Here’s a brief first entry, just setting up the blog, making
sure that it works. Profundity will have to wait, as will penetrating insights
to life and travel that I’m sure will produce senses of awe in all of you. After I
post these words I’ll shut down my laptop for 30 days. Please take a few
minutes to imagine that—no electronic devices for 30 days.
I told many of you about how anxious I’ve been feeling about
the whole thing. And as predicted, within an hour of touching down on the Yangon
tarmac I thought, “Why the hell didn’t I do this ten years ago?” Well, one good
reason is that soldiers were shooting unarmed monks, students, and Japanese
news photographers in the streets only five years ago—2007, only a few blocks
from my hotel. But why did I wait for 10 years between international jaunts? My
knee operation in India doesn’t count. New Orleans only counts for 50% as a
foreign country.
I wasn’t prepared for the other strong reaction I had: been here,
done that. I’ve been here for less than 36 hours, and my main thought at this
moment is, “Get thee to a monastery and place thy butt on a meditation cushion.”
The one exception is so major as to be laughable: Shwedagon
Pagoda. Shwedagon Pagoda. Look it up. I’m still feeling the power of this
morning’s trip to Shwedagon Pagoda. I’ve been studying Buddhism for over a
decade now, so it makes sense that Shwedagon should have such a strong effect
on me, but I got the feeling that it provides a spiritual experience that visitors
from other faiths can also pick up on. I was impressed by the large number of
young people I saw doing their morning meditations in various shrines located
around the main stupa. They showed enormous respect for the old monks
collecting their alms. I watched many elderly monks doing their practice in
front of their preferred Buddhas—by that I mean there are hundreds of Buddha
statues at Shwedagon, many of them with their own separate shrines with teak or
marble floors on which practitioners sit, chant, or do their silent practice.
Those monks have spent all of their lives working on their minds. I tried to
imagine doing 60 or more years of practice, 60 or more years of working on
moment-to-moment awareness.
Many of the hundreds of Buddhas I saw had newly installed
halos of streaming red, blue, green, yellow and white lights. Disco halos.
Karaoke halos. Remember in the 90s, when there was a thankfully short trend of
tape decks and CDs players with multi-colored lights that grew in intensity and
speed in time with the music? Those kinds of halos. My first reaction was
“tacky,” but by the time I did my third circuit around the pagoda, I was more
accepting of the images of light emanating from the various Buddhas’ minds. I
mean, that’s where all the action is, right? At least that’s what I’m told.
Starting tomorrow afternoon, I’ll be testing that idea while
alternating between sitting and walking meditation for 12 or more hours a day
in an environment with no disco halos. I haven’t been there, haven’t done that.
I’ve walked through many Chinese, Muslim, and Indian neighborhoods in countries
that weren’t China, Pakistan, or India. I’ve walked through many street markets
one way, and then turned around and walked through the same markets the other
way. And while I am absolutely thrilled to be surrounded by these intense
sights, smells and sounds, the main motivation for this trip is the retreat. After
three intense months of preparation—getting rid of most of my possessions,
stockpiling money, making it possible to perhaps spend one or more years
overseas—I crave silence. There will be time later for scratching beneath the
surface.
All of those sensory experiences I’ve had in the last
day-and-a-half are short-lived, even the ones at Shwedagon. I didn’t understand
that when I first started traveling around Asia in my 30s, I just got all caught
up in the show. The show no longer has such a tight grip on me. As I was doing
the tourist shuffle around the core of Yangon today, I kept repeating a phrase
that the teacher at my last retreat said at the end of each day:
“All conditioned
phenomena are impermanent, they arise and pass away. Understanding this deeply
brings the greatest happiness, which is peace.”
I’ll let y’all know how it went in a month or so.
Jon
Shwe Oo Min Center: http://sayadawutejaniya.org/meditation-center/
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