Ten things I’ve learned from the retreat at Wat Suan Mokkh (part 3)

Part 1 and Part 2

1. It’s liberating not to place so much importance on the way I look, at least sometimes. At the retreat we all wore comfortable clothes, that means baggy pants and loose T-shirts. Shoulders needed be covered, no transparent outfits, and the pants or skirts had to reach below the knee. Nobody cared if you haven’t brushed your hair or you were so sleepy you were about to pass out during meditation. Many of us felt the same. I didn’t see my face in a mirror for 11 days. When I did see my face, in the airport restroom, I was surprised to see I had a tan but other than that I was pretty much myself. I don’t know what I expected. 🙂
2. Not talking for a while can be a blessing. You see so much more and your mind quiets down. Imagine you’re standing in line for lunch but the person in front of you is taking their sweet time getting the food. There’s no point in getting angry. You will eat, eventually. And there’s no hurry. It’s not like you have to be somewhere. So you let go of your irritation (because, remember, you can’t talk and tell the person in front of you to hurry up because you’re hungry) and you just wait for your turn.
3. Not wearing a watch can be liberating. Time was measured with the bell. I heard the bell and I knew I had to change the activity. The schedule was easy to follow and I didn’t even have to think, just follow the routine and if I forgot what was next, I just followed everybody else.
4. Complete silence would have been ten times harder. We listened to talks given by monks and laywomen and we chanted in Pali (the language of the Buddha). Actually the chanting was one of my favorite activities because the monk who guided us made some really good jokes (many of them involving the wooden pillow). I did not find the silence hard to deal with because there were always people around. Besides, I’m a quiet person by nature so this was actually quite nice. But not to hear another voice for ten days would have been a lot more challenging.
5. A smile is an amazing thing. It transforms people in incredible ways and makes them beautiful. One of the women at the retreat – she was tall and a bit scary and she always had this intimidating look on her face – she smiled at me one day and it was such an incredible thing, it transformed her completely. For a few moments she changed from a grumpy woman to an amazingly beautiful one. That smile lasted only a few seconds but it’s something I will remember for a long time. I smiled a lot, since this was the only means of communication with the other participants at the retreat. A smile can make someone’s day. I know it made mine.
6. Pain can come and go, like a visitor. We were told to try and acknowledge the pain, even make friends with it, then let it go. Pain is not ours so we should not hold on to it. Three days into the retreat I wanted to cry, that’s how much my back was hurting from sitting meditation. But I realized it was my fault for trying to keep a rigid posture. I relaxed, and in time the pain went away.
7. I don’t need as much food as I think I do. During this retreat I was able to distance myself from what I wanted and to eat only what I needed. It was one of the best things I learned and it changed my relationship with food. From eating for pleasure, I began to think of food as fuel for the body. It’s true that I’ve heard this countless of time – food is fuel – but it never quite got through me. I also lost a few kilos, something I haven’t been able to do in a long time, even after months of exercise.
8. Practice “loving kindness”. That means refraining from killing any creature, from the mosquito to the snake. Spiders don’t want to be in your room, cockroaches don’t hate you and snakes are not evil. They’re all creatures, trying to live, just like we do. This is a practice I’ve been familiar with and I try to follow as often as I can. I used to kill cockroaches – they give me the creeps, but I’ve become more tolerant of them now. That’s a big improvement for me.
At the retreat, I spent a few minutes every evening looking around the room, hoping there wasn’t anything in there bigger than a mosquito. There wasn’t. Some of the girls at the retreat really freaked out when they saw a spider or a frog. I really like frogs, and had fun removing a couple of them from windows and putting them away, in the grass. I don’t feel quite the same about spiders but they don’t freak me out as much as they used to.
9. Speaking in public is still not something I’m comfortable with but I can do it and I actually say things that make sense. On the last evening we were invited to share our experience at the retreat. Usually being in front of a microphone makes me incredibly anxious. My voice shakes and my palms get sweaty. But I got up and I went and said something and the next day people came to me and told me how much they enjoyed my speech. I don’t remember all of it. It’s like somebody else took over my voice. But people’s reactions made me happy.
10. I should keep trying new things, even sleeping on a hard bed with a wooden pillow. Monks and nuns sleep like that every night. The body gets used to it. (We visited the nuns’ house. The rooms look pretty much like cells, except there are no bars at the windows. Everything is clean, neat, no personal touches. It felt…oppressive.) Besides, unless you want to follow the monastic life, this is temporary. If they can do it for years, why can’t I at least try it for ten days? That’s what I told myself. Besides, you never know what life throws at you and maybe one day you can say “hey, this is nothing, I once slept on a wooden pillow.”  So I did sleep on the wooden pillow one day during nap time and then again for one whole night. I woke up a few times and wished that bell would ring because waking up at 4 a.m. was suddenly more appealing than putting my head on what I lovingly called “the chopping block”. But I’m glad I tried. I also cheated a little. In the storage room I found a thin sponge mat and together with my yoga mat they made for an acceptable bed. I also had a small inflatable pillow. It wasn’t the same as sleeping in a normal bed but it was an improvement.

I’m sure there are many things I’ve missed when putting together this list. It could have very well been 20 things instead of 10, but I tend to run away with the words and 10 seemed like a sensible number.

Next time I’m posting the 4th and final part: Things to consider and practical advice