Hard work and hard rest
Trip Start
Nov 02, 2007
1
13
33
Trip End
Dec 02, 2007
Chiang Mai, Thailand
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
After work I decided to check out a new temple which was just around the corner from the guesthouse.
It was a very peaceful space and I had a lovely meditation for about ½hour before some novice monks turned up. Then things got quite fun. They were very chatty and laughing at lot.
Cheekie Novice Monk
One of them took me to show me his room at the temple, which I think was more of a joke for the other monks than a special privalege for me :-0. After that I went back to meditation for a bit and then they asked if I'd like to help sweep the temple, before service. I gave it a go for a few minutes, which I think they found very amusing. Still it was fun and after all they were just young boys around 7-10 and although I couldn't make out most of what they saying I did have the odd phrase directed at me, mainly: "You beautiful" and "he say he love you" The funniest though was when one of the smallest ones said to me "me what make boom boom with you" :-0!! I had to laugh. Very sweet as only one of them knew the english so the others were getting prompts from him.Anyway, I felt really good in there so I went back to meditation and before I knew it the service was starting. I was asked to move to the back, as the monks needed to be at the front, but I was allowed to stay and participate. One monk came over and chatted to me as his english was pretty good. Turns out he was from Cambodia and has travelled around a lot during his 10 years of devotion. We had a chat about meditation and I explained that I had a teacher in the west who was instructing me.
The service itself was hard going. Obviously it was all in thai so I hadn't a clue what most of the chants were about. I did pick out the odd one from the schools morning prayer sheet but that was only like 1 line out of the hour long service. The basic structure seemed to be that the head monk would start a chant then all the monks would follow and continue for several minutes before moving into the next one.
There were some other (non-monk) thais at the back who I was sitting with and it was nice to see that they were almost of unsure of what happened next as I was :-) After much chanting everyone turns around and faces the other way and meditates for a while. Then there is another spoken prayer, more meditiation and then everyone turns back again. The last bit is prayer and lots of bowing.
I had a great time in there and felt very privaleged to have been part of it. The cambodian monk chatted to me some more at the end and I think he'd like to chat more about meditation and buddhist traditions (to practise his english) so I will probably go back later in the week.
Just had a meal at the guesthouse which was lovely and thinking of crashing soon. Time for a juice maybe (fresh juices here are great).
