The enlightened one?

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It is said that after training in meditation for six years Siddhārtha Gautama sat meditating under a Bondi tree and vowed not to arise until he achieved full enlightenment. Just 24 hours later he achieved his goal thus becoming Buddha or the enlightened one, from that day forth he taught the path or Dharma he realised in that moment and Buddhism was borne.

A religion without a god based on “a path of practice of spiritual development leading to the true nature of life,” (http://fwbo.org/buddhism.html). What would a novice like me with my knowledge of Buddhism, meditation and enlightenment coming mainly from what I’d read on Wikipedia the previous week get out living for 24 hours as a Buddhist monk?

My weekend began in hair raising style when six of us plus a driver were crammed into a five seater taxi taking us from the bus stop to the Lotus Lantern International Meditation Centre, where the temple stay would take place. Luckily, after a few near misses, we arrived in one piece and were greeted by a Russian monk.

He showed us into our living quarters and provided us with our outfits, a pair of baggy trousers, baggy t-shirt and baggy waistcoat in a fetching shade of grey! These were to be worn at all times, including to bed!

I’d read that the idea of a temple stay wasn’t to sit around meditating and chanting, it was to live as a monk and included doing chores around the temple grounds and observing their rules of silence. Despite this our stay began sitting around doing well… nothing. After the monk showed us our living quarters he disappeared leaving us with two hours spare before the orientation began.

The orientation involved the monk pointing to some buildings and telling us what they were before taking us into the Buddha Hall for a talk about Buddhism. He showed us how to enter and leave the room without turning our backs to the alter and told us to half bow as we stepped in and out of the hall. Once we were settled in the hall he showed us how to complete a full bow and told us what to expect from the chanting before he launched into a talk about Buddhism, the four noble truths and the middle way.

We stood in the Buddha Hall for what felt like an eternity as the monks’ broken English became increasingly difficult to follow. Soon my legs and back were aching and I self consciously shifted my weight from foot to foot whilst mentally planning Mondays lessons. I tuned back into the talk as the monk was saying the way out of suffering was through concentration. How ironic, I was stood in a Buddha Hall learning about Buddhism but whilst the monk was talking about one its key elements, the alleviation of suffering through concentration, I wasn’t concentrating because I was thinking about how much pain I was in from standing still for too long!

For the rest of the talk I tried my best to concentrate on his speech on not on the aching in my legs and back, but to no avail. It seems I need a bit more practice before I can concentrate my way out of suffering – at least the sort caused by standing still for too long!

As the monk finished the talk he told us the temple Abbot was out of the country so there was only him and the  Swiss monk, who would teach us meditation, at the temple. He also revealed that the temple currently didn’t have a cook, but assured us he’d find one to make our dinner! And added that normally we would watch a video about Buddhism but the video player was broken, so instead we enjoyed the last of the sunshine and sat in the garden drinking tea.

The monk prepared the tea in a very gentle and methodical manner, first he washed out each of the cups and the tea pot using boiling water and tipping the waste water into a bowl. He then carefully emptied the bowl at the side of the garden before making the tea in a small tea pot and carefully passing each person a helping of tea in a small cup. Small handelless cups are often used for drinking tea in Korea and whilst they don’t hold a lot of liquid they are usually topped up as soon as you finish your last mouthful.

As we drank the tea it was clear the monk was nervous and the initial conversation was stiled as everyone got used to their surroundings and each other. As the tea flowed everyone loosened up and the monk, seemingly more comfortable talking Korean than English, sat chatting to some of the Korean participants.

Soon it was time for dinner, the schedule had recommended dinner was eaten in silence and most of the Korean participants did so. But taking our lead from the monks, who were quietly chatting, there was polite conversation on the foreign end of the table as we sampled the Korean food making sure we didn’t take anything we didn’t like as we had to finish everything on our plates.

After dinner there was dish washing in “absolute silence”, I had imagined this to be almost ritualised and involve all the dishes used in the preparation of the food. But  I was surprised to find we just has to wash our own plate and chopsticks.

The final part of the day took us back to the Buddha Hall for evening chanting. Recordings of monks chanting never sound as nice as it did stood listening to it. Although I didn’t have clue what the chanting was about it was pleasantly calming to listen to. When the chanting was over and we had bowed many times we made our way to the meditation hall where we met with the Swiss monk for the first time. His English was much better than the Russian and his talk was much more informative.

The sun was setting outside as we sat cross legged on cushions in the dimly lit hall whilst the Swiss monk recounted the story of the first Buddha. He told us how Siddhārtha Gautama had been a prince who had been sheltered from the everything outside the palace where he grew up. But one day ventured outside the palace for the first time and witnessed suffering in the outside world. He saw a sick person, an old person, a corpse and a monk meditating under a tree. These four sights changed his life, he realised he could not be happy living as he had been and set out to discover how to overcome suffering. After six years of searching, living in great poverty and refusing food and drink he realised there had to be some middle way between the great riches he once had and the extreme poverty he had enforced upon himself. He then sat down under a tree and vowed not to move until the answer came to him.

The Swiss monk also said that Buddhism can be seen as an aethesist religion because its followers don’t worship a god. Instead they subscribe to a set of ideals, a philosophy or ideology.

Whilst listening to this talk Buddhism began to make more sense to me than other religions have. I’ve always found it difficult to subscribe to fairy tale type stories of omnipotent gods that have the power of creation. It is much easier to subscribe to ideologies such as the four noble truths and the eight fold path taught in Buddhism.

According to Wikipedia the four noble truths are:

1. The Nature of Suffering: This is the noble truth of “Suffering”: Birth is Suffering, aging is Suffering, sickness is Suffering, death is Suffering; union with what is displeasing is Suffering; separation from what is pleasing is Suffering; not to get what one wants is Suffering; to get what one does not want is Suffering; in brief, the five aggregates subject to clinging are Suffering.
2. The Origin of Suffering (Samudaya): This is the noble truth of the origin of Suffering: It is this craving which leads to renewed existence, accompanied by delight and lust, seeking delight here and there; that is, craving for sensual pleasures, craving for existence, craving for extermination.
3. The Cessation of Suffering (Nirodha): This is the noble truth of the cessation of Suffering: It is the remainderless fading away and cessation of that same craving, the giving up and relinquishing of it, freedom from it, and non-reliance on it.
4. The Way Leading to the Cessation of Suffering (Magga): This is the noble truth of the way leading to the cessation of Suffering: It is this Noble Eightfold Path; that is, right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration.
It is the eight fold path that personally makes the most sense to me. If we live in such a way that we do not cause suffering to other through our actions, views and livelihood then it should follow that we will be a more content person.

Once his talk was over the Swiss monk gave us guidance on how to meditate. We were instructed to sit cross legged with our back straight in a comfortable position. In order to meditate we were to concentrate on our breath to the exclusion of everything else in our mind. We were told to breath through our noses counting in 1… out 2… in 3… out 4… and so on until we’d counted to 10, then start again form one. The aim of this was to find a completely clear mind and if we stopped concentrating on counting and found ourselves thinking about something else we were to start again from one.

Initially I found the meditation hard as my mind swarmed with questions about what I has just heard. I understood that the point of meditation was to find a clear mind but, why?

According to the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order:

Meditation is a means of transforming the mind. Buddhist meditation practices are techniques that encourage and develop concentration, clarity, and emotional positivity.

We meditated for two 20 minute sessions and by the second session my mind had calmed down and the 20 minutes passed quickly. During my meditation I didn’t discover the answers to any of the question that had arisen from the talk and I didn’t feel enlightened at the end. But as I walked back to the accommodation, amid the usual complaints of aching backs and dead legs from sitting motionless in the meditation posture for 20 minutes, I did feel much more peaceful and relaxed.

That evening lights out was at 9:30pm due to a predawn start and I fell asleep listening to the almost defining roar of crickets outside the window. It felt nice to be somewhere were you could here nature around you. It so easy to forget things like that exist when you live in high rise flats in the middle of a city and are lulled to sleep by the noise of the road every night.

I awoke to the sound of the temple bell at 3:45am, I dragged myself out of bed and headed to the bathroom to freshen up before predawn chanting began at 4:00am.

My need to feel clean almost made me late as I left the bathroom to find everyone else was already at the Buddha Hall. I trudged as quickly as my weary body would take me across the garden and was relieved to find, that although I was the last to arrive, the ceremony hadn’t started.

Dressed, as the previous evening, in terracotta robes the monks began their predawn chanting with the same chant as last night then moved onto a more upbeat number. We watched, listened and copied throughout the ceremony; again with little idea what was happening. Then once again we were lead to the meditation hall. This time the meditation was even harder. My mind, not used to being up so early, absolutely refused to concentrate, whilst I was supposed to be concentrating on my breath and counting all I could think about was my bed! Luckily the meditation only lasted 20 minutes and afterwards we had an hours rest before breakfast.

Back in our communal area everyone gathered chatting in hushed tones, reading and drinking tea not wanting to sleep for fear of feeling even more tired when they awoke.

Breakfast required absolute silence and in our sleepy sates this wasn’t difficult, the food was exactly the same as last nights dinner. Koreans don’t make a distinction between meals and will happily start the day eating spicy foods, fish and rice. Not feeling quite that brave I opted for a very small plate of rice and potatoes – after all it was 6am.

After breakfast we went for a short walk with the Russian monk to a Buddhist burial ground. There wasn’t a lot to see and almost as soon as we arrived we turned on our heal and headed back to do some manual labour, well weeding, in the garden.

As we were weeding the early morning turned into day the sun came out making it a pleasant experience. We each picked a particularly bad patch of gravel to weed and sat chatting as we freed the roots from the ground.

Once the weeding was over the day had begun to feel old, we’d been awake and on the go for five hours yet it was only 9am and time to write some scripture.

Entering the long hall and seeing the table set up with ink, palettes and paintbrushes I felt like I was back in art class at school – something I was never any good at. I took my place at the table dreading the task ahead. Luckily we were tracing the Chinese, Korean and English scripture but that didn’t stop my finished effort looking like something a five year old had done.

After writing the scripture we completed a final round of chanting and bowing before changing back into our normal clothes and I heading off in search of the bus home.

By the time I left the temple the 4am start had caught up with me and I was longing for my bed, but I also had a greater understanding of Buddhism and how the monks live their lives. I didn’t quite get to grips with meditation, my mind was far to active, but I now understand the principle and can see myself using it in the future and trying to improve my concentration.

I’ve come away with a bit of knowledge about Buddhism and a want to learn more. I can see how some of the ideologies behind Buddhism make sense and it would not be a bad thing if more people applied them to the way they live their lives, but I doubt I’ll be declaring myself a Buddhist any time soon!

* Posted by j150vsc on 23/05/2007.

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