The bats fly into the cave. They swoop, circle low and around then up and out again. It’s Northern Thailand in 1987 and I try to sleep on the ground, nearly impossible with the large looming golden Buddha sitting and staring in the pitch black and those bats. When I finally fall asleep I’m awakened by visions of dark figures marching in.
Down the hill from the cave white, rounded smooth steps made from mineral deposits lead down to a hot spring pool. Kate, Paolo, Lucia and I run up and down the steps to breathe in the healthy hot air. We’ve been invited up north to visit temples and sacred sites after completing a 26-day meditation retreat at The Northern Insight Meditation Center at Wat Rampoeng in Chiang Mai.
Wat Rampoeng is a noisy Wat. At dawn the chickens and dogs create quite a din at the bell announcing the first meal of the day. Midway through my stay construction begins on a new meditation building. The hammering, sawing, cement mixing and yelling create quite the meditation challenge when combined with all the voices in my head.
That first morning meal is often boiled rice with peanuts or tiny dried fish thrown on top and stirred in. I enjoy and appreciate this early nourishment, because like the rest of the monastery I’m not permitted to eat after twelve noon.
The second and final meal of the day comes around 10:30 am. It’s a full meal with meat, fish, vegetables, rice, noodles and fresh fruit. Every morning the barefoot monks gather this food from the community in large bowls. This is supplemented with coffee, tea, toast and jam. Sometimes I’m so buzzed from the sugar and caffeine after this communal meal, it’s difficult to shut up and meditate.
Behind Rampoeng’s red wooden temple is a large chedi that looks like an upside down ice cream cone with seated Buddha statues stuck in it. Barefoot, I walk miles and sit many hours around that chedi.
The Vipassana practice includes walking and sitting meditation. “Lifting – moving – putting” is the first walking exercise – right foot up, forward and down then left foot up, forward and down slowly and mindfully. It’s like moving in slow motion as if deaf, blind and dumb with head at a 45-degree angle and hands clasped behind back. The steps become increasingly complex — the final six-step combo is; “Heel up – lifting – forwarding – lowering – touching – pressing.” My feet become as sensitive as my hands.
In the sitting position I’m instructed to focus on my breathing in the belly rising and falling – in and out. Next I concentrate on a series of points on my body. A small wooden figure with white dots stuck to it, show their exact location.
During meditation when I hear a sound I say to myself, “Hearing, hearing, hearing”, a smell, “Smelling, smelling, smelling” a discomfort in the body, “Feeling, feeling feeling” or “Pain, pain, pain”. Heightened awareness of the five senses and my breathing, combined with focus on the points and steps is the complex equation to clearing the mind for at least a short time.
The big insight happened when I realize there are thoughts in my head that play over and over like a recording on repeat. “Thinking, thinking, thinking” separates thoughts out and dissipates them so they have less control or influence.
For two months I shift from room to room, monk to monk, floor to floor – wood to cement, and back to wood again. I endure pain, burning, battle tedium, sway, tremble, quiver, cry and get the chills on all these hard surfaces. My head, shoulders and knees bob up and down like a marionette. I experience the complete range of my emotions, desires and weaknesses.
By the end of this intense journey I meditate 10 hours a day, an hour walking then an hour sitting and so on. As I sit with hands palm up, right on top of left and legs folded in the lotus position; I envision an empty space, a blank sheet of white paper or a pool of water inside my skull. My spine becomes a wood pole stuck in the middle of a pond with no banks, and ripples continuing on, outward and beyond.
I consider becoming a monk and read through the 227 precepts or official monastic rules. As a warm up I’m given the traditional cloth monk bag to carry over my shoulder when we travel outside the Wat walls. One such trip was attending a massive funeral for a famous cigar-smoking monk seen hovering in mid air by pilots at the moment of his death. A photo of me ends up in a feature on the funeral in a Thai newspaper. I stand out amidst tens of thousands as the tall skinny Caucasian man dressed in white with shaved head sporting a big smile.
Soon after this trip my tourist visa expires and it’s time to go. I leave Thailand with the ability to achieve a quiet mind. This is Vipassana’s gift. I can access an inner emptiness amidst all the chaos of life and the fears, worries and anxieties that swoop and circle like the bats in that faraway cave.
Melcher Mosaic 