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, I am able to sit much stiller during the morning meditation. After breakfast, I go up the road into the forest. Hidden from the road, I’ve created table and chair from conveniently shaped rocks. I write letters to friends and family and spend two hours listening to Pimsleur Thai lessons.

Whether it’s the rain that stills my thoughts or not, I am able to sit much stiller during morning meditation. After breakfast, I go up the road into the forest. Hidden from the road, I’ve created table and chair from conveniently shaped rocks. I write letters to friends and family and spend two hours listening to Pimsleur Thai lessons.

Today at tea, Mott writes down on a piece of paper the point he was trying to make yesterday, illustrating how Buddhism is high development and science, since it only deals with the physical, is inferior.

I tell him how in the Catholic tradition that my mom follows they also have incorruptible saints like the undecayed body of the previous Abbot under glass in the central temple.

My mom always used this phenomenon of incorruptibility to show proof at her certainty that her faith was the faith. So it is interesting to learn that some Buddhist Arhats’ bodies remain intact after their death. Either there is human tampering to cause this, or deep spirituality, regardless of religious sect, has a profound effect on one’s cellular level.

I tell Mott that maybe both Buddhism and Christianity and other religions are paths and practices which touch some higher reality. But few people want to see their religion to be one of many ways to touching underlying truths.Everyone wants their way to be The Way.

I show him my Kindle and the library of books I care with me. He tells me that he is gotten rid of all technology but his phone, because he wants to do less of everything else that is not meditation.

He sees science as a distraction because scientists are out charting stars and clinging to facts instead of charting the vibrations of their hearts and letting go of the things that humans can’t hold onto eternally.

In a rare moment, he shares with me something of his personal bio. Rarely do we talk of our lives outside of the temple. He says his father doesn’t understand why he wants to spend so much time in temples instead of earning money. “But I don’t care,” he says, “I think seeking wisdom with this life is the highest thing to do. ”

He has two sisters and no brothers. So from his Thai father’s perspective, he’s losing his only son to Buddhism. I ask him if he has ever had a girlfriend. He has once, for six years, but says, “I think it is easier to be alone.”

In five weeks, I will turn 30, and having tango’d with romances agree with Mott in one sense. It is easier to be free, to read and write books, travel the world, acquire languages, and learn.

But I am as Gemini as they come, a hopeless romantic who looks for love when alone and feels confined when with someone. At times I feel both unable to commit to a life alone or with someone. I think somewhere deep down I carry the understanding that I’m still too much a person in progress. First I must become the me I fully want to be, but this can also be taken to far–we can spend our whole lives in that endeavoring. And in a sense, we all do.

“Sometimes,” Mott says, “meditation make sex desire strong.”

He shows me a book of dead babies cut open on the operating table, bloated bodies floating in the debris of a tsunami, rotting corpses and death grotesquely portrayed. On the cover of the book is a Buddhist monk, all smiles. The purpose of the book and books like it is to erase sexual desires. Mott looks at it every day to meditate on it.

“The book can make you feel good,” he says, mentioning how in Tibet when a person dies they chop up the body and throw the pieces to birds. We will do anything in life to turn away from the ugly reality facing us all one way or another we will die. Buddhism is dedicated to facing this reality without a sugar coating.

I love the beginnings of Buddhism. Through it I want to find a healthy balance with intoxicants, want to foster joy and compassion, but it’s dawning on me that the final door of these practices is to arrive at a state that finds every earthly endeavor frivolous. Maybe that’s why many of the historically wise — Buddha, Jesus, Socrates — wrote nothing down. On a long enough timeline, everything, even those three mentioned names, will be annihilated — our sun will die and render everything less than ash.

But even if that’s reality, it doesn’t stop me from desiring and wanting to continue to covet the joys of being human. I still want to write songs and be moved by music. I still want poetry to twist things within my consciousness, want to fall in love, have falling outs and reconciliations with my family, want to love so much as to be brutalized by the suffering I see in the world.

I cling to this self that will die and though there is little chance of such a person ever achieving enlightenment, still I can’t help but see much lost by what is gained. Just because we can’t pinpoint anything constant about a river’s existence doesn’t mean that we ought to damn it up at the source.

 

Read more from my series, “Being Buddhist in Thailand”