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.