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.
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