Acknowledge,
Thinking, thinking, thinking,
sitting, sitting, sitting,
Rising, falling, rising, falling,
annoying noise in the background..accept!
Hearing the timer
stretching
Standing standing standin
getting ready to walk
raising, moving, setting,
raising, moving, setting
feeling anger…accept
raising, moving, falling,
thinking about what i will do when i come back to germany
-You are here now! Be in the present moment! Accept!
This is basically my head for the last 10 days.
And this is what was going on with my body
-Waking up at 4.00 am
-meditation: walking, sitting, walking, sitting
-breakfast at 6.30am
-sweeping the courtyard for 15 minutes
-Meditation
-lunch at 10.30am
-sweep the yard for 30minutes
-meditation
-report to the teacher at 5.30pm
-meditation
-go to bed at 10pm
No talking allowed, no books, no internet, no diary
just meditation!
Everybody, except for the Monks was wearing completely white clothing.
Does this sound like prison?
well prison is more luxurious 😉
But I can recommend it to anybody who wants to find out something about himself!
The whole Vipassana retreat was in the Monastery Wat Rampoeng in Chiang Mai.
Thank you Kuno for telling me about this place!
An introduction to Buddhist teaching:
Life is Suffering!
When a baby is born, does it laugh?
No it cries!
We suffer when
-we are born
-we are sick
-we are aging
-we die
and
-we loose a loved one
-we have to be together with somebody we hate
why did i divide these two?
The first 4 are nonself causes, we cannot influence them, not even Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed… could resist aging and dying (lets not argue about getting sick)
The second 2 are, as you probably guessed Self inflicted problems.
The 3 causes of suffering
-Anger
-Ignorance
-Attachment/Desire
If you compare these 3 to the 7 deadly sins from christianity you will find a lot of similarities.
The ways to overcome suffering are:
Wisdom, Love and Compassion.
These are achieved through effort.
Thats it 😉
The retreat actually shows you suffering:
Pain in Knees etc, thoughts, emotions….
accept, accept, accept
This develops a mindfulness to your body…really good stuff.
But i don’t want to write a book here …yet 😉
But i want to show you some pictures 🙂
every building has dragons in front, they themself are eaten by other animals…i have not yet understood the symbolic 🙂
The Pagoda: it took me 40 minutes to walk aroundThe Gong: when hit it produces a very cool vibrating deep sound, when stroked on the middle a hummingÂ
The most beautiful but hardest place to meditate, crawling with ants, and mosquitoes, just so much distraction!! The library, my standard meditating spot, cool and mosquito free 🙂The Buddha of the Library Amazing Woodwork, i don’t know how much you would pay for this !handworked! door in Germany…the monastery was full of it!!
The technique of the “mindful prostration” on the top, which was the “warm-up” for the mind before each meditation session 4 times a day.
And of the walking 🙂
After the 10 days, i am staying with Ay (left) now, a exchange student who spent 1 year in my village in germany…but more from that the next days 🙂
So long
Ole 🙂