Koh Samui is a big, extremely developed, extremely populated island within the Gulf of Thailand. It’s often full of European households on trip and Russians avoiding the draft, however proper now it’s off-season and there’s hardly anyone right here.
I’m at the moment smack dab within the centre of the motion, rotting deliciously in an Irish pub that blasts Western pop music till dawn, seven days every week. I wait on this loud, empty place for my buddy from Cambodia, and when she reveals up we pilgrimage to a wat showcasing a mummified monk meditating in a glass field. His physique is a nesting floor for a neighborhood gecko species, and he’s carrying sun shades.
After paying our respects, we exit ingesting in order that I can get drunk for the final time shortly.
I get up with the worst hangover of my life—the mission had been successful. I vomit pale yellow stuff, after which take a taxi all the way down to a nondescript constructing full of paperback books which can be the identical color because the vomit. I give up my telephone, pockets, passport, cigarettes and ebook of performs by Chekhov. I’m assigned a canine tag (#4), and after that, a bunch of us are pushed behind a pickup to a second location—a compound deep within the centre of the island.
Arrival on the compound
The compound is about on a hill, a small village composed of darkish homes and empty pavilions nestled in thick jungle. The lads’s dormitory is on the very prime—a maze of gray rooms within the basement of the meditation corridor. I discover the barred home windows, wood pillows and skinny mattresses on concrete slabs to be fairly spartan, however I’m later knowledgeable that the lodging are, in actual fact, luxurious. No matter. I’m not paying any cash to be right here, so I can’t complain.
The buildings are muted and impeccably clear. The partitions are clean, aside from the occasional yellowing laminate reminding us that we’ve got no souls, and to please assist save electrical energy by remembering to show off the lights. I dimension up the opposite college students—10 or 15 foreigners like myself, of various ages. There’s no speaking allowed, and the women and men are separated always.
The brass bell
Our lives are dictated by a brass bell. We’re woken up at 4:30 a.m. and despatched to mattress at 9 p.m. That leaves seven and a half hours for sleeping, offered you go to sleep instantly and don’t keep up listening to all of the alien noise, the cheeps and whirrs, the hypnotic susurrus of the jungle.
There are geckos so long as my forearm, and black scorpions. There are additionally three shiny roosters which have free vary of the grounds, and at nightfall there are fireflies.
Two vegetarian meals a day are eaten in a silent cafeteria, boys within the entrance and women within the again. Earlier than every meal, we chant a promise to not eat for pleasure, which is a simple promise to maintain as a result of by the point everybody’s seated and the mantra is accomplished, the meals is chilly. Dinner is tea and rambutans, and no guarantees.
We spend hours and hours shuffling about, specializing in the sensations within the soles of our toes. There’s a particular pavilion only for this exercise, with a flooring lined in coarse sand. Once I stroll slower than somebody, I take into consideration how a lot better I’m than them. When somebody walks slower than me I curse them in my head, calling them a fraud and a kiss-ass.
At night time, we stroll in single file across the rotunda that encircles the highest of the brick stupa, with boys in entrance, women within the again. We stroll and stroll in silent circles for hours. The rotunda overlooks the huge ocean, burning within the moonlight. Palm tree silhouettes wave like pleasant giants within the heat breeze, and within the distance you possibly can see the glittering lights of civilization, however you’re not presupposed to look.
Once we’re not strolling, we’re sitting within the meditation corridor, this time with boys on the left and women on the proper. Generally we chant in Pali, however more often than not we simply sit and sit there in meditation. Each day, I watch the ache rise and fall in my knees and ankles. I swap positions, try to get snug, after which all of it begins over once more.
Lecturers, duties and a large spider
Our academics are three expats: volunteers wearing free capris and white button-ups, armed with tote luggage. They sit in full lotus on a wood bench beneath a fantastic eight-spoked wheel that’s hanging on the entrance of the meditation corridor. They inform us that every one life is struggling, and have us think about the bloated, rotting corpses of these we discover enticing. Girls cry and males go away with out saying a phrase.
There’s a recording of a canine barking that performs on a loop for hours and hours within the early mornings and afternoons. The farmers subsequent door play it to scare the rats and monkeys away from the durian crop. Every time the recording begins, my coronary heart sinks. Ultimately a melody grows out of the barking, and I hum alongside to it.
We’re every assigned a chore—mine is mopping the meditation corridor. It’s by far an important chore, and I take nice satisfaction in my work. In the future, whereas mopping, I see the fattest spider on Earth. It’s orange and rubbery and is crouched subsequent to a small gap within the hardwood flooring, close to the place my meditation cushion usually is.
I freeze and we’ve got a staring contest, every ready on the opposite’s transfer. I’ll the spider to go away, nevertheless it refuses, so I quit and go mop the opposite facet of the corridor. Once I flip round, the spider is gone, by no means to be seen once more. Generally, although, I can really feel eyes on me throughout meditation, and I’ll sneak a peek into the small, darkish gap within the flooring.
I’m in a kind of trance, barely considering. Different folks have pale to hazy types in my periphery. Truthfully, I’m feeling fairly nice, however then I get a stuffy nostril and every little thing comes crashing down. Within the psychological vacuum of this place, one thing as trivial as a stuffy nostril is blown manner out of proportion. I’ve nothing to do however sit with my nostril and really feel it. I stroll round and round, mouth-breathing like dying.
The primary atrium
One afternoon I wander into the stupa’s fundamental atrium, a spot I haven’t explored but. On the partitions and ceiling are nice glittering murals—depictions of lifeless our bodies decomposing, black elephants reworking into white ones. After days and days of clean partitions and muted colors, these vibrant work are like visible heroin. I stare and stare at them.
A big one within the centre depicts samsara—the limitless cycle of dying and rebirth within which we’re all trapped. The mural is a big wheel held by Yama, the god of dying. The outer ring of the wheel is split into 12 hyperlinks, and the eighth hyperlink depicts a person shot with an arrow. Craving. The person craves aid from his discomfort, identical to me and my poor nostril.
However this craving is a supply of struggling, says the Buddhists. Our aversion to ache, our want for one thing higher is exactly what retains us trapped right here, dooms us to attend endlessly for a satisfaction that by no means comes.
Proper then and there my academics’ classes lastly sink in. It’s not my stuffy nostril that’s the issue, it’s my downside with my stuffy nostril that’s the issue. A stuffy nostril is only a sensory expertise, neither good nor unhealthy. It’s the yearning for a transparent nostril, the ready on issues to vary that’s making me undergo. This epiphany makes me really feel higher, not as a result of my nostril is any extra bearable, however as a result of I really feel like I’ve realized one thing.
Goodbye, Koh Samui
Simply in time, too—the retreat’s over. I make a pitiful donation to the centre, after which be part of among the different college students at a restaurant. I order a espresso, which is an enormous mistake, and I’m nearly too excessive to operate. We sit there all day with our newfound means to speak, discussing consciousness and masturbation and gossiping concerning the different college students.
I watch these our bodies that I’ve been silently dwelling with for 10 days out of the blue spring ahead with names and accents and personalities. A middle-aged lady from the U.Ok. who had been scowling all week seems to be humorous and personable. As we chat, I slowly notice that I’m surrounded by people who find themselves hooked on pushing the bounds of their minds. One woman has simply come from doing ayahuasca in Peru, whereas one other is on his option to shave his head and eyebrows and dwell with the monks in Isaan.
I slowly notice that I’m surrounded by people who find themselves hooked on pushing the bounds of their minds.
One after the other they drift away, off to proceed their lives, by no means to be seen once more. I’m one of many final to depart. When it’s time, one in every of them provides me a journey to the pier on his motorcycle, and that’s that.
On the mainland, I hop in a van and wait as they pack it to the ceiling with baggage and vacationers. We drive to city and look forward to the bus. A bus comes, all of us rise up. The bus opens and extra folks arrive, additionally ready for the bus. This continues till the bags is spilling into the road and the footwear are piled three-deep.
Lastly, the proper bus comes. We get on and wait as they repair some mechanical points. When the bus lastly begins, we’re knowledgeable that this isn’t, in actual fact, our bus, however merely the bus that’s taking us to the true bus. After the drive, all of us must get off and wait and wait once more, and when that closing bus lastly comes all of us get on and wait the ten hours it takes to get to Bangkok.
Throughout this complete ordeal, my dopamine receptors are nonetheless manner too delicate to go on my telephone. All I can handle with out turning into overstimulated is people-watching, so I sit and sit there, making all of them uncomfortable with my calm presence, watching them smoke and fidget and look desperately down the highway. There’s numerous ache and struggling in ready, and there’s a lot of ready on this world.
I do know that the results of the meditation retreat will finally put on off. Quickly my dopamine receptors will desensitize, and I’ll be struggling proper together with everyone else. In spite of everything, just like the Buddhists say, nothing lasts endlessly. However for proper now, for this transient second, I’m free from all that. I’m completely happy, craving nothing, content material to attend just a bit bit longer.
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