The two main ideas for today’s post were already outlined in my mind yesterday. But I decided to sleep on them and write them today.
My body hurts
There are two main sources of pain for my body in this temple.
One is the bed. I wonder how I will feel on my last day. Yesterday, it felt like lying down hurt less.
Also, yesterday at 8:00 PM I was already in bed, playing a bit of a masochist to spend more time in it than necessary.
So, the bed is hard and it is difficult to lie on, but I have often thought about how many people sleep like this every day.
I wonder not only how my feelings about the bed will change, but also what my thoughts will be about continuing to sleep on such a bed.
Another source of pain for me is sitting during meditations. I sit on a sitting mat, my legs crossed in front of it. I am as flexible as a rock in a forest, so this pose is quite tiring.
My third day was easier, today my leg was like this for almost an hour. True, I had to re-awaken this part of my body afterwards.
In addition to this, there is the occasional kneeling or sitting on my ankles. This is especially the case during food offerings.
I left it until the very end to try to make sure that my spine is straight while using all these positions.
Accordingly, by the third day I have felt and feel pain in many places. My ankles, calves, thighs, pelvis, spine are the signs.
It is a comforting feeling that although the pain is there, its intensity seems to be decreasing, and what is more important, I feel that there is a reason for this difficult physical experience.
I thought that even my life has become significantly more comfortable. This dumping of pain brings me closer to the ground on this plane for the first time in a long time.
I am grateful for these reminders of pain!
Common prayer
I wrote about common chanting in the previous posts.
I had a position on this activity by yesterday.
I mentioned earlier that a 40-minute chant creates a kind of relaxed state. I still think so now, but I would add that this is definitely not its purpose.
I went a little overboard with my ideas.
The background to this is that I remembered my church experiences at home. I have been to a Reformed church several times in the last 10 years. Sometimes regularly.
There are not many prayers and many rules to follow there. We stand up when the pastor speaks, we sit down when he speaks again. We sing the pre-selected songs. And at the end of the service, we definitely say our prayer learned from Our Lord.
But this was never for me! I did not participate in the singing, and this is just one of the reasons that I do not know the songs. The other reason is that this is not a single prayer that I know or say out loud.
I have known this prayer since I was a child. I learned it myself. I don’t know why. At a certain point in my life, I also learned English. I don’t know why. On the contrary, I can say that this prayer is part of my identity.
Our Father, who art in heaven…
It is part of my identity. And yet I don’t even know if I believe it. But the fact that I have never said it out loud with others is almost certain. It has always spoken to myself.
Now that I have written these lines, the answer to the question of why has dawned on me.
Maybe I don’t say it out loud because then the doubt I expressed earlier would be only God’s and my business. On the contrary, if I say it, this doubt already belongs to someone else.
So, I don’t say our most well-known prayer out loud. I don’t sing the hymns with the congregation. I even know the language.
In contrast, here in Northern Thailand, I am chanting a tuneless tsunami of sounds in an unknown language with a community of strangers who cannot even be called a congregation.
Yesterday I realized that my idealism had taken over. Respect for the place made me forget respect for those at home.
If not there, then not here.
That’s it, because that’s all…
This way I will be true to myself and to what this world means to me.
It’s just one step to start writing about religion, but not now.
The joint work
I haven’t written about it yet, but there is joint work.
I couldn’t sleep this morning. I thought I’d go to the kitchen. There’s always work to do there. So Sunrise found me there. I chopped vegetables with my friends.
I already raked Lombok yesterday and the day before yesterday. We’ve brought heavy rice bowls from the kitchen before, and I’ve washed the large shared dishes several times. I’ve already done that, when I see someone else working and dragging, I take the work out of their hands. It feels good to put it into the joint work like this.
There’s no other way. Today I reminded myself that apart from my underpants, everything around me is now shared.
Values are only in theory, but I’ll explain that in a future article.
The end of today
After the walking meditation during the day, a long dharna speech followed from virtual reality: one of the monks started a recording of his favorite master.
At that point, everything hurt, to refer back a little to the beginning of this article. I thought my back would break. The pain in my legs was still bearable, but the two together were now too much.
For my “retreat”, I read a great book about meditation. The key point of this is the comfort of the body.
This comfort was completely missing today. For this reason, and because of what I wrote a few paragraphs earlier about chanting, I decided to withdraw from the rest of the official part of the day.
I will participate in the evening chanting again tomorrow, but just as I did not speak yesterday, I will not speak tomorrow either. So the only way I can honor the place is by giving 45 minutes of my life in exchange for my words.
I spent this afternoon and evening in the triangle of writing, reading, and thinking.
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