A Monastery for Meditation

As I was on my boat ride from LuangPrabang to Thailand my friend Kyle, who I’d met in Bangkok a month earlier, reached out and asked if I was interested in meditation at all. He was staying up in Pai in northern Thailand and kept hearing about a monastery nearby that allowed anyone to come and learn about Buddhism and Meditative practices. I’ve done meditation on my own (without any kind of instruction mind you) and researched it on my own from time to time. The monastery in question provided free accommodation, food, and spiritual guidance for everyone that comes looking. It’s maybe 2 hours away from Pai, which is a notorious hippy-haven, and a significant chunk of the monastery’s patrons are foreigners who aren’t sure what to expect once they get there.

After a bit of research, I excitedly agreed to make a beeline for the Monastery once I got to Thailand. Talking it out, me and Kyle figured we could spend up to five days there. About three days later, stepping out of a minivan after 6 hours in the middle of nowhere we were greeted by the above photo. The man who drove us dropped our bags, pointed to the road under the mountain and said “Walk. Over there. 30 minutes.” The sun was setting by this point and we wanted to get initiated quickly, so we took off on a walk that only lasted 20 minutes. The countryside on the approach was gorgeous and in my mind the perfect place to stick a meditative center.

Thus we came to Wat Pa Tam Wua, or translated Forest Mountain Monastery. There was a strange silence in the air. Here or there we saw people drifting like ghosts across fields, under trees, or sitting on benches; they dressed all in white. Some smiled as we passed, others waved, and I can recall only 1 person actually saying hello while doing all three. We searched for reception because we realized Evening Meditation was to begin at 6pm and, after our walk, less than an hour away. We talked to a very nice man who checked us in, gave us our blankets and bedroll, told us where our dormitory was, and said we could join evening meditation once we got all settled.

These are the kuties, or personal cabins. People who come to join Wat Pa Tam Wua are encouraged to do so for between 3 to 10 days. The longer you stay, the higher priority you have for lodging because they assume you’ll need privacy for better meditative practice. All of these were, at the time of arrival, filled with people so we were directed to the dorms. Just a large room with one small coffee table, and enough space to fit maybe 20 people on their bedrolls. The ground was ceramic tile, and the bedroll was as thin as a pair of jeans; this combination made for some of the worst sleep I have gotten in a long while but, in the end, I think it was better for me to experience this level of discomfort during my excursion into meditation. Along with the lack of comfort were several rules one could choose to follow or not:

• No speaking
• No electronics (phone or computer)
• No reading
• Eating only twice per day, finishing before 11am.

I personally chose to follow the first and last rule, made an exception for number 3, and only let myself use my reading tablet after we turned in for the night around 9pm. That’s right, curfew at 9pm! But I’m getting a little ahead of myself. To give you a proper insight into Wat Pa Tam Wua I should start with their daily schedule of activities and a little description.

Technically the day starts at 5am every morning, with the suggestion being to meditate alone until around 6am. In the dorms I’m not sure I saw a single person doing that, though I did take the time to stretch my arms and legs before the meditations for the day; sitting indian-style with good posture can be difficult for some people. Most people kept on sleeping, some people packed on their last days, and a very few of them took showers in the ice-cold mountain air before the water heater got turned on.

At 6am you’re expected to gather in the common area. Here they have rice that needs to be scooped onto plates for each individual person to hold. We all group up, those of us awake enough at the time, and help move the rice from pot to plate, from one table to another where it sits waiting to be used. With a few minutes before the next activity, most of us grab free coffee or tea and try to shake ourselves out of our autopilot to prepare for:

6:30am, offering food to the Monks. See in Buddhism there are 227 rules one must follow to be considered a part of the monkhood (311 for women). One of those involve never taking food for yourself and only eating that which people freely offer you as a kindness. It promotes compassion among the laypeople and reduces temptations of greed for monks. So at 6:30am one of the monks dings the bell in that above photo. It is quite loud and can be heard all the way in the dorms. Each person then grabs one of the prepared plates of rice and sits in a circle surrounding the main meditation hall, boys on one side, girls on the other. You must not be sitting on anything, lest you be considered disrespectful, and you must not grab your knees for support when sitting for the same reason. Each monk comes by with his own bowl for the day, where you drop a small scoop of rice from your own plate. We did this for each monk (4-6) and needed to be mindful not to drop any rice on the ground, lest we generate bad karma (for our greed in keeping food from others).

After all our rice has been dished out to the monks, they take a seat at the front of the meditation hall to eat and we all congregate in the common area for our own breakfast by 7am. Breakfast was always rather simple, with white rice and most likely one side dish of vegetables. There were always condiments like chili or soy sauce at the end to take. One of these mornings we got lucky and a local man made all of us one roti roll covered in condensed milk to go along with the meal! There was no limit on the amount of food you were allowed to take, you could go up and refill your bowl as many times as you please to satiate your morning hunger. Once we all finished eating we needed to self wash our dishes in a public sink area, and many were encouraged to help clean the cooking pots or pans as well in an effort to practice mindfulness. We then had about an hour to ourselves to shower, read, or meditate alone.

Because at 8am the morning meditation begins. Again the bell dings calling us all to gather, the monks get to the front of the meditation chambers, we take our seats. We’re lead in an opening chant of respect (Anchali, Wanta, Apiwan) toward The Buddha. Almost immediately we head out to the grounds for walking meditation. We step slowly and keep heavy attention on the movement of our bodies, being mindful to raise our back heel to stand on our toe as our front heel hits the ground. Everyone stays 3-4m apart with a single step being taken every 2-3 seconds. The entire process takes maybe 50 minutes? You can either go with or without shoes. I always chose the latter and got cuts or calluses on my feet day after day, but it helped me keep track of different parts of my body or sensations that I think most people generally ignore.

Once we finish the slow morning meditation we make our way back to the meditation hall to continue regular sitting meditation. Chatting takes place before they instruct us to sit properly and focus on the breathing of our lungs, to concentrate on the air as it enters and leaves our nose or on the movement of the diaphragm. We are encouraged to use the mantra “Bud Dho” by saying it in our head slowly to try and sync our thoughts with our breathing before moving on to only focusing on the movements. For half an hour we do that as a group before we take a small break, maybe 40 minutes to an hour, to get coffee, tea, or go to the bathroom.

Before too long, though, we are called for another food offering to the monks, this time for lunch. It’s meant to be concluded by 10:30am because – as another one of those 227/311 monk rules states – monks need to stop eating before 11am every day. It has primarily to do with viewing food as only a resource necessary for preserving the body, and not as something to be desired. Later in the day when a monk gets hungry, it is their opportunity to observe that feeling and reject it, thus furthering the understanding of their own body. Men physically hand each lunch item to each monk who will take whatever amount they wish. For women it is a bit different, though. In relation to temptations of desire (I think) women are not allowed to touch monks without generating bad karma. So instead of handing food to the monks they place their offering a certain distance away from the Abbot on a ceremonial cloth; too close is rude, too far and he isn’t allowed to accept it. He offers a gesture of thanks and the women are allowed to go back to their place in the hall and sit down.

We then all sit down for our lunch! Which, for the most part, is the same as the monks. Lunch is more lavish than breakfast. Along with the rice that is a staple for every meal in this part of the world there are at least 3 or 4 entrees to go along with it. Every meal is always vegetarian, and many dishes are vegan (I think). They range from fried cabbage to cold mushrooms and everything else in between. Fruit is often included.

When we finish lunch we again must clean our plates, and many of us assist in cleaning the dishes that served the food to all. After that we’re sort of left to our own devices. The monastery had a very nice library with books in at least five languages (Thai, English, Chinese, Japanese, Korean). Many of those books focus on Buddhism and the philosophical arguments behind the faith, or ideas on how to improve one’s practice of it, or just basic tenents that westerners might not be familiar with; the monks here even wrote a few of the books themselves. It wasn’t only Buddhist books, however! During my time at Wat Pa Tam Wua, I went ahead and read a book on the historic origins of Ayutthaya and the Thai language! A fascinating read that considered the significance of the religion in the development of modern Thailand. If you looked you could find other activities practiced by other people all throughout the monastery grounds. Some meditated in the sun, some did yoga, many cleaned a dusty spot on the floor of the monastery. It was a time of reflection on the events of the first half of our days, considered in whatever ways helped us understand

At 1pm the bells chimed again! Afternoon meditation. These were always led by who I am forced to assume is the #2 at the monastery. These, in my opinion, were always the most enlightening of the meditations. The morning is rather busy and so there isn’t much time for an explanation of what you’re doing, why, or how it’s useful. At the Afternoon Meditation the monk in charge made sure to stress this information.

We began as always by sitting in designated spots on the floor. The monk told us what the plans for that particular meditation were, and they were almost always the same. Walking Meditation (faster at this time of day), then Sitting Meditation, finally Meditation Laying Down. As the monk explained these all focused on something different.

• Walking Meditation is supposed to provide a focus for our minds to observe what our bodies are doing. If you are moving, there’s more that is obviously going on for you to be away of, but because we walk everyday we don’t consciously think about the various movements of different parts of our body. The soles of your feet are making contact with all sorts of grooves in the pavement, your knees are bending, your thighs stretching, your weight shifting, your hair is blowing in the wind. As you read this you might think “yes I know these things happen,” but when you go walking are you consciously thinking about the grooves you feel under your feet, or how your back hurts with 30 minutes of good postured walking, or how your belly fat moved from back to front with each step?
• Sitting Meditation is the chance to take the same principals from Walking Meditation and utilize them on examing a resting body. It’s easy to know “I’m walking and this is what I feel on my foot as I do that,” even without practice. But how easy is it to focus on the beating of your heart without checking your pulse? Or to focus on the tips of your fingers when they aren’t touching anything? Or to feel the food from lunch passing out of your stomach? Our bodies are always doing something and ever changing, yet we spend most of our lives actively ignoring what it’s doing so we can focus on things beyond ourselves and in the world.
• Meditation Laying Down is a bit different from the previous two. While those help us focus on the body, this is more for mental clarity and calmness. After half an hour of Sitting Meditation it is assumed our minds are calmer than normal waking life. Here we are supposed to choose something, anything, that makes us happy and focus on it. I have often read that happiness is a state of mind, and physical things or events that make us happy are fleeting. Here, for 30 minutes or so, we focus entirely on one thing that makes us happy in an effort to train our brain to think more along that mental state when there isn’t an external force to make us happy.

Once Meditation was finished we would do some chanting to pay our respect before being let go. Unlike all other meditations, though, this monk would stick around for another hour or so to answer any questions we might have. It didn’t matter what kind of question, he would do his best to answer it respectfully and to the best of his ability. A few sample questions from people who came to the monastery to learn that I can recall:

• How does Buddhism feel about homosexuals?
  -He told us a story about Buddha’s cousin (Life 3) being too promiscuous with married women in a previous life (Life 1), and being made to reincarnate as – in his own words – “a gay.” (Life 2) The way it came out, it sounded like a punishment, but I don’t think that was the intention or moral of the story. He made no indication that being gay was wrong, only an effect of one’s actions that needed to be dealt with, the same way we deal with something as common as getting the wrong order at McDonald’s.
• Can Animals perform good merits (acts that generate karma) and reincarnate into humans?
  -This one was complicated. Essentially, animals are incapable of thinking on a level that allows them to intentionally act in good faith to generate karma and reincarnate up in the cycle. They can, however, be exposed to positive karma through living a life with good humans, such as monks, and unintentionally reincarnate up in the cycle this way. He told a story of a chicken who heard monks chanting, felt positive from the experience, and was immediately killed by a hawk for food – allegedly, the chicken reincarnated as a human after the experience.
• Why are there no female monks?
  -“We have,” he said, “they’re on the way.”
• Daoism purports that all things have a spirit. One time I was walking in the forest and thinking about unconditional love when behind me, clear as day, I heard a voice. I turned and saw nothing but a tree. It spoke to me and said “What do you humans know of unconditional love? We give you our children to eat, our bodies to burn or build. Humans know nothing of unconditional love.” If humans and animals have souls and can reincarnate, can plants do the same?
  -The monk smiled and gave a very flat “No.”
  -When challenged with scientific studies about measuring reactions in plants to certain stimuli (which is real), he expanded his answer. Monks have tested showing extra love and kindness toward one plant and not another, with the ‘control plant’ clearly growing slower than the loved plant. He was vague with exactly what that means but maintained that plants do not have souls and cannot reincarnate.
• Is dark magic real? If so, how can I know that’s what I’m facing, and what can I do to stop it?
  -The monk answered but he clearly has more patience and respect than myself. I didn’t hear the answer because I was laughing in my own head at how ridiculous I found the question.

At 3pm sharp the monk would always cut us off saying “I’m sorry, I have to go!” The next three hours were a combination of everything else from before. Personal Meditation, Reading, Coffee, Hygiene, etc. Some people even chose to walk on down to a corner shop 1km away to buy a snack because 20 hours is too long to go without eating. At this point we were told to please clean the monastery, either by raking leaves, sweeping floors, or anything else that needed doing. We all got to stay here technically free of charge, so it was the least we could do. Raking leaves also provide a very good atmosphere for meditation. You can do it mindlessly and be bored, or you can overcome the boredom through carefuly consideration of your actions and be the best damn raker of leaves Thailand has ever seen!

At 6pm, again, DINGDINGDING! Calls to gather in the Dharma Hall for Evening Meditation. This has significantly more chanting than the other meditations, the specifics of which you can get from a book you download off their website. Chanting moves into sitting meditation IN THE DARK! Sitting meditation moves into meditation laying down ALSO IN THE DARK! (try not to fall asleep, several did). It all took until 8pm or so where the Abbot would tell a few jokes, mostly about following the rules:

• Couples, honeymoon over, okay?
• You in dorms, no big party, okay?
• You see snake, say to snake “Be happy snake! Please no hurt me! I no BBQ you, okay?”

We would then settle down for an hour but by 9 a police officer would start turning off lights asking us to go to bed. Having woken up between 5 and 6am, I never complained about the curfew. Though I often read for an hour as I lay on the stone-tiled floor wishing for sleep to come. All in all, this was my schedule for four full days.

Now I figured I’d take the time to tell you my personal interpretation of the experience and how it benefitted me. Mind you everything here is subjective, and not everyone would have experienced the get away the same way as me. In fact while there I met people who had stayed on for two weeks when you’re really only meant to stay for 10 days. I also met people who came not knowing what to expect and left after only one night. Some people were here for the second time! I’m also fairly certain I was thinking about the entire thing incorrectly for the first three days I went through it. In the past I have been interested in Buddhism, and while living in China I got heafty doses of it in everyday life. Even so I went to Wat Pa Tam Wua knowing only so much about the religion or how to really practice meditation. That being said, I found the experience very engaging and, puns aside, enlightening.

Let me start by introducing the Abbot. We could not have been led through this by any jollier tof a man. His mere presence made you smile and his laughter was nothing if not infectious. He told the exact same jokes every night. Despite having heard them before, you never would have been able to stop yourself from laughing. He didn’t run the meditations as much as I expected, but as an Abbot there is a lot of work to be done. What’s more I’m fairly confident he had a cold throughout most of my stay. The first and second morning he greeting those leaving and spoke for a time. The last three days he was nowhere to be seen. One of the evening meditations, which he typically lead, he was absent; it was also the night we ended early for the day. And when I saw him the next day a person asked him a question and from a distance I saw him make motions that seemed to indicate a problem with his nose. Despite his elusiveness, people would frequently discuss how impressed they were with him. I went to listen to him one night after evening meditation, and he only had so much time (again, it seemed from illness-induced exhaustion) so me and a few had to leave him after only about a minute. But as we left one of the guys – who had only arrived the day before – was ecstatically talking about how amazing the Abbot was! If there were ever anyone to be a role model in how to live happily, the Abbot of Wat Pa Tam Wua is it.

If the pictures haven’t so far explained the idea, the monastery is gorgeous. The perfect “away from civilization” mountain valley to practice meditation and get in touch with Buddhist spirituality. I swore off of phones during my time there and I’m ultimately glad that I did. See, I wanted photos, every day I wanted photos! The inability to take them was what allowed me to more fully appreciate the natural beauty of the place. Mornings were spent feeling the sun in the crisp and foggy mountain air. Afternoons were spent standing in the ice-cold stream to feel the water rushing past my ankles. I took the time to feed the fish sunflower seats amidst the mist of a lake-fountain. Ants bit at me as I swept up their leaves, and I mindfully took the time to brush them off instead of squish them (an important thing in Buddhist Doctrine). While Vipassana meditation here at Wat Pa Tam Wua is meant to teach you focus on your own body, one of the greatest challenges here is to not marvel at the natural scenery surrounding you.

So I should take the time to explain the point of the meditation as I saw it. There are strict definitions, of course, but I’m finding it difficult to decipher and correlate with what was going on at Wat Pa Tam Wua without years of Buddhist Theological study under my belt. The two types of meditation we were instructed on were Vipassana (vee-pah-sah-nah) and Samatha (sah-mah-tah). Go ahead and read through the description in those links. There you’ll find more specific and orthodox details. Here on AJourneySonder, though, I’m going to give each my own personal spin.

One of the basic ideas behind Buddhism is that the world is ever in motion, never remaining the same. No matter how you think of it, this is verifiably true. No matter what you’re discussing this is correct in our physical world: electrons can’t sit still, energy increases or decreases. Even things we think of as constants – such as the speed of light – can change when acted on by outside forces – like when passing through partially opaque objects, or influenced by gravity – they are limits. This concept is built into the very fabric of our reality. Getting closer to home, right now, even if you’re sitting down your body is changing. Neurons are firing, proteins are being made, cells are dividing. Regardless of what we think is happening our body is doing something.

The other thing we must understand is that our Body is not Ourself. This may be the most challenging part to grasp. We spend our entire lives having the opposite reinforced into our understanding of the world. We stub our toe and we scream out in pain. We look into a mirror and the person we see moves the same way we tell ourselves to. Someone’s body stops working and they are gone forever because they are their body, and if it doesn’t work they can’t either. Buddhism specifically wants us to recognize that our body is just another thing in the world, the only difference is that when I tell a rock to move it doesn’t obey, when I tell my body to move it does. But I can also tell a mouse to move with my hand and have the cursor on the computer move with it; that makes neither the mouse nor the computer a part of me. In other words:

• Our minds (not our brains) are from elsewhere, incorporeal, viewing the physical through the eyes of a body we spend our lives being told is us. We are a soul piloting a Mech made of bone, flesh, and blood.

Like I said, for the first three days or so I wasn’t quite getting it. But on the fourth day a lot of the information I’d absorbed from books or the monks came together into what I think they’re trying to communicate. Vipassana is the technique that helps us to understand both that our body is always changing and that our body is not us. It starts with focusing on the breathing. “Bud, Dhooooo. Bud, Dhoooooo.” In and out the breath goes. Focus on it, they say, either in the diaphragm or at the nose. Tell yourself to breathe slowly, and in time. Focus on this breath only until your mind is blank, until it focuses on nothing. An interesting thing, then, that your body continues breathing at the speed and tempo you set. You aren’t telling yourself to breath. In fact, your body will only stop breathing once you instruct it to. Your brain is working, yes of course, but it works when I’m in a coma too, though I don’t know that I would say I’m there when in a coma.

On the last two days, once these concepts started to make sense in my head, some very interesting things happened. The first thing I noticed were my hands. That sounds stupid, I know some of you must be rolling your eyes. In life I believe we think of our hands as a unit, a whole object that has different identifiable sections. But one hand is not a whole unit. A hand has four fingers, a thumb, nails, knuckles, palm, wrist, tendons, etc… They all make up a hand. Of course you know, on some level, that your hand is a construct of these other parts, but I’m not sure most of us consciously think of it in those terms.

To put it another way, our entire body has nerve endings, but our hands have a higher proportion than almost anywhere else in the body. In your day to day life do you consciously take note of what each and every nerve ending is experiencing, or do you default to clustering them all into the single unit of your hand (unless there’s something noticeably wrong) because to focus so specifically would – for lack of a better expression – take too much processing power? With the meditation I spent the third day trying my best to move my hands and feel the multiple sensations that go with that; how do my tendons contract when I move like this, what does each finger feel like as I slowly make a fist curling one at a time, how does the porcelain of the coffee mug feel against my skin and where are the gaps caused by the creases on my palm? On the fourth day I didn’t need to concentrate very hard, recognizing the many sensations of the fingers/pal/etc came much more naturally.

The second thing I noticed was actually a bit of a problem. On day three I decided to shift from focusing on my breath to focusing on my heartbeat. Not with my wrist, but taking notice of the heart inside my chest, its shape and how it moves when it beats to pump blood. The afternoon meditation monk said this was fine because it fulfilled the same basic idea. It worked phenomenally! Before the end of the meditation I could feel the pulsation of blood through my veins in time with the beat of my heart! Later on, though, as I laid down to sleep and put my earplugs in, the beating of the blood in my ears was akin to thunder. It took an extra hour to get to sleep that night because I was too easily able to take note of the more subtle functions of my body.

A third thing I noticed was due to my personal vow of silence. In the beginning I was merely telling myself to be silent while thoughts flittered through my head. And being silent for three days in full isn’t as easy as you’d expect; I broke on the second day saying hello to a dog! Though I did notice I’d spoken immediately after doing so, I ended up having a good laugh at that. By the last day there weren’t many random and unnecessary thoughts running around in my head. This, in turn, allowed me to better focus on what my body itself was doing. I was naturally inclined to follow the sensations of my body because my mind was not focusing on jumping from random thought to random thought – Monkey-Mind, as the Abbot termed it. On the fourth day I decided speaking was okay, but only when spoken to first, and directly. This allowed me to speak carefully, specifically, and without fluff. You would be so shocked at the amount of breath we all waste spouting unimportant nonsense! Sometimes it’s in conversation saying 3x as much info as necessary, sometimes it’s alone as we utter under our breath.

The point, finally, is this:

• Our Bodies are not us, we spend our whole lives being told that they are because cause and effect present the illusion that they are one and the same.
• Similarly, our bodies are constantly working, shifting, changing. Perhaps when we are born we’re conscious of how our heart beats, or what every nerve-ending feels like at each moment, or how our liver filters nutrients but as we grow there are countless sensations we learn to ignore because it takes up concentration that is more funly used to focus on things in the world around us.
• We can be trained to refocus on our body, away from useless thoughts or words. We can learn to be mindful of the body’s sensations. Through mindfulness of these sensations we eventually recognize that our body is a thing, an object, something that will waste away; but me, my consciousness, it will not.

That is Vipassana, as I understood it. It is one aspect of reaching Enlightenment in Buddhism – to fully recognize the self as separate from the body. Another is Samatha. Samatha focuses more on training the self to experience the world in a positive perception. Personally I can’t write much about it. Until the final evening meditation I totally misunderstood what they were trying to get me to do. That was partially on me, and partially on difficulties with translation. Regardless I can say that if one thinks positively then the world does, in fact, seem like a better place. At a certain time in my past I have gotten my mental state to such a point where nothing bothered me, I was happy all the time, stress was little more than a fleeting annoyance, and those who acted negatively toward me were immediately forgiven; they didn’t affect me or my mood. Like all things, though, that can be difficult to maintain, getting back there even more so. Part of the reason I went to Wat Pa Tam Wua was in the hope that it could give me insights on how to do it. And, Samatha or not, the time there did, in fact, help me get a step or so closer to that state of mind.

I have barely gotten into any of the theology of Buddhism during this article! Don’t worry, I’ve written enough already. In this article the point isn’t so much the theological beliefs of Buddhism anyway. The monks stressed Buddhism is a religion, but they also stressed that it is entirely compatible with Islam, Christianity, or anything else you practice. Those religions focus on God and the world, Buddhism focuses solely on spiritual development and escaping from the world’s suffering. The Afternoon Meditation Monk even used the words Angel and Demon to describe some of the cosmic elements of Buddhist theology; when thought of in the right way, they fit. Even the book they wrote claimed that if you prefer to think of reaching Nirvana (Enlightenment/Escaping the Wheel of Reincarnation) as rejoining God separate from the cycle of death and rebirth, that was entirely fine!

No, I wanted the article to be about my experiences with delving, for the first time seriously, into meditation and how I think it relates to some modern concepts present in the most basic of Buddhist philosophy. I could discuss a lot more than I already have, both in my personal interpretation of the religion and meditation or in the personal effects that were born from going through all of this. Like how before the retreat I constantly made mistakes typing on my phone or on the computer, but after mindfulness training the errors dropped dramatically without adding time to typing mostly because I was more conscious of finger placement. If anyone reading this wants to discuss more about this subject, either because you disagree or I wasn’t clear on something, please do message me or leave a comment. Before Wat Pa Tam Wua I was already very attracted to Buddhist thought, afterward I only got a stronger disposition toward how positive it can be for everyone! If you get a chance, take a look for yourself and think about booking your next vacation for Thailand where you can stopover in Mae Hong San to learn meditation at Wat Pa Tam Wua. I might end up going back one day myself!

I can’t finish, though, without mentioning Pachi Dog. He is the Monastery’s Mascot if there ever was one! He constantly hung out in the Dharma Hall during meditations and generally provided a fuzzy face to bring happiness to all patrons of the monastery. I have never met a more chill dog in my life. Helpful too! Every time the monks DINGed the bell to summon us to meditation, he would howl as loud as he could. It was as if, in his little doggy brain, he thought “There’s no way the humans will hear that DINGing…” before shouting for all to hear “HEY, HEY EVERYONE, COME TO THE DHARMA HALL! THE MONKS ARE COMING! DON’T MISS MEDITATION! COME ON!!!” Pachi Dog is a good dog. If any animal can reincarnate up the ladder and into a human in its future life, Pachi Dog is it.