In early February, I spent two weeks in silence and meditation at Wat Pradhat Doi Suthep, a Theraveda Buddhist temple in northern Thailand.
The Golden Pagoda at Doi Suthep by night.
The program (which we will henceforth refer to as "meditation camp") was a simple Vipassana meditation course taught by monks and run out of a center just below monastery grounds. Our days were structured to mirror the rhythms of monastic life: 5AM wakeups, 2 simple, vegetarian meals per day, an hour of chanting in Pali every evening. We wore only white and were required to keep the silence, unless absolutely necessary, throughout our time at the center.
Though there were twenty other "campers" at any given time, we arrived and departed on different dates, progressing through the course at our own rates. We each met individually with the head monk (whom we referred to as 'Teacher') once daily to check in and receive our next meditation assignment--usually just an increased allotment of time and a couple more physical points of self-observation. The vast majority of our time was spent in silent meditation--either walking or sitting in the traditional Vipassana style.
Walking Meditation
Sitting Meditation
Here's what I learned:
1. I am Addicted to Everything
...namely caffeine, sugar, food (generally), and various forms of background noise: listening to music, checking social media, texting and otherwise staying in constant communication with the world I left behind back home.
I felt withdrawal from all of these things in the first few days of camp. At first, the symptoms were primarily physical: caffeine and sugar-craving headaches, cavernous hunger, constant, head-bobbing drowsiness. Then, as the reality of complete disconnection set in (no wifi or 3G), I felt it on a deeper, emotional level--a lonely grasping for all my usual human comfort blankets.
Of course, all of this eased with time and, by the second week of camp, I had more or less adjusted. 5AM wakeups weren't so bad when I had crawled into bed exhausted at 7:30PM the night before. My body stopped craving so much food when my only energetic output for the day involved climbing a few steps to the meditation temple. I learned to regulate my circadian rhythms with exposure to natural light rather than caffeine. The loneliness softened, though occasionally still welled up with surprising ferocity.
I can't say I'm enlightened, but I do feel a little lighter, a little freer from all my mindless addictions. Conscious deprivation brought them into the light, loosening their grip on my life. While I don't plan to give up coffee, meat, communication or any of the rest, I do plan to maintain the healthy separation I got from these addictions at camp, staying mindful of their power and playfully experimental with their dosage.
2. Healthy Body does not Equal Healthy Mind
I'm a pretty healthy person. I workout regularly, sleep at least 8 hours each night, and eat extremely well. So, as the saying goes, I should have 'a healthy mind in a healthy body,' right?
Nope. At meditation camp, I got a private tour of the madhouse that is my unconscious mind. The list of inmates included the Judger, a constant critic of both myself and others; The Planner, a worry-wart ever preparing for hypothetical future situations; the Filmmaker, a meticulous editor of long irrelevant footage from my past; and--my favorite--the Narrator, a redundant echo constantly describing present events as they happen in real-time in the past tense...as though I'm being interviewed in a future documentary about my own life. A whole lot o’ madness.
Meditation camp taught me that all the sleep, kale, and cardio in the world won't cure a sick mind. Unconscious thought patterns left to their own devices grow stronger and stronger, thwarting our every conscious attempt to be happy, healthy and at peace. Healing the unconscious madness requires something a little stronger, and yet infinitely more subtle: attention and awareness. In the (heavily Thai-accented) words of our Teacher: "When youh body is duhrty, youh take a showuh; When youh mind is duhrty, youh must meditate."
3. Self-Compassion Goes a Lot Farther than Self-Control
It was in the spirit of health and wellness that I began my novice meditation practice about a year ago. A long-time athlete, I approached my 20-minute morning sits with the same steely determination that I had approached difficult workouts in the past; I "got through them"--mostly on brute force and sheer strength of will--but I didn't particularly enjoy them.
This worked some days better than others. Most days, I'd get frustrated or upset. My thoughts didn't respond well to brute force. Despite my best efforts to wrestle them to the ground as soon as they arose--drown them out with the forceful tide of my breathing, they always resurfaced, often with increasing frequency and intensity. After the tenth or twentieth time I'd wake to catch them derailing my attention, I'd give up, convinced I wasn't cut out for meditation.
While the self-control approach occasionally "got me through" a 20-minute sit back at home, I knew it wasn't going to cut it for the 4-5 hours of meditation I had everyday at meditation camp. I needed a new approach and our Teacher was happy to provide. First, he encouraged me to let go of trying to stop thoughts. Thoughts, he explained, stem naturally from the energy constantly humming through the body, much like the breath. We can slow them down; we can lengthen the pauses in between; but we can't stop them entirely. Our best bet, he offered, is to work with rather than against the thoughts.
For this, he prescribed a dose of something I don't typically associate with exercise (including mental exercise): self-compassion. The unconscious mind, he explained, is a lot like a child; its actions and movements are automatic, untrained, and largely unintentional. There's no use getting mad at the child, yelling at her for something she's always done. Better to approach that child in the emotional language she understands: with love, limitless patience and ocean-like compassion. Only in this way, he explained, could I convince the child that there might be something in this for her too.
I gave it a shot. When thoughts interrupted my sits, I tried literally talking myself through them as if I were talking to a child. It's a little awkward to write out, but it went something like this: inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale, *THOUGHT.* Ah, that sad memory again. That's OK, Anna. Memories happen. Feel that sadness. It's okay if tears fall. Whenever you're ready, come back to the breath. Doesn't matter how many times we start again as long as we keep coming back. You're doing great. I love you. Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale. *THOUGHT.* repeat. As awkward and embarrassing as this is to see typed out, it actually worked. I started feeling the calm compassion my words were meant to convey and stopped quitting in the middle of my sits. Sometimes I cried. Sometimes I laughed, but I always came back to the breath. I always tried again.
Recognizing the thinker as my own inner child, and treating that child with all the love, patience, compassion and forgiveness that every child deserves set my practice free, allowing me to start sitting for 30, 45, 60, 90 minutes.
4. Sangha (Community) is Essential
In my year-long practice before coming to meditation camp, I had always meditated alone (with mixed success). Having a group to meditate with and a mentor/Teacher to continually raise the stakes made a huge difference.
The way I see it now, trying to start a stable meditation practice on your own is like trying to teach yourself how to play tennis without a coach or anyone to practice with. Like any learned skill, meditation requires goal-setting, progress-measurement, mentorship and feedback. The Teacher gave individual meditation assignments tailored to our practice and progression, continually increasing challenges to match increased skills. Our daily one-on-one sessions (though brief) gave us each the opportunity to ask questions and express concerns. Though we never spoke, the 20-or-so other meditators at the center with me kept me in the room on tougher days, inspiring me with their effort and keeping me accountable to our shared intention.
Don't believe you can't meditate because you tried to 'just sit' once and didn't get anything out of it. Find a community and an experienced meditator to help you along the way. Lord knows I'm going to when I get back.
Fellow campers meditating together at the center
5. Real Change Happens in the Real World
...not in a peaceful meditation room at a temple on a hill somewhere in Southeast Asia.
I left meditation camp with the sincerest of intentions to meditate daily. Some days I did; most days I didn't. It's been about a month, and I'm no longer feeling very calm and "enlightened." Life on the backpacker trail has brought out the very worst in me: sleep-deprived impatience, auto-judgement of strangers, prestige-hungry anxiety about the future... all the old insecurities and neuroses and absurd longings. Despite my brief stint as a Buddhist nun, I'm still the same old Anna struggling with all the same old bullshit.
It's tempting to seek out the ascetic experience and hope that its extremes will somehow "forge me in the fire"--change me into something or someone stronger, better...different. But real change happens in the real world. And it's not measured by how many minutes I can sit still in a meditation room in a temple overlooking Chiang Mai. It's measured by how well I'm able to breathe the air I'm breathing, taste the food I'm eating, see the colors and opportunities in front of my face, love the people around to be loved.
I've made contact with that deeper awareness: the calm underneath the waves. But if I can't bring into into the real world--make my life my meditation, I'll have missed the whole point.
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