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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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