Written By Kate & Nella
“Why” is a good word we would use to sum up the 3 days at the Wat Pa Tam Wua forest monastery. The night before our departure to the monastery, we had gone over what our days would look like living as monk. Several concerns were raised due to the new circumstances, which will be explained later. Due to those concerns none of us were too excited for this new retreat.
Out first day there, we get into our dorms and are immediately led to the changing room to get our new white clothing. It wasn’t a vibe at first, but on the last day some of wanted to take these clothes home. After getting dressed, Anne Marie, our guide around the monastery, led us to the prayer hall where we began chanting and meditating. We really jumped right in.
The morning of the next day, we got up bright and early to give rice alms to the monks at 6:30. Then we grabbed our pillows, which we learned were very necessary if you didn’t want to have back pain the rest of the week, to go sit in our spots for morning chanting, sitting meditation and walking meditation. Many people quite liked the walking meditation. Then we had free time for about 30 minutes until we gave alms to the monks again in preparation for lunch. After lunch, we head right in for afternoon meditation which is relatively the same as morning meditation just with an added 15 minutes of laying down – which I am sure we can all say was our favorite form of meditating. A 3-hour rest time followed which most spent either sleeping, journaling, organizing etc. until evening meditation.
By now, as we’ve gone through a night, a day, an afternoon and another night the feelings of confusion are beginning to settle. We had many talks both during the afternoon rest time and before bed about what we don’t understand. Some of these topics would include the patriarchy in Buddhism that until this point we had only seen secondhand; the contradictions in the teachings; and not understanding the why of what we’re practicing. Pretty heavy topics. But though the heaviness would weigh us down a majority of the time there would be some moments that had us appreciate coming to this monastery. For example: there was a specific monk that would love making jokes that half the time would never be audible. A few of our favorites are what we deem “I don’t know” and “ barbecue tiger”. This monk was definitely a king.
Just random moments we would like to highlight. During one of our afternoon walking meditations, which was normally an hour through the garden, instead we went an hour up and around a mountain barefoot. Why we were barefoot, well we don’t know because, to be honest with you, the monks were wearing flip flops. It was a long track through ants, mud, wood, leaves, pointy rocks and soft moss. Normally we’re supposed to be mindful during these walks, but I ,Kate, would just like to say that I was anything but mindful. Instead of thinking about nothing, I was thinking about the rocks that kept jabbing at my feet. It was the least meditative I’d ever been in my life.
Another random moment, which at this point we can call it “how many bugs can Carpe attract” – we found a cockroach in a bag of food that we had brought. And we can say with confidence the rubber cockroach that’s made for jokes looks EXACTLY like a real cockroach, right on for whoever made rubber cockroaches (though the cockroach in the bag was real). Luckily, Sam killed it.
To end, though there were complaints and many many questions, we learned through these 3 days that being a monk maybe is not for us. But not just that, we learned that with being open-minded and having much patience we can come to understand even the hardest of topics.
