Vipassana Meditation at the Wat Phrathat Sri Chom Tong temple

4 am: Wake-up

In the early hours of the morning, the temple bells chime, the dogs howl along, and, gradually, the roosters pick up on the fragments of daylight. There is something sacred about doing the meditation practice in the morning, knowing that monks, nuns, fellow meditators, and even the 88-year-old enlightened head monk, Ajahn Tong, are all drowsily following the same rituals.

There are 8 moral precepts (rules of conduct) that each yogi agrees to in the opening ceremony, guiding behavior during the meditative period. My favorite, #8: “I undertake the precept to refrain from lying on high or luxurious sleeping beds.” Sure enough, the mattress on the floor was stiff and far from luxurious, but with 6 hours of sleep, I never had an issue with it.

One of the ideas behind the meditative experience is that there are a lot of things we grow dependent on, creating a need out of a want. Alcohol, electronics, reading, and music, it is viewed, help distract us from what we don’t want to face (all those, too, were covered by the precepts); they help achieve a different state of mind that’s not the present moment and postpone the feelings that will inevitably surface. Vipassana meditation promotes awareness, so the temple proactively removes those "obstacles".

6 am: Breakfast

There’s nothing stranger than sitting in a cafeteria, everyone in all white slowly – mindfully – eating their food (talking is discouraged because it takes away from the present moment of food-eating). It’s the kind of situation where you’d expect Nurse Ratched to walk through, or perhaps Willow Smith.

Listed on the wall is the prayer for food. Like with all the prostrating and vows, I just went along with it, and there was always something that stuck out as well-put or fascinating. In the food prayer, there's a line that says “I will use this food to get rid of the old feeling [hunger] while avoiding a new feeling [overeating]”, amusingly-put but realistic way of looking at it. And so I enjoyed my morning soup one slow slurp at a time.

7 am: Meditation practice

Vipassana is essentially mindfulness meditation, a method of gaining insight about yourself and learning to be content in the present. It’s hard to remember a time when I’ve been fully present, always distracted by random memories or plans, emails or books. But the idea behind Vipassana is that all we really have is the here and now: the past contracts to biased impressions and fragments of experiences and the future is uncertain, so the only thing that’s real is our current state of mind and body.

Each of the three parts involves slowly repeating 3 times the thought, action, or description that comes to mind. For the walking part, it can be “standing, standing, standing” or “lifting, lifting, lifting”; similarly, it could be “hearing, hearing, hearing” or “anxious, anxious, anxious”. Later, I had to repeat intention, such as “intention to move” (3x) before walking. The sitting part is similar, but with more of a focus on the “rise, fall” of the breath.

The mind, it turns out, is rather fickle. Sometimes it focuses too much on one topic or feeling which leads, generally, to frustration. But more often than not, it just forgets. Within a 10-minute period, mine skipped from calm to anger to disappointment to resolve. Or sometimes a bird would start chirping, and since the practice promotes awareness, after naming “hearing”, I’d completely forget the topic I was so focused on. Go figure.

11 am: Lunch time

Despite the modest nature of nunhood, Thai Buddhist nuns still love their spice. Of the 3 lunch dishes, there was always one with a substantial kick. Sometimes it was obvious, like red pepper flakes. But sometimes that green bean turns out to be a mouse-shit chili (read: painful). One meal, all of the dishes were especially spicy – one of the nun-cooks must’ve been having a particularly bad day – and I tried in vain to hide my shock, only to hear a number of Thai yogis sniffling, too.

I couldn’t always decipher what I was eating, and it was probably for the better. I ate more eggplant and mushrooms than in my entire life – I generally avoid both, since eggplant usually turns out soggy and I have an irrational fear of mushrooms. Communal dining eradicated that fear, as well as my newer fear of rambutans (straight out of Monsters, Inc., I swear). I also got to try lotus seeds and cactus fruit, more of the Dr. Seuss-like plants that Thailand seems to be full of.

12 pm: Meditation practice

This was usually the worst practice of the day: trying to practice on a full stomach during 90-degree heat is a recipe for disaster. Usually it translated into me getting really flustered or nodding off.

3 pm: Small snack break

The precept I was originally the most concerned about was #6: “I undertake the precept to refrain from eating at the wrong time”, which essentially means after 12 pm. Anyone who’s gone afternoon shopping with me or has traveled with me can attest to the fact that I get insanely cranky without at least a snack to tide me over (I guess I got Grandpa Ben’s sugar-low gene).

Fortunately, the rule only applies to solid food. Soy milk and chocolate (allowed since it melts in your mouth) became my best friends.

6 pm: More meditation practice or the occasional distraction

I really enjoyed practicing in the meditation hall at this time for whatever reason. The red carpets faded to maroon as the sun went down, and there was always a calmer energy in the room, everyone’s enthusiasm fading to resolve.

Buddha Day falls once a week, a date marked on Thai calendars with a little Buddha head in the corner. As would be expected, it’s a big deal in the temple. Everyone gathers to one of the meditation halls and proceeds to repeat Pali verses after the monks, prostrating countless times in between. After listening to a monk give his speech, we all headed out to the main temple area, a bouquet of flowers, candles, and incense in hand.

The tradition goes that you walk around the temple three times, repeating a wish for someone. We circled in silence, deep in thought, our faces lit from the candles below, the golden temple from above. Setting the offering in front of the temple, we returned to the meditation hall to meditate en groupe, which somehow added to the already communal feeling of the evening.

Thai people can be overwhelmingly generous, donating significant portions of their money to the temple in hope of good karma. At the end of the ceremony, we were greeted by nuns serving warm soy milk, one of the many donations. Drinks in hand, we all walked back solemnly to our housing in the jasmine-scented night.

10 pm: Sleep (finally!)

Well, most nights. But the last two nights I was instructed to reduce my sleep. I was dreading the 4 hours of sleep the final night, but was resolved to get a final practice in. It was the strangest feeling that night, being so intensely present in the moment, aware of the crickets chirping outside while the cows mooed in triads, the placement of all my things in the room, the lightness of my steps, and my complete lack of anxiety. And right then, I was completely accepting of everything about myself and with how things are.

The most lasting concepts of Vipassana are anatta and anicha. The first describes how we can’t have complete control over everything, while anicha is the idea that everything changes – and trying to control change leads to dukkha, or suffering. Similar to the biblical idea of “this too shall change”, happiness, like sadness, is temporary. The best we can do is achieve contentedness, the “middle way”, as Buddhism teaches. So one good practice doesn’t ensure good ones to follow, but at least indicates the possibility.

As my teacher said, meditation doesn’t require a huge leap of faith, just one thoughtful step at a time. Intending to move, intending to move, intending to move.