Maditation (failed meditation retreat)

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Meditation attempt, Burma, Pa-auk-taw-ya Kyaung

 
Like everyone else in this world, I am curious about myself. Who doesn’t dream nowadays of finding the way, the guru, the genius shrink who will reveal us to ourselves, will give us the absolute method to find the path to wisdom, inner beauty and the way to resist the stress of our crazy lives? At this moment of my life, I have a crazy energy, I’m fit, I travel, I walk, I climb, I carry heavy, I have stamina, I have tenacity.

But behind me there are years of stress, a lot of work, few holidays. That’s why I’m also travelling, to change my lifestyle which, I feel good, will soon have my skin and above all my mind. I have embarked on this famous journey that will (really) change my life in search of metamorphosis and inspiration. So why not take advantage of it for a deeper introspection ?

Since I’ve been walking around Asia, I see many yoga centres, massages, philosophical and Buddhist works and meditation retreat monasteries

 
To crown it all, I also have a few friends who are specialists in the matter and who have warmly recommended me to try the experience: “you’ll see, it will open you up, calm you down, it’s the path to inner peace”.
I feel ready to try the experience.
As I walk along the paths of the wonderful Burma, I hear about a monastery famous for meditation. So here I go, planning three days to search for myself on the very precious twenty-eight days granted by the very democratic Burmese government. Direction Pa-auk-taw-ya Kyaung!
I take a local bus to reach Mawlemine in the early morning. A local night bus. You have to know that “Burmese night bus” does not rhyme with “good night mummy”.
When I finally arrive at my destination, it’s four o’clock in the morning and I’m not the freshest.
But the night is really beautiful, the weather is mild, the moon is bright, the sky is full of stars. The wind in my hair, the bag on my back, a motorbike taxi takes me to the monastery some ten kilometres away. Still numb from my previous two sleepless nights, the trip to the monastery, bumpy and shaky, is a pure moment of cinematic happiness.
 

We finally arrive. The surprise is great: it’s immense

 
A large avenue lined with century-old trees leads us to the heart of the building, “the office”.
I have to register here. But the office is closed, it’s too early.
No one sleeps, but nay, they are all in meditation. Because here, the day starts at four in the morning. Meditation.
The first contact with the monk of the “office” could have been more to my advantage but he finds me asleep on a bench, slumped on my backpack, in front of the door at half past five in the morning.
The somewhat dry and formal welcome is no less touching as I am brought a breakfast which I am allowed to approach after washing my face and hands.
 

They take me to my “room”, the second surprise: it is a new building, dazzlingly clean, clear and simple

 
I am alone in my monastic room. Two beds without mattresses are reaching out to me. Without a mattress. Here you have to bring your things, including mattresses.
The lady who brought me here is a little overwhelmed by my lightness because, of course, I don’t carry my Dunopillo and my duvet in my rucksack. Of course I don’t.
So she lends me a very uncomfortable plastic mat the thickness of a sheet of paper, but it’s the gesture that counts.
I’m not at the end of the road, because I also need cutlery and plates.
 

Fortunately, I have a neighbour: a fifty-year-old woman who looks like she’s barely forty years old

 
A shaved head and meditation rejuvenates.
She is Malaysian and rather nice because she lends me something for lunch. I exchange with her my motivations, ask her for hers, we get to know each other. She has been here for five years and her dearest wish is to stay here for life. She explains to me in a low and steady voice that the Buddha’s way is beautiful, that we have to accept that our lives escape us, that our bodies deteriorate no matter what we do and that we can do nothing about it except accept it.
And also, that we must not desire anything, that it is bad for us. I listen by swallowing my saliva, it’s not very joyful all that.
I scrupulously read the roadmap that I was given at the service so that I understand how the monastery works, the method of meditation, the schedules, the meetings. But I fall asleep after a few minutes. On my wooden plank, the booklet in hand.
Fortunately, I wake up just in time for the meal.
 

I rush to my neighbour’s house and follow her, chatting as best she can. You have to know that the monastery is not a tea room or even a neighbourhood bar, many people here take a course of silence

 
Not a word, not even a glance. We move towards the canteen. It seems to me that there are three thousand of them queuing up, all in red robes, all with shaved heads, all ceremonial, self-centred, straight in their sandals.
My nice neighbour tells me to follow “people like me”. What are they, people like me? I’m not at the best of my intellectual capacities, still tired from the journey, I feel lost.
People like me have long hair, or are pissed off (like a sleepless night on a local bus), trousers, a T-shirt and trainers.
With these beautiful words she leaves me standing there.
I remain very discreet and keep a lookout. An interminable time goes by, because I feel a bit stupid, my metal bowl in my hands, in my crumpled trousers and grey T-shirt in the middle of the impeccable red saris.
 

I can’t say why, I do have a little knot in my throat, a funny blues clouds my mind

 
Finally, I can run into a very small group of Chinese people with hair and trousers. I sneak up behind them and present my stainless steel bowl in front of the smoking pots which is generously filled.
The ladies at the service are nice and smiling, but alas, they are not there to show me the dining room. All these beautiful people are scattered in unknown buildings, the site is very large and, who knows why, I start to follow a group of monks who seem to me very nice.
I trot gently behind the monks when one of them turns around. I smile at him with a smile that would make Buddha jealous. 
He turns around and goes on his way. I still am. He turns around a second time with a frown on his eyebrow. Then a third time.
Now it’s less funny, he waves a sweeping hand towards me, as if he was chasing a stray dog. “Chhh Chh Chh Chh Chh… “
Friendly.
I am going through a great moment of loneliness, I would even say tinged with despair. I’m standing there in the middle of the wooden path that crosses countless buildings, on which a strange silence has fallen, my bowl in my hand, completely lost.
It is not sure that this monk feels sorry for me because the way he enjoins me to follow him backwards is really authoritarian, he is angry with this gentleman, not zen at all.
 

I ask him where we’re going because, at this stage, I’m still waiting to meet up in the common room to make a few friends while enjoying the vegetarian menu so generously served

 
In fact, he takes me back to the “office”. The frightfully surly gentleman who ordered me to wash my hands this morning watches me come and still says these words full of love for his neighbour: “aïe aïe aïe aïe aïe aïe aïe”.
Ok.
I have forgotten an important rule, in the monastery, you must not follow men, especially if you are a woman. Here we don’t mix. It’s each one on his own. Obviously.
I find myself sitting in the “office”, alone, between the desk, the photocopier and the archive cupboards for the second time today.
To alleviate my obvious distress, the secretary lends me her spoon and that gesture completes me. I have a spoon to eat my mountain of rice, but I am all alone, isolated, like a plague.
I wash my cutlery, return the spoon and, determined to find the path to inner peace, I go off to meditate, all alone in my room.
 
I tried, I really tried, but it was very difficult not to fall asleep. So I meditated in my sleep
 

Fortunately, tonight I have a date. I have to meet the meditation master, somewhere in one of the buildings, but that’s good, it’s near the “office” and I know exactly where it is. They call it “the interview”.
I get out of my cell to go there when the person in charge of the block catches up with me. I have to change my clothes. My T-shirt neck is too wide, it has to cover everything up to the neck and my trousers have to cover everything up to the feet. I go back to change.

The master is a nice young man. We are several women sitting on the floor in our suits. The others are all in sari and tell about their inner experiences, breathing, concentration. When it’s my turn, I hardly have time to talk, he explains how to do the meditation, but that I’ve already read in the booklet but he doesn’t tell me where or with whom. After these words, I feel that he wants to finish the interview. I persist and ask if I should always be alone…

Yes, but I have a funny look on my face, so he tells me that it is still possible to be alone, but in a group. Great programme.

I think it’s the rice, I have a lump in my throat. I go out, a little stunned, strangely hopeless, sad

 

And then the stupidest idea of the day comes to me, I ask the scarecrow in the “office” where to find a group for me. It is difficult for me at this point to describe his answer. I think that if he had had a big enough broom he would have thrown me out with it like a piece of rubbish.
I meet the astonished gaze of two monks waiting outside on the bench. No, I’m not dreaming, he’s obnoxious.
I don’t know why I have a sudden and violent craving for screaming, studded and hairy rock ‘n roll, bleeding steak and Kama sutra.

With death in my soul, I go back to my quarters, I now feel like I have a haystack in my gullet

 

I try meditation again, and above all, I tempt my neighbour. A little note on the door says “do not disturb, meditation” but as it was already there this morning, I deduce that she must have forgotten to take it off.
I knock on the door with two bags of coffee, a packet of biscuits in my hand and a big smile on my face. I say, “Hello! Shall we have a cup of coffee?”. Oh la la, the look on her face!
I’m bothering her in the middle of introspection and no, this is not the time.
I go back to my cell. I feel that my condition is getting worse and that I’m ready to cry. But what’s going on? I was so happy before I got here!

The sun is fading, I decide to meet my neighbour in the tree-lined alley, but just like that, everyone is walking in their own steps, self-centred, in conversation with themselves. I go to drink a little coffee by myself in a small hut near the gate, I make some drawings while sniffing.

It’s five o’clock, it’s time for evening meditations, songs, circles

 

I go back to the room, I approach the red level of absolute distress. People here don’t eat at night. No meetings, no chatting, but hey, no chance to find myself in the “office” again. And quickly, darkness falls on my grief like closing a coffin.
I would need more than one page to talk about the night in this monastery, alone, in silence, on my wooden plank, rolled up in my pareo which serves as a blankett. I am assailed by dark thoughts, sadness and anguish. There must be something in the air, or in the rice. I fight bravely like the little goat against the wolf so as not to give in to the blues and I cry in my big broth T-shirt.

The gong rings at four o’clock in the morning. I am already wide awake

 

What the hell, I don’t get up at the end to go and meditate. I stay on my wooden plank, tetanized, as if cast in lead.
If by misfortune I find myself once again, even if only one metre away from the other recluse, I commit suicide before the end of the morning. Smothering me with rice!
When at half past five my neighbour comes back to her room, I am in the corridor, bag on my back, ready to leave. IM-PO-SSI-BLE, IT’S IMPOSSIBLE TO STAY HERE FOR ANOTHER HOUR.
I was waiting for her to say goodbye. She couldn’t believe it. She’s all annoyed and astonished and so am I. She warmly recommends me not to give up and to make sure that I find the Buddha’s path so wonderful. I nod as I look at my shoes because I don’t want her to read in my foggy eyes that the only path I want to find now is the one that will take me away from here.

They ask me why I’m leaving so quickly and I can’t even articulate a correct answer as I have to fight against the anguish that is wrenching my throat. The other residents are also sad to see me leave and greet me warmly.
I do my best not to come back to “the office”, especially not, it would finish me off. There now – allready – immediately – like an urgent pee I MUST escape, get away. I have to fly away.

Meditation, it’s too hard, even if I still don’t know what is too hard. It’s indefinable

 

Meditation, it’s sure it works, it’s had a bull effect on me, oops, sorry, a cow effect. I was joy incarnate, and I find myself ready to burst into tears at any moment!
I leave loosely, not confidente (it’s starting to get quite a few sleepless nights), in the rising sun in the mists of dawn, with the nose up in the air… and I feel like I’m leaving hell.

A moped passes me in the large alleyway bathed in golden light and offers me its taxi services. I don’t even negotiate the price, I don’t even look for a particular hotel, the first one will be fine and explodes my budget, great luxury. I need at least that to get back on my feet. 

Morality, being surrounded by people resigned to die without a fight, who never cross my gaze, never argue, never laugh over a drink, a coffee with friends, never eat a steak and never fall madly in love, it has shaken me up a lot and brought me back to the harsh realities of my crazy life… which I love above all else.

Travelling means discovering the world, yourself and others!

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