Retreat

Talk about a cultural experience. I just came back from a two day silent meditation retreat 30 minutes outside of Chiang Mai. The course was run entirely by local monks and I was the youngest one there by at least ten years. Most of the people there were of the 25-year old-backpacker variety, which was nice after having been with a 50 year old for two weeks. They were from all over the world too: one from Iceland, Mozambique, Argentina, France, The Netherlands, England, Canada, Saudi Arabia ect... Although it was a silent retreat and there was little time for socialising, the other participants were very friendly. That's one of the nice things about traveling, you get to talk to people from all over the world. I talked to one dutch guy about Socialism, I talked to the woman from Mozambique about Barack Obama and I talked to one of the young Thai monks about the abundance of 7-11s in Thailand. 7-11s in Thailand are as common as Mcdonalds combined with Starbucks, they're everywhere.
The monks were very friendly as well. I imageined them to be incredibly stoic and serious but I have never seen a group of people smile and laugh so much. They all wore their orange robes and walked with such purpose you'd wonder if you were walking wrong. They were not so strict either, the only rules on the retreat were to remain silent and to not show the bottoms of your feet to images of the Buddah (harder to do then you might think).
I arrived on the first day around 2, after Dad and I had toured around Wat Suan Dok (pronounced Wat swan doe, although Dad pronounces it Wat Swan Duck) which is a very nice temple in Chiang Mai. I said good bye to Dad as he left for his Thai cooking school, and I sat in a small room in the temple to listen to the introduction to the retreat given by the head Buddhism professor at the nearby university who also started the program. He was a very nice old monk, talking about the process he went through in starting a meditation retreat program for foreigners. The talk also covered the meaning of life, death and hapiness, and all within one hour (not bad huh?).
We arrived at the meditation center outisde of Chiang Mai in the back of a pick up truck and after meeting our roomates (mine was a particularly hairy 20-something argentian man) and unpacking we began our first meditation. Within the large meditation hall, plastered with massive paintings of the Buddah's face and several other Buddah statues, the senior monks taught us the proper way to practice sitting meditation and walking meditation. I was one of the only people there with any meditation experience but it was still odd for me as the technique they used was much diffrent than the one I had learned on my teen meditation retreat in California. We learned how to do the proper Pali (ancient Indian language) chanting and bowing. The bowing and chanting were particularly difficult as it required us to sit on our heels for around 20 minutes with stiff backs. Sitting on the heels is bad enough, but to do this for twenty minutes while chanting in an odd ancient language is nearly impossible, not to mention we're supposed to be focused and concentrated in a meditative state.
The retreat mostly consisted of this: chanting, meditation with a brief period of discussion. In our discussion we were lucky to have the head professor in our group. One of the cocky French guys asked the monk, what is the meaning of life? The monk laughed a big hearty laugh and then as quickly as his laughing had begun he became very focused and concentrated and said (in a voice between Jackie Chan and Yoda), "This is very good question. I think taht meaning of life come from helping other, when we do good for other we help other who need. We all born, live life then die, like flowar, and when we do good for other we use life for purpose and meaning. And when we are happy like tree we spread our hapiness branches and drop seeds on ground and spread our hapiness to others." He went on with other wise metaphors and Buddah quotes for quite a while but everything he said made so much sense. I'm really glad I did the retreat, it made me very interested in Buddhism. How could you lose with a philosophy all about hapiness, helping others, and peace?
The food was simple and plain, the beds were hard and the rooms were sparesely furnished but the retreat was worth the wisdom and friendliness of the monks. This morning we practiced a Thai tradition of giving alms to the monks in the form of giving them rice for their breakfast. The monks do not consider it begging, rather they are giving others the chance to gain merit by giving. Careful not to touch the women (this is not allowed for the monks) and walking very slowly in single file, they went along the line of our group all dressed in sterile white attire and collected their rice with stoic looks. Afterwards we sat on our heals with hands together and recieved a prayer of good fortune and merit from the monks. This was perhaps my favorite part of the retreat.
All and all it was a very good experience. I learned a lot about Buddhism and Thai culture as well as gained the opportunity to talk with the monks and other travelers from around the world. Hopefully I'll remember this for a long time and be able to tell my kids that I meditated with monks in rural Thailand. Pictures will come soon, I bought a little kodak disposable camera so we'll see how those turn out.

Tomorrow we leave for our 3 day hill tribe trek outside of Chiang Mai. We're going to hike from tribal villiage to tribal villiage, sleep in wooden huts, o bamboo rafting, maybe elephant riding and meet the local tribespeople who supposedly live the same way they did hundreds of years ago. It'll be a nice chance to get out of the smoggy city and into nature. Did I mention the smog here? All of the farmers burn their crops to spare time cutting them so the air here is like a smoky bar. It's pretty terrible. Everybody here has a sore throat and a cough. So this will be the perfect way to get out of the smoke and into the culture. I'll update after we come back.