Coda

This is my last post on my experience at Shwe Oo Min south, I promise, unless you really want me to try and explain what it feels like to have an insight while practicing insight meditation.

When I went back to the center to check on my visa, Seattle Paul told me that somehow my Buddha Buddies had learned that Sayadaw’s birthday was coming up, and they did a very Western thing and invited him to lunch to celebrate. As part of the inner circle of yogis during the month of March, I was on the short list of invitees, and I told Paul to email me the details when they were worked out. (He could do that because Internet Hour had been reinstated upon Sayadaw’s return.)

But when I got the email—“Meet at Sharky’s on the 8^th, 10:30 or 11”—I immediately started hemming and hawing and thinking that if I hadn’t felt any spark of connection with Sayadaw by this point, then the odds of it happening in an intimate lunch setting seemed pretty low. I was prepared to blow the whole thing off when some sati kicked in, and I started looking at the situation as an excellent chance to practice doing things differently—the whole reason for being 13,000 miles from home.

Sharky’s is one of those places specifically built and interiorly decorated to attract expatriates and the top layer of Myanmar residents (“We are the 5%.”). Lots of chrome and glass. A refrigerated case holding meats and cheeses and salads like an American deli. Food is served on low tables, knee-height; the chairs are curved in such a way that after you finish eating you can just kind of collapse into them with your glass of zinfandel. If Sharky’s were on Lower Queen Anne in Seattle, I would yawn. But it’s in a suburb of Yangon, and so it seemed slick and unnerving to me because it was my first time in what I now recognize as the city’s expat ghetto, where embassy and multinational coporate employees live and eat and drink and watch rugby and soccer and basketball on satellite TV and talk about what Myanmar really needs.

And now a high-level and wealthy Sayadaw had chosen Sharky’s to celebrate his birthday in a most un-Myanmar monk manner. The tradition in this country is to give things to others on your birthday; monasteries are typical recipients of large gifts of food or cash from adults who were brought up to think this way. My guess is that Sayadaw did exactly that in a manner that I was unaware of, but he was also willing to accept our invitation to receive something. He arrived riding in the shotgun seat of an enormous crimson-colored Toyota SUV, with four Westerners in the back and jumper seats.

So much for my image of a poor monk living a life of voluntary simplicity while teaching Dhamma. So much for my image of a role model for renunciation, for my images of a forest refuge far from the trappings of material life, where everything is focused on achieving insights. I know, I know, those images should have been killed during my month at Shwe Oo Min, but please, I dearly love my delusions. Of course Sayadaw should feel completely at home at Sharky’s—he spent a decade as an executive in his family’s garment manufacturing business, and he was clearly very good at it. One day during my retreat his family came to sponsor a yogi meal and to make a large donation to the center. Most of them traveled in a private luxury bus, but a few insisted on driving their own SUVs.

Still, I had a “What’s wrong with this picture?” moment when I looked around our table and saw one young Mexican woman named Susan and four males (one Aussie and three Yanks) age 40 and older, all dressed in typical Western garb, plus one sayadaw in his crimson and saffron robes. Everything else about Sharky’s screamed “Attachment! Attachment!” Tasteful paintings for sale on the wall. Four well-dressed Burmese women enjoying a lunch date. Wait staff standing close-by, ready to pounce should we gaze their way.

Sayadaw ordered an individual pizza. So did Seattle Paul and Susan. I ordered spaghetti Bolognese, Carl lasagna, Aussie Paul a spinach salad with a broiled chicken breast. Three house salads. Baskets of warm French bread. Juices and iced coffees. Sayadaw did not hold back at dessert: a scoop of ice cream and a cappuccino. Dig it, I got to watch a respected sayadaw scarf down pizza and ice cream and an espresso on his birthday. You gotta love them attachments!

And while we waited for our order, and while we ate, and as we digested, we mostly talked about Dhamma, but as lunch progressed things got more relaxed. Someone told a tired old story about seeing a sign in a restaurant in India that showed someone squatting with both feet planted on a Western-style toilet seat, with a line drawn through it indicating “do not do this.” Sayadaw responded by pulling out his iPhone and finding a photo he took in another Asian bathroom of a sign showing someone standing in front of a urinal, again with a line drawn through it. He asked us, “What is this sign for?” None of us could figure it out. “Don’t wash your hands in the urinal!” He said some people in that country (I think it was China) thought the soap in the urinal was for washing their hands, and that the automatic flushing was for rinsing.

A toilet joke from Sayadaw! Then he showed us some funny pictures from other situations. He told some stories about unusual yogis he had met, like the yogi who was so uptight that he could not relax enough to do a simple twist-your-torso-and-swing-your-arms yoga exercise. After that story I pictured a group of sayadaws sitting in a bar, quaffing tall glasses of tamarind juice with little umbrella drink stirrers, talking shop about the retreat biz, comparing notes about strange yogis: “You think he’s weird, wait ‘til you get a load of this guy . . .”

But for the most part, the conversation centered on Dhamma, which is what you would expect from a sayadaw and five of his yogis, four of whom were still in retreat—though you sure as hell couldn’t tell that from the Sharky’s tableau. And it was through that conversation that I finally made a dent in Sayadaw’s consciousness. I surprised everyone, including myself, over how much I had to share in this informal setting, especially compared to the weekly English-language Q&A session at the monastery, where I competed with 20 or more yogis for his attention. I said some things that clearly struck a chord with everyone sitting around the table. Maybe it was my imagination getting the better of me, but I got the feeling that Sayadaw thought, “Oh, so this guy really does have an idea about what this vipassana stuff is all about, maybe I was wrong about him.”

About 90 minutes into lunch it was time to call it quits, and for Sayadaw and four of the yogis to head on back to Shwe Oo Min—perhaps in time for the 4 o’clock sitting meditation, but I couldn’t imagine any of them finding it easy to slip into sati for the rest of the day. Aussie Paul and Carl went downstairs to figure out the bill, Seattle Paul and I chatted with Susan, and Sayadaw slipped away, I thought downstairs with the others. Then nature called, and I went to the bathroom.

I don’t know about women, but for guys there can be an uncomfortable feeling when you’re in the bathroom with another guy that you don’t have a clear connection with. I did my business in one toilet stall (the bathroom was unisex, no urinals) and flushed at the same time as the guy in the stall next to me, who turned out to be Sayadaw. As we washed our hands in adjacent sinks, I figured the situation called for silent meditation—I mean, what do you say to a sayadaw in that scenario? “Hey, Susan looks nice today, doesn’t she?” “How was your pizza and espresso?” “How do you manage to not get your robe wet?”

If you’ve got nothing to say, don’t say it. Sayadaw was standing closer to the paper towel dispenser, so he got first dibs and dried his hands. He moved to the side and I did the same. After I put my towels into the wastebasket, I turned around and saw that he was standing in front of the sliding door. I stood behind him and slightly to his right. While waiting for him to leave, I stood there lightly holding my right wrist in my left hand. It took what must have seemed to him like the longest two seconds ever to realize what was expected of me: he was waiting for me to open the door for him. I let out a soft “Oh,” tried to stifle a chuckle, and then fulfilled my duty. Ice cream, good Dhamma conversation, and toilet jokes aside, in the end he was Sayadaw, I was yogi.

He was gone by the time I collected my day pack, went downstairs, and ponied up my share of the bill. He was probably waiting in the front seat of the Shwe Oo Min SUV, being equanimous. I said my goodbyes and shuffled on down Dhama Zedi Road to find a nearby coffee shop rumored to have really fast wi-fi, perhaps not walking as mindfully as Sayadaw might have encouraged.

The Return

I told you about young backpacker types taking advantage of the meditation visa system. Well, so am I. I applied for a six month extension in order to teach English in a monastery school in northern Shan State, not too far from the Chinese border. I will try to hook up with a monastery that actually supports my meditation practice, but the primary motivation this time is to serve as a volunteer teacher.

The process starts by getting permission from Sayadaw, which takes just a few minutes. The next step is dealing with Dta Dta, a woman in her 30s who unfortunately has the best English in the front office, which makes her the go-to woman for English speakers with standard accents as well as Estonian, Czech, German, French, Ukranian, Mexican, Australian, and all other accents. Poor Dta Dta, I do feel for her.

I gave her the slip of paper from Sayadaw giving me permission to apply for a six month extension, she gave me the paperwork to fill out in duplicate, I gave her the requisite eight passport photos, which she looked at and said “Very handsome,” and I offered her my glasses for a second look. Then I said, “How much do you need?” to which she replied “Oh, don’t worry, you can pay it later.” The way she said it made me think, “Oh, that’s weird, usually they want the money up front.” I had no idea that her real meaning was “Don’t worry, you can pay after lunch or sometime before I go home at 5 o’clock.” When will I ever learn?

She was, however, very clear in her answer to my question, “How long will this take?” “Six weeks, so you should come to the office and check on April 7.” I knew I would be in Yangon by that time, but as instructed, on April 7 I gave Dta Dta a call. Her responses to my questions were

Who are you?

What do you mean, a visa extension?

When did you pay? Do you have a receipt?

When were you here? When did you apply?

Who are you? When did you pay?

And so on into cyclic existence befitting a meditation center. Obviously a return visit was called for.

I made it an adventure. Instead of forking out $20 for round-trip taxi fare, I decided to take the local bus, the one that stops every 50 yards or so, and that sometimes picks up passengers in-between as long as the bus doesn’t have to come to a full stop. Local bus drivers in Myanmar always hire two assistants, one to call out the destination and the stops and to tell people to hurry up getting on and off, and another to collect the fare, which ranges from 100 to 300 kyat: about 11 to 35 cents. For 35 cents I got a full 90 minutes’ worth of entertainment, including an accident—my bus sideswiped a pickup truck, so I got to see some theatrical denial and negotiations between drivers.

Good thing I was entertained, because unlike what I’d been told, the end of the line for the “gna-dit” (number 51) bus was several miles short of where I needed to be. I found a “moto-boy”—there’s always a bunch in every village, guys in their early 20s who own 125 cc motorcycles and who spend their days hanging out waiting for riders. They don’t usually troll for fares, but one moto-boy found me, told me he knew where Shwe Oo Min was, and that he would take me there for 2,500 kyat. That’s taxi fare, I’d been told to watch out for those moto boys, they’ll take you for a ride. I offered 1,000 max, he said OK, and he took me on a 5-10 mile ride through some nasty back roads to get to the center. He went well beyond the moto-boy call of duty, so I gave him 2,000. He was really happy with that, on top of being happy with the idea of a foreigner being interested in something like Buddhism and meditation. 

Total travel time: 2 hours. Total time figuring out the problem with my visa in the office: 3 minutes. Dta Dta remembered my face and my filling out the forms in duplicate. She asked me for $120, gave me a receipt, and that was that.   

Hosannas and palm leaves were not expected upon my return, and none were given. But I sure had a sense of coming home. I was expecting to say hello to maybe 1 or 2 people before having another bus adventure back to Yangon. Instead, I almost stayed overnight.

One-by-one I ran into my Buddha homeboys: US Paul, Aussie Paul, Fran, Carl, Than Loc, Hiro, Mathias, some others with whom I had made connections despite their tortured English. This was the core group of foreign and local yogis who had spent two weeks meditating in relative silence and scorching heat after Sayadaw left for Vietnam. They were the few and the proud, and I was welcomed back as a comrade. During my retreat I had had focused discussions about Dhamma with all of them, mixed in with a few samalappawada sessions.

What a great feeling, the attachment of belonging! Immediately the appointments started adding up: a walk with Than Loc, a cup of US Paul’s special instant coffee recipe that he calls a “Burmese speedball,” a promise to meet with people during the juice hour. And they were so calm! They had spent their days in meditation and media blackout while I explored the streets of Yangon and dealt with editing clients by email. They knew very little about the Buddhist-Muslim riots and killings that had taken place in three Myanmar cities during the preceding week. I was the messenger bringing news from the outside world—this must have been what it was like before telegraphs, when news stories took days, weeks, or months to travel across states, countries, and oceans. When I saw the looks on their faces when I told them about Buddhist monks attacking a Muslim madrassa, I thought, “Maybe you should shut your mouth, Mr. Media Man, they will find out soon enough when they leave the center, let them have the pleasure of looking at their minds in isolation for a bit longer.”

And the big news at the center? Sayadaw had returned just the previous evening! Everyone was excited about his presence, and happy to see him taking leisurely strolls around the grounds, checking on the orchids. And this is where I had a minor, non-vipassana insight. Almost all of my Buddha homeboys said the same thing: “How wonderful that you came back today, Jon, you can visit with Sayadaw and talk about your practice since you returned to Yangon!” And each time, the suggestion made me squirm and stammer while I tried to feign excitement.

I had been away from the center for more than a week, and like anyone else who returns to civilian life, I had struggled with keeping a high level of intensity in my practice. But I really could not imagine going out of my way to talk with Sayadaw—I just did not feel the sense of connection that would support such an idea.

My friends’ suggestions made me think about the three times I had been in the same room with him. The first was on the day of my arrival, when it is standard protocol for a new yogi to meet him. He asked me what kind of visa I had. He asked me how long I was planning to stay. I said “Thirty days.” He said, “Thirty days, that’s a long time, have you done this before?” I said, “I’ve done two week-long retreats with Steve Armstrong.” And then one of his assistant nuns entered the room to do some administrative stuff with him, and that was that.  

The second time was that same evening, when he had his once-every-five-days question-and-answer session with English-speaking yogis. I was surrounded by 30 yogis who had already been there for weeks or months, I was the new kid in town. When it was my turn to speak I talked about dealing with sloth and torpor and heat, asked him for some advice, and he basically said “Get some rest” and that was it, on to the next yogi. It was a lame question deserving of a no-nonsense ho-hum response.

The third time was five days later, on the evening before his trip to Vietnam. At the last minute he changed his mind and decided to have 1-to-1 sessions with each of the foreign yogis, giving each of us 5-10 minutes of time. One person stayed in his office for almost 20 minutes, I was jealous that they had so much to talk about. The rest of us stood outside dealing with mosquitoes. This time I was prepared, I actually had two questions for him, one about the location of the mind (a topic worth three blog entries in itself), and one about awareness of awareness. The session went fine, but when I looked at the clock it had taken all of 8 minutes.

And that’s it. I recognize Sayadaw as someone who has come up with a unique approach to a 2,500-year-old form of meditation, and that he came up with that approach by spending years as a devoted student to a true meditation master named Shwe Oo Min. I recognize Sayadaw as a remarkably intelligent individual who used that intelligence to help his family build a successful garment manufacturing business after he had spent some years as an ordained monk, and then returned to a monk’s existence to spend as much time as possible with Shwe Oo Min refining his practice. I felt privileged to be on the same grounds with him, let alone to be in a position to ask for his advice on meditation. And I understand that it is impossible for him to make a strong connection with every single yogi who walks in his door. Still, I felt zero connection with him due to simple causes and conditions on both sides.

But what the hell, there I was at Shwe Oo Min checking up on my visa, and all of my yogi friends had said the same thing, “You really should check in with him while you’re here, talk about what’s going on with your practice.” That was wonderful heartfelt advice from friends who had been practicing non-stop in a retreat setting for the past eight days. So I sat on the steps in front of his office waiting for his 4 pm office hours to begin.

The Vietnamese Mother Superior nun opened the door at exactly 4 and immediately said, “Sayadaw is very busy.” And he was. There was a taxicab driver doing some kind of business with him, and he was pacing back-and-forth between his desk and a computer printer that wasn’t cooperating. The atmosphere was one of a busy office with workers trying to make a deadline. He looked in my direction without saying anything, though making it clear that I should say what I had to say, which was “I have two practical questions and a question about my practice.” He said, “Can’t talk about practice now, come back when there’s a yogi session.” Then we did our business—getting permission to visit another meditation center in the central part of the country that is more restrictive about accepting foreign yogis, and getting his account number at his bank in Singapore so I could send my retreat dana there and save my US cash dollars to support my volunteer teaching.

All of this makes total sense. I’d shown up unexpectedly, he was just back from a month-long retreat in Vietnam, and his office hours were generally for non-Dhamma stuff. But once again I left his office feeling no sense of connection, and while I accepted it, I was also disappointed, and feeling a bit of the very human emotion of envy that my Buddha homeboys all felt closer to him than I. Had I been a more experienced practitioner, I may have felt equanimity instead. I’ll work on it.

So I left his office, had my juice appointment, went to the dining hall for another glass of some unusual tea from Vietnam that was said to keep the body cool in intense heat, and chatted about Dhamma and non-Dhamma cabbages and kings until it was time to go. My Swiss friend Mathias joined me for the two-kilometer walk to the village because he wanted a haircut. During the walk we had one of the most focused Dhamma conversations I’ve ever had, because Mathias really knows his stuff, I had something to share that he was interested in, and we were one of those rare pairs of people whose senses of give-and-take in conversation were very much alike. I was energized, even in the intense heat of the Myanmar countryside.

I forgot to mention, in between drinking a Burmese speedball with Paul and my date with Sayadaw, I spent two hours in the meditation hall. I needed patience when I tried to meditate in my hotel room, but in the hall I slipped into a state of sati with almost no effort at all. I sat comfortably for a full hour, whereas even during my retreat 45 minutes tended to be my max. I continuously and affirmatively responded to the ongoing question, “Is there awareness?” I was able to step back and look at my thoughts from a detached distance. These were things that did not come easy in Yangon. So even though I was happy knowing that I would be sleeping in air-conditioned comfort and not waking up the next morning drenched in sweat, on the bus back to town I had a vision of Alan Bates in the movie King of Hearts, standing at the gate of the insane asylum, wanting to be let in because he had seen enough of the outside world.

Schlepping Toward Liberation

I had some doubts about surviving 30 days of tropical heat. Between February 24 and March 23, the daily high temperature was somewhere between 36^◦C and 40^◦C—95^◦ and 104^◦ Fahrenheit. There were two 100-plus degree days during the first week, which triggered this internal conversation:

What is being known in the present moment? (Used as a verbal cue for maintaining mindfulness while meditating.)

Hot.

What is being known in the present moment?

Hot.

What is being known in the present moment?

Why am I here?

What is being known in the present moment?

This makes August in Louisiana feel like New Years in Manitoba.

What is being known in the present moment?

I’ll bet the Finnish yogi wouldn’t tolerate this in a sauna.

What is being known in the present moment?

Norgies, Swedes, they’d all open the door to let some sub-zero air in.

What is being known in the present moment?

            I’ll bet this is how a cooking lobster feels.

Since working with defilements is a central tenet in vipassana meditation, I was supposed to work with heat as an object for my practice. According to Sayadaw, if the mind is truly interested in what it’s doing, it should never get sleepy. Sayadaw has one air conditioning unit mounted on the outside wall upstairs on his house, and one mounted internally in his downstairs office, which is one reason why there’s always perfect attendance when he holds his question-and-answer sessions. It’s fans-only in the main meditation hall, a third of them not working. Monk or yogi, by mid-afternoon heads are dropping like eight balls in the corner pocket.

A friend has a post card in her kitchen proclaiming that “Routine is the enemy”—it’s an ad for a beer company. Those are very American values: avoid routine, be unique, look for the new and unusual. In monasteries—Buddhist, Daoist or Trappist—routine is central to achieving spiritual goals. One routine they all share is arising at hours best described as ungodly: 3:30 is common, and that’s when the bell rung at Shwe Oo Min. With bedtime scheduled for 9 p.m. and lights out at 10, we had a luxurious 5-1/2 to 6-1/2 hours dedicated to sleep. Someone I met who spent a week at a Myanmar nunnery said that the local nuns and yogis were only allowed 4 hours, Westerners 6. Liberation is not for the well-rested.

I only overslept once, during week 1, and I responded with Presbyterian guilt, I know it was Presbyterian because no one was watching and no one cared. For the other 29 days I was out of bed and out the door in five minutes, since it was the only time when the temperature was below 80. At 4 I reluctantly went to the meditation hall, to the previous day’s residual heat and the stuffiness of sitting under a mosquito net. But the mind was fresh, and I had several mindful sits at 4 a.m.

At 5:30 routine became ritual. A young kitchen worker with major biceps grabbed a 10-pound wooden mallet and swung it against a five-foot section of tree trunk hanging by a chain from the frame above the walkway. Bonk … Bonk ... Bonk ... Bonk-bonk-bonk-bnk-bnk-bnk-bnk-nk-nk-nk-nk-nk-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k. (Dramatic pause.) Bonk ... Bonk ... Bonk. The robed monks led the way to the dining hall, but went upstairs to their segregated section. The nuns followed and went down to the commoners’ cafeteria, followed by the householders in the two male dorms, with female householders bringing up the rear. It’s been said that you must be reborn as a male to achieve liberation. I read somewhere that the Dalai Lama cried when a Western nun described life on the bottom rung.

The monk situation was an indicator of the center’s wealth. They got their regular breakfast in the dining hall, then at 6:30, after another set of bonks, they went out to gather alms. Inside the entrance gate, members of a Myanmar Buddhist organization doing a group retreat offered the monks rice or pre-wrapped cakes (think Hostess—nutrition doesn’t count, it’s the act of giving that produces merit). One day I watched a member of the Buddhist organization pass out pre-wrapped cakes on one side of the gate, and on the other side another group member held a bag to collect the same cakes from the monks, don’t know what that was about. Outside the gate, local women generously added more rice to the monks’ bowls.

Collecting alms is a solemn ritual dating back to the time of the Buddha, over 2,500 years ago, when monks were completely dependent on dana (sounds like “Donna”) for their survival. In 2007, when a group of Myanmar monks led a nationwide strike against unfair increases in energy and food prices and in favor of democratic reforms, they turned their bowls upside-down when members of the military, government, or their families tried to offer dana. This was considered shocking: by refusing to accept donations, the monks were denying the givers the opportunity to gain merit toward nibbana. I’m told that officers all the way to the top were offended and angered by this action. It’s not the main reason why soldiers killed almost 3,000 unarmed monks in what came to be known as the Saffron Revolution, but it certainly didn’t do anything to maintain good relations.

Except for watching the monks collect their alms, the only other time I left the Shwe Oo Min compound was for a 90-minute visit to a local “Internet café” to check up on an ill friend and to make a reservation for a post-retreat guest house. I walked 15 minutes along a deeply rutted dirt road to get there, surrounded by some of the worst poverty I’ve ever seen first-hand. Raw sewage stink. Dogs whose fur had fallen off long ago, unable to lift their legs high enough to scratch new bug bites. Thin, rocky soil, garbage-filled dikes, collapsed buildings. I walked by two nunneries consisting of one-room thatched huts serving triple duty as altars, bedrooms, and protection from the sun and rain. Each nunnery occupied maybe a half-acre of land. Those women really depend on dana. In comparison, two of the local monasteries have high brick and mortar walls, gates on metal tracks that could be locked at night, dormitories for monks and visitors, and loudspeakers for broadcasting the Dhamma talks of their respective sayadaws. While the Shwe Oo Min dana ritual still held some power for me—it is a solemn ceremony—after that walk it took on a theatrical aspect as something that wasn’t really necessary, though it gave local families opportunities to gain merit.

It must be said: the nuns I saw on my walk were thin, rail-thin in some cases. Sayadaw Tejaniya, who spent at least a decade managing his family’s successful garment business before renouncing his householder’s life for his robed existence, is hefty, though pictures prove that he wasn’t always. None of the monks I met looked like they had missed a meal in a long time. It must also be said: I heard on my personal grapevine that Shwe Oo Min is generous in sharing its wealth with nearby nunneries and monasteries. Generosity is an important parami.  

One of you asked me about the cafeteria food. I’ll keep the description short: it surpassed my expectations, which were low due to a comment made by my last American teacher at a Cloud Mountain retreat. Breakfasts were variations on a noodle theme, once in a while fried rice. We got hard boiled eggs, bean protein, congee, and occasionally mohinga—Burma’s favorite breakfast, consisting of thin rice noodles with fish and vegetables in a tasty broth. Lunch was rice with one or two meat/fish dishes, a couple of veggies, one type of salad (non-leafy), and soup. Both meals had vegetarian options. Ice cream at least once per week, two times with a piece of sponge cake on the side. Breakfast at 5:30, lunch at 10:30, take all you want, eat all you take. I rarely felt hungry.

After breakfast, ritual returned to routine. There were no rules for the gap between eating and the 7 o’clock sit. I used the time for ablutions, then grabbed one of my Dhamma books and went to my favorite chair in my favorite location during my favorite time of day. I’ll post a picture later. It was on the porch outside the second floor meditation hall. If the mosquitos were still out, there was a mosquito net I could sit under. If not, I sat facing some trees to watch tropical birds building nests or fussing and fighting over females or territory. Any breeze was lagniappe.

I usually had between 20 and 30 minutes before other yogis appeared, which I felt was important in the absence of a teacher. On all of my Cloud Mountain retreats I’ve had teachers who sit with the yogis first thing in the morning, who give brief morning instructions, who give one-hour Dhamma talks in the evening, and in cases where there are two teachers on the same retreat, sometimes I’ve gotten a bonus Dhamma talk in the afternoon. On top of this are group or individual meetings with him/her/them, either daily or every other day.

Like I said, there were great benefits to Sayadaw leaving on day 8 of my retreat. The samalappawada index fell by two-thirds, and I had a dorm room to myself. The down side was no access to a teacher. But I don’t think I would have had access to one if he had stayed—too many yogis vying for his attention. I spent 8 minutes with him one-on-one, feeling pressure to hurry up because there was a line of other yogis waiting outside his door.

Fortunately, he has written a wonderful and very short book called Don’t Look Down On the Defilements, They Will Laugh at You, available in its entirety online. It has all the vipassana basics you need for liberation, your results may vary. He also freely gives away copies of two other books, Awareness is Not Enough and Dhamma is Everywhere. The first is a collection of transcripts from question-and-answer sessions, translated and edited so the English is excellent. The second is a mix of Q and A transcripts and translations of Dhamma talks that Sayadaw has given on various retreats. By now both of them may be available online. These books were my teacher substitutes, and as I’ll try to describe in a separate post, they were good enough to help me achieve a significant insight in that very chair in that very corner of the second floor porch, during that very 7 to 8 o’clock hour designated as the first post-breakfast sitting meditation period of the day.

But I don’t want to burn you out. I have more to say on the daily routine, I’ll do it in a separate post to keep the portions small.