Meeting and meditating with the monks!

I'm totally elated! I now possess (in my mind) a potenitally powerful email address. The address of a Buddhist monk! This means I'm edging closer to the man himself. The Dahli Lama. His name is Monk Phonechit (or Peter) and I met him outside the men and women's loos (as you do!) as Wat Suan Dok in Chiang Mai. I was washing my hands and turned around and there he was. Brilliant. I've yet to ask him whether he knows anyone who can actually arrange a meeting with DL but I'm positive it's a step in the right direction!!

So my vist to Wat Suan Dok lead to a two hour discussion with number of monks about life in general, marriage, jealousy, love - the works. It was fascitating. To my joy I also found out the Wat offered meditation courses with an overnight - I signed up there and then!

Anyway, I've just returned from the retreat and it was everything I expected and more.

After a pretty difficult week (more later on that) I was feeling a bit jaded by the whole travelling thang. Various incidents meant I had to work really hard on reigning in my cycinsim (yes, for those of you who know me well you'll know how hard that was!). So I headed to the Wat (temple) slightly anxious and with some trepidation. I couldn't bear the thought of yet another 'situation' or having to fend off some idiot.

Thankfully it restored my faith - at least for the moment!!

About 10 people attend the retreat, which is about 30 mins from the Wat. Mixture of men and women, all different nationalities. I was amused to witness yet another type of snob. You have music snobs (sadly dated one of those), you have your travelling snobs (met plenty of those), your fashion snobs (worked with millions of those) and now you have your meditation snobs. Yep, that's right folkes. Pick your jaws up off the floor - believe me. There are meditation snobs out there.

The MS in question smuggly advised me within 10 seconds of meeting me (and the rest of the group in our truck) that this was the sixth time he'd attended this particular course. As you know I'm not judgementel (ahem!) so I naturally kept an open mind. He continued to tell me about the course (interesting), why he meditates (slightly interesting) and his life (interesting, but not about about 15 mins of it!). He then began meditating right in front of my eyes. I was trying to hide my smirks and seeing if anyone else found it as amusing - they weren't letting on if they did which worried me even more....

MS continued to amuse me throughout the course but I have to addmit it lessened as the course progressed. Not very 'buddhist' of me to mock people esp on a retreat. I sort of thought it would taint my experience so managed to stop myself - down to my new focused mind!

The course was brilliant. Learnt how to meditate and loved it. We did walking meditation, sitting, lying. Some of it was pretty hard. Apparently when you start aching that's your body trying to prevent you from 'dealing' with an old 'issue'. Interesting.

Had the opportunity to ask questions about Buddhism, approach, how to relay it to modern day life ie what if your boyf or husband cheats on you, how to you forgive, what's the meaning/purpose of life - all of which I'll write up sepeartly in another post (bet you can't wait, Dad!). FYI my father mocks me endlessly about my interest in monks, meditation, reiki etc!!

So all in all it was really good - met some really lovely people and I've decided to delay my trip to Bangkok for a few days to meditate with some of the people I met on the course at another Wat.

Very much having a love hate relationship with Chiang Mai but that said I think it's more because of a few 'incidents' I've encountered recently rather than the place itself. The last 'incident' was in Chiang Mai which put me in a foul mood! More on that later though.