Meditating in 1997 Thailand

Meditating in 1997 Thailand

Janet and I couldn’t stay at Bhavana as a married couple, so a kind nun at the Bhavana Society referred Janet to a friend of hers; a Buddhist nun living in Thailand, thinking that Janet might be interested in going back to Southeast Asia. When Janet got in touch with the nun, she invited Janet to join both her and her abbot along with two other senior monks, on a trip they were planning to Califo
ia, Canada and Mexico. Janet could ordain during the trip, and then accompany them back to Thailand and live at Wat Phratat Foon with the nun, with Ajahn Lee, and Ajahn Luen.

So Janet was off, leaving me behind to dispose of our belongings . . . again, which now included a mobile home! The old Toyota was still running, amazingly, and I was able to sell it for about what I initially paid for it, and by some stroke of pure luck, I was able to sell the mobile home as well. I moved in with Bhante G again, for awhile, before heading for Thailand and Wat Pah Baan That. I would be two hundred kilometers from where Janet was staying, far enough away so that we would see each other occasionally, but not close enough to interfere with each other’s practice (or raise eyebrows with the villagers).

Janet made herself right at home in Thailand, living out in the jungle with nothing but a small bamboo platform and a mosquito net. Her meditation deepened quickly, walking for hours back and forth alongside her little “tent,” and somehow protected from the cobras that roamed the gardens that she weeded. Walking meditation created more of a challenge to keep her mind concentrated than did sitting meditation, and when she could become concentrated while walking, her sitting became even more refined.

Janet’s abbot was enigmatic, and more — Janet was certain he could read minds. She once tested him by thinking . . . if you can read my mind; walk over here, right now, past where I am standing (she was standing in an area where he rarely entered. Well, in only a few minutes, you guessed it; there he was!

One day, when I was visiting Janet’s monastery, I watched him work some more magic. He was talking to a seriously distressed young village woman who was supposedly possessed with some kind of psychosis — screaming and thrashing about in the courtyard of the monastery. Her family and a crowd of villagers had gathered and were looking on as the abbot smoked one cigarette after another while calmly talking to her for hours. Finally, the girl curled up on the courtyard pavement and went to sleep, and from what I understand, was never troubled again.

My home monastery was Wat Pah Baan That, home of unquestionably the most renowned meditation monk now living in Thailand; Acha
Maha Boowa. I didn’t see too much of him as a layperson, and never spoke to him personally, but the little contact I did have was impressive. Whenever I was near him, I experienced an unusual peaceful feeling, and he didn’t affect me in any kind of a wearying way, as if everything was as it should be. He always seemed tranquil and comfortable. I never seen him excited, but at times he expressed annoyance if not downright anger, regarding some of his young monk’s behavior! You knew where you stood with him at all times, and he knew what you were, intuitively. He was about eighty-two at the time.

He was fearless as well. While I was there, a cancerous tumor was discovered in his bowel that had invaded the lining of the bowel itself and was spreading. A battery of doctors from Bangkok insisted that he undergo immediate surgery, but instead, and without the slightest conce
as if he only had a headache or something, he opted for some Chinese herbs relying on the power of his meditation to take care of things. (He’s still alive today, ten years later).

The wat (monastery) was extremely busy. Thousands of lay supporters from all over Thailand were constantly coming and going to make offerings and pay respects during the holidays; it was not unusual to have ten-thousand attend the wat during a special occasion, with busloads of people from Bangkok.

Acha
Maha Boowa spoke differently to monks than he did to lay people. With monks, he discussed the intricacies of meditation and spiritual training, but with lay people, he talked about things that would make their lives better. He understood that they didn’t have the time or inclination to go deeply into meditation, even though some of the lay people, surprisingly, became quite advanced in Samadhi within the context of a busy lay life.

After about six months at Wat Pah Baan That, I took full ordination as a Buddhist monk with the help of some Thai supporters, an American monk, Tan Dick, and the beloved senior English monk, Ajahn Panyavaddho, who passed away recently with over three-hundred monks from monasteries throughout Thailand attending his funeral.

Acha
Maha Boowa, however, would not permit me to stay at Wat Pah Ban That after my ordination — “Too many Westerners,” which was difficult for him to teach because of the language barrier, and because of his advanced age — so I was shipped off to a strict “boot camp” at a wat run by a disciplinarian abbot just across the Mekong River and Laos. This was great, because Acha
Maha Boowa’s wat was just too busy for me, but the downside was that I was now 400 Kilometers from Janet!

Fifteen to twenty monks usually inhabited the wat near Laos, the number varied, and fortunately included an ex CIA (he never admitted it but I was sure he was) American monk who spoke not only fluid Thai, but Cambodian and Laotian as well. The abbot could only speak a few words of English, but he had a favorite phrase that he repeated ad nauseam as we walked together on alms round: “Women have the nature of dogs!” he would say, over and over. Then, when we were all seated in the hall for the meal, he would glance at me and smile every time Thai women from Bangkok, dressed to the nines in short skirts, ran around with food offerings. (I think he knew that I was married).

My kuti was deep in the forest, about a half mile from the main hall, and situated on the upper end of a massive, flat rock. There were large flat rocks on both sides with deep ravines separating them (havens for cobras), and surrounding everything was dense jungle. The six by seven foot hut was perched on the customary four stilts, with each stilt fitted with a small pan filled with kerosene to keep out ants and termites. Eight steps led to a small porch at the entrance of the small hut, which had two large windows with shutters to protect the occupant from the heavy storms that would soon arrive.

The tin roof looked as if it would hold up well during the rains and was clear of low hanging branches that would invite vipers to drop off trees and become unwelcome guests. Inside on the floor were a lante
and a water jug, and in a corner was a table with a candle and some incense. The solitary ado
ments on the back wall were a pair of geckos, the ever-present foot long lizards that considered this hut their home as well.

The floor and walls were made of planks cut from large trees by villagers using a two-man saw, and manually cutting the forty-foot logs end-to-end to make boards. This was backbreaking, tedious work for the young village men who would work all day without stopping, except for a few bites of rice and a coke at noon. These impoverished villagers gave up a great deal of their time and resources to support the monks, and I vowed to work as hard as I could to find the truth so that I could somehow repay them. Their generosity always astounded me.

A monk’s routine in Thailand varied little no matter where he stayed. In the afte
oons, I would join the monks at the well near the main hall where we each drew a bucket of cold water for our bath. This bathing area also served as a meeting place where the monks met twice a month to make their brooms for sweeping the paths and to wash and dye their donated robes, by boiling them with the orange bark from the jackfruit tree. (We were treated to a hot bath every two weeks!).

I would walk back to my hut after the bath and practice meditation for the rest of the evening and usually late into the night. How could I be happier? I had two geckos as companions and my meditation was improving too. I was beginning to feel at ease with this practice; the fertile soil my heart was growing in.

I was feeling increasingly at home in nature. The unique aspect of nature is its vastness — I could take in as much as I wanted and not diminish it. While I was there, I tried to attain jhanas, deep states of concentration that systematically relinquishes attachments to the eye, ear, nose, tongue, and body sensual sensations; as well as attachments to directed thought and mental evaluations; rapture, pleasure, equanimity, form, infinite space, infinite consciousness, nothingness, and neither perception nor non-perception.

Jhanas are complicated. They are experiential, and making one’s way through the maze of sensations and impressions that result from deep concentration that can culminate in jhanas can be mind-boggling. I soon found myself writing a monk in Australia that I had become acquainted with years ago at Wat Pah Nanachat in 1981, and had since moved on to a monastery in Perth, Australia where he currently was the abbot. He was a monk well known for his familiarity with jhanas, and his advice was exactly what I needed to help me get past some obstacles. He was an interesting monk, his three-page letter was hand printed and spaced with such precision that I was positive it was done with a fancy computer font, but upon close examination (under a magnifying glass years later), sure enough, tiny microscopic dissimilarities could be seen between the characters.

In addition to working on jhanas, there was the everyday routine to follow. A little before sunrise, I would make my way through the night on a narrow trail to the hall, being careful of the Russell Vipers that liked to curl up in the middle of the paths, looking very much like little piles of leaves. In the hall, we would all meet and then start walking to the villages nearby to collect our alms, a custom that has been unchanged for twenty five hundred years. At this wat, we didn’t meditate as a group; everybody was advanced enough to be on their own.

I fell into a relaxed routine, and as my meditation deepened, beautiful visions of deep color filled the evenings, sometimes only as a color itself, but many times appearing as fields of flowers or intricate designs. Strange words and teachings came up as well, perhaps having many meanings that I couldn’t readily understand; it was that same voice had visited me many times while I was between stages of deep meditation. Words would appear such as “Be level, true, and correct.” “Go deeper in the valley.” “The citta (mind) is ahead of the times.” “There are seeds to pick about but not talk about.” “Think deep, pure thoughts.” “There is a great difference between a material void and the immaterial void.” “The brain is dead.”

These phrases came from . . .where? They seemed to come out of the blue, like Einstein’s Theory of Relativity which he admitted came to him in a flash. At times, the meanings seemed clear, but as my practice deepened over the years, their meanings would change. Many phrases appeared that I didn’t record, and wished that I had, but they were so fleeting; small wisps of consciousness that if not immediately written down would be lost forever, and I chose not to disrupt my meditation by recording all of them.

The Zen monks at Shasta Abbey regarded all visions and words as irrelevant “makyo”; only traps to keep the meditator from going deeper. St John of the Cross disagreed somewhat, saying that certain authoritative words that arise in meditation can be illuminating. The key word here is “certain.” Disce
ment is required to, one; determine that you’re meditating and not having a schizo episode, and two; that the words fall into the mystical category, which you can only disce
with experience. Therefore, I was always torn regarding these strange phrases that constantly came up, keeping in mind that it was a monk’s duty in Thailand to above all rid oneself of the kilesas (greed, hatred, and delusion).

Kilesas: Those subtle hazards in our lives that trip us up as we constantly give in to their pressures and influences, eventually dominating us with little hope for our rising above them. When we fight against them and disagree with them, we feel as if we had been in a dogfight. When we go against the grain of our natural tendencies, we are in conflict, but actually these “natural tendencies” are what cause our constant discontent, and are not natural at all, only the seemingly easy way out which becomes the way to bondage. The kilesas arise from a conditioned consciousness that has been with us for a long time, and for me, meditation was the only way to get smart enough to change these conditioned reactions.

Down deep, I knew that In order to experience profound states of concentration or jhanas, I would have to not only temporarily discourage these kilesas, (with the help of the monk’s code of discipline), but I would have to keep my concentration pure, and ignore all the visions and words that appeared, even the substantial ones — ones that were strong enough to rise up in my consciousness and become significant.

These words and visions didn’t really fall into the realm of normal existence. You would have to experience them to see what I mean. They indicated that much more is going on than my limited physical senses could detect. To believe that there is nothing out there, except what we can perceive, must be the ultimate conceit of a self-enclosed, runaway ego! It was a balancing act, however — these words. Many people have taken them to be the WORDS OF GOD, and followed them to the letter.

Not a good idea. It’s okay to investigate them and discover how they might clear things up for you, but to follow anything blindly is not what meditation is about. Meditation is all about disce
ment, and seeing clearly, each shifting moment at a time.

Many thoughts and regrets came up while I was at this wat, a natural enough reaction when the mind begins to go deep. After all, it’s the mind’s last-ditch effort before it gives in to stillness. Memories of my family haunted me still; especially memories of when I sat the kids down to tell them that I was leaving. At first, I tried to put these memories out of my mind and think of something else, but that didn’t work; they kept seeping back in. Then I decided to flood my mind with the memories until I became weary of them, hoping that since everything changes (Impermanence: the first of the Three Characteristics), the strength of memory would have to subside as well. So whenever the memories began to fade, and the mind was ready to move on to other things, I forced it to remember and relive the episodes over and over, hundreds of times until I was so fed up with them that all the emotionalism completely drained from the memories. And that was the end of it. Fear definitely thrives best in darkness, and I successfully forced light into these memories.

The forest was abounding in wildlife, many barking deer, squirrels, and snakes of all kinds, and consequently, it was a haven for ticks. I had to examine my entire body daily for the little pinhead sized rascals, because if I missed one, in only a few days they would grow as big as an eraser head, and be almost impossible to dislodge — I still have scars from the ones I missed.

Large cobras would lie in the ravines between the rock formations that surrounded my kuti, but they behaved themselves as long as I didn’t disturb them, and rarely did they crawl under my kuti. I had to be especially cautious when doing my walking meditation in the forest, however, as they loved to lie in my path. It was a good practice in awareness, and since I was looking through my “third eye” in the middle of my forehead most of the time, whether I was meditating of not, it was easy to spot them because the awareness was so uncluttered.

I tried never to look around while I was doing my walking meditation—not even a sideward glance, and I walked at a normal, relaxed pace from one end of the path to the other with my arms hanging relaxed and my hands clasped in front. I would bring my mental attention to an area in my forehead between my eyes, through which I would watch myself walk back and forth. With my mind aware, I tried not to break this concentration.

I wasn’t walking; my body wasn’t walking; there was only the pacing back and forth, and something observing this through my third eye. I tried to maintain this forehead concentration all day, seeing everything through it. It was like a 24/7 meditation, with few thoughts.

Gorgeous wild orchids, purple ones, grew in a small area on top of an adjoining rock formation about a hundred feet away, beckoning to me, always tempting my endless desires that looked for the slightest excuse to raise their persistent heads. Getting to the orchids required navigating through the ravines, and the cobras, which I gladly risked. I loved meditating in the middle of those flowers. Since the snakes liked the ravines as well, constant disagreements ensued over who had the right of way, but somehow we worked it out.

One night about 2 a.m., I was sitting in meditation when I heard and felt something extremely heavy coming up the steps of my kuti. The whole hut was shaking! My first thought was that it could only be two or three fat monks, but they would never interrupt me in the middle of the night, and I could see no signs of lante
s. Moreover, all the monks were tiny! I listened closely with my heart in stop mode, but there were no further sounds . . . except for heavy breathing, and it wasn’t human breathing. Whatever came up my steps was now silently waiting on my porch, and this was really eerie.

I was extremely cautious when I opened the door a crack to have a look, after all, the whole kuti shook like an earthquake when it came up the steps! What I saw made me quickly close the door and think, What the hell is that? I had never seen anything like it in my life!

I grabbed my flashlight and slowly opened the door again. Believe me, I was hesitant to shine a light on whatever it was, but curiosity had overtaken fear at this point. And there it was — a huge bear with the head of a raccoon! Now I was befuddled, so I quietly closed the door and tried to go back to my meditation, with no luck, I just sat there listening until the animal, which fell asleep on my porch for awhile, decided to leave.

The next day, I excitedly told my American colleague what happened. After making some inquiries, he explained that an Asian Bear had either wandered onto the grounds or was let loose in the monastery, and that bears were extremely rare and never known to approach any of the monks, and certainly was never known to climb the stairs of anybody’s kuti!

Well. I felt a little special! Perhaps the bear liked me and came to keep me company while I meditated. I was actually looking forward to see if he would return. That afte
oon, after sweeping the paths, I noticed a crowd gathering near the sala. I went over to see what the excitement was, and there, lying in a ravine, was my bear with an arrow in his side. He was slowly dying.

I walked up to the ajahn, who was standing there with the hunter, and got on my knees. With tears streaming down my face, I asked, “Why?” He looked at me as if he didn’t understand the English word “why,” which I’m sure he did, and then as if my display of emotionalism was unbecoming a monk, he waived me off with the back of his hand. I later asked my fellow American monk what had happened, but he remained mum. I could only assume that the ajahn feared for my safety, and had it killed.

How could he have done this? I had become so sensitive to the beings in the forest and their love of life, and this sort of thing, I felt, was unforgivable. I could no longer kill anything, and yet I now felt as if I had killed the bear myself, because of my big mouth. My heart was breaking; it was finally opening and I could almost hear without the noise of myself driving me crazy, but I couldn’t forgive the ajahn . . . and my doubts began.

Janet and I would send letters back and forth, but they would take anywhere from three weeks to never to arrive, meaning that if I asked her a question, it would take six weeks minimum for a reply. So when Janet wrote that she was bleeding abnormally, and ended up stranded at a hospital after being checked out without transportation back to her monastery, I became conce
ed. Her abbot later claimed that he would have sent a car for her, had he known, but nevertheless, I felt that somebody either dropped the ball or was indifferent about a western (farang) nun’s welfare. She had given up everything for me, and I couldn’t stand by and let anything stupid happen to her.

I was having problems as well. Vitamin C wasn’t available in the quantities I required to counteract the grain allergies, so I tried not eating sticky rice, making up for it by consuming huge piles of leafy vegetables. But when we were all lined up, sitting in the hall for the meal, and my bowl would be overflowing with leafy things, the ajahn would walk by, look into my bowl and admonish me for being greedy. So I was forced to either go back to the rice, or lose more weight. I kept trying to eat the rice, the only real source of calories, but all the old symptoms would return, along with persistent diarrhea, and I was miserable. My practice was going nowhere.
This all fell into the realm of doubt that always comes up in training, and if I had it to do all over again, I may have stayed in Thailand and toughed it out, and somehow made sure that Janet had received the medical care she required. But I didn’t.

I talked her into leaving Thailand, just as her meditation and practice were seriously deepening, and she was hesitant to return to America. I had to reflect on what is a worst tragedy — death — or not finding enlightenment.

I, of course, have always followed my heart, and my heart told me to leave Thailand. Was it my heart? Who knows where decisions come from, or which decisions lead to delusion. We can only go as far as our karma permits us, and then push that envelope just a little. But I’m afraid I’ll never know if my decision led Janet away from finding truth in this lifetime, or possibly gave her some extra time to accomplish it. When we did return to the States, she needed an operation, and five years later, a tiny cancer was detected by a mammogram and treated successfully. It was all very puzzling.

A legend in Boulder persists that an old Arapaho chief, Chief Niwot, put a curse on any white man who entered his territory. If anyone dared leave Boulder after moving in, he or she was ete
ally cursed to return. So back to Boulder we went, arriving at the bus station with our piddling life’s savings that we barely retrieved from the Thai banking system. The baht (Thai dollar), plummeted just before we left, and farangs, or Westerners, were all suspected of being money-speculators, so, of course, all foreign funds were frozen. Luckily, the bank in Bangkok, after three tense days, was able to verify our religious status and released our money. It seemed that it always took us three days to get out of Thailand, for some strange reason.

Janet was having health issues and we were getting older, two indisputable facts that forced us to buckle down and intelligently make plans for the day when we could no longer work. We had inklings of what it is we would love to do, if we had the freedom to do it. It involved first raising our own consciousness with our practice, after which, and without proselytizing, we could perhaps help others to raise theirs in some small way. Only much later did these inklings become a reality, but day jobs remained an essential part of our leading a responsible life. This included arranging for our own health care and our old age.

We worked hard for four years in Boulder, eventually saving enough to buy a small mobile home in a quiet park. We couldn’t wait! The apartments we were living in were noisy day and night, which meant that a Walkman was glued to our heads almost constantly. In contrast, the mobile home was cozy, and in the peace and quiet, we began working on the second step of our practice — mindfulness. n