A Tale Of Two Retreats

 

I'm getting ready to go on a five day silent Ignatian retreat in a couple weeks. Some traditional Benedictine monks are flying to Ohio from Tasmania (Australia) to offer it; in addition to daily Latin Mass, there is guided spiritual direction and Confession, as well as meditations on the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. Because it can be hard to find a solid retreat, I have to travel a bit for this one (20 hours total of driving). I feel fortunate I am able to attend, and I'd solicit your prayers for a fruitful experience.

Part of my desire to go on periodic retreats is to receive training, be pushed by those more advanced in the interior life, experience silence apart from my every day life, and grow closer to Christ in my spiritual practice. 

There was a time, years ago, when I was willing to travel anywhere in order to sit at the feet of a teacher under tutelage. At that time, my mind was my enemy--a rabid raccoon I couldn't trust. Who can teach me to train it? I wasn't plugged in to any kind of orthodox Catholicism at the time, and so I went East. In scripture, the Lord God says "As far as the East is from the West..." (Ps 103:12). Eastern thought is not that of the West, and religious syncretism is something I discovered later is not a boon, but a liability in the spiritual life of a Catholic (which I wrote about here). I don't recommend this for any sincere, practicing Catholic, but it was part of my journey at the time, and led me to reflect on it this morning.

In 2007 I traveled to Southern Thailand to make an eleven day vipassana ("to see things as they are") retreat at a monastery founded by the late Nguam Panitch (b 1906, d 1993). In 1926, Panitch left the wats (temples) of Bangkok and founded Suan Mokkhabalarama in the forest to practice what he believed to be a purer and less encumbered form of Buddhism. He adopted the name Buddhadassa Bhikkhu, which translates 'Slave of the Buddha' and lived out his life as a monk seeking liberation, and teaching others who sought the same.

There was no "signing up" or registering for this retreat; I just had to show up at the monastery gates and hope the monks let you in. It was over 700km from Bangkok to the province of Surat Thani in the far southern part of the country, where the monastery was located in the jungle. 

By combination of bus and tuk-tuk (a three-wheeled auto rickshaw) over the course of a day, I eventually arrived. The monks let me in.

The days began at 4am with meditation. We ate simple vegetarian meals, washed our clothes in a cistern and used a lantern to illuminate the path through the forest for talks. We did about six hours of meditation a day. I had a small cell with a concrete bed and bamboo mat, and a wooden block for a pillow. 

Two monks game the talks on the dharma each day, Tan Dhammaviddu and Tan Medhi. Tan Dhammaviddu was an English monk who had lived in a cave until recently; he was pale and never smiled, but was frank and serious and strived after enlightenment "the way a drowning man seeks air," as Bhuddhadassa Bhikku used to say; Tan Medhi was a pleasant native Thai monk who would smile and laugh. Sometimes the monks would go into the jungle to meditate for days where they knew the lions and other wild animals were present; being so close to potential death-by-mauling heightened their awareness, I was told. 

I didn't talk for eleven days, nor did any of the other participants, and I couldn't write. We were also forbidden to kill, as a precept, which meant enduring the mosquitos which in a state of meditation you would feel land on your skin and insert their stinger, drawing your blood.

About fifty men and fifty women from all over the world started the retreat, and a good number could not stand the intensity and left. One night I heard crying in the cell next to mine; it was a pimply kid from England who I imagined was homesick. We each had our own assigned meditation cushion; one morning the young man from Ireland who usually sat next to me didn't show up. I learned later, after the retreat, that he ran away in the middle of the night, climbing over the monastery gates, never to be heard of again. 

Thai Buddhism is largely based in the Theravada ("School of the Elders") tradition, which is old-school, strict Buddhism. In the Christian tradition, it would be akin to the "traditionalist" camps. There are different schools of Buddhism: Mayahana is a kind of reform school which places the enlightenment of all sentient beings as their primary end. Mayahana Buddhists refer to the Theravada school pejoratively as the "lesser vehicle," since Theravada Buddhists focus on liberation of the self. There is also Tibetan Buddhism, and Zen (Rinzai and Soto) Buddhism. The goal in Buddhism is to realize the non-duality of all things: there is no self, which is only a construct. Suffering arises from attachment to desire, which the Buddhist seeks to annihilate. Most Buddhists believe in karma and reincarnation--subsequent lives in which one continues to try to escape from the cycle of rebirth if you don't achieve it in your lifetime.

When I flew back to America, I did not come home enlightened, but I did undergo some serious discipline during that week and a half. Again, this is not something I would recommend to any Christian seeking Christ, as it is not necessary or good practice. I only share it because in my journey, God wrote with crooked lines. 

If you desire God, seek Christ and learn from a teacher in the school of charity. Pray to the God who loves you, don't meditate and seek answers from the Void. Rather than seek the annihilation of the self, subjugate it in order to become a slave of Christ, as the Apostle and all the disciples did.  The Gospel and the Dharma are not one and the same. Be willing to sell all you have for the Pearl of Great Price. Seek out discipline in the school of Tradition and orthodoxy, and learn from the Saints who have gone before you. Otherwise you will have a lot of 'un-learning' to do. If you are tempted towards religious syncretism, I would like to spare you from all that.