We meditated there under a blanket of heat, the air thick with moisture and heavy like wet gauze. The sun drilled into me and I felt the heat intensely. Sweat beaded on my body and my shirt clung, wet and heavy, to my back after only a few minutes.

I sat tall, legs crossed beneath me and focused on the in-out of my breath. Sitting and breathing like that made me think of Jack Kornfield, the meditation master and former monk, who taught about following the breath. He said to inhale and to feel the cool air stream enter through the nose and to exhale, feeling the warm air from the body pass through the same orifice. That guided meditation he delivered was apparently geared toward people who were not sitting in the midday heat of Thailand. What is a person supposed to do when the air coming out of his body is cooler than the air going in?

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From the book:

Jet lag was still haunting me and I woke up to the darkness of my room, shades drawn tight against the outdoor fluorescent lamps. The air conditioner had cooled the room to what felt like almost freezing and had sufficiently cooled my sweat-soaked bedclothes. The air conditioners at Lai Thai Guesthouse have two settings – on and off. At night this meant the difference between a stuffy 85 degrees and a breeze cool enough to freeze your kidneys to the mattress. At least the AC units are efficient, if a little more powerful than necessary. It seemed like the large, industrial size unit you might use to cool a whole suite of offices.

I read the clock. 5:30 a.m. The traffic outside was evident and sounded above the din of the air conditioner. Chiang Mai is a city that knows no rest. All day and night cars, trucks and motorbikes make their loops around the city, feeding the air with smoke and smog, noise and vibration. The appeal of a tropical country, I decided, was not due to its city life. I longed for countryside. It was time to leave.

It was still hours before offices opened, so I could not simply stroll down the street and find a ticket to wherever lie ahead of me. I showered and dressed and left my room at that early hour for a convenience store near my hotel. I bought a couple bags of drinks and snacks, stuffed a couple bottles in my pocket for later and brought the rest to a Buddhist temple across the street.

There I met a monk who was busy sweeping leaves from the temple paths. The other, younger monks must have already gone on their morning alms rounds, as there were no others in sight – a strange thing that early in the day. I greeted him and offered my packages. He took them, set them aside and motioned for me to kneel. I obeyed, kneeling in the fresh-swept dirt, hands pressed together reverently. The monk said some words I recognized as a blessing in the Pali language. As I kneeled there, the monk touched my head and I could practically feel the dirt of the city – and of my life – lift from my being and blow away in the morning breeze. The cleansing of my spirit was more than I had bargained for; I just thought it would be a nice gesture to bring something to the monks.

Progress so far: Working backward through the chapters, currently editing chapter four.

(Holly Burns will be proud of me for using a semicolon in that last paragraph, despite claiming to dislike them previously.)

Technorati Tags: cleansing, redemption, traffic, Chiang Mai, Buddhist temple, monk, dirt

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Phramaha Nattapong walked all the way to the edge of the waterfall, standing atop a boulder. It looked like the end of the earth, where he stood. It was so high that not even jungle was in the background of the picture.

“Carl, come take picture,” he said. I got close enough so that he was more than a speck in the small viewfinder and snapped a picture. I was about six feet from the edge, technically closer than I should be for safety purposes. The concept of edge discipline says that a person should not get closer to a dropoff than he is tall. I would not say that I have a fear of heights or even a fear of death but I certainly have no desire to experience either one up close.

“Come here. Stand here with me,” Phramaha Nattapong said.

“No, thanks. I’m fine here.”

“No, come here,” he insisted. “Beautiful view.”

“No, too high for me,” I said. He shrugged and enjoyed the view. Phra Bi edged out along a ridge over the drop. I chose to remain on firm, solid, dry ground where the only slipping I might do would land me in a river full of parasites and squalor, rather than in a morgue or simply left to scavenging animals out of simple convenience.

I later thought that this could have been an excellent Buddhist teaching Phramaha Nattapong was trying to impart on me. Becoming more aware of one’s own mortality and certain eventual demise is a very Buddhist undertaking. Monks and laypeople do this in different ways to show themselves that they are never far from death and that death is really part of a cycle of existence. Everything arises, exists and stops existing. Climbing on the boulder with Phramaha Nattapong pushed this point home a bit. Cessation and change are the only constants.

Word count so far: 54,690. I think that’s a good length and I am mostly working on editing at this point.

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He tried to buy my camera, insisting that I mail it to him when I got home. I never did. I did not want to and never promised it to him, despite his insistence. I suppose I could send it now, since I have a camera that is much nicer and have not used that particular one in some time.

Gak had spent six years as a monk during his younger years and seemed to know all the chants by heart, even though probably 20 years had passed. He meditated often, as did Nut, but Gak’s age and experience seemed to translate into a different type of meditation with a different intensity.

Nut’s youth seemed to keep him in the mindset of always striving for the still point in his mind, pushing forward until he finally achieved it. Gak, on the other hand, was more calm, peacefully allowing the concentration to develop. He seemed to watch his mind’s actions, while Nut pushed his mind in different ways.

Traveling and meditating with these two was definitely an eye-opener, allowing me to see where I was a little better and also where I was going. I recognized both styles and appreciated seeing them in other people as a confirmation of what was familiar on both ends.

Technorati Tags: travel, Thailand, Phramaha Nattapong, meditation, still point

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This is a video I made when Phramaha Nattapong came to visit me in Worcester, MA a couple years ago. He is the Buddhist monk I went to Thailand with in 2004, the one who encouraged me to come and stay in the temples and ordain as a monk. In this video, he is giving a Dhamma talk, which is something like a sermon, if I were to relate it to something we are familiar with here in the States.

Worcester Magazine had done a story on me and my Worcester Diaries project. You can catch someone taking picture of my robed friend. She was a student photographer with the magazine sent to get some shots to accompany the story. As luck would have it, I had a monastic visitor when she came and she got a whole lot more than she had bargained for, I think. Great times!

Technorati Tags: video, Phramaha Nattapong, Buddhist, monk, Thailand, Dhamma, sermon, Worcester Magazine, Worcester Diaries

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