8. Act of Ultimate Trust
9. Cultural Rebirth (Moving to a foreign country)
Food – and falling into the hidden culinary scene of Japan. Life of mountains – walking through the Himalayas to see Everest. Giving back – having my heart broken volunteering as a translator and English teacher in refugee camps. Click here to read more about The Adventure 8: Themes to enhance your travels. **
However, there was one “adventure” I hadn’t been able to fully experience – “Journey into self.” The idea of the adventure of “journeying into self” was to take on an experience that would push me to the edge of what I know about myself, flip me inside out, and leave me a better person for it.
In 2017, just before I left to travel the world, I stumbled on a documentary called “Free the Mind,” in which a researcher examines the rehabilitative effects of mindfulness and meditation training on combat veterans with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and on children with mental disabilities. The results, and the underlying story of how meditation can be practiced to repair and strengthen the mind, and how we dance with our emotions in a healthy way, was impressive to say the least.
The idea of studying meditation in a formal way stuck with me for months.
Fast forward a few months, and I was sitting in a hostel in Chiang Mai having an afternoon beer and overheard a conversation that a girl with unbearably heavy “Eat, Pray, Love” vibes was having about plenty of topics I wanted to get pulled into less than I wanted to test my luck with how spicy Thais can make their food when you annoy them. However, two things she mentioned caused my ears to perk up.
Vipassana.
Ten days of meditation training.
Come to find out, she’d just discovered that right up the road at the Thai Buddhist temple, the monks hosted all willing guests at their meditation center for 10 days of intensive meditation training in silence. Their goal was pure – teach you four simple techniques to train your mind, and improve the quality of your life. That was it.
I was in.
However, I was on my last week in Thailand. I’d already booked flights and accommodation to trek to Everest Base Camp, and follow on flights to the Galapagos Islands.
The monks were kind enough to allow me a four day stay, which amounted to just more than two days of intensive meditation. In that brief period, the monks generally don’t teach much and the stay is treated more as a quiet respite from the world than intensive training. However, the little teaching there was, and 48 hours of silence left my mind tingling in a way that bored into my skull one single idea…I had to come back.
Everyone I’d spoken with that had done a 10-day meditation experience in silence laughed when I mentioned 4 days of meditation. According to them, “something weird” happens midway through a 10 day experience that changes your life.
That joking yet positive little criticism stayed with me for 7 years. For 7 years I knew that I needed to go back. I knew that the journey into my mind would start at the temple Wat Doi Suthep.
Fast forward, 7 years later, and I was sitting in the back of a red Toyota pickup with a fraction of my life in a backpack, watching the asphalt slide away behind us as the city of Chiang Mai gave way to the forested mountain country of the Thai temple, Wat Doi Suthep.
After one cancelled flight, three flight delays, two actual flights, one overnight train, three taxis, and a two miles of walking, I was finally making my way up the steep, dragon lined stairway to Wat Phra That Doi Suthep, and the meditation center I would spend the next 10 days. The time: 1:45pm. 2pm was the arrival deadline, otherwise I would lose the spot reserved months before. I jogged the final few hundred meters up to the meditation center just so I could make one final call to my girlfriend before going into silence.
1:55pm.
I jogged into the meditation center office, out of breath…but silent. From the second I read “delay due to volcano” the knob for life had been set to full chaos while fate played the game of “what else can go wrong.” However, I had made it. My 10 days had started.
Any further chaos would come from inside.
Check-in, settle-in, and hang on for the ride
After writing my name down on the check in form and handing over a copy of my passport, I was handed my room key.
“You will not talk to anyone for your stay unless necessary. You will not eating solid food after noon. Please wear white and be at the meditation demonstration at 3pm. You will meet with the monk tomorrow for your daily check-in.”
That afternoon, the final half of the first day, was primarily uneventful. We were shown a very simple approach to walking and sitting meditation.
For walking meditation, simply stand with hands clasped in front of you, lift your right foot up, and set your foot down, very slowly, speaking the steps in your mind. That’s it.
For sitting meditation, sit down, close your eyes, breath in and think “rising,” breathe out and think, “falling.”
Do each form of mediation for a full 15 minutes, with walking meditation immediately followed by sitting meditation. Take optional break for a few minutes between meditation cycles. Then repeat through the entire course of the day. Simple enough.
We had the option of meditating in the meditation hall, the expansive and aged top floor of the simple concrete building with a balcony hanging into the forest, in our rooms, with a sparseness that resembled military barracks or a prison, or outside, walking paths in the beautiful forest of the Thai hill country.
Each day would start at 5am, with “Dhamma talks” at 530am in which the head monk shared Buddhist philosophies on living a happy life free of suffering.
Breakfast was vegan, and served promptly at 7am each morning with the ring of an old Chinese bell.
Meditation then commenced straight from 8am to 11am.
At 11am, the final meal of the day, also vegan, was served. No eating was allowed after noon until the following morning at 7am.
At 11:30am, we individually reported to the monk for guidance on how to meditate for the next 24 hours. These encounters were always remarkably brief, simple, and insightful, with some interactions overheard being funny or entertaining when the monk decided to get “sassy” for some reason.
Then, meditation continued from 12:30pm with a 45-minute break for evening chanting at 6pm then continuing meditation until 9pm.
Then sleep.
Then repeat.
For 10 days.
With that, our instructions laid out for our time at the monastery, we were sent on our way to meditate.
Day 1: This is easy…
After the introduction, we, two other new guests and myself, proceeded to the meditation hall.
An expansive room, maybe 20 meters by 15 meters, crossed by long carpets for walking meditation the led to three statues of buddha would be where I would live most of my life for the next week plus.
To the right, my most difficult obstacle during my time there – a balcony hanging into the forest, overlooking the city of Chiang Mai from 1500 meters above. Attempting not to spend my time on the balcony just sipping coffee soaking up the beautiful view of nature, and instead actually meditating, was one of the tougher tasks for me. However, as the days rolled on, that peaceful view was a sanity saver.
After soaking up the view, I started meditating.
15 minutes walking.
15 minutes sitting.
15 minutes walking.
15 minutes sitting.
Until the sun set and the city lit up while the sounds of the forest and singing birds gave way to the chirping of crickets in the darkness.
Under normal circumstances, seven hours of meditation might be tough but after running from a volcano for three days, walking slowly in silence visibly above the clouds felt like heaven.
Day 2: Throw me in the garbage
The following day continued uneventfully, as I still felt like I was “settling in.” The peace still felt like relaxing recovery from the travel and, honestly, from the chaos of life on Bali over the last four years.
However, one difference on day 2 was that the good night’s sleep allowed me to awake with a refreshed mind, that didn’t want to sit down and “respect the silence.”
Oddly, I’m not sure if on day 1 I was too tired to have thoughts, or, if I was just unaware of how many thoughts I was having. In any case, on day 2, as I tried to just focus on the slow lifting and settling of each foot during walking meditation, or the slow rising and falling of my breath during sitting meditation, my mind was sprinting in circles at 1000 mph.
In meditative practice, sitting or walking, the initial goal is to focus and train focus. Focus on the feeling of your foot hanging in the air as the wind passes it. Focus on the feeling of breath traveling deep into your belly. Focus on the emptiness between your thoughts. However, the untrained mind (like mine) would rather use that silent time to deliberate new additions to the villa in Bali, where in Buenos Aires I want to live and how awesome it will be, or what kind of new surfboard to design for surf breaks in Chile.
After hours of walking in silence and sitting with eyes closed, I became very aware of how uncontrolled and chaotic my mind can be. In technical terms, it’s a hot mess in there.
I would compare the feelings during day one of meditation to attempting to walk peaceful and focused through a tunnel. However, as you walk through the tunnel thoughts are constantly flying into your face like a swarm of bees, with many of them sticking to you. Then, because these disruptive little ideas refuse to leave you alone, you obsess over them. You get annoyed by them, sad about them, and angry about them. As soon as you discard a thought, it’s not long before another idea smacks you in the face for you to run with.
The surprise of sitting in silence with no distraction for an extended period (48 hours plus) is you realize that, this is how an untrained mind always is. No wonder its so easy in daily life to lose focus, forget, and burn out on the regular.
The monk clearly knew that no additional work was needed on Day 2, and simply coping with the silence and a running mind is enough homework 24 hours in.
At the check in the monk merely said, “focus on your feet, follow your breath, and if you have a thought or emotion, acknowledge it and let it be.” That single sentence had a plethora of both wisdom and an equal amount of difficulty.
As Day 2 neared an end and I seemed to tire out, my mind began to calm somewhat throwing fewer ideas at me to think about. And when my mind did conjure an idea, I was too tired to continue the thought or feel the emotion – I just felt my feet as I picked them up and set them down, and felt my breath as my chest rose and fell.
Just like the monk said.
The one exception to the uneventful day was when I napped. Or more so, when I woke up from the nap.
After spending most of the day alternating between sitting and walking in meditation I was mentally smoked and needed a nap. I went to my room, put my head on the pillow and was out nearly immediately.
Fifteen minutes later I woke up and flew out of the bed in screaming pain!
Hooooooooooooly shit!
Everything hurt!
My shoulders felt broken in the sockets. My ankles felt broken. My knees felt like shards of glass were in them. I can’t remember every being in that much pain in nearly every single joint and big muscle.
My initial thought was, “I’m done. Throw me in the garbage. There’s no way I’m coming back from this.”
It felt like everything was cracked and broken.
I have no idea what was happening but, my theory is, I’d been hurting like that for days. Weeks maybe. Walking literal miles through airports carrying a 45lb backpack. Running on 2 hours of sleep and coffee. Spending my final days in Bali alternating between surfing for 3 hours and being anxious about what came next. The key, however, was zero recovery. Zero rest.
Now, after just over 24 hours in the center listening to my mind and body, my body decided to speak up…REALLY F**ING LOUD!!
I sat there in post nap confusion trying to figure out I was so broken all of a sudden, or just realizing it. Or how the hell I was going to function like this.
Then I realized, this was likely a preview of things to come, and my only choice was to take it one step at a time.
So, I stood up, and started stretching.
If only everything else that happened over the next eight days had such a simple explanation and solution…
Day 3: Switches get flipped and senses hit max
On day 3, things started to get interesting, but not from the direction I thought.
I assumed, from the beginning, that the monk would have some deep wisdom or complex meditation technique he would impart. This couldn’t be further from the truth. At each day’s meeting he more often than not described how I was experiencing the meditation and described what “abnormalities” I was probably feeling. And it was usually spot on.
In terms of training the meditation, new instructions were usually a new sequence of points on the body to focus on during the meditation, as well as how long to meditate for.
On day 3, the monk directed me to walk even more slowly and focus on feeling the top of my foot as I lifted it slightly, paused, moved it forward, paused, and set it down, stating each step in my mind in sequence. “Lifting, gliding, touching…”
For sitting meditation, I was similarly directed to focus on points while stating an instruction in my mind. “Rise, fall, touch right. Rise, fall, touch left.” For this approach, I was to focus on the rising of the chest during breathing, then the falling of the chest, then focus on feeling a very specific point on the lower right side of my back. Then repeat the sequence and focusing on awareness and feeling a touch on my left side, then repeat.
The monk explained, “This sequence is designed to build a mind body connection, and connect right brain and left brain by alternating how you target awareness of both sides of the body. This will train focus and awareness, and improve how the right and left brain connect.”
Now, I’ll preface the following with this…
I am a very straight forward guy. I’m not “woo woo” and am not a believer in most of the “metaphysical stuff.” I’m not into astrology and have no idea what the signs mean. I’ve never seen ghosts, though it would be a cool experience. I’m not religious. And I don’t “feel stuff” other than gut instincts. My complete approach to this experience was purely a pragmatic bit of training with the goal of good mental health, improved productivity, and mental clarity with a side of happiness.
With that said, all of the little weird stuff that follows comes from an open-minded skeptic.
Now, back to the story…
After the monk’s new directions about where to focus, I returned to the meditation hall and continued.
Walking. Lift, glide, touch. Lift, glide, touch.
Sitting. Rise, fall, touch right. Rise, fall, touch left.
It was getting late, around 8ish, 7+ hours after my new instructions from the monk.
I was getting agitated. Just slightly. I was feeling annoyed and I couldn’t pin down why until, through the silence that comes with closed eyes while sitting, I could hear it. A clock. Somebody brought in a massive clock that felt so loud the tick of each second was drowning out any thoughts that came through.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
But I needed to stay disciplined. I was meditating 20 minutes at a time. Twenty minutes sitting. Twenty minutes walking. So, I needed to finish my 20 minutes of sitting meditation and only then could go solve this clock issue.
“Why would someone bring in a new clock at the end of the day?” Was my thought.
“Beep. Beep. Beep.” My G-Shock signaled the end of about 8 or 9 hours of meditating. Time to find that clock.
But…I couldn’t see it. And most people had already left, so the hall was mostly empty.
I could hear the clock, but I couldn’t see it. And the more I looked, the softer the ticking got. Until…I found it. But I was extremely confused. I was meditating next to the wall in a far corner of the room, and this “massive clock” was in the opposite corner of the room, 20 meters away from.
What’s even more, this “massive clock,” was tiny. A little battery operated 3 inch by 3 inch clock.
And the kicker is I realized, that clock had been sitting there for 3 days. However, in that last 30 minutes, my mind quieted so much that this tiny clock suddenly felt like it was next to my ear, 10x louder.
Focus and the “mind body connection” was kicking in. The monk made a point the following day that our bodies are amazing sensors absorbing much more than we realize, and the mind is processing magnitudes more information in the form of ideas. His numbers were each day, the average human thinks 60,000 ideas and feels 300,000 emotions. But, what the sliver of that information that we are consciously aware of is, for the average person, miniscule at best.
I had just tapped into what happens when you can stand quietly in the middle of that.
Back to the “meditation tunnel” metaphor…
If the experience of meditating was like running through a tunnel, and day 2 I was constantly being smacked in the face by thoughts, day 3 felt like running through the tunnel with ideas sliding along the sides past me, rarely hitting me in the face. However, if I stared at or focused on an idea on the side of the tunnel too much, it pulled me away with it distracting me whether or not I wanted to. Even more, whether or not I got emotional (angry, sad, happy) depended more on the idea than what I wanted.
Day 4: The Mind Tunnel Becomes a Portal to “Explore” My Mind
On day 4, the experience of meditation and the process of thinking during meditation became like walking through that tunnel (not running) and the sides of the tunnel were completely made of thoughts, more than I realized initially, each passing peacefully, slowly, and continuously without interruption. For each thought, I had the choice to stop, observe it briefly, examine it, and choose to interact with the idea emotionally or not. Then, I could note it and continue on without that thought having any further effect on me.
As I went into the daily check in with the monk, the highlight of the day wasn’t the progression in his instructions, but actually the comical interaction the monk had with another anxious meditator.
“But I’m seeing things. I’m seeing colors,” the girl said, slightly panicked.
“Ok,” the monk said, unbothered.
“But…is that normal?” She asked, clearly worried that he wasn’t worried.
“Of course not!” He said, with a little chuckle.
“Wait, what?” The girl retorted as she lost her composure a little more, clearly worried.
“Well, it’s normal if you’re not normal,” the monk said, as if those words were the key to soothing her…which they clearly weren’t.
I couldn’t help but laugh, and neither could the guy next to me.
The girl wiggled around trying to shake off her discomfort.
The monk realized the girl wasn’t giving up until she got some kind of assurances that she wasn’t having a psychotic break.
“Don’t worry about it, I’m not normal either. You’re ok and you’ll be ok. It’s just your third eye opening up,” the monk said as he motioned the girl away, now, clearly calmed by the words assuring her this was expected possibility.
However, …third eye? I had no idea what he was talking about, beyond the passing joke in Bali and that band from 90’s.
Should I have done my homework.
Interesting.
Whatever. Her problem, not mine.
For me, the check in with the monk was much less eventful. I was to continue walking extremely slowly, and focused on awareness of multiple points on my body while meditating in 25-minute increments.
At the pace we were walking during meditation it took approximately 7.5 minutes to walk the 20 meter (60 foot) length of the meditation hall.
Realization: It’s easy to find peace at the top of the world
That day, after the individual check in with the monk and between meditation sessions, I could not stop going to the balcony to just stare into the forest.
Within the temple of Wat Doi Suthep and next to the monastery at the far edge of the complex sits the meditation center, where we were. The sloped mountain side was covered in the beautiful green foliage you would expect to find at 1,000 meters up (3500 feet). The meditation hall, ceremony hall, and spartan accommodation buildings were built, cascading down the slope in a way that hid them among the trees and allowed a clear view of the tree covered mountain side, and the centuries old city of Chiang Mai below.
Something about this view, and even the higher mountains in the distance was incredibly soothing.
Every morning, after the Dhamma talks at 530 AM, all of the meditators that had been in the center for more than a few days “slowly rushed” to this meditation center balcony to soak up sunrise each morning, like energy charging their batteries to make it through the day.
As the warming view of the sun crept up behind the pines, every single day that view, of the sun through the trees, the city, and the clearly pale blue sky, was exquisite. It never got old.
In the background, the birds sang their songs as the only sounds for tens of miles. The trees, the sun, and the sounds of birds were the only signs of outside life in the solitude. And still, just enough.
As I sat there in an old wooden chair with a cup of tea soaking up a view and feeling I hoped would stay burned into my mind forever, it finally made sense why so many communities of monks have sought refuge in cliffsides and at the top of mountains. Few views soothe the soul and allow for piece like a quiet view from the top of the world.
Day 5: Fireworks
The fifth day started uneventfully and ran from breakfast, through lunch, through check in with nothing interesting. That is, not until a little tingle happened.
Today, I’d made an attempt to meditate without rest for as long as possible without a break. At this moment, I was at probably the hour and a half mark during meditating seated with eyes closed when the top of my head starting tingling. Nothing extraordinary, just a mild tingling sensation. Except, it started to spread down the sides of my head, and as it did, a little kaleidoscope starting to form behind my closed eyes. However, this wasn’t the normal colors show up when rubbing your eyes with eyes closed.
What started as a small circle of static color stretched into a larger circle taking up the upper half of vision with eyes closed and started collapsing in on itself, like a large whirlpool of colors in the ocean. Except this was “just” a stream of colors pouring into the whole in front of me. Electric reds, blues, and greens flowing past me as they went into the “whirlpool” sucking everything towards it’s depths in front of me as I was surrounded by a literal warm feeling all around.
I remember thinking, I have no idea what’s going on but I’m seriously enjoying the show as the whirlpool danced, and shrank. I think there were ten minutes left in my meditation when the “colorful whirlpool” started, so I just relaxed and enjoyed the experience.
Then, with a “beep, beep, beep” my trusty G-shock screamed, and the whirlpool dissolved away into darkness.
I just sat there in disbelief, like “damn, wtf just happened.” Then I proceeded to the balcony and just stared at Chiang Mai below the forest for an hour.
Well, at least not being normal is fun.
Within 30 minutes I had an odd, massively painful migraine that clustered precisely to the left half of brain, precisely from just above my ear to precise middle of my skull. It was shocking how precisely shaped and located the headache was. Nothing in the right, or bottom of my head was hurting. No neck or shoulder tension, or tension anywhere else. Just a dull yet intense lightning storm in the left half of my brain. I hadn’t experienced a headache like that in as long as I could remember.
I tried to fight through the headache but something was happening in my head that I couldn’t figure out. I snuck to my room at 7:15pm and passed out immediately. I slept the entire night, dead to the world
The next day I woke up to my screaming alarm at 5am, fresh, energized, and with the clearest mind I’ve ever experienced.
Realization: Decay and aging is a natural part of life, and accepting it brings peace and (awareness) of its own function and beauty
As I spent more time in the meditation center and around the monastery, I became more aware of the minute details of the facilities. Not the Lana Kingdom style architecture, or the gold leaf covered stupas in the areas that attract tourists, but actually how dilapidated the facilities were “allowed” to become. And not in a bad way either.
Wherever you walked, there were visible aesthetic cracks in the walls, piles of leaves, and half functioning door knobs. At first sight you may think, “why doesn’t someone fix these?” But in a center designed to help people understand and embrace the world as it is, why would you?
Everything functioned enough. Everything was still standing. The only thing missing was that “like brand new” veneer that we like to maintain so much today. Dying the grey hair. Upgrading to the newest smartphone. Botox and “light” plastic surgery to stay looking young, fresh, and brand new.
However, the natural way of the world is everything grows. Everything ages. Everything decays. And that’s ok. That, was the “aesthetic” of the monastery, intentionally or unintentionally. Everything was allowed to serve its purpose, and naturally break down, only being replaced or refreshed when it no longer served its purpose. No sooner. No later.
With that reminder, I enjoyed how the facilities I was wrapped in, the walls, the roof, the railing, felt old, and uncared for. In actuality, everything was built sturdily, simply, and functionally, and allowed to decay into its “natural state” in tune with the forest around it.
I wasn’t looking at a crack in a wall, or chipped railing, or a shifting floor. I was looking at a decades old building that was simply allowed to fulfill its purpose, and continue to fill its purpose, without molestation.
The realization was that so many times in modern life, we overcomplicate things and create undue stress aiming for bigger, better, prettier, flashier, newer. When the existing state gets things done to a high standard just fine. Perhaps, by stressing over “newer” or “better” we feel validated. Perhaps its because of the marketing and societal pressures and “standards for success” we’re bombarded with daily.
However, in actuality, many things would likely be fine if we just let them be. We would likely be more at peace if we accepted them and let them be.
This center, with its plain concrete walls and cracks wasn’t going to make the cover of Architectural Digest anytime soon, but, it was doing its job of helping me find more insight, mental health, and peace than I’d found in any other building in decades. As long as I just let it be.
Day 6: Nothing. Thankfully.
The sixth day of the experience was relaxed and uneventful, thankfully. I was enjoying the little “adventures of the mind,” but each was getting more intense. I had a slight, “oh man, what’s next?” vibe as I jumping into my walking and sitting meditation for the day. So, a day with “nothing exciting” was pleasant.
That day, the monk’s advice proceeded as expected. Continue walking, extremely slowly, and focus on different, specific points on the leg throughout the process. Sitting, continue following the breath, and cycling between awareness of the whole body while sitting and feeling a “touch” on specific points of the body, one at a time.
The only unique thing about Day 6 was a unique tingling sensation nearly on command. While I do remember being relaxed in previous days and enjoying a tingling sensation slide over my skin, the feeling came at random, or fairly far into meditation.
On this day, however, immediately upon starting meditation, as soon as I would focus on an area, a vibrating tingle – almost like you’d feel with goosebumps – came over the area. During standing meditation, the sensation would start at the top of my head and fall, like water droplets on a shower, as far down as I’d focus, and similarly during sitting meditation. A couple of times I cheated, opening my eyes, and looked down to see actual goosebumps in the areas of my skin that were tingling.
Perhaps it was awareness, perhaps it was something else, but the “mind body connection” that the monk was talking about was starting to make sense, and I could feel that I was just scratching the surface.
Day 7: Into the deep…
The seventh day of meditation felt like it was divided into two distinct halves – in the morning, before my time to report to the monk, and the afternoon meditation. Both came with wildly different insights.
My first realization was that the 25-minute sessions of walking meditation followed by 25 minutes of sitting meditation were passing smoothly and effortlessly. However, walking meditation appeared to pass almost instantly and easily. Sitting meditation, however, felt more involved and more “effective” for lack of a better term.
While sitting, I was trying to avoid scratching tingling itches that I thought were bug bites. After meditation, with eyes opened, I looked down and realized, the tingling, itchy places weren’t bug bites – they were all old scars. And I remembered fairly well where I got each scar from, but had completely forgotten about them.
Additionally, the first few days were miserable in terms of a stiff body and sitting cross legged. Nearly every aspect of this experience that wasn’t standing was spent sitting cross legged on a cushion on the floor for 30 minutes at a time. For the average, healthy person, that is a non-issue (I think). However, for a naturally stiff “seasoned athlete” that spent too much time Crossfitting and not enough time stretching, my hips, knees and ankles felt like they were bound by steel cables – alternating between screaming in pain like “whyyyyy did you go a decade without stretching?!?!?!” or just going numb.
That was, until day 7.
At some point I realized I could focus on an area of my body that went numb while sitting, say, a knee, or an ankle, or a foot, and simply focus like any point in the meditation, and the limb would regain feeling. Even more, when I started for the day with tight hips and ankles, before I needed to stretch – however, now I could just focus on a spot while meditating – hip, hamstring, etc. – and loosen it up almost at will.
Granted, 7 days of sitting on the floor can massively help lower body mobility. However, in 5+ years of focusing on training mobility (usually) I have never picked up the ability to just focus on a point on the body and make it loosen up on its own, without stretching. This was a welcomed shock.
Beyond the welcomed body adjustment, all intense cravings or even appetite had dissipated. All cravings for food, sweets, or caffeine were completely non-existent, and almost seemed appetizing. In the evening when I’d normally think, end of the day, nice time for a glass of wine, beer, or Scotch – the thought crossed my mind and felt almost appalling. As in, the taste seemed unappealing, the affects seemed unappealing, and the first reaction was that I wouldn’t want to compromise this (what felt like) superhuman brain space I’d tapped into for a sip of alcohol.
I am a fairly disciplined guy that generally watches what he consumes. I avoid sweets as much as possible, drink my coffee black, and take protein over pasta any day. However, I’m a sucker for a glass of wine or good beer, a cinnamon, and food in general, and the sacrifice is always intentional.
But I’ve never had a point in my life where all cravings dissipated. That lack of craving stayed for the remainder of my stay and (even after) has barely returned, and only for healthy practical things.
However, this cool, healthy side effect of the training was nothing compared to what came in day 7’s afternoon training.
The only craving that continued, was the urge to sit on the balcony overlooking the forest with a cup of tea and an empty mind. That craving, I hope, will never go away
The Abyss
In the afternoon meditation I received instruction from the monk to simply continue with the added points of focus on the body. However, I should beware that I may see colors or “things” and this isn’t the goal, but is instead a side effect that I shouldn’t chase. I should simply be aware of it and not be worried. Additionally, my mind would likely be much calmer than when I arrived, and, if a thought did rise just let it pass and continue. Today, I was to continue with alternating 30 minutes of walking meditation followed by 30 minutes of sitting meditation, alternated with no breaks, if possible, for as long as possible.
Though chats with my quirky Yoda were short, uplifting and enlightening in hindsight, I should have sensed the ominous nature of this particular encounter.
Walking meditation passed quickly, effortlessly and, almost enjoyably, so I settled in for 30 minutes of sitting meditation. At hour 2 of sitting, things got very calm, and interesting.
Sitting with eyes closed in the meditation hall, I expected the colors or the fireworks show that I’d seen a couple of days before. But instead, nothing happened. As I sat, everything went black. Very, very, black.
Whereas normally when our eyes are closed (try it now) you can see some form of light coming through your eyelids, or even those odd little bits of color from staring at the sun, I saw nothing. Just black.
The kicker, was that I heard absolutely nothing either. Despite having birds chirping outside, people walking, and occasionally hearing a plane overhead, I was fully aware that I was sitting in the darkness with eyes open and no sound at all.
No light.
No sound.
No temperature.
No feeling.
Nothing.
Aware of this, but without reaction, I just continued meditating.
And then, I started sinking slowly. Still weightless, but floating down.
In what I can only describe as a pitch-black vertical tunnel, I floated down past, again what I can only describe as, ideas and emotions. Almost glowing like bioluminescent jellyfish in the deep sea. I could feel they were my thoughts and ideas, but I had no attachment to them. No desire to explore them. No feeling of what they were about.
Then, I passed them all, continuing to sink, and was surrounded by nothing.
I felt a weightless sensation as I sat there floating in the dark. No thoughts. No emotions. No ideas. Nothing.
For what was likely about 10 minutes but felt void of time, I floated there in a dark void. The most peaceful I’ve ever been. The only semblance of a feeling were the specific points on my back lighting up with a “touch of awareness” that the monk directed as I continued meditating. Ever so lightly.
Then, out of the darkness…the alarm on my trusty and ill-timed little G-Shock watch screamed.
With a “Beep! Beep! Beep!” I felt an immense pull upwards through the dark abyss. Past those thoughts and ideas and towards light. Like an inverse of the feeling that happens in your stomach when falling, I could feel myself coming up as if I was being pulled by a bungee until I finally I reached light with eyes open.
Before getting into surfing, I dabbled in freediving, with the deepest I’ve ever dived at somewhere between 25 and 30 meters (80 and 100 feet) down into the ocean on a single breath of air. At that depth, it’s just far enough that you can barely see the light above and you can still see nothing below. Even more, when you decide to come up, your lungs are burning from the carbon dioxide buildup in your lungs, ready to explode from your chest, and you are, literally, dying for a breath…gasping at the surface.
In the meditation hall, after I “came back” from whatever abyss I was floating in, my eyes were “gasping for light” so overwhelmed it almost hurt, while my lungs were following suit with the same need for air. Amidst this I realized I was a sweaty mess and literally overheated, despite the weather being chilly enough for a sweater.
Confused and disoriented, I crawled to my feet, and put together the last bit of energy I had to get to the meditation room balcony, and sit on a cushion on the floor, with the green forest view below as solace, grounding me back into reality.
As I visually clung to that view of the mountainside to keep me in place, I realized I had no comprehension of what had just happened as the scars on my hands and legs itched. So, I just let it be.
Day 8: Being the void
On the eighth day, I woke up before my alarm with a buzzing sensation, tingling skin. And not a thought in my mind. Not a single emotion.
I ate, checked in with the monk, and meditated as normal. Nothing out of the ordinary, but, for the entirety of the day, my mind felt like an empty space ship on autopilot that I was just simply enjoying the ride in as I meditated and walked around the monastery. No narration or internal monologue necessary.
In living and in movement, my mind had never been this quiet.
Day 9: Time
On the ninth day I woke up again with skin tingling, blood flowing, and an intense calm. I checked my heart rate – 57 beats per minute.
As I walked to the morning Dhamma talk I realized that everything I felt during the meditation training – tired, achy, sleepy, restless – wasn’t from the training. They were simply the feelings, aches, thoughts, and tensions I brought with me into the training from the outside world.
However, the intense external quiet and calm of the monastery, and the internal calm it created launched awareness of these issues to max on the volume knob of my mind. Thus, it gave me a chance to dance with these aches, pains, ideas, and emotions and decide to address the issues, dance with the issues, solve the issues, or throw them in the garbage.
When you reach a place where you can feel just a little bit of what your mind is actually doing below the surface, and some semblance of control, you’d be surprised what you can coax it into doing.
As I sat in the morning session of the monk’s dhamma talk sharing insights on living a fulfilling life of happiness that brings goodness into the world, what, on day 1, felt like quick ramblings that I could barely keep up with, now sounded like a crystal clear stream of nuggets of wisdom.
In meditation that day, the 30 minutes of each stint breezed by.
I cheated (breaking the rule of no writing) and scribbled this single note after an afternoon meditation session on day 9:
“The more space and depth I feel inside as I sit in the quiet and focus, the more it feels like there just isn’t enough time. The time in each moment feels too short, the time here [at the meditation center] feels too short – and I feel like this is just me grasping, and becoming aware of, the vastness, enormity, and possibility of each individual experience in general in life. With all that can be felt and observed and thought in a single moment, there just isn’t enough time to explore and be aware of it all. I can see how the Buddhists ‘stumbled’ on this idea of reincarnation.”
Day 10: Rage
After 10 days of sitting in silence attempting to the world clearly, the world around me and the world inside, I can see why everyone I’ve spoken with adamantly declared that 10 days of meditation training is a must.
Though I admittedly was ready to leave, to apply this new focus and peace to daily life, and to get working on all of the possibilities and opportunities that revealed themselves to me, my mind was in a state of peace and mental clarity I couldn’t have dreamed was possible. And I knew I was just scratching the surface.
At this point, my newfound mental clarity allowed me the ability to better recognize and assess my own thoughts for their true nature quickly, and either let them pass without emotion, or follow the “thread” easily to a beneficial insight that was almost trying to find me.
The simple, quick action of thinking – is this truly my own original idea, or an idea pushed on me by someone else’s influence or expectations? Does it serve the life I want to live? Is there a color of emotion in this “rational” thought? If there was a tinge of emotion, I was able to recognize it, give it enough recognition to release it, and feel it dissipate into the darkness.
Thoughts and emotions interrupted and passed similarly to a child with something to say that they think is important and they are adamant about sharing. In return, just like healthily dealing with the child, I was able quickly hear out my thoughts and send them on their way, with minimal disruption to my focus and emotional state, if desired.
This last line, “if desired” became clear to me late the final evening.
As I meditated for my final evening in an admittedly lazy state of mental fatigue, I lost focus and my mind wandered briefly. In that moment, I remembered a recent incident back on Bali that had come to a close. However, before the final nail went into the coffin of the issue, it presented potent enough lessons that the situation was difficult to just walk away from peacefully. Now, understand that though this issue did frustrate me slightly in the past, at present the issue was something I had fully dismissed. Or so I thought.
In that moment, as I sat eyes closed, mentally fatigued on my final night, I let this thought run through my mind with its bitter tinges. Within seconds I felt an anger bordering on rage, so intense I could almost feel it physically as my skin tingled. My mind raced 1000 miles per hour with memories and anger as my breathing deepened.
I’ve been in some situations, from brawls to warzones, that have been filled to the brim with true rage, hatred, anger and violence. However, I had never felt anger as potently, as hot, and as deeply as this, and it was spiraling fast, akin to a growing explosion inside my chest.
At some point, I have no idea when, I caught myself. I stepped back, “in my mind” emotionally distancing myself from the idea enough to assess the thought rationally and realized…this thing I was feeling this much anger over was legitimately not that big of a deal. There was no continuing threat to me, and the situation that caused the anger was over. Such rage had no place here. No use in my life. With that, I dismissed the anger, and the thought and returned to meditating, focused, calm, and relaxed.
I was happy that I was able to, once I remembered my goal of mindfulness, dismiss the emotions and the ideas so quickly.
But, what startled me was how angry I got. Then, the realization hit. Though I felt like I had never been that angry before, the truth is I was, but this was the first time I was aware of it, and to this degree. With my awareness of the inside cranked up to maximum, I could feel that the anger that passed was far more wildfire than a lit match.
Ten days of meditation training didn’t make emotions or ideas go away. They were still my job to assess and handle before a lit match turned into a forest fire. However, I was now clearly equipped with the toolkit of internal and external awareness. It was my toolkit to listen to, to respect, to develop, and to maintain. Also, I had a whole new responsibility to myself now. Now that I knew.
Day 11: Discovering my true teacher
The final day was, for the most part, quick and uneventful.
We woke at 5am, and I proceed to my final session of listening to the monk’s Dhamma talk.
This morning, the monk shared the story of a student who came to the monastery with a door as his teacher, and the story resonated deeply with me.
According to a monk, the student that previously visited the meditation center was a high-power business man, always visibly tensed and accustomed to controlling most things around him. For the first five days of the man’s stay, each time the man checked in to report to the monk on his meditation, the man complained about a single, squeaky door that was constantly being slammed by an apparently unaware woman. This door squeaking and slamming was disrupting the student’s meditation attempts to the point of anger. The conundrum for the man was that meditators aren’t allowed to communicate with each other – so there was no way he could make this disruptive issue stop. So, he just let the frustration and anger consume him.
Every day the monk’s reply to the man’s complaint was, “ok, you can return to meditate.” Nothing more.
Until day 6.
The man checked in with the monk, lighter, freer, happier. The man reported to the monk that he had a plan that he wanted to replace the door with a new one. Also, he wanted to take the old, squeaky door home with him.
The monk inquired as to what happened that caused this change in opinion.
The man stated that he realized that the door wasn’t bothering him. On the contrary, he was allowing himself to be bothered by the door. The woman wasn’t disrupting him. He was allowing himself to be disrupted by the door that she slammed. No one in the universe had ill will towards him, in regards to the slamming a squeaky door. It was just the way things were and, externally, nothing was keeping him from achieving what he needed to achieve – meditating. To the contrary, they were giving him an opportunity to do it better.
He wanted to take the door with him and install it in his home to remind him of the true nature of things.
For me, just as I’d figured, having the volcano disrupt my travel plans in a way I’d never experienced in 7 years and at what for me felt like a crucial moment was my own squeaky door – a simple tool of life to test my patience, that I hadn’t had much of recently. To test my will to achieve an important goal instead of calling it quits and returning to my home and surfboards in comfort. The obstacle of getting there to the monastery was the priming experience for my meditation training – leaving my mind tired and burnt out, and leaving my body in tense knots to unravel during my stay. All of this made re-exploring my mind, and my unnecessarily stiff body, a more beneficial and involved experience. The effort required enhanced the lessons of my journey and the benefits of the outcome.
The hardest part of my journey
The ceremony, consisting of myself and one other meditator kneeled before the monk was quick and uneventful, yet insightful.
In charismatic Yoda fashion, the monk congratulated us on completing the training, as the start of a new journey to apply the tools we learned.
As parting wisdom, he offered one final piece of advice.
“Take care of yourself.”
“Like good people, you take care of your family, you take care of your job, you even take nonsense from bad people to keep the peace. In all of this, take care of yourself, to keep your peace. Happiness with peace is true happiness. So, take care of yourself.”
With that, we all bowed three times to the triple gem, and departed.
As we walked, I saw the meditator next to me that I’d been with his entire stay getting misty eyed. I put my hand his shoulder as comfort.
Swiftly, I changed clothes, grabbed my backpack, and walked up the stairs leaving the meditation center as if I was leaving a crime scene. I, for some reason, had the urge to leave without any extra interaction – because I didn’t know if I had it in me to say goodbyes.
But as I sped off, I realized, I couldn’t. I couldn’t just leave. I needed to stand on the meditation center balcony, my place of refuge, and look into the forest down onto Chiang Mai last time.
As I tried to sneak past the other mediators, now in jeans and t-shirt instead of the all white I’d worn for 10 days, one of the meditators motioned me to look. He pointed out the doors and mouthed, “Are you going?”. I nodded yes. He smiled, placed his hands together in front of his heart, bowed lightly, and mouthed “good luck.” I bowed in return, overcome with a warmth.
I couldn’t leave without saying goodbye.
I walked to the other two meditators I’d been with night and day for over a week, put my hands together in front of my heart, and mouthed, “Thank you. Good luck.” The fella smiled and hugged me. The girl got misty eyed.
I sneaked out to the balcony quickly, as it took everything in me to keep my shit together. The view into the forest still beautiful as my vision blurred slightly against my will. I’d spent the last 10 days just focusing on how to breathe freely again, and in that moment my chest tightened as I struggled to breath…and keep it together
I had to get out of there.
I swiftly picked up my bag, waved, and bowed to my quiet companions on this adventure, and to the meditation center that became my Sangha, and backed out of the door quickly.
As I walked up the road through the forest, making my way back to the gates that once welcomed me, my knees gave way as I put my hand on a tree to keep from collapsing, overwhelmed by some unnamable and indescribable emotion as it filled everything in me. Perhaps it was all of them. Then tears flowed, as I sat there on the ground, alone in the forest. Ten days of emotions washing over me.
Not happy. Not sad. Not angry. Not hopeful. Nothing. Just existing. And it felt like a brand-new experience.
I’d journeyed into my own mind and returned to the world with the realization that, for me, a whole new journey was just beginning.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Carlos is a nomad, slow traveler, and writer dedicated to helping others live abroad and travel better by using his 7+ years of experience living abroad and background as a management consultant and financial advisor to help other nomad and expats plot better paths for an international lifestyle. Click here to learn more about Carlos's story.