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On the last day of 2001 I started a meditation retreat at the Wat Suan
Mokkh International Dhamma Hermitage a short drive north from Surat Thani.
Felipe and I agreed to meet back at our hotel when the retreat ended in ten
days.
To fill in a little background, Wat Suan Mokkh hosts these retreats during
the first ten days of every month. All instruction and dhamma talks are
given in English. At least a hundred people sign up on a typical month,
coming from all over the world to attend. Photography is forbidden until
the final day, but most of these photos could well represent any given day
of the retreat.
Here's a brief journal entry from around sunset on my first evening there:
I'm presently in my room in the mens dormitory building. I can hear an
Aussie a few doors down from me play the digeridoo to a percussion of
background pops and booms as New Years is celebrated in the nearby village.
I don't suppose I'll be writing for a while as it's against the rules here.
After the retreat I sent back a series of three emails in which I tried to
describe a typical day during the retreat. Here's the first one:
So Felipe and I are back in Surat Thani. On New Years Eve we split
up. I went for a 10-day meditation retreat at the International Dhamma
Hermitage about a 1 hour drive from here and Felipe went to Ko
Phangan, an island infamous for its beach parties and raves.
I've never been to such a retreat before so I didn't really know what
to expect, but it sounded like a good way to learn meditation.
Staying there turned out to be a lot harder then I had expected. When
we started the retreat on the 31st there were 101 attendees split
between two dormitories (one for men, one for women). People started
fleeing in droves by the next day, completely disregarding their
non-refundable 1200 baht registration fee (about $30 US). By the
last day we'd lost close to half the people who signed up, most of
them having left during the first three days.
I found out yesterday
that the drop-out rate is usually around 60-70%, but it falls in
January since only the more serious people are willing to give
up their New Years Eve to attend the January retreat.
Frankly I don't blame any of the drop-outs. I felt pretty close to
leaving on day 2 myself.
At 4am you start hearing these steady "bong!' sounds from the bell
tower nearby, telling you it's time to get up. Until your body
adjusts, you tend to wake up quite sore for the first fews days. The
beds are concrete slabs. For your comfort they provide a thin straw
mat, a blanket, a mosquito net and wooden pillow (a polished block of
wood with a curve in it where your head sits).
You step out into the
courtyard of your dormitory and take a quick shower in either your
underwear or a bathing suit.
The courtyard has these large concrete
tubs filled with rainwater. Plastic bowls rest on the edges of the
tubs and you are expected to use these to splash water on yourself in
order to bathe. It's against the rules to climb inside the tubs or
contaminate them with soap. The water is bloody cold at 4am, but then
you have to finish up quickly anyways and at least the fact that it's
dark out means you can't see all the bugs and other shit that's
floating in the water. By 4:25 you're expected to be in Meditation
Hall 2 for the morning reading.
I'm out of time but I'll continue this
description in a later email.
Scott
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