Thailand, 23 Aug 2006 --

Cara and I got away from the chaos and constant noise of Bangkok yesterday afternoon and took a three hour meditation class at a buddhist temple.  It was definitely some good, relaxing stuff, and I enjoyed it a lot.  I don’t know that I could ever get really good at meditataion, though…my mind wanders a lot.

Apparently, buddhist meditation (for beginners anyway) is all about constant awareness of what each part of your body is doing, feeling and intending to do.  For example, one of the exercises we did was a walking meditation.  The routine pretty much goes: stand, walk 6 paces, turn 180 degrees, repeat.  The key, though, is that the whole time you’re thinking to yourself about what your body is doing.  As you stand, you think ’standing, standing, standing’ (in a calm, soothing voice of course).  Then you think ‘intending to walk, intending to walk,’ ‘lifting,’ ‘moving,’ ‘dropping’ (for the actions of your foot) and so on.

If you’re uncomfortable or need to itch or something, you think ‘itching, itching, itching.’ The buddhist teacher leading the class claims that most ‘discomforts’ will go away if you simply ‘note’ them.  If this doesn’t work for you and you need to scratch:  you think ‘intending to scratch,’ ‘lifting the arm,’ ’scratching,’ ‘dropping the arm,’ ‘etc.’

This was all well and good…and if it weren’t for one inch and a half long cocroach, I might be well on my way to buddhist zen-ness at this very moment.  As we began the walking meditation, I saw my giant roachy friend start crawling across the tile floor of the basement room in the monistary in my general direction.  After I walk my six paces, I close my eyes, stand, turn, open my eyes.

With my back now to the roach, I’m now left wondering what he’s up to back there…and so instead of soothingly thinking ’standing, standing, standing’ my train of thought is more along the lines of ‘cockroach….cockroach….cockroach.’  I know the buddhist master teaching us to meditate swears that acknowledging a ‘discomfort’ is just supposed to make it go away…but in the case of the roach somehow this didn’t seem to happen.

Fortunately, I never got to the point of: ‘turning,’ ‘walking,’ ’squishing giant roach with bare foot’ but I’d definitely say my state of mind wasn’t as peaceful as it could have been.  Stupid buddhist cockroach.

Categories thailand