Staying True in Thailand

The same friend who suggested Thailand also recommended a ten-day meditation course. I was intrigued. This would be ten days without any reading, writing, exercise, or conversation. Ten days without eye contact. My days would consist of eating, meditating for at least six hours a day, and sitting for an hour more every evening to watch the video-taped meditation talks. It was, according to my friend, enlightening.

Until then, my meditation practice had been limited to occasional half hour sits. I sometimes frequented the Zen farm just over the Golden Gate Bridge on Sunday mornings, and I’d walk away hours later refreshed, arms filled with vegetables and flowers, belly warm from the community tea, and light-hearted conversation. I imagined what ten days of silence in a Buddhist country would bring to my life. I felt ready.

I felt considerably less confident the next day. On the shuttle bus to the meditation center, a man from Canada who was participating in the ten-day sit for his fourth time flexed his muscles and wiped sweat from his brow as he spoke of the difficulties that lay ahead. After an hour, I wanted desperately to escape his presence, but he was the only other foreigner on a bus packed with locals. My new Canadian friend explained that because this meditation center was close to Bangkok, the locals often frequented it, adding an air of austerity to an already intense practice.

When we got there, the leaders of the course asked us to hand over our passports, wallets, and books. After a moment’s hesitation, I withheld my journal, silently begging forgiveness for already breaking the rules. There was one other Caucasian woman around my age in line behind me, but I felt a hand on my arm and a disapproving look from one of the instructors as I instinctively turned to smile at her. After being shown to our rooms (which were really more like closets, each consisting of a cot and a hand-held fan made out of paper), we were told to meet in the meditation hall ten minutes later for our first sit of the day.

I was feeling timid, the voices inside my head already arguing over whether this was the best or worst decision I’d ever made. I sat on a meditation cushion in the back row, eased myself into the lotus position, closed my eyes, and concentrated on my breath.