So in case you didn’t get the pun, “wat” is the Thai word for temple. Oh, I’m so punny!
This past weekend our group stayed at a Wat near Chiang Rai to learn how to meditate from the monks. Fortunately, we did more than meditate during our time. It felt more like a youth retreat than a meditation weekend – we had group meals, played silly games and pulled pranks on each other. We also went spelunking through a bat cave and collected alms with the monks…that’s the part that was unlike any youth group trip I’ve been on.
We left Chiang Mai on Saturday morning and visited about 28 wats before we arrived at the one we would be staying at for the weekend. Okay, so it wasn’t 28, but it was so many that I really don’t remember how many. Before we arrived at the wat we drove to the opening of a cave, climbed a small mountain to get to the actual opening, and spent an hour or two wandering around. It was rather peculiar, actually. We weren’t given instructions or a time to be back, so it was sort of every man for himself. Within 100 feet of being inside the cave it was pitch black, and the tiny candles we were given didn’t help much. But thanks to my MacGuyver-esque skills, I converted my iPod into a makeshift flashlight. Some of us decided that it would be fun to all climb in a small crevice and find out where it led. Apparently it finally led into a tiny room with limited oxygen, but I never made it there because the line leaders started to not be able to breath, freaked out, and told us to get out as fast as we could. So selfish! But don’t worry: we were all fine. And I’m sure that if I had needed to, I would have been able to craft a rudimentary oxygen tank out of my water bottle and survive. That was also in a MacGuyver episode.
You might gather from the start of a new paragraph that all of the cave adventure stories are over, but you would be wrong. It’s just that this next experience deserves a paragraph all to itself. After we made it out of the oxygen-less part of the cave, we decided to enter into the portion of the cave inhabited by bats and see how far in we could get. Again: not the best idea ever. It was the single most disgusting experience of my life. As soon as we rounded the corner we literally hit a brick wall of humidity caused by the vast amount of bat poop. We progressed for a few more minutes and would stop every so often to listen to the hundreds of bats flying around us. (p.s. that is not an exaggeration). I took a few pictures in which I pointed the camera up and took a picture with the flash so we could see how many bats there were. There was one very mysterious image which I believe was a bat that flew right in front of the camera as I took the pictures. It’s rather frightening. Despite the thrill we got from getting pooped on by hundreds of bats, we turned back when bats started flying in front of our faces.
Well, we finally arrive at the wat portion of the weekend. The festivities of the night included our first meditation session. We all gathered in a large room and sat on the floor on mats in lotus position (well, some of us sat in lotus position. Others of us slightly less flexible deferred to “Indian style.” The monks led us in about an hour of standing, walking, and sitting meditation. You are supposed to wipe your mind of everything and only concentrate on what is going on then: your breathing and your steps if you are doing walking meditation. I have admiration for people who can meditate for hours, because I could only last a few minutes before my mind was fully engrossed in the fact that my foot was asleep and coming up with a way to remedy the situation without anyone noticing how completely “un-enlightened” I was. Fortunately, everyone else in the group was suffering the same plague of ADD. So meditation was a bust, but the next day was full of excitement, from 5 am on.
That’s right – I said 5:00 am. That’s what time we got up in order to go with the monks down to the village to collect alms. Since monks don’t cook in the temples, every morning they go out into the streets with bowls over their shoulders and people are waiting there to give them food. This happens EVERY morning. And people are inclined to get up this early because it is a way to make merit, a very important Buddhist concept related to racking up good karma that will hopefully bring you a better life when you are reborn.
After that we went back up to the temple grounds and the monks invited us into their “dedication ceremony” where they dedicate the food to Buddha and then eat it. I never thought that the verse in 1 Corinthians 10 about eating food sacrificed to idols would ever be literally applicable to my life, but it is. I can eat the food with a clean conscience because I’ve given thanks to God for it, acknowledging Him as the true provider, not a statue. It’s been really hard trying to discern the line between being respectful of the people here and disrespecting my God. Yes I am an observer, a sociologist, and I am grateful for the Thai people inviting me into their culture, but I am first and foremost a Christian, and that dictates things that I will and will not participate in. There are going to be many more instances and situations like this one, so please pray that God would make it clear to me the right thing to do and how to do it with respect.
Well, the rest of the day was much less mentally trying. It involved another short meditation session (equally as entertaining), and a trip to the sauna. Apparently temples in Thailand come fully equip with sauna rooms. It wasn’t exactly what I pictured a sauna being like: it was literally an outhouse with an herbal fire. The group that went in after us was all boys, so we of course took advantage of the situation and stole their clothes after they went in. Ahh, just like the old days of youth group pranks. Apparently it’s outrageously disrespectful to roam Buddhist temple grounds without clothes (who knew!?) so we had to give them back. Nevertheless, it was a great weekend full of excellent learning experiences, some more serious than others. Again, please pray that all of us would be able to discern the right thing to do in situations when our convictions are put to the test. Thanks!