Road to Vipassana

I'm sitting right now at a bus station at 6.30 a.m. in Surat Thani. Bus station in this case means a cluster of rough stone seating in what looks like an outdoor market closed for the night.



As far as local bus stations go, this one is a dream. No one is selling me anything, no one is scamming me (that part of the morning was over with the buying of the ticket), and really, no one cares i'm here. It's early, and people have their own problems.


I forgot to mention my actual destination to the driver of the overnight bus I took from Bangkok, so we drove right past it while I slept. The other passengers had ongoing transit planned, so I was left roadside at 5.30 a.m. on a minor road with only local traffic.

30 minutes to get a ride, 30 to the bus station, and now a 30 minute wait for a bus, and then an hour's drive.

Perfectly normal morning.

My destination is Suan Mokkh monastery (The Garden of Liberation), where I am entering a 10-day Vipassana. They call it a 'solitary meditation retreat' because everyone there maintains noble silence, meaning we refrain from any form of communication, including eye contact.

From tomorrow morning at 4 a.m. until September 11th at 11 a.m., not a word will be spoken, no eyes shall meet, no meal will be eaten after 12 noon, no books will be read, and no words will be written.

my room

The idea, as far as I can understand it so far, is to deprive myself of all stimulation that comes from outside of my mind, leaving me to face to face with that which comes from inside my mind.

The 17-hour (4 a.m. - 9 p.m) day consists mainly of sitting and standing meditations, so we're talking discomfort, boredom, illumination, frustration, memories, desire, clarity... these are the kinds of things I imagine i'll contend with.

my pillow

I cannot wait to go inside. To live inside of consciousness, and nothing else. To look my mind in the eye. To begin to know it. To deepen the work I did in Kopan monastery in Nepal last year.

When I get out, only 10 days – a vast 10 days – away, I will hop onto a boat to Kho Phanghan and return to a beach on its east coast, my happy place. That will be a good day.

the bungalow that waits for me... second from the right

And while it is only 12-days away from this moment, I have no sense of how I will feel on the other side, no insight into the insights I will have, no heart for what my heart will have felt, and no mind for who my mind will have met within itself.

I am saying that as I enter Vipassana, I am perceptive of how little I know about what “I” is. Not the “I” you know of me, but the “I” of the self, of consciousness.

I want to meet my mind. The motor in the funky machine. The wizard behind the kaleidoscope curtain. The thing that wants something. What does it want?

I enter now open to everything. In 12-days, I don't know what I will have seen and felt. This not knowing is excruciating, and electric.

postcards

a cat barked at me just now.

i swear. it barked.

Ode to the Moon

a slab of the moon
between two trees

fireflies impersonating
stars

light
tangled in the branches of the night

on this road by the riverside
where did aloneness end
and loneliness begin

Tabish Kair
(Printed in the menu of Casa Luna, Ubud)

Boundless

a beautiful friend sent me some beautiful words just now, and her timing caused my eyes to burn. i will share two fragments here, because they have spoken for me today.

my journey resonates with this friend. she has been Questing alone on the road for decades, and is a veteran of my spirit.

thanks, Elly, for making today bigger than me.

... I hope for your journey the sweetest fruits, the most intense of aromas and the softest of breezes. Alas, these breezes can sometimes come in gusts, but fuck they tear through us and frighten, and thank god for these emotions, for the sheer opportunity we have given ourselves to know them, to feel them, make love to them and then to sit, silent, just being nothing and everything...

... I think now of holding a little hand, walking down an ancient cobble stone street telling this little person, whom we have made out of love, that this life is here for the living. That there is no such thing as cannot, but only 'can'.

That if they wish they can touch the wet, cold nose of a lion, and walk up or around each and every mountain they see, and taste the most exotic of fruits, straight from the tree, and show themselves, time and time again that their spirit is larger, more limitness and more beautiful than they could ever imagine, and that if they look long enough, in the detail enough, within the setting sun they might see their spirit, their own colour in the palette of the sky...

... That there is only "I can...". That there are no boundaries.

That life is BOUNDLESS.

Nyoman Lara

I really only noticed Nyoman Lara when I climbed into the front seat, after we’d dropped Luca at the airport and the Russian couple in Kuta. It was just me and him in the van now, with an hour’s drive ahead of us.

I actually didn’t feel that much like talking. These were the first minutes of my aloneness on this solo journey. For five weeks, first Dejana and then Luca had kept me company. Now a new phase of my trip was beginning, the one I had envisioned. But I knew it would be a while before I eased into it; a while before alone wasn’t a feeling of missing something.

Maybe I needed to fill the space, so hesitantly I began. As he answered my questions, Nyoman Lara became the first Balinese to break down the wall between tourist and friend.

It was the story of his wife that did it. Things weren’t okay at home, he told me.

“My wife, she is depressed,” he said.

Depressed? He knows what depression is?

After the Bali Bombings in 2002, Nyoman Lara lost his job at a Kuta hotel. It was a good job, and his wife and three children had been above water. In the years after, they had all struggled. Nyoman began working long hours as a taxi driver just to afford food and school supplies.

In the past two years, the price of rice tripled, while his salary stayed the same, and become more unstable.

Then Nyoman’s wife began to experience mood swings. She wore her deep frustration in private and in public, and was despondent, bitter. She felt Nyoman was responsible.

“She is angry all the time,” he says with a gentle Balinese smile, not complaining. “I come home late, and she yells at me.”

“What does she want?” I ask.

“She wants a divorce.”

Not the answer I was expecting. Just a few years ago, divorce was a dangerous taboo in Bali. One with serious consequences in the traditional family compounds in which husband and wife live, together with several other generations, and a few dozen chickens.

I proceed carefully... “And what do you want?”

“If she was healthy, I would say... pause, sigh ... 'okay'. You want divorce? I want you to have what you want. I want you happy,” he says with resignation, with love, even. “But... she is sick. My wife, she is sick. Maybe she doesn’t understand. Maybe, she needs me..."

the red lotus, a symbol of Compassion

When Nyoman dropped me at home, I couldn’t help but hug him.

Maybe she does need him, maybe she doesn't. But I did feel that Nyoman was a man who wanted to do the right thing; and that he in past six years he had spent much less time than me thinking about his own feelings.

Good luck Nyoman. I hope your happy nature and your kindness bring you the love you deserve soon.

postcards

today i saw a man light a cigarette from a burning trash heap.

that's all.