Since arriving in Asia four months ago, I have only been bitten by one animal (a new record!). A lizard sunk his teeth into me on Ko Phangan, off the Gulf of Thailand. I’d say he was acting within his animal rights. I did sneak up behind him and grab him off a tree.…
On my last afternoon and Wat Klegonwan, the sky darkens, rains begin, thunder crescendos, the lights go out, and when trees begin crashing into the temple it becomes clear that this is no ordinary storm. The next day, a monk who has lived here for 23 years tells me it was the worst storm he…
Mott in his indomitable serenity had a way of dropping conversational bombs as casual asides. “You know tomorrow is Ne Suschij?” He asked on my penultimate afternoon at Wat Klagonwan. Considering no one else spoke English, no I had no idea what was happening tomorrow so I asked him to elaborate. “Tomorrow we do not…
Last night a rainstorm engulfed the mountain. The thunder wakes me before the 3 AM meditation gong. I am overjoyed to experience it. What could complete the picture of this mountain hideaway more than thunder and lightning illuminating drops playing romantic rhythms on the roof? Whether it’s the rain that stills my thoughts or not,…
Today at tea, after small talk and the daily exchange of English for Thai words, Mott asks me, “Can I ask you a question?” He said he saw me writing all the time and asked what one needed to do to become a good writer. At the end of the year, when he halts his trekking…
In a booklet Mott gave me, the Thai monk Chanmay Sayadaw writes that, “Talking is a great danger to the progress of insight. A five-minute talk can wreck a meditator’s concentration for the whole day.” Mott was a deeply peaceful person who seem capable of enjoying levels of profound stillness and serenity when he meditated.…
After breakfast, one of the younger monks and comes up to me and proclaims, “I teach you how to ca-pot.” I am making a mess of my bows to the Buddha and superior monks are noticing. Sometimes my brain puts things in the wrong file. My mind put all Buddhist monks as in the same…
When your brain dreams for the body, it desires bowl after bowl of fresh fruit—pineapple, durian, mangos, watermelon, papaya, melon, grapes, oh grapes!, strawberries, and a dozen fruits only Google knows. When your stomach is honest with itself, it wants you to fill it with pastries made from fresh fruit, coconut fried dough balls, pies,…
At 3 AM, a gong reverberates us awake — time for morning chanting and meditation. I place my cushion behind everyone else’s so that they will not notice my frequent fidgeting. In the morning, I do better than in the evening, but seriously, the lotus position is painful. I hope that with time my limbs…
I leave Bangkok with nothing more than the name of a town and the hope that I will get there to the mountain where a temple and monastery sit uniquely in Thailand’s interior. I only know about the monastery in the mountains because a shifty British expat using a fake name, sitting outside a 7…
